A Review of the Literary History of Germany, to the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1859. Excerpt: ... SUMMARY OF THE LITERARY HISTORY OF GERMANY. The German is one of the oldest, purest, and most cultivated of modern languages; yielding to none in force and perspicuity, it excels many in richness, and if I may use the term, in adaptability. Klopstock, our immortal writer, in alluding to these qualities so strikingly inherent in our language, truly and patriotically exclaims: Dass keine, welche lebt, mit Deutschlands Sprache sich In den zu kuhnen Wettstreit wage, Sie ist damit ich's kurz, mit ihrer Kraft es sage, An mannigfalt'ger Uranlage zu immer neuer, Und doch deutscher Wendung reich Ist, was wir selbst, vor grauen Jahren Da Tacitus uns forschte waren, Gesondert, ungemischt und nur sich selber gleich Like the nation, our language grew up slowly, for exterior unfavourable circumstances frequently impeded and checked its more rapid development. Its history, from the earliest to the present time, spreads over a space of about two thousand years. Let us, therefore, in order to survey its development more clearly, divide it into seven periods, and subdivide them again into two parts, so that the first four will form the history of the ancient, and the last B three that of our modern literature; the beginning of the sixteenth century, or of the Reformation, being thus the boundary. For the knowledge of the history of the first period, called the Germanic-Gothic, dating from the first appearance of German tribes, about one hundred years before till 768 after Christ, we are exclusively indebted to Grecian and Roman authors. According to them, and recent philological researches fully bear out this assertion, the German language is that of an ancient powerful race, divided into different tribes, which at a very remote age emigrating from the upper part of ...