“If you can construe but your doctor’s bill,
Parse your wife’s waiting-women.”
“Parse? Was kann es bedeuten?”
“Pierce ist dem aufmerksamen Auge
leserlich genug.”
Here one can only open one’s eyes at the question, and smother one’s reply.
[775]. The Works of Friedrich (except some Juvenilia) are included in a complete edition (Vienna, 1846) in fifteen vols., of which the first eight are entirely filled with critical matter. Of August Wilhelm, besides the Sämmtliche Werke (12 vols., Leipzig, 1846), there are three vols. of French and two of Latin works, and also the Lectures, which were not published till 1884 (Heilbronn).
[776]. They were redistributed later in the Works of the brothers and in A. W.'s Kritische Schriften. But it is good to read, and possess, the original Characteristiken und Kritiken (2 vols., Königsberg, 1801).
[777]. I should think better of the criticism of Germany if it did not habitually speak of “Romeo und Julia.” In the first place, it is surely common good manners not to alter an author’s title—though you may abbreviate it. In the second, which is more important, the change argues an æsthetic and gynæcologic callousness. Julia and Juliet are quite different persons.
[778]. Schlegel was twenty-nine at the date of the earliest, and sixty-one when the book was published. The climacteric of accomplished youth and that of not yet absolutely declining age could not be much better hit off.