In German sentiment, which runs over so easily into sentimentalism, a
foreigner cannot help being struck with a certain incongruousness. What
can be odder, for example, than the mixture of sensibility and sausages
in some of Goethe's earlier notes to Frau von Stein, unless, to be sure,
the publishing them? It would appear that Germans were less sensible to
the ludicrous--and we are far from saying that this may not have its
compensatory advantages--than either the English or the French. And what
is the source of this sensibility, if it be not an instinctive perception
of the incongruous and disproportionate? Among all races, the English has
ever shown itself most keenly alive to the fear of making itself
ridiculous; and among all, none has produced so many humorists, only one
of them, indeed, so profound as Cervantes, yet all masters in their
several ways. What English-speaking man, except Boswell, could have
arrived at Weimar, as Goethe did, in that absurd _Werthermontirung_? And
where, out of Germany, could he have found a reigning Grand Duke to put
his whole court into the same sentimental livery of blue and yellow,
leather breeches, boots, and all, excepting only Herder, and that not on
account of his clerical profession, but of his age? To be sure, it might
be asked also where else in Europe was a prince to be met with capable of
manly friendship with a man whose only decoration was his genius? But the
comicality of the other fact no less remains.
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