THE personalities in this first German Romantic movement were a
mixed company of young middle-class intellectuals, in rebellion against the formalism of eighteenth- century culture. The usual source for our knowledge of them is Goethe's Dichtung und Wahrheit, in which he looks back on the companions of his youth with a tranquillity that leads him somewhat to understate their violence. The emotional colour of their revolt, however, is reflected in Werther, Goethe's own caution to himself against hectic extremes of feeling. Professor Pascal's view of the personalities and their thought is founded on wide reading, and, though it reveals an academic sympathy with revolu- tions as such, is, on the social side, reason- ably objective. He has reserved an examina- tion of Sturm und Drang writing for a later volume. Perhaps the most surprising result of his researches has been to add stature to the figure of Herder; his most dubious conclusion is that German Romanticism only partially fulfils the promise of this generation of the 1770s. J. M. C.
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