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Untitled Article
notes on Lessing , Jacobi , Novalis ,, the Schlegels ., Tlerk ,, &C , oil whom judgment is passed very summarily . Whether by Way of * rant ion , or as a recommendation ,, we do not know , but Mrs . Austin announces the writer as the attache to a Prussian embassy . Now she must know very well that Frederick Schlegel and Ludwig Tieck went over from the Protestant to the Catholic Church ; that Schlegel was the salaried advocate of the cabinet of Austria , as Milton was of the Commonwealth
Government ; and that Tieck commenced his career as the satirist of the court and literary coteries of Berlin : she might , therefore ., have suspected the unconscious influence of party feelings in her friend and assistant . At all events , she should not have exposed him to obvious ridicule , by first proclaiming his office , and then allowing him to write that it is , in every point of view , lamentable that a man of Schlegel ' s genius should have permitted himself to be regarded as a political agent . ' A strange suggestion from the pen of one in the school of diplomacy . It is the just pride of Prussians , that they can name as the political agents of their ^ overnment such men as IN iebuhr , Humboldt , &c . &c .
The objects of this gentleman ' s displeasure are the ' new school' of taste in Germany . Some remarks on his strictures may serve to convey juster notions concerning a literary sect of great and continued influence on the poetry and poetics oi Germany . The article on Frederick Schlegel ( vol . i . p . 298 ) is calculated to
mislead the uninformed reader even as to the personal relations of the parties . The school * were politic enough to ally themselves with Goethe * ( then Goethe must have been a party to the transaction ) , ' to express the highest admiration for him , and thus to secure a portion of the universal consideration he enjoyed . It was at this time that Goethe and Schiller published the famous u Xenien , " which gave the death-blow to their shallow and superficial adversaries . The Schlegelites now entrenched themselves behind the former of these two illustrious poets , though they renewed their attacks upon Schiller ; but this noble-minded man troubled himself not about such criticisms , and held on his simple , serene course . ' We will not dwell on the singular infelicity of these latter words ; for , assuredly , though Schiller be entitled to the character of noble-minded , simplicity and serenity were precisely the graces he did not possess . All his works , and the 1 fine bust of him by Dannecker , equally show this . Bur we
s'ispoct that the writer never saw the original ' Xenien * —i . c , the ' Musen Ahnanach / for 1797 ;—if lie had , he would have otherwise characterized this gay and wanton overflow of genius , which gave no death-blows , and was by no means directed against the shallow and superficial only . It was a playful attack on almost every one—Wieland himself did not escape ; and , in spite of the alliance , few were more successfully assailed than the Schlegels
Untitled Article
Characteristics of Qoetke * 187
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1834, page 187, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2631/page/27/
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