[1] Karl Gutzkow: _Das Kastanienwäldchen in Berlin. --Rückblicke auf mein Leben_, p. 7. [2] _Cf_. Emil Kuh: _Biographie Fr. Hebbels_, i. 437. [3] _Aus meinem Tagebuch_. Soden, May 22, 1830. [4] "Die Ordonnanz gegen die Zeitungen und Bücher betrachte ich als ein kolossales Wagstück, dessen Ausführbarkeit mir noch nicht recht einleuchtet.... Mit solchen Waffen darf man nur spielen, wenn man seiner Kraft und seiner Mittel gewiss ist. Leute wie Polignac und Peyronnet, wenn sie sich in diese Regionen versteigen, gehen zu Grunde." [5] "Nun fort mit allen schwarzen Gedanken! Wir sterben nicht, Europa stirbt nicht, was wir liebe stirbt nicht. Wie viel bilde ich mir darauf ein, nie verzweifelt zu haben." [6] Heine: _Sämmtliche Werke_, XII. 80. [7] R. Prutz: _Vorlesungen über die deutsche Litteratur der Gegenwart_, 270, 271. V THE INFLUENCE OF BYRON The classical literature of Germany in the end of the eighteenth and the early years of the nineteenth century was in subject or form imitative of the antique; the Romantic literature which followed swore allegiance to the Middle Ages; both stood aloof from surrounding actualities, from the Now, from existing political or social conditions; neither directly aimed at producing any change in these. The ideal floated in the deep blue ether of Greece or in the Catholic sky of the Middle Ages. Now it was resolutely dragged down to earth. The modern ideal, an ideal which contains no mythic element, manifested itself to the dreamers and the workers. And with a haste, a violence, that too often made prose journalistic, poetry only lyric or quite fragmentary, the opposition poets and prose writers set to work to draw all modern life into the sphere of literature. From the fact of this inclusion, this appropriation, taking place when things were on a war footing, wit and satire became more prominent powers than they had ever been before in Germany; and the mood and inspiration of the "Sturm und Drang" period seemed to have revived, so far as aggressive defiance of the established was concerned. It was a strong craving for liberty that first induced Heine and Börne to strike out a new path in German literature, and afterwards inspired the writers who followed them, and were known by the vague name of "Young Germany."