POETS. THE MINNESINGERS GENERALLY.

[Sidenote: _Position of Germany._]

It must have been already noticed that one main reason for the
unsurpassed literary interest of this present period is that almost
all the principal European nations contribute, in their different
ways, elements to that interest. The contribution is not in all cases
one of positive literary production, of so much matter of the first
value actually added to the world's library. But in some cases it is;
and in the instance to which we come at present it is so in a measure
approached by no other country except France and perhaps Iceland. Nor
is Germany,[105] as every other country except Iceland may be said to
be, wholly a debtor or vassal to France herself. Partly she is so; of
the three chief divisions of Middle High German poetry (for prose here
practically does not count), the folk-epic, the "art-epic," as the
Germans themselves not very happily call it, and the lyric--the second
is always, and the third to no small extent, what might punningly be
called in copyhold of France. But even the borrowed material is
treated with such intense individuality of spirit that it almost
acquires independence; and part of the matter, as has been said, is
not borrowed at all.

[Footnote 105: The most accessible _History of German Literature_ is
that of Scherer (English translation, 2 vols., Oxford, 1886), a book
of fair information and with an excellent bibliography, but not very
well arranged, and too full of extra-literary matter. Carlyle's great
_Nibelungenlied_ Essay (_Essays_, vol. iii.) can never be obsolete
save in unimportant matters; that which follows on _Early German
Literature_ is good, but less good. Mr Gosse's _Northern Studies_
(1879) contains a very agreeable paper on Walther von der Vogelweide.
The Wagnerites have naturally of late years dealt much with Wolfram
von Eschenbach, but seldom from a literary point of view.]

[Sidenote: _Merit of its poetry._]

It has been pointed out that for some curious reason French literary
critics, not usually remarkable for lack of national vanity, have been
by no means excessive in their laudations of the earlier literature of
their country. The opposite is the case with those of Germany, and the
rather extravagant patriotism of some of their expressions may perhaps
have had a bad effect on some foreign readers. It cannot, for
instance, be otherwise than disgusting to even rudimentary critical
feelin