From 1791 to 1795, Schlegel was tutor to Willem Ferdinand Mogge Muilman, the son of a Dutch banker, who lived at Herengracht 476 in Amsterdam.

[4] She assisted Schlegel in some of his literary productions, and the publication of her correspondence in 1871 established for her a posthumous reputation as a German letter writer.

[6] In Jena, Schlegel made critical contributions to Schiller's Horen and that author's Musen-Almanach,[4] and wrote around 300 articles for the Jenaer Allgemeine Litteratur-Zeitung.

[6] It is widely accepted that the Romantic Movement in Germany emerged, on the one hand, as a reaction against the aesthetical ideals defended in Classicism and Neoclassicism, and on the other, as a deviation from the rational principles of the Enlightenment with the consequent regression to the irrational spirit of the Middle Ages.

With his brother, Schlegel founded the Athenaeum (1798–1800), the organ of the Romantic school, in which he dissected disapprovingly the immensely popular works of the sentimental novelist August Lafontaine.

[7]In 1801 Schlegel went to Berlin, where he delivered lectures on art and literature; and in the following year he published Ion, a tragedy in Euripidean style, which gave rise to a suggestive discussion on the principles of dramatic poetry.

In another volume, Blumensträusse italienischer, spanischer und portugiesischer Poesie (1804), he gave translations of Spanish, Portuguese and Italian lyrics.

After divorcing his wife Caroline, Schlegel travelled with Madame de Staël to Switzerland, Italy and France, acting as an adviser in her literary work.

Schlegel was made a professor of Indology at the University of Bonn in 1818, and during the remainder of his life occupied himself chiefly with oriental studies.

After the death of Madame de Staël 14 July 1817, Schlegel married in 1818 a daughter of Heinrich Paulus, but this union was dissolved in 1821.

In 1837 he wrote the preface to the German translation of James Cowles Prichard's book An Analysis of the Egyptian Mythology which originally had been published in 1819.

[16] In 1835, Schlegel became head of the committee organising a monument in memory of Ludwig van Beethoven in Bonn, the composer's birthplace.

[4] An article for the 1920 Encyclopedia Americana provided the following thoughts: As a critic [Schlegel] carried on the tradition of Lessing and Herder.

Without possessing Lessing's power of style and personality, [Schlegel] commanded a wider range of artistic susceptibility.

Schlegel established models for the new method of analytical and interpretative criticism in his essays on Goethe's Hermann and Dorothea and on Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.

His Vienna lectures On Dramatic Art and Literature were translated into most of the languages of Europe and stand as a permanent contribution to critical literature; his definition of the terms "classic" and "romantic" met with general recognition; his views on the so-called "three unities" and on the "correctness" of Shakespeare evoked an especially strong echo in England and finally made the Johnsonian attitude toward Shakespeare appear obsolete.

A selection of the writings of both August Wilhelm and Friedrich Schlegel, edited by Oskar Walzel, will be found in Kürschner's Deutsche Nationalliteratur, 143 (1892).