II.

LUTHER.

1483-1546.

A WORLD-HISTORICAL personage, emphatically and by eminence such, is Luther. The adjective we thus apply-a compound adjective so much more German than English in genius-seems made for our purpose, to express densely at the same time this man's personality, his influence, and his fame. For no other man perhaps ever lived who, simply by what he was, stamped himself so broadly, so deeply, and so indelibly as did Luther upon the universal imagination of the human race; no other man who, by his own single force, did so much to turn into a new channel the main current of human history; no other who so imperiously usurped, at once and for ever, his place in the memory of all human kind.

Such was Luther, the man. We have here, however, to deal with Luther, not in these larger aspects of his genius and his achievement, but rather as a German simply; and, even more narrowly still, as a German producer of German literature. (No inconsiderable part of Luther's immensely voluminous literary production was written, not in German, but in Latin.) Luther, as we have already remarked, stands founder, at the very beginning, of proper German literary history. Fecund and manifold man that he was, he bore fruit for literature hardly less remarkable than was the fruit which he bore for religion and for politics. German literature, in the full catholic sense of that expression, may be said to date its commencement from the moment at which Luther's noble translation of the Bible into his own mothertongue was first given to Germany. That monumental work it was which fixed for Germans the form of their literary language—in truth, which made it possible for a German literature, strictly and comprehensively so described, to be.

Before Luther, the German language seemed hopelessly distracted into dialects. As an organ of literary expression, it was despised even by the Germans themselves, and neglected. Luther's works in authorship are as multiform as they are manifold. They consist of lectures, of sermons, of tracts, of pamphlets in controversy, of commentaries, of addresses, and, unsurpassed in importance, of letters-letters almost as numerous, and almost as various, as those of Voltaire. Above every thing else, however, that proceeded from Luther's pen towers eminent in literary value and significance his translation into German of the Old and New Testament Scriptures. Luther's own sign manual, legible on it all, renders it fair that the German Bible which, where he did not himself make it he at least effectively got made, should be called, as it invariably is called, by his name.

This, Luther's capital achievement in literature, it will, of course, be impossible for us at all to illustrate here. Luther's Bible is, and it must remain, immortally and hopelessly, as it is admirably, German. It has, for three centuries and a half, been to the German-speaking peoples all that the "King James's" translation, for two centuries, has been to the peoples that speak English.

We shall not need here to sketch Luther's life. The world knows it by heart. It will not, however, be amiss to recall to our readers an image, at once lively and just, of the man Martin Luther, by giving a few glimpses of him as self-disclosed in his letters, or again as acting the true “autocrat of the breakfast-table," at his ease and freely, among his friends. How the great reformer seems to be living again, as often as one listens to that racy and that abundant “tabletalk" of his silent now so long from the lips that uttered it, but resounding still, and forever resounding, in the books in which it is printed, for all races and all generations of his fellow-men to hear! Luther, with shrewd self-knowledge, contrasted himself against his friend Melanchthon by saying: "Philip is straiter tied than I am; I am more a rhetorician and a talker." To talk was indeed Luther's genius and his

delight. He talked when he preached, talked even when he wrote; but he was at his best-also, it must be owned, at his worst when he ungirded himself to talk freely and flowingly, in the communications of social or of convivial life.

Such most characteristic utterances of Luther are preserved for us, perhaps in overlarge supply. The great man had his devoted admirers, who valued, not merely for themselves, but for the whole world of mankind, every syllable of speech that issued from those extremely out-speaking oracular lips. These earlier Boswells of a far mightier Johnson waited on their master as often as they got the chance-and they got the chance very often-and took down his words in writing as fast as he spoke them. His least considered utterances seem not to have differed from those best considered, in the perilous risk they ran of being thus 66 treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life." Never perhaps was mortal man more completely, more pitilessly, exposed, to be known to the world for what he really was, than was Martin Luther. And this exposure we have, in not its least startling degree of distinctness, in the volumes of his table-talk. No conventional, no posturing Luther is here— no Luther deceptively draped by artful admirers for decorous appearance to history. It is an actual, not an ideal, man, a man, too, caught as it were, at unawares-his attitude sighted under many different angles-that lives before us, as we listen, and speaks these breathing words.

