Abstract
IT was a happy thought of the compiler of this volume to collect and publish on the five hundredth anniversary of the foundation of the University of Heidelberg a selection of what has been written about the city and the University by eminent men of various nations at different periods of time. A collection of all that has been written about the ancient city and its lovely situation would, Herr Mays says, fill a respectable library, for besides histories in verse of the Palatinate and its capital there are innumerable tales, novels, and the like based on incidents in its history, and lyrical andhistorical poems on Heidelberg by the hundred. In making a selection from this vast mass of matter, the compiler has only retained poems or descriptions which are of special poetical or literary value, or those which are of special interest on account of the author, or, finally, those which exhibit some special originality or peculiarity. But even when thus winnowed a handy volume is left. Needless to say, the vast majority of the writers are German; there are a few English, and one American (Longfellow) The list commences with an extract from the Bull of Pope Urban VI. of October 23, 1385, authorising Prince Rupert to found the University. This is followed by extracts from over sixty authors arranged chronologically. Herr Mays notices as a curiosity that not one of these is French. The English authors naturally dwell on the castle, “next to the Alhambra of Granada the most magnificent ruin of the Middle Ages,” rather more than on the University; but indeed the German writers do the same. The book will show the good people of Heidelberg, if they lack such knowledge at this festive season, that they are citizens of no mean city. It should also prove an interesting memento to many in Europe and America who have passed a few years at the most impressionable period of their lives at the old University, which, with its sister at Bonn, has of late years drawn the British student away from Göttingen.
Heidelberg gefcirt von Dichtern und Denkern seit fünf jahrhundesten.
Herausgegeben von Albert Mays. (Heidelberg, 1886.)
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[Book Reviews]. Nature 34, 335 (1886). https://doi.org/10.1038/034335b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/034335b0