FRAGMENTS FROM GERMAN PROSE WRITERS. TRANSLATED BY SARAH AUSTIN. ILLUSTRATED WITH NOTES. LONDON: JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. PREFACE. I CANNOT send this little volume into the world without cautioning my readers against a misapprehension of its character and purpose. It would be unjust to German literature to regard it as a selection. That word implies more of choice and order than I have been able to bestow. Many of these fragments were translated some years ago from books which chance threw in my way, and without any view to their publication; they were given to friends, who were curious to know what inducement there was to study the German language, and thus found their way into several numbers of a magazine. It has been frequently suggested to me, that a reprint of them, with additions, in a more convenient and durable form, would not be unacceptable to the English public, among whom a curiosity concerning the matter and form of German literature is greatly in creased and increasing. Upon this suggestion I have at length acted, though not without many misgivings, Germany and its literature open a new world to one accustomed only to the habits and the opinions of England. They present trains of thought as foreign to those with which we are familiar, as their forms of language are to our modes of expression. This great dissimilarity affords, as may readily be imagined, ample scope for the misconceptions and misrepresentations of ill-informed, prejudiced, and uncandid readers; indeed, renders it very difficult for the most candid and enlightened to avoid them, without a far more intimate knowledge of the country than foreigners can usually acquire. And accordingly, such misconceptions and misrepresentations do very widely prevail. It may be said that this is an inconvenience under which all nations labour with respect to each other. To a certain extent that is true; but it admits of modifications from the peculiarities of national character. Few, I imagine, will assert that the energetic and practical English mind has that plasticity which enables it to place itself in the very circum |