enough ground to support an entire philosophy of living.
All the motives of the old court-lyric are well represented--the
torments and rewards of love, the charm of spring, the refinements of
courtly breeding--and the sophisticated metrical forms are handled
with great virtuosity. Schiller, it is true, compared them to the
chatter of sparrows, and Goethe also paid his compliments to the
"sing-song of the Minnesingers," but it was this same little book
which first gave young Jakob Grimm the wish to become acquainted with
these poets in their original form.

That eminently "Romantic" play, _Emperor Octavian_ (1804), derived
from a familiar medieval chap-book, lyric in tone and loose in form,
is a pure epitome of the movement, and the high-water mark of Tieck's
apostleship and service. Here Tieck shows his intimate sense of the
poetry of inanimate nature; ironic mockery surrenders completely to
religious devotion; the piece is bathed in--

The light that never was on sea or land,
The consecration and the poet's dream.

It is in the prologue to this play that personified Romance declares
her descent from Faith, her father, and Love, her mother, and
introduces the action by the command:

"Moonshine-lighted magic night
Holding every sense in thrall;
World, which wondrous tales recall,
Rise, in ancient splendors bright!"

During a year's residence in Italy Tieck applied himself chiefly to
reading old-German manuscripts, in the Library of the Vatican, and
wavered upon the edge of a decision to devote himself to Germanic
philology.

[Illustration: #A CHAPEL IN THE FOREST# MORITZ VON SCHWIND]

The loss to science is not serious, for Tieck hardly possessed the
grasp and security which could have made him a peer of the great
pioneers in this field. From the time of his leaving for Italy,
Tieck's importance for the development of Romanticism becomes
comparatively negligible.

After a roving existence of years, during which he lived in Vienna,
Munich, Prague and London, he made a settled home in Dresden. Here he
had an enviable place in the very considerable literary and artistic
group, and led an existence of almost suspiciously "reasonable"
well-being, from a Romantic view-point. The "dramatic evenings" at his
home, in which he read plays aloud before a brilliant gathering, were
a feature of social life. For seventeen years he had an influential
position as "dramaturg" of the Royal Theatre, it being his dut