hilst
in this distressing condition, he began the _Elixiere des Teufels_, the
first volume of which was completed in less than a month. This work he
intended to be an illustration, or illustrative exposition of his own
notions, of "a man who even at his birth was an object of contention
between the powers divine and demoniacal, and his tortuous wonderful
life was intended to exhibit in a clear and distinct light those secret
and mysterious combinations between the human spirit and all those
Higher Principles which are concealed in all Nature, and only flash out
now and again--and these flashes we call chance." That he succeeded in
his purpose cannot be maintained. His own individuality was too strong
for him: he failed to handle his subject from a sufficiently
independent standpoint. He was not the artist creating a work that
was quite outside himself; he was rather the silk-worm spinning his
entangling threads round about himself. The book can scarcely be
read without shuddering; the dark maze of humane motion and human
weakness--a mingling of poetry, sentimentality, rollicking humour, wild
remorse, stern gloom, blind delusion, dark insanity, over all which is
thrown a veil steeped in the fantastic and the horrible--all this
detracts from the artistic merits of the work, but invests it with a
corresponding proportion of interest as a revealer of some of the
deepest secrets and hidden phases of the human soul, if one only has
the courage to wade through it. The dreamy mystifications and the wild
insanity and mystic passion of Brother Medardus are not unrelieved by
scenes and characters which bear the stamp of bright poetic beauty
and rich comic humour (_e.g._, the character of the Abbess of the
Cistercian convent, the _jaeger_, the description of the monastery, the
scenes with Mr. Ewson and Belcampo _alias_ Schoenfeld).

For some reason which cannot be quite made out for certain, either in
consequence of his continued illness or because of a quarrel with
Seconda, Hoffmann found himself once more adrift in the world without
an anchor to hold fast by in February, 1814. In striking contrast with
his treatment by the Bamberg public, his talents as director whilst
with Seconda's company were fully and adequately appreciated, both by
the artistes and the orchestra, as well as by the general public. This
may have been due to two causes; first, the actors and actresses were
not embarrassed by his directing from the pianoforte i