"In

He then adds the following just and important remark. vain will tradition or texts of scripture be adduced in support of a doctrine, donec clava impossibilitatis et contradictionis e manibus horum Herculum extorta fuerit. For the heretic will still reply, that texts, the literal sense of which is not so much above as directly against all reason, must be understood figuratively, as Herod is a fox, and so forth."*

These principles I held, philosophically, while in respect of revealed religion I remained a zealous Unitarian. I considered the idea of the Trinity a fair scholastic inference from the being of God, as a creative intelligence; and that it was therefore entitled to the rank of an esoteric doctrine of natural religion. But seeing in the same no practical or moral bearing, I confined it to the schools of philosophy. The admission of the Logos, as hypostasized (that is, neither a mere attribute, nor a personification) in no respect removed my doubts concerning the Incarnation and the Redemption by the cross; which I could neither reconcile in reason with the impassiveness of the Divine Being, nor in my moral feelings with the sacred distinction between things and persons, the vicarious payment of a debt and the vicarious expiation of guilt. A more thorough revolution in my philosophic principles, and a deeper insight into my own heart, were yet wanting. Nevertheless, I can not doubt, that the difference of my metaphysical notions from those of Unitarians in general contributed to my final re-conversion to the whole truth in Christ; even as according to his own confession the books of certain Platonic philosophers (libri quorundam Platonicorum) commenced the rescue of St. Augustine's faith from the same error aggravated by the far darker accompaniment of the Manichæan heresy.†

[I have looked through several collections of letters and other writings of Leibnitz, besides the collection of his works by Dutens, and that of all his philosophical works by Erdmann, but have not met with this letter. The edition of the philosophical works by Raspe, with a preface by Mr. Kästner, Amst. et Leips. 1765, I have never seen.-S. C.]

[Et primo volens, &c. Confess. vii. 13. And thou willing first to show me, how Thou resistest the proud, but givest grace unto the humble, and by how great an act of Thy mercy Thou hadst traced out to men the way of humility, in that Thy Word was made flesh, and dwelt among men :---Thou procuredst for me by means of one puffed up with most unnatural pride, certain books of the Platonists, translated from Greek into Latin. And therein I read, not indeed in the very words, but to the very same purpose,

While my mind was thus perplexed, by a gracious providence for which I can never be sufficiently grateful, the generous and munificent patronage of Mr. Josiah, and Mr. Thomas Wedgwood enabled me to finish my education in Germany.* Instead of troubling others with my own crude notions and juvenile compositions, I was thenceforward better employed in attempting to store my own head with the wisdom of others. I made the best use of my time and means; and there is therefore no period of my life on which I can look back with such unmingled satisfaction. After acquiring a tolerable sufficiency in the German languaget at Ratzeburg, which with my voyage and jourenforced by many and divers reasons, that In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, &c. (A former translation revised by the Rev. E. B. Pusey, D.D.)

Perrexi ergo ad Simplicianum, &c. Confess. viii. 3. To Simplicianus then I went, the father of Ambrose (a Bishop now) in receiving thy grace, and whom Ambrose truly loved as a father. To him I related the mazes of my wanderings. But when I mentioned that I had read certain books of the Platonists, which Victorinus, sometime Rhetoric Professor of Rome (who had died a Christian, as I had heard), had translated into Latin, he testified his joy that I had not fallen upon the writings of other philosophers, full of fallacies and deceits, after the rudiments of this world, whereas the Platonists many ways led to the belief in God and his Word. (Ut supra.)-Ed.]

[Mr. C. left England on the 16th of September, 1798, when he sailed from Great Yarmouth to Hamburgh, in company with Mr. Wordsworth and his sister.-S. C.]

To those who design to acquire the language of a country in the country itself, it may be useful, if I mention the incalculable advantage which I derived from learning all the words, that could possibly be so learned, with the objects before me, and without the intermediation of the English terms. It was a regular part of my morning studies for the first six weeks of my residence at Ratzeburg, to accompany the good and kind old pastor, with whom I lived, from the cellar to the roof, through gardens, farm-yard, &c. and to call every, the minutest, thing by its German name. Advertisements, farces, jest-books, and the conversation of children while I was at play with them, contributed their share to a more home-like acquaintance with the language, than I could have acquired from works of polite literature alone, or even from polite society. There is a passage of hearty sound sense in Luther's German Letter on interpretation, to the translation of which I shall prefix, for the sake of those who read the German, yet are not likely to have dipped often in the massive folios of the heroic reformer, the simple, sinewy, idiomatic words of the original. Denn man muss nicht die Buchstaben in der Lateinischen Sprache fragen wie man soll Deutsch reden; sondern man muss die Mutter im Hause die Kinder auf den

ney thither I have described in The Friend,* I proceeded through Hanover to Göttingen.

