iversity studies, Wilhelm was for a while
private tutor in a wealthy family at Amsterdam, where conditions of
living were most agreeable, but where a suitable stimulus to the
inborn life of his mind was lacking. He accordingly gave up this
position and returned, with little but hopes, to Germany. Then came a
call which was both congenial and honorable. Schiller's attention had
been drawn, years before, to a review of his own profound
philosophical poem, _The Artists_, by an unknown young man, whom he at
once sought to secure as a regular contributor to his literary
journal, _The New Thalia_. Nothing came of this, chiefly because of
Schlegel's intimate relations to Buerger at the time. Schiller had
published, not long before, his annihilatory review of Buerger's poems,
which did so much to put that poet out of serious consideration for
the remainder of his days. In the meantime Schiller had addressed
himself to his crowning enterprise, the establishing of a literary
journal which should be the final dictator of taste and literary
criticism throughout the German-speaking world. In 1794 the plan for
_The Hours_ was realized under favorable auspices, and in the same
year occurred the death of Buerger. In 1796 Schiller invited Wilhelm to
become one of the regular staff of _The Hours_, and this invitation
Schlegel accepted, finding in it the opportunity to marry Caroline,
with whom he settled in Jena in July of that year. His first
contribution to _The Hours_ was a masterful and extended treatise on
_Dante_, which was accompanied by translations which were clearly the
most distinguished in that field which the German language had ever
been able to offer. Schlegel also furnished elaborated poems, somewhat
in Schiller's grand style, for the latter's _Almanac of the Muses_.
During the years of his residence at Jena (which continued until 1801)
Schlegel, with the incalculable assistance of his wife, published the
first eight volumes of those renderings of Shakespeare's plays into
German which doubtless stand at the very summit of the art of
transferring a poet to an alien region, and which have, in actual
fact, served to make the Bard of Avon as truly a fellow-citizen of the
Germans as of the Britons. Wilhelm's brother Friedrich had remained
but a year with him in Jena, before his removal to Berlin and his
establishment of the _Athenaeum_. Although separated from his brother,
Wilhelm's part in the conduct of the journal was almost