He wrote also a great number of letters,
between 60 and 70 elaborate reviews, and some critical essays, the
best of which seems to be his commentary to Madame de Stael's _De
l'Allemagne_, while he translated from Anacreon, Dante, Guarini,
Horace, Ovid, Petrarch, Vergil, and others, and left a number of
fragments including the outline of a pretentious novel of which
Heinrich von Veldeke, whom he looked upon as "der Heilige des
Enthusiasmus," was to be the hero. And he was, incidentally, an
omnivorous reader, for, as he naively said:
Viele BUecher muss ich kennen,
Denn die Menschen kenn' ich gern.[5]
As to his originality, another confession is significant:
Ja, es gibt nur wenig Leute,
Deren SchUeler ich nicht bin.[6]
No attempt, however, has as yet been made at even an eclectic edition
of his numerous finished works, a few of which are still unpublished,
many of which are now rare.[7]
As to his standing with his literary contemporaries, Eichendorff
admitted[8] that Loeben influenced him as a man and as a poet; it was
he who induced Eichendorff to write some of his earlier works under
the pen-name of "Florens.
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