ACT III. SCENE IV.

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THOMAS CARLYLE'S

COLLECTED WORKS.

LIBRARY EDITION.

_IN THIRTY VOLUMES._

VOL. V.

LIFE OF FRIEDRICH SCHILLER.

LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL (LIMITED),

11 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN.

[Illustration:

From a Miniature in the Possession of the Hofdame Fraeulein von Kalb,

in Berlin, taken while Schiller lived with the Koerners in Dresden.

London. Chapman & Hall.]

THE

LIFE OF FRIEDRICH SCHILLER

COMPREHENDING

AN EXAMINATION OF HIS WORKS.

BY

THOMAS CARLYLE.

Quique pii vates et Phoebo digna locuti. VIRGIL.

[1825.]

_WITH SUPPLEMENT OF 1872._

LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL (LIMITED).

CONTENTS.

PAGE

PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION vii

PART I.

SCHILLER'S YOUTH. (1759-1784) 1

PART II.

FROM HIS SETTLEMENT AT MANNHEIM TO HIS SETTLEMENT AT

JENA. (1784-1790.) 49

PART III.

FROM HIS SETTLEMENT AT JENA TO HIS DEATH. (1790-1805.) 117

SUPPLEMENT OF 1872.

SCHILLER'S PARENTAGE, BOYHOOD, AND YOUTH 241

APPENDIX I.

NO. 1. DANIEL SCHUBART 341

2. LETTERS OF SCHILLER 354

3. FRIENDSHIP WITH GOETHE 371

4. DEATH OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS 375

APPENDIX II.

GOETHE'S INTRODUCTION TO GERMAN TRANSLATION OF THIS LIFE

OF SCHILLER 379

SUMMARY AND INDEX 417

PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION.

[1845.]

The excuse for reprinting this somewhat insignificant Book is, that

certain parties, of the pirate species, were preparing to reprint it

for me. There are books, as there are horses, which a judicious owner,

on fair survey of them, might prefer to adjust by at once shooting

through the head: but in the case of books, owing to the pirate

species, that is not possible. Remains therefore that at least dirty

paper and errors of the press be guarded against; that a poor Book,

which has still to walk this world, do walk in clean linen, so to

speak, and pass its few and evil days with no blotches but its own

adhering to it.

There have been various new _Lives_ of Schiller since this one first

saw the light;--great changes in our notions, informations, in our

relations to the Life of Schiller, and to other things connected

therewith, during that long time! Into which I could not in the least

enter on the present occasion. Such errors, one or two, as lay

corrigible on the surface, I have pointed out by here and there a Note

as I read; but of errors that lay deeper there could no charge be

taken: to break the surface, to tear-up the old substance, and model

_it_ anew, was a task that lay far from me,--that would have been

frightful to me. What was written remains written; and the Reader, by

way of constant commentary, when needed, has to say to himself, "It

was written Twenty years ago." For newer instruction on Schiller's

Biography he can consult the _Schillers Leben_ of Madame von Wolzogen,

which Goethe once called a _Schiller Redivivus_; the _Briefwechsel

zwischen Schiller und Goethe_;--or, as a summary of the whole, and the

readiest inlet to the general subject for an English reader, Sir

Edward Bulwer's _Sketch of Schiller's Life_, a vigorous and lively

piece of writing, prefixed to his _Translations from Schiller_.

The present little Book is very imperfect:--but it pretends also to be

very harmless; it can innocently instruct those who are more ignorant

than itself! To which ingenuous class, according to their wants and

tastes, let it, with all good wishes, and hopes to meet afterwards in

fruitfuler provinces, be heartily commended.

T. CARLYLE.

_London, 7th May 1845._

PART I.

SCHILLER'S YOUTH (1759-1784).

PART FIRST.

[1759-1784.]

Among the writers of the concluding part of the last century there is

none more deserving of our notice than Friedrich Schiller.

Distinguished alike for the splendour of his intellectual faculties,

and the elevation of his tastes and feelings, he has left behind him

in his works a noble emblem of these great qualities: and the

reputation which he thus enjoys, and has merited, excites our

attention the more, on considering the circumstances under which it

was acquired. Schiller had peculiar difficulties to strive with, and

his success has likewise been peculiar. Much of his life was deformed

by inquietude and disease, and it terminated at middle age; he

composed in a language then scarcely settled into form, or admitted to

a rank among the cultivated languages of Europe: yet his writings are

remarkable for their extent and variety as well as their intrinsic

excellence; and his own countrymen are not his only, or perhaps his

principal admirers. It is difficult to collect or interpret the

general voice; but the World, no less than Germany, seems already to

have dignified him with the reputation of a classic; to have enrolled

him among that select number whose works belong not wholly to any age

or nation, but who, having instructed their own contemporaries, are

claimed as instructors by the great family of mankind, and set apart

for many centuries from the common oblivion which soon overtakes the

mass of authors, as it does the mass of other men.

Such has been the high destiny of Schiller. His history and character

deserve our study for more than one reason. A natural and harmless

feeling attracts us towards such a subject; we are anxious to know how

so great a man passed through the world, how he lived, and moved, and

had his being; and the question, if properly investigated, might yield

advantage as well as pleasure. It would be interesting to discover by

what gifts and what employment of them he reached the eminence on

which we now see him; to follow the steps of his intellectual and

moral culture; to gather from his life and works some picture of

himself. It is worth inquiring, whether he, who could represent noble

actions so well, did himself act nobly; how those powers of intellect,

which in philosophy and art achieved so much, applied themselves to

the every-day emergencies of life; how the generous ardour, which

delights us in his poetry, displayed itself in the common intercourse

between man and man. It would at once instruct and gratify us if we

could understand him thoroughly, could transport ourselves into his

circumstances outward and inward, could see as he saw, and feel as he

felt.

But if the various utility of such a task is palpable enough, its

difficulties are not less so. We should not lightly think of

comprehending the very simplest character, in all its bearings; and it

might argue vanity to boast of even a common acquaintance with one

like Schiller's. Such men as he are misunderstood by their daily

companions, much more by the distant observer, who gleans his

information from scanty records, and casual notices of characteristic

events, which biographers are often too indolent or injudicious to

collect, and which the peaceful life of a man of letters usually

supplies in little abundance. The published details of Schiller's

history are meagre and insufficient; and his writings, like those of

every author, can afford but a dim and dubious copy of his mind. Nor

is it easy to decipher even this, with moderate accuracy. The haze of

a foreign language, of foreign manners, and modes of thinking strange

to us, confuses and obscures the sight, often magnifying what is

trivial, softening what is rude, and sometimes hiding or distorting

what is beautiful. To take the dimensions of Schiller's mind were a

hard enterprise, in any case; harder still with these impediments.

Accordingly we do not, in this place, pretend to attempt it: we have

no finished portrait of his character to offer, no formal estimate of

his works. It will be enough for us if, in glancing over his life, we

can satisfy a simple curiosity, about the fortunes and chief

peculiarities of a man connected with us by a bond so kindly as that

of the teacher to the taught, the giver to the receiver of mental

delight; if, in wandering through his intellectual creation, we can

enjoy once more the magnificent and fragrant beauty of that fairy

land, and express our feelings, where we do not aim at judging and

deciding.

Johann Christoph Friedrich Schiller was a native of Marbach, a small

town of Wuertemberg, situated on the banks of the Neckar. He was born

on the 10th of November 1759,--a few months later than our own Robert

Burns. Schiller's early culture was favoured by the dispositions, but

obstructed by the outward circumstances of his parents. Though removed

above the pressure of poverty, their station was dependent and

fluctuating; it involved a frequent change of place and plan. Johann

Caspar Schiller, the father, had been a surgeon in the Bavarian army;

he served in the Netherlands during the Succession War. After his

return home to Wuertemberg, he laid aside the medical profession,

having obtained a commission of ensign and adjutant under his native

Prince. This post he held successively in two regiments; he had

changed into the second, and was absent on active duty when Friedrich

was born. The Peace of Paris put an end to his military employment;

but Caspar had shown himself an intelligent, unassuming and useful

man, and the Duke of Wuertemberg was willing to retain him in his

service. The laying-out of various nurseries and plantations in the

pleasure-grounds of Ludwigsburg and Solitude was intrusted to the

retired soldier, now advanced to the rank of captain: he removed from

one establishment to another, from time to time; and continued in the

Duke's pay till death. In his latter years he resided chiefly at

Ludwigsburg.

This mode of life was not the most propitious for educating such a boy

as Friedrich; but the native worth of his parents did more than

compensate for the disadvantages of their worldly condition and their

limited acquirements in knowledge. The benevolence, the modest and

prudent integrity, the true devoutness of these good people shone

forth at an after period, expanded and beautified in the character of

their son; his heart was nourished by a constant exposure to such

influences, and thus the better part of his education prospered well.

The mother was a woman of many household virtues; to a warm affection

for her children and husband, she joined a degree of taste and

intelligence which is of much rarer occurrence. She is said to have

been a lover of poetry; in particular an admiring reader of Utz and

Gellert, writers whom it is creditable for one in her situation to

have relished.[1] Her kindness and tenderness of heart peculiarly

endeared her to Friedrich. Her husband appears to have been a person

of great probity and meekness of temper, sincerely desirous to approve

himself a useful member of society, and to do his duty conscientiously

to all men. The seeds of many valuable qualities had been sown in him

by nature; and though his early life had been unfavourable for their

cultivation, he at a late period laboured, not without success, to

remedy this disadvantage. Such branches of science and philosophy as

lay within his reach, he studied with diligence, whenever his

professional employments left him leisure; on a subject connected with

the latter he became an author.[2] But what chiefly distinguished him

was the practice of a sincere piety, which seems to have diffused

itself over all his feelings, and given to his clear and honest

character that calm elevation which, in such a case, is its natural

result. As his religion mingled itself with every motive and action of

his life, the wish which in all his wanderings lay nearest his heart,

the wish for the education of his son, was likely to be deeply

tinctured with it. There is yet preserved, in his handwriting, a

prayer composed in advanced age, wherein he mentions how, at the

child's birth, he had entreated the great Father of all, "to supply in

strength of spirit what must needs be wanting in outward instruction."

The gray-haired man, who had lived to see the maturity of his boy,

could now express his solemn thankfulness, that "God had heard the

prayer of a mortal."

[Footnote 1: She was of humble descent and little education,

the daughter of a baker in Kodweis.]

[Footnote 2: His book is entitled _Die Baumzucht im Grossen_

(the Cultivation of Trees on the Grand Scale): it came to a

second edition in 1806.]

Friedrich followed the movements of his parents for some time; and had

to gather the elements of learning from various masters. Perhaps it

was in part owing to this circumstance, that his progress, though

respectable, or more, was so little commensurate with what he

afterwards became, or with the capacities of which even his earliest

years gave symptoms. Thoughtless and gay, as a boy is wont to be, he

would now and then dissipate his time in childish sports, forgetful

that the stolen charms of ball and leapfrog must be dearly bought by

reproaches: but occasionally he was overtaken with feelings of deeper

import, and used to express the agitations of his little mind in words

and actions, which were first rightly interpreted when they were

called to mind long afterwards. His schoolfellows can _now_ recollect

that even his freaks had sometimes a poetic character; that a certain

earnestness of temper, a frank integrity, an appetite for things grand

or moving, was discernible across all the caprices of his boyhood.

Once, it is said, during a tremendous thunderstorm, his father missed

him in the young group within doors; none of the sisters could tell

what was become of Fritz, and the old man grew at length so anxious

that he was forced to go out in quest of him. Fritz was scarcely past

the age of infancy, and knew not the dangers of a scene so awful. His

father found him at last, in a solitary place of the neighbourhood,

perched on the branch of a tree, gazing at the tempestuous face of the

sky, and watching the flashes as in succession they spread their lurid

gleam over it. To the reprimands of his parent, the whimpering truant

pleaded in extenuation, "that the lightning was very beautiful, and

that he wished to see where it was coming from!"--Such anecdotes, we

have long known, are in themselves of small value: the present one has

the additional defect of being somewhat dubious in respect of

authenticity. We have ventured to give it, as it came to us,

notwithstanding. The picture of the boy Schiller, contemplating the

thunder, is not without a certain interest, for such as know the man.

