Tales from the German, Comprising specimens from the most celebrated authors. Anonymous

of a totally different kind has been given in this volume. The powerful tale of the Klausenburg is from Tieck's collected novels.

      Heinrich von Kleist, from whom two tales have been taken, is another poet of the romantic school, and was born at Frankfort on the Oder, in 1777. He led an unsettled kind of life, residing successively at Paris, Dresden, and Berlin, and after the battle of Jena, retired from the latter city to Königsberg, where he devoted himself to literary pursuits. Returning to Berlin during the French occupation of Prussia, he was taken prisoner, and though he was shortly afterwards released, this imprisonment seems to have had a fatal effect upon a temperament naturally morbid. In 1811, at Potsdam, he voluntarily terminated his own existence, and that of an invalid lady of his acquaintance. His works, which are somewhat numerous, consist of dramas and tales, and are all distinguished by a sort of rugged power. Of his plays, the most celebrated is the romantic drama, Käthchen von Heilbronn, and of his tales, the narrative of Michael Kohlhaas, contained in this collection. A complete edition of his works was published at Berlin, in 1821, by the indefatigable, Ludwig Tieck. The critical remarks which he has made on Kohlhaas, may be extracted with profit.

      "Michael Kohlhaas," says Tieck, "is unquestionably the most remarkable of all Kleist's narratives, and if we see with what firmness he sketches the various forms, how faithfully the events and feelings are deduced from each other, with what steadiness the narrator advances, step by step, we are tempted to believe that this style is more suitable to the author, and that his talents might have shone forth more brilliantly here than in the drama. Here, as in his plays, we see, as in the form of a law-suit, the misfortune and the guilt of a remarkable man unfolded before his eyes. Few writers understand how to shake our hearts to the very depth, like Kleist, and this is precisely because he goes to work with so steady a purpose, and consciously avoids all soft sentimentality. The insulted and injured Kohlhaas becomes unhappy;—nay, becomes a criminal through his misery and his keen sense of justice, until he is called back from his career by the revered Luther, and by his means obtains a hearing for his suit, so that he can stand boldly forward. It is only by chance without any fault on his own part, that he finds at Dresden, that his position has grown more unfavourable. It is unnecessary to call attention to the masterly hand which has portrayed all the characters from the prince and Luther, down to the humblest menial, in such living colours, that we seem to behold the realities themselves. Whether it was by intention or unconsciously, the writer has made important deviations from history. This might be excused on account of his leading motive, and the admirable freshness of his colouring; but he is more culpable for his incorrectness in the necessary circumstances of an event, which did not happen so very long ago—circumstances which can scarcely escape the recollection of the reader. Kleist forgets that Wittenberg, not Dresden, was the residence of the Elector of Saxony. Moreover, he describes Dresden just according to its present aspect. The old town, (Altstadt) scarcely existed at the time, and what shall we say of the elector himself, who appears as a romantic, amorous, eccentric, fantastical personage, when certainly it must have been either Frederick the Wise, or the Steadfast, who belonged to the period of the narrative? By over haste—for it certainly was not from design—this excellent story loses its proper costume and accompanying circumstances, whereas it would have been far more effective had the author allowed himself time to place himself in the period with greater truth. Another consequence of this deficiency in true locality is, that the author, after long alluring us by his truth and nature, leads us through a fanciful visionary world, which will not accord with the previous one, which he has taught us to know so accurately. That wondrous gipsy, who afterwards turns out to be the deceased wife of Kohlhaas, that mysterious inscription, those ghost-like forms, that sick, half-mad, and, afterwards, disguised elector; those weak, for the most part, characterless forms, which, nevertheless, come forward with a pretension, as if they would be considered superior to the real world previously described, as if they would sell as dearly as possible that mysterious nature, which comes to us little as possible—that horrible foreboding which the author suddenly feels in the presence of the creatures of his own fancy—all this, we say, reminds us so forcibly of many a weak product of our times, and of the ordinary demands of the reading public, that we are forced, mournfully, to admit that even distinguished authors, like Kleist—who in other respects does not participate in these diseases of his day—must pay their tribute to the time that has produced them."

