ic crudity and
formlessness. In surveying the field, it was likewise incumbent upon
him to demonstrate in what respects the classic drama differed from
the independently developed modern play, and his still useful
generalization regards antique art as limited, clear, simple, and
perfected--as typified by a work of sculpture; whereas romantic art
delights in mingling its subjects--as a painting, which embraces many
objects and looks out into the widest vistas. Apart from the clarity
and smoothness of these Vienna discourses, their lasting merit lies in
their searching observation of the import of dramatic works from their
inner soul, and in a most discriminating sense of the relation of all
their parts to an organic whole.

In 1818 Schlegel accepted a professorship at the University of Bonn,
in which place he exercised an incalculable influence upon one of the
rising stars of German literature, young Heinrich Heine, who derived
from him (if we may judge from his own testimony at the time; Heine's
later mood is a very different matter) an inspiration amounting to
captivation. The brilliant young student discovered here a stimulating
leader whose wit, finish, and elegance responded in full measure to
the hitherto unsatisfied cravings of his own nature. Although Heine
had become a very altered person at the time of writing his _Romantic
School_ (1836), this book throws a scintillating illumination upon
certain sides of Schlegel's temperament, and offers a vivid impression
of his living personality.

In these last decades of his life Schlegel turned, as had his younger
brother, to the inviting field of Sanskrit literature and philology,
and extracted large and important treasures which may still be
reckoned among mankind's valued resources. When all discount has been
made on the side of a lack of specific gravity in Wilhelm Schlegel's
character, it is only just to assert that throughout his long and
prolific life he wrought with incalculable effect upon the
civilization of modern Europe as a humanizer of the first importance.

Ludwig Tieck (1773-1853) is reckoned by many students of the Romantic
period to be the best and most lasting precipitate which the entire
movement has to show. For full sixty years a most prolific writer, and
occupied in the main with purely literary production, it is not
strange that he came to be regarded as the poetic mouthpiece of the
school.

His birth was in a middle-class family of Berlin.