HERDER1 WAS Herder a great man? I protest, I cannot say. He is called the German Plato. I will not be so satirical as Mr. Coleridge, who, being told by the pastor of Ratzeburg, that Klopstock was the German Milton, said to himself, “Yes,— a very German Milton." The truth is, Plato himself is but an idea to most men; nay, even to most scholars; nay, even to most Platonic scholars.2 Still, for that very reason, the word "Plato" has a grandeur to the mind-which better acquaintance, if it did not impair, would tend at least to humanize and to make less seraphic. As it is, with the advantage, on Plato's side, of this ideal existence, and the disadvantage on Herder's of a language so anti-Grecian as the German in everything except its extent, the contest is too unequal. Making allowances for this, however, I still find it difficult to form any judgment of an author so "many-sided " (to borrow a German expression), so polymorphous, as Herder: there is the same sort of difficulty in making an estimate of 1 This paper first appeared in the London Magazine for April 1823 under the title "Death of a German Great Man," with the signature "X. Y. Z.," but described in the title-page of the magazine as "By the Author of the Confessions of an English Opium-Eater." It was reprinted by De Quincey in the thirteenth volume of his collected writings.-M. 2 As, for example, to our English translators, who make the Attic bee talk like an old drone both as to sense and expression. See, too, for a specimen of what Plato does not mean the Geist der Speculativen Philosophie by a tedious man-one Tiedemann. his merits as there would be to a political economist in appraising the strength and weakness of an empire like the Chinese, or like the Roman under Trajan: to be just, it must be a representative estimate—and therefore abstracted from works, not only many, but also various, and far asunder in purpose and tendency. Upon the whole, the best notion I can give of Herder to the English reader is to say that he is the German Coleridge; having the same all-grasping erudition, the same spirit of universal research, the same disfiguring superficiality and inaccuracy, the same indeterminateness of object, the same obscure and fanciful mysticism (schwärmerey), the same plethoric fulness of thought, the same fine sense of the beautiful, and (I think) the same incapacity for dealing with simple and austere grandeur. I must add, however, that in fineness and compass of understanding our English philosopher appears to me to have greatly the advantage. In another point they agree, both are men of infinite title-pages. I have heard Coleridge acknowledge that his title-pages alone (titles, that is, of works meditated but unexecuted) would fill a large volume: and, it is clear that, if Herder's power had been commensurate with his will, all other authors must have been put down: many generations Iwould have been unable to read to the end of his works. The weakest point about Herder that I know of, was his admiration of Ossian; a weakness from which, I should think, Coleridge must have been preserved,1 if by nothing else, by his much more accurate acquaintance with the face and appearances, fixed and changing, of external nature. I have been lately much interested by a life of Herder, edited by Professor J. G. Müller, but fortunately written (or chiefly so) by a person far more competent to speak of him with love and knowledge: viz. Maria Caroline, the widow of Herder. Herder had the unspeakable blessing in this world of an angelic wife, whose company was his consolation under 1 There is, indeed, a metrical version of Niny-what? "Ninithoma," or Niny-something in Coleridge's earliest volume of Poems: but that was a very juvenile performance. [The poem referred to is one of two Ossianic pieces printed by Coleridge in 1796,-one with the title "Imitated from Ossian," the other with the title "The Complaint of Ninathoma: from the same."-M.] a good deal of worldly distress from secret malice and open hostility. She was admirably fitted to be the wife of a philosopher; for, whilst her excellent sense and her innocent heart enabled her to sympathize fully with the general spirit of Herder's labours, she never appears for a moment to have forgotten her feminine character, but declines all attempt to judge of abstruse questions in philosophy,—whatever weight of polemic interest may belong to them in a life of Herder. Her work is very unpretending, and, perhaps, may not have been designed for the public: for it was not published until more than ten years after her death. The title of the book is "Erinnerungen aus dem Leben Joh. Gottfrieds von Herder (Recollections from the Life of J. G. Herder): 2 vols. Tübingen, 1820." It appears that Herder rose from the very humblest rank, and, of necessity, therefore, in his youth, but afterwards from inclination, led a life of most exemplary temperance: this is not denied by those who have attacked him. He was never once intoxicated in his whole life: a fact of very equivocal construction! his nerves would not allow him to drink tea; and, of coffee, though very agreeable to him, he allowed himself but little. All this temperance, however, led to nothing: for he died when he was but four months advanced in his sixtieth year. Surely, if he had been a drunkard or an opium-eater, he might have contrived to weather the point of sixty years. In fact, opium