The violent attempt to be that which was really unnatural in the modern German, namely antique and classical, produced a violent counter-movement. Goethe's and Schiller's ever more determined and strict adherence to the antique ideal in art led them at last, in their attachment to severity and regularity of style, to take a step in the direction of that school against which they had been the first to rebel, namely French classical tragedy. Goethe translated Voltaire's _Mahomet_, and Schiller, Racine's _Phèdre_; and thus, through the action of these two greatest of German poets, the French and the German conception of the classical entered into league with one another. But this alliance, as was inevitable, gave the signal for revolt. The antique was so severe; men longed for colour and variety. It was so plastic; they longed for something fervent and musical. The antique was so Greek, so cold, so foreign; who had the patience to read Goethe's _Achilleïs_, or Schiller's _Die Braut von Messina_, with its solemn antique chorus? Had they not a past of their own? They longed for something national, something German. The antique was so aristocratic; enthusiasm for the classical had actually led to the revival of the old court poetry of the period of Louis XIV. But surely art should be for all classes, should unite high and low? Men wanted something simple, something popular. These classical efforts were, in the last place, so very dull. Lessing's genial rational religion had, under the treatment of Nicolai the bookseller, turned into the same sort of insipid rationalism which was in favour in Denmark at the close of the century. Goethe's pantheism could not warm the hearts of the masses. Schiller's _Die Sendung Moses_ could not but be an offence to every believer. And after all, the word "poetic" did not necessarily mean "dull." Men wanted to be roused, to be intoxicated, to be inspired; they wanted once again to believe like children, to feel the enthusiasm of the knight, the rapture of the monk, the frenzy of the poet, to dream melodious dreams, to bathe in moonlight and hold mystic communion with the spirits of the Milky Way; they wanted to hear the grass grow and to understand what the birds sang, to penetrate into the depths of the moonlit night, and into the loneliness of the forest.