BOOKS.

A GERMAN EPIC.* IT shows how complete is the neglect in this country of the con- temporary poetry of Germany that no English critic, as far as- we are aware, has called attention to the epic of Dreizehn Linden. The poem has in five years passed through twenty- one editions, and is regarded by German critics as the most important contribution made to their poetical literature since Heine ceased to write. Apart from its intrinsic merits, it is something of a phenomenon in literary history, as being a first poem, and of the highest order, of an author who had reached the very mature age of sixty-five. Dr. Weber is a physician,. and spent the greater part of his life in the practice of his pro- fession, first at Driburg, in Westphalia, beside which he was born, and afterwards at Lippspringe, another health-resort in the same neighbourhood. He is also a politician, and has been for many years a member of the German Parliament. Whether he was hindered by professional and political duties, or whether, unlike most poets, he was unconscious of his gift of song— although he translated Tennyson's "Enoch Arden" and "Maud" —he published no original poem until the year seventy-eight,. when Dreizehn Linden appeared, which at once gave him a place in the front rank of the living poets of Germany. Accord- ing to his friends, the poem was written in the years imme- diately preceding its publication. He has since published a volume of miscellaneous poems, which have added to his repu- tation.

Dreizehn Linden is an epic of the ninth century, and the- incidents of the poem are supposed to have happened during the reign of Lewis the Pious, the son of Charles the Great. The thirty years of resistance by the Saxons to the iron-handed Kaiser are ended, and the power of the Franks and of the Church established. Elmar, the hero of the poem, is the last representative of the great Saxon race of the Falcons. His father died when Elmar was an infant, broken-hearted by the overthrow of his country. Elmar was trained by his mother and by a Druid woman Swanahild, who taught him to fear the gods and to hate the Franks. When Elmar grew to manhood,. he accepted his destiny with perfect courage and loyalty; but he is conscious that the Norns have bound him hand and foot in the threads of a hopeless destiny. For a time he sails the- seas with the Norsemen, and wins much renown as a warrior. On his return he finds his mother dead, and he lives a solitary life in Habichtshof," the Hawk's Dwelling," brooding over the evil fate which condemned him to a life of inaction. He remains faithful to the outlawed gods, and attends the Balder Festival on the Iburg, of which the poet gives a striking descrip- tion, where Swanahild presides over the ancient rites, while watchers are posted all around lest the assembly should be interrupted by the Franks. But Elmar also goes to the Harvest Festival at Bodinthorpe, where the Frankish Count Bodo lives, who rules the land in the name of the King at Aachen. Elmar is drawn to Bodinthorpe by love

• Dreieehn Linden. Von F. W. Weber. Ein.und-zwanzigste Anhwei. Paden, born. 1884.

to the fair Hildegunde, Bodo's daughter. Bat Gero, the King's Messenger, had cast his eyes upon Hildegunde, and filled with jealousy because he sees that the maiden loves the Saxon, he whispered words of gross insult to Elmar, and upbraided him with his presence at the unlawful assembly on the Iburg. Elmar replies with words of outspoken defiance, and draws his sword. Bodo desires him to leave his house, and Elmar goes out into

the dark woods in wrath and grief. While standing in the woods above Bodinthorpe he perceives that Bodo's house is on fire.

He rushes back and saves Hildegunde from the flames ; but he receives but cold thanks from Bodo, for Gero has persuaded the Count that Elmar was the incendiary. He betakes himself to Swanahild, who gives him no comfort ; she perceives that he loves the Frankish maiden, and she predicts that evil will meet him on the forest path. While he prays to Wodan under the sacred oak, an arrow strikes him from the hand of Gero. Elmer

overtakes him, but scorns to slay the craven. He is then accused by Gero before the Ding, or Council, of having set fire to Bodo's house ; and although the people are in his favour, he is found guilty by the chiefs, who are under the influence of Gero, and he is condemned to banishment Before he goes forth to roam

the world free as a bird, he goes to the smith, Fulko, to have his horse shod. Fulko urges him to raise again the Saxon banner, and assures him that the people are ready for revolt. But Elmer, who knows that the chiefs are against him, refuses to shed the blood of brave men in a hopeless struggle. He leaves his home, and rides on, until, faint with loss of blood from his wound, he sinks senseless at the gate of the convent of Dreizehn Linden. He is recognised by the porter as a worshipper of Wodan, against whom sentence of banishment had gone forth.

But the Abbot says that convent walls are sacred, and desires the brethren to act to the wounded man, as it stands written in the tenth chapter of Saint Luke ! Brother Beda exerted all his skill on Elmar, but in vain ; for Gero's arrow was poisoned, and the delirium continued so long that they feared that he was possessed by an evil spirit. In his despair Beda determined to seek the aid of Swanahild, who was famed for her skill, although the Abbot feared it might be sin. From her he received a remedy by means of which Elmar recovered. On his recovery the Prior endeavoured to convert him to the Christian faith, but for long his efforts were vain. But after the Prior had

given up the task in despair, Elmer yielded, and he was baptised in the convent chapel Afterwards all goes well. The real author of the fire is discovered ; and the King at Aachen takes Elmar into favour, and appoints him in the place of Bodo, who

dies after giving his consent to the marriage of Elmar with Hildegunde.

