But his death-bed was at least not haunted by the
unappeasable apprehension of a German for his biographer; and that the
fame of Lessing should have four times survived this cunningest assault
of oblivion is proof enough that its base is broad and deep-set.
There seems to be, in the average German mind, an inability or a
disinclination to see a thing as it really is, unless it be a matter of
science. It finds its keenest pleasure in divining a profound
significance in the most trifling things, and the number of mare's-nests
that have been stared into by the German _Gelehrter_ through his
spectacles passes calculation. They are the one object of contemplation
that makes that singular being perfectly happy, and they seem to be as
common as those of the stork. In the dark forest of aesthetics,
particularly, he finds them at every turn,--"fanno tutto il loco varo."
If the greater part of our English criticism is apt only to skim the
surface, the German, by way of being profound, too often burrows in
delighted darkness quite beneath its subject, till the reader feels the
ground hollow beneath him, and is fearful of caving into unknown depths
of stagnant metaphysic air at every step. The Commentary on Shakespeare
of Gervinus, a really superior man, reminds one of the Roman Campagna,
penetrated underground in all directions by strange winding caverns, the
work of human borers in search of we know not what.
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