but to all intents and purposes fully constituted, if not
fully developed.

[Footnote 116: Ed. Bechstein. 3d ed., 2 vols. Leipzig, 1891.]

And Gottfried is quite equal to his form. One may feel, indeed, and it
is not unpleasant to feel, that evidence of the "young hand," which
consists in digressions from the text, of excursus and ambages,
essays, as it were, to show, "Here I am speaking quite for myself, and
not merely reading off book." But he tells the story very
well--compare, for instance, the crucial point of the substitution of
Brengwain for Iseult in him and in the English _Sir Tristrem_, or the
charming account of the "Minnegrotte" in the twenty-seventh song, with
the many other things of the kind in French, English, and German of
the time. Also he has constant little bursts, little spurts, of
half-lyrical cry, which lighten the narrative charmingly.

"Diu wise Isot, diu schoene Isot,
Diu liuhtet alse der morgenrot,"

is the very thing the want of which mars the pleasantly flowing but
somewhat featureless octosyllables of his French models. In the
famous passage[117] where he has been thought to reflect on Wolfram,
he certainly praises other poets without stint, and shows himself a
generous as well as a judicious critic. How Hartmann von Aue hits the
meaning of a story! how loud and clear rings the crystal of his words!
Did not Heinrich von Veldeke "imp the first shoot on Teutish tongues"
(graft French on German poetry)? With what a lofty voice does the
nightingale of the Bird-Meadow (Walther) warble across the heath! Nor
is it unpleasant to come shortly afterwards to our old friends Apollo
and the Camoenae, the nine "Sirens of the ears"--a slightly mixed
reminiscence, but characteristic of the union of classical and
romantic material which communicates to the Middle Ages so much of
their charm. Indeed nowhere in this Pisgah sight of literature would
it be pleasanter to come down and expatiate on the particular subject
than in the case of these Middle High German poets.

[Footnote 117: _Tristan_, 8th song, l. 4619 and onwards. The crucial
passage is a sharp rebuke of "finders [_vindaere_, _trouveres_] of wild
tales," or one particular such who plays tricks on his readers and
utters unintelligible things. It _may_ be Wolfram: it also may not
be.]

[Sidenote: _Hartmann von Aue._]

Hartmann von Aue,[118] the subject of Gottfried's highest eulogy, has
left a bulkier--at least a more varied--poetic