dramatic poet, "broken into a thousand pieces;" the poems
appeared in 1815, the first drama in 1818. I would not advance this
superficial argument if it were not connected with an essential one. All
these full, flowing songs and romances were finished before the nobly
calm power that called them into being concentrated itself for the
creation of a dramatic work; and in truth they do not bear on their
forehead the red fever spot of aspiration groping in the dark, which
does not find what it seeks and therefore clasps in its arms the object
over which it stumbles; they breathe that smiling, lovely, self-absorbed
contentment, without which there may be intoxication, but no joy, no
life. It is true that through the songs as well as through the ballads,
the dramatic genius which was later to produce _Duke Ernest_ and _Louis
the Bavarian_ already treads softly like a sleep-walker; this it is
which gives them the firm form, the deeper meaning which is so
scandalously lacking in those good people who now and then innocently
versify a legend or some trifling emotion. But the dramatic element is,
strange as this assertion may sound, just as much an essential in
poetry--one without which poetry would crumble away into dust--as the
lyrical; from the former, poetry receives its body; from the latter, its
soul, and both are mutually dependent upon one another. Is not suffering
itself, only action turned inward!

On page twenty-one we read: "Do you know what it is that I love in
Uhland's imperfect dramas? It is the pure, vital, German-dramatic
poetry, which, piercing the tawdry veneer of culture and the
prevailingly wretched appearances of our life, strikes fire from the
bed-rock of spiritual life itself, and with its divining rod points to
the golden veins in the foundations of the national character.
German-dramatic! that is the right word! and this is saying a great
deal, for German and dramatic are contradictory terms. Just because
Uhland is so German-dramatic he might give our theatre the national
consecration which it lacks, and which alone can assure it intrinsic
worth and dignity, efficacy and stability. Goethe's _Goetz_ is not
adapted to the stage, and it will be difficult for the scissors to make
it so. Schiller's _Wallenstein_, in spite of its extensiveness, is only
a character picture; the Thirty Years' War merely peeps through shyly
now and again when the Duke's eloquence fails him, and when Max and
Thekla take a rest fr