ard vocation
to do so by Schlegel may yet do so in Germany; if there be any in these
busy times, even there, who may have leisure to applaud such a work. To
us in Britain it may suffice to have essayed to exhibit the fruit and the
final results, without attempting curiously to dissect the growth of
Schlegel's criticism.

[Footnote I: RAHEL'S _Umgang_. FRIEDRICH VON SCHLEGEL, vol. i. p. 325.]

The outward fates of this great critic's life may be found, like every
thing else, in the famous "Conversations Lexicon;" but as very few
readers of these remarks, or students of the history of ancient and
modern literature, may be in a condition to refer to that most useful
Cyclopaedia of literary reference, we may here sketch the main lines of
Schlegel's biography from the sources supplied by Mr Robertson,[J] in the
preface to his excellent translation of the "Lectures on the philosophy
of history." Whatever we take from a different source will be distinctly
noted.

[Footnote J: The authorities given by Mr Robertson are, (1.) _La
Biographie des Vivans, Paris_. (2.) An article for July 1829, in the
French _Globe_, apparently an abridgement of the account of Schlegel in
the Conversations Lexicon. (3.) A fuller and truer account of the author,
in a French work published several years ago at Paris, entitled "Memoirs
of distinguished Converts." (4.) Some facts in _Le Catholique_, a
journal, edited at Paris from 1826 to 1829, by Schlegel's friend, the
Baron d'Echstein.]

The brothers Schlegel belonged to what Frederick in his lectures calls the
third generation of modern German literature. The whole period from 1750
to 1800, being divided into three generations, the first comprehends all
those whose period of greatest activity falls into the first decade, from
1750 to 1760, and thereabout. Its chief heroes are Wieland, Klopstock, and
Lessing. These men of course were all born before the year 1730. The
second generation extends from 1770 to 1790, and thereabouts, and presents
a development, which stands to the first in the relation of summer to
spring--Goethe and Schiller are the two names by which it will be sent
down to posterity. Of these the one was born in 1749, and the other in
1759. Then follows that third generation to which Schlegel himself
belongs, and which is more generally known in literary history as the era
of the Romantic school--a school answering both in chronology, and in many
points of character also, to what we