THE MASTERSINGERS. Nu ist der seite enzwei. ante, p. 134. D'autra guiza e d'autra razo ARNAUD DANIEL. Decline of German poetry from the beginning of the 14th century. The Mastersingers.-Sing-schools.-The last of the Minnesingers. Der Chanzler.. Regenbog. Frauenlob, and his funeral.-The battle of Wartburg.-System and peculiarities of the Mastersingers.-Hans Sachs.-Anonymous ballads and popular songs.-Specimens of the latter. THE accession of the house of Hapsburg has already been pointed out as the æra of the decline of German poetry. No branch of European vernacular literature gave so rich a promise,--none seemed more capable of being matured into finished excellence; yet no hopes were so speedily and completely blasted. The causes of the degradation of the German muse to such an extent are not easily discovered. Why, it has often been asked, did it take so unfavourable a turn, as compared with that of many other countries? why did so much beauty and harmony of language, so much tenderness and comparative refinement of taste and feeling, fail in producing their legitimate effects? and why did they quietly give place to a cold, artificial, handicraft system of riming by line, square, and compass? Princes and nobles had, it is true, ceased to sing; and humbler minstrels had taken up the neglected 'geige:' but why was the muse purely aristocratic? and why should she refuse her inspiration, as the court did its honours, to all but the nobility that proves its title by a due pedigree of heraldic quarterings? Whatever cause we may choose to assign to the phenomenon, certain it is that we must historically record a vast and almost cheerless blank, which extends from the age of the Minnesingers almost to the 18th century, chequered with only few and rare alleviating exceptions. The characteristic of the Troubadour age was form and rule in every thing, supported by an excited tone of feeling in society, and the caprice of the aristocracy. The protecting principle was removed, and there ensued a disrespect of the art which such patronage had forced beyond its natural level. The vernacular tongues, too, for two or three centuries rather retrograded than advanced on the progress they had so rapidly made at their first cultivation; and they were not even assisted, but perhaps retarded, by the increased taste for literary pursuits, inasmuch as that taste was chiefly directed towards classical objects. But the relics which are sprinkled over the mass of desolation,-and particularly the beautiful ballads and popular songs of this period, which more or less belong to every country in Europe, -show that the feelings which an artificial state of society had prematurely excited, and afterwards left to languish, were still in existence, and were only waiting the more mature culture of progressive civilization. The Minnesingers are usually considered as definitively separated both in time and character from the Mastersingers, a class of minstrels who about the beginning of the 14th century formed themselves, in the towns of Germany, into guilds or trading companies, and agreed to be bound by certain fanciful and arbitrary laws of rhythm. Learned controversies still agitate the antiquarian polemics of Germany, as to the proper line of demarcation between these schools. The difficulty on this head would incline us to think it more probable that they blend impercepti→ bly, that one formed itself by degrees, and from the operation of various political and social causes, during the decline of the other. Even during the 14th century, long after the dominion of the Mastersingers had established itself, we have decisive evidence in the Limpurg Chronicle [see Bouterwek I. 292], that many minstrels chose rather to pursue the more independent and natural course of the Minnesingers. Unfortunately, the Chronicle has given little more than initiatory extracts. On the other hand, persons to whom, as adepts in the poetic art, the name of Masters was attributed, seem to have existed even in the best age of the Minnesingers; and it is probable that the title was only more universally and distinctively bestowed when the spirit of pedantry had be |