There is an old word that was often used in Germany during the merry days of the Renaissance, and it had a beautiful sound, although at that time its actual signification may not have been beautiful. It is the word Courage-giver. The expression first came into use among the knights of the German Order in Prussia and Livonia at the time when history tells us of their downfall, _i.e._ when asceticism began to decline. When a knight of that period had sufficient disregard for his eternal salvation to procure himself a lady-love, he called her his Courage-giver, because she gave him renewed courage. But as soon as the Lutheran pastors, with their protestant ideas about conversion and discipline, opposed this being who was not acknowledged in the service-book, the good word came to have an evil sound. But when one wishes to describe Keller’s women, the old word suggests itself again, for his women are good Courage-givers; they are bright as a spring morning which expands the heart and rejoices the soul of man, refreshing as the first verdure of the year, and sweet as the young, juicy grass of the meadows. Where did Keller learn to know these women who are such genuinely natural beings, such harmonious, unspoilt, sensitive natures? Where did he first see Judith, little Meret, his village Juliet, and the numerous other revelations in his portrait gallery? In this respect, Gottfried Keller stands alone and unequalled by any in his century. We have only to turn to the classics. Schiller’s woman was composed of little else than a long skirt, and the same may be said of his entire progeny of sentimental and pathetic dramatists extending down to our own time. If one took away the skirt there was something underneath it which bore a strong resemblance to a young man, a being who was half a man in its actions and feelings, just as the women in Lessing’s dramas are, for the most part, dialecticians in veils and stays. At the end of the last century and the beginning of this there were no less than an entire group of authors who were remarkable for their inability to create women, and they tried to make up for it by introducing their own nature into that of the opposite sex. Even Kleist sometimes resorted to this method. It was the origin of all their heroines who inspirited men to brave deeds and encouraged the faint-hearted, from the Maid of Orleans onwards, they were nothing but men split in half; the authors personified their own grand qualities and then contrasted them with their own weaknesses in the person of the woman.