to be found here and there in these leaves the shrewdest comments on the character of the Shakespearean heroes, and ever and anon we find that poetic power of perception which we ever admired in his earlier writings, and recognised with joy.
Ah, this Tieck, who was once a poet, and reckoned, if not among the highest, at least with those who had the highest aims, how low has he fallen since then! How miserably mournful is the negligently reeled off task, which he gives us annually, compared to the free outpourings of his muse from the early moonlit time of Fairy Tale! As dear as he once was, even so repulsive is he now—the powerless Neidhart,[1] who calumniates the inspired sorrows of German youth in his gossiping novels. Unto him are truly applicable those words of Shakespeare:
"For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds:
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds"[2]
Among the German commentators on the great poet, the late Franz Horn should not be omitted. His elucidations of Shakespeare are certainly the fullest, and are in five volumes. There is, indeed, in them the spirit of wit and intelligence, but it is a spirit so diluted and thinned down, that it is even less refreshing than the most spiritless narrow-mindedness. Strange that this man, who
