instance, is strikingly like Bolz in _The Journalists_ or Fink in
_Debit and Credit_. Freytag's answer to such objections was that an
author, like any other artist, must work from models, which he is not
obliged constantly to change. The feeling for the solidarity of the
arts was very strong with him. He practically abandoned writing for
the stage just after achieving his most noted success and merely for
the reason that in poetic narration, as he called it, he saw the
possibility of being still more dramatic. He felt hampered by the
restrictions which the necessarily limited length of an evening's
performance placed upon him, and wished more time and space for the
explanation of motives and the development of his plot. In his novel,
then, he clung to exactly the same arrangement of his theme as in his
drama--its initial presentation, the intensification of the interest,
the climax, the revulsion, the catastrophe. Again, in the matter of
contrast he deliberately followed the lead of the painter who knows
which colors are complementary and also which ones will clash.

[Illustration: GUSTAV FREYTAG. STAUFFER-BERN]

What, now, are some of the special qualities that have made
Freytag's literary work so enduring, so dear to the Teuton heart, so
successful in every sense of the word? For one thing, there are a
clearness, conciseness and elegance of style, joined to a sort of
musical rhythm, that hold one captive from the beginning. So evident
is his meaning in every sentence that his pages suffer less by
translation than is the case with almost any other author.

Freytag's highly polished sentences seem perfectly spontaneous, though
we know that he went through a long period of rigid training before
achieving success. "For five years," he himself writes, "I had pursued