story may indeed be taken as a symbol of that principle of “poetic realism” which Ludwig strove for and of which the story is one of the best embodiments.  The technique of the work, to be sure, is that of Ludwig’s day, not of our own.  There are long descriptions and reflections and a good deal of direct psychological analysis, in all of which the narrator does not hesitate to speak from his subjective point of view.  Such a method modern theorists would feign stamp as a crime against the spirit of epic art, as though a novel were a drama, and genuine narration did not by nature participate of both the objective and subjective manner of presentation.  But even if these things were undeniable flaws of technique, which we are far from admitting, they certainly cannot mar genuine art in its essential beauty and appeal.  The Thuringian landscape and the life of the small town embedded in it, the tragic happenings in the Nettenmair family, the slow processes of soul-life in the two hostile brothers and the martyred woman between them—­all this is made to live before our eyes with such simple and yet absolutely adequate means that we get from it that deep and satisfying feeling of harmony of content and form that characterizes a true masterpiece of art.  Character drawing and milieu painting, always Ludwig’s strong points, have again been most felicitously handled.  With equal success the author has developed the plot of the story which, in a few memorable scenes, attains to truly dramatic scope and power.  More admirable than everything else, however, is the subtly realistic treatment of the psychological processes in Fritz Nettenmair.  His gradual deterioration, step by step, from self-indulgent joviality, through envy and jealousy, to the hatred of despair that does not even shrink from fratricide, is depicted with masterly insight and consistency.  This phase of Ludwig’s art strikes us as fresh and modern today, and it must have appeared like a revelation to a generation that did not yet, know Flaubert’s Madame Bovary or George Eliot’s Adam Bede.

Considered in his totality as man and as artist, Ludwig cannot be counted among the names of the very first rank in German nineteenth century literature.  To him cannot be assigned the unequivocal greatness of a Kleist, a Hebbel, a Keller.  The narrowness of the circumstances of his life and the invalidism of his mature years combined with, and no doubt were aided by, an apparent lack of robustness and forcefulness of character and temperament, and thus conspired to keep him from attaining that victorious self-assertion, that sovereign balance between volition and power, without which true greatness in the full sense of the word is impossible.  But among the leading names of second rank, his will always occupy a place of distinction.  If his was not the work of a Messiah, it was that of a John the Baptist.  Having been nurtured in the traditions of the romanticism of Tieck, E.T.A.  Hoffmann, and Jean Paul, he was one of