SCHLEGEL, AUGUST WILHELM VON, the elder brother of Friedrich Carl Wilhelm Von Schlegel, and an eminent philologist and critic of Germany, was the son of Johann Adolphus Schlegel, and was born at Hanover in the month of September 1767. He betrayed early a natural gift for language, which carried him through the grammar school of Hanover with great reputation. On leaving school he accepted of a tutorial appointment which demanded of the holder a knowledge both of the French and English lan-
guages. He was chosen in his eighteenth year to deliver an oration before the Lyceum of his native city in honour of a royal birthday. This address, which was written in German hexameters, excited considerable sensation in the citizens of Hanover, both from the range of information displayed in it and from the elegant style in which it was composed. Proceeding to the University of Göttingen, he engaged in the study of theology, but which he shortly afterwards abandoned for the more congenial one of philology. He had already made great progress in classical learning, and his Latin Dissertation on the geography of Homer was warmly applauded by Voss, the most competent judge of his age. While at the university he made the acquaintance of Heyne, for whose Virgil he completed an index in 1788. He likewise gained the friendship of the distinguished Michaelis, and of the poet Bürger, to whose Académie der Schönen Redekünste he contributed his Ariadne and his Essay on Dante. Having from his early youth had a leaning to poetry, he now, in conjunction with Bürger, made considerable advances in that species of composition, and had the honour of naturalizing the Italian sonnet in his native country. On leaving the university he became tutor to the son of a wealthy banker of Amsterdam, and after a three years' engagement, he again sought retirement in the University of Jena, where he was appointed professor. He now contributed largely to the Horen, and to Schiller's Musen-Almanach; and down to 1779 he was one of the most elegant and fertile writers for the Allgemeinen Literatur-Zeitung of Jena. It was here he began to disclose to his countrymen the enchanted world of Shakespeare (9 vols., Berlin, 1797-1810), which produced a decided change in the dramatic criticism of Germany. He subsequently renounced in favour of Tieck the work of rendering Shakespeare into German, a change with which the public were not at all dissatisfied, as the exceeding elegance, amounting sometimes to starchedness, of Schlegel's manner, did not always suit the free and unfettered genius of the English poet. During his residence in Jena he became acquainted with Schiller, and professed admiration for Goethe, who, however, did not return the compliment. Schlegel now commenced a course of lectures on aesthetics, and joined his brother, Frederick, in the editorship of the Athenäum (3 vols., Berlin, 1796-1800), a journal of literary criticism, designed by its freedom and impartiality to discover and foster every spark of genuine literary development in Germany. In 1800 he published his exceedingly ill-natured satire on Kotzebue, in reply to his attack of the Hyperborean Ass (Hyperboreischen Esce). About this period appeared his Gedichte (poems), Tübingen, 1800, which were much admired for their elegance and spirit.
He collected his own and his brother Friedrich's contributions to various periodicals, and brought them out under the title of Characteristiken und Kritiken, 2 vols., Königsberg, 1801. He undertook with Tieck the editorship of the Musen-Almanach for 1802; and with minds of a kindred temper continued to promulgate the doctrines of the so-called romanticists. Fired by ambition, and perhaps also by vanity, August Schlegel now left Jena for Berlin, where he found the most intellectual public of Germany ready to listen to his lectures. He was accordingly induced to deliver a course in 1802, which subsequently appeared in the Europa, a review edited by his brother. They bore the title of Vorlesungen über Literatur und Kunst des Zeitalters (Lectures on the Literature and Fine Arts of the Age). His Ion, a drama in imitation of the ancients, published in 1803, and not marked by any peculiar vigour either of conception or of execution, led to an interesting discussion between the author and some literary men of the day regarding dramatic representation in general, and which was carried on in the Zeitung für die elegante Welt. It was from this journal, also, that A. Schlegel shot
Schlegel, forth his darts against Kotzebue and the classicists, who constantly infested him, with all manner of weapons, from the lightest arrowy banter to the deadliest personal abuse. And in giving them back their blows, the galled romanticist did not bate a jot either in keenness of weapon or force of stroke. Schlegel was now engaged upon his Spanish Theatre, which he gave to the world in 2 vols. at Berlin, 1803-1809. In this version he observed all the measures, rhythms, and assonances of the original, and earned for himself a foremost place among successful translators. The German public had another proof of his skill in his Blumenstrausse d. Ital. Span. u. Portug. Poësie, Berlin, 1804.
