“But he was something more than a hero; he was the son of God, wasn’t he?”
The elderly individual made no immediate answer; but, after a few more whiffs from his pipe, exclaimed, “Come, fill your glass! How do you advance with your translation of Tell?”
“It is nearly finished; but I do not think I shall proceed with it; I begin to think the original somewhat dull.”
“There you are wrong; it is the masterpiece of Schiller, the first of German poets.”
“It may be so,” said the youth. “But, pray excuse me, I do not think very highly of German poetry. I have lately been reading Shakespeare, and, when I turn from him to the Germans—even the best of them—they appear mere pigmies. You will pardon the liberty I perhaps take in saying so.”
“I like that every one should have an opinion of his own,” said the elderly individual; “and, what is more, declare it. Nothing displeases me more than to see people assenting to everything that they hear said; I at once come to the conclusion that they are either hypocrites, or there is nothing in them. But, with respect to Shakespeare, whom I have not read for thirty years, is he not rather given to bombast, ‘crackling bombast,’ as I think I have said in one of my essays?”
“I daresay he is,” said the youth; “but I can’t help thinking him the greatest of all poets, not even excepting Homer. I would sooner have written that series of plays, founded on the fortunes of the House of Lancaster, than the Iliad itself. The events described are as lofty as those sung by Homer in his great work, and the characters brought upon the stage still more interesting. I think Hotspur as much of a hero as Hector, and young Henry more of a man than Achilles; and then there is the fat knight, the quintessence of fun, wit, and rascality. Falstaff is a creation beyond the genius even of Homer.”
“You almost tempt me to read Shakespeare again—but the Germans?”
“I don’t admire the Germans,” said the youth, somewhat excited. “I don’t admire them in any point of view. I have heard my father say that, though good sharpshooters, they can’t much be depended upon as soldiers; and that old Sergeant Meredith told him that Minden would never have been won but for the two English regiments, who charged the French with fixed bayonets, and sent them to the right-about in double-quick time. With respect to poetry, setting Shakespeare and the English altogether aside, I think there is another Gothic nation, at least, entitled to dispute with them the palm. Indeed, to my mind, there is more genuine poetry contained in the old Danish book which I came so strangely by, than has been produced in Germany from the period of the Niebelungen lay to the present.”