They spend
their lives, more or less, at the various games of poetry. Some, like
Goethe, win in the majority of trials, and then we study all of their
records regardless of their individual excellence. Some like Immermann
in _Oberhof_, win only once, but this is sufficient to insure
immortality. Some play and joust, run and wrestle with constancy and
grace; their records, just after starting and just before finishing,
are interesting, but in the end they are always defeated. And when
this is the case, posterity, lay and initiated, forgets their names
and concerns itself in no wise with their records, unless it be for
statistical purposes. It is to the latter class that Graf von
Loeben[1] belongs. For twenty-five years he was a perpetual,
loyal, chivalric contestant in the Olympic vale of poetry. His running
was interesting, but he never won; he never wrote a single thing that
everybody still reads for its own sake.
Aside from his connection with the Lorelei-matter, Graf von Loeben is,
therefore, at present, a wholly obscure, indeed unknown, Poet. The
large _Konversations-Lexikons_[2] of Meyer and Brockhaus say nothing
about him, unless it be in the discussion of some other poet with whom
he associated.
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