[Illustration: #FRIEDRICH SCHLEGEL# E. HADER]

Then, too, it marks a curious stage in the development of the
younger Schlegel, a really profound thinker and one of the notable men
of his day. This explains why a considerable portion of the much
discussed book is here presented for the first time in an English
dress.

The earliest writings of Friedrich Schlegel--he was born in
1772--relate to Greek literature, a field which he cultivated with
enthusiasm and with ample learning. In particular he was interested in
what his Greek poets and philosophers had to say of the position of
women in society; of the _hetairai_ as the equal and inspiring
companions of men; of a more or less refined sexual love, untrammeled
by law and convention, as the basis of a free, harmonious and
beautiful existence. Among other things, he seems to have been much
impressed by Plato's notion that the _genus homo_ was one before it
broke up into male and female, and that sexual attraction is a desire
to restore the lost unity. In a very learned essay _On Diotima_,
published in 1797--Diotima is the woman of whose relation to Socrates
we get a glimpse in Plato's _Symposium_--there is much that
foreshadows _Lucinda_. Let two or three sentences suffice. "What is
uglier than the overloaded femininity, what is more loathesome than
the exaggerated masculinity, that rules in our customs, our opinions,
and even in our better art?" "Precisely the tyrannical vehemence of
the man, the flabby self-surrender of the woman, is in itself an ugly
exaggeration." "Only the womanhood that is independent, only the
manhood that is gentle, is good and beautiful."