| | | Of Sir Archibald Alison as an historian we have already | spoken; but his new volume presents him in a new light, | and in that light we now propose to consider him. How | remarkable he is in the two qualities of verbiage and | inaccuracy, every reader knows; but not until the | publication of the volume now before us had he given the | full measure of his powers in those directions. He has, | de gaiete de coeur, and without any provocation, | undertaken to sketch the “Literature of Germany in the first | half of the nineteenth century;” and inasmuch as the task | was purely gratuitous and self-imposed, it may be thought | that he felt himself qualified to execute it. And, indeed, as | far as ignorance, rudimentary and comprehensive, can | qualify a man for so bold an undertaking, we must do Sir | Archibald Alison the justice to declare that he is thoroughly | qualified. | Rudimentary hi ignorance is, for it begins with | the very language. He knows so little of German, that, | having to translate the title of Goethe’s novel Die | Wahlverwandtschaften (Elective Affinities), he calls it | Relatives by Affinity! And Burgher’s ballad | Der Wilde Jager (the Wild Huntsman) he calls the | Cruel Huntsman. Every German name which | admits of being mis-spelled, by instinctive affinity for | blundering he misspells. Thus, Muffling is always Muffling, | Ruckert always Ruckhart, Oehlenschlager always | Oehlenshlager, Hacklander always Haklander, Burger | always Burger, and Freiderich Halm, the author of Der | Sohn der Wildniss, is, in the three lines devoted to | him, called “Frederick Salom, author of Der Sohn der | Waldniss.” These, we beg to observe, are not | occasional misprints, to be credited to the printer ~~ they | are the constant errors of the author, who never deviates, | even by accident, into the right spelling. | Comprehensive his ignorance is, for not only | has he failed to master the language in which the works | are written ~~ so that his knowledge of them must | necessarily be of a not altogether profound and | discriminating quality ~~ but he seems to have read few | translations, and not any histories of German literature ~~ | or, at all events, not with much attention. He has no | knowledge at first-hand, nor at second-hand. His blunders | are so colossal, so preposterous, so wide of any | approximation to fact, that they sometimes seem like the | odd combinations of a dream, rather than the deliberate | statements of history. | We will cull a specimen or so, enough to justify our | remarks without wearying the reader. The very first name | in this survey is Lessing, one of the best known of German | writers, and of whom all instructed readers, however | ignorant they be of German, know enough to appreciate | the following, which is all Sir Archibald has to say | about him: ~~ | If Lessing is celebrated for one thing more than another, it | is for his merciless polemics against the French | school; and he would writhe in his tomb at the thought of | his dramas having been imitations of Voltaire, and fettered | by French rules, to ridicule and expose which had been his | constant effort. His dramas may be mediocre, | though Sir Archibald cannot know it, but they happen to be | intensely national. His works “opened men’s eyes,” but it | was to the excellence of Greek and English poetry, | not to that of the French. | The next name we meet is Winckelmann (of course | misspelled by Sir Archibald), and we give entire what is | devoted to that illustrious name, calling especial attention | to the grammar of the passage: ~~ | On Goethe he is more diffuse, but not more accurate. He | actually has the audacity to say that Goethe’s

“Life of | Benvenuto Cellini shows he was capable of writing an | interesting biography.”

Is there one of Sir Archibald’s | clerks so ignorant as not to know that Cellini wrote his own | life, which has been translated into every European | language? and this work

“which shows Goethe was | capable of writing a biography,”

Goethe simply | translated. Here is another delightful specimen: ~~ | | If any German had said this, he would have been received | with shouts of laughter; but as Sir Archibald does not know | enough German to distinguish many forms of expression, it | is natural that his

“most minute scrutiny”

should | have been unable to detect a repetition of one expression |

“in the whole of his voluminous works.”

| Of Kotzebue also the general public knows something. | Part of what is thus generally known is also | known to Sir Archibald, as we see in the following: ~~ | | He seems to be ignorant, however (for he does not state it, | and he is always ready to state what he does know, as well | as what he does not), that a far more popular play than | Pizarro still holds its place on the British stage, | namely, The Stranger, which is a translation | from Kotzebue. But why, in a survey of German literature, | is a name so renowned as that of Kotzebue to be passed | over with a single allusion to one play? Has Sir Archibald | never heard of Der Arme Poet, (the original of | Monsieur Jacques ), of Gustav Vasa, | or of the very amusing Kleinstadter? Probably | not; and if he had, it would not assist him, for he could not | read them, nor, reading, understand them. | Of Herder, also, something is known by cultivated readers, | especially through the English translation of the work thus | spoken of: ~~ | If the critic had ever seen that work, or the | translation, he would be aware of the exquisite absurdity of | his criticism. But we may inform him that Herder does not | put forth

“pretensions to the character”

here | denied ~~ he calls his work Ideas towards a | Philosophy of the History of Humanity and not a | Philosophy of History. | The two Schlegels are also widely known in | England, through translations and criticisms; but Sir | Archibald, disdaining that knowledge which is common | property, and writing from a quite private and peculiar | knowledge of his own, confounds the two together. After | loftily putting down the Philosophy of History | (written by Frederick), he eulogizes the Lectures on | the Drams (written by August Wilhelm), and says | they are the real services rendered by the author. | There has been enough talk about Strauss, too, in England, | to prevent anyone but Mr. | Alison from being utterly and absurdly wrong in describing | what is his position with reference to Christianity; yet listen | to this: ~~ | These blunders are enough. The reader will observe that | we have not pressed hard upon Sir Archibald’s erudition ~~ | we have not sought for blunders on subjects recondite and | remote from ordinary inspection. We have kept to the | broad highway ~~ we have seen him in company with | writers known, more or less, to all the world, whose fame | has made even casual readers acquainted with their works | and tendencies ~~ and yet such is the unparalleled | audacity, and such the comprehensive ignorance of Sir | Archibald Alison, that he deliberately swells out his bulky | volume with a dissertation on a subject of which, as we | have shown, he does not know what is known to the world | at large. He pretends to instruct us upon a literature of | which he does not know the language, and of which he has | not taken the pains to collect even the simplest and best | known facts. If a Frenchman were to undertake a | dissertation on English literature, it is possible that, in the | madness of his vanity, and the levity of his knowledge, he | might rival Sir Archibald Alison; but we deliberately record | it as our opinion that no other mortal could be found to | write so foolish and so false a chapter in a work of | historical pretensions.