Schiller's first teacher was Moser, pastor and schoolmaster in the

village of Lorch, where the parents resided from the sixth to the

ninth year of their son. This person deserves mention for the

influence he exerted on the early history of his pupil: he seems to

have given his name to the Priest 'Moser' in the _Robbers_; his

spiritual calling, and the conversation of his son, himself afterwards

a preacher, are supposed to have suggested to Schiller the idea of

consecrating himself to the clerical profession. This idea, which laid

hold of and cherished some predominant though vague propensities of

the boy's disposition, suited well with the religious sentiments of

his parents, and was soon formed into a settled purpose. In the public

school at Ludwigsburg, whither the family had now removed, his studies

were regulated with this view; and he underwent, in four successive

years, the annual examination before the Stuttgard Commission, to

which young men destined for the Church are subjected in that country.

Schiller's temper was naturally devout; with a delicacy of feeling

which tended towards bashfulness and timidity, there was mingled in

him a fervid impetuosity, which was ever struggling through its

concealment, and indicating that he felt deeply and strongly, as well

as delicately. Such a turn of mind easily took the form of religion,

prescribed to it by early example and early affections, as well as

nature. Schiller looked forward to the sacred profession with

alacrity: it was the serious daydream of all his boyhood, and much of

his youth. As yet, however, the project hovered before him at a great

distance, and the path to its fulfilment offered him but little

entertainment. His studies did not seize his attention firmly; he

followed them from a sense of duty, not of pleasure. Virgil and

Horace he learned to construe accurately; but is said to have taken no

deep interest in their poetry. The tenderness and meek beauty of the

first, the humour and sagacity and capricious pathos of the last, the

matchless elegance of both, would of course escape his inexperienced

perception; while the matter of their writings must have appeared

frigid and shallow to a mind so susceptible. He loved rather to

meditate on the splendour of the Ludwigsburg theatre, which had

inflamed his imagination when he first saw it in his ninth year, and

given shape and materials to many of his subsequent reveries.[3] Under

these circumstances, his progress, with all his natural ability, could

not be very striking; the teachers did not fail now and then to visit

him with their severities; yet still there was a negligent success in

his attempts, which, joined to his honest and vivid temper, made men

augur well of him. The Stuttgard Examinators have marked him in their

records with the customary formula of approval, or, at worst, of

toleration. They usually designate him as 'a boy of good hope,' _puer

bonae spei_.

[Footnote 3: The first display of his poetic gifts occurred

also in his ninth year, but took its rise in a much humbler

and less common source than the inspiration of the stage. His

biographers have recorded this small event with a

conscientious accuracy, second only to that of Boswell and

Hawkins in regard to the Lichfield _duck_. 'The little tale,'

says one of them, 'is worth relating; the rather that, after

an interval of more than twenty years, Schiller himself, on

meeting with his early comrade (the late Dr. Elwert of

Kantstadt) for the first time since their boyhood, reminded

him of the adventure, recounting the circumstances with great

minuteness and glee. It is as follows: Once in 1768, Elwert

and he had to repeat their catechism together on a certain

day publicly in the church. Their teacher, an

ill-conditioned, narrow-minded pietist, had previously

threatened them with a thorough flogging if they missed even

a single word. To make the matter worse, this very teacher

chanced to be the person whose turn it was to catechise on

the appointed day. Both the boys began their answers with

dismayed hearts and faltering tongues; yet they succeeded in

accomplishing the task; and were in consequence rewarded by

the mollified pedagogue with two kreutzers apiece. Four

kreutzers of ready cash was a sum of no common magnitude; how

it should be disposed of formed a serious question for the

parties interested. Schiller moved that they should go to

Harteneck, a hamlet in the neighbourhood, and have a dish of

curds-and-cream: his partner assented; but alas! in Harteneck

no particle of curds or cream was to be had. Schiller then

made offer for a quarter-cake of cheese; but for this four

entire kreutzers were demanded, leaving nothing whatever in

reserve for bread! Twice baffled, the little gastronomes,

unsatisfied in stomach, wandered on to Neckarweihingen;

where, at length, though not till after much inquiry, they

did obtain a comfortable mess of curds-and-cream, served up

in a gay platter, and silver spoons to eat it with. For all

this, moreover, they were charged but three kreutzers; so

that there was still one left to provide them with a bunch of

St. John grapes. Exhilarated by such liberal cheer, Schiller

rose into a glow of inspiration: having left the village, he

mounted with his comrade to the adjacent height, which

overlooks both Harteneck and Neckarweihingen; and there in a

truly poetic effusion he pronounced his malediction on the

creamless region, bestowing with the same solemnity his

blessing on the one which had afforded him that savoury

refreshment.' _Friedrich von Schillers Leben_ (Heidelberg.

1817), p. 11.]

This good hope was not, however, destined to be realised in the way

they expected: accidents occurred which changed the direction of

Schiller's exertions, and threatened for a time to prevent the success

of them altogether. The Duke of Wuertemberg had lately founded a Free

Seminary for certain branches of professional education: it was first

set up at Solitude, one of his country residences; and had now been

transferred to Stuttgard, where, under an improved form, and with the

name of _Karls-schule_, we believe it still exists. The Duke proposed

to give the sons of his military officers a preferable claim to the

benefits of this institution; and having formed a good opinion both of

Schiller and his father, he invited the former to profit by this

opportunity. The offer occasioned great embarrassment: the young man

and his parents were alike determined in favour of the Church, a

project with which this new one was inconsistent. Their embarrassment

was but increased, when the Duke, on learning the nature of their

scruples, desired them to think well before they decided. It was out

of fear, and with reluctance that his proposal was accepted. Schiller

enrolled himself in 1773; and turned, with a heavy heart, from

freedom and cherished hopes, to Greek, and seclusion, and Law.

His anticipations proved to be but too just: the six years which he

spent in this establishment were the most harassing and comfortless of

his life. The Stuttgard system of education seems to have been formed

on the principle, not of cherishing and correcting nature, but of

rooting it out, and supplying its place with something better. The

process of teaching and living was conducted with the stiff formality

of military drilling; every thing went on by statute and ordinance,

there was no scope for the exercise of free-will, no allowance for the

varieties of original structure. A scholar might possess what

instincts or capacities he pleased; the 'regulations of the school'

took no account of this; he must fit himself into the common mould,

which, like the old Giant's bed, stood there, appointed by superior

authority, to be filled alike by the great and the little. The same

strict and narrow course of reading and composition was marked out for

each beforehand, and it was by stealth if he read or wrote any thing

beside. Their domestic economy was regulated in the same spirit as

their preceptorial: it consisted of the same sedulous exclusion of all

that could border on pleasure, or give any exercise to choice. The

pupils were kept apart from the conversation or sight of any person

but their teachers; none ever got beyond the precincts of despotism to

snatch even a fearful joy; their very amusements proceeded by the word

of command.

How grievous all this must have been, it is easy to conceive. To

Schiller it was more grievous than to any other. Of an ardent and

impetuous yet delicate nature, whilst his discontentment devoured him

internally, he was too modest and timid to give it the relief of

utterance by deeds or words. Locked up within himself, he suffered

deeply, but without complaining. Some of his letters written during

this period have been preserved: they exhibit the ineffectual

struggles of a fervid and busy mind veiling its many chagrins under a

certain dreary patience, which only shows them more painfully. He

pored over his lexicons and grammars, and insipid tasks, with an

artificial composure; but his spirit pined within him like a

captive's, when he looked forth into the cheerful world, or

recollected the affection of parents, the hopes and frolicsome

enjoyments of past years. The misery he endured in this severe and

lonely mode of existence strengthened or produced in him a habit of

constraint and shyness, which clung to his character through life.

The study of Law, for which he had never felt any predilection,

naturally grew in his mind to be the representative of all these

evils, and his distaste for it went on increasing. On this point he

made no secret of his feelings. One of the exercises, yearly

prescribed to every scholar, was a written delineation of his own

character, according to his own views of it, to be delivered publicly

at an appointed time: Schiller, on the first of these exhibitions,

ventured to state his persuasion, that he was not made to be a jurist,

but called rather by his inclinations and faculties to the clerical

profession. This statement, of course, produced no effect; he was

forced to continue the accustomed course, and his dislike for Law kept

fast approaching to absolute disgust. In 1775, he was fortunate enough

to get it relinquished, though at the expense of adopting another

employment, for which, in different circumstances, he would hardly

have declared himself. The study of Medicine, for which a new

institution was about this time added to the Stuttgard school, had no

attractions for Schiller: he accepted it only as a galling servitude

in exchange for one more galling. His mind was bent on higher

objects; and he still felt all his present vexations aggravated by the

thought, that his fairest expectations from the future had been

sacrificed to worldly convenience, and the humblest necessities of

life.

Meanwhile the youth was waxing into manhood, and the fetters of

discipline lay heavier on him, as his powers grew stronger, and his

eyes became open to the stirring and variegated interests of the

world, now unfolding itself to him under new and more glowing colours.

As yet he contemplated the scene only from afar, and it seemed but the

more gorgeous on that account. He longed to mingle in its busy

current, and delighted to view the image of its movements in his

favourite poets and historians. Plutarch and Shakspeare;[4] the

writings of Klopstock, Lessing, Garve, Herder, Gerstenberg, Goethe,

and a multitude of others, which marked the dawning literature of

Germany, he had studied with a secret avidity: they gave him vague

ideas of men and life, or awakened in him splendid visions of literary

glory. Klopstock's _Messias_, combined with his own religious

tendencies, had early turned him to sacred poetry: before the end of

his fourteenth year, he had finished what he called an 'epic poem,'

entitled _Moses_. The extraordinary popularity of Gerstenberg's

_Ugolino_, and Goethe's _Goetz von Berlichingen_, next directed his

attention to the drama; and as admiration in a mind like his, full of

blind activity and nameless aspirings, naturally issues in imitation,

he plunged with equal ardour into this new subject, and produced his

first tragedy, _Cosmo von Medicis_, some fragments of which he

retained and inserted in his _Robbers_. A mass of minor performances,

preserved among his papers, or published in the Magazines of the time,

serve sufficiently to show that his mind had already dimly discovered

its destination, and was striving with a restless vehemence to reach

it, in spite of every obstacle.

[Footnote 4: The feeling produced in him by Shakspeare he

described long afterwards: it throws light on the general

state of his temper and tastes. 'When I first, at a very

early age,' he says, 'became acquainted with this poet, I

felt indignant at his coldness, his hardness of heart, which

permitted him in the most melting pathos to utter jests,--to

mar, by the introduction of a fool, the soul-searching scenes

of _Hamlet_, _Lear_, and other pieces; which now kept him

still where my sensibilities hastened forward, now drove him

carelessly, onward where I would so gladly have lingered * *

He was the object of my reverence and zealous study for years

before I could love himself. I was not yet capable of

comprehending Nature at first-hand: I had but learned to

admire her image, reflected in the understanding, and put in

order by rules.' _Werke_, Bd. viii 2, p. 77.]

Such obstacles were in his case neither few nor small. Schiller felt

the mortifying truth, that to arrive at the ideal world, he must first

gain a footing in the real; that he might entertain high thoughts and

longings, might reverence the beauties of nature and grandeur of mind,

but was born to toil for his daily bread. Poetry he loved with the

passionateness of a first affection; but he could not live by it; he

honoured it too highly to wish to live by it. His prudence told him

that he must yield to stern necessity, must 'forsake the balmy climate

of Pindus for the Greenland of a barren and dreary science of terms;'

and he did not hesitate to obey. His professional studies were

followed with a rigid though reluctant fidelity; it was only in

leisure gained by superior diligence that he could yield himself to

more favourite pursuits. Genius was to serve as the ornament of his

inferior qualities, not as an excuse for the want of them.

But if, when such sacrifices were required, it was painful to comply

with the dictates of his own reason, it was still more so to endure

the harsh and superfluous restrictions of his teachers. He felt it

hard enough to be driven from the enchantments of poetry by the dull

realities of duty; but it was intolerable and degrading to be

hemmed-in still farther by the caprices of severe and formal

pedagogues. Schiller brooded gloomily over the constraints and

hardships of his situation. Many plans he formed for deliverance.

Sometimes he would escape in secret to catch a glimpse of the free and

busy world to him forbidden: sometimes he laid schemes for utterly

abandoning a place which he abhorred, and trusting to fortune for the

rest. Often the sight of his class-books and school-apparatus became

irksome beyond endurance; he would feign sickness, that he might be

left in his own chamber to write poetry and pursue his darling studies

without hindrance. Such artifices did not long avail him; the masters

noticed the regularity of his sickness, and sent him tasks to be done

while it lasted. Even Schiller's patience could not brook this; his

natural timidity gave place to indignation; he threw the paper of

exercises at the feet of the messenger, and said sternly that "_here_

he would choose his own studies."

