no German Zola—­but then, is there a Russian Nietzsche, or a Norwegian Wagner, or a French Bismarck?  Men like these, men of revolutionary genius, men who start new movements and mark new epochs, are necessarily rare and stand isolated in any people and at all times.  The three names mentioned indicate that Germany, during the last fifty years, has contributed a goodly share even of such men.  Quite apart, however, from such men of overshadowing genius and all-controlling power, can it be truly said that Germany, since Goethe’s time, has been lacking in writers of high aim and notable attainment?

It can be stated without reservation that, taken as a whole, the German drama of the nineteenth century has maintained a level of excellence superior to that reached by the drama of almost any other nation during the same period.  Schiller’s Wallenstein and Tell, Goethe’s Iphigenie and Faust, Kleist’s Prinz Friedrich von Homburg, Grillparzer’s Medea, Hebbel’s Maria Magdalene and Die Nibelungen, Otto Ludwig’s Der Erbfoerster, Freytag’s Die Journalisten, Anzengruber’s Der Meineidbauer, Wilbrandt’s Der Meister von Palmyra, Wildenbruch’s Konig Heinrich, Sudermann’s Heimat, Hauptmann’s Die Weber and Der arme Heinrich, Hofmannsthal’s Elektra, and, in addition to all these, the great musical dramas of Richard Wagner—­this is a century’s record of dramatic achievement of which any nation might be proud.  I doubt whether either the French or the Russian or the Scandinavian stage of the nineteenth century, as a whole, comes up to this standard.  Certainly, the English stage has nothing which could in any way be compared with it.

That German lyric verse of the last hundred years should have been distinguished by beauty of structure, depth of feeling, and wealth of melody, is not to be wondered at if we remember that this was the century of the revival of folk-song, and that it produced such song-composers as Schubert and Schumann and Robert Franz and Hugo Wolf and Richard Strauss.  But it seems strange that, apart from Heine, even the greatest of German lyric poets, such as Platen, Lenau, Moerike, Annette von Droste, Geibel, Liliencron, Dehmel, Muenchhausen, Rilke, should be so little known beyond the borders of the Fatherland.

The German novel of the past century was, for a long time, unquestionably inferior to both the English and the French novel of the same epoch.  But in the midst of much that is tiresome and involved and artificial, there stand out, even in the middle of the century, such masterpieces of characterization as Otto Ludwig’s Zwischen Himmel und Erde or Wilhelm Raabe’s Der Hungerpastor, such delightful revelations of genuine humor as Fritz Reuter’s Ut mine Stromtid, such penetrating studies of social conditions as Gustav Freytag’s Soll und Haben.  And during the last third of the