poets; such were Goethe, Tieck, Eichendorff, Mörike, Keller, Heyse,
Theodor Storm and C.F. Meyer; whereas, in the case of Marie von
Ebner-Eschenbach, who otherwise would form an exception, even what
appears to be a "Novelle" is in reality a "small novel."

The novel, on the contrary, still enjoys in Germany the dangerous
privilege of formlessness. In its language it varies from the vague
lyric of romantic composition to the bureaucratic sobriety of
mechanically-compiled studies of real life. In its outline, in the
rhythm of its construction, in the division of its parts and the way
in which they are brought into relief, it has, in spite of masterly
individual performances, never attained a specific literary form, such
as has long been possessed by the English and the French novels.
Likewise the inclination, sanctioned by Goethe and the Romantic
school, to interpolate specimens of the least formed half-literary
_genres_--namely, letters and diaries--worked against the adoption of
a fixed form, notwithstanding that this expedient augmented the
great--often indeed too great--inner richness of the German novel.
Thus the German novel, as well as the so justly favorite form of
letters and diaries, is of infinitely more importance as a human or
contemporary "document" than as a direct work of art. We have,
however, already drawn attention to the fact that the never-failing
efforts to clothe the novel in a more esthetically pure form have, in
our own day, happily increased.

The traditional _material_ of literary compositions is, however, also
a conservative power, just as are language and form. The stock of
dominating motives naturally undergoes just as many transformations as
language or metrics; but, in both cases, what already exists has a
determining influence on everything new, often going so far as to