y truthfulness, such
seriousness of purpose, or such a wide range of imagination as in
contemporary Germany.

All these dramatists, lyric poets, and novelists, and with them not a
few essayists, philosophers, orators, and publicists,[1] of the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries will speak in the following volumes
to America and other countries of the English language. They have been
arranged, in the main, chronologically. The first three volumes have
been given to the mature work of Goethe and Schiller--time-tested and
securely niched. Volumes IV and V contain the principal Romanticists,
including Fichte and Schelling; Volume VI brings Heine, Grillparzer,
and Beethoven to view;

Volume VII, Hegel and Young Germany; Volume VIII, Auerbach, Gotthelf,
and Fritz Reuter; Volume IX, Hebbel and Ludwig; Volume X, Bismarck,
Moltke, Lassalle. Of the second half of the collection there might be
singled out: Volume XIV (Gottfried Keller and C.F. Meyer); Volume XV
(Schopenhauer, Wagner, Nietzsche, Emperor William II.); Volume XVIII
(Gerhart Hauptmann, Detlev von Liliencron, Richard Dehmel). The last
two volumes will be devoted to the most recent of contemporary authors.

The editors have been fortunate in associating with themselves a
notable number of distinguished contributors from many universities
and colleges in this country and abroad. A general introduction to the
whole series has been written by Professor Richard M. Meyer of the
University of Berlin. The last two volumes will be in charge of
Professor Julius Petersen of the University of Basel. The
introductions to Goethe and Schiller have been prepared by Professor
Calvin Thomas, of Columbia University; that to the Romantic
Philosophers by Professor Frank Thilly, of Cornell University; that to
Richard Wagner by Professor W. R. Spalding, of Harvard University.
And, similarly, every important author in this collection will be
introduced by some authoritative and well known specialist.

The crux of the whole undertaking lies in the correctness and adequacy
of the translations. How difficult, if not impossible, a really
satisfactory translation is, especially in lyric poetry, no one
realizes more clearly than the editors. Their only comfort is that
they have succeeded in obtaining the assistance of many well trained
and thoroughly equipped scholars, among them such names of poets as
Hermann Hagedorn, Percy MacKaye, George Sylvester Viereck, and
Martin Schuetze.

Kuno Fran