in June 1802, and the news is supposed to have reached Holderlin shortly afterwards, for in the following month he suddenly left Bordeaux, and travelled homewards on foot through France, arriving at Nurtingen destitute and insane. Kind treatment gradually alleviated his condition, and in lucid intervals he occupied himself by writing verses and translating Greek plays. Two of these translations--the _Antigone_ and _Oedipus rex_ of Sophocles--appeared in 1804, and several of his short poems were published by Franz K. L. von Seckendorff in his _Musenalmanach_, 1807 and 1808. In 1804 Holderlin obtained the sinecure post of librarian to the landgrave Frederick V. of Hesse-Homburg, and went to live in Homburg under the supervision of friends; but two years later becoming irremediably but harmlessly insane, he was taken in the summer of 1807 to Tubingen, where he remained till his death on the 7th of June 1843. Holderlin's writings are the production of a beautiful and sensitive mind; but they are intensely, almost morbidly, subjective, and they lack real human strength. Perhaps his strongest characteristic was his passion for Greece, the result of which was that he almost entirely discarded rhyme in favour of the ancient verse measures. His poems are all short pieces; of his tragedy only a fragment was written. _Hyperion, oder der Eremit in Griechenland_ (1797-1799), is a romance in letters, in which the stormy fervour of the "Sturm und Drang" is combined with a romantic enthusiasm for Greek antiquity. The interest centres not in the story, for the novel has little or none--Hyperion is a young Greek who takes part in the rising of his people against the Turks in 1770--but in its lyric subjectivity and the dithyrambic beauty of its language. Holderlin's lyrics, _Lyrische Gedichte_, were edited by L. Uhland and G. Schwab in 1826. A complete edition of his works, _Samtliche Werke_, with a biography by C. T. Schwab, appeared in 1846; also _Dichtungen_ by K. Kostlin (Tubingen, 1884), and (the best edition) _Gesammelte Dichtungen_ by B. Litzmann (2 vols., Stuttgart, 1897). For biography and criticism, see C. C. T. Litzmann, _F. Holderlins Leben_ (Berlin, 1890), A. Wilbrandt, _Holderlin_ (2nd ed., Berlin, 1891), and C. Muller, _Friedrich Holderlin, sein Leben und sein Dichten_ (Bremen, 1894).