Having made himself master of the Spanish language, he translated some of Calderon's _Autos Sacramentales_. This pursuit led to a still closer connection between him and the leaders of the Ultramontane party. In his later years he criticised modern German literature in the spirit of orthodox Catholicism, writing of the Catholic tendency of the Romanticists as if it were the most important and best feature of the school, and treating the change of opinion of some of the leaders in regard to this matter as a falling away from the truth and a sign of literary decadence. He looked with contempt upon Schiller's heroes, with their "rhetorical ideality," and upon the symbolic "Naturpoesie" of Goethe's shorter poems. "How different," he says, "is the great idea of Romanticism, _homesickness_, longing for the lost home--that is to say, for the universal, the Catholic Church." With these unsound theories Eichendorff combined real and considerable lyrical talent. No one has given, in a condensed form, better representations of the longings and the ideals of Romanticism. In the little story, _Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts_, we seem to hear young Romanticism twittering and singing as if he had caught it bodily and shut it up in a cage. It is all there--the fragrance of the woods and the song of the birds; longing for travel and delight in it, especially when Italy is the goal; Sunday emotions and moonlight; genuine Romantic vagrancy and idleness--such idleness that from want of use the limbs actually begin to fall out of joint, and the hero begins to feel as though he "were tumbling to pieces." The Ne'er-Do-Well is a miller's son, young and poor, whose only pleasure in life is to lie under the trees and look up into the sky, or to roam aimlessly about the country with his zither, singing such sad and beautiful songs that the hearts of all who hear him "long." "Every one," he says, "has his allotted place upon this earth, his warm hearth, his cup of coffee, his wife, his glass of wine of an evening, and is content. But I am content nowhere." He, the humble gardener (for such, when he does work, is his occupation), adores a high-born, lovely lady whom he has only seen once or twice; he addresses her in a beautiful and touching song:-- "Wohin ich geh' und schaue In Feld und Wald und Thal, Vom Berg hinab in die Aue, Vielschöne, hohe Fraue, Grüss ich dich tausendmal. In meinem Garten find' ich Viel Blumen, schön und fein, Viel Kränze wohl draus wind' ich, Und tausend Gedanken bind' ich Und Grüsse mit darein. "Ihr darf ich keinen reichen, Sie ist zu hoch und schön; Sie müssen alle verbleichen, Die Liebe nur ohne Gleichen Bleibt ewig im Herzen stehn. "Ich schein' wohl froher Dinge Und schaffe auf und ab, Und ob das Herz zerspringe, Ich grabe fort und singe Und grab' mir bald mein Grab."[3]