ver-failing
efforts to clothe the novel in a more esthetically pure form have, in
our own day, happily increased.

The traditional _material_ of literary compositions is, however, also
a conservative power, just as are language and form. The stock of
dominating motives naturally undergoes just as many transformations as
language or metrics; but, in both cases, what already exists has a
determining influence on everything new, often going so far as to
suppress the latter entirely. Customary themes preferably claim the
interest of the reader; as, for example, in the age of religious
pictures it would have been exceedingly hard to procure an order for a
purely worldly painting. The artists themselves unconsciously glide
into the usual path, and what was intended to be a world-poem flows
off into the convenient worn channel of the love-story. But the
vivifying and deepening power of the Germanic spirit has here, more
than in any other domain, destroyed the opposing force of inertia.

The oldest poetry is confined to such subjects as are of universal
interest--one could also say of universal importance. War and the
harvest, the festivals of the gods and the destinies of the tribe, are
the subjects of song. These things retain their traditional interest
even where a healthy communal life no longer exists. Epochs which are
absolutely wanting in political understanding still cultivate the
glory of Brutus in an epic or dramatic form; or those ages which can
scarcely lay claim to a living religious interest still join in
choruses in honor of Apollo or in honor of the Christian religion.
Every literature carries with it a large and respectable ballast of
sensations that are no longer felt, of objects that are no longer
seen, culminating in the spring-songs of poets confined to their room,
and the wine-songs of the water-drinkers. A stagnating literature, as
that of the seventeenth century was essentially, always has an
especially large amount of such rubbish. Poems composed for certain
occasions, in the worst sense--that is to say, poems of congratulation
and condolence written for money, trivial reflections and mechanical
devotion, occupy an alarmingly large space in the lyric of this
period. Drama is entirely confined, and the novel for the greater
part, to the dressing up in adopted forms of didactic subject matter
of the most general type. Men of individuality are, however, not
altogether lacking: such were lyric poets like