On the other hand the Romantic school has also broadened the realm of poetic material in a very important manner, by adding to it the provinces of the phantastic, the visionary, the fairy-like, and by giving to the symbolical an undreamed-of expansion.

On the whole, modern German literature has probably a richer field from which to choose her material than any other literature can boast of.  In fact it is perhaps too variegated, and thus, because of the richness and originality of its subject matter, allows too much latitude to genius.  One field only in poetry, considered from the viewpoint of real art, is almost uncultivated.  All the efforts and all the attempts on the part of both Catholics and Protestants have not succeeded in producing religious poems of any degree of importance since Annette von Droste-Huelshoff ceased to sing; whereas, on the other hand, poetry that is hostile to the church has brought to maturity some great productions, not only in Anzengruber or Karl Schoenherr, in Friedrich Theodor Vischer, in Storm, and Keller, but, above all, in Nietzsche.  A turn in the tide that seems just now to be taking place is exemplified in the important epic poems of Enrica von Handel-Mazzetti.

Finally, as the last and, in a certain sense, the strongest, pillar of permanency we will name the public.  It is just as much a product as a contributing factor of literature; in both respects, however, preeminently important as a conservative force.  The predominant and enduring tendencies, forms, and subjects are naturally chiefly conducive to the formation of a circle of “fixed subscribers” among the crowd of possible patrons.  These subscribers, on their part, of course insist upon the preservation of those tendencies, forms, and subjects by which they are attracted.  In the same way that, in general, a large “reading world,” or a regular public for a theatre, or a solid community of devotees for each of the different species of song (as for example, the religious song, the folk-song, the student’s song) is organized, so do important personalities call into being a special following of admirers, such as the partisans of Hebbel, the Wagnerians, and the adherents of Stefan George.  But these narrow circles are often much more intolerant of every effort on the part of the master to depart from the program he has sworn to, than are outsiders.  The history of the German public, unlike that of the English or French, is less a church-history than a sect-history.  Schiller alone succeeded in becoming the national poet of his people—­and he had his merits as well as his weaknesses to thank for it.  Lessing is the one who comes next to him, whereas Goethe really reached the masses in only a few of his compositions.  On the other hand, he made a stronger impression upon, and gave more happiness to, the intellectual classes than any of our poets since Klopstock.  After him, only poets of a decidedly esoteric character, such as Stefan George or Friedrich Nietzsche, have