de Quincey's Works (Volume 12); Speculation Literary and Philosophic with German Tales and Other Narrative Papers (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. 1863. Excerpt: ... LESSING. For the last fifty years, or perhaps we may say from the beginning of the present century, there has been a growing interest amongst us in the German literature. This interest has followed a direction, which upon the whole cannot be regarded as happy, having settled almost exclusively on the poets, in whom, as a class, it may be boldly said that the originality and the strength of the German mind are not revealed. For these we must look to the Prose Authors, who in general have neither written under the constraint of foreign models, nor sought to manifest their emancipation from that constraint by the monstrous, or the blank affectations of caprice. 'From the German prose writers, therefore, of the classical rank, I purpose to present the English reader with a specimen or more; in selecting which I shall guide myself by this law, that on the one hand any such specimen shall be fitted for a general, and not a merely German interest; and, on the other hand, that it shall express the characteristic power of the author. I begin with Lessing, as the restorer and modern father of the German literature. Lessing was born in January 1729, and died in February 1781. He may be said, therefore, to have begun his career precisely at the middle of the last century. At this time the German literature was sunk in meanness and bai ' barism. Leibnitz, who might have exalted the national mind, had been dead little more than forty years: but he had no right to expect any peculiar influence over the Ger man intellect, not having written at all in the German language; and Wolf, who had, was too much of a merely scholastic writer, and had besides too little that was properly his own, except his systematic method, to impress any deep sense of excellence, strictly nation...