would, perhaps, have been of service to him. For all his sufferings were derived from a most exquisite and morbid delicacy of nervous temperament; and of this it was that he died. With more judicious medical advice, he might have been alive at this hour. His nervous system had the sensitive delicacy of Cowper's and of Rousseau's, but with some peculiarities that belong (in my judgment) exclusively to German temperaments. I cannot explain myself fully on this occasion: but, in general, I will say that, from much observation of the German literature, I perceive a voluptuousness— —an animal glow—almost a sensuality in the very intellectual sensibilities of the German, such as I find in the people of no other nation. The French, it will be said, are sensual. Yes sensual enough. But theirs is 1 He was born in 1744, and died 18th December 1803.-M. a factitious sensuality: a sensual direction is given to their sensibilities by the tone of a vicious literature, and a tone of public and domestic life certainly not virtuous. The fault however in the French is the want of depth and simplicity in their feelings. But, in Germany, the life and habits of the people are generally innocent and simple. Sensuality is nowhere less tolerated: intellectual pleasures nowhere more valued. Yet, in the most intellectual of their feelings, there is still a taint of luxury and animal fervour. Let me give one illustration :-In the Paradise Lost, that man must have an impure mind who finds the least descent into sensuality in any parts which relate to our first parents in Eden: in no part of his divine works does the purity of Milton's mind shine forth more bright and unsullied: but there is one infirm passage; viz. where Raphael is made to blush on Adam's questioning him about the loves of the heavenly host. The question, in fact, was highly improper, as implying an irregular and unhallowed curiosity not incident to a paradisiacal state. But to make the archangel blush is to load him with a sin-born shame from which even Adam was free. Now, this passage, this single infirm thought of Milton's, is entirely to the taste of Germany; and Klopstock even, who is supposed to support the Hebraic, sublime, and unsensualizing nature against the more Grecian, voluptuous, and beautiful nature of Wieland, &c., yet indulges in this sensualism to excess. But to return to Herder:-His letters to his wife and children (of which many are given in this work) are delightful; especially those to the former, as they show the infinite, the immeasurable depth of affection which united them. Seldom, indeed, on this earth can there have been a fireside more hallowed by love and pure domestic affections than that of Herder. He wanted only freedom from the cares which oppressed him, and perhaps a little well-boiled opium, combined with a good deal of lemonade or orangeade (of which, as of all fruits, Herder's elegance of taste made him exceedingly fond), to have been the happiest man in Germany. With an angel of a wife, with the love and sympathy of all Germany, and with a medicine for his nerves, what more could the heart of man desire? Yet, not having the - last, the others were flung away upon him; and, in his latter years, he panted after the invisible world, merely because the visible (as he often declared) ceased to stimulate him. That worst and most widely-spread of all diseases, weariness of daily life, inirritability of the nerves to the common stimulants which life supplies, seized upon him to his very heart's core he was sick of the endless revolution upon his eyes of the same dull unimpassioned spectacle : tædet me harum quotidianarum formarum was the spirit of his ceaseless outcry. He fought with this soul-consuming evil; he wrestled with it as a maniac. Change of scene was suggested, undoubtedly one of the best nervous medicines. Change of scene he tried: he left his home at Weimar, and went to Dresden. There one would think the magnificent library was alone sufficient to stir the nerves even of a paralytic. And so it proved. Herder grew much better: the library, the picture - gallery, the cathedral service, all tended to regenerate him he received the most flattering attentions: the Elector of that day (1803) expressed a wish to see him. Herder went, and was honoured with a private interview; in the course of which the Elector, who was a prince of great talents and information, paid him a very high and just compliment. "The impression which the nobleminded prince made upon Herder," says Mrs. Herder, deep and memorable. On his part, the Elector was highly pleased with Herder, as we have learned from the best authority, and is represented as having afterwards consulted a minister on the possibility of drawing him into his service." From Dresden Herder returned home in high spirits, but soon began to droop again. His last illness and death soon followed. These I shall report from the authentic narrative of Mrs. Herder : 66 was "Full of gratitude, and with many delightful remem"brances, did Herder leave Dresden. The three last weeks "of his residence in that city were the last sun-gleam that "illumined his life. He purposed for the future to spend 66 a few weeks there every now and then, in order to make 66 use of the superb library. On the 18th of September he "arrived at home happy and in high spirits. He found our "William with us, and gave him such consolation as he |