gave one loud shriek, and fell lifeless at my feet." And the worthies rejoiced, and congratulated each other on the ruin they had wrought. And Father Joseph said to himself, "The adder's nest is crushed; I have removed his most hated enemy from Richelieu's path;_he cannot but reward me with the long-promised cardinal's hat." But Richelieu made much the same use of the cardinal's hat in respect to the Capuchin, that he did of the bauble he danced before the eyes of his favourite cat: it made her put forth all her powers, and display all her activity; but the higher she sprang to catch it, the farther he removed it from her reach. It is a singular fact, that precisely three years from the day on which Urbain Grandier was sacrificed, the victim of hatred and injustice, the judge Lanbardemont did meet an untimely and dreadful death. CENSUS OF FOREIGN LITERATURE. THE MOST MODERN CONTINENTAL AUTHORS (IN A SERIES OF LETTERS). LETTER I. FERDINAND FREILIGRATH. MY DEAR SIR,-You request me from time to time, for our mutual benefit, to forward you the results of my varied and desultory reading. You wish to hear from me the impressions made upon me by the books which fall into my hands, while my mind is yet warm from their reception. In vain do I represent the necessary crudity of all that I utter, while writing under the influence of the most transient circumstances; you say that you would rather hear the result of an immediate feeling, than reap the fruits of a mature deliberation; and would rather listen to the sympathising voice of a fellow-student than hearken to the opinion of a dictator, even though the latter might be much more soundly critical and instructive. Well, then, without arguing, or resisting, or objecting to comply with your request. I have just received from Germany a neat little parcel, enclosing a copy of German poems, by Ferdinand Freiligrath. You know that Teutonic lyrics are to me as caviare, or any other delicacy, and will easily conjecture that I devoured the volume with due rapidity. "Ferdinand Freiligrath"-a new name! No one has heard of him on our side the herring-pond in all human probability; and, most likely, the copy I ordered is the only one in her Majesty's dominions. O the luxury of selfishness! the pleasure of knowing that one's know. ledge is not diffused; the delight of being a pedant, at the easy rate of reading some 300 loosely printed pages. But no, no, no; I am not selfish, but willing ever, my dear sir, to make you the participator of the eccentricities on which I have so lately feasted. And now, to begin with the philosophy of the thing-to put you in the right state of mind--to set you at the right point of view to receive my stores of information: just remember the distinction which has been drawn between poets, themselves observers of nature, from whom alone they draw their treasures, and the other class of poets, who imbibe their information from books. It is useless to remind you, how the first are in immediate contact with the world, and are the oracles to tell its secrets in their own way, while the others learn the secrets at second-hand, and are hammering their brains to give their work this or that form-to torture it into a ghazel-to toss it loosely through a Spanish metre-or to rumble it through hexameters, thinking much less how they shall tell their thoughts themselves than how they shall imitate other people's manner of telling, or feeling. It is useless, I say, to remind you of all this and besides all this-that our friends the German poets are more addicted to the bookish school of poetry than any other nation in the world. But now imagine a third case—a man who has not studied for the sake of studying, or for the sake of cultivating a literary style-or, indeed, for the sake of writing at all; imagine this man, with little in the actual world to occupy his thoughts, amusing himself with a course of reading after his own heart-just as children read fairy tales-and then constructing a world suitable to himself, into which he can peep and feel himself quite at home. Suppose this man shall build a volume of poetry out of the objects he shall find in this region of his own creation-suppose all this, and you have Ferdinand Freiligrath. Freiligrath is now about nine-and-twenty years old; and his poems, which were not collected till last year, have made a surprising stir among the German critics; each endeavouring to discover and explain the psychological causes of poems so eccentric and extraordinary. He was born in a little German village, where nothing of interest was going on, and as a boy he amused himself with books of travels. These not only opened a new world to him, but literally took him into a new world: and from that period, he stooped under Simooms, listened to the roaring of lions, marked the track of the hyena, admired skull-garnished palaces, and probably without having stirred an inch further than Holland, dashed boldly into a wild Asiatic or African life. Amsterdam,— strange place for inspiration-received him; the sight of the shipping gave a visibility and substantiality to the visions he had drawn from his books, and the material for the poet was at hand; he had not to look to the right or the left, or to wander or reflect; his head was so full of outlandish scenery, customs, and persons, that he had merely to take his pencil and hit off in glowing