should be current in a nation.

"We admire the tragedies of the ancient Greeks; but, to take a correct
view of the case, we ought rather to admire the period and the nation in
which their production was possible than the individual authors; for
though each of these pieces differs a little from every other, and
though one of these poets appears somewhat greater and more finished
than the other, still, taking all things together, only one decided
character runs through the whole.

"This is the character of grandeur, fitness, soundness, human
perfection, elevated wisdom, sublime thought, pure, strong intuition,
and whatever other qualities one might enumerate. But when we find all
these qualities, not only in the dramatic works that have come down to
us but also in lyrical and epic works, in the philosophers, the orators,
and the historians, and in an equally high degree in the works of
plastic art that have come down to us, we must feel convinced that such
qualities did not merely belong to individuals, but were the current
property of the nation and the whole period.

"Now, take up Burns. How is he great, except through the circumstance
that the whole songs of his predecessors lived in the mouth of the
people--that they were, so to speak, sung at his cradle; that, as a boy,
he grew up amongst them, and the high excellence of these models so
pervaded him that he had therein a living basis on which he could
proceed further? Again, why is he great, but from this, that his own
songs at once found susceptible ears amongst his compatriots; that, sung
by reapers and sheaf-binders, they at once greeted him in the field; and
that his boon-companions sang them to welcome him at the ale-house?
Something was certainly to be done in this way.

"On the other hand, what a pitiful figure is made by us Germans! Of our
old songs--no less important than those of Scotland--how many lived
among the people in the days of my youth? Herder and his successors
first began to collect them and rescue them from oblivion; then they
were at least printed in the libraries. Then, more lately, what songs
have not Buerger and Voss composed! Who can say that they are more
insignificant or less popular than those of the excellent Burns? but
which of them so lives among us that it greets us from the mouth of the
people? They are written and printed, and they remain in the libraries,
quite in accordance with the general fate of German poets. Of my own
so