Under such corroding and continual vexations an ordinary spirit would

have sunk at length, would have gradually given up its loftier

aspirations, and sought refuge in vicious indulgence, or at best have

sullenly harnessed itself into the yoke, and plodded through

existence, weary, discontented, and broken, ever casting back a

hankering look upon the dreams of youth, and ever without power to

realise them. But Schiller was no ordinary character, and did not act

like one. Beneath a cold and simple exterior, dignified with no

artificial attractions, and marred in its native amiableness by the

incessant obstruction, the isolation and painful destitutions under

which he lived, there was concealed a burning energy of soul, which no

obstruction could extinguish. The hard circumstances of his fortune

had prevented the natural development of his mind; his faculties had

been cramped and misdirected; but they had gathered strength by

opposition and the habit of self-dependence which it encouraged. His

thoughts, unguided by a teacher, had sounded into the depths of his

own nature and the mysteries of his own fate; his feelings and

passions, unshared by any other heart, had been driven back upon his

own, where, like the volcanic fire that smoulders and fuses in secret,

they accumulated till their force grew irresistible.

Hitherto Schiller had passed for an unprofitable, a discontented and a

disobedient Boy: but the time was now come when the gyves of

school-discipline could no longer cripple and distort the giant might

of his nature: he stood forth as a Man, and wrenched asunder his

fetters with a force that was felt at the extremities of Europe. The

publication of the _Robbers_ forms an era not only in Schiller's

history, but in the Literature of the World; and there seems no doubt

that, but for so mean a cause as the perverted discipline of the

Stuttgard school, we had never seen this tragedy. Schiller commenced

it in his nineteenth year; and the circumstances under which it was

composed are to be traced in all its parts. It is the production of a

strong untutored spirit, consumed by an activity for which there is no

outlet, indignant at the barriers which restrain it, and grappling

darkly with the phantoms to which its own energy thus painfully

imprisoned gives being. A rude simplicity, combined with a gloomy and

overpowering force, are its chief characteristics; they remind us of

the defective cultivation, as well as of the fervid and harassed

feelings of its author. Above all, the latter quality is visible; the

tragic interest of the _Robbers_ is deep throughout, so deep that

frequently it borders upon horror. A grim inexpiable Fate is made the

ruling principle: it envelops and overshadows the whole; and under

its louring influence, the fiercest efforts of human will appear but

like flashes that illuminate the wild scene with a brief and terrible

splendour, and are lost forever in the darkness. The unsearchable

abysses of man's destiny are laid open before us, black and profound

and appalling, as they seem to the young mind when it first attempts

to explore them: the obstacles that thwart our faculties and wishes,

the deceitfulness of hope, the nothingness of existence, are sketched

in the sable colours so natural to the enthusiast when he first

ventures upon life, and compares the world that is without him to the

anticipations that were within.

Karl von Moor is a character such as young poets always delight to

contemplate or delineate; to Schiller the analogy of their situations

must have peculiarly recommended him. Moor is animated into action by

feelings similar to those under which his author was then suffering

and longing to act. Gifted with every noble quality of manhood in

overflowing abundance, Moor's first expectations of life, and of the

part he was to play in it, had been glorious as a poet's dream. But

the minor dexterities of management were not among his endowments; in

his eagerness to reach the goal, he had forgotten that the course is a

labyrinthic maze, beset with difficulties, of which some may be

surmounted, some can only be evaded, many can be neither. Hurried on

by the headlong impetuosity of his temper, he entangles himself in

these perplexities; and thinks to penetrate them, not by skill and

patience, but by open force. He is baffled, deceived, and still more

deeply involved; but injury and disappointment exasperate rather than

instruct him. He had expected heroes, and he finds mean men; friends,

and he finds smiling traitors to tempt him aside, to profit by his

aberrations, and lead him onward to destruction: he had dreamed of

magnanimity and every generous principle, he finds that prudence is

the only virtue sure of its reward. Too fiery by nature, the intensity

of his sufferings has now maddened him still farther: he is himself

incapable of calm reflection, and there is no counsellor at hand to

assist him; none, whose sympathy might assuage his miseries, whose

wisdom might teach him to remedy or to endure them. He is stung by

fury into action, and his activity is at once blind and tremendous.

Since the world is not the abode of unmixed integrity, he looks upon

it as a den of thieves; since its institutions may obstruct the

advancement of worth, and screen delinquency from punishment, he

regards the social union as a pestilent nuisance, the mischiefs of

which it is fitting that he in his degree should do his best to

repair, by means however violent. Revenge is the mainspring of his

conduct; but he ennobles it in his own eyes, by giving it the colour

of a disinterested concern for the maintenance of justice,--the

abasement of vice from its high places, and the exaltation of

suffering virtue. Single against the universe, to appeal to the

primary law of the stronger, to 'grasp the scales of Providence in a

mortal's hand,' is frantic and wicked; but Moor has a force of soul

which makes it likewise awful. The interest lies in the conflict of

this gigantic soul against the fearful odds which at length overwhelm

it, and hurry it down to the darkest depths of ruin.

The original conception of such a work as this betrays the

inexperience no less than the vigour of youth: its execution gives a

similar testimony. The characters of the piece, though traced in

glowing colours, are outlines more than pictures: the few features we

discover in them are drawn with elaborate minuteness; but the rest are

wanting. Every thing indicates the condition of a keen and powerful

intellect, which had studied men in books only; had, by

self-examination and the perusal of history, detected and strongly

seized some of the leading peculiarities of human nature; but was yet

ignorant of all the minute and more complex principles which regulate

men's conduct in actual life, and which only a knowledge of living men

can unfold. If the hero of the play forms something like an exception

to this remark, he is the sole exception, and for reasons alluded to

above: his character resembles the author's own. Even with Karl, the

success is incomplete: with the other personages it is far more so.

Franz von Moor, the villain of the Piece, is an amplified copy of Iago

and Richard; but the copy is distorted as well as amplified. There is

no air of reality in Franz: he is a villain of theory, who studies to

accomplish his object by the most diabolical expedients, and soothes

his conscience by arguing with the priest in favour of atheism and

materialism; not the genuine villain of Shakspeare and Nature, who

employs his reasoning powers in creating new schemes and devising new

means, and conquers remorse by avoiding it,--by fixing his hopes and

fears on the more pressing emergencies of worldly business. So

reflective a miscreant as Franz could not exist: his calculations

would lead him to honesty, if merely because it was the best policy.

Amelia, the only female in the piece, is a beautiful creation; but as

imaginary as her persecutor Franz. Still and exalted in her warm

enthusiasm, devoted in her love to Moor, she moves before us as the

inhabitant of a higher and simpler world than ours. "_He_ sails on

troubled seas," she exclaims, with a confusion of metaphors, which it

is easy to pardon, "he sails on troubled seas, Amelia's love sails

with him; he wanders in pathless deserts, Amelia's love makes the

burning sand grow green beneath him, and the stunted shrubs to

blossom; the south scorches his bare head, his feet are pinched by the

northern snow, stormy hail beats round his temples--Amelia's love

rocks him to sleep in the storm. Seas, and hills, and horizons, are

between us; but souls escape from their clay prisons, and meet in the

paradise of love!" She is a fair vision, the _beau ideal_ of a poet's

first mistress; but has few mortal lineaments.

Similar defects are visible in almost all the other characters. Moor,

the father, is a weak and fond old man, who could have arrived at gray

hairs in such a state of ignorance nowhere but in a work of fiction.

The inferior banditti are painted with greater vigour, yet still in

rugged and ill-shapen forms; their individuality is kept up by an

extravagant exaggeration of their several peculiarities. Schiller

himself pronounced a severe but not unfounded censure, when he said of

this work, in a maturer age, that his _chief_ fault was in 'presuming

to delineate men two years before he had met one.'

His skill in the art of composition surpassed his knowledge of the

world; but that too was far from perfection. Schiller's style in the

_Robbers_ is partly of a kind with the incidents and feelings which it

represents; strong and astonishing, and sometimes wildly grand; but

likewise inartificial, coarse, and grotesque. His sentences, in their

rude emphasis, come down like the club of Hercules; the stroke is

often of a crushing force, but its sweep is irregular and awkward.

When Moor is involved in the deepest intricacies of the old question,

necessity and free will, and has convinced himself that he is but an

engine in the hands of some dark and irresistible power, he cries out:

"Why has my Perillus made of me a brazen bull to roast men in my

glowing belly?" The stage-direction says, 'shaken with horror:' no

wonder that he shook!

Schiller has admitted these faults, and explained their origin, in

strong and sincere language, in a passage of which we have already

quoted the conclusion. 'A singular miscalculation of nature,' he says,

'had combined my poetical tendencies with the place of my birth. Any

disposition to poetry did violence to the laws of the institution

where I was educated, and contradicted the plan of its founder. For

eight years my enthusiasm struggled with military discipline; but the

passion for poetry is vehement and fiery as a first love. What

discipline was meant to extinguish, it blew into a flame. To escape

from arrangements that tortured me, my heart sought refuge in the

world of ideas, when as yet I was unacquainted with the world of

realities, from which iron bars excluded me. I was unacquainted with

men; for the four hundred that lived with me were but repetitions of

the same creature, true casts of one single mould, and of that very

mould which plastic nature solemnly disclaimed. * * * Thus

circumstanced, a stranger to human characters and human fortunes, to

hit the medium line between angels and devils was an enterprise in

which I necessarily failed. In attempting it, my pencil necessarily

brought out a monster, for which by good fortune the world had no

original, and which I would not wish to be immortal, except to

perpetuate an example of the offspring which Genius in its unnatural

union with Thraldom may give to the world. I allude to the

_Robbers_.'[5]

[Footnote 5: _Deutsches Museum v. Jahr_ 1784, cited by

Doering.]

Yet with all these excrescences and defects, the unbounded popularity

of the _Robbers_ is not difficult to account for. To every reader, the

excitement of emotion must be a chief consideration; to the mass of

readers it is the sole one: and the grand secret of moving others is,

that the poet be himself moved. We have seen how well Schiller's

temper and circumstances qualified him to fulfil this condition:

treatment, not of his choosing, had raised his own mind into something

like a Pythian frenzy; and his genius, untrained as it was, sufficed

to communicate abundance of the feeling to others. Perhaps more than

abundance: to judge from our individual impression, the perusal of the

_Robbers_ produces an effect powerful even to pain; we are absolutely

wounded by the catastrophe; our minds are darkened and distressed, as

if we had witnessed the execution of a criminal. It is in vain that we

rebel against the inconsistencies and crudities of the work: its

faults are redeemed by the living energy that pervades it. We may

exclaim against the blind madness of the hero; but there is a towering

grandeur about him, a whirlwind force of passion and of will, which

catches our hearts, and puts the scruples of criticism to silence. The

most delirious of enterprises is that of Moor, but the vastness of his

mind renders even that interesting. We see him leagued with

desperadoes directing their savage strength to actions more and more

audacious; he is in arms against the conventions of men and the

everlasting laws of Fate: yet we follow him with anxiety through the

forests and desert places, where he wanders, encompassed with peril,

inspired with lofty daring, and torn by unceasing remorse; and we wait

with awe for the doom which he has merited and cannot avoid. Nor amid

all his frightful aberrations do we ever cease to love him: he is an

'archangel though in ruins;' and the strong agony with which he feels

the present, the certainty of that stern future which awaits him,

which his own eye never loses sight of, makes us lenient to his

crimes. When he pours forth his wild recollections, or still wilder

forebodings, there is a terrible vehemence in his expressions, which

overpowers us, in spite both of his and their extravagance. The scene

on the hills beside the Danube, where he looks at the setting sun,

and thinks of old hopes, and times 'when he could not sleep if his

evening prayer had been forgotten,' is one, with all its

improprieties, that ever clings to the memory. "See," he passionately

continues, "all things are gone forth to bask in the peaceful beam of

the spring: why must I alone inhale the torments of hell out of the

joys of heaven? That all should be so happy, all so married together

by the spirit of peace! The whole world one family, its Father above;

that Father not _mine_! I alone the castaway, I alone struck out from

the company of the just; not for me the sweet name of child, never for

me the languishing look of one whom I love; never, never, the

embracing of a bosom friend! Encircled with murderers; serpents

hissing around me; riveted to vice with iron bonds; leaning on the

bending reed of vice over the gulf of perdition; amid the flowers of

the glad world, a howling Abaddon! Oh, that I might return into my

mother's womb;--that I might be born a beggar! I would never more--O

Heaven, that I could be as one of these day-labourers! Oh, I would

toil till the blood ran down from my temples, to buy myself the

pleasure of one noontide sleep, the blessing of a single tear. There

_was_ a time too, when I could weep--O ye days of peace, thou castle

of my father, ye green lovely valleys!--O all ye Elysian scenes of my

childhood! will ye never come again, never with your balmy sighing

cool my burning bosom? Mourn with me, Nature! They will never come

again, never cool my burning bosom with their balmy sighing. They are

gone! gone! and may not return!"

