the revolution of 1848 was threatening, and almost all the leading men in science were politicians. Rückert had nothing in common with them. The patriotic energy of his youth had long ago exhaled. As with Goethe, seeking repose in the study of Chinese while the ground shook under his feet with the thunder of the cannon at Leipzic announcing the liberation of Germany, the conflict of opinions was a sort of personal annoyance. In vain did the brilliant wits of the salons compare the illumination of his romanticism to a Bengal light, and the German Aristophanes at Paris burn him alive in his auto-de-fe of satires; in vain did August Schlegel, who could endure no Sanscrit scholar in his presence, point his epigrams at him, forgetting that Rückert claimed to be best versed, not in Sanscrit, but, in Arabic and Persian, in which Schlegel was not versed at all. Rückert sat drowsily through it all in his arm-chair, like a Brahmin lost in contemplation of the All; while the restless groups around him discussed the state of the Rhenish provinces, or the last note from the czar. But as the times grew stormier, and there was less interest felt in the peaceful wisdom of the East, Rückert retired, in 1849, with a pension, to his sweet retreat at Neuses near Coburg, which he never left again, dying there on the 31st of January, 1866.

It was at Neuses, in the intervals of his duties in Erlangen, that he had written what perhaps one must call his chief work, "Die Weisheit des Brahmanen," a collection of didactic verses of two lines each, in rhymed Alexandrian measure, upon all possible subjects, treated at various lengths. Its quietism has been attacked, and its monotony ridiculed; but, nevertheless, it displays all the best traits of Rückert's genius in the melodious flow of the verse, in the thought often so profound, and the fancy always. so graceful. It is not a book indeed to be read through for any interest it has as a whole its epigrammatic proverbs seldom take the shape of parable or fable, and the oriental imagination is kept within severe limits. Yet its poetic fancies and its vigor of expression preserve it from the almost inevitable dulness of a didactic poem, in spite of its somnolent measure, and the un

broken monotony of its verse; while the wisdom of its precepts, so far from being cold, external, springs from the profoundest observation of the divine in human life.

As an original creation, it surpasses the "Makamen des. Hariri as much as it is inferior to that extraordinary work in its feats of language. The great French Orientalist, Silvestre de Sacy, said it was not always a translation, yet always more than a translation. Rückert, however, did not claim that it was any thing more than a close imitation. The Makamen (that is, stories) are put into the mouth of one Hareth Ben Hemman, who relates in them the adventures which befell him as he journeyed from place to place in search of pleasure or knowledge or gold, and how he found everywhere Abu Seid, present or active in one form or other; the "Metamorphoses of Abu Seid," we should have said, being the alternative title of the work. The language is the rhymed prose peculiar to the Arabic, but intolerable in German and impossible in English. In view of the difficulties he had to encounter, Rückert's success was really marvellous. But, when we have said that, we have said all: reading the book is out of the question; it makes one giddy even to run one's eye over the pages. It is only to be recorded in the history of literature as the most extraordinary tour de force in language ever achieved.

It was in Neuses also, the seat originally of his wife's stepfather, and, after 1836, his own property, that Rückert found the pervading inspiration of his life. After withdrawing from Berlin, though he still made rhymes by the ream,-mere improvisations, like his dramas, of which history will keep only the titles, he wrote nothing comparable to his former works. But in his earlier years, after the great re-action which swept him away from his interest in contemporary political life, he found in the idyllic rest of Neuses, and the love which illumined it, a certain compensation even for that consciousness of weariness, which, in spite of his great gifts, the lassitude of the time had created in him, as in Chamisso and Heine and the rest, who, crying aloud in endless verse that the seriousness of the age had banished all love for poetry, turned away to dream and scoff and die.

Neuses lies half-way from Coburg, as you ride out to the beautiful castle of Callenberg, in the midst of green meadows and fruitful fields. A hundred steps past the village church, across a little stone bridge over the rippling Lauter, will bring you to Rückert's house, close upon the water amongst tall bushes, shaded with trees and evergreens, with wild grapevines rustling with swallows. The plants grow as they please, for Rückert hated compulsion; and as he treated his plants, so he treated his children, let them develop themselves. But, as the principle may be thought somewhat dangerous, we must add, that, out of nine children, seven survived him, and that with all of them he is reported to have had very good luck.

His Haus- und Jahreslieder are but the poetic recital of this domestic idyl, this life among the flowers and trees and books. in the companionship of wife and children and friends. Nothing escapes his observation: no event is too trivial to suggest a reflection.

