I cannot yet conceive what you infer By art and nature.
I shall soon resolve ye. A sound of music touched my ears, or rather Indeed entranced my soul. As I stole nearer, Invited by the melody, I saw This youth, this fair-faced youth, upon his lute, With strains of strange variety and harmony, Proclaiming, as it seemed, so bold a challenge To the clear quiristers of the woods, the birds, That, as they flocked about him, all stood silent, Wondering at what they heard: I wondered too.
A nightingale, Nature's best skilled musician, undertakes The challenge, and for every several strain The well-shaped youth could touch, she sung her own; He could not run division with more art Upon his quaking instrument than she, The nightingale, did with her various notes Reply to: for a voice and for a sound, Amethus, 'tis much easier to believe That such they were than hope to hear again.
You term them rightly; For they were rivals, and their mistress harmony. Some time thus spent, the young man grew at last Into a pretty anger, that a bird, Whom art had never taught cliffs, moods, or notes, Should vie with him for mastery, whose study Had busied many hours to perfect practice. To end the controversy, in a rapture Upon his instrument he plays so swiftly So many voluntaries and so quick, That there was curiosity and cunning, Concord in discord, lines of differing method Meeting in one full centre of delight.
The bird, ordained to be Music's first martyr, strove to imitate These several sounds; which when her warbling throat Failed in, for grief down dropped she on his lute, And brake her heart. It was the quaintest sadness, To see the conqueror upon her hearse To weep a funeral elegy of tears; That trust me, my Amethus, I could chide Mine own unmanly weakness that made me A fellow mourner with him.
He looked upon the trophies of his art, Then sighed, then wiped his eyes, then sighed and cried:-- "Alas, poor creature! I will soon revenge This cruelty upon the author of it; Henceforth this lute, guilty of innocent blood, Shall never more betray a harmless peace To an untimely end:" and in that sorrow, As he was pushing it against a tree, I suddenly stept in.
The romantic school had many false and erratic tendencies, but it produced some of the most fanciful and poetic creations of literature. Fouqué was called the Don Quixote of the Romanticists, and his early romances of chivalry were devoured by the public as quickly as they appeared. But his fame proved to be a passing fancy; and his later works scarcely found a publisher. This was owing partly to a change in public taste, and partly to his mannerisms. His descriptions often deteriorate into tediousness, and the narrative is broken by far-fetched digressions. He was so imbued with the spirit of chivalry that he became one-sided, and his scenes were always laid in "the chapel or the tilt-yard." Critics of his time speak of his mediæval romances as "full of sweet strength and lovely virtue." Others say "the heroes are almost absurd, and do not arouse enthusiasm." Heine asserts that Fouqué's laurel is genuine; Coleridge places him above Walter Scott; Thomas Carlyle compares him to Southey, and describes him as a man of genius, with little more than an ordinary share of talent. Fouqué was introduced to romanticism by Wilhelm von Schlegel, and drew his first inspiration from Cervantes. Whatever his shortcomings, it cannot be denied that he succeeded in catching the spirit of chivalry. His knights may be unreal and quixotic, but he delineates his characters with the irresistible touch of a poet, and his work displays noble thoughts and depth of feeling.