FROM THE FOURTH TO THE NINETEENTH CENTURY WITH BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES, TRANSLATIONS INTO BY F. MAX MÜLLER, M.A. CORPUS PROFESSOR OF COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD A New Edition Revised, Enlarged, and Adapted to WILHELM SCHERER'S 'HISTORY OF GERMAN LITERATURE' BY F. LICHTENSTEIN VOL. I. Oxford AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 1886 [All rights reserved] To the Memory of MY DAUGHTER MARY THE TRANSLATOR OF SCHERER'S "HISTORY OF GERMAN LITERATURE." Born 21 February 1862, Died 3 September 1886. TRUTHFUL, CONSCIENTIOUS, EARNEST, TENDER. PREFACE. WHEN the Clarendon Press undertook to publish a translation of Professor W. Scherer's History of German Literature, it was suggested that an Historical Reading-Book, containing extracts from the principal writers of prose and poetry treated in that History, would form a useful companion volume. My 'German Classics from the Fourth to the Nineteenth Century,' published in 1858, had long been out of print, and I had no time to undertake a new edition. Professor Scherer, whom I consulted on the subject, suggested Professor Franz Lichtenstein of Breslau as fully qualified to revise and rearrange my volume, so as to adapt it to the new purpose for which it was intended, namely, to supply the pièces justificatives for the new History of German Literature. Professor Lichtenstein devoted himself most zealously to this arduous task, and, with the assistance of Professor Scherer himself, his part of the work was nearly finished, when a sudden death,— he was drowned while bathing in the Baltic,-put an end to the bright career of this most conscientious and hard-working scholar. Professor Scherer, who had himself taken an active part in the selection of new extracts, now commissioned Dr. Joseph to superintend the printing of this Historical Reading-Book, to whom therefore all the credit for the correctness both of the texts and the translations is due. On the whole the Reading-Book follows Scherer's History step by step, though in order to keep extracts from the same author together, or to gain some other small advantages, certain deviations |