comiasts. But by abolitionists the morals, and transcendentalists both the morals and the language of revelation, are thought to be puerile and common-place, when contrasted with their own illumination. The language of reason and of God is beneath them; they claim no praise unless they are able to do without either. In their means they certainly succeed, but it is to be hoped that incense will not be offered to the monkeys, which would supplant divinity.

Thimm is "naturally led to institute a comparison between the Messiah and the Paradise Lost ;" and deems the former a German counterpart of the latter. He is forgetful, though we are not, of Coleridge's celebrated reply to a brother Arcadian, who made the same comparison, and termed Klopstock a German Milton. "Yes," replied the English poet, "a very German Milton indeed!" And we may say to Mr. Thimm without flattery, that he is a very German critic indeed! But the case stands, Coleridge vs. Thimm: we are willing to leave the point without argument, to be decided by any court of common sense, on the sole authority of the conflicting names.

From Thimm on Klopstock, we turn to Thimm on Herder. "Herder," says he, by way of compliment, "was no poet : he was something far more sublime and better than a poet; he was himself an Indian Greek epic, composed by one of the purest of the gods." We are not informed whether this purest of the gods was an ancient or modern divinity; but we think it rather a singular employment for any of the multifarious deities who have ever figured in human creeds, to be forging Herders upon his anvil. We are not surprised, but we are shocked to find Christianity converted into polytheism in the heart of London. It is possible, however, that to Mr. Thimm's highly excited imagination, may have been revealed in his sleep, the vision of one of the cashiered divinities of a forgotton mythology, tinkering away at his strange work-since his own occupation has been long gone-of transmitting a good-hearted simple-minded man into some anomalous fabric. We have all heard of the ægri somnia vana, and may thus account for this dream of the night. But where did this imp of an untold resurrection-this purest of gods find a model for his Indian Greek epic? Was it by compressing the Mahabarata and the Iliad into one scarcely homogeneous form, and then blowing into it the breath of life through a pair of blacksmith's bellows? VOL. XI.-NO. 22.

9

Or did he seize a mandrake, or a forked radish, and then invest the skeleton with an outer integument, torn from the Argonautica and the Bagavadhgita, and glued on to the frame-work in alternate strips? What an Indian Greek epic could be, we cannot tell. But we are moved with deep compassion for the poor and needlessly resuscitated divinity who can find no better employment for his old age than botching up Indian Greek epics, and nicknaming them Herder. Heu! quantum mutatus ab illo !-he had nobler, if less innocent employment of old. Dido became a truckster of mushrooms in the lower world, but her degradation is not to be compared with that of this purest of gods in his dotage.

We are anxious to know Mr. Thimm's further estimate of this curiously mechanized anatomy, who was an Indian Greek epic. We are not unwilling to turn our stylus and blot out what we have just written. We must apologize to Mr. Thimm for having done him injustice in attributing this singular characterization of Herder to him. There are two culprits in the case, for it appears of right to belong primarily to Jean Paul. He may be thankful for the blunder, as the blame must be first attached to his principal. It matters little: we have now eased our conscience, and we may apply to Richter all that we have said of Thimm: they are par nobile fratrum,-Arcades ambo, et cantare pares-and what is good for goose is sworn to be sauce for gander. We will not rob Peter to pay Paul, but will request Franz Thimm to pay over to Paul, the rightful owner, the sum lately placed to his credit by mistake. Mr. Thimm is not guilty of having seen by clairvoyance the disinterred deity at his work-he has only endorsed Jean Paul's vision as "a bold and brilliant metaphor," and thus made himself particeps criminis, or an accessary after the fact, and so liable to the pains and penalties inflicted on his principal. We beg pardon of Mr. Thimm, and hope that we have so rectified the flaw in the indictment, that both parties may be reconciled.

But to repair our fault completely, we must consider what Thimm really does say in propria persona, concerning this fabulous creation. We have not far to look, we may swear to his utterance this time-instinct might teach us the true lion, and honest Bottom declares the part of the lion to be nothing but roaring. It is thus he pours out his criticism:

"Was there "ever a beautiful work written, were there ever the most precious thoughts of men reproduced in an elevated and wonder-teeming tone of language; if there were, we surely find them in the book now under notice, Die Ideen." Well then we will look for them. We would remark, however, that the work in question, Herder's Philosophy of History, has been already examined in the pages of this Review, and if we could only transfer the testimony from one cause to another, or reverse the legal practice, and move to have the evidence enrolled tunc pro nunc, we might dispense with any new search. But neither of these can we do: we should be alike guilty of some informality of proceeding, and in the latter case, commit a most egregious Hibernicism. We shall accordingly, provide our own instance for the impending trial: les voilà.

1. "In us the relation of matter to mind is probably proportionate to the length of our days and nights. The celerity of our thoughts is probably as the revolution of our planet round itself, and round the sun to other stars." Therefore the march of intellect is identical with the acceleration of the earth's mean motion.

