s to his works whatever permanent value they may
possess. With a painter's eye he grasps a character or a scene by a few
of its more prominent and essential features, and with a painter's hand
and eye he sketches them in a few telling strokes. The reader must not
look to find in Hoffmann any clever or subtle analysis of the deeper
motives that work towards the development of character; all that
Hoffmann can give him will be talented _pictures_. He himself lays down
his canon of literary spirit in the introduction to the first volume of
the _Serapionsbrueder_--

"Vain are an author's efforts to bring us to believe in what he does
not believe in himself, in what he cannot believe in, since he has not
made it his own by _seeing_ it (_erschauen_). What else are the
characters of such an author, who, to borrow the old phrase, is no true
seer, but deceitful marionettes, painfully glued together out of alien
materials?... At least let each one of us [the Brethren] strive
earnestly and truly to grasp the image that has arisen in his mind in
all its features, its colours, its lights and its shades, and then when
he feels himself really enkindled by them let him proceed to embody
them in an external description."

Hoffmann has mostly succeeded in acting up to his canon and has written
in its spirit; and in so far true genius cannot be denied him. And
he possessed in no less eminent a degree the true art of the born
story-teller. The interest seldom if ever flags; and the curious
anomalies of men and of men-creatures (_Mensch-Thiere_), whom he
mingles amongst his winning heroines and his delightful satiric
characters, oftener than not quite enthrall the mind or afford it true
enjoyment as the case may be, and this they do in spite of the fact
that, owing to their own nature, they frequently stand outside the
ordinary sphere of human sympathies. Of course it may readily be
conceived that the danger which he was liable to fall into was want of
clearness in conception and sentiment, but he has avoided this rock for
the most part with wonderful skill. One of his latest productions,
_Prinzessin Brambilla_, is the one where this fault is most markedly
conspicuous; nor is the _Elixiere_ free from it.

German critics have not failed to notice the sweet grace and winning
loveliness which hover about the characters of most of his heroines.
They are nearly all presented in colours impregnated with real poetic
beauty; see, for instance