The character of Elmer is drawn with consummate skill, and Dr. Weber successfully accomplishes the difficult feat of carry- ing the sympathies of the reader with Elmar when he abandons the Saxon cause and his ancient faith. His acts of prowess among the Vikings prove that it is not want of courage, but noble self-restraint that leads him to refuse to raise the standard of revolt. His words during his "fever dreams" show how loyally he clings to the past; and when he does yield, it is evident that it is not because of the Prior's words, but because his spirit has outgrown the creed of hate in which he had been nurtured. Hildegunde's love, too, had something to do with Elmar's conversion ; for when in his " fever-dreams " he sees Walhalla open, and Wodan and Freia smile welcome upon him, he exclaims :—

" No ; on earth I needs must linger, Though your halls shine fair and clear, Mightier than the powers of Walhall Is a gentle maiden's tear."

The planting of the cross by Hildegunde under the sacred oak where her lover worshipped, is another hint of the union of love with religion which is so characteristic of the Middle Ages.

Dr. Weber is a Roman Catholic, and the Ultramontane Press of Germany has somewhat ostentatiously claimed him as a Catholic poet; but there is no line in the poem which might not have been written by any one who had learned to treat the Church of the Middle Ages with historical justice. It contains a brilliant series of portraits of the monks as they file into the chapel at matins ; and we never remember to have read any- thing which brought so vividly before us the strangely hetero- geneous character of the inmates of religions houses in the early Middle Ages. The stately Frankish Abbot who fought with Charles at Ronzeval, is followed by the fair-haired Saxon Prior who in his youth wrote his opinions in red runes on the cheeks of his enemies, and still sometimes finds it difficult to

curb his anger. Good Churchman as he is, he has not lost his national sympathies; and it pleases him ill to see ancient law and custom superseded by Frankish despotism. Even in chapel, when he lifts his eyes to the high altar, he murmurs the patriotic prayer :— " Lord of the World in mercy guide

The fortunes of the Saxon land."

Among the monks there is the pale thinker Heribert, who is meditating on a problem in Aristotle ; followed by Father Luthard, whose thoughts were busy about the forest game which he had to catch for the convent kitchen. The saint is not absent; there is the pions priest, Tankmar, whom the convent it- self does not satisfy, and who often longs for the wings of a dove that he might flee away. And he must have found some of his comparisons trying—Father Ivo, for example, who had been a herd, and in a combat with a robber received a great scar, blue and red, which disfigured his face, and who retired into the convent because maidens love better colours. Father Biso, the son of a heathen, who still swore by Donar's hammer when he was crossed, cannot have been congenial. A more attractive, but still rather worldly personage, is Sigeward, the wandering poet and singer, who had seen so many lands ; and at matins is making rhymes against the Franks, and saying to himself,—

" Would not now the Prior laugh ?

And the Abbot wouldn't he scold ?"

There is no bitterness or bigotry in Dr. Weber's treatment of the old Faith and order which had to pass away, after having served so many generations. The priestess Swanahild is a noble figure, very touching in her stern fidelity to the past. The portraits in which it abounds are, indeed, the chief charm of the poem ; and almost every one has the freshness and distinction which are the sure signs of creative genius. Specially admirable are Aiga, a maiden from the banks of the Garonne, whose light, mocking words play like sheet-lightning round the slow-tongued Saxons ; and Eggi, an impish boy, who re- veals, after first concealing, the real author of the fire. Diethelm and Fulko are fine representatives of the humbler Saxons; and their prosaic conversion forms an excellent contrast to the spiritual struggles of the high-souled Elmer. When his worthy retainer heard the unjust sentence pronounced upon his master, he took counsel with Fulko, and both were at first vastly indignant at the gods for not having helped their worshipper ; but, on further consideration, they came to the conclusion that the poor old gods had lost their power, and were no longer in a position to protect their worshippers, and. without more ado, they got themselves baptised.

Dr. Weber makes an experiment which would have been perilous in less skilful bands. On two occasions,—first when Elmar leaves his home, and afterwards on his return, he intro- duces the conversations of the forest trees and beasts, who show a great and generally a friendly interest in the lord of "Hawk's Dwelling," although the bear and some other animals cherish a grudge against him, because of domestic bereavements which they have suffered at his hands. The conversa- tions admirably recall the times when the Germans dwelt so much in the forest that the trees and beasts seemed to them like living companions, as all their early fables show. Dr. Weber has made one mistake in these conversations. He is a deter- mined enemy to materialism and irreligion, and he seeks to make them ridiculous by ascribing them to the owl, who treats with impartial scorn the Christian water and the Pagan flame,. and avows himself an advanced thinker of the school of Mr. Bradlaugh. But the owl's speeches are much too modern in tone, and they disturb for the reader the pleasant illusion, otherwise so admirably maintained, that he is reading a ninth and not a nineteenth century poem. And if Dr. Weber must have a materialist among the animals, why did he choose the bird of Minerva, whose eyes alone ought to have protected it from all suspicion of entertaining foolish opinions ? Your true material- ist cynic is the raven, with his hunger for flesh and his sardonic eyes.