We stroll with him among the sweet May flowers, and breast the driving snow of winter on the bleak hillsides, and sleep away the midsummer heats in the apple orchard at mid-day. The clear skies of autumn and the dark clouds of winter, the Christmas joys and the solitude of the leafless forests, the nightingales and the swallows and the churchyard and the stillness of eventide, all that he saw and felt, he sang. "What he did not sing, he did not live."

Yet charming as it all is, in its patriarchal simplicity, with the silent benediction of content breathing out of every line, there is, nevertheless, in much of this poetry, a certain limitation of human sympathy. Our gardens and our meadows, however we may love them, are but a fragment of the great world of nature; our quiet home is but a fragment of the great world of man. Between the universal life and our own. separate existence lies that great realm of aspiration and brotherhood and toil we call the present, our own age and our own nation, with all its strivings and all its hopes, not to serve which, in sympathy at least, is to limit our influence, if not to impair our vigor. The vast genius of Shakspeare, indeed, soared above his time into the everlasting truths that

make the central light of mankind; but it is only the first order of intellects that can do that safely, and Rückert belonged to the second. European Brahmin as he was, the individualism of the West- that affirmation of self, that personal force which is the saving element of modern society — was lost in him in the political indifference, the personal renunciation, of the Eastern character.

In all that he did, however, one cannot fail to find the mark of an original mind. His observation of human life and the forces that enter into it was wide and profound. He may not have succeeded in attaining the highest excellence in lyrical expression; but, as a didactic poet, he is without a rival in epigrammatic vivacity. Yielding himself to the swift flow of his thoughts, he fails to penetrate, as Goethe in his simplicity and calm so often does, into the very depths of the soul by a single word of tenderness or love. But, in abundance of images and the command of all metres of all nations, he is not surpassed by any modern poet; while, better than any German poet, he illustrates the power of the German language- unique in the history of human speech to reproduce the spirit of foreign verse and the form of foreign thought. Italian terzine and Greek hendecasyllables, Scandinavian alliteration and Arabic ghazals, come as readily to his use as Nibelungen strophes or old German rhymes.

It is this luxuriant many-sidedness which makes him the best representative of that art of universal translation and reproduction which finds in the German language the best instrument for the fusing of the thought of the world. Of the world-literature of Goethe, he is the boldest apostle. And it is for this reason, perhaps, that to be judged fairly he must be judged in his totality, so to speak, and not by single poems. He cannot think otherwise than in verse. His inexhaustible fancy covers us with flowers from Italy and India, from Arabia and Persia and Greece; the gold dust of his thought glitters about us as we approach him. As one of his critics said, he is atomistic; and he himself complains that he has scattered thought and feeling enough through a hundred poems to have made him a complete poet, could he

have united it all in a single creation. For, notwithstanding the depth of his thought and the brilliancy of his wit, he has never attained that self-concentration, that "perfect objectivity," which impresses us in Goethe. In that respect, also, he is inferior to Uhland, who, less aware of the higher philosophic consciousness of the age, was truer to the simplicity of nature. In Rückert, on the contrary, the effort to attain this supreme poetic charm, the self-forgetfulness of art, is always apparent. It is not so much life you find in him as the reflection of life.

His "Rostem und Suhrab," for instance, one of his best creations, an Eastern tale of heroes, father and son, pitted against one another by fate,-leaves upon the mind no impression of reality. They are human forms, indeed; but, like Rückert himself, they have half the air of phantoms. Their heroism, to be sure, is brilliant with light; but all the rest is shadowy. There is a cry of anguish, and they are gone; and you put the book down, grieved at the father's perverse mistake in running his son through the body, yet careful also to listen for the rumble of the wheels in the streets to make sure that you, at least, abide at some definite point in space.

In spite, however, of this tendency to lose himself in the universal, the wonderful vigor of Rückert's personality kept him from vagueness or obscurity. As Dr. Meyer said of him. at the grave, the fatherland of poetry had with him no limits except those of truth and goodness and beauty; and those he respected with religious care. His quick apprehension of passing events and phases of thought, made his verse even suitable at times for that musical expression which depends for its effect upon the definiteness of the sentiment. On the whole, indeed, Schumann may not have succeeded well in setting his lyrics to music. The twelve songs which were published by Schumann, in conjunction with his wife Clara, failed in their effect, not from any fault of the composer's, but from the inherent defects of the poems themselves. In some single songs, however, Schumann found field enough for all the pathos of his nature and all the grace of his art. It is then that we seem to hear the minstrel of the Middle Age, to whom

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