As to his poetic ability from the point of view of quantity, one can
only marvel at the amount he produced in the time at his disposal; his
creative works cover all types and sorts of literature.[4] He is best
known for his numerous poems and his _magnus opus_, _Guido_, a novel
of 360 pages, written under the pen-name of "Isidorus Orientalis," and
intended as a continuation of Novalis' _Ofterdingen_; he used Tieck's
notes for this purpose. He wrote also a great number of letters,
between 60 and 70 elaborate reviews, and some critical essays, the
best of which seems to be his commentary to Madame de Staël's _De
l'Allemagne_, while he translated from Anacreon, Dante, Guarini,
Horace, Ovid, Petrarch, Vergil, and others, and left a number of
fragments including the outline of a pretentious novel of which
Heinrich von Veldeke, whom he looked upon as "der Heilige des
Enthusiasmus," was to be the hero. And he was, incidentally, an
omnivorous reader, for, as he naïvely said:

Viele Bücher muss ich kennen,
Denn die Menschen kenn' ich gern.[5]

As to his originality, another confession is significant:

Ja, es gibt nur wenig Leute,
Deren Schüler ich nicht bin.[6]

No attempt, however, has as yet been made at even an eclectic edition
of his numerous finished works, a few of which are still unpublished,
many of which are now rare.[7]

As to his standing with his literary contemporaries, Eichendorff