In the _Athenæum_ both brothers give splendid testimony to their astonishing and epoch-making gift in transferring classical and Romance metrical forms into elegant, idiomatic German; they give affectionate attention to the insinuating beauty of elegiac verse, and secure charming effects in some of the most alien Greek forms, not to mention _terza rima, ottava rima_, the Spanish gloss, and not a few very notable sonnets. The literary criticisms of the _Athenæum_ are characteristically free and aggressive, particularly in the frequent sneers at the flat "homely" poetry of sandy North Germany. At the end of the second volume, the "faked" _Literary Announcements_ are as daring as any attempts of American newspaper humor. When the sum of the contents and tendency of the journal is drawn, it is a strange mixture of discriminating philosophy, devoted Christianity, Greek sensuousness, and pornographic mysticism. There is a never-ending esthetic coquetry with the flesh, with a serious defense of some very Greek practices indeed. All of this is thoroughly typical of the spirit of the Romantic school, and it is by no means surprising that Friedrich's first book, the novel _Lucinda_ (1799), should stand as the supreme unsavory classic in this field. That excellent divine, Schleiermacher, exalted this document of the Rights of the Flesh as "a pæan of Love, in all its completeness," but it is a feeble, tiresome performance, absolutely without structure, quite deserving the saucy epigram on which it was pilloried by the wit of the time: Pedantry once of Fancy begged the dole Of one brief kiss; she pointed him to Shame. He, impotent and wanton, then Shame's favors stole. Into the world at length a dead babe came-- "_Lucinda_" was its name.