breadth and humanity, and more secure composure. His translations,
more masterly than those of Friedrich, carry out Herder's demand for
complete absorption and re-creation.

In 1801 Schlegel went to Berlin, where for three successive winters he
lectured on art and literature. His subsequent translations of
Calderon's plays (1803-1809) and of Romance lyrics served to
naturalize a large treasure of southern poetry upon German soil. In
1804, after having separated from his wife, he became attached to the
household of Madame de Staël, and traversed Europe with her. It is
through this association that she was enabled to write her brilliant
work, _On Germany_. In 1808 he delivered a series of lectures on
dramatic art and literature in Vienna, which enjoyed enormous
popularity, and are still reckoned the crowning achievement of his
career; perhaps the most significant of these is his discourse on
Shakespeare. In the first volume of the _Athenæum_, Shakespeare's
universality had already been regarded as "the central point of
romantic art." As Romanticist, it was Schlegel's office to portray the
independent development of the modern English stage, and to defend
Shakespeare against the familiar accusations of barbaric crudity and
formlessness. In surveying the field, it was likewise incumbent upon
him to demonstrate in what respects the classic drama differed from
the independently developed modern play, and his still useful
generalization regards antique art as limited, clear, simple, and
perfected--as typified by a work of sculpture; whereas romantic art
delights in mingling its subjects--as a painting, which embraces many
objects and looks out into the widest vistas. Apart from the clarity
and smoothness of these Vienna discourses, their lasting merit lies in
their searching observation of the import of dramatic works from their
inner soul, and in a most discriminating sense of the relation of all