nd Holt.

When, as Heine says, Napoleon, who was Classic like Caesar and Alexander,
fell to the ground, and Herren August Wilhelm and Friedrich Schlegel,
who were Romantic like Puss in Boots, arose as victors, Baron von
Eichendorff was one of those who shared the triumph. He wrote plays and
poems and novels to the tunes set by the masters of his school, but for
himself practically he was a wise man,--held comfortable offices all his
life long, and, in spite of vast literary yearning, sentiment, and
misanthropy, was a Philister of the Philisters. The tale which Mr.
Leland translates so gracefully is an extravaganza, in marked contrast
to all the other romances of Eichendorff, in so far as it is purposely
farcical, and they are serious; but we imagine it does not differ from
them greatly in its leading qualities of fanciful incoherency and
unbridled feebleness. An idle boy, who is driven from home by his
father, the miller, and is found with his violin on the road to nowhere
by two great ladies and carried to their castle near Vienna,--who falls
in love with one of these lovely countesses, and runs away for love of
her to Italy, and, after passing through many confused adventures there,
with no relation to anything that went before or comes after, returns to
the castle, and finds that his lovely countess is not a countess, but a
poor orphan adopted by the great folk,--and so happily marries
her,--this is the Good-for-Nothing and his story. A young student of the
German language, struggling through the dusty paths of the dictionary to
a comprehension of the tale, would perhaps think it a wonderful romance,
when once he had achieved its meaning; but being translated into our
pitiless English, its poverty of wit and feeling and imagination is
apparent; and one is soon weary of its mere fantasticality.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No.
106, August, 1866, by Various

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ATLANTIC MONTHLY ***

***** This file should be named 23040.txt or 23040.zip *****
This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
http://www.gutenberg.org/2/3/0/4/23040/

Produced by Joshua Hutchinson, Josephine Paolucci and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net.
(This file was produced from images generously made
available by Cornell University Digital Collections).

Updated editions will replace the previous on