ly and stolidly as so many confirmed drinkers do. Hitzig,
who was deeply grieved at this downward course of his friend and at the
estrangement it had brought about between them, contrived to draw him
away from his demoralising companions of the wine-shop for at least one
night a week. On that evening there was a small gathering at Hoffmann's
house, moderation being strictly enjoined as one of the chief
regulations of the meeting. This small circle, which consisted of
Hoffmann, Hitzig, Contessa, and Koreff,[24] and an occasional friend or
two whom one of them introduced, called itself "The Serapion Brethren,"
this title being adopted from the fact that the first meeting was held
on the night of the anniversary of that saint, according to Frau
Hoffmann's Polish almanac. It is interesting to remark that amongst
these occasional guests figures the great Danish poet Oehlenschlaeger in
the year 1816. In a letter written to Hoffmann on March 26th, 1821,
recommending a young fellow-countryman to him, Oehlenschlaeger says,
"Dip him also a little in the magic sea of your humour, respected
friend, and teach him how a man can be a philosopher and seer of the
world under the ironical mantle of the mad-house, and what is more an
amiable man as well;" and he subscribes himself, "A. Oehlenschlaeger,
Serapion Brother."

In 1817 was published the collection of tales called _Die Nachtstuecke_,
embracing _Der Sandmann_ (The Sand-man) and _Das Majorat_ (The Entail),
which reproduce personages and experiences belonging to the years in
Koenigsberg; _Die Jesuitenkirche_ and _Das steinerne Herz_, going back
to his life in Glogau; _Das Geluebde_, built upon a story related by his
wife as connected with her native town of Posen; _Das Sanctus_, which was
suggested by an incident in Berlin soon after Hoffmann's arrival there;
and _das oede Haus_, this last due to the way in which he was
incessantly haunted by the appearance of a closed house in the _Unter
den Linden_. These were mostly written in 1816 and 1817; and to them he
added _Ignas Denner_, which possesses some merit, but is of too gloomy
and darkly unpleasant a cast to be attractive to English readers; it
was written during the first days in Dresden, just after his
emancipation from the Bamberg thraldom. Whilst in it he gives free rein
to sombre melancholy, and dips his pen in "midnight blackness," in
_Berganza_, written about the same time, he has poured out the cynical
bitterness and scat