No less strange is the soliloquy where Moor, with the instrument of

self-destruction in his hands, the 'dread key that is to shut behind

him the prison of life, and to unbolt before him the dwelling of

eternal night,'--meditates on the gloomy enigmas of his future

destiny. Soliloquies on this subject are numerous,--from the time of

Hamlet, of Cato, and downwards. Perhaps the worst of them has more

ingenuity, perhaps the best of them has less awfulness than the

present. St. Dominick himself might shudder at such a question, with

such an answer as this: "What if thou shouldst send me companionless

to some burnt and blasted circle of the universe; which thou hast

banished from thy sight; where the lone darkness and the motionless

desert were my prospects--forever? I would people the silent

wilderness with my fantasies; I should have Eternity for leisure to

examine the perplexed image of the universal woe."

Strength, wild impassioned strength, is the distinguishing quality of

Moor. All his history shows it; and his death is of a piece with the

fierce splendour of his life. Having finished the bloody work of

crime, and magnanimity, and horror, he thinks that, for himself,

suicide would be too easy an exit. He has noticed a poor man toiling

by the wayside, for eleven children; a great reward has been promised

for the head of the Robber; the gold will nourish that poor drudge and

his boys, and Moor goes forth to give it them. We part with him in

pity and sorrow; looking less at his misdeeds than at their frightful

expiation.

The subordinate personages, though diminished in extent and varied in

their forms, are of a similar quality with the hero; a strange mixture

of extravagance and true energy. In perusing the work which represents

their characters and fates, we are alternately shocked and inspired;

there is a perpetual conflict between our understanding and our

feelings. Yet the latter on the whole come off victorious. The

_Robbers_ is a tragedy that will long find readers to astonish, and,

with all its faults, to move. It stands, in our imagination, like

some ancient rugged pile of a barbarous age; irregular, fantastic,

useless; but grand in its height and massiveness and black frowning

strength. It will long remain a singular monument of the early genius

and early fortune of its author.

The publication of such a work as this naturally produced an

extraordinary feeling in the literary world. Translations of the

_Robbers_ soon appeared in almost all the languages of Europe, and

were read in all of them with a deep interest, compounded of

admiration and aversion, according to the relative proportions of

sensibility and judgment in the various minds which contemplated the

subject. In Germany, the enthusiasm which the _Robbers_ excited was

extreme. The young author had burst upon the world like a meteor; and

surprise, for a time, suspended the power of cool and rational

criticism. In the ferment produced by the universal discussion of this

single topic, the poet was magnified above his natural dimensions,

great as they were: and though the general sentence was loudly in his

favour, yet he found detractors as well as praisers, and both equally

beyond the limits of moderation.

One charge brought against him must have damped the joy of literary

glory, and stung Schiller's pure and virtuous mind more deeply than

any other. He was accused of having injured the cause of morality by

his work; of having set up to the impetuous and fiery temperament of

youth a model of imitation which the young were too likely to pursue

with eagerness, and which could only lead them from the safe and

beaten tracks of duty into error and destruction. It has even been

stated, and often been repeated since, that a practical

exemplification of this doctrine occurred, about this time, in

Germany. A young nobleman, it was said, of the fairest gifts and

prospects, had cast away all these advantages; betaken himself to the

forests, and, copying Moor, had begun a course of active

operations,--which, also copying Moor, but less willingly, he had

ended by a shameful death.

It can now be hardly necessary to contradict these theories; or to

show that none but a candidate for Bedlam as well as Tyburn could be

seduced from the substantial comforts of existence, to seek

destruction and disgrace, for the sake of such imaginary grandeur. The

German nobleman of the fairest gifts and prospects turns out, on

investigation, to have been a German blackguard, whom debauchery and

riotous extravagance had reduced to want; who took to the highway,

when he could take to nothing else,--not allured by an ebullient

enthusiasm, or any heroical and misdirected appetite for sublime

actions, but driven by the more palpable stimulus of importunate duns,

an empty purse, and five craving senses. Perhaps in his later days,

this philosopher _may_ have referred to Schiller's tragedy, as the

source from which he drew his theory of life: but if so, we believe he

was mistaken. For characters like him, the great attraction was the

charms of revelry, and the great restraint, the gallows,--before the

period of Karl von Moor, just as they have been since, and will be to

the end of time. Among motives like these, the influence of even the

most malignant book could scarcely be discernible, and would be little

detrimental, if it were.

Nothing, at any rate, could be farther from Schiller's intention than

such a consummation. In his preface, he speaks of the moral effects of

the _Robbers_ in terms which do honour to his heart, while they show

the inexperience of his head. Ridicule, he signifies, has long been

tried against the wickedness of the times, whole cargoes of hellebore

have been expended,--in vain; and now, he thinks, recourse must be

had to more pungent medicines. We may smile at the simplicity of this

idea; and safely conclude that, like other specifics, the present one

would fail to produce a perceptible effect: but Schiller's vindication

rests on higher grounds than these. His work has on the whole

furnished nourishment to the more exalted powers of our nature; the

sentiments and images which he has shaped and uttered, tend, in spite

of their alloy, to elevate the soul to a nobler pitch: and this is a

sufficient defence. As to the danger of misapplying the inspiration he

communicates, of forgetting the dictates of prudence in our zeal for

the dictates of poetry, we have no great cause to fear it. Hitherto,

at least, there has always been enough of dull reality, on every side

of us, to abate such fervours in good time, and bring us back to the

most sober level of prose, if not to sink us below it. We should thank

the poet who performs such a service; and forbear to inquire too

rigidly whether there is any 'moral' in his piece or not. The writer

of a work, which interests and excites the spiritual feelings of men,

has as little need to justify himself by showing how it exemplifies

some wise saw or modern instance, as the doer of a generous action has

to demonstrate its merit, by deducing it from the system of

Shaftesbury, or Smith, or Paley, or whichever happens to be the

favourite system for the age and place. The instructiveness of the

one, and the virtue of the other, exist independently of all systems

or saws, and in spite of all.

But the tragedy of the _Robbers_ produced some inconveniences of a

kind much more sensible than these its theoretical mischiefs. We have

called it the signal of Schiller's deliverance from school tyranny and

military constraint; but its operation in this respect was not

immediate; at first it seemed to involve him more deeply and

dangerously than before. He had finished the original sketch of it in

1778; but for fear of offence, he kept it secret till his medical

studies were completed.[6] These, in the mean time, he had pursued

with sufficient assiduity to merit the usual honours;[7] in 1780, he

had, in consequence, obtained the post of surgeon to the regiment

_Auge_, in the Wuertemberg army. This advancement enabled him to

complete his project, to print the _Robbers_ at his own expense, not

being able to find any bookseller that would undertake it. The nature

of the work, and the universal interest it awakened, drew attention to

the private circumstances of the author, whom the _Robbers_, as well

as other pieces of his writing, that had found their way into the

periodical publications of the time, sufficiently showed to be no

common man. Many grave persons were offended at the vehement

sentiments expressed in the _Robbers_; and the unquestioned ability

with which these extravagances were expressed, but made the matter

worse. To Schiller's superiors, above all, such things were

inconceivable: he might perhaps be a very great genius, but was

certainly a dangerous servant for his Highness the Grand Duke of

Wuertemberg. Officious people mingled themselves in the affair: nay,

the graziers of the Alps were brought to bear upon it. The Grisons

magistrates, it appeared, had seen the book: and were mortally huffed

at being there spoken of, according to a Swabian adage, as _common

highwaymen_.[8] They complained in the _Hamburg Correspondent_; and a

sort of Jackal, at Ludwigsburg, one Walter, whose name deserves to be

thus kept in mind, volunteered to plead their cause before the Grand

Duke.

[Footnote 6: On this subject Doering gives an anecdote, which

may perhaps be worth translating. 'One of Schiller's teachers

surprised him on one occasion reciting a scene from the

_Robbers_, before some of his intimate companions. At the

words, which Franz von Moor addresses to Moser: _Ha, what!

thou knowest none greater? Think again! Death, heaven,

eternity, damnation, hovers in the sound of thy voice! Not

one greater?_--the door opened, and the master saw Schiller

stamping in desperation up and down the room. "For shame,"

said he, "for shame to get into such a passion, and curse

so!" The other scholars tittered covertly at the worthy

inspector; and Schiller called after him with a bitter smile,

"A noodle" (ein confiscirter Kerl)!']

[Footnote 7: His Latin Essay on the _Philosophy of

Physiology_ was written in 1778, and never printed. His

concluding _thesis_ was published according to custom: the

subject is arduous enough, "the connection between the animal

and spiritual nature of man,"--which Dr. Cabanis has since

treated in so offensive a fashion. Schiller's tract we have

never seen. Doering says it was long 'out of print,' till

Nasse reproduced it in his Medical Journal (Leipzig, 1820):

he is silent respecting its merits.]

[Footnote 8: The obnoxious passage has been carefully

expunged from subsequent editions. It was in the third scene

of the second act; Spiegelberg discoursing with Razmann,

observes, "An honest man you may form of windle-straws; but

to make a rascal you must have grist: besides, there is a

national genius in it, a certain rascal-climate, so to

speak." In the first edition, there was added: "_Go to the

Grisons, for instance: that is what I call the thief's

Athens._" The patriot who stood forth on this occasion for

the honour of the Grisons, to deny this weighty charge, and

denounce the crime of making it, was not Dogberry or Verges,

but 'one of the noble family of Salis.']

Informed of all these circumstances, the Grand Duke expressed his

disapprobation of Schiller's poetical labours in the most unequivocal

terms. Schiller was at length summoned to appear before him; and it

then turned out, that his Highness was not only dissatisfied with the

moral or political errors of the work, but scandalised moreover at its

want of literary merit. In this latter respect, he was kind enough to

proffer his own services. But Schiller seems to have received the

proposal with no sufficient gratitude; and the interview passed

without advantage to either party. It terminated in the Duke's

commanding Schiller to abide by medical subjects: or at least to

beware of writing any more poetry, without submitting it to _his_

inspection.

We need not comment on this portion of the Grand Duke's history: his

treatment of Schiller has already been sufficiently avenged. By the

great body of mankind, his name will be recollected, chiefly, if at

all, for the sake of the unfriended youth whom he now schooled so

sharply, and afterwards afflicted so cruelly: it will be recollected

also with the angry triumph which we feel against a shallow and

despotic 'noble of convention,' who strains himself to oppress 'one of

nature's nobility,' submitted by blind chance to his dominion,

and--finds that he cannot! All this is far more than the Prince of

Wuertemberg deserves. Of limited faculties, and educated in the French

principles of taste, then common to persons of his rank in Germany, he

had perused the _Robbers_ with unfeigned disgust; he could see in the

author only a misguided enthusiast, with talents barely enough to make

him dangerous. And though he never fully or formally retracted this

injustice, he did not follow it up; when Schiller became known to the

world at large, the Duke ceased to persecute him. The father he still

kept in his service, and nowise molested.

In the mean time, however, various mortifications awaited Schiller. It

was in vain that he discharged the humble duties of his station with

the most strict fidelity, and even, it is said, with superior skill:

he was a suspected person, and his most innocent actions were

misconstrued, his slightest faults were visited with the full measure

of official severity. His busy imagination aggravated the evil. He had

seen poor Schubart[9] wearing out his tedious eight years of durance

in the fortress of Asperg, because he had been 'a rock of offence to

the powers that were.' The fate of this unfortunate author appeared to

Schiller a type of his own. His free spirit shrank at the prospect of

wasting its strength in strife against the pitiful constraints, the

minute and endless persecutions of men who knew him not, yet had his

fortune in their hands; the idea of dungeons and jailors haunted and

tortured his mind; and the means of escaping them, the renunciation

of poetry, the source of all his joy, if likewise of many woes, the

radiant guiding-star of his turbid and obscure existence, seemed a

sentence of death to all that was dignified, and delightful, and worth

retaining, in his character. Totally ignorant of what is called the

world; conscious too of the might that slumbered in his soul, and

proud of it, as kings are of their sceptres; impetuous when roused,

and spurning unjust restraint; yet wavering and timid from the

delicacy of his nature, and still more restricted in the freedom of

his movements by the circumstances of his father, whose all depended

on the pleasure of the court, Schiller felt himself embarrassed, and

agitated, and tormented in no common degree. Urged this way and that

by the most powerful and conflicting impulses; driven to despair by

the paltry shackles that chained him, yet forbidden by the most sacred

considerations to break them, he knew not on what he should resolve;

he reckoned himself 'the most unfortunate of men.'

