Professor Marsh gave his lecture in Sever 11 last evening, on German Poetry. This is the last of the series on the Beginnings of Modern Poetry, which has proved of so much interest.

Owing to our Renaissance sympathies, we commonly think of the early Germans only as barbarians and destroyers. The Germans, however, cannot have had this aspect to themselves. They rightly felt that their energies and powers were not altogether barbarous. We have seen how the infusion of their blood and their culture had a vivifying effect on those portions of the Roman Empire which came later to be the Romance nations. Modern life and modern literature are alike full of traces of the Germans, hence it is highly interesting to see how they developed at home, and unmixed with Latin blood, a modern society and art. This development began with their invasion of the Roman world, which produced in them a great excitation of all their powers, very much in contrast with the destruction they brought to things Roman. They carried with them in their invasion religions and historical traditions, largely mythological in form; and these traditions were excellent as material for poetic use. To them they added, however, a great body of historical tradition due to the events of the invasion itself. Their great struggles and their great men quickly transformed themselves in this wise. Then they came in contact with the classic tradition of the Romans, and with Christianity and with the traditions of the Church. All these new materials and new forms of art produced an immense effect.

The 7th century was a kind of classic period of German poetry; then poetry was treated seriously, as an art to be practised by persons of influence; and the heroic legends of the Germans were the result. This classic period was succeeded by a time when the Germans lost somewhat their national feeling, - the time of Charle magne and universal Empire. At this time, also, there was a revival of interest in the Latin writers and in philosophy. Accordingly, poetic creation languished; and during the 8th and 9th centuries we may say that classical and Christian culture was everywhere penetrating and changing Germany.

The 10th century is sometimes called the Mediaeval Renaissance in Germany, so marked is this spread of influences not German. Meanwhile, in 843. Germany was separated for good from France, and began her independent life but she did not at once renew her original creative activity. For this, the example and influence of fresh creation were needed and Germany found this in the 11th century in France. There chivalric society was growing up as a consequence of Feudalism, and soon this society was to find expression in poetry. When this poetry came, it was almost at once imitated by the Germans. The poetry of Northern France passed over, mainly along the lower Rhine; the poetry of Provence, along the upper.

Early in the 12th century translations of French Chansions de Geste begin, - the earliest, Konrad's Rolandsliid, about 1130 and rapidly follow Heinrich von Veldeke, and 'Courtoisie.' The attraction of this poetry led soon to a revival of the German heroic legends. The 12 century saw also the Celtic legends, which had come to be in Northern France the chief vehicles for conveying chivalric ideas, pass into Germany and became highly attractive to the Germans. Soon after narrative poetry after French models began in Germany, lyric poetry also began, showing the influence of both France and Provence. It seems to have appeared first along the upper Rhine, and at once showed itself subjective, metaphysical, chivalric. It had, however, from the start a purely German sentimental strain. The weariness and disenchantment of Walther's old age are illustrative of a change in the moral condition of Germany and the whole world. Chivalry had ceased to be the perfect idea; it had shown itself capable of strange absurdities, and clearly could not endure. We now see what was to come, but men in the 13th century may be pardoned for having found the future dark.