There is not a trace in Hölderlin of the sanctimonious piety developed by the other Romanticists, who, to begin with, were far more decided free-thinkers than he. Yet his Hellenism is not pagan in the manner of Schiller's and Goethe's. There is a fervency in it which is akin to Christian devotion; his poetic prayers to the sun, the earth, and the air are those of a believer; and when, as in _Empedokles_, he handles a purely pagan subject, the spirit of the treatment is such that we feel (as we do in a later work, Kleist's _Amphitryon_) the Christian legend behind the heathen. The position of Empedokles to the Pharisees of his day and country is exactly that of Jesus to the Pharisees of Judea. Empedokles, like Jesus, is the great prophet, and both his willing sacrificial death and the worship of which he is the object awake feelings which remotely resemble those of the devout Christian. In Hölderlin we find in outline, light and delicate as if traced by a spirit, symbols and emotions which the Romantic School develops, exaggerates, caricatures, or simply obliterates. [1] "'Tis nothing new; this I have told you oft; I know you well, you and your evil kind. And long it was a mystery to me How Nature could endure you in her realm. Corrupters of mankind! Even as a child, My guileless heart shrank from you with distrust-- That honest, fervent heart, that loved the sun, The cool fresh air, and all the messengers Of Nature, dimly discerned and great. For even then I timidly perceived How ye would take our true love of the gods And make it serve some baser, selfish end-- And that in this ye would that I should follow you. Begone! I cannot look upon the man Who practises religion as a trade; His countenance is false and cold and dead, As are his gods." III A. W. SCHLEGEL In 1797, August Wilhelm Schlegel, then aged thirty, published the first volume of his translation of Shakespeare. Rough drafts of several of the plays in this edition have been found, and these faded, dusty manuscripts not only enable us to follow the persevering, talented translator in his self-imposed task, but, when carefully read, give us direct insight into his and his wife's spiritual life, and indeed into the intellectual life of the whole period.[1]