written by the two brothers, Friedrich furnishing the most aggressive
contributions, more notably being responsible for the epigrammatic
_Fragments_, which became, in their, detached brevity and
irresponsibility, a very favorite model for the form of Romantic
doctrine. "I can talk daggers," he had said when younger, and he wrote
the greater part of these, though some were contributed by Wilhelm
Schlegel, by his admirable wife Caroline, by Schleiermacher, and
Novalis. The root of this form lies in French thinking and
expression--especially the short deliverances of Chamfort, the
epigrammatist of the French Revolution. These Orphic-apocalyptic
sentences are a sort of foundation for a new Romantic bible. They are
absolutely disconnected, they show a mixture and interpenetration of
different spheres of thought and observation, with an unexpected
deference to the appraisals of classic antiquity. Their range is
unlimited: philosophy and psychology, mathematics and esthetics,
philosophy and natural science, sociology and society, literature and
the theatre are all largely represented in their scope.

Friedrich Schlegel's epigrammatic wit is the direct precursor of
Heine's clever conceits in prose: one is instantly reminded of him by
such _Athenæum_-fragments as "Kant, the Copernicus of Philosophy;"
"Plato's philosophy is a worthy preface to the religion of the
future;" "So-called 'happy marriages' are related to love, as a
correct poem to an improvised song;" "In genuine prose all words
should be printed in italics;" "Catholicism is naïve Christianity;
Protestantism is sentimental." The sheer whimsicality of phrase seems
to be at times its own excuse for being, as in an explanation of
certain elegiac poems as "the sensation of misery in the contemplation
of the silliness of the relations of banality to craziness;" but there
are many sentences which go deep below the surface--none better