The most conveniently accessible popular form in which, until lately, Luther's Table-Talk could be read in English was found in a much abridged translation, from the hand of William Hazlitt, constituting one of the issues of the wellknown Bohn Library. Professor Henry Morley now edits, for the very useful "National Library," in course of publication by Cassell & Company, one small volume of selections, promising a second, from the pioneer English version of Captain Henry Bell.

We go ourselves to the original text for our extracts from

the Table-Talk. Luther is discussing astrology, in which pretended science he did not believe, although his friend Melanchthon did. Luther says:

I have often talked of the subject [astrology] with Philip [Melanchthon] and recounted to him in order my whole life, how one thing after another has befallen, and how it has fared with me. I am a peasant's son; my father, my grandfather, my great-grandfather, were nothing but peasants. My father went to Mansfeld, and there became a miner. Such is my origin.

Now that I should become bachelor of arts, master of arts, monk, and so forth, that was not written in the stars. Did I not get myself great shame though, by becoming monk, by laying aside my brown cap and wearing a different one? The which, truly, vexed my father sore and offended him. After that I got into the pope's hair, and he, forsooth, back into mine; I took a runaway nun to wife, and had children by her. Who saw all that in the stars? Who would have told me beforehand that so it was to happen?

With the foregoing passage cited from the Table-Talk, Michelet begins his lively biography of Luther. But the passage is "edited" by the Frenchman. The fact of its being in argument against astrology that Luther was sketching his own career does not at all come out, and Michelet omits altogether the particular about Luther's becoming a "monk," apparently because to include it, after "bachelor of arts, doctor of divinity," would spoil a climax--a climax, by the way, quite the Frenchman's own, and not in the least belonging to Luther's simple statement. In short, Luther is exhibited by Michelet as swaggering about himself, instead of merely telling, for argument's sake, a few incidents from his own experience. In addition, the clause, "Such is my origin," is mistranslated to read, "There I was born," Luther being thus caused to say that he was born at Mansfeld, whereas Eisleben was his birthplace. It will do to add a good pinch of salt, in allowance for rhetorical variations, whenever you read M. Michelet's citations from the TableTalk of Luther. Care, in fact, is always to be exercised in using Luther's Table-Talk. The nature of things forbids that there should not, from one cause or another, be many

errors in the existing records of such hurrying reports, never, we suppose, verified by Luther, as were taken of his winged words.

When Martin's father, John Luther, died, the son wrote thus to his friend Philip Melanchthon :

It is just and right that I, his son, should mourn such a father, through whom the Father of mercy created me, and through whose sweat he nourished me and made me what I am, such as that is. But how I rejoice that he lived in these times, that he saw the light of truth! Blessed be God in all his works and counsels for evermore!

The filial piety of the foregoing, as well as its piety toward God, is touching and beautiful. Melanchthon's character and spirit seem to have been such as always to draw out toward him the sweetest and the best that was in Luther. If only there were now left of Luther nothing but the sweetest and the best that was in him! What bounds then would there be to the reverence with which we should study and admire! Alas, the dross, too, of him has come down, with sad inextricableness entangled in the gold!

The stormy soul of the battle-welcoming reformer was sensitive and tractable to music; the lion listened, and, listening, became the lamb. Luther himself played the guitar and the flute. He never tired of sounding the praises of music as being, nigh to theology, one of the best gifts of God to men. In his Table-Talk many pleasing allusions to the subject occur. For instance, he says:

It [music] drives away the devil. pride, and other evil passions.

Again (speaking to a harper):

It makes one forget anger, lust,

Friend, strike me up a song, as David struck it up. I hold that if David were now to rise from the dead, he would be very much surprised finding to what a pitch people have got in the matter of music. Music never reached a higher point than now.

Might not we, adapting, say, in our turn, of Luther what Luther said of David in reference to music, "If Luther were now to rise from the dead?"