t step
when he demanded an autochthonous growth--that is to say, a
development of art out of the inner necessity of personalities on the
one hand, and of nationalities on the other. To be sure, the great
poets who now appeared were not included in the program, and Gottsched
did not appreciate Haller, nor did Lessing form a correct estimate of
Goethe, or Herder of Schiller. There is, however, a mysterious
connection between the aspirations of the nation and the appearance
of genius.

Klopstock probably felt most directly what was wanting in the
literature of his people, as he was also the most burning patriot of
all our classical writers; and at the same time, as is proved by the
_Republic of Letters_, his strange treatise on the art of poetry, he
was the one among them who bore the most resemblance to the literary
pedant of the old days. He is, therefore, continually occupied with
the comparison between German and foreign art, language, and
literature, which endeavor was continued later on and with other
methods by A.W. Schlegel. But Herder also, in his comparison of the
native art of Germany with the art of antiquity, of the Orient and of
England, produced effective results; no less did Lessing, although the
latter seeks to learn from the faults of his neighbors rather than
from their excellencies. Goethe's criticism is dominated to such a
degree by his absorption in the antique, and also in French and
English general literature, that he has no understanding of national
peculiarities when they do not conform to typical literary phenomena,
as Uhland's lyric and Kleist's drama--two literary phenomena which we,
nowadays, consider eminently national. The Romantic school was the
first to try to place the conception of national literature as a whole
on an autochthonous basis, and the scientific speculation to which
Romanticism gave rise, has, since the Brothers Grimm, also resulted in
serviceable rules gained from the increasingly thorough knowledge of
language, of national development, and of social conditions. This new
point of view reaches its climax in the attempts of Karl Muellenhoff
and Wilhelm Scherer to trace the native literary development directly
back to the nature and destiny of the German nation. But even as that
proved scientifically unsuccessful, so likewise it was not feasible
practically to establish a poetry confined to native materials, forms,
and opinions. In vain did Tieck try to play off the youthful G