en the critic is compelled to blame its
results; for it is natural and unavoidable. Such a superabundance of
poetic forms of address, applications, words, and measures, are at
present current in the world, that for every poetic feeling a prosaic or
metrical reminiscence rings and echoes consciously or unconsciously, and
more or less clearly, through the poetic soul. To avoid this wearisome
beaten path, our poets are driven, on the one hand, into unheard of
refinements of metre and words--or on the other, into an affected
barbarism and roughness. And since the quantity of poetic metres,
applications, and forms of speech, has become so incredibly large that
they every where pass and are received as a sort of _spiritual small
change_, it has become infinitely easier to express an idea in tolerably
good poetic language, than it was fifty years ago. Gleim, Holty, and
Buerger, are to us great men, not because their poems are so much better
than those manufactured at the present day, but because their every poem
was a victory gained over the barbarism and want of form in the German
language as it then existed--a true conquest for the realm of beauty and
art. At present, any fool who has by heart his Schiller or his Heine,
can collect and write that which may pass for his 'poem'--though perhaps
not an atom of the whole is the result of aught save mere reproduction.
What is really wanting to all our writers is the _correct_ and
_artistic_ adaptation of terms. For this modern dilettanti reproduction
and combination of the thoughts and forms of others is but a rough and
uncomely parody of those poetic creations, which were consecrated by an
earnest striving and silent battle with the force of language. Among the
numerous modern poets in Germany, there live not a dozen who can write a
truly correct verse and make just applications of our so poetically
adapted language. The which assertion, seemingly a paradox--is
nevertheless natural enough.

"And yet the creative impulse lives in many a soul, nor has there for a
long time existed a more generally diffused or more exquisite
appreciation of lyrical poetry than during the past year. New poets of
an aristocratic or pious tendency are eagerly purchased and admired,
which is also according to rule, since they reflect the spirit of the
age, and correspond with modern wants. Such a peculiar influence on the
interest of the public at large has naturally conducted to the most
elegant style