was
likewise beginning to extend its labours to original dramatic
composition. From the universality of sympathies proclaimed by this
school, to whose leaders Germany owed its classical translation of
Shakespeare,[291] and an introduction to the dramatic literatures of so
many ages and nations,[292] a variety of new dramatic impulses might be
expected; while much might be hoped for the future of the national drama
(especially in its mixed and comic species) from the alliance between
poetry and real life which they preached, and which some of them sought
personally to exemplify. But in practice universality presented itself
as peculiarity or even as eccentricity; and in the end the divorce
between poetry and real life was announced as authoritatively as their
union had been. Outside this school, the youthful talent of Th. Kurner,
whose early promise as a dramatist[293] might perhaps have ripened into
a fulness enabling him not unworthily to occupy the seat left vacant by
his father's friend Schiller, was extinguished by a patriotic death. The
efforts of M. von Collin (1779-1824) in the direction of the historical
drama remained isolated attempts. But of the leaders of the romantic
school, A. W.[294] and F. von Schlegel[295] contented themselves with
frigid classicalities; and L. Tieck, in the strange alembic of his
_Phantasus_, melted legend and fairy-tale, novel and drama,[296] poetry
and satire, into a compound, enjoyable indeed, but hardly so in its
entirety, or in many of its parts, to any but the literary mind.

Later dramatists.

F. de La Motte Fouque infused a spirit of poetry into the chivalry
drama. Klemens Brentano was a fantastic dramatist unsuited to the stage.
Here a feeble outgrowth of the romanticists, the "destiny dramatists" Z.
Werner[297]--the most original of the group--A. Mullner,[298] and Baron
C. E. v. Houwald,[299] achieved a temporary _furore_; and it was with an
attempt in the same direction[300] that the Austrian dramatist F.
Grillparzer began his long career. He is assuredly, what he pronounced
himself to be, the foremost of the later dramatic poets of Germany,
unless that tribute be thought due to the genius of H. von Kleist, who
in his short life produced, besides other works, a romantic drama[301]
and a rustic comedy[302] of genuine merit, and an historical tragedy of
singular originality and power.[303] Grillparzer's long series of plays
includes poetic dramas on classical themes[304]