ke. 'KOTZEBUE, with his
frivolous fertility, is more respectable in my eyes than that barren
generation, who, though always limping themselves, are never content with
bawling out to those who have legs--STOP!'"[C]

[Footnote C: Briefwechse Zwischen GOETHE und ZELTER. Berlin, 1834. Vol. vi.
p. 318.]

That there is some truth in these severe remarks, the paltry personal
squibs in the _Leipzig Almanach_ for 1832, which called them forth, with
regard to Augustus Schlegel at least, sufficiently show: but there is a
general truth involved in them also, which the worthy fraternity of us
who, in this paper age, wield the critical pen, would do well to take
seriously to heart; and it is this, that great poets and philosophers have
a natural aversion as much to be praised and patronized, as to be rated
and railed at by great critics; and very justly so. For as a priest is a
profane person, who makes use of his sacred office mainly to show his gods
about, (so to speak,) that people may stare at them, and worship him; so a
critic who forgets his inferior position in reference to creative genius,
so far as to assume the air of legislation and dictatorship, when
explanation and commentary are the utmost he can achieve, has himself only
to blame, if, after his noisy trumpet has blared itself out, he reaps only
ridicule from the really witty, and reproof from the substantially wise.
Not that a true philosopher or poet shrinks from, and does not rather
invite, true criticism. The evil is not in the deed, but in the manner of
doing it. Here, as in all moral matters, the tone of the thing is the soul
of the thing. And in this view, the blame which Fichte and Goethe attach
to the Schlegels, amounts substantially to this, not that in their
critical vocation the romantic brothers wanted either learning or judgment
generally, but that they were too ambitious, too pretenceful, too
dictatorial that they must needs talk on all subjects, and always as if
they were the masters and the lions, when they were only the servants and
the exhibitors; that they made a serious business of that which is often
best done when it is done accidentally, viz. discussing what our
neighbours are about, instead of doing something ourselves; and that they
attempted to raise up an independent literary reputation, nay, and even to
found a new poetical school, upon mere criticism--an attempt which, with
all due respect for Aristarchus and the Alexandrians, is, and remai