sense of the term,—a κτημα ες αιει as Thucydides styles his immortal history,—or, as Milton in young anticipation speaks of his ‘adventurous song,’ “a work which posterity will not willingly suffer to die.” The idolizing enthusiasm of one generation survives not to another. Kant has resigned the sceptre of philosophy to Jacobi; Klopstock yielded that of poetry to Schiller; even his claims are now in a great degree considered obsolete, and Goethe reigns in his stead. The ruler of the hour’s ascendant in Germany exercises a sort of eclipsing power over all his predecessors, of which we have no example in other countries.
Whether this be a symptom of literary constitution which betokens perfect soundness at the core, and promises permanent health for the future, may perhaps be questioned. But certain it is that in the meanwhile it is productive of an evolution of talent and literary accomplishment unexampled since the days of Athens—where the same peculiarity existed—in rapidity and in copiousness. All the German authors seem to write against Time, for Time with them is an almost infallible destroyer; and hence in the mass of German literature which is destined but to swim for a few years on the surface of that ever-fluctuating public taste, there is to be found an amount of talent and erudition which in our country would have been either carefully husbanded at home, or
