In 1803 he published a graceful little volume of typical Minnelieder, renewed from the middle high-German period.  The note of the book (in which Runge’s copperplate outlines are perhaps as significant as the poems) is spiritualized sex-love:  the utterance of its fragrance and delicacy, its unique place in the universe as a pathway to the Divine—­a point of view to which the modern mind is prone to take some exceptions, considering a religion of erotics hardly firm enough ground to support an entire philosophy of living.  All the motives of the old court-lyric are well represented—­the torments and rewards of love, the charm of spring, the refinements of courtly breeding—­and the sophisticated metrical forms are handled with great virtuosity.  Schiller, it is true, compared them to the chatter of sparrows, and Goethe also paid his compliments to the “sing-song of the Minnesingers,” but it was this same little book which first gave young Jakob Grimm the wish to become acquainted with these poets in their original form.

That eminently “Romantic” play, Emperor Octavian (1804), derived from a familiar medieval chap-book, lyric in tone and loose in form, is a pure epitome of the movement, and the high-water mark of Tieck’s apostleship and service.  Here Tieck shows his intimate sense of the poetry of inanimate nature; ironic mockery surrenders completely to religious devotion; the piece is bathed in—­

  The light that never was on sea or land,
  The consecration and the poet’s dream.

It is in the prologue to this play that personified Romance declares her descent from Faith, her father, and Love, her mother, and introduces the action by the command: 

  “Moonshine-lighted magic night
  Holding every sense in thrall;
  World, which wondrous tales recall,
  Rise, in ancient splendors bright!”

During a year’s residence in Italy Tieck applied himself chiefly to reading old-German manuscripts, in the Library of the Vatican, and wavered upon the edge of a decision to devote himself to Germanic philology.

[Illustration:  #A CHAPEL IN THE FOREST# MORITZ VON SCHWIND]

The loss to science is not serious, for Tieck hardly possessed the grasp and security which could have made him a peer of the great pioneers in this field.  From the time of his leaving for Italy, Tieck’s importance for the development of Romanticism becomes comparatively negligible.

After a roving existence of years, during which he lived in Vienna, Munich, Prague and London, he made a settled home in Dresden.  Here he had an enviable place in the very considerable literary and artistic group, and led an existence of almost suspiciously “reasonable” well-being, from a Romantic view-point.  The “dramatic evenings” at his home, in which he read plays aloud before a brilliant gathering, were a feature of social life.  For seventeen years he had an influential position as “dramaturg” of the Royal Theatre, it being his duty to pass on plays to be performed and to decide upon suitable actors for the parts.