ootsteps of his father, went to
Jena, where he met the Schlegels; and here his brilliant but unsteady
literary career began.

In 1803 he married the talented Sophie Mareau, but three years later his
happiness was terminated by her death. His next matrimonial venture was,
however, a failure: an elopement in 1808 with the daughter of a
Frankfort banker was quickly followed by a divorce, and he thereafter
led the uncontrolled life of an errant poet. Among his early writings,
published under the pseudonym of 'Marie,' were several satires and
dramas and a novel entitled 'Godwi,' which he himself called "a romance
gone mad." The meeting with Achim von Arnim, who subsequently married
his sister Bettina, decided his fate: he embarked in literature once and
for all in close association with Von Arnim. Together they compiled a
collection of several hundred folk-songs of the sixteenth, seventeenth,
and eighteenth centuries, under the name of 'Des Knaben Wunderhorn' (The
Boy's Wonderhorn), 1806-1808. That so musical a people as the Germans
should be masters of lyric poetry is but natural,--every longing, every
impression, every impulse gushes into song; and in 'Des Knaben
Wunderhorn' we hear the tuneful voices of a naive race, singing what
they have seen or dreamed or felt during three hundred years. The work
is dedicated to Goethe, who wrote an almost enthusiastic review of it
for the Literary Gazette of Jena. "Every lover or master of musical
art," he says, "should have this volume upon his piano."

The 'Wunderhorn' was greeted by the German public with extraordinary
cordiality. It was in fact an epoch-making work, the pioneer in the new
field of German folk poetry. It carried out in a purely national spirit
the efforts which Herder had made in behalf of the folk-songs of all
peoples. It revealed the spirit of the time. 1806 was the year of the
battle of Jena, and Germany in her hour of deepest humiliation gave ear
to the encouraging voices from out her own past. "The editors of the
'Wunderhorn,'" said their friend Goerres, "have deserved of their
countrymen a civic crown, for having saved from destruction what yet
remained to be saved;" and on this civic crown the poets' laurels are
still green.

Brentano's contagious laughter may even now be heard re-echoing through
the pages of his book on 'The Philistine' (1811). His dramatic power is
evinced in the broadly conceived play 'Die Gruendung Prags' (The Founding
of Prague: 1815