In order to present to your minds an outline whereby will be rendered easier the following of its course from its rise to the present day, I will, in the first place, label three great epochs in its progress, with the names which made them epochs. Of the first, however, can be given but the name of the work, that of its author being unknown. I allude to the _Nibelungenlied_, the Song of the Nibelungen, the great Epic of the Germans, written about the beginning of the thirteenth century, more than a hundred years before the birth of Chaucer. Luther makes the second epoch, and Goethe represents the third. We have here a period embracing six hundred years. But long before the production of the _Nibelungenlied_, and the cotemporaneous lyrical poetry, letters were cultivated in Germany and books written, which, though containing nothing worthy of preservation, deserve to be considered and respected as bold forerunners, that fitted the Germans to value the singers of the Nibelungen period, while for these they cultivated {374} the language into the degree of flexibility and fullness required for the medium of poetry. Charlemagne, who in the eighth century, conquered and converted Germany to Christianity, established schools in the monasteries, caused to be collected the ancient songs and laws, ordered the preaching to be in German, and had translations made from Latin. As the immediate result of this beginning, chronicles and translations in verse of the Bible, were written by the inmates of monasteries during the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries. The first period of German literature, I have named after the _Nibelungenlied_, a work which is not only the greatest of its age, but stands alone and unapproached as a national epic in the literature of all modern Europe. This period is commonly called the Swabian, from the influence of the Swabian line of emperors, who commenced to reign as emperors of Germany in the twelfth century, and who, by their zealous and judicious encouragement of letters, made the Swabian dialect prevail over the Franconian, which had hitherto been predominant. In the Swabian dialect is written the Song of the Nibelungen, which, like the Iliad--according to the well supported theory of the great German philologist Wolff--is wrought into a compact whole out of the traditions, songs and ballads, current at the time of its composition. The name Nibelungen, is that of a powerful Burgundian tribe, whose tragic fate is the subject of the poem. Nibelungen is obviously a name derived from the northern mythology, and is transferred to the Burgundians, when these get possession of the fatal Nibelungen hoard of treasure. The time is in the fifth century, and the scene is on the Rhine and afterwards on the frontier of Hungary and Austria.