as important
as Friedrich's, and, in effect, they conducted the whole significant
enterprise out of their own resources. The opening essay, _The
Languages_, is Wilhelm's, and properly, for at this time he was by far
the better versed in philological and literary matters. His cultural
acquisitions, his tremendous spoils of reading, were greater, and his
judgment more trustworthy. In all his work in the _Athenaeum_ he
presents a seasoned, many-sided sense of all poetical, phonetic and
musical values: rhythm, color, tone, the lightest breath and aroma of
an elusive work of art. One feels that Wilhelm overhauls the whole
business of criticism, and clears the field for coming literary
ideals. Especially telling is his demolition of Klopstock's violent
"Northernism," to which he opposes a far wider philosophy of grammar
and style. The universality of poetry, as contrasted with a narrow
"German" clumsiness, is blandly defended, and a joyous abandon is
urged as something better than the meticulous anxiety of chauvinistic
partisanism. In all his many criticisms of literature there are charm,
wit, and elegance, an individuality and freedom in the reviewer, who,
if less penetrating than his brother, displays a far more genial
breadth and humanity, and more secure composure. His translations,
more masterly than those of Friedrich, carry out Herder's demand for
complete absorption and re-creation.

In 1801 Schlegel went to Berlin, where for three successive winters he
lectured on art and literature. His subsequent translations of
Calderon's plays (1803-1809) and of Romance lyrics served to
naturalize a large treasure of southern poetry upon German soil. In
1804, after having separated from his wife, he became attached to the
household of Madame de Stael, and traversed Europe with her. It is
through this association that she was enabled to write her brilliant
work, _On Germany_. In 1808 he delivered a series of lectures on
dramatic art and literature in Vienna, which enjoyed enormous
popularity, and are still reckoned the crowning achievement of his
career; perhaps the most significant of these is his discourse on
Shakespeare. In the first volume of the _Athenaeum_, Shakespeare's
universality had already been regarded as "the central point of
romantic art." As Romanticist, it was Schlegel's office to portray the
independent development of the modern English stage, and to defend
Shakespeare against the familiar accusations of barbar