hair-brained grammarian, not without a sense of humour, but rendered immeasurably dreary by the fustian professorial element in him. With a little more love, and a little less lumber, he might perhaps have been a man of genius. We will close what we have to say of him by a brief account of his career, which his biographer states has an "epic course and a tragic close," a true enough statement if the essence of the epic consist, as we believe Goethe and Schiller decided, in a constant tendency to "retardation;" a tendency that realises itself a good deal to the mind of the reader. A tragic close it surely had. Nicodemus Frischlin, in order to be educated at all, had to choose theology for his profession: there only did the government step in with a "foundation" to enable him to pass through a course of preparation for Tübingen, and afterwards 'through the college itself. Fortunately for him-for if he made a rash and quarrelsome teacher, he would have made a worse pastorhis extraordinary powers of acquisition and versifying procured him at once a teachership in connection with the university. He was popular with his classes, and still more popular with his Duke, for whom he wrote Latin poems, reciting the honours of the Duke's ancestry and name, and manufactured such dramas as we have spoken of,-and had a general reputation for omniscience which he diligently encouraged, unfortunately sometimes at the expense of his brother professors. Amongst his colleagues and former teachers was Martin Kraus (Martinus Crusius as he was called), a jealous and sallow person of anxious erudition. It was squabbling with this individual (or with those by him set in motion) that chiefly constituted Frischlin's "epic career;" and being hot and imprudent, he lost his battle, and impatiently brought on himself the tragic issue. The two typical professors are well sketched by our author. He is speaking first of Crusius: "We find in him a learning which remained fruitless of result, not only for his character, but almost for his intellect. In proportion as the range of his knowledge was wide, were his head and heart narrow. The silliest old woman's tales are so believable to this learned historical inquirer, that he enters them in his annals. A pedant in science, he is pettily vain about his reputation for learning and his University influence; and to preserve this when it seems to him endangered, he does not at all hesitate even at intrigue. As he had wrung out all that * Frischlin accused Crusius of deriving the German word 'Dolch' (a short dagger or poniard) from doλixóσkiov xos (a long spear), per antiphrasin; which Strauss thinks is a mischievous joke. There are modern German professors, however, quite as ingenious. Döderlein, as we used to learn from Mr. T. K. Arnold, derives trucidare,' to murder or butcher, from taurum cædere,' to cut down an ox. he knew by dead labour from faculties any thing but fertile, he cherished a considerable reverence for his own person; and at times, if he were too near touched, he could break out into a sort of fanaticism as at a desecration of what was holy.-Frischlin was strong in person and full in blood, of sanguine complexion, with a portly impressive figure and free bearing, full of laughter and jest. He spoke so loud in the streets as to excite notice where he was not well known. He was of intensely sanguine temperament, open, but also boastful; quickly irascible, and quickly appeased; at one time easily touched, at another obstinate; unsparing in wit, and yet not without good nature. Crusius, on the other hand, had a sallow face, serious mien, stiff carriage, measured pace, unctuous speech; he was not averse to ornament in dress; of atrabilious temperament; not boastful, but so much the more vain; not easily irritated, but rancorous and unforgiving. Between men such as these there was no preventing a quarrel unless Frischlin was much on his guard. But to be on his guard at all, he was not the man." Our readers would not thank us for following the episodes, retardations, and accelerations, of this dullest of human "epic" contests. Crusius kept a diary exclusively sacred to it, and noted up all Frischlin's misdemeanours, all his hair-brained boasts and threats, all his own replies, all Frischlin's slips and misfortunes, all the circumstances of his death and burial and posthumous literary resurrection, with accurate dates in Latin oddly besprinkled with Greek-the German professor's idea of a life-duel! Our author-with that astounding national diligence in things useless, which makes us often imagine that if the Germans had only laid the foundation-stone of Babel, it would be their honourable pride to build patiently at it stillhas anxiously perused the infinitely boastful and foolish volubility of his hero, and the spite of his opponents, together with all the extant advice of his advisers; and has usually quoted or condensed something at least concerning every passage-atarms in this tedious tournament for his readers; and all which he has written a morbid conscience has obliged us to read. We will give the result. Frischlin had never a regular professor's chair; he was only an extraordinary professor. It was his great desire to belong to the Faculty. Unluckily he was not only imprudent enough to irritate his colleague, but he also furnished him with weapons against himself. He was not particularly pious; he got into drunken quarrels; he was not Very moderately formidable wit,-a little heavy perhaps, though it is possible to smile at his humour sometimes. There is a mystic faith-drama by Frischlin, such as the Catholics commonly invented to amuse the people, in the course of which he puts a really humorous protest into the mouth of the Virgin against the miracles attributed to her by the monks: "Zween Bischof soll ich haben kusst: entirely faithful to his wife. Under these circumstances, with a powerful enemy in the University, he could not have kept his place at all, probably though he was a very popular teacher-but for the marked favour of the Duke. The Duke of Wirtemberg drank also, and found Frischlin one of his pleasantest companions. He also liked to have Latin elegies and odes addressed to him on anniversaries, which Frischlin could manufacture better than any man of his day. But Frischlin blundered into an attack on the nobility. He wrote. a eulogy on the agricultural life (de vitá rustica), and launched out into rhetorical abuse of the degenerate nobles of the time. He does not appear to have meant much by it. It was a theme for "eloquence;" and in he went, calling them as a class, with frugal exceptions, "Cyclops," "Centaurs," "men-eaters, through a good deal of watery invective. However, he had had personal quarrels with men of this class before the publication of the Latin oration, and these took care to have a German version (and not a fair one, for it still further abridged the exceptions) immediately prepared and distributed. The Latin version would have been far beyond the reading powers of most of