Goethe and Schiller took the purest delight in one another’s achievements, and neither of them was ever tired of stimulating the other to bring forth the noblest fruits of his genius. The tendency of Schiller, who was hardly less a philosopher than a poet, was to give his ideas, even in poetry, an abstract expression. Through contact with Goethe he was led, almost unconsciously, to present his conceptions in more imaginative forms. His style became more direct, lucid, and animated, and deeper appreciation of the real world around him imparted fresh life and colour to his pictures of purely ideal realms. Goethe, whose genius was of an incomparably higher order, and responded to a wider range of influences, had nothing, so far as art was concerned, to learn from Schiller. Nevertheless, he owed to Schiller, as he himself was always eager to acknowledge, a deep debt of gratitude. From the time when he had finished “Tasso” and the “Roman Elegies,” he had produced nothing that was worthy to rank with his best work. He had occupied himself chiefly with ministerial business and physical science, and seemed almost to have lost the impulse to visit the imaginative world in which he had for a while moved so freely and so happily. His power of poetic creation was, however, only slumbering; and by his intercourse with Schiller it was awakened to splendid activity. Schiller’s enthusiasm called forth in him what Goethe himself called “a second youth,” “a new spring.” The _Horen_, which began to appear in 1795, excited much antagonism, and Schiller was excessively annoyed by the attacks directed against it. Goethe did not let himself be disturbed by hostile judgments, but towards the end of the year he proposed that they should amuse themselves by making their opponents the subjects of a series of epigrams, each epigram consisting of a distich. This suggestion delighted Schiller, and they lost no time in giving effect to it. The scheme widened as they went on, being made to include not only writers who had directly assailed them, but others whose methods and tendencies they disliked. They also seized the opportunity to do honour to various great writers, such as Lessing and Kant. A vast collection of epigrams soon accumulated, some by Goethe, some by Schiller, and some the work of both poets. They were called “Xenien” (“Xenia,” hospitable gifts: a title borrowed from Martial), and published in the “Musenalmanach,” a yearly volume of poems, edited by Schiller. These epigrams, many of which are bright and keen, fluttered the dovecots of criticism, and caused Goethe and Schiller, whose names were always henceforth closely associated, to be held in wholesome dread by pedants and literary impostors.