before, to have written a great tragedy, entitled Leubald und
Adelaide.

The manuscript of this drama has unfortunately been lost, but I
can still see it clearly in my mind's eye. The handwriting was
most affected, and the backward-sloping tall letters with which I
had aimed at giving it an air of distinction had already been
compared by one of my teachers to Persian hieroglyphics. In this
composition I had constructed a drama in which I had drawn
largely upon Shakespeare's Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth, and
Goethe's Gotz van Berlichingen. The plot was really based on a
modification of Hamlet, the difference consisting in the fact
that my hero is so completely carried away by the appearance of
the ghost of his father, who has been murdered under similar
circumstances, and demands vengeance, that he is driven to
fearful deeds of violence; and, with a series of murders on his
conscience, he eventually goes mad. Leubald, whose character is a
mixture of Hamlet and Harry Hotspur, had promised his father's
ghost to wipe from the face of the earth the whole race of
Roderick, as the ruthless murderer of the best of fathers was
named. After having slain Roderick himself in mortal combat, and
subsequently all his sons and other relations who supported him,
there was only one obstacle that prevented Leubald from
fulfilling the dearest wish of his heart, which was to be united
in death with the shade of his father: a child of Roderick's was
still alive. During the storming of his castle the murderer's
daughter had been carried away into safety by a faithful suitor,
whom she, however, detested. I had an irresistible impulse to
call this maiden 'Adelaide.' As even at that early age I was a
great enthusiast for everything really German, I can only account