records regardless of their individual excellence. Some like Immermann
in _Oberhof_, win only once, but this is sufficient to insure
immortality. Some play and joust, run and wrestle with constancy and
grace; their records, just after starting and just before finishing,
are interesting, but in the end they are always defeated. And when
this is the case, posterity, lay and initiated, forgets their names
and concerns itself in no wise with their records, unless it be for
statistical purposes. It is to the latter class that Graf von
Loeben[1] belongs. For twenty-five years he was a perpetual,
loyal, chivalric contestant in the Olympic vale of poetry. His running
was interesting, but he never won; he never wrote a single thing that
everybody still reads for its own sake.

Aside from his connection with the Lorelei-matter, Graf von Loeben is,
therefore, at present, a wholly obscure, indeed unknown, Poet. The
large _Konversations-Lexikons_[2] of Meyer and Brockhaus say nothing
about him, unless it be in the discussion of some other poet with whom
he associated. Of the twenty best-known histories of German
literature, some of which treat nothing but the nineteenth century,
only six contain his name, and these simply mention him either as a
member of the Dresden group of pseudo-romanticists, or as one of those
_Afterromantiker_ who did yeoman service by way of bringing real
romanticism into disrepute through their unsubstantial, imitative, and
formless works. And this is true despite the fact that Loeben was an
exceedingly prolific writer and a very popular and influential man in.
his day. Concerning his personality, Muncker says: "Die Tiefe und
Wärme seines leicht erregbaren Gemüthes, seine Herzensreinheit, seine
schwärmerische Hingabe an alles Schöne und Edle sowie sein zartes
Tactgefühl erwarben ihm bei Freunden und Bekannten das Lob einer
schönen Seele in des Wortes schönster Bedeutung."[3]