enstein_ is the story
of the struggle of Ulrich of Wuertemberg against the Suabian League and
gives us a Romantic picture of the Duke which is not justified by the
facts. It was, however, an attempt to vitalize history and owes its
origin to the Romantic longing for fatherland. Its immediate impulse
among Scott's novels was _Quentin Durward_ and, like _Quentin
Durward_, it has a double plot--the sentimental young lovers and the
romantic ruler. It also shows all the pageantry of Romanticism and the
naive technique of the beginning of an art-form in the early stages of
a new literary movement.

Friedrich Rueckert (1788-1866) was prevented from taking part in the
Wars of Liberation by poor health, but added his _Sonnets in Harness_
to the poetry of the period. These sonnets had no such stirring effect
as the poems of Koerner, not only because of their literary form, but
because, in spite of their unquestioned belligerency, they had not the
tone of religious conviction against the enemy which characterized
the verses of Arndt and the rest. Other poems, like _Koerner's Spirit_,
show how deeply Rueckert felt himself in sympathy with his times; his
reward has been to have added a very large number of poems to the
every-day repertory of Germany. His _Barbarossa_ is found in almost
every reading book.

The cycle _Love's Spring_ is an imperishable monument to his love for
Louisa Wiethaus. But too many of the poems are dedicated to her and
too many inconsequential moods relating to her are recorded. In spite
of this, Rueckert has resolved the discord between every-day life and
poetry with the simplest poetic apparatus. Rueckert has also enriched
the German language with a mass of gnomic poetry, to the writing of
which he was led by his Oriental studies. This gnomic poetry (_The
Wisdom of the Brahman_) has been aptly said to recall at times the
ripeness of the mature Goethe and at other times--Polonius. Rueckert
was one of the first to introduce the Orient and its verse-forms
into German literature. Here the influence of Friedrich Schlegel
is unmistakable. He was also a master in the reproduction of the
complicated metres of the East and South. Though many of these
verse-forms have refused to become indigenous in Germany, a large
number of new words invented by Rueckert have had poetical vogue, and
even where the new formations were too bold or too _recherche_, they
accustomed German ears to a new idea-presentation through sound.