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    cathedral . The termination indeed , is , we fear , in these uncongenial days , to be left only to the imagining of our own poet Wordsworth . * But that inspiring heat Hath failed : And now , ye powers ! whose gorgeous wings And splendid aspect yon em blazon ings But faintly picture , t ' wert'kn office meet For you , on these unfinished shafts to try

    The midnight virtues of your harmony . ' The 40 th and concluding Volume opens with a work which though in its original form it fills an important place in the literary history of Europe at the revival of letters , nevertheless under out author ' s hands has become an interesting feature in the development of his character . For as Jie has more than once intimated that poetry was to him a relief against the evils of life , so he pat ^

    ticularly informs us , ( vol . 31 ., p . 22 , ) that it was at that lamentable period , 1793 , when the triumphant Fi-ench made their first onslaught in Germany , that half itt despair submitting to inevitable realities , and under the influence of the sad ( widerwartig ) habit of scorning everything sentimental , Reinecke Fuchs , that unnoty bible of the world , became to him a desirable object for a mode of

    treatment which vacillated between translation and ( umarbeitung ) paraphrase . * It was a consolation to him both at home and abroad . He has rendered the work his own by all the graces of his peculiar style—softening down the cynicisms natural to a semi-barbarous age , and mitigating the asperities of polemical purposes . It retains no traces of personal satire , it has all the gaiety and freedom of a comic or familiar epos , as that word is

    presently to be explained . We pass over altogether the antiquarian and historical controversies which have been carried on concerning its origin . ^ We have never seen the French Roman du Renard ^ published by M . Meon , and which the learned editor declares to be a work of the 13 th century ; nor are we competent to compare , nor would this be the place if we were , the * Hystorye of Reynart the Foxe which was in Dutche / translated and printed by William Caxton , 1481 , with the low-German Rynke de Vos of a somewhat earlier date , which professes to be from the French . The most material fact is this , that the work never ceased to live amonj ? the people in Germany , where it has now again become a classic ; while both in France and England it has been nearly extinct . In 1684 there did indeed appear in London a new edition , ' purged from all grossness in phrase and matter ; ' and we have heard of a modern version in heroic rhyme , which we have never seen . We know , too , that Soltau , the author of a clever version in German

    * More than twenty years ago we compared Goethe ' s work with Caxton ' 8 translation and found them so much alike that we were surprised by this passage in Goethe ' s hefte * Oux examination must have been hasty and imperfect .

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    Goethe * s Works . Vt %

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1833, page 279, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2612/page/63/