remembered, perhaps, than the dictum, "The French Revolution, Fichte's
_Doctrine of Science_, and Goethe's _Wilhelm Meister_ are the greatest
symptoms of our age."

In the _Athenæum_ both brothers give splendid testimony to their
astonishing and epoch-making gift in transferring classical and
Romance metrical forms into elegant, idiomatic German; they give
affectionate attention to the insinuating beauty of elegiac verse, and
secure charming effects in some of the most alien Greek forms, not to
mention _terza rima, ottava rima_, the Spanish gloss, and not a few
very notable sonnets.

The literary criticisms of the _Athenæum_ are characteristically free
and aggressive, particularly in the frequent sneers at the flat
"homely" poetry of sandy North Germany. At the end of the second
volume, the "faked" _Literary Announcements_ are as daring as any
attempts of American newspaper humor. When the sum of the contents and
tendency of the journal is drawn, it is a strange mixture of
discriminating philosophy, devoted Christianity, Greek sensuousness,
and pornographic mysticism. There is a never-ending esthetic coquetry
with the flesh, with a serious defense of some very Greek practices
indeed. All of this is thoroughly typical of the spirit of the
Romantic school, and it is by no means surprising that Friedrich's
first book, the novel _Lucinda_ (1799), should stand as the supreme
unsavory classic in this field. That excellent divine, Schleiermacher,
exalted this document of the Rights of the Flesh as "a pæan of Love,
in all its completeness," but it is a feeble, tiresome performance,
absolutely without structure, quite deserving the saucy epigram on
which it was pilloried by the wit of the time: