ERNST, HERZOG VON SCHWABEN, TRAUERSPIEL IN FÜNF AUFZÜGEN VON LUDWIG UHLAND, WITH A BIOGRAPHICAL AND HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION, BY H. J. WOLSTENHOLME, B.A. (LOND.) LECTURER IN GERMAN AT NEWNHAM COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. EDITED FOR THE SYNDICS OF THE UNIVERSI BI Cambridge: AUC 1882 AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. PODLEIANA London: CAMBRIDGE WAREHOUSE, 17, PATERNOSTER Row. 1882 [All Rights reserved.] 384. f. 41 PREFACE. THOSE persons who take up a modern language with the immediately practical purpose of using it in conversation and correspondence, or in the perusal of technical works, will of course confine their attention to modern prose, and will rather avoid poetry as of little use for their purpose, and as tending to interfere with their acquisition of a correct prose style. The school or college however, as an institution for education and culture, cannot so restrict itself; and probably few private students of German will be willing to exclude themselves from the enjoyment of its fine poetical literature. If it be granted then that modern languages are to be learnt with an aim that includes along with practical knowledge and mental training also an acquaintance with literature, it is obviously necessary that the learner should be taught to distinguish current modern prose from what has become obsolete, and especially from a diction that is peculiar to poetry or the style soutenu, which with its licences and archaisms must otherwise tend to give to his own prose style an incorrect and often grotesque character. This principle has long been |
