xenion], _munus
hospitale_; a title borrowed from Martial, who has thus
designated a series of personal epigrams in his Thirteenth
Book.]

The cavilling of these people, awkwardly contrasted with their
personal absurdity and insipidity, at length provoked the serious
notice of the two illustrious associates: the result was this German
Dunciad; a production of which the plan was, that it should comprise
an immense multitude of detached couplets, each conveying a complete
thought within itself, and furnished by one of the joint operators.
The subjects were of unlimited variety; 'the most,' as Schiller says,
'were wild satire, glancing at writers and writings, intermixed with
here and there a flash of poetical or philosophic thought.' It was at
first intended to provide about a thousand of these pointed
monodistichs; unity in such a work appearing to consist in a certain
boundlessness of size, which should hide the heterogeneous nature of
the individual parts: the whole were then to be arranged and
elaborated, till they had acquired the proper degree of consistency
and symmetry; each sacrificing something of its own peculiar spirit to
preserve the spirit of the rest. This number never was completed: and,
Goethe being now busy with his _Wilhelm Meister_, the project of
completing it was at length renounced; and the _Xenien_ were published
as unconnected particles, not pretending to constitute a whole. Enough
appeared to create unbounded commotion among the parties implicated:
the _Xenien_ were exclaimed against, abused, and replied to, on all
hands; but as they declared war not on persons but on actions; not
against Gleim, Nicolai, Manso, but against bad taste, dulness, and
affectation, nothing criminal could be sufficiently made out against
them.[31] The _Musen-Almanach_, where they appeared in 1797, continued
to be published till the time of Schiller's leaving Jena: the _Horen_
ceased some months before.

[Footnote 31: This is but a lame account of the far-famed
_Xenien_ and their results. See more of the matter in Franz
Horn's _Poesie und Beredtsamkeit_; in Carlyle's
_Miscellanies_ (i. 67); &c. (_Note of 1845._)]

The cooeperation of Goethe, which Schiller had obtained so readily in
these pursuits, was of singular use to him in many others. Both
possessing minds of the first order, yet constructed and trained in
the most opposite modes, each had much that was valuable to learn of
the oth