imposture practiced, and without wavering in interior conviction of right, may all his life go on being looked up to and addressed as "Sir Oracle;" in other words, may contentedly, comfortably, and, moreover, perhaps not discreditably, sustain the life-long part of one wiser than any human being ever was.

But the pretensions of the Schlegels, overweening as they were, had grounds, solid, at least, if not sufficient, to rest upon. They were both men of great ability, and of acquirements still greater. They were prodigies of learning. Their self-complacency-but this is especially true of the elder-was an exhaustless resource to them, supported as it was by dignified personal presence, courtly manners, and, at last, high worldly position. The elder brother, August Wilhelm von Schlegel (1767-1845), translated Shakespeare, producing the version which was destined to be accepted as final, and which as matter of fact has completely domesticated the prince of English dramatists among the Germans. He also translated Dante and Calderon. He wrote original poetry of his own. Upon that poetical form known as the sonnet, he bestowed the highest distinction within his power-by writing in it a lyric of eulogy upon himself! His own claim therein preferred, is not quite that he was first to write sonnets in German- -as it is sometimes said that he was; but only that he was "conqueror, exemplar, master," in this kind. The whole absurd travesty, by Schlegel in this sonnet, of the calmly Olympian manner in self-appreciation, may be represented as follows in prose:

In the manners of peoples, in many a foreign clime, and in their language, long since by experience versed—that which antiquity, that which modern times, have produced, uniting in the chain of one knowledge-whether standing still, moving, walking, lying in bed, even on a journey as if under the roof of home, forever poetizing, of all things that are, and that wereconqueror, exemplar, master in the sonnet. The first to dare on German soil wrestle with Shakespeare's shade and with Dante, at once the creator and the mold of law: how the mouth of the future will name him is unknown, but this generation recognized him by the name of AUGUST WILHELM SCHLEGEL.

The self-complacent author of the foregoing sonnet probably saw no reason why he should not do ample justice to a great name in letters simply because that great name happened to be his own.

This man was an erudite Orientalist, when Orientalism was a comparatively new department of learning among Europeans. Critic, too, as well as philologist, was August Wilhelm Schlegel; after Lessing, perhaps among Germans none wiser, none more accomplished, than he. Such, at least, was for some time at first the estimation in which he was held. But Schlegel's credit as critic has since suffered loss. A single brief critical expression of his, relating to Shakespeare (foremost with Schlegel of poets, and mighty model of romanticists), must suffice to indicate his quality as critic. The critic here appears engaged in setting forth the contrast between the distinctively antique and the distinctively modern in literature and in art. That contrast he makes substantially the same as the contrast between the classic and the romantic. He says:

The Parthenon is not more different from Westminster Abbey or from the Church of St. Stephen at Vienna than the structure of a tragedy of Sophocles from a drama of Shakespeare. The comparison between these wonderful productions of poetry and architecture might be carried still further. But does our admiration of the one compel us to depreciate the other? We will quarrel with no one for his predilection, either for the Grecian or the Gothic; the world is wide, and affords room for a great diversity of objects.

We ought perhaps to apprise our readers that they would by no means find Schlegel as intelligible throughout as he appears in the brief citations from him here presented.

Friedrich Karl Wilhelm von Schlegel (1772-1829), the brother, five years younger, was, beyond even August Wilhelm, a determined and vigorous fighting romanticist. Friedrich felt a vocation to begin a new era in literature. Wieland was, for him, no poet; Schiller, none. Goethe, the two Schlegels praised. He indeed was a god to them. This particular idolatry was probably in part a deep trick with the

two Schlegels; a trick, the conception of which is credited to the cunning of Friedrich. The plot was to separate Goethe and Schiller, attach Goethe, nominally, at least, to the romantic schoo', and so secure at the same time the triumph of romanticism and the downfall of Schiller. But Schiller was an unsurpassed diplomatist, and he easily succeeded in holding Goethe fast to himself; while, as for Goethe, this supremely fortunate man had nothing to do but sit still and tranquilly let the wind from either quarter fill his sails.

