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themselves . One distichon says , * " What they yesterday learned , (to-day they are busy in teaching . Oh , what a short gut these gentlemen have ! ' Another says ,, No sooner is the hot fit of the Gallomania over , than the cold fit of the Grsecomania breaks out . ' We have no desire to vindicate the political life of Frederick Schlegel , but we protest against this oracular sentence : — c With his physical life ,, his literary existence had also reached its term : he will not live , because he was not independent ;—selfsustained , he never succeeded in creating anything original and complete . ' We presume , in opposition , to say , that if ever there
were thinkers whose influence on the thoughts of future ages has been so considerable as to leave imperishable traces in the works of their successors , and who , therefore , may claim permanent honour , the Schlegels are such writers . We can directly appeal to the English translations of Frederick Schlcgel's ' Lectures on the History of Literature / and August Wilhelm Schlegel ' s ' Lectures on the Drama . ' And the judgment of Goethe himself may be thought a more than sufficient comment on the note-writer ' s sentence of commendation : —
c grand schism which had taken place in German literature had n great influence on our dramatic affairs , particularly from the vicinity of Jena . I kept on the same side with Schiller ; we gave in our adhesion to the new philosophy , and the oesthetical system arising out of it . ' —Ta ^ und-Jahnes Hefte , 1802 , vol . iii . p . 278 . Another great offence committed by this school , in this gentleman ' s eyes , is their depreciation of Wieland . Wo , of course , do not censure him for his opinion that their judgment was depreciation ,, but for the imputation of unworthy motives , and
the incorrectness of his own representation of Wieland ' s writings . He urges that Wieland ' popularized philosophy ; ' but when this is alleged as enhancing the offence of not rendering to him due honours ,, it should be recollected that this was the very yravamen of the * charge against him . Indeed , an anecdote related by another note-writer of Wieland shows that , in his own eyes , it was a very doubtful merit to make the people partisans in matter of religious controversy : a fortiori it must be so , of avowed philosophical speculations . Mrs . Austin ' s friend proceeds : — ' But the school , whose grand object it was to introduce relig ious mysticism and the romance of the middle ages , never could forgive Wieland what he had done to enlighten the nation . They accused him of infidelity , because , in his ji gathodtcmon , for instance , he endeavoured to represent Christianity in the moral grandeur it possesses , even to those who do not believe in the miracles related in the " New Testament . " ' An account of this philosophical romance will probably interest our readers , and , at tlie same time , enable them to appreciate the candour of this accusation .
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188 Characteristic * of Goethe .
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1834, page 188, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2631/page/28/
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