literature, which endeavor was continued later on and with other
methods by A.W. Schlegel. But Herder also, in his comparison of the
native art of Germany with the art of antiquity, of the Orient and of
England, produced effective results; no less did Lessing, although the
latter seeks to learn from the faults of his neighbors rather than
from their excellencies. Goethe's criticism is dominated to such a
degree by his absorption in the antique, and also in French and
English general literature, that he has no understanding of national
peculiarities when they do not conform to typical literary phenomena,
as Uhland's lyric and Kleist's drama--two literary phenomena which we,
nowadays, consider eminently national. The Romantic school was the
first to try to place the conception of national literature as a whole
on an autochthonous basis, and the scientific speculation to which
Romanticism gave rise, has, since the Brothers Grimm, also resulted in
serviceable rules gained from the increasingly thorough knowledge of
language, of national development, and of social conditions. This new
point of view reaches its climax in the attempts of Karl Müllenhoff
and Wilhelm Scherer to trace the native literary development directly
back to the nature and destiny of the German nation. But even as that
proved scientifically unsuccessful, so likewise it was not feasible
practically to establish a poetry confined to native materials, forms,
and opinions. In vain did Tieck try to play off the youthful Goethe,
as the only national one, against the Goethe of the Weimar period,
which attempt many after him have repeated; or again, it was proposed
to strike Heine out of the history of our literature as un-German--the
last two literary events of European significance in Germany,
according to Nietzsche. On the contrary, a comparison of German
literature with those of foreign nations was not only necessary but
also fruitful, as a certain exhaustion had set in, which lent an
aftermath character to the leaders of the German "intellectual poetry"