[Footnote 9: See Appendix I., No. 1.]

Time at length gave him the solution; circumstances occurred which

forced him to decide. The popularity of the _Robbers_ had brought him

into correspondence with several friends of literature, who wished to

patronise the author, or engage him in new undertakings. Among this

number was the Freiherr von Dalberg, superintendent of the theatre at

Mannheim, under whose encouragement and countenance Schiller

remodelled the _Robbers_, altered it in some parts, and had it brought

upon the stage in 1781. The correspondence with Dalberg began in

literary discussions, but gradually elevated itself into the

expression of more interesting sentiments. Dalberg loved and

sympathised with the generous enthusiast, involved in troubles and

perplexities which his inexperience was so little adequate to thread:

he gave him advice and assistance; and Schiller repaid this favour

with the gratitude due to his kind, his first, and then almost his

only benefactor. His letters to this gentleman have been preserved,

and lately published; they exhibit a lively picture of Schiller's

painful situation at Stuttgard, and of his unskilful as well as eager

anxiety to be delivered from it.[10] His darling project was that

Dalberg should bring him to Mannheim, as theatrical poet, by

permission of the Duke: at one time he even thought of turning player.

[Footnote 10: See Appendix I., No. 2.]

Neither of these projects could take immediate effect, and Schiller's

embarrassments became more pressing than ever. With the natural

feeling of a young author, he had ventured to go in secret, and

witness the first representation of his tragedy, at Mannheim. His

incognito did not conceal him; he was put under arrest during a week,

for this offence: and as the punishment did not deter him from again

transgressing in a similar manner, he learned that it was in

contemplation to try more rigorous measures with him. Dark hints were

given to him of some exemplary as well as imminent severity: and

Dalberg's aid, the sole hope of averting it by quiet means, was

distant and dubious. Schiller saw himself reduced to extremities.

Beleaguered with present distresses, and the most horrible

forebodings, on every side; roused to the highest pitch of

indignation, yet forced to keep silence, and wear the face of

patience, he could endure this maddening constraint no longer. He

resolved to be free, at whatever risk; to abandon advantages which he

could not buy at such a price; to quit his step-dame home, and go

forth, though friendless and alone, to seek his fortune in the great

market of life. Some foreign Duke or Prince was arriving at Stuttgard;

and all the people were in movement, occupied with seeing the

spectacle of his entrance: Schiller seized this opportunity of

retiring from the city, careless whither he went, so he got beyond the

reach of turnkeys, and Grand Dukes, and commanding officers. It was in

the month of October 1782.

This last step forms the catastrophe of the publication of the

_Robbers_: it completed the deliverance of Schiller from the grating

thraldom under which his youth had been passed, and decided his

destiny for life. Schiller was in his twenty-third year when he left

Stuttgard. He says 'he went empty away,--empty in purse and hope.' The

future was indeed sufficiently dark before him. Without patrons,

connexions, or country, he had ventured forth to the warfare on his

own charges; without means, experience, or settled purpose, it was

greatly to be feared that the fight would go against him. Yet his

situation, though gloomy enough, was not entirely without its brighter

side. He was now a free man, free, however poor; and his strong soul

quickened as its fetters dropped off, and gloried within him in the

dim anticipation of great and far-extending enterprises. If, cast too

rudely among the hardships and bitter disquietudes of the world, his

past nursing had not been delicate, he was already taught to look upon

privation and discomfort as his daily companions. If he knew not how

to bend his course among the perplexed vicissitudes of society, there

was a force within him which would triumph over many difficulties; and

a 'light from Heaven' was about his path, which, if it failed to

conduct him to wealth and preferment, would keep him far from baseness

and degrading vices. Literature, and every great and noble thing which

the right pursuit of it implies, he loved with all his heart and all

his soul: to this inspiring object he was henceforth exclusively

devoted; advancing towards this, and possessed of common necessaries

on the humblest scale, there was little else to tempt him. His life

might be unhappy, but would hardly be disgraceful.

Schiller gradually felt all this, and gathered comfort, while better

days began to dawn upon him. Fearful of trusting himself so near

Stuttgard as at Mannheim, he had passed into Franconia, and was living

painfully at Oggersheim, under the name of Schmidt: but Dalberg, who

knew all his distresses, supplied him with money for immediate wants;

and a generous lady made him the offer of a home. Madam von Wolzogen

lived on her estate of Bauerbach, in the neighbourhood of Meinungen;

she knew Schiller from his works, and his intimacy with her sons, who

had been his fellow-students at Stuttgard. She invited him to her

house; and there treated him with an affection which helped him to

forget the past, and look cheerfully forward to the future.

Under this hospitable roof, Schiller had leisure to examine calmly the

perplexed and dubious aspect of his affairs. Happily his character

belonged not to the whining or sentimental sort: he was not of those,

in whom the pressure of misfortune produces nothing but unprofitable

pain; who spend, in cherishing and investigating and deploring their

miseries, the time which should be spent in providing a relief for

them. With him, strong feeling was constantly a call to vigorous

action: he possessed in a high degree the faculty of conquering his

afflictions, by directing his thoughts, not to maxims for enduring

them, or modes of expressing them with interest, but to plans for

getting rid of them; and to this disposition or habit,--too rare among

men of genius, men of a much higher class than mere sentimentalists,

but whose sensibility is out of proportion with their inventiveness or

activity,--we are to attribute no small influence in the fortunate

conduct of his subsequent life. With such a turn of mind, Schiller,

now that he was at length master of his own movements, could not long

be at a loss for plans or tasks. Once settled at Bauerbach, he

immediately resumed his poetical employments; and forgot, in the

regions of fancy, the vague uncertainties of his real condition, or

saw prospects of amending it in a life of literature. By many safe and

sagacious persons, the prudence of his late proceedings might be more

than questioned; it was natural for many to forbode that one who left

the port so rashly, and sailed with such precipitation, was likely to

make shipwreck ere the voyage had extended far: but the lapse of a few

months put a stop to such predictions. A year had not passed since his

departure, when Schiller sent forth his _Verschwoerung des Fiesco_ and

_Kabale und Liebe_; tragedies which testified that, dangerous and

arduous as the life he had selected might be, he possessed resources

more than adequate to its emergencies. _Fiesco_ he had commenced

during the period of his arrest at Stuttgard; it was published, with

the other play, in 1783; and soon after brought upon the Mannheim

theatre, with universal approbation.

It was now about three years since the composition of the _Robbers_

had been finished; five since the first sketch of it had been formed.

With what zeal and success Schiller had, in that interval, pursued the

work of his mental culture, these two dramas are a striking proof. The

first ardour of youth is still to be discerned in them; but it is now

chastened by the dictates of a maturer reason, and made to animate the

products of a much happier and more skilful invention. Schiller's

ideas of art had expanded and grown clearer, his knowledge of life had

enlarged. He exhibits more acquaintance with the fundamental

principles of human nature, as well as with the circumstances under

which it usually displays itself; and far higher and juster views of

the manner in which its manifestations should be represented.

In the _Conspiracy of Fiesco_ we have to admire not only the energetic

animation which the author has infused into all his characters, but

the distinctness with which he has discriminated, without aggravating

them; and the vividness with which he has contrived to depict the

scene where they act and move. The political and personal relations of

the Genoese nobility; the luxurious splendour, the intrigues, the

feuds, and jarring interests, which occupy them, are made visible

before us: we understand and may appreciate the complexities of the

conspiracy; we mingle, as among realities, in the pompous and imposing

movements which lead to the catastrophe. The catastrophe itself is

displayed with peculiar effect. The midnight silence of the sleeping

city, interrupted only by the distant sounds of watchmen, by the low

hoarse murmur of the sea, or the stealthy footsteps and disguised

voice of Fiesco, is conveyed to our imagination by some brief but

graphic touches; we seem to stand in the solitude and deep stillness

of Genoa, awaiting the signal which is to burst so fearfully upon its

slumber. At length the gun is fired; and the wild uproar which ensues

is no less strikingly exhibited. The deeds and sounds of violence,

astonishment and terror; the volleying cannon, the heavy toll of the

alarm-bells, the acclamation of assembled thousands, 'the voice of

Genoa speaking with Fiesco,'--all is made present to us with a force

and clearness, which of itself were enough to show no ordinary power

of close and comprehensive conception, no ordinary skill in arranging

and expressing its results.

But it is not this felicitous delineation of circumstances and visible

scenes that constitutes our principal enjoyment. The faculty of

penetrating through obscurity and confusion, to seize the

characteristic features of an object, abstract or material; of

producing a lively description in the latter case, an accurate and

keen scrutiny in the former, is the essential property of intellect,

and occupies in its best form a high rank in the scale of mental

gifts: but the creative faculty of the poet, and especially of the

dramatic poet, is something superadded to this; it is far rarer, and

occupies a rank far higher. In this particular, _Fiesco_, without

approaching the limits of perfection, yet stands in an elevated range

of excellence. The characters, on the whole, are imagined and

portrayed with great impressiveness and vigour. Traces of old faults

are indeed still to be discovered: there still seems a want of pliancy

about the genius of the author; a stiffness and heaviness in his

motions. His sublimity is not to be questioned; but it does not always

disdain the aid of rude contrasts and mere theatrical effect. He

paints in colours deep and glowing, but without sufficient skill to

blend them delicately: he amplifies nature more than purifies it; he

omits, but does not well conceal the omission. _Fiesco_ has not the

complete charm of a true though embellished resemblance to reality;

its attraction rather lies in a kind of colossal magnitude, which

requires it, if seen to advantage, to be viewed from a distance. Yet

the prevailing qualities of the piece do more than make us pardon such

defects. If the dramatic imitation is not always entirely successful,

it is never very distant from success; and a constant flow of powerful

thought and sentiment counteracts, or prevents us from noticing, the

failure. We find evidence of great philosophic penetration, great

resources of invention, directed by a skilful study of history and

men; and everywhere a bold grandeur of feeling and imagery gives life

to what study has combined. The chief incidents have a dazzling

magnificence; the chief characters, an aspect of majesty and force

which corresponds to it. Fervour of heart, capaciousness of intellect

and imagination, present themselves on all sides: the general effect

is powerful and exalting.

Fiesco himself is a personage at once probable and tragically

interesting. The luxurious dissipation, in which he veils his daring

projects, softens the rudeness of that strength which it half

conceals. His immeasurable pride expands itself not only into a

disdain of subjection, but also into the most lofty acts of

magnanimity: his blind confidence in fortune seems almost warranted by

the resources which he finds in his own fearlessness and imperturbable

presence of mind. His ambition participates in the nobleness of his

other qualities; he is less anxious that his rivals should yield to

him in power than in generosity and greatness of character, attributes

of which power is with him but the symbol and the fit employment.

Ambition in Fiesco is indeed the common wish of every mind to diffuse

its individual influence, to see its own activity reflected back from

the united minds of millions: but it is the common wish acting on no

common man. He does not long to rule, that he may sway other wills, as

it were, by the physical exertion of his own: he would lead us captive

by the superior grandeur of his qualities, once fairly manifested; and

he aims at dominion, chiefly as it will enable him to manifest these.

