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 languages. 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 philosophy. 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 Academie 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 Shakspeare (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 Shakspeare 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 Athenaeum (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 Axe (Hyperbereichen Esse). About this period appeared his Gedichte (poems), Tubingen, 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 haunter 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. Poesie, 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, she 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 Bohm'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 Réflexions sur l'Étude des Langues Asiatique. After publishing, in 1842, his Essais Litteraires 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.

Schlegel, Friedrich Carl Wilhelm von, an eminent German critic and philosophical writer, was born at Hanover in 1772, of a family which had already produced more than one writer of ability. He was the third son of the family, being three years younger than his distinguished brother, August Wilhelm. In his earlier years he is said to have displayed no remarkable genius. Though intended for the mercantile profession, he received an admirable classical education; and ultimately prevailed on his father to allow him to follow the bent of his own inclination, and to devote himself to literature. He then began to devote himself in earnest to study, which he pursued, first at Gottingen and afterwards at Leipzig. From the age of seventeen, as he himself informs us, the writings of the Greek tragedians, and of Plato, combined with Winkelmann's enthusiastic criticisms on art, formed the intellectual world in which he lived. This admiration for the antique was increased by a visit which he was enabled to pay to Dresden in 1789, where he was for the first time enabled to contemplate, in their marble forms, those gods, heroes, and sages, who had been the companions of his thoughts. As might be expected, his first literary effort, which appeared in 1794, took the direction of these his early studies. It was a short Essay on the different Schools of Greek Poetry, which appeared in the Berlin Monatschrift, displaying not only an erudition of considerable depth and extent, but an elegance of style and a clearness of classification less frequently to be found among his countrymen. Two little treatises followed, composed in 1795 and 1796—the Diotema, a view of the condition of the female sex in Greece; and a parallel between Caesar and Alexander, which, however, was not published till twenty-six years afterwards. In this work we trace the first indications of that talent which was afterwards so conspicuously displayed in the field of philosophical and criti- A more important work, entitled the Griechen und Römer, appeared in 1797, which was highly praised by Heine. It was followed two or three years afterwards by a History of Greek Poetry, in which, taking Winkelmann's History of Art as his model, he has thrown into criticism an imaginative and poetical tone, which combining as it did with profound learning and breadth of philosophical views, succeeded in bringing before the mind the true spirit of antiquity, with a freshness and distinctness of portraiture which mere erudition could not have effected. The work, however, is incomplete. In 1799 he published his Lucinde, a work, as Mrs Austin describes it, "of fancy, sentiment, and reflection;" in which, however, the very anti-platonic character of his descriptions of love occasioned not a little scandal and censure. In the year 1800 he established himself as a private teacher in Jena, where he delivered a course of philosophical lectures with success. His first poetical compositions, which appeared in the Athenaeum, seem to have been the productions of this period. In 1801 he published, in conjunction with his brother, August W. Schlegel, two volumes, entitled Characteristiken und Critiken, one of the most popular and pleasing of his works. The second volume includes his "Hercules Musagetes," an elegiac poem of some length; and in 1802 he published a tragedy, Alarcon, in which he has tried, with no remarkable success, to impart the severe and gloomy simplicity of Eschylas to a legend of the middle ages. In fact, it is neither as a lyric nor as a dramatic poet that the name of F. Schlegel is likely to be remembered. Goethe, at least, always appeared to estimate the poetical talent of Schlegel at a low standard (Characteristics of Goethe, vol. i. p. 120). But the study of the poetry and literature of the west was near about to be exchanged for that of the eastern nations. Following in the footsteps of Sir William Jones, and filled with the idea of the important additions which might be made to Europe by naturalizing, in Germany, the results of Indian research, and of the still greater benefits which he conceived might be derived from the pursuit of Indian literature, philosophy, and antiquities, in an enlarged, philosophical, and at the same time religious spirit, he resolved to devote himself to the study of Sanscrit. He probably overrated, on the whole, both the importance of the labour in which he was about to engage and its probable interest to the public mind. With a view, however, to his intended investigations, he repaired to Paris in 1802, accompanied by his wife, the daughter of the celebrated Moses Mendelssohn, and, with the assistance afforded by the valuable stores of the National Library, and the hints derived from those distinguished orientalists, M.M. de Langlès and Chézy, he is said to have made considerable progress in the study of Persian and Sanscrit poetry. During his residence in Paris, which continued till 1805, he delivered a course of lectures on metaphysics, which met with but partial success. During the same period he wrote a variety of articles on the early Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Provençal poetry; and published, in 1804, a collection of the romantic poems of the middle ages, and a series of letters on the different schools and epochs of Christian painting and Gothic architecture, a work for which the temporary concentration of the various treasures of modern art in the Parisian capital afforded ample materials. These letters, which he afterwards revised and enlarged, form one of the most pleasing of his compositions. He takes up the subject nearly where Winkelmann had left it, and performs, in the same spirit of love, the same service for the arts of the middle ages which that critic had done for those of antiquity.

It was at this period of F. Schlegel's life (1805) that he took the step of embracing Roman Catholicism, as Count Stolberg had done a few years before.

