In attempting to trace the theory of the German novelle back to its beginnings, a century and more ago, the student finds that Goethe's famous epigram of 1827: “Was ist die Novelle anders als eine sich ereignete unerhörte Begebenheit?” is rightly given third place chronologically among the more important contributions to the discussion before Tieck. Goethe's predecessors in this field were the brothers Schlegel, and their contributions were pioneer work in a truly peculiar sense of the word; for at the time they wrote, the German novelle was as good as non-existent, and criticism is wont to follow, not precede, literary production. It is true that both had foreign models from which to deduce their theory; in the case of Friedrich Schlegel, Boccaccio furnished the norm, for August Wilhelm, both Boccaccio and Cervantes. But it is also true that, as the foremost critical talents of the Romantic movement, the Schlegels were in search of a new literary form into which might be poured the new literary content of the movement with which they were allied; and so their critical statements are, in a certain sense, more or less conscious propaganda for Romanticism. It was in their characteristically Romantic flight from an uncongenial present that they rediscovered Boccaccio and Cervantes and realised that these two masters had excelled in a form not native to Germany. In introducing this form in theory into German literature theirs was pioneer criticism of the first order, and it is with no thought of belittling their attainment that attention may be called to the fact that their work was anticipated in a fashion by the greatest figure in literature among their contemporaries.