      No literature can produce a more original writer, than Ernst Theodore Amadeus Hoffmann, from whom the translators have not scrupled to take three stories. Some have called Hoffmann an imitator of Jean Paul, but the assertion seems to be made rather because both writers are of an eccentric and irregular character, than because their eccentricities and irregularities are similar. However wild may be the subjects of Hoffmann, and however rambling his method of treating them, his style is remarkably lucid; and while Jean Paul is one of the most difficult authors for a foreigner to read, Hoffmann is comparatively easy. He was born at Königsberg on the 24th of January, 1776, where he studied law, and in 1800 became assessor of the government at Posen. In 1802 he became a councillor of the government at Plock, and in 1803 went in a similar capacity to Warsaw. His legal career was terminated by the invasion of the French, in 1806, and he made use of his musical talents to obtain a subsistence. In the autumn of 1808 he accepted the invitation of Count Julius von Soden to go to a theatre at Bamberg, where he was appointed musical director. The theatre soon closed, and he was reduced to such distress that he was forced to part with his last coat. He then occupied himself with musical instruction, and contributed to the Leipzig Musikalische Zeitung. From 1813 to 1815 he conducted the orchestra of a theatrical company, alternately in Dresden and Leipzig, and in 1816 was appointed councillor of the royal Kammergericht in Berlin, where he died on the 24th of July, 1822. Hoffmann had devoted himself to music from his earliest years, he composed the music for an opera on the subject of Undine, played at the Berlin theatre, and many of his writings have an immediate reference to the feelings and fortunes of the musician. This is conspicuous in the collection called, Fantasia-pieces in Callot's Manner, which he published in 1814, and which was followed by his Devil's Elixir, published in 1816. His works, consisting of narratives, are very numerous, and were published at Berlin, in fifteen volumes, and by Baudry, of Paris, in one volume, royal octavo. Among the most conspicuous are the fantastic Confessions of Tomcat Murr, the collection called the Scrapions Brothers, and Master Flea. Many of Hoffmann's stories have been translated into English, but they have not been so successful here as in France, where, when the translations appeared, they created a complete furore. Of the tales in this collection, the Sandman, and the Jesuits' Church, are from the "night-pieces," and the Elementary Spirit is from Hoffmann's "later works." In all these stories it will be observed that Hoffmann's purpose is to point out the ill-effect of a morbid desire after an imaginary world, and a distaste for realities. Different as their adventures are, there is a striking similarity in the characters of Nathaniel, Victor, and the painter Berthold, and Hoffmann seems to be exhibiting his own internal nature as the extreme of unhealthiness. The same tone may be perceived in his other writings, and his obvious reverence for the prosaic and common-place, as the antithesis to himself, is remarkable. The story of the Sandman had its origin in a discussion which actually took place between La Motte Fouqué and some friends, at which Hoffmann was present. Some of the party found fault with the cold, mechanical deportment of a young lady of their acquaintance, while La Motte Fouqué zealously defended her. Here Hoffmann caught the notion of the automaton Olympia, and the arguments used by Nathaniel are those that were really employed by La Motte Fouqué.

      A writer of extraordinary fancy and invention, but working for a more obvious purpose, and producing narratives more related in character to popular legends, was Wilhelm Hauff, of whom likewise there are three specimens in this volume. He was born on the 29th of November, 1809, at Stuttgard, and in early life showed a great predilection for telling childish narratives. Being designed for the theological profession, he went to the University of Tübingen in 1820. Afterwards he became a private teacher at Stuttgard, and began his literary career with the Almanach of Tales for the year 1826. This was followed by Contributions from Satan's Memoirs, and the Man in the Moon, the latter of which was designed to satirise the popular writer Clauren. Hauff's historical romance of Lichtenstein acquired great celebrity, and the collection of tales called the Caravan, which have contributed to this volume, are in the happiest