the German nobility, who were but a raw set. But now the nobility rose against him, and his life was scarcely safe. Not only the Wirtemberg nobility, but that of Franconia and the Rhine, violently memorialised the Duke of Wirtemberg to punish his professor. The Duke acted a manly part enough: rejected their memorials, and only insisted that Frischlin should publish an explanatory apologetic paper. Frischlin was, like himself, at one time frightened into almost abject apology; at another bursting out into fresh causes of offence. When the screw was on-he had been ordered to confine himself to his house-he was all concession; when off, he effervesced again, and broke every promise he had made. He taunted the University, hit at the nobles, wrote epigrams on Crusius. Thus he tired out the Duke; and when the University again refused to raise him to a professor's chair, he asked and obtained permission to accept a post offered him in Styria as rector of a gymnasium. Here were spent probably the most useful two years of his life. He applied himself to grammatical studies, gained his enthusiasm for J. C. Scaliger, and wrote two works which really did much to simplify the absurd grammatical prolixities of the day, and to advance the comparative study of Latin and Greek grammar. Unfortunately, even here he could not refrain from attacking his old enemy, who had also written a grammar, and a poor one. After a stay of two years, Frischlin's wife, it is said, insisted on his returning to their own land; and back they came, without prospects. The goodnatured Duke, of Wirtemberg took him again into favour, employed him on Court-poems, and again did his best to induce the University to appoint him their professor. It was now that Crusius-more than ever spiteful, owing to the grammatical attacks-brought to light, from seven years back, Frischlin's infidelity to his wife, which, in the Court of Wirtemberg, at that time was a grave criminal of fence. To this was added a perpetual disposition to break out into libels on the University, and efforts to renew the struggle with the nobles by appeal to the Austrian emperor. The Duke mildly gave him the choice between a public prosecution and its consequences, and banishment accompanied by a solemn oath never again to write against the University nor the Wirtemberg government nor his personal enemy Crusius, and never to desert the Lutheran faith. Frischlin chose banishment, took the oath, and very speedily broke it. With almost every Easter and Michaelmas, publications of Frischlin's came into Wirtemberg from the fairs, in which his old enemy and enemies were held up to ridicule. He got a precarious livelihood-now by dedicating a Latin poem to some conspicuous mán or corporation, now by lecturing on rhetoric, now by conducting a school. Restlessly driven about by insatiable ideas of his own greatness, he abandoned every thing that promised a sober maintenance, and inundated the world with writings in which philology, vanity, and irritation fermented together in odd mixture. At last, when the government of Wirtemberg had written plainly, "We will be no more troubled by your affairs; only if you will break your oath, keep out of our way, or you may find that princes have long arms," he returned an answer so insolent, that it was determined to arrest him. Frischlin was then at Mainz. In spite of an appeal to the Emperor of Germany, he was given up by the Elector of Mainz to the Duke of Wirtemberg's emissary, and was thrown into prison. At first he was mildly treated; being detected, however, in the attempt to send letters of complaint and accusation against his own government to the emperor and other imperial officials, he was removed to a place of greater safety and severely treated. From the bleak tower of Hohenurach, in the Schwabian Jura, poor Frischlin poured forth, with unwearying pen, Mississippi floods of "copy" on a mostly ungrateful world. For the first two months of his imprisonment his sufferings were very great. Without change of linen, with insufficient light and food, and no exercise, he was overpowered by all the miseries of filth and complete nervous depression; yet still he wrote on. He had declined to take his trial for the old offences, or let the law run its course, thinking it more prudent to throw himself on the mercy of the officials. To some of the ministers, however, he had given personal offence that rankled in their minds; and in these latter days the good-natured Duke Ludwig, with energy and health impaired by drinking, left things very much to the disposal of his cabinet. Frischlin as usual bent like a reed; but the ministers were satisfied with no slight humiliation. By long Latin petitions, and distiches in praise of every influential person, he strove to win his release. He applied for pardon to every one,-to the University of Tübingen, to Crusius himself, and to each member of the cabinet,-in separate communications. There is something pathetic in this immediate and absolute conquest of physical misery over him. The Duke's counsellors, who, so few weeks before, had been inveighed against in no measured terms, were now, "every one of them, without exception, glorious men, respected by the whole world." But these numerous petitions and private letters were but a small part of his activity. In four months of prison-life he produced, besides all these memorials, two biblical dramas, and a Latin epic of twelve books, containing 12,500 hexameter lines on the rise of the Hebrew monarchy. It was called the Hebrais; the materials were taken from the books of Kings; and he predicted it would "last as long as the heavens and earth remain." There is a sublimity in such productiveness apart from the quality of the product. It suggests the wish that one could as easily turn to external advantage such flow of spoiled intellect as we can streams of spoiled water. Muddy streams that we cannot drink will still turn a mill. Is there no hope of economising, in these literary days, the floods of hapless muddy intellect, discovered to be unfit for consumption? However, the Hebrais, though much admired, turned no stone for poor Frischlin,-at least not in the time his impatient nature allowed him to wait for it. After seven months' imprisonment, of which the last five were comparatively light, he made a desperate effort to escape. It was the end of November, and the weather cold. The stove by which his room was heated was carried through the wall of the castle and heated from outside, and the aperture closed by a little iron-barred gate. Frischlin broke into his stove, and escaped through this narrow opening to the wall. He had cut up his bed-linen to make a rope for his descent; and with a bright moon his chance of escape was not small. He attempted, however, the wrong side of the castle, where the precipices were steepest: and his rope was either too slight or too short. On the next morning, November 30, 1790, he was found lying dead halfway between the fortress and the foot of the rocks. The rest |