colours what his mental eye beheld; and this he did with a vigour, and a colouring, and a fulness which struck great wonderment into all who read his novel effusions. "Oh!" I hear you say," another Rückert." Not a bit of it, my dear sir; not a morsel like Rückert. That glorious man travels about gathering wisdom as he goes, culling oriental tradition, listening to the spirit of the East. Not so Freiligrath; it is the body of the east that he delighteth in: he cares not for its wisdom, or its tradition, or the parables of its dervises, or the oriental style of allegory; no,-he loves the tigers, and lions, and the Bedouins, and the yellow sands; the scenes that are before him are not matters for reflection, but for description. Now, to open his book. On the first page we find a poem entitled "Moss-tea" (Moos-thee); that is, "tea made of Iceland moss," which is given to the author in a state of sickness. What can he make of it? Does he sentimentalise on the shortness of life, and so on? No; but hear him. After describing his quaffing the "dark-green juice," and the “fire darting through his nerves," he concludes thus powerfully : This is a very wonderful poem for a boy of sixteen (the age of the poet, according to the first verse); but the sagacious have suspected that the last part was written some time after the first, as it is evidently intended as a preface to the whole book; and the probability is, that Freiligrath had got a large heap of these fiery stones, before he began to pray that they might hiss in other people's hearts. The next poem I shall take is, perhaps, his chef-d'œuvre, and a most characteristic specimen. Now we shall find him full of enthusiasm for his own wild world; we shall find that his feelings are wrapped up in the results of his juvenile studies-and how vividly the pictures of his imagination stand before him. The "Moos-thee" was rather an introduction—a telling us what he was going to do-a showman's cloth, hung before his collection of natural curiosities. Now, we have entered,-and behold O segle, wenn im Lenze, Goldstaub auf deiner Locke When, in the spring, no more ice restrains thy ship,-O sail to the border of thy land, return home to thy tent. There the land Dar Fur sprinkles gold dust on thy hair ;-here the hoar frost and flakes of snow deck it but with silver dust. Do you not now see what I mean by Freiligrath being merely descriptive, not reflective? Observe there are no comparisons between civilisation and non-civilisation; no symbols of things immaterial; his African scenery does not remind him of this or that; he is rejoicing in the sight of the great Sahara, and the gold-dust of Darfur-feasting on the spectacle of the negro-palace, adorned with skulls-and joining in the chase of the panther. Delighted with the scene he has raised, he calls your attention to the various imaginary objects around him, with the eagerness of a child who travels for the first time; and the warmth of his feeling causes a reciprocal glow in your own. You may see what a new field Freiligrath has taken, as the unreflective poet of uncivilized life; and into whatever country he travels it is the wild and adventurous which strikes him. At sea, he loves to think of the wonders of the deep, and the corsairs; if he remains in Europe, it is to behold the death of a robber-chief; in short, the whole tenour of his works may be most accurately traced to his boyish Robinson-Crusoeschool of reading; and, however his subjects may vary, they are generally similar in kind. It is a remarkable circumstance, that not a single love-poem is to be found in his collection (I should say not an original love-poem, for there are several, which are translations); and it has been conjectured that love-at least as a subject for poetical expression, forms no part of Freiligrath's composition-that his nature requires to be stirred by the wild and the wonderful, before he can produce a line, and that he has no sympathy for any life, but that of the regions he has made so peculiarly his own. It is also worthy of remark, that with all his love for the wonderful, he rarely strays into the supernatural-rarely creates beings merely imaginary. Nature, in her wildest state, contains enough to satisfy him; and his imagination is employed rather in bringing home to himself distant realities, than in building edifices entirely without a natural foundation. Hence his substantiality and distinctness; he begins to work with good solid materials, and his graphic imagination must needs produce a vivid and highly-coloured picture. Doubtless many will object to the field Freiligrath has taken, as a sign of bad and depraved taste but that is no question to discuss here. I have done enough if I establish the fact, that Freiligrath has excelled in a new region, without caring whether his soaring, or rather sailing, into that region be in good taste or not. There must be a good deal of personal taste in these matters; and I can only, for my own part, say, that I have rarely read a volume with greater delight, and should look forward to another with a very pleasant anticipation. But what to turn to next? It is no hard matter to criticise a wellknown author, when all your readers are in possession of the subject, and you have only to go on doling out your opinion; there is no great difficulty with a tragedy or an epic-where you can go on detailing the |