2. "Since air and weather have so much power over us and the whole earth, in all likelihood it was here an electrical spark that shot more pure into this human being: then a portion of inflammable matter, more forcibly compressed into that; here a map of mere coldness and severity; there a soft, mollifying, diffusive essence; that determined and produced the greatest revolutions of human kind." Consequently boys should not be taught but electrified; not sent to College but invested with Christie's magnetic rings, by way of completing their education. And States should not be governed by laws, but by a big galvanic battery.

3. "The less an animal has of jaws and the more of skull, the nearer it approaches the rational form." We were not before aware of the vast importance of a thick skull to heighten intelligence but unfortunately for Herder's theory those who have the densest skulls have also the most jaw.

4. "In the deepest recesses of being, where we perceive germinating life, we discover the inscrutable and active element, which we designate by the imperfect appellations of light, ether, vital warmth; and which is probably the sensorium of the creator of all things, by which he warms and

quickens whatever is warmed and quickened." Therefore all experiments on light are so many manipulations of the divinity and Brewster's Kaleidoscope is an invention to produce a pleurality of gods.

5. "The Chinese are a people endowed by nature with small eyes, a short nose, a flat forehead, little beard, and a protuberant belly. A nation that sleeps on warm stoves, and drinks warm water from morning to night, must be equally destitute of a warlike spirit and profound reflection." We need make no farther comment on this than to say that Presnitz is a second Bacon, and that hydropathy is at once a military education and a Novum Organon.

6. "The Greenlander's head is large in proportion to his body; his face broad and flat; for nature who produces beauty only when acting with temperance, and in a mean betwixt extremes, could not here round a soft oval, and still less could allow the ornament of the face, the beam of the balance, if I may use the expression, the nose, to project." Consequently, the stranger in Slawkenbergius, who "had been to the promontory of noses, and had got one of the godliest," was the wisest of great men; and the monachal mode of lengthening the nose in infancy, is one of the royal roads to learning.

We have given only a few examples taken at random from this much lauded work of Herder; the list might easily be swelled to any amount; but the task would be accompanied with little profit, and no very great amusement. In these we may easily recognize "the wonder-teeming tone of language”—if by this be understood a rich fecundity of monstrous creations. But for the credit of all literature, for the honor of intellect, for the sake of humanity, we do trust, as we believe, that these are not "the most precious thoughts of men." And yet, notwithstanding these crudities of taste and expression, and others like unto them or worse, to be found on every page of Herder's work, Mr. Thimm proceeds to say, "a flower blooms throughout the whole of this work, structured (look into Johnson) out of man's inner nobilities; and this exciting quality of its language is instantly thrown back into the themes of the heart, inasmuch as Herder's muse exercises no little influence over

* Rabelais, from whom was also taken the notion of Dido being a mushroom-truckster.

the ideal of man." This is meant to be a compliment, but is withal, very pretty nonsense.

In speaking of Musæus, he employs language less painfully transcendental in its expression, but equally indicating the fatal abnegation of practical thought and sober utterance. "An agreeable humor, and a fine order of sarcasm meet us prima facie in the writings of Musæus." There is a return. however, to all that is worst in his style, in the following remark upon Winckelmann: "The effect that his descriptions produce, the, sublimity of his style, the harmony of those modulations that his genius knew how to call forth from the harp-sculpture of the age of Alexander the Great," &c. How Thimm became cognizant of the existence of so singular a faculty in any human being we are at a loss to conceive. Prospero's wand achieved nothing like this-it is worse than "calling monsters from the vasty deep." By what process Winckelmann exercised this magic power we are curious to learn, but remain hopeless of ever having our curiosity gratified. We cannot conjecture what the harpsculpture can have been; it seems to us we might as naturally talk of a piano order of architecture, or a violin style of painting. The association of ideas would be equally luminous, and the connection of his words might be made to assume a like appearance of oracular harmony. But Thimm is by no means satisfied with this new and strange coinage, which reminds us of the fabled exploits of Amphion's lyre; but from his harp-sculpture he contrives to educe a strange "harmony of modulations." The statue of Memnon was feigned to emit a musical note when the rays of the morning sun fell upon it; and certain stones are said to be found near the cataract of the Nile, which produce a melodious sound by their contractions and expansions; a foreign nobleman was also proclaimed some short time ago as having invented a cyclopean harmonicon of stone plates; and, though we are sceptical upon all these points, yet we could more readily comprehend and believe them all, than understand the "harmony of modulations" elicited by Winckelmann from his "harp-sculpture."

Again, "Bouterwek is, so to speak, the crisis and maturity between Kant and Jacobi"-but, so to speak, will never do, or we might say as a counterpart to this, that a quince is the crisis and maturity between a green apple and a ripe medlar. There would be as much sense in the one expres