'It is not the arena that he values, but what lies in that arena:' the

sovereignty is enviable, not for its adventitious splendour, not

because it is the object of coarse and universal wonder; but as it

offers, in the collected force of a nation, something which the

loftiest mortal may find scope for all his powers in guiding. "Spread

out the thunder," Fiesco exclaims, "into its single tones, and it

becomes a lullaby for children: pour it forth together in _one_ quick

peal, and the royal sound shall move the heavens." His affections are

not less vehement than his other passions: his heart can be melted

into powerlessness and tenderness by the mild persuasions of his

Leonora; the idea of exalting this amiable being mingles largely with

the other motives to his enterprise. He is, in fact, a great, and

might have been a virtuous man; and though in the pursuit of grandeur

he swerves from absolute rectitude, we still respect his splendid

qualities, and admit the force of the allurements which have led him

astray. It is but faintly that we condemn his sentiments, when, after

a night spent in struggles between a rigid and a more accommodating

patriotism, he looks out of his chamber, as the sun is rising in its

calm beauty, and gilding the waves and mountains, and all the

innumerable palaces and domes and spires of Genoa, and exclaims with

rapture: "This majestic city--mine! To flame over it like the kingly

Day; to brood over it with a monarch's power; all these sleepless

longings, all these never satiated wishes to be drowned in that

unfathomable ocean!" We admire Fiesco, we disapprove of him, and

sympathise with him: he is crushed in the ponderous machinery which

himself put in motion and thought to control: we lament his fate, but

confess that it was not undeserved. He is a fit 'offering of

individual free-will to the force of social conventions.'

Fiesco is not the only striking character in the play which bears his

name. The narrow fanatical republican virtue of Verrina, the mild and

venerable wisdom of the old Doria, the unbridled profligacy of his

Nephew, even the cold, contented, irreclaimable perversity of the

cutthroat Moor, all dwell in our recollections: but what, next to

Fiesco, chiefly attracts us, is the character of Leonora his wife.

Leonora is of kindred to Amelia in the _Robbers_, but involved in more

complicated relations, and brought nearer to the actual condition of

humanity. She is such a heroine as Schiller most delights to draw.

Meek and retiring by the softness of her nature, yet glowing with an

ethereal ardour for all that is illustrious and lovely, she clings

about her husband, as if her being were one with his. She dreams of

remote and peaceful scenes, where Fiesco should be all to her, she all

to Fiesco: her idea of love is, that '_her_ name should lie in secret

behind every one of his thoughts, should speak to him from every

object of Nature; that for him, this bright majestic universe itself

were but as the shining jewel, on which her image, only _hers_, stood

engraved.' Her character seems a reflection of Fiesco's, but refined

from his grosser strength, and transfigured into a celestial form of

purity, and tenderness, and touching grace. Jealousy cannot move her

into anger; she languishes in concealed sorrow, when she thinks

herself forgotten. It is affection alone that can rouse her into

passion; but under the influence of this, she forgets all weakness and

fear. She cannot stay in her palace, on the night when Fiesco's

destiny is deciding; she rushes forth, as if inspired, to share in her

husband's dangers and sublime deeds, and perishes at last in the

tumult.

The death of Leonora, so brought about, and at such a time, is

reckoned among the blemishes of the work: that of Fiesco, in which

Schiller has ventured to depart from history, is to be more favourably

judged of. Fiesco is not here accidentally drowned; but plunged into

the waves by the indignant Verrina, who forgets or stifles the

feelings of friendship, in his rage at political apostasy. 'The nature

of the Drama,' we are justly told, 'will not suffer the operation of

Chance, or of an immediate Providence. Higher spirits can discern the

minute fibres of an event stretching through the whole expanse of the

system of the world, and hanging, it may be, on the remotest limits of

the future and the past, where man discerns nothing save the action

itself, hovering unconnected in space. But the artist has to paint for

the short view of man, whom he wishes to instruct; not for the

piercing eye of superior powers, from whom he learns.'

In the composition of _Fiesco_, Schiller derived the main part of his

original materials from history; he could increase the effect by

gorgeous representations, and ideas preexisting in the mind of his

reader. Enormity of incident and strangeness of situation lent him a

similar assistance in the _Robbers_. _Kabale und Liebe_ is destitute

of these advantages; it is a tragedy of domestic life; its means of

interesting are comprised within itself, and rest on very simple

feelings, dignified by no very singular action. The name,

_Court-Intriguing and Love_, correctly designates its nature; it aims

at exhibiting the conflict, the victorious conflict, of political

manoeuvering, of cold worldly wisdom, with the pure impassioned

movements of the young heart, as yet unsullied by the tarnish of

every-day life, inexperienced in its calculations, sick of its empty

formalities, and indignantly determined to cast-off the mean

restrictions it imposes, which bind so firmly by their number, though

singly so contemptible. The idea is far from original: this is a

conflict which most men have figured to themselves, which many men of

ardent mind are in some degree constantly waging. To make it, in this

simple form, the subject of a drama, seems to be a thought of

Schiller's own; but the praise, though not the merit of his

undertaking, considerable rather as performed than projected, has been

lessened by a multitude of worthless or noxious imitations. The same

primary conception has been tortured into a thousand shapes, and

tricked out with a thousand tawdry devices and meretricious ornaments,

by the Kotzebues, and other 'intellectual Jacobins,' whose

productions have brought what we falsely call the 'German Theatre'

into such deserved contempt in England. Some portion of the gall, due

only to these inflated, flimsy, and fantastic persons, appears to have

acted on certain critics in estimating this play of Schiller's. August

Wilhelm Schlegel speaks slightingly of the work: he says, 'it will

hardly move us by its tone of overstrained sensibility, but may well

afflict us by the painful impressions which it leaves.' Our own

experience has been different from that of Schlegel. In the characters

of Louisa and Ferdinand Walter we discovered little overstraining;

their sensibility we did not reckon very criminal; seeing it united

with a clearness of judgment, chastened by a purity of heart, and

controlled by a force of virtuous resolution, in full proportion with

itself. We rather admired the genius of the poet, which could elevate

a poor music-master's daughter to the dignity of a heroine; could

represent, without wounding our sense of propriety, the affection of

two noble beings, created for each other by nature, and divided by

rank; we sympathised in their sentiments enough to feel a proper

interest in their fate, and see in them, what the author meant we

should see, two pure and lofty minds involved in the meshes of vulgar

cunning, and borne to destruction by the excess of their own good

qualities and the crimes of others.

Ferdinand is a nobleman, but not convinced that 'his patent of

nobility is more ancient or of more authority than the primeval scheme

of the universe:' he speaks and acts like a young man entertaining

such persuasions: disposed to yield everything to reason and true

honour, but scarcely anything to mere use and wont. His passion for

Louisa is the sign and the nourishment rather than the cause of such a

temper: he loves her without limit, as the only creature he has ever

met with of a like mind with himself; and this feeling exalts into

inspiration what was already the dictate of his nature. We accompany

him on his straight and plain path; we rejoice to see him fling aside

with a strong arm the artifices and allurements with which a worthless

father and more worthless associates assail him at first in vain:

there is something attractive in the spectacle of native integrity,

fearless though inexperienced, at war with selfishness and craft;

something mournful, because the victory will seldom go as we would

have it.

Louisa is a meet partner for the generous Ferdinand: the poet has done

justice to her character. She is timid and humble; a feeling and

richly gifted soul is hid in her by the unkindness of her earthly lot;

she is without counsellors except the innate holiness of her heart,

and the dictates of her keen though untutored understanding; yet when

the hour of trial comes, she can obey the commands of both, and draw

from herself a genuine nobleness of conduct, which secondhand

prudence, and wealth, and titles, would but render less touching. Her

filial affection, her angelic attachment to her lover, her sublime and

artless piety, are beautifully contrasted with the bleakness of her

external circumstances: she appears before us like the '_one_ rose of

the wilderness left on its stalk,' and we grieve to see it crushed and

trodden down so rudely.

The innocence, the enthusiasm, the exalted life and stern fate of

Louisa and Ferdinand give a powerful charm to this tragedy: it is

everywhere interspersed with pieces of fine eloquence, and scenes

which move us by their dignity or pathos. We recollect few passages of

a more overpowering nature than the conclusion, where Ferdinand,

beguiled by the most diabolical machinations to disbelieve the virtue

of his mistress, puts himself and her to death by poison. There is a

gloomy and solemn might in his despair; though overwhelmed, he seems

invincible: his enemies have blinded and imprisoned him in their

deceptions; but only that, like Samson, he may overturn his

prison-house, and bury himself, and all that have wronged him, in its

ruins.

The other characters of the play, though in general properly

sustained, are not sufficiently remarkable to claim much of our

attention. Wurm, the chief counsellor and agent of the unprincipled,

calculating Father, is wicked enough; but there is no great

singularity in his wickedness. He is little more than the dry, cool,

and now somewhat vulgar miscreant, the villanous Attorney of modern

novels. Kalb also is but a worthless subject, and what is worse, but

indifferently handled. He is meant for the feather-brained thing of

tags and laces, which frequently inhabits courts; but he wants the

grace and agility proper to the species; he is less a fool than a

blockhead, less perverted than totally inane. Schiller's strength lay

not in comedy, but in something far higher. The great merit of the

present work consists in the characters of the hero and heroine; and

in this respect it ranks at the very head of its class. As a tragedy

of common life, we know of few rivals to it, certainly of no superior.

The production of three such pieces as the _Robbers_, _Fiesco_, and

_Kabale und Liebe_, already announced to the world that another great

and original mind had appeared, from whose maturity, when such was the

promise of its youth, the highest expectations might be formed. These

three plays stand related to each other in regard to their nature and

form, as well as date: they exhibit the progressive state of

Schiller's education; show us the fiery enthusiasm of youth,

exasperated into wildness, astonishing in its movements rather than

sublime; and the same enthusiasm gradually yielding to the sway of

reason, gradually using itself to the constraints prescribed by sound

judgment and more extensive knowledge. Of the three, the _Robbers_ is

doubtless the most singular, and likely perhaps to be the most widely

popular: but the latter two are of more real worth in the eye of

taste, and will better bear a careful and rigorous study.

With the appearance of _Fiesco_ and its companion, the first period of

Schiller's literary history may conclude. The stormy confusions of his

youth were now subsiding; after all his aberrations, repulses, and

perplexed wanderings, he was at length about to reach his true

destination, and times of more serenity began to open for him. Two

such tragedies as he had lately offered to the world made it easier

for his friend Dalberg to second his pretensions. Schiller was at last

gratified by the fulfilment of his favourite scheme; in September

1783, he went to Mannheim, as poet to the theatre, a post of

respectability and reasonable profit, to the duties of which he

forthwith addressed himself with all his heart. He was not long

afterwards elected a member of the German Society established for

literary objects in Mannheim; and he valued the honour, not only as a

testimony of respect from a highly estimable quarter, but also as a

means of uniting him more closely with men of kindred pursuits and

tempers: and what was more than all, of quieting forever his

apprehensions from the government at Stuttgard. Since his arrival at

Mannheim, one or two suspicious incidents had again alarmed him on

this head; but being now acknowledged as a subject of the Elector

Palatine, naturalised by law in his new country, he had nothing more

to fear from the Duke of Wuertemberg.

Satisfied with his moderate income, safe, free, and surrounded by

friends that loved and honoured him, Schiller now looked confidently

forward to what all his efforts had been a search and hitherto a

fruitless search for, an undisturbed life of intellectual labour. What

effect this happy aspect of his circumstances must have produced upon

him may be easily conjectured. Through many years he had been inured

to agitation and distress; now peace and liberty and hope, sweet in

themselves, were sweeter for their novelty. For the first time in his

life, he saw himself allowed to obey without reluctance the ruling

bias of his nature; for the first time inclination and duty went hand

in hand. His activity awoke with renovated force in this favourable

scene; long-thwarted, half-forgotten projects again kindled into

brightness, as the possibility of their accomplishment became

apparent: Schiller glowed with a generous pride when he felt his

faculties at his own disposal, and thought of the use he meant to make

of them. 'All my connexions,' he said, 'are now dissolved. The public

is now all to me, my study, my sovereign, my confidant. To the public

alone I henceforth belong; before this and no other tribunal will I

place myself; this alone do I reverence and fear. Something majestic

hovers before me, as I determine now to wear no other fetters but the

sentence of the world, to appeal to no other throne but the soul of

man.'

These expressions are extracted from the preface to his _Thalia_, a

periodical work which he undertook in 1784, devoted to subjects

connected with poetry, and chiefly with the drama. In such sentiments

we leave him, commencing the arduous and perilous, but also glorious

and sublime duties of a life consecrated to the discovery of truth,

and the creation of intellectual beauty. He was now exclusively what

is called a _Man of Letters_, for the rest of his days.

PART II.

FROM SCHILLER'S SETTLEMENT AT MANNHEIM TO HIS SETTLEMENT AT JENA.

(1783-1790.)

PART SECOND.

[1783-1790.]

