Note 171 — Chapter VII · ROMANTIC IRONY

A well-known example of the extreme to which the romanticists pushed their Fichtean solipsism is the following from the William Lovell of the youthful Tieck: “Having gladly escaped from anxious fetters, I now advance boldly through life, absolved from those irksome duties which were the inventions of cowardly fools. Virtue is, only because I am; it is but a reflection of my inner self. What care I for forms whose dim lustre I have myself brought forth? Let vice and virtue wed. They are only shadows in the mist,” etc.