divine harmony. The maturing Richter has come to see that idealism in
thought and feeling must be balanced by realism in action if the thinker
is to bear his part in the work of the world. The novel naturally falls
far short of realizing its vast design. Once more the parts are more
than the whole. Some descriptive passages are very remarkable and the
minor characters, notably Roquairol, the Mephistophelean Lovelace, are
more interesting than the hero or the heroine. The unfinished _Wild
Oats_ of 1804, follows a somewhat similar design. The story of Walt
and Vult, twin brothers, Love and Knowledge, offers a study in contrasts
between the dreamy and the practical, with much self-revelation of the
antinomy in the author's own nature. There is something here to recall
his early satires, much more to suggest Goethe's _Wilhelm Meister_.

While _Wild Oats_ was in the making, Richter with his young wife and
presently their first daughter, Emma, was making a sort of triumphal
progress among the court towns of Germany. He received about this time
from Prince Dalberg a pension, afterward continued by the King of
Bavaria. In 1804 the family settled in Bayreuth, which was to remain
Richter's not always happy home till his death in 1825.

The move to Bayreuth was marked by the appearance of _Introduction to
Esthetics_, a book that, even in remaining a fragment, shows the
parting of the ways. Under its frolicsome exuberance there is keen
analysis, a fine nobility of temper, and abundant subtle observation.
The philosophy was Herder's, and a glowing eulogy of him closes the
study. Its most original and perhaps most valuable section contains a
shrewd discrimination of the varieties of humor, and ends with a
brilliant praise of wit, as though in a recapitulating review of
Richter's own most distinctive contribution to German literature.