A certain brilliant haze of indistinctness envelops Friedrich Schlegel's writing. He seems to promise much to his reader; but his reader vexes himself vainly to find it, and ends by bringing little away. The following passage, in which the writer glorifies his beloved middle ages, is a good and a sufficient specimen of his quality. Our critic has just previously been setting forth the claims of Ossian's poetry— a romantic product which he was unwilling to surrender as a spurious antique forged by Macpherson; and he mentions, in connection, the Icelandic Edda, the cycles of Norman song (chansons de geste), the works of Firdusi, the Persian poet, the Spanish epic of the Cid, and the German Nibelungen Lied; he then says (our translations from the Schlegels' prose, Dr. Hedge's later book supplies us) :

All these works appeared in the very heart of that long period of time usually designated the night of the Middle Ages-a term, perhaps, well fitted to express the isolated existence of nations and individuals, and the interruption of that universal active intercourse which prevailed in the later period of the Roman dominion. . . . In this view, and because the business and occupations of the time were not then prosecuted with the skill and dexterity of modern ages, that remarkable period in the civilization of mankind may, indeed, be termed a night. But how starlit, how radiant was that night! Now, on the contrary, we are wrapt in the gloom and confusion of a lingering twilight. The stars which shone upon that night are dim, many of them sunk even below the horizon, and yet no day has risen upon us. More than once, indeed, we have been summoned to hail the dawn of a new sun which was to bring universal knowledge, happiness, prosperity. But the results have by no means justified the rash anticipation; and if some promise seems still to herald

the approach of a new day, it is but the chill breath of the morning air which ever precedes the breaking light.

The Oriental studies of the elder brother were shared, were perhaps pushed farther, by the younger. Friedrich Schlegel may be considered the original source of that western interest in Hindu philosophy and Hindu literature, of which we have seen so remarkable a growth and development in our own day. The joint services of the two brothers to the science of comparative philology were great. The elder Schlegel, who survived the younger, survived also his own commanding authority in literature. His relation as traveling tutor in the German language and literature to Madame de Staël could not but have considerable influence in carrying over the romantic literary movement from Germany to France.

Or the simply and strictly popular tale―the popular tale, that is, unmodified by the personal taste or whim or fancy of the writer-the best, as well as for us the most practicable, representative specimen is undoubtedly to be found in the collection by the brothers Grimm. These authors, if they are to be ranked as romanticists at all, are the classicists among them. That is, they seem less perhaps than any other of those who romanced in this vein, to have humored themselves, and more, to have obeyed that rule of "Not too much" which is at once the awe of the classicist, and of the romanticist the scorn.

The brothers Grimm were not the inventors in Germany of the species of literature in which they so excelled. The lead was given by one Musæus, a writer of a time somewhat earlier than that of Herder. Musæus, though a meritorious writer, is not a writer of the first class in importance. Carlyle, however, in his Specimens of German Romance, translated several of Museus's stories.

The brothers Grimm (Jacob Ludwig Karl, 1785-1863; Wilhelm Karl, 1786-1859) were seriously learned scholars as well as popular writers. Their stories, from which alone we

here draw, may be regarded as mere leisure-hour recreations on their part, interposed in the midst of the most arduous philological labors. Their monumental undertaking-achievement it can hardly be called, since they did not themselves bring it to completion—is a dictionary, encyclopædic for comprehensiveness, of the German language.

There is a peculiar household cosiness about the conception and the style of the stories of these brothers, well adapted to make them, as they are, popular favorites. They are stories pure and simple. No attempt was made by the authors to moralize or sentimentalize their narratives. The personal equation in them is nothing. It is as if there were no author. The stories seem to tell themselves. Of course this is art, and, in its humble kind, it is art of high degree. The English or American taste does not so naturally as does the German take to narratives of the sort about to be exemplified. Still the stories of the brothers Grimm have had no small currency in English translation.

We shall expect our readers to throw off their dignity and heartily laugh at the whimsical grotesqueness of the following story, which must stand single, and retrenched of its beginning at that, in example of what the brothers Grimm offer their readers in this line of production. The story is entitled, The Musicians of Bremen.

The chief personages of the story are four-an ass, a dog, a cat, and a cock-who agree to go to Bremen, and there set up as musicians together. On their way to the city they are overtaken by night in a forest. Prospecting for accommodations, they find a house occupied by robbers. Through a lighted window was to be seen a table temptingly set out with food. The "musicians" put their heads together to contrive a plan for dispossessing the robbers. They at length hit upon an idea. Now the brothers Grimm:

The ass had to place his forefeet upon the window ledge, the hound got on his back, the cat climbed up upon the dog, and lastly, the cock flew up and perched upon the head of the cat. When this was accomplished, at a given signal they commenced together to perform their music: the