Page:History of the German people at the close of the Middle Ages vol1.djvu/315

PROSE AND POPULAR READING 303 duke Siegmund of Austria.' This book was one of the greatest favourites of the day. ' The reader,' says Steinhowel, ' should, like the bee, suck the honey from the flowers ; not only read the stories, but feed on their morals.' There was a marked development also at this period in the prose writings which dealt with natural science, medicine, and jurisprudence. To the latter branch Sebastian Brant contributed largely by his popular writings. The capacity of the German language for philoso- phical expression originated with the Mystics. It was they who first discovered the art of expressing the most profound and abstract ideas in clear and in- telligible German speech ; while at the same time a wonderful poetic charm clothes all their utterances. Many of their treatises and collections of abstruse maxims and rules for the contemplative life appeared, after the invention of printing, in a variety of editions ; those especially of Henry Suso, John Tauler, and Otto von Passau, and the translations of the - Imitation of Christ.' Many of the fifteenth-century books of devotion and edification are amongst the noblest monuments of German prose : for instance, the ' Himmelstrasse,' the ' Seelen-trost,' the ' Schatzbehalter, oder Schrein der wahren Keichthumer des Heils.' In simplicity and vigour of language, in penetration, truth, and depth of matter, they are unequalled in single pas- sages, and, of their kind, altogether unsurpassable models. In oratorical prose Gieler von Kaisersberg was con-