_Die Raeuber_ he gives us
a weak version of Schiller's celebrated work.

In Hoffmann we have an instance of a man who nearly all his life long
failed to get himself placed amid the circumstances in the midst of
which it was his one burning wish to be placed. He never found his
right calling. He is a man ruined by circumstances (_zerfahren_). He
was not wanting in warm natural feeling, as is proved by his close and
faithful friendships with Hippel, Hitzig, and Kunz; and more than one
instance of spontaneous kindness and of winning amiability are
preserved by his biographer.[27] In youth his mind and heart were full
of noble thoughts and aspirations, and he was sincerely desirous to
educate himself up to better things. We see it in "May it never happen
to me that my heart is not readily receptive of every communication
from without, as well as for every feeling within, for the head must
never injure the heart, nor must the heart ever run away with the head,
that is my idea of culture," and "an excitable heart and a restless
nature will never let us be quite happy, but will have a beneficial
influence upon our education, upon our striving after greater
perfection." His poetic temperament, and such like poetic tendencies,
found no responsive sympathy amongst his relatives. Being thrust back
upon himself and then having his feelings centred, when at length they
did meet with sympathetic appreciation, in such a way as could only
bring disappointment and unhappiness, he was early made a fit
instrument for circumstances to play upon, and sorely was he buffeted
by them through all the years from going to Posen right down until the
day of his death. But this result must also be traced partly to the
want of a parent's loving, watchful eye. In those years which are the
most important for moulding a boy's character he was practically left
to go his own way. True, his uncle Otto held him down to habits of
industry and order; but he did nothing to encourage the boy's better
and higher nature, or guide it sympathetically along the paths where it
was striving to find its own way. Hoffmann had no high idea of the
moral dignity of man, and at times even seemed to have but little
conception of it. The relations upon which he lived with his uncle Otto
and the history of his own father prevented this sense of moral worth
from being planted in his mind. The germ which bore fruit in his love
for extremes, for what was extraordinary and quite o