



Produced by Adam Buchbinder and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was
produced from scanned images of public domain material
from the Google Print project.)









  THE
  PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY;


  IN A
  COURSE OF LECTURES,
  DELIVERED AT VIENNA,
  BY FREDERICK VON SCHLEGEL.


  TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN,
  WITH A MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR,
  BY JAMES BURTON ROBERTSON, ESQ.

  IN TWO VOLUMES.
  VOL. I.

  LONDON
  SAUNDERS AND OTLEY, CONDUIT STREET.

  MDCCCXXXV.




  B. BENSLEY, PRINTER.




  MEMOIR
  OF THE LITERARY LIFE
  of
  FREDERICK VON SCHLEGEL.


In the following sketch of the literary life of the late Frederick Von
Schlegel, it is the intention of the writer to take a rapid review of
that author's principal productions, noticing the circumstances out of
which they grew, and the influence they exerted on his age; giving at
the same time a fuller analysis of his political and metaphysical
systems:--an analysis which is useful, nay almost necessary to the
elucidation of very many passages in the work, to which this memoir is
prefixed. Of the inadequacy of his powers to the due execution of such a
task, none can be more fully sensible than the writer himself; but he
trusts that he will experience from the kindness of the reader, an
indulgence proportionate to the difficulty of the undertaking.

In offering to the British public a translation of one of the last
works of one among the most illustrious of German writers, the
Translator is aware, that after the excellent translation which
appeared in 1818 of this author's "History of Literature," and also
after the admirable translation of his brother's "Lectures on
Dramatic Literature," by Mr. Black, his own performance must appear
in a very disadvantageous point of view. But this is a circumstance
which only gives it additional claims to indulgent consideration.

The family of the Schlegels seem to have been peculiarly favoured by
the Muses. Elias Schlegel, a member of this family, was a
distinguished dramatic writer in his own time; and some of his plays
are, I believe, acted in Germany at the present day. Adolphus
Schlegel, the father of the subject of the present biography, was a
minister of the Lutheran church, distinguished for his literary
talents, and particularly for eloquence in the pulpit. His eldest
son, Charles Augustus Schlegel, entered with the Hanoverian regiment
to which he belonged into the service of our East India Company, and
had begun to prosecute with success his studies in Sanscrit
literature--a field of knowledge in which his brothers have since
obtained so much distinction--when his youthful career was unhappily
terminated by the hand of death. Augustus William Schlegel, the
second son, who was destined to carry to so high a pitch the
literary glory of his family, was born at Hanover in 1769--a year so
propitious to the birth of genius. Frederick Schlegel was born at
Hanover in 1772. Though destined for commerce, he received a highly
classical education; and in his sixteenth year prevailed on his
father to allow him to devote himself to the Belles Lettres. After
completing his academical course at Gottingen and Leipzig, he
rejoined his brother, and became associated with him in his literary
labours. He has himself given us the interesting picture of his own
mind at this early period. "In my first youth," says he, "from the
age of seventeen and upwards, the writings of Plato, the Greek
tragedians, and Winkelmann's enthusiastic works, formed the
intellectual world in which I lived, and where I often strove in a
youthful manner, to represent to my soul the ideas and images of
ancient gods and heroes. In the year 1789, I was enabled, for the
first time, to gratify my inclination in that capital so highly
refined by art--Dresden; and I was as much surprised as delighted to
see really before me those antique figures of gods I had so long
desired to behold. Among these I often tarried for hours, especially
in the incomparable collection of Mengs's casts, which were then to
be found, disposed in a state of little order in the Bruehl garden,
where I often let myself be shut up, in order to remain without
interruption. It was not the consummate beauty of form alone, which
satisfied and even exceeded the expectation I had secretly formed;
but it was still more the life--the animation in those Olympic
marbles, which excited my astonishment; for the latter qualities I
had been less able to picture to myself in my solitary musings.
These first indelible impressions were in succeeding years, the
firm, enduring ground-work for my study of classical antiquity."[1]
Here he found the sacred fire, at which his genius lit the torch
destined to blaze through his life with inextinguishable brightness.

He commenced his literary career in 1794, with a short essay on the
different schools of Greek poetry. It is curious to watch in this little
piece the buddings of his mind. Here we see, as it were, the germ of the
first part of the great work on ancient and modern literature, which he
published nearly twenty years afterwards. We are astonished to find in a
youth of twenty-two an erudition so extensive--an acquaintance not only
with the more celebrated poets and philosophers of ancient Greece, but
also with the obscure, recondite Alexandrian poets, known to
comparatively few scholars even of a maturer age. We admire, too, the
clearness of analytic arrangement--the admirable method of
classification, in which the author and his brother have ever so far
outshone the generality of German writers. The essay displays, also, a
delicacy of observation and an originality of views, which announce the
great critic. It is, in short, the labour of an infant Hercules.

