religious spirit. It is this book which Heine had in mind when he
ridiculed Tieck's "silly plunge into medieval naïveté." Overbeck and
Cornelius in Rome, with their pre-Raphaelite, old-German and
catholicizing tendencies, became the leaders of a productive school.
Goethe scourged it for its "mystic-religious" aspirations, and
demanded a more vigorous, cheerful and progressive outlook for German
painting.

Having already formed a personal acquaintance with Friedrich Schlegel
in Berlin, Tieck moved to Jena in 1799, came into very close relations
with Fichte, the Schlegels, and Novalis, and continued to produce
works in the spirit of the group, notably the tragedy _Life and Death
of Saint Genoveva_ (1800). His most splendid literary feat at this
period, however, was the translation of _Don Quixote_ (1799-1801), a
triumph over just those subtle difficulties which are well-nigh
insurmountable, a rendering which went far beyond any mere literalness
of text, and reproduced the very tone and aura of its original.

In 1803 he published a graceful little volume of typical
_Minnelieder_, renewed from the middle high-German period. The note of
the book (in which Runge's copperplate outlines are perhaps as
significant as the poems) is spiritualized sex-love: the utterance of
its fragrance and delicacy, its unique place in the universe as a
pathway to the Divine--a point of view to which the modern mind is
prone to take some exceptions, considering a religion of erotics
hardly firm enough ground to support an entire philosophy of living.
All the motives of the old court-lyric are well represented--the
torments and rewards of love, the charm of spring, the refinements of
courtly breeding--and the sophisticated metrical forms are handled
with great virtuosity. Schiller, it is true, compared them to the