than these, and in a
way their master, Eilhart von Oberge, is supposed or rather known to
have dealt with the Tristram story before Gottfried; and Heinrich von
Veldeke, in handling the AEneid, communicated to Germany something of a
directly classical, though more of a French, touch. We have spoken of
the still earlier work of Conrad and Lamprecht, while in passing must
be mentioned other things fashioned after French patterns, such as the
_Kaiserchronik_, which is attributed to Bavarian hands. The period of
flourishing of the literary poetry proper was not long--1150 to 1350
would cover very nearly the whole of it, and, here, as elsewhere, it
is impossible to deal with every individual, or even with the majority
of individuals. But some remarks in detail, though not in great
detail, on the four principals above referred to, will put the German
literary "state" of the time almost as well as if all the battalions
and squadrons were enumerated. Hartmann, Gottfried, and Wolfram, even
in what we have of them, lyric writers in part, were chiefly writers
of epic or romance; Walther is a song-writer pure and simple.

[Sidenote: _Excellence, both natural and acquired, of German verse._]

One thing may be said with great certainty of the division of
literature to which we have come, that none shows more clearly the
natural aptitude of the people who produced it for poetry. It is a
familiar observation from beginners in German who have any literary
taste, that German poetry reads naturally, German prose does not. In
verse the German disencumbers himself of that gruesome clumsiness
which almost always besets him in the art he learnt so late, and never
learnt to any perfection. To "say" is a trouble to him, a trouble too
often unconquerable; to sing is easy enough. And this truth, true of
all centuries of German literature, is never truer than here.
Translated or adapted verse is not usually the most cheerful
department of poetry. The English romances, translated or adapted from
the French, at times on the whole later than these, have been unduly
abused; but they are certainly not the portion of the literature of
his country on which an Englishman would most pride himself. Even the
home-grown and, as I would fain believe, home-made legend of Arthur,
had to wait till the fifteenth century before it met, and then in
prose, a worthy master in English.

[Sidenote: _Originality of its adaptation._]

But the German adapters of French