The delightful 'Life of a Good-for-Nothing' appeared in 1824, and it remains to-day one of the most popular tales in German literature. It is the apotheosis of idleness and vagabondism. "In this little book," says Brandes, "all the old charms of romance are shut up, as in a cage, to make music for us. There is the odor of the woods and the song of birds, the longing for travel and the joys of wandering." The book describes the vagabond life of a child of genius, idle with a hundred aptitudes, pure with a hundred temptations, and amid a hundred dangers careless and irresponsible. This Good-for-Nothing illustrates in his roving life the romantic quest of the "blue flower." He lives for pure pleasures and the joys of unremunerative art; his is the infinite longing which never can be stilled, but only rendered endurable by poetry, by music, and by moonlight on forest, field, and stream. The book is an exquisite idyl; it is full of strange adventures and all the romantic machinery of singular disguises, lofty and secluded castles, and mysterious beauties who throw flowers from shaded balconies; and yet it is essentially idyllic, and the beautiful lyrics which are scattered through its pages create an atmosphere of eternal summer in which we are made to forget the work-a-day world where men earn their daily bread and feel the salutary pressure of duty. Eichendorff himself was a faithful public servant, and in the 'Life of a Good-for-Nothing' we have the confession only of what the author perhaps thought he would have liked to be, rather than of what he was. He was reverent and pious, and one of the most evenly balanced minds in all that circle of madcap poets. He has told us of those early days of the Romantic School and of the deep thrills which agitated the entire German people when Schelling, Novalis, the Schlegels, and Tieck began their life work in literature. And this work was done in the days when the sword of Napoleon hung suspended over Germany: in days when even the poet who was to sing the praises of the _dolce far nicnte_ of Good-for-Nothingness was ready to give three years of his life for the defense of his native land. So far had literature and life lost sight of each other, and the men of vigorous action and solid achievement still sang sweetly of the blue flower and of the pleasures of idleness, leaving behind them a body of literature which, however unreal, will not lose its power to soothe and charm. FROM 'OUT OF THE LIFE OF A GOOD-FOR-NOTHING'