Page:The Midsummer Night.djvu/15

 Tieck's brother, who had been his companion at the time of their production, was of the party; and Tieck occasionally read to them some of these early effusions. They afforded especial evidence of the two poetical elements by which the poet in later times had first obtained the favour and love of the public, by that intense and inexhaustible love of nature, evinced in his "Phantasus," and the deep overpowering pathos displayed in his "Lowell."

They undoubtedly manifested in him even then the same courageous derision of the follies of the time which is handled in so masterly a manner in his "Gestiefelte Kater," and repeated in his "Zerbino;" but the governing tone of his first poems remains always what we have named.

Of all these youthful poems, one appeared to Bulow the most remarkable, which Tieck had written in 1789, when he was only sixteen years old, entitled, "Die Sommernacht." This, even at the first reading, fixed Bulow's earnest attention. Tieck was surprised that he admired this poem so much above the others,