life-work; while mastering the body of ancient literature, he was
assimilating, with much the same sort of eagerness, the philosophical
systems of Kant and Fichte. His first notable publication was an
esthetic-philosophic essay, in the ample style of Schiller's later
discourses, _Concerning the Study of Greek Poetry_. He found in the
Greeks of the age of Sophocles the ideal of a fully developed
humanity, and exhibited throughout the discussion a remarkable mastery
of the whole field of classical literature. Just at this time he
removed to Jena to join his older brother, Wilhelm, who was connected
with Schiller's monthly _The Hours_ and his annual _Almanac of the
Muses_. By a strange condition of things Friedrich was actively
engaged at the moment in writing polemic reviews for the organs of
Reichardt, one of Schiller's most annoying rivals in literary
journalism; these reviews became at once noticeable for their depth
and vigorous originality, particularly that one which gave a new and
vital characterization of Lessing. In 1797 he moved to Berlin, where
he gathered a group about him, including Tieck, and in this way
established the external and visible body of the Romantic School,
which the brilliant intellectual atmosphere of the Berlin salons, with
their wealth of gifted and cultured women, did much to promote. In
1799 both he and Tieck joined the Romantic circle at Jena.

In Berlin he published in 1798 the first volume of the _Athenæum_,
that journal which in a unique way represents the pure Romantic ideal
at its actual fountain-head. It survived for three years, the last
volume appearing in 1800. Its aim was to "collect all rays of human
culture into one focus," and, more particularly, to confute the claim
of the party of "enlightenment" that the earlier ages of human
development were poor and unworthy of respect on the part of the
closing eighteenth century. A very large part of the journal was