alone, among the dramatists, have a liberal tendency. The spirit that
had been called forth also degenerated into mere bacchanalian license,
and, in order to return to nature, the limits set by decency and
custom were, as by Heinse, for instance, who thus disgraced his
genius, wantonly overthrown.

In contradistinction to these wild spirits, which, whether borne aloft
by their genius or impelled by ambition, quitted the narrow limits of
daily existence, a still greater number of poets employed their
talents in singing the praise of common life, and brought domesticity
and household sentimentality into vogue. The very prose of life, so
unbearable to the former, was by them converted into poetry. Although
the ancient idyls and the family scenes of English authors were at
first imitated, this style of poetry retained an essentially German
originality; the hero of the modern idyl, unlike his ancient model,
was a fop tricked out with wig and cane, and the domestic hero of the
tale, unlike his English counterpart, was a mere political nullity. It
is perhaps well when domestic comforts replace the want of public
life, but these poets hugged the chain they had decked with flowers,
and forgot the reality. They forgot that it is a misfortune and a
disgrace for a German to be without a country, without a great
national interest, to be the most unworthy descendant of the greatest
ancestors, the prey and the jest of the foreigner; to this they were
indifferent, insensible; they laid down the maxim that a German has
nothing more to do than "to provide for" himself and his family, no
other enemy to repel than domestic trouble, no other duty than "to
keep his German wife in order," to send his sons to the university,
and to marry his daughters. These commonplace private interests were
withal merely adorned with a little sentimentality. No noble motive is
discoverable in Voss's celebrated "Louisa" and Goethe's "Hermann and