of humor. It embraces everything, if
only it is poetic--from the greatest system of art which, in its turn,
includes many systems within itself, down to the sigh, the kiss, which
the musing child breathes forth in artless song. It can so be lost in
what it represents that it might be supposed that its one and all is
the characterization of poetic individuals of every type; and yet no
form has thus far arisen which would be equally adapted perfectly to
express the author's mind; so that many artists who desired only to
write a romance have more or less described themselves. Romantic
poetry alone can, like the epic, become a mirror of the entire world
that surrounds it, and a picture of its age. And yet, free from all
real and ideal interests, it, too, most of all, can soar, mid-way
between that which is presented and him who presents, on the wings of
poetic reflection; it can ever re-intensify this reflection and
multiply it as in an endless series of mirrors. It is capable of the
highest and of the most universal culture--not merely from within
outward, but also from without inward--since it organizes similarly
all parts of that which is destined to become a whole; thus the
prospect of an endlessly developing classicism is opened up to it.
Among the arts romantic poetry is what wit is to philosophy, and what
society, association, friendship, and love are in life. Other types of
poetry are finished, and can now be completely analyzed. The romantic
type of poetry is still in process of development; indeed, it is its
peculiar essence that it can eternally only be in process of
development, and that it can never be completed. It can be exhausted
by no theory, and only a divinatory criticism might dare to wish to
characterize its ideal. It alone is infinite, even as it alone is
free; and as its first law it recognizes that the arbitrariness of the
poet brooks no superior law. The romantic style of poetry is the only
one which is more than a style, and which is, as it were, poetry
itself; for in a certain sense all poetry is, or should be, romantic.

In the ancients every man has found what he needed or
desired--especially himself.

The French Revolution, Fichte's _Wissenschaftslehre_, and Goethe's
_Wilhelm Meister_ are the three greatest tendencies of the age.
Whoever is offended at this juxtaposition, and whoever can deem no
revolution important which is not boisterous and material, has not yet
risen to the broad and loft