cumbrous, for he advances not with one faculty, but with a whole mind; with intellect, and pathos, and wit, and humour, and imagination, moving onward like a mighty host, motley, ponderous, irregular, and irresistible. He is not airy, sparkling and precise, but deep, billowy and vast. The melody of his nature is not expressed in common note-marks, or written down by the critical gamut; for it is wild and manifold; its voice is like the voice of cataracts and the sounding of primeval forests. To feeble ears it is discord, but to ears that understand it deep majestic music.
In his own country, we are told,[1] 'Richter has been in fashion, then out of fashion, then in it again; till at last he has been raised far above all fashion,' which indeed is his proper place. What his fate will be in England is now to be decided. Could much-respected counsels from admirers of Richter have availed with me, he had not at present been put upon his trial. Predictions are unanimous that here he will be condemned or even neglected. Of my countrymen, in this small instance, I have ventured to think otherwise. To those, it is true, 'the space of whose Heaven does not extend more than three ells,' and who understand and perceive that with these three ells the Canopy of the Universe terminates, Richter will justly enough appear a monster, from without the verge of warm three-ell Creation; and their duty, with regard to him, will limit itself to chasing him forth of the habitable World, back again into his native Chaos. If we judge of works of art, as the French do of language, with a Cela ne se dit pas, Richter will
- ↑ Franz Horn's Poesie und Beredsamktit der Deutschen (Poetry and Eloquence of the Germans, from Luther's time to the present); a work which I am bound to recommend to all students of German literature, as a valuable guide and indicator. Bating a certain not altogether erroneous sectarianism in regard to religion, and a certain janty priggishness of style, nay, it must be owned, a corresponding priggishness of character, they will find in Horn a lively, fair, well-read and on the whole interesting and instructive critic. The work is in three volumes; to which a prior publication, entitled Umrisse (Outlines), forms a fourth; bringing down the History, or rather Sketch, to the border? of the year 1819.
