Deeply touched
with the Gemeinheit which is the bane of his nation, as he is at the
same time a grand example of the honesty which is his nation's
excellence, he can seldom even show himself brave, resolute and
truthful, without showing a strong dash of coarseness and commonness
all the while; the right definition of Luther, as of our own Bunyan,
is that he is a Philistine of genius. So Luther's sincere idiomatic
German,--such language is this: 'Hilf lieber Gott, wie manchen
Jammer habe ich gesehen, dass der gemeine Mann doch so gar nichts
weiss von der christlichen Lehre!'--no more proves a power of style
in German literature, than Cobbett's sinewy idiomatic English proves
it in English literature. Power of style, properly so-called, as
manifested in masters of style like Dante or Milton in poetry,
Cicero, Bossuet or Bolingbroke in prose, is something quite
different, and has, as I have said, for its characteristic effect,
this: to add dignity and distinction.
Style, then, the Germans are singularly without, and it is strange
that the power of style should show itself so strongly as it does in
the Icelandic poetry, if the Scandinavians are such genuine Teutons
as is commonly supposed. Fauriel used to talk of the Scandinavian
Teutons and the German Teutons, as if they were two divisions of the
same people, and the common notion about them, no doubt, is very much
this.
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