may partly be conjectured from Goethe’s expressions to Eckermann. The various classes of poets whom he meant to represent, and the jealousy of the cliques with which they were associated (unfortunately a characteristic of German literary life at the present day), may readily be guessed. Although no one allows the others to speak, the Satirist succeeds in declaring that his delight is in uttering what no one likes to hear. Under the title of “Night and Churchyard Poets” the author may have hinted at Matthisson and Salis, and the earlier lyrics of Lenau. The allusion to the vampire we are able definitely to trace. Early in 1827, Merimée published his La Guzla: Poésies Illyriques, of which Goethe wrote: “The poet, as a genuine Romanticist, calls up the ghostliest forms: even his localities create a dread. Churches by night, grave-yards, cross-roads, hermits’ huts, rocks and ravines uncannily surround the reader, and then appear the newly dead, threatening and terrifying, alluring and beckoning as shapes or flames, and the most horrid vampirism, with all its concomitants.”
The new Romantic school in France, and especially its leader, Victor Hugo, aroused Goethe’s keenest wrath. He called Nôtre Dame de Paris “an abominable book!” and thus expressed himself to Eckermann: “In place of the beautiful substance of the Grecian mythology we have devils, witch-hags, and vampires, and the noble heroes of the early time must give way to swindlers and galley-slaves. Such things are piquant: They produce an effect! But after the public has once eaten of this strongly peppered dish, and become accustomed to the taste, it will demand more and stronger ingredients.” Herein is an explanation of the reference to the Grecian Mythology, “which, even in modern masks, loses neither its character nor its power to charm.”
25. The Graces.
Here the masks represent social qualities and forces, not varieties of individual character. In the Graces we see giving, receiving, and thanking or acknowledging, not in the narrower sense of an act, but as symbolical of the intercourse of
