The quality which maintained the value and the dignity of the Deutscher Merkur for many years was its editor’s innate liberality.  Wieland was not created to be a party leader; he who recognizes moderation as the chief maxim cannot make himself guilty of one-sidedness.  Whatever excited his active spirit he sought to equalize within himself through taste and common sense, and thus he also treated his collaborators, for none of whom he felt very much enthusiasm; and as, while translating the ancient authors whom he so highly esteemed, he was accustomed frequently to attack them in his notes, so, by his disapproving annotations, he often vexed, and actually estranged, valued and even favorite contributors.

Even before this, our friend had been forced to endure full many an attack on account of major or minor writings; so much the less as the editor of a periodical could he escape literary controversies.  Yet here, too, he shows himself ever the same.  Such a paper war can never last long for him, and if it threatens to be in any degree protracted, he gives his opponent the last word and goes his wonted path.

Foreigners have sagaciously observed that German authors regard the public less than the writers of other nations, and that, therefore, one can tell from his writings the man who is developing himself, and the man who seeks to create something to his own satisfaction,—­and, consequently, the character of these two types soon becomes obvious.  This quality we have already ascribed to Wieland in particular; and it will be so much the more interesting to arrange and to follow his writings and his life in this sense, since, formerly and latterly, the attempt has been made to cast suspicion on our friend’s character from these very writings.  A large number of men are even yet in error regarding him, since they fancy that the man of many sides must be indifferent, and the versatile man must be wavering; it is forgotten that character is concerned simply and solely with the practical.  Only in that which a man does and continues to do, and in that to which he is constant, does he reveal his character, and in this sense there has been no more steadfast man, no man constantly more true to himself, than Wieland.  If he surrendered himself to the multiplicity of his emotions, and to the versatility of his thoughts, and if he permitted no single impression to gain dominion over him, in this very way he proved the firmness and the sureness of his mind.  This witty man played gladly with his opinions, but—­I can summon all contemporaries as witnesses—­never with his convictions.  And thus he won for himself many friends, and kept them.  That he had any decided enemy is not known to me.  In the enjoyment of his poetic works he lived for many years in municipal, civic, friendly, and social surroundings, and gained the distinction of a complete edition of his carefully revised works, and even of an edition de luxe of them.