19 MARCH 1842, Page 16

xiiiticsit's LYRE AND SWORD.

IT is not easy to say whether Iiiiarma, bad his life been spared, would have turned out a poet after all. His plays contain little of promise. That they betray a want of the knowledge of human nature which alone enables the poet to lend the appearance of reality to his shadows—and that in consequence of this want the speeches of the dramatis personte are often turgid and exaggerated, and the incidents forced and unnatural—might have been the case even with one in whom there lurked, undeveloped or imperfectly developed, a truly poetical sense of the beautiful combined with impassioned thought. But this defect is not counterbalanced by any indications of imaginative sentiment--such, for example, as is found in that chaos of poetical imagery KEATES'S Endymion—or even of a power of versification. What thought and what expres- sion are to be found in these plays, are mere feeble echoes of the ideas and versification of Scummt ; such as were naturally enough caught up by a clever and ambitious boy, early rendered familiar with SCHILLER'S works by the familiar footing on which the poet stood in his father's family.

A few of the fugitive pieces collected and published under the title of Lyre and Sword smack of better things. IURNER was brave, and of an elevated and energetic turn of mind. He was fitted to catch the deep stern feeling that animated the public mind of Germany in 1813, and to add to its intensity from his own stores of enthusiasm. The pride of the Germans' who remembered the laurels of FREDERICK the Great, yet found themselves scat- tered and trampled down by the Revolutionary troops of France— their animosity called forth by the wanton and petulant oppression of the nation which of all European peoples can least bear success with a good grace or control its actions in the moment of triumph by a recollection of the feelings of others—every thing goaded the people of Germany to a great effort to regain national independence ; and.NaroLEox's disasters in the Russian campaign, and the mas- terly measures of the Prussian Minister Yore STEIN, inspired them with a well-grounded confidence in their own resources. It was one of those moments in a hation's history when the whole mass seems miraculously inspired with a preternatural keenness of feeling and power of thought—a moment such as France experienced at the time of the Three Days and England at the time of the Reform Bill, but chastened and elevated by the severer sufferings that had preceded it, and the more terrible dangers that seemed to be impending. It was one of those moments when even asses speak and think to the purpose ; and when, of course, a high- spirited lad of talent, who strenuously laboured to acquire the knack of versification, could scarcely fail to light occasionally upon something better than his neighbours.

This, after all, is the most that can be said for the really good pieces in the Lyre and Sword. They are better than any thing TURNER has done, because they are expressions of a real feeling. The sentiment is at times exaggerated; the strained ideas lose themselves not unfrequently in bombast ; but they present (for that very reason, perhaps) a vivid and true picture of the author's state of mind, and the state of mind at the time of ninety-nine in the hundred of his young countrymen who were worth any thing.

Any person who will take the trouble to turn to the sonnet to the Prussian Frontier Eagle, or the "Prayer during the Fight," or " Liitzow's Wild Hunt," in the original, (or who, not understanding German, will get some friend who does to make an extempore literal translation for him,) will admit this. They are rough, strong, terse expressions of a mind stimulated to preternatural intelligent* by the intoxication of the bustling preparation for battle. But this is not peculiar to the poems of Keats/Ea: among the songs of that period which are still sung, or more properly roared, by the Burschen of Germany when in their altitudes, there are many quite as good but less famous, because their authors not having had the luck to die as lioattaa died, have not lent a fac- titious interest to their verses. This is just the counterpart of the enthusiasm for KomiEa's memory, when many as brave and as hopeful youths fell in the struggle for their country's emancipa- tion, unnamed, except at the firesides made desolate by their loss, because they had never aspired to contribute to the Musen-Alma- nach, or had interest to get an insipid drama brought upon the stage. Kdaag is in a fair way to hobble on to a kind of immor- tality—like a duck with one broken leg and one broken wing, making up by half-flying for its only half ability to walk. His poe- try would not stand him in stead and his heroism would not stand him in stead ; but taken together, they are allowed to pass. A passage in the preface to the Lyre and Sword will illustrate this position- ., Out of at least sixty shots fired, only three took effect. KOrner fell the first ; after him Count Hardenberg a volunteer in the Russian service; and a Liitzow rifleman. The body of Kiirner was borne, with that of the young Count Hardenberg, to Lubelow; there, laid in a coffin, crowned by his friends with oak-leaf; then, with military honours—the procession attended by all the officers of his corps, and by all his companions in arms who had more inti- mately known and loved him—was buried under an old oak.'

The sentimental had tears for the poet, and for the "Count"; but the " Ltitzow rifleman" was too vulgar for them.

Thus is the estimation in which KoRNER is held in Germany easily accounted for. Lads fresh from Homer, and girls deep-read in the circulating library, see in the young soldier who wrote verses, (whether good or bad they know not and care not,) and threw away his life when there was nothing to be gained by exposing it, their ideal of a hero. How should they comprehend that it was ARNDT'S Geist der Zeit that moved KoRNER and "hundreds good as he" like automata, and that it was the head of VON STEIN that directed their energies thus excited, so as to work out what without such a guiding and controlling intellect their unidea'd valour never could have accomplished ? It is probably to the same classes in this country that we are indebted for all the thousand-and-one translations of KEIRNER, which have from time to time dropped dead-born from the English press. It is of no use complaining, for no one is forced to read them ; and as to waste of time, if the translators were capable of doing any real service to literature, they would find out the way how by instinct.

But it is not unreasonable to ask that what is called " a trans-

lation" should bear a little more resemblance to the original than LOIrd LEVESON GOWER'S Faust to that of Gi3THE. The transla- tion" of KoRNER'S Lyre and Sword, now before us, bears, if any thing, rather less. For the strong rough language of the original is substituted the hackneyed feebleness of the bards of the An- nuals—a double dilution of the diluted versification and twisted conceits of BARRY CORNWALL. A few specimens will suffice. Thus-

" Was gliinzt dort vom Walde im Sonnen- Schein? " Was gliinzt dort vom Walde im Sonnen- Schein?

Mires naer und niiher brawn I " is travestied into

"What gleams from yon copse in the ruddy dawn ?

While hurtling echoes roll ! "

And—

"Der Funke der Freiheit ist gliihend erwacht Und lodert in blutigen Flammen," is frittered down to

"The spark of our liberty gleams like a star, And her rays give a blood-red flash."

Nay, it is well when the translator, clutching at the first best rhyme that suggests itself to his unmusical ear, does not render the verse positively ludicrous as well as unfaithful ; as in

"Ask the black troopers—they'll answer blunt, That is Liitzow's desperate hunt."