In a remarkable paper, written at the age of forty-six, he has described the conditions under which he and his contemporaries produced their works in the different departments of literature.

The paper had been called forth by a violent and coarse attack, which he described as _literarischer Sansculottismus_, on the writers of the period, and with a testiness unusual with him he took up their defence.

Under what conditions, he asks, do classical writers appear?
Only, he answers, when they are members of a great nation and when great events are moving that nation at a period in its history when a high state of culture has been reached by the body of its people.

Only then can the writer be adequately inspired and find to his hand the materials requisite to the production of works of permanent value.

But, at the epoch when he and his contemporaries entered on their career, none of these conditions existed.