FROM ACCESSION OF FREDERICK WILLIAM IV. TO 1848. 273 



conducted the negotiation with Cornelius. In communicating 

 his acceptance to Humboldt on January 8, 1841, Cornelius 

 remarks : ' I view it as a happy augury that the affair has 

 been brought about by one of the favoured few so fortunate as 

 to be loved both by the gods and mankind.' With no less 

 energy did Humboldt exert himself for many years to secure an 

 appointment at Berlin for Eiickert, until he was checked by 

 his grateful assurances 6 that he was wholly unfit to appear 

 before a Berlin audience, and that his mode of life was far more 

 suited to the retirement of the country.' 1 The advent of 

 Schelling, on the contrary, was viewed by Humboldt with in- 

 difference, eagerly as he would have welcomed him in 1835, 

 ' as one likely to infuse into the dull and stagnant life at 

 Berlin an animating principle to quicken, elevate, and ennoble, 

 whereby public attention might be diverted from empty frivoli- 

 ties to the consideration of something higher and nobler ; ' 2 

 there was a melancholy truth in the observation he addressed 

 to Bockh in a letter in 1840, that Schelling is coming, 

 ' apparently as a mummy, to complete the fifth age of the 

 world.' Though welcoming in Tieck a source of intellectual 

 stimulus to the court, it can hardly be supposed that he felt 

 any keen interest in his arrival ; for the nattering remark he 

 made to him in 1847 ' that he had never ceased to rejoice in 

 his presence,' 3 can scarcely be regarded as sincere in view of 

 the satirical manner in which he often alluded to him, espe- i 

 dally on the occasion of the representation of ' Antigone.' 



The arrival in the capital of these distinguished leaders of 

 elegant literature and the arts deprived Humboldt of the 

 exercise of any direct influence upon these subjects ; but he 

 was thereby enabled, with all the more freedom, to indulge his 

 criticism, in proof of which, were such trifles worthy of being 

 recorded, we might adduce the remarks he made upon the 

 reproduction of the tragedies of Sophocles. An undertaking of 

 some importance now demanded his assistance in the publica- 

 tion, by the Academy, of an edition of the works of Frederick 

 the Great. He had indeed felt somewhat aggrieved that c not 





1 ' Briefe an Varnhagen/ No. 113. 



2 ' Briefe an Bunsen,' p. 18 ; see also p. 48. 



3 ( Briefe an Ludwig Tieck/ edited by Karl von Holtei, vol. ii. p. 34. 

 VOL. II. T 



