n
the prefaces to his _Old English Theatre_ and his _Shakespeare's
Vorschule_; few have ever bestowed such attention on the history of the
stage in all countries, or have so studied the principles of dramatic
composition and the nature of dramatic effect; hardly any one, I may say
no one, ever learnt so much from Shakespeare: no one, therefore, can
have more to teach us about him; and to judge from the remarks on some
of the plays which have already been printed in the _Abendzeitung_, no
one was ever so able to trace out the most secret workings of the great
master's mind, or to retain his full, calm self-possession when
following him on his highest flights; no one ever united in such
perfection the great critic with the great poet. One may look forward,
therefore, with confidence to the greatest work in aesthetical criticism
that even Germany will ever have produced.

Of the foregoing tale itself little need be said. If the translator has
failed so grievously that an English reader cannot see its merits, he
would hardly help himself out of the scrape by talking about the effect
he ought to have produced. And grievously he must have failed, if any
reader with a feeling for poetry does not perceive and enjoy the beauty
of the descriptions, especially of the two eventful scenes, the power
and passion of the wild dithyramb, the admirable delineation of the
characters in proportion to their relative importance, and the poetical
harmony and perfect _keeping_ of the whole. Nothing can be more delicate
than the way of softening the horror that might be felt for the bride:
she has not even a name, that there may be no distinct object for our
disgust to fasten on; she is only spoken of under titles of a
pleasurable meaning; her beauty, like Helen's on the walls of Troy, is
manifested by its effect: the young men are astonished at it; her air of
deep melancholy impresses even the gayest and most thoughtless, and is
thus more powerful than if pages had been employed in giving utterance
to her remorse; besides which, had the latter course been adopted, the
main object would have been the wicked heart, not the wicked deed, the
sin, not the crime; and sin is always loathsome, whereas a crime may
often be looked upon with pity. The poet has therefore wisely kept all
his power of characteristic delineation for the two chief persons in the
tale; and rarely have any characters been brought out so distinctly
within a work of such dimensio