THE MAGIC RING.'
It happened to the poet one evening, while in familiar converse with his beloved and now deceased spouse, Caroline Baroness de la Motte Fouque, that he informed her, with respect to an ancient French novel on which she was then engaged, many particulars as to the customs of that chivalric period. For although his lady was greatly more familiar and conversant with the modem French than himself, yet, on the other hand, he was much more at home with those days of departed heroes and their language ; partly on ac- count of his ancestry, partly also through his studies, and, above all, by the general tendency of his inward life.
The conversation was attended with much fervency ; at last she said, " How unaccountable that thou never yet hast attempted a fiction on those times wherein thy French ancestors fought and vanquished !"
The thought kindled, and soon there gradually rose before the author the lights of the " Magic Ring." He determined to con- struct a romance of ancient French chivalry ; and a glance into his own recesses sufficed to shew him the necessity of an original Ger- man hero, as the radical stem for the French knighthood, as also for the related European, and even the Arabian, therewith united. Thus arose in its primitive features the variegated texture which has here again unfolded itself There might further, amid the nu- merous sympathies of which this work can boast, have been many a minuter feature welcome, as it occurred to the poet, and deter- mined him during its composition. Next to the propitious ap- pearance of Bertha (in the reality), and Gabrielle, there hovered before the eyes of the bard the Image of a female friend, then long since beatified as Blanchefleur. At all events, this form at a later period arose upon his consciousness In immeasurably brighter splendour. He is certainly not the first poet to whom the like
boing in the result an admirable product, as Corinthiau brass was said to be the conflux of the spoils of a city. But ' Undine,' he said, was one and single in projection ; and had presented to his imagination — what Scott had never done — an absolutely new idea."
' It has been thought well to include these remarks on the " Magic Ring," both because of its connexion with " Siutram," and because it is probably known (through the English translation above alluded to) to many of the readers of this volume.