If to know wisdom were to practise it; if fame brought true dignity

and peace of mind; or happiness consisted in nourishing the intellect

with its appropriate food and surrounding the imagination with ideal

beauty, a literary life would be the most enviable which the lot of

this world affords. But the truth is far otherwise. The Man of Letters

has no immutable, all-conquering volition, more than other men; to

understand and to perform are two very different things with him as

with every one. His fame rarely exerts a favourable influence on his

dignity of character, and never on his peace of mind: its glitter is

external, for the eyes of others; within, it is but the aliment of

unrest, the oil cast upon the ever-gnawing fire of ambition,

quickening into fresh vehemence the blaze which it stills for a

moment. Moreover, this Man of Letters is not wholly made of spirit,

but of clay and spirit mixed: his thinking faculties may be nobly

trained and exercised, but he must have affections as well as thoughts

to make him happy, and food and raiment must be given him or he dies.

Far from being the most enviable, his way of life is perhaps, among

the many modes by which an ardent mind endeavours to express its

activity, the most thickly beset with suffering and degradation. Look

at the biography of authors! Except the Newgate Calendar, it is the

most sickening chapter in the history of man. The calamities of these

people are a fertile topic; and too often their faults and vices have

kept pace with their calamities. Nor is it difficult to see how this

has happened. Talent of any sort is generally accompanied with a

peculiar fineness of sensibility; of genius this is the most essential

constituent; and life in any shape has sorrows enough for hearts so

formed. The employments of literature sharpen this natural tendency;

the vexations that accompany them frequently exasperate it into morbid

soreness. The cares and toils of literature are the business of life;

its delights are too ethereal and too transient to furnish that

perennial flow of satisfaction, coarse but plenteous and substantial,

of which happiness in this world of ours is made. The most finished

efforts of the mind give it little pleasure, frequently they give it

pain; for men's aims are ever far beyond their strength. And the

outward recompense of these undertakings, the distinction they confer,

is of still smaller value: the desire for it is insatiable even when

successful; and when baffled, it issues in jealousy and envy, and

every pitiful and painful feeling. So keen a temperament with so

little to restrain or satisfy, so much to distress or tempt it,

produces contradictions which few are adequate to reconcile. Hence the

unhappiness of literary men, hence their faults and follies.

Thus literature is apt to form a dangerous and discontenting

occupation even for the amateur. But for him whose rank and worldly

comforts depend on it, who does not live to write, but writes to live,

its difficulties and perils are fearfully increased. Few spectacles

are more afflicting than that of such a man, so gifted and so fated,

so jostled and tossed to and fro in the rude bustle of life, the

buffetings of which he is so little fitted to endure. Cherishing, it

may be, the loftiest thoughts, and clogged with the meanest wants; of

pure and holy purposes, yet ever driven from the straight path by the

pressure of necessity, or the impulse of passion; thirsting for glory,

and frequently in want of daily bread; hovering between the empyrean

of his fancy and the squalid desert of reality; cramped and foiled in

his most strenuous exertions; dissatisfied with his best performances,

disgusted with his fortune, this Man of Letters too often spends his

weary days in conflicts with obscure misery: harassed, chagrined,

debased, or maddened; the victim at once of tragedy and farce; the

last forlorn outpost in the war of Mind against Matter. Many are the

noble souls that have perished bitterly, with their tasks unfinished,

under these corroding woes! Some in utter famine, like Otway; some in

dark insanity, like Cowper and Collins; some, like Chatterton, have

sought out a more stern quietus, and turning their indignant steps

away from a world which refused them welcome, have taken refuge in

that strong Fortress, where poverty and cold neglect, and the thousand

natural shocks which flesh is heir to, could not reach them any more.

Yet among these men are to be found the brightest specimens and the

chief benefactors of mankind! It is they that keep awake the finer

parts of our souls; that give us better aims than power or pleasure,

and withstand the total sovereignty of Mammon in this earth. They are

the vanguard in the march of mind; the intellectual Backwoodsmen,

reclaiming from the idle wilderness new territories for the thought

and the activity of their happier brethren. Pity that from all their

conquests, so rich in benefit to others, themselves should reap so

little! But it is vain to murmur. They are volunteers in this cause;

they weighed the charms of it against the perils: and they must abide

the results of their decision, as all must. The hardships of the

course they follow are formidable, but not all inevitable; and to such

as pursue it rightly, it is not without its great rewards. If an

author's life is more agitated and more painful than that of others,

it may also be made more spirit-stirring and exalted: fortune may

render him unhappy; it is only himself that can make him despicable.

The history of genius has, in fact, its bright side as well as its

dark. And if it is distressing to survey the misery, and what is

worse, the debasement of so many gifted men, it is doubly cheering on

the other hand to reflect on the few, who, amid the temptations and

sorrows to which life in all its provinces and most in theirs is

liable, have travelled through it in calm and virtuous majesty, and

are now hallowed in our memories, not less for their conduct than

their writings. Such men are the flower of this lower world: to such

alone can the epithet of great be applied with its true emphasis.

There is a congruity in their proceedings which one loves to

contemplate: 'he who would write heroic poems, should make his whole

life a heroic poem.'

So thought our Milton; and, what was more difficult, he acted so. To

Milton, the moral king of authors, a heroic multitude, out of many

ages and countries, might be joined; a 'cloud of witnesses,' that

encompass the true literary man throughout his pilgrimage, inspiring

him to lofty emulation, cheering his solitary thoughts with hope,

teaching him to struggle, to endure, to conquer difficulties, or, in

failure and heavy sufferings, to

'arm th' obdured breast

With stubborn patience as with triple steel.'

To this august series, in his own degree, the name of Schiller may be

added.

Schiller lived in more peaceful times than Milton; his history is less

distinguished by obstacles surmounted, or sacrifices made to

principle; yet he had his share of trials to encounter; and the

admirers of his writings need not feel ashamed of the way in which he

bore it. One virtue, the parent of many others, and the most essential

of any, in his circumstances, he possessed in a supreme degree; he was

devoted with entire and unchanging ardour to the cause he had embarked

in. The extent of his natural endowments might have served, with a

less eager character, as an excuse for long periods of indolence,

broken only by fits of casual exertion: with him it was but a new

incitement to improve and develop them. The Ideal Man that lay within

him, the image of himself as he _should_ be, was formed upon a strict

and curious standard; and to reach this constantly approached and

constantly receding emblem of perfection, was the unwearied effort of

his life. This crowning principle of conduct, never ceasing to inspire

his energetic mind, introduced a consistency into his actions, a firm

coherence into his character, which the changeful condition of his

history rendered of peculiar importance. His resources, his place of

residence, his associates, his worldly prospects, might vary as they

pleased; this purpose did not vary; it was ever present with him to

nerve every better faculty of his head and heart, to invest the

chequered vicissitudes of his fortune with a dignity derived from

himself. The zeal of his nature overcame the temptations to that

loitering and indecision, that fluctuation between sloth and consuming

toil, that infirmity of resolution, with all its tormenting and

enfeebling consequences, to which a literary man, working as he does

at a solitary task, uncalled for by any pressing tangible demand, and

to be recompensed by distant and dubious advantage, is especially

exposed. Unity of aim, aided by ordinary vigour of character, will

generally insure perseverance; a quality not ranked among the cardinal

virtues, but as essential as any of them to the proper conduct of

life. Nine-tenths of the miseries and vices of mankind proceed from

idleness: with men of quick minds, to whom it is especially

pernicious, this habit is commonly the fruit of many disappointments

and schemes oft baffled; and men fail in their schemes not so much

from the want of strength as from the ill-direction of it. The weakest

living creature, by concentrating his powers on a single object, can

accomplish something: the strongest, by dispersing his over many, may

fail to accomplish anything. The drop, by continual falling, bores its

passage through the hardest rock; the hasty torrent rushes over it

with hideous uproar, and leaves no trace behind. Few men have applied

more steadfastly to the business of their life, or been more

resolutely diligent than Schiller.

The profession of theatrical poet was, in his present circumstances,

particularly favourable to the maintenance of this wholesome state of

mind. In the fulfilment of its duties, while he gratified his own

dearest predilections, he was likewise warmly seconded by the

prevailing taste of the public. The interest excited by the stage, and

the importance attached to everything connected with it, are greater

in Germany than in any other part of Europe, not excepting France, or

even Paris. Nor, as in Paris, is the stage in German towns considered

merely as a mental recreation, an elegant and pleasant mode of filling

up the vacancy of tedious evenings: in Germany, it has the advantage

of being comparatively new; and its exhibitions are directed to a

class of minds attuned to a far higher pitch of feeling. The Germans

are accused of a proneness to amplify and systematise, to admire with

excess, and to find, in whatever calls forth their applause, an

epitome of a thousand excellencies, which no one else can discover in

it. Their discussions on the theatre do certainly give colour to this

charge. Nothing, at least to an English reader, can appear more

disproportionate than the influence they impute to the stage, and the

quantity of anxious investigation they devote to its concerns.

With us, the question about the moral tendency of theatrical

amusements is now very generally consigned to the meditation of

debating clubs, and speculative societies of young men under age; with

our neighbours it is a weighty subject of inquiry for minds of almost

the highest order. With us, the stage is considered as a harmless

pastime, wholesome because it occupies the man by occupying his

mental, not his sensual faculties; one of the many departments of

fictitious representation; perhaps the most exciting, but also the

most transitory; sometimes hurtful, generally beneficial, just as the

rest are; entitled to no peculiar regard, and far inferior in its

effect to many others which have no special apparatus for their

application. The Germans, on the contrary, talk of it as of some new

organ for refining the hearts and minds of men; a sort of lay pulpit,

the worthy ally of the sacred one, and perhaps even better fitted to

exalt some of our nobler feelings; because its objects are much more

varied, and because it speaks to us through many avenues, addressing

the eye by its pomp and decorations, the ear by its harmonies, and the

heart and imagination by its poetical embellishments, and heroic acts

and sentiments. Influences still more mysterious are hinted at, if not

directly announced. An idea seems to lurk obscurely at the bottom of

certain of their abstruse and elaborate speculations, as if the stage

were destined to replace some of those sublime illusions which the

progress of reason is fast driving from the earth; as if its

pageantry, and allegories, and figurative shadowing-forth of things,

might supply men's nature with much of that quickening nourishment

which we once derived from the superstitions and mythologies of darker

ages. Viewing the matter in this light, they proceed in the management

of it with all due earnestness. Hence their minute and painful

investigations of the origin of dramatic emotion, of its various kinds

and degrees; their subdivisions of romantic and heroic and

romantico-heroic, and the other endless jargon that encumbers their

critical writings. The zeal of the people corresponds with that of

their instructors. The want of more important public interests

naturally contributes still farther to the prominence of this, the

discussion of which is not forbidden, or sure to be without effect.

Literature attracts nearly all the powerful thought that circulates in

Germany; and the theatre is the great nucleus of German literature.

It was to be expected that Schiller would participate in a feeling so

universal, and so accordant with his own wishes and prospects. The

theatre of Mannheim was at that period one of the best in Germany; he

felt proud of the share which he had in conducting it, and exerted

himself with his usual alacrity in promoting its various objects.

Connected with the duties of his office, was the more personal duty of

improving his own faculties, and extending his knowledge of the art

which he had engaged to cultivate. He read much, and studied more. The

perusal of Corneille, Racine, Voltaire, and the other French classics,

could not be without advantage to one whose exuberance of power, and

defect of taste, were the only faults he had ever been reproached

with; and the sounder ideas thus acquired, he was constantly busy in

exemplifying by attempts of his own. His projected translations from

Shakspeare and the French were postponed for the present: indeed,

except in the instance of _Macbeth_, they were never finished: his

_Conradin von Schwaben_, and a second part of the _Robbers_, were

likewise abandoned: but a number of minor undertakings sufficiently

evinced his diligence: and _Don Carlos_, which he had now seriously

commenced, was occupying all his poetical faculties.

Another matter he had much at heart was the setting forth of a

periodical work, devoted to the concerns of the stage. In this

enterprise, Schiller had expected the patronage and cooeperation of the

German Society, of which he was a member. It did not strike him that

any other motive than a genuine love of art, and zeal for its

advancement, could have induced men to join such a body. But the zeal

of the German Society was more according to knowledge than that of

their new associate: they listened with approving ear to his vivid

representations, and wide-spreading projects, but declined taking any

part in the execution of them. Dalberg alone seemed willing to support

him. Mortified, but not disheartened by their coldness, Schiller

reckoned up his means of succeeding without them. The plan of his work

was contracted within narrower limits; he determined to commence it on

his own resources. After much delay, the first number of the

_Rheinische Thalia_, enriched by three acts of _Don Carlos_, appeared

in 1785. It was continued, with one short interruption, till 1794. The

main purpose of the work being the furtherance of dramatic art, and

the extension and improvement of the public taste for such

entertainments, its chief contents are easy to be guessed at;

theatrical criticisms, essays on the nature of the stage, its history

in various countries, its moral and intellectual effects, and the best

methods of producing them. A part of the publication was open to

poetry and miscellaneous discussion.

