vel, called _Grandison the Second_, which
first appeared in 1760. In 1763 he was made Pagenhofmeister (governor
of the pages) at the court of Weimar, and some years afterwards
professor at the Gymnasium of that place. A considerable period
elapsed before he again appeared as an author, when he satirised
Lavater in a novel called the _Physiognomical Travels_. This had an
immense success, encouraged by which, he proceeded to collect materials
for his _Popular Tales of the Germans_. This collection he made in a
singular manner. Sometimes he would gather round him a crowd of old
women with their spinning-wheels and listen to their gossip, sometimes
he would hear the stories of children from the street. On one
occasion, his wife, returning from a visit, was surprised, as she
opened the room-door, by a cloud of tobacco smoke, through which she at
last discovered her husband sitting with an old soldier, who was
telling him all sorts of tales. On the stories collected by him thus
strangely, and afterwards narrated with great humour, though with
occasional vulgarity, the fame of Musaeus chiefly depends. They were
written under the assumed name of Runkel, and were designed, according
to the author's own statement, to put an end to the taste for
sentimentality. He began a new series of tales called _Ostrich
Feathers_, of which he only completed one volume. On the 28th of
October, 1787, he died of a polypus in the heart, and a handsome
monument was erected to him by an unknown hand. His _Popular Tales_
were, at the request of his widow, re-edited after his death by the
celebrated Wieland, and this is the edition now current. The story of
_Libussa_, which is taken from the _Popular Tales_ is founded on the
Latin history of Bohemia, by Dubravius, and the work of AEneas Sylvius,
_De Boliemorum gestis et origine_. The fables which are uttered by the
personages will be found in Dubravius.

The name of Jean Paul Friedrich Richter is almost as well known here as
that of Goethe and Schiller; but the eccentricity of his style, and the
quantity of local allusions with which he abounds, will probably for
ever prevent his works from being extensively read out of Germany.
Jean Paul was born at Wimsiedel, in the Baireuth territory, in the
early part of 1763, and died at Baireuth on the 14th of November, 1825.
He first wrote under the signature of "Jean Paul" only, this he
extended to "J. P. F. Halsus," and it was to his _Quintus Fix