An important career now presented itself to August Schlegel by his introduction to the celebrated Madame de Staël. That lady had arrived in Berlin in 1805, with the intention of making a tour through Germany and of making herself more thoroughly acquainted with German literature. She chose A. Schlegel to direct her studies and to complete the education of her children. Quitting Berlin, he accompanied her to Italy, France, Austria, and Sweden, and subsequently repaired with her to her paternal seat at Coppet, on the Lake of Geneva. It was here he wrote, in 1807, his Comparaison de la Phèdre d'Euripide, et de celle de Racine, which produced a lively sensation in the salons of Paris. He is said to have had many friends and admirers in the French capital, despite his attack upon Racine, and his having called Molière a mountebank. In the spring of 1808 he visited Vienna, and there read before a brilliant audience his Vorlesungen über Dramatische Kunst und Literatur, 3 vols., Heidelberg, 1809-11, which were received throughout Europe with marked approbation. These lectures on dramatic art and literature are, with all their defects, unquestionably his most popular work. They were rendered into English by John Black, 3 vols., 8vo, London, 1840, reprinted in Bohn's "Standard Library," 1 vol. 1846. He was introduced about this time to the Crown Prince of Bavaria, who gratified the vanity of August Wilhelm Schlegel by bestowing upon him some marks of the royal favour. A new edition of his Gedichte appeared in 1811, among which are his "Arion," "Pygmalion," "Der Heilige Lucas," &c., which are said to be the best of his poetical efforts. He likewise took part in the Deutsche Museum, a publication issued by his brother Friedrich, and contributed to it some learned dissertations on the Nibelungen Lied. In 1812 he visited Stockholm together with De Staël, where he duly made the acquaintance of Bernadotte, Crown Prince of Sweden, who made him his secretary and counsellor. He continued to write political papers for Bernadotte till the taking of Paris, when he retired to the country-seat of Madame de Staël, with whom he remained till her death in 1818. He was ennobled about this time by the Crown Prince of Sweden, as an expression of his esteem for him during his residence in Stockholm. On the creation, in 1819, of the university of Bonn, August Von Schlegel was chosen professor of history, for what particular reason does not appear. He had never written anything historical, and if one may judge of his fitness for such a position from his ridiculous critique of Niebuhr's Roman History in 1828, one would be inclined to say he should have remained at Berlin or Vienna, where he could have had abundant means of enlightening the fair intellects of the elegant beauties which frequent those courtly cities. He added nothing to his reputation by his Bonn professorship. He married this year a daughter of Professor Paulus, a union which was destined to be as short-lived as had been his previous one with the daughter of Michaelis. He now resolved to devote himself exclusively to the study of Sanscrit. With this view he established the printing-office at Bonn for the publication of that language. In 1820 he founded the Indische Bibliothek (2 vols., Bonn, 1820-26),
a review devoted exclusively to Indian languages and antiquities. Inferior to Bopp and Lassen as a Sanscrit scholar, he surpassed them in his general views, and contributed very considerably to the diffusion of a taste for the Indo-Persian languages. Indeed, it is mainly owing to his exertions in this department, and to his critical essays on aesthetics and poetry, that August Von Schlegel stands so high as he does in the esteem of his country. He published the Ramayana, Bonn, 1825; and the Bagavad-Gita, an episode in the great Indian epos, Mahabharata, Bonn, 1829, which afford favourable specimens of his Sanscrit learning. He likewise visited France and England in pursuit of oriental manuscripts. On his return to Berlin he delivered a course of Vorlesungen über Theorie und Geschichte der bildenden Kunst, Berlin, 1827; and the following year he published his Kritische Schriften, Berlin, 1828. This same year he published an Explication de quelques Mal-entendus, in reply to an accusation which had been repeatedly preferred against him, of having a leaning towards Roman Catholicism. In 1832, he addressed to Sir James Mackintosh his Reflexions sur l'Etude des Langues Asiatiques. After publishing, in 1842, his Essais Littéraires et Historiques, and after spending a long career of successful literary labour, August Von Schlegel died at Bonn on the 12th of May 1845. His printed works amounted to one hundred and twenty-six in all, and he bequeathed his unpublished manuscripts to Professor Welcker of Bonn, with a view to their publication.
August Schlegel, although possessed of a more lively imagination and greater powers of illustration than his brother Friedrich, was wanting in those solid critical faculties which gained for him his fame. He was a man of immoderate vanity, and possibly this natural defect may have qualified in an important manner the development of his critical faculties. With more brilliant talents than his brother, he earned for himself a less enduring reputation.