In 1808 appeared his work on the Language and Wisdom of the Indians. The first part of this work is occupied with a comparative examination of the etymology and grammatical structure of the Sanscrit, Persian, Greek, Roman, and German languages. The second traces the connection of the different religions and philosophical systems that prevailed in the ancient oriental world. The last consists of metrical versions from the sacred and didactic poems of the Hindus. It cannot be denied that this work, with all its learning and sagacity of conjecture, is yet a very imperfect one. The profounder learning of Jacob Grimm has demolished many of the ingenious theories of Schlegel as to the original monuments of the German language. Much, too, has of course been added to Indian learning since it appeared; many of its views have so completely passed into commonly-received opinions, that they have ceased to strike us as novelties; and other truths which are there only hinted at, have been elucidated and confirmed. But it had the merit of opening a comparatively new path in Germany, and perhaps in other countries of Europe. After Schlegel's return from France, he proceeded, in 1808, to Vienna, with the view, it is said, of completing from historical documents an unfinished drama on the subject of Charles V. In the following year he was appointed imperial secretary at the Archduke Charles's head-quarters, and contributed much, by his spirited proclamations, towards raising the patriotic ardour of the country in the contest against Napoleon. After the unfortunate issue of the war, he resumed his literary activity and in 1810 delivered his course of lectures on modern history. By many these lectures were considered as his masterpiece. They embodied in a systematic form the various opinions and incidental views which he had thrown out in his earlier essays, and contained, in a more detailed form, the proofs of many of those positions which he afterwards stated in a more brief and general form in his Philosophy of History. In 1812 Schlegel delivered, before a numerous and distinguished audience at Vienna, his celebrated Lectures on the History of Literature, the work by which he is best known beyond the limits of his own country. Of course a work which exhibits an outline of the literary history of the world, and traces the influence of its various literatures on one another, within the compass of two volumes, cannot descend to much minuteness of detail, or delineate, with that precision which would be desirable, the characteristics of individuals. The style of the work is elegant and enthusiastic without being extravagant. Yet some deductions must be made, both from the impartiality of the work and from the soundness of its views. It is difficult to conceive on what grounds of sound criticism the Lusiad of Camoens can be exalted above the Jerusalem of Tasso; and still more how the "romantic witchery" of the drama of Calderon, rich and fantastic as it is, can ever be placed on the same level with the profound imagination which combines with this romantic beauty in the theatre of Shakspeare. English literature, with the exception of Shakspeare, can hardly be said to be appreciated at all. French literature, at least after the time of Corneille, is treated with great injustice; Pascal is passed over with a single word; Malebranche is not mentioned at all. And indeed the literature of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is discussed in a very perfunctory and unsatisfactorily manner. Some of the faults of the work are undoubtedly owing to the strong religious bias of the author. For the Catholic literature of Spain and Italy he shows an undue preference, with a corresponding coldness and indifference towards that of Protestant nations. "Friedrich Schlegel," says Heine, in his lively work on Germany, "has examined all literatures from a lofty point of view; but this high position of his is always on the belfry of the Catholic church; and whatever Schlegel says, you can't..." help hearing the bells jingle about him, and now and then the creaking of the ravens that haunt the old weathercock."

With the History of Literature the critical career of F. Schlegel may be said to have closed; for a flattering and somewhat exaggerated criticism on Lamartine's Méditations Poétiques, which subsequently appeared in the Concordia, scarcely deserves to be noticed as an exception.

From 1812 he was much occupied with political and diplomatic employments. Having acquired the friendship and confidence of Prince Metternich, he was employed by him in various diplomatic missions; and for several years after the peace of 1814 he was one of the representatives of the court of Vienna at Frankfort. A pension, with letters of nobility, and the title of councillor-confessor were conferred upon him by the emperor. These diplomatic functions, of course, occasioned a temporary interruption to his literary pursuits; but in 1818 he returned to Vienna, where they were resumed with ardour.

In 1827 he delivered at Vienna another course of Lectures on the Philosophy of Life, of which, indeed, an outline had appeared in the Concordia for 1820. This work was almost immediately followed by another course of Lectures on the Philosophy of History, which have lately been translated into English, and which appear not unworthy of the reputation of the author. Towards the close of the year 1828 Schlegel went to Dresden, where he delivered nine Lectures on the Philosophy of Language, in which he farther developed and expanded those philosophical views which he had already laid down in his Philosophy of Life. The course, however, was interrupted by death, on the 11th of January 1829.

The genius of F. Schlegel was philosophical and critical, rather than poetical; but he had that species of poetical imagination without which there can be no lofty or useful criticism, which enables the critic to rise above artificial and natural peculiarities, and to judge with truth and certainty upon broad and universal principles. Even when his criticism is imperfect or erroneous, it is often valuable; for it abounds in new and original views, excites the mind to independent speculation, and teaches the habit of viewing literature, the arts, and philosophy, not as isolated subjects of study, but as acting and re-acting with the most important influences upon each other. From his powerful and inventive mind many of the speculations of his brother appear to have been derived. Translations of four volumes of F. Schlegel's works are included in Bohn's "Standard Library."