like, already lay behind those heroes, and therefore had been endured.  We have already tasted of the sweets of the third strophe; in spite of this, we see there is a great deal still remaining in this strophe, a happy hope, a golden future, a whole heaven, etc., etc.—­it must be the fault of my eyes that, notwithstanding, I can see nothing at all in it.  In the fourth strophe courage comes along on regular seven league boots, and I wish the critic had as much reason to be satisfied with its contents, as had the Fatherland, to which a splendid vow is sworn therein.  The fifth strophe contains a real human sentiment; it might exclaim with Falstaff, “Heaven send me better company!” In the sixth strophe we learn that the poet was not blustering in the fourth strophe, but that the fighting is really going to begin:  at the same time it contains the principal beauty of the song, namely the end.  Now, I ask, apart from the school-boyish, crude composition of the poem, which throws suspicion merely on the taste, not precisely on the power, of a poet—­where is even the faintest tinge of poetry?  And the muse was a battle!

We have finished, then, with the poetic part of this poem; it now remains to investigate in how far it is a real German product, that is to say, such an one as could have been produced only on German soil by a German.  Every one will find that it might very easily have been written by some person from the Sultan’s seraglio, and used by any people who found themselves in a like situation.  Even the French, although it is directed against them, could gain inspiration from it, if their good taste did not preserve them from doing so.  Let no one throw the German oaks (strophe four) in my way; I must stumble along over whole oak trees.

Let us now compare with Koerner’s Battle-Song of the Confederation, Kleist’s poem To Germany, as I believe it is called.  I am glad that I am not able to characterize the separate strophes of this poem; they are, what the divisions of a poem should be, nothing, when they are detached from the whole.  “Germans,” exclaims the poet—­“Your forests have long been cleared, serpents and foxes ye have destroyed, only the Frenchman I still see slinking!” This is a folk song; the vast, the great, is associated with the simplest and most familiar objects, and the figures chosen are not only beautiful, but at the same time inevitable.

I will pass on to consider the achievements of Koerner and Heinrich von Kleist in the field of the drama.  In this both have been very active, but in order to avoid boredom for a time at least, I shall begin with the analysis of a piece by Kleist, choosing first a tragedy, his Prince of Homburg which, to be sure, is entitled simply “a drama” by its author.  I do not know whether he did this because of the circumstances that the Prince, as the hero of the piece, happily escapes with his life, or, what is more likely, in order to humor the public, who think