Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature (tr John Black) | Page 5

life a sincere and affectionate esteem,
whose ardour neither time nor distance could diminish. The filial
affection of her favourite son soothed the declining years of his mother,
and lightened the anxieties with which the critical and troubled state of
the times alarmed her old age. His further education was carried on by
a private tutor, who prepared him for the grammar-school at Hanover,
where he was distinguished both for his unremitting application, to
which he often sacrificed the hours of leisure and recreation, and for the
early display of a natural gift for language, which enabled him
immediately on the close of his academic career to accept a tutorial
appointment, which demanded of its holder a knowledge not only of
the classics but also of English and French. He also displayed at a very
early age a talent for poetry, and some of his juvenile extempore

effusions were remarkable for their easy versification and rhythmical
flow. In his eighteenth year he was called upon to deliver in the
Lyceum of his native city, the anniversary oration in honour of a royal
birthday. His address on this occasion excited an extraordinary
sensation both by the graceful elegance of the style and the interest of
the matter, written in hexameters. It embraced a short history of poetry
in Germany, and was relieved and animated with many judicious and
striking illustrations from the earliest Teutonic poets.
He now proceeded to the University of Göttingen as a student of
theology, which science, however, he shortly abandoned for the more
congenial one of philology. The propriety of this charge he amply
attested by his Essay on the Geography of Homer, which displayed
both an intelligent and comprehensive study of this difficult branch of
classical archaeology.
At Göttingen he lived in the closest intimacy with Heyne, for whose
_Virgil_, in 1788 he completed an index; he also became acquainted
with the celebrated Michaelis. It was here too that he formed the
friendship of Bürger, to whose _Academie der Schönen Redekünste_,
he contributed his _Ariadne_, and an essay on Dante. The kindred
genius of Bürger favourably influenced his own mind and tastes, and
moved him to make the first known attempt to naturalize the Italian
sonnet in Germany.
Towards the end of his university career he combined his own studies
with the private instruction of a rich young Englishman, born in the
East Indies, and at the close of it accepted the post of tutor to the only
son of Herr Muilmann, the celebrated Banker of Amsterdam. In this
situation he gained universal respect and esteem, but after three years
he quitted it to enter upon a wider sphere of literary activity. On his
return to his native country he was elected Professor in the University
of Jena. Schlegel's residence in this place, which may truly be called
the classic soil of German literature, as it gained him the acquaintance
of his eminent contemporaries Schiller and Goethe, marks a decisive
epoch in the formation of his intellectual character. At this date he
contributed largely to the _Horen_, and also to Schiller's
_Musen-Almanach_, and down to 1799 was one of the most fertile
writers in the _Allgemeinen Literatur-Zeitung_ of Jena. It was here,
also, that he commenced his translations of Shakspeare, (9 vols., Berlin,

1797-1810,) which produced a salutary effect on the taste and judgment
of his countrymen, and also on Dramatic Art and theatrical
representation in Germany. Notwithstanding the favourable reception
of this work he subsequently abandoned it, and on the publication of a
new edition, in 1825, he cheerfully consigned to Tieck the revision of
his own labours, and the completion of the yet untranslated pieces.
Continuing attached to the University of Jena, where the dignity of
Professorship was associated with that of Member of the Council, he
now commenced a course of lectures on Aesthetics, and joined his
brother Frederick in the editorship of the _Athenaeum_, (3 vols., Berlin,
1796-1800,) an Aesthetico-critical journal, intended, while observing a
rigorous but an impartial spirit of criticism, to discover and foster every
grain of a truly vital development of mind. It was also during his
residence at Jena that he published the first edition of his Poems,
among which the religious pieces and the Sonnets on Art were greatly
admired and had many imitators. To the latter years of his residence at
Jena, which may be called the political portion of Schlegel's literary
career, belongs the _Gate of Honour for the Stage-President
Von-Kotzebue_, (_Ehrenpforte fur den Theater Präsidenten von
Kotzebue_, 1800,) an ill-natured and much- censured satire in reply to
Kotzebue's attack, entitled the Hyperborean Ass (_Hyperboreischen
Esee_). At this time he also collected several of his own and brother
Frederick's earlier and occasional contributions to various periodicals,
and these, together with the hitherto unpublished dissertations on
Bürger's works,