Here I regularly attended the lectures on physiology in the morning, and on natural history in the evening, under Blumenbach, a name as dear to every Englishman who has studied at that university, as it is venerable to men of science throughout Europe! Eichhorn's lectures on the New Testament were repeated to me from notes by a student from Ratzeburg, a young man of sound learning and indefatigable industry, who is now, I believe, a professor of the oriental languages at Heidelberg. But my chief efforts were directed towards a grounded knowledge of the German language and literature. From Professor Tychsen I received as many lessons in the Gothic of Ulphilast as sufficed to make me acquainted with its grammar, and the radical words of most frequent occurrence; and with the occasional assistance of the same philosophical linguist, I read through‡ Ottfried's Gassen, den gemeinen Mann auf dem Markte, darum fragen: und denselbigen auf das Maul sehen wie sie reden, und darnach dolmetschen. So verstehen sie es denn, und merken dass man Deutsch mit ihnen redet."

TRANSLATION.

For one must not ask the letters in the Latin tongue, how one ought to speak German; but one must ask the mother in the house, the children in the lanes and alleys, the common man in the market, concerning this; yea, and look at the moves of their mouths while they are talking, and thereaf ter interpret. They understand you then, and mark that one talks German with them.'

* [See the Second Landing-place. Essay iii. p. 333.—S. C.]

[See note D. in the Appendix.-S. C.]

This paraphrase, written about the time of Charlemagne, is by no means deficient in occasional passages of considerable poetic merit. There is a flow, and a tender enthusiasm in the following lines (at the conclusion of Chapter XI.) which, even in the translation. will not, I flatter myself, fail to interest the reader. Ottfried is describing the circumstances immediately following the birth of our Lord.

She gave with joy her virgin-breast;

She hid it not, she bared the breast,

1 [Archdeacon Hare has kindly communicated to me that this passage occurs in a Sendbrief vom Dolmetschen der heiligen Schrift, written to Wencesslaus Link, when Luther was in the Castle of Coburg, during the Diet of Augsburg, 1530: that it is to be found in vol. xxi. of Walch's edit. of Luther's works, p. 318. The words wie die Esel thun, after Deutsch reden, were doubtless omitted intentionally.-S. C.]

metrical paraphrase of the gospel, and the most important remains of the Theotiscan, or the transitional state of the Teutonic language from the Gothic to the old German of the Swabian

Which suckled that divinest babe!
Blessed, blessed were the breasts
Which the Saviour infant kiss'd;
And blessed, blessed was the mother
Who wrapp'd his limbs in swaddling-clothes,
Singing placed him on her lap,

Hung o'er him with her looks of love,
And sooth'd him with a lulling motion.
Blessed! for she shelter'd him
From the damp and chilling air;
Blessed, blessed! for she lay
With such a babe in one blest bed,
Close as babes and mothers lie!
Blessed, blessed evermore,
With her virgin-lips she kiss'd,
With her arms, and to her breast
She embraced the babe divine,
Her babe divine the virgin-mother!
There lives not on this ring of earth
A mortal, that can sing her praise.
Mighty mother, virgin pure,

In the darkness and the night

For us she bore the heavenly Lord!'

Most interesting is it to consider the effect, when the feelings are wrought above the natural pitch by the belief of something mysterious, while all the images are purely natural. Then it is, that religion and poetry strike deepest.

[Otfridi Evang. Lib. i. cap. xi. 1. 73-108, contained in Schilter's Thesau rus Antiquitatum Teutonicarum, pp. 50-51. The translation is a little condensed but faithful in sense. I shall give a few couplets of the original to show the rhyme and metre.

period. Of this period-(the polished dialect of which is analogous to that of our Chaucer, and which leaves the philosophic student in doubt, whether the language has not since then lost more in sweetness and flexibility, than it has gained in condensation and copiousness)-I read with sedulous accuracy the Minnesinger (or singers of love, the Provençal poets of the Swabian court) and the metrical romances; and then labored through sufficient specimens of the master singers, their degenerate successors; not however without occasional pleasure from the rude, yet interesting strains of Hans Sachs, the cobbler of Nuremberg.† Of this man's genius five folio volumes with double columns are extant in print, and nearly an equal number in manuscript; yet the indefatigable bard takes care to inform his readers, that he never made a shoe the less, but had virtuously reared a large family by the labor of his hands.

In Pindar, Chaucer, Dante, Milton, and many more, we have instances of the close connection of poetic genius with the love of liberty and of genuine reformation. The moral sense at least will not be outraged, if I add to the list the name of this honest shoemaker (a trade by-the-bye remarkable for the production of philosophers and poets). His poem entitled THE MORNING STAR, was the very first publication that appeared in praise and support of Luther; and an excellent hymn of Hans Sachs, which has been deservedly translated into almost all the European languages, was commonly sung in the Protestant churches, whenever the heroic reformer visited them.

In Luther's own German writings, and eminently in his translation of the Bible, the German language commenced. I mean the language as it is at present written; that which is called the High German as contra-distinguished from the Platt-Teutsch, the dialect of the flat or northern countries, and from the OberTeutsch, the language of the middle and Southern Germany. The High-German is indeed a lingua communis, not actually the native language of any province, but the choice and fragrancy of all the dialects. From this cause it is at once the most copious and the most grammatical of all the European tongues.

Within less than a century after Luther's death the German was inundated with pedantic barbarisms. A few volumes of *[See note E in the Appendix.-S.C.] [See note F in the Appendix.—S. C.]