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The difference between these and those of Goethe and Schiller is not merely in the so-called "castle-Romanticism" of Uhland, not in a lingering sentimentality in some of the poorer ones, but in Uhland's ability at will to catch the folk-tone.
Longfellow's "Miles Standish" came out that winter, and I suspect that I got vastly more real pleasure from that one poem of his than I found in all my German authors put together, the adored Heine always excepted; though certainly I felt the romantic beauty of 'Uhland, and was aware of something of Schiller's generous grandeur.
The probability is that the constant references in Jaufre's poems to an unknown distant love, and the fact of his crusading expedition to the Holy Land, formed in conjunction the nucleus of the legend which grew round his name, and which is known to all readers of Carducci, Uhland and Heine. Contemporary with Jaufre Rudel was Bernard de Ventadour, one of the greatest names in Provençal poetry.
The class of workmen it employs is often of a particularly high grade. German painters quote Kotzebue and sing the songs of Uhland as they weave their graceful harmonies of line and color over the panels; and the sculptors who carve antique heads over the doorways of palace cars make the place merry with studio jokes from the Berlin Academy.
The students a powerful and an organized class stood foremost in this patriotic movement. Their excited imaginations warmed by the spirit-stirring songs of Kërner and Uhland, and glowing with the instincts of that chivalry which is a German's birthright, they spread over the country, calling upon their fellow-subjects to arise and defend the "Vaterland" against the aggression of the tyrant.
Sturdy reserve characterizes it that reserve which forbids the peasant to show his feelings under the stress of the greatest emotion. Uhland does not carry his feelings to market; like Schiller, he is not a love poet. There is no display, no self-analysis, no self-exaltation, no amalgamation of self with nature.
He used to read German, when he was a boy, with a young enthusiasm for its romantic poetry, and now, for the sake of Schiller and Uhland and Heine, he held imaginary conversations with a barber, a bootmaker, and a banker, and tried to taste the joy which he had not known in the language of those poets for a whole generation.
However, not a word more upon this wretched subject, lest I become unwise in railing against folly." In the same manner he blamed the political course, so much praised by others, of Uhland. "Mind," said he, "the politician will devour the poet. To be a member of the States, and to live amid daily jostlings and excitements, is not for the delicate nature of a poet.
He was actively and practically interested in the politics of his native land as a member of its legislative bodies and as delegate to the national parliament at Frankfurt in 1848. Uhland had a conservative love for the "good old Suabian law."
When Goethe said that Uhland was primarily a balladist, he was right, for the ballad presupposes just that permeation of the object by the emotion that satisfies the unquestionable lyric gift possessed by Uhland, without in any way destroying the essentially narrative objectivity of his style. Uhland's greatest fame rests, then, on his ballads.
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