THE

PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY;

IN A

COURSE OF LECTURES,

DELIVERED AT VIENNA,

BY FREDERICK VON SCHLEGEL.

TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN,

WITH A MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR,

BY JAMES BURTON ROBERTSON, ESQ.

IN TWO VOLUMES.

VOL. I.

LONDON

SAUNDERS AND OTLEY, CONDUIT STREET.

MDCCCXXXV.

B. BENSLEY, PRINTER.

MEMOIR

OF THE LITERARY LIFE

OF

FREDERICK VON SCHLEGEL.

In the following sketch of the literary life of the late Frederick Von Schlegel, it is the intention of the writer to take a rapid review of that author's principal productions, noticing the circumstances out of which they grew, and the influence they exerted on his age; giving at the same time a fuller analysis of his political and metaphysical systems:—an analysis which is useful, nay almost necessary to the elucidation of very many passages in the work, to which this memoir is prefixed. Of the inadequacy of his powers to the due execution of such a task, none can be more fully sensible than the writer himself; but he trusts that he will experience from the kindness of the reader, an indulgence proportionate to the difficulty of the undertaking.

In offering to the British public a translation of one of the last works of one among the most illustrious of German writers, the Translator is aware, that after the excellent translation which appeared in 1818 of this author's "History of Literature," and also after the admirable translation of his brother's "Lectures on Dramatic Literature," by Mr. Black, his own performance must appear in a very disadvantageous point of view. But this is a circumstance which only gives it additional claims to indulgent consideration.

The family of the Schlegels seem to have been peculiarly favoured by the Muses. Elias Schlegel, a member of this family, was a distinguished dramatic writer in his own time; and some of his plays are, I believe, acted in Germany at the present day. Adolphus Schlegel, the father of the subject of the present biography, was a minister of the Lutheran church, distinguished for his literary talents, and particularly for eloquence in the pulpit. His eldest son, Charles Augustus Schlegel, entered with the Hanoverian regiment to which he belonged into the service of our East India Company, and had begun to prosecute with success his studies in Sanscrit literature—a field of knowledge in which his brothers have since obtained so much distinction—when his youthful career was unhappily terminated by the hand of death. Augustus William Schlegel, the second son, who was destined to carry to so high a pitch the literary glory of his family, was born at Hanover in 1769—a year so propitious to the birth of genius. Frederick Schlegel was born at Hanover in 1772. Though destined for commerce, he received a highly classical education; and in his sixteenth year prevailed on his father to allow him to devote himself to the Belles Lettres. After completing his academical course at Gottingen and Leipzig, he rejoined his brother, and became associated with him in his literary labours. He has himself given us the interesting picture of his own mind at this early period. "In my first youth," says he, "from the age of seventeen and upwards, the writings of Plato, the Greek tragedians, and Winkelmann's enthusiastic works, formed the intellectual world in which I lived, and where I often strove in a youthful manner, to represent to my soul the ideas and images of ancient gods and heroes. In the year 1789, I was enabled, for the first time, to gratify my inclination in that capital so highly refined by art—Dresden; and I was as much surprised as delighted to see really before me those antique figures of gods I had so long desired to behold. Among these I often tarried for hours, especially in the incomparable collection of Mengs's casts, which were then to be found, disposed in a state of little order in the Brühl garden, where I often let myself be shut up, in order to remain without interruption. It was not the consummate beauty of form alone, which satisfied and even exceeded the expectation I had secretly formed; but it was still more the life—the animation in those Olympic marbles, which excited my astonishment; for the latter qualities I had been less able to picture to myself in my solitary musings. These first indelible impressions were in succeeding years, the firm, enduring ground-work for my study of classical antiquity."[1] Here he found the sacred fire, at which his genius lit the torch destined to blaze through his life with inextinguishable brightness.

He commenced his literary career in 1794, with a short essay on the different schools of Greek poetry. It is curious to watch in this little piece the buddings of his mind. Here we see, as it were, the germ of the first part of the great work on ancient and modern literature, which he published nearly twenty years afterwards. We are astonished to find in a youth of twenty-two an erudition so extensive—an acquaintance not only with the more celebrated poets and philosophers of ancient Greece, but also with the obscure, recondite Alexandrian poets, known to comparatively few scholars even of a maturer age. We admire, too, the clearness of analytic arrangement—the admirable method of classification, in which the author and his brother have ever so far outshone the generality of German writers. The essay displays, also, a delicacy of observation and an originality of views, which announce the great critic. It is, in short, the labour of an infant Hercules.

As this essay gives promise of a mighty critic; so two treatises, which the author wrote in the following years, 1795 and 1796—one entitled "Diotima," and which treats of the condition of the female sex in ancient Greece—the other, a parallel between Cæsar and Alexander, not published, however, till twenty-six years afterwards—both show the dawnings of his great historical genius. Rarely have the promises of youth been so amply fulfilled—rarely has the green foliage of Spring been followed by fruits so rich and abundant. It is interesting to observe the fine, organic development of Schlegel's mental powers—to trace in these early productions, the germs of those great historical works which it was reserved for his manhood and age to achieve. In the latter and most remarkable of these essays, he examines the respective merits of Cæsar and Alexander, considered as men, as generals, and as statesmen. To the Macedonian he assigns greater tenderness of feeling, a more generous and lofty disinterestedness of character—and a finer power of perception for the beauties of art. To the Roman he ascribes greater coolness and sobriety of judgment, an extraordinary degree of self-controul, a mind tenacious of its purpose, but careless as to the means by which it was accomplished, an exquisite sense of fitness and propriety in the smallest as in the greatest things, yet little susceptibility for the beautiful in art. With respect to military genius, he shows that Cæsar united to the fire and rapidity of the Macedonian, greater