As this essay gives promise of a mighty critic; so two treatises, which
the author wrote in the following years, 1795 and 1796--one entitled
"Diotima," and which treats of the condition of the female sex in
ancient Greece--the other, a parallel between Caesar and Alexander, not
published, however, till twenty-six years afterwards--both show the
dawnings of his great historical genius. Rarely have the promises of
youth been so amply fulfilled--rarely has the green foliage of Spring
been followed by fruits so rich and abundant. It is interesting to
observe the fine, organic development of Schlegel's mental powers--to
trace in these early productions, the germs of those great historical
works which it was reserved for his manhood and age to achieve. In the
latter and most remarkable of these essays, he examines the respective
merits of Caesar and Alexander, considered as men, as generals, and as
statesmen. To the Macedonian he assigns greater tenderness of feeling, a
more generous and lofty disinterestedness of character--and a finer
power of perception for the beauties of art. To the Roman he ascribes
greater coolness and sobriety of judgment, an extraordinary degree of
self-controul, a mind tenacious of its purpose, but careless as to the
means by which it was accomplished, an exquisite sense of fitness and
propriety in the smallest as in the greatest things, yet little
susceptibility for the beautiful in art. With respect to military
genius, he shows that Caesar united to the fire and rapidity of the
Macedonian, greater constancy and perseverance; yet that the temerity of
Alexander was not always the effect of impetuous passion, but sometimes
the result at once of situation and deliberate reflection. As regards
the political capacities of these two great conquerors, he shows that
Caesar possessed an over-mastering ascendancy over the minds of men--the
talent of guiding their wills, and making them subservient to his own
views and interests--in short, a consummate skill in the tactics of a
party-leader. Yet he thinks him destitute of the wisdom of a law-giver,
or what he emphatically calls, the _organic genius of state_--the power
to found, or renovate a constitution. To Alexander, on the contrary, he
attributes the plastic genius of legislation--the will and the ability
to diffuse among nations the blessings of civilization--to plant cities,
and establish free, flourishing and permanent communities.

In the year 1797, Schlegel published his first important work,
entitled "the Greeks and the Romans." This work was two or three
years afterwards followed by another, entitled "History of Greek
Poetry." These two writings in their original form are no longer to
be met with--for in the new edition of the author's works, they not
only have undergone various alterations and additions, but have
been, as it were, melted into one work. Winkelmann's history of art
was the model which Schlegel proposed to himself in this history of
Greek poetry; and we must allow that the noble school which that
illustrious man, as well as Lessing, Herder, and Goethe, had founded
in Germany, never received a richer acquisition than in the work
here spoken of. Prior to the illustrious writers I have named,
Germany had produced a multitude of scholars distinguished for
profound learning and critical acuteness; but their labours may be
considered as only ancillary and preliminary to the works of men
who, with an erudition and a perspicacity never surpassed, united a
poetical sense and a philosophic discernment that could catch the
spirit of antiquity, reanimate her forms, and place them in all
their living freshness before our eyes.

In the first chapter of the "History of Greek Poetry," Schlegel
speaks of the religious rites and mysteries of the primitive Greeks,
and of the Orphic poetry to which they gave rise. Contrary to the
opinion of many scholars who, though they admit the present form of
the Orphic hymns to be the work of a later period, yet refer their
substance to a very remote antiquity, Schlegel assigns their origin
to the age of Hesiod. "Enthusiasm," he says, "is the characteristic
of the Orphic poetry--repose that of the Homeric poems." His
observations however on the early religion of the Greeks, form, in
my humble opinion, the least satisfactory portion of this work. He
next gives an interesting account of the state of society in Greece
in the age of Homer, as well as in the one preceding, and shews by a
long process of inductive evidence, how the Homeric poetry was the
crown and perfection of a long series of Bardic poems.

He then examines, at great length, the opinions of the ancients from
the earliest Greek to the latest Roman critics, on the plan, the
diction and poetical merits of the Iliad and the Odyssey;
interweaving in this review of ancient criticism his own remarks,
which serve either to correct the errors, supply the deficiencies,
or illustrate the wisdom of those ancient judges of art. After this
survey of ancient criticism, he proceeds to point out some of the
characteristic features of the Homeric poems. He enquires what is
understood by natural poetry, or the poetry of nature; shews that it
is perfectly compatible with art--that there is a wide difference
between the natural and the rude--that Homer is distinguished as
much for delicacy of perception, accuracy of delineation, and
sagacity of judgment, as for fertility of fancy and energy of
passion. The author next passes in review the Hesiodic epos, the
middle epos, or the works of the Cyclic poets, and lastly, the
productions of the Ionic, AEolic, and Doric schools of lyric poetry.
The fragments on the lyric poetry of Greece are particularly
beautiful, and comprise not only excellent criticisms on the genius
of the different lyrists themselves, but also most interesting
observations on the character, manners, and social institutions of
the races that composed the Hellenic confederacy.

It was Schlegel's intention to have given a complete history of
Greek poetry; but the execution of this task was abandoned, not from
any want of perseverance, as some have imagined, but from some
peculiar circumstances in the world of letters at that period. The
literary scepticism of Wolf, supported with so much learning and
ability, was then convulsing the German mind; and while the purity
of the Homeric text, and the unity and integrity of the Homeric
poems themselves were so ably contested, Schlegel deemed it a
hazardous task to attempt to draw public attention to any aesthetic
enquiries on the elder Greek poetry. Hence the second part of this
work, which treats of the lyric poets, remained unfinished. The
general qualities, which must strike all in this history of Greek
poetry are, a masterly acquaintance with classical literature--a
wariness and circumspection of judgment, rare in any writer,
especially in one so young--a critical perspicacity, that draws its
conclusions from the widest range of observation--and a poetic
flexibility of fancy, that can transport itself into the remotest
periods of antiquity. In a word, the author analyzes as a critic,
feels as a poet, and observes like a philosopher.

But a new career now expanded before the ardent mind of Schlegel. The
enterprising spirit of British scholars had but twenty years before
opened a new intellectual world to European inquiry:--a world many of
whose spiritual productions, disguised in one shape or another, the
Western nations had for a long course of ages admired and enjoyed,
ignorant as they were of the precise region from which they were
brought. For the knowledge of the Sanscrit