The cavilling of these people, awkwardly contrasted with their personal absurdity and insipidity, at length provoked the serious notice of the two illustrious associates: the result was this German Dunciad; a production of which the plan was, that it should comprise an immense multitude of detached couplets, each conveying a complete thought within itself, and furnished by one of the joint operators. The subjects were of unlimited variety; 'the most,' as Schiller says, 'were wild satire, glancing at writers and writings, intermixed with here and there a flash of poetical or philosophic thought.' It was at first intended to provide about a thousand of these pointed monodistichs; unity in such a work appearing to consist in a certain boundlessness of size, which should hide the heterogeneous nature of the individual parts: the whole were then to be arranged and elaborated, till they had acquired the proper degree of consistency and symmetry; each sacrificing something of its own peculiar spirit to preserve the spirit of the rest. This number never was completed: and, Goethe being now busy with his _Wilhelm Meister_, the project of completing it was at length renounced; and the _Xenien_ were published as unconnected particles, not pretending to constitute a whole. Enough appeared to create unbounded commotion among the parties implicated: the _Xenien_ were exclaimed against, abused, and replied to, on all hands; but as they declared war not on persons but on actions; not against Gleim, Nicolai, Manso, but against bad taste, dulness, and affectation, nothing criminal could be sufficiently made out against them.[31] The _Musen-Almanach_, where they appeared in 1797, continued to be published till the time of Schiller's leaving Jena: the _Horen_ ceased some months before. [Footnote 31: This is but a lame account of the far-famed _Xenien_ and their results. See more of the matter in Franz Horn's _Poesie und Beredtsamkeit_; in Carlyle's _Miscellanies_ (i. 67); &c. (_Note of 1845._)]