The _Phantasiestucke_, which had been published with a commendatory preface by Jean Paul, were followed in 1816 by the gruesome novel--to some extent inspired by Lewis's _Monk--Die Elixiere des Teufels_, and the even more gruesome and grotesque stories which make up the _Nachtstucke_ (1817, 2 vols.). The full range of Hoffmann's powers is first clearly displayed in the collection of stories (4 vols., 1819-1821) _Die Serapionsbruder_, this being the name of a small club of Hoffmann's more intimate literary friends. _Die Serapionsbruder_ includes not merely stories in which Hoffmann's love for the mysterious and the supernatural is to be seen, but novels in which he draws on his own early reminiscences (_Rat Krespel_, _Fermate_), finely outlined pictures of old German life (_Der Artushof_, _Meister Martin der Kufner und seine Gesellen_), and vivid and picturesque incidents from Italian and French history (_Doge und Dogaressa_, the story of Marino Faliero, and _Das Fraulein von Scuderi_). The last-mentioned story is usually regarded as Hoffmann's masterpiece. Two longer works also belong to Hoffmann's later years and display to advantage his powers as a humorist; these are _Klein Zaches, genannt Zinnober_ (1819), and _Lebensansichten des Katers Murr, nebst fragmentarischer Biographie des Kapellmeisters Johannes Kreisler_ (1821-1822). Hoffmann is one of the master novelists of the Romantic movement in Germany. He combined with a humour that reminds us of Jean Paul the warm sympathy for the artist's standpoint towards life, which was enunciated by early Romantic leaders like Tieck and Wackenroder; but he was superior to all in the almost clairvoyant powers of his imagination. His works abound in grotesque and gruesome scenes--in this respect they mark a descent from the high ideals of the Romantic school; but the gruesome was only one outlet for Hoffmann's genius, and even here the secret of his power lay not in his choice of subjects, but in the wonderfully vivid and realistic presentation of them. Every line he wrote leaves the impression behind it that it expresses something felt or experienced; every scene, vision or character he described seems to have been real and living to him. It is this realism, in the best sense of the word, that made him the great artist he was, and gave him so extraordinary a power over his contemporaries.