SCHLEGEL, with a Memoir of the Author, by JAMES BURTON ROBERTSON, Esq. In
two vols. London, 1835. Reprinted in America, 1841.

4. _Philosophie des Lebens_ von FRIEDRICH SCHLEGEL. Wien, 1828.]


"I would not have you pin your faith too closely to these SCHLEGELS," said
FICHTE one day at Berlin to VARNHAGEN VON ENSE, or one of his friends, in
his own peculiar, cutting, commanding style--"I would not have you pin
your faith to these Schlegels. I know them well. The elder brother wants
depth, and the younger clearness. One good thing they both have--that is,
hatred of mediocrity; but they have also both a great jealousy of the
highest excellence; and, therefore, where they can neither be great
themselves nor deny greatness in others, they, out of sheer desperation,
fall into an outrageous strain of eulogizing. Thus they have bepraised
Goethe, and thus they have bepraised me."[B]

[Footnote B: _Denkwürdigkeiten_ von K. A. VARNHAGEN VON ENSE. Mannheim,
1837. Vol. ii. p. 60.]

Some people, from pride, don't like to be praised at all; and all
sensible people, from propriety, don't like to be praised extravagantly:
whether from pride or from propriety, or from a mixture of both,
philosopher Fichte seemed to have held in very small account the
patronage with which he was favoured at the hands of the twin aesthetical
dictators, the Castor and Pollux of romantic criticism; and, strange
enough also, poet Goethe, who had worship enough in his day, and is said
to have been somewhat fond of the homage, chimes in to the same tune
thus: "the Schlegels, with all their fine natural gifts, have been
unhappy men their life long, both the one and the other; they wished both