literature of the constitutional mother-country democratic, but also
the literature of France, otherwise so decidedly aristocratic: a
majority dictates its laws to the distinguished individual and is
inclined to ostracize him, if too headstrong, and exile him from the
"Republic of Letters." This, for instance, is what happened to Lord
Byron among the British. On the other hand, German literature, like
Germanic literatures in general, is disposed to concede, at least at
times, a dictatorial leadership to the individual, even at the cost of
tradition--as, for example, to a Klopstock, a Goethe, or a Richard
Wagner. But, in exchange, the leader is often forced to uphold his
power, no matter how much it may have been due to his achievements, by
coercive measures--as, again for example, by means of a prætorian
guard of partisans, such as Klopstock first created for himself in the
Göttinger "Hain," but which was most effectively organized by Wagner,
and such as Victor Hugo, imitating the German model, possessed in the
Young Guard which applauded _Hernani_. Another method of enforcing his
mastery is the organization of a systematic reign of terror,
consisting of bitter satires, such as Schiller and Goethe (after the
model of Pope) founded in the _Xenien_, and the Romanticists
established in many different forms--satires much more personal and
much better aimed than was the general sort of mockery which the
Romance or Romanized imitators of Horace flung at Bavius and Mævius.
In saying all this, however, we have at the same time made it clear
that the power and influence of the individual of genius receives much
more positive expression in German literature than in those which
produced men like Corneille, Calderon, yes, even Dante and
Shakespeare. German literary history is, more than any other, occupied
with the _Individual_.

If we now try rapidly to comprehend to what extent each one of the