Meditating so many subjects so assiduously, Schiller knew not what it

was to be unemployed. Yet the task of composing dramatic varieties, of

training players, and deliberating in the theatrical senate, or even

of expressing philosophically his opinions on these points, could not

wholly occupy such a mind as his. There were times when,

notwithstanding his own prior habits, and all the vaunting of

dramaturgists, he felt that their scenic glories were but an empty

show, a lying refuge, where there was no abiding rest for the soul.

His eager spirit turned away from their paltry world of pasteboard, to

dwell among the deep and serious interests of the living world of men.

The _Thalia_, besides its dramatic speculations and performances,

contains several of his poems, which indicate that his attention,

though officially directed elsewhither, was alive to all the common

concerns of humanity; that he looked on life not more as a writer than

as a man. The _Laura_, whom he celebrates, was not a vision of the

mind; but a living fair one, whom he saw daily, and loved in the

secrecy of his heart. His _Gruppe aus dem Tartarus_ (Group from

Tartarus), his _Kindesmoerderinn_ (Infanticide), are products of a mind

brooding over dark and mysterious things. While improving in the art

of poetry, in the capability of uttering his thoughts in the form best

adapted to express them, he was likewise improving in the more

valuable art of thought itself; and applying it not only to the

business of the imagination, but also to those profound and solemn

inquiries, which every reasonable mortal is called to engage with.

In particular, the _Philosophische Briefe_, written about this period,

exhibits Schiller in a new, and to us more interesting point of view.

Julius and Raphael are the emblems of his own fears and his own hopes;

their _Philosophic Letters_ unfold to us many a gloomy conflict that

had passed in the secret chambers of their author's soul. Sceptical

doubts on the most important of all subjects were natural to such an

understanding as Schiller's; but his heart was not of a temper to rest

satisfied with doubts; or to draw a sorry compensation for them from

the pride of superior acuteness, or the vulgar pleasure of producing

an effect on others by assailing their dearest and holiest

persuasions. With him the question about the essence of our being was

not a subject for shallow speculation, charitably named scientific;

still less for vain jangling and polemical victories: it was a fearful

mystery, which it concerned all the deepest sympathies and most

sublime anticipations of his mind to have explained. It is no idle

curiosity, but the shuddering voice of nature that asks: 'If our

happiness depend on the harmonious play of the sensorium; if our

conviction may waver with the beating of the pulse?' What Schiller's

ultimate opinions on these points were, we are nowhere specially

informed. That his heart was orthodox, that the whole universe was for

him a temple, in which he offered up the continual sacrifice of devout

adoration, his works and life bear noble testimony; yet, here and

there, his fairest visions seem as if suddenly sicklied over with a

pale cast of doubt; a withering shadow seems to flit across his soul,

and chill it in his loftiest moods. The dark condition of the man who

longs to believe and longs in vain, he can represent with a

verisimilitude and touching beauty, which shows it to have been

familiar to himself. Apart from their ingenuity, there is a certain

severe pathos in some of these passages, which affects us with a

peculiar emotion. The hero of another work is made to express himself

in these terms:

'What went before and what will follow me, I regard as two black

impenetrable curtains, which hang down at the two extremities of human

life, and which no living man has yet drawn aside. Many hundreds of

generations have already stood before them with their torches,

guessing anxiously what lies behind. On the curtain of Futurity, many

see their own shadows, the forms of their passions enlarged and put in

motion; they shrink in terror at this image of themselves. Poets,

philosophers, and founders of states, have painted this curtain with

their dreams, more smiling or more dark, as the sky above them was

cheerful or gloomy; and their pictures deceive the eye when viewed

from a distance. Many jugglers too make profit of this our universal

curiosity: by their strange mummeries, they have set the outstretched

fancy in amazement. A deep silence reigns behind this curtain; no one

once within it will answer those he has left without; all you can hear

is a hollow echo of your question, as if you shouted into a chasm. To

the other side of this curtain we are all bound: men grasp hold of it

as they pass, trembling, uncertain who may stand within it to receive

them, _quid sit id quod tantum morituri vident_. Some unbelieving

people there have been, who have asserted that this curtain did but

make a mockery of men, and that nothing could be seen because nothing

_was_ behind it: but to convince these people, the rest have seized

them, and hastily pushed them in.'[11]

[Footnote 11: _Der Geisterseher_, Schillers Werke, B. iv. p

350.]

The _Philosophic Letters_ paint the struggles of an ardent,

enthusiastic, inquisitive spirit to deliver itself from the harassing

uncertainties, to penetrate the dread obscurity, which overhangs the

lot of man. The first faint scruples of the Doubter are settled by the

maxim: 'Believe nothing but thy own reason; there is nothing holier

than truth.' But Reason, employed in such an inquiry, can do but half

the work: she is like the Conjuror that has pronounced the spell of

invocation, but has forgot the counter-word; spectres and shadowy

forms come crowding at his summons; in endless multitudes they press

and hover round his magic circle, and the terror-struck Black-artist

cannot lay them. Julius finds that on rejecting the primary dictates

of feeling, the system of dogmatical belief, he is driven to the

system of materialism. Recoiling in horror from this dead and

cheerless creed, he toils and wanders in the labyrinths of pantheism,

seeking comfort and rest, but finding none; till, baffled and tired,

and sick at heart, he seems inclined, as far as we can judge, to

renounce the dreary problem altogether, to shut the eyes of his too

keen understanding, and take refuge under the shade of Revelation. The

anxieties and errors of Julius are described in glowing terms; his

intellectual subtleties are mingled with the eloquence of intense

feeling. The answers of his friend are in a similar style; intended

not more to convince than to persuade. The whole work is full of

passion as well as acuteness; the impress of a philosophic and poetic

mind striving with all its vast energies to make its poetry and its

philosophy agree. Considered as exhibiting the state of Schiller's

thoughts at this period, it possesses a peculiar interest. In other

respects there is little in it to allure us. It is short and

incomplete; there is little originality in the opinions it expresses,

and none in the form of its composition. As an argument on either

side, it is too rhetorical to be of much weight; it abandons the

inquiry when its difficulties and its value are becoming greatest, and

breaks off abruptly without arriving at any conclusion. Schiller has

surveyed the dark Serbonian bog of Infidelity: but he has, made no

causeway through it: the _Philosophic Letters_ are a fragment.

Amid employments so varied, with health, and freedom from the coarser

hardships of life, Schiller's feelings might be earnest, but could

scarcely be unhappy. His mild and amiable manners, united to such

goodness of heart, and such height of accomplishment, endeared him to

all classes of society in Mannheim; Dalberg was still his warm friend;

Schwann and Laura he conversed with daily. His genius was fast

enlarging its empire, and fast acquiring more complete command of it;

he was loved and admired, rich in the enjoyment of present activity

and fame, and richer in the hope of what was coming. Yet in proportion

as his faculties and his prospects expanded, he began to view his

actual situation with less and less contentment. For a season after

his arrival, it was natural that Mannheim should appear to him as land

does to the shipwrecked mariner, full of gladness and beauty, merely

because it is land. It was equally natural that, after a time, this

sentiment should abate and pass away; that his place of refuge should

appear but as other places, only with its difficulties and discomforts

aggravated by their nearness. His revenue was inconsiderable here, and

dependent upon accidents for its continuance; a share in directing the

concerns of a provincial theatre, a task not without its irritations,

was little adequate to satisfy the wishes of a mind like his. Schiller

longed for a wider sphere of action; the world was all before him; he

lamented that he should still be lingering on the mere outskirts of

its business; that he should waste so much time and effort in

contending with the irascible vanity of players, or watching the ebbs

and flows of public taste; in resisting small grievances, and

realising a small result. He determined upon leaving Mannheim. If

destitute of other holds, his prudence might still have taught him to

smother this unrest, the never-failing inmate of every human breast,

and patiently continue where he was: but various resources remained to

him, and various hopes invited him from other quarters. The produce of

his works, or even the exercise of his profession, would insure him a

competence anywhere; the former had already gained him distinction

and goodwill in every part of Germany. The first number of his

_Thalia_ had arrived at the court of Hessen-Darmstadt while the Duke

of Sachsen-Weimar happened to be there: the perusal of the first acts

of _Don Carlos_ had introduced the author to that enlightened prince,

who expressed his satisfaction and respect by transmitting him the

title of Counsellor. A less splendid but not less truthful or pleasing

testimonial had lately reached him from Leipzig.

'Some days ago,' he writes, 'I met with a very flattering and

agreeable surprise. There came to me, out of Leipzig, from unknown

hands, four parcels, and as many letters, written with the highest

enthusiasm towards me, and overflowing with poetical devotion. They

were accompanied by four miniature portraits, two of which are of very

beautiful young ladies, and by a pocket-book sewed in the finest

taste. Such a present, from people who can have no interest in it, but

to let me know that they wish me well, and thank me for some cheerful

hours, I prize extremely; the loudest applause of the world could

scarcely have flattered me so agreeably.'

Perhaps this incident, trifling as it was, might not be without effect

in deciding the choice of his future residence. Leipzig had the more

substantial charm of being a centre of activity and commerce of all

sorts, that of literature not excepted; and it contained some more

effectual friends of Schiller than these his unseen admirers. He

resolved on going thither. His wishes and intentions are minutely

detailed to Huber, his chief intimate at Leipzig, in a letter written

shortly before his removal. We translate it for the hints it gives us

of Schiller's tastes and habits at that period of his history.

'This, then, is probably the last letter I shall write to you from

Mannheim. The time from the fifteenth of March has hung upon my hands,

like a trial for life; and, thank Heaven! I am now ten whole days

nearer you. And now, my good friend, as you have already consented to

take my entire confidence upon your shoulders, allow me the pleasure

of leading you into the interior of my domestic wishes.

'In my new establishment at Leipzig, I purpose to avoid one error,

which has plagued me a great deal here in Mannheim. It is this: No

longer to conduct my own housekeeping, and also no longer to live

alone. The former is not by any means a business I excel in. It costs

me less to execute a whole conspiracy, in five acts, than to settle my

domestic arrangements for a week; and poetry, you yourself know, is

but a dangerous assistant in calculations of economy. My mind is drawn

different ways; I fall headlong out of my ideal world, if a holed

stocking remind me of the real world.

'As to the other point, I require for my private happiness to have a

true warm friend that would be ever at my hand, like my better angel;

to whom I could communicate my nascent ideas in the very act of

conceiving them, not needing to transmit them, as at present, by

letters or long visits. Nay, when this friend of mine lives beyond the

four corners of my house, the trifling circumstance, that in order to

reach him I must cross the street, dress myself, and so forth, will of

itself destroy the enjoyment of the moment, and the train of my

thoughts is torn in pieces before I see him.

'Observe you, my good fellow, these are petty matters; but petty

matters often bear the weightiest result in the management of life. I

know myself better than perhaps a thousand mothers' sons know

themselves; I understand how much, and frequently how little, I

require to be completely happy. The question therefore is: Can I get

this wish of my heart fulfilled in Leipzig?

'If it were possible that I could make a lodgment with you, all my

cares on that head would be removed. I am no bad neighbour, as perhaps

you imagine; I have pliancy enough to suit myself to another, and here

and there withal a certain knack, as Yorick says, at helping to make

him merrier and better. Failing this, if you could find me any person

that would undertake my small economy, everything would still be well.

'I want nothing but a bedroom, which might also be my working room;

and another chamber for receiving visits. The house-gear necessary for

me are a good chest of drawers, a desk, a bed and sofa, a table, and a

few chairs. With these conveniences, my accommodation were

sufficiently provided for.

'I cannot live on the ground-floor, nor close by the ridge-tile; also

my windows positively must not look into the churchyard. I love men,

and therefore like their bustle. If I cannot so arrange it that we

(meaning the _quintuple alliance_[12]) shall mess together, I would

engage at the _table d'hote_ of the inn; for I had rather fast than

eat without company, large, or else particularly good.

[Footnote 12: Who the other three were is nowhere

particularly mentioned.]

'I write all this to you, my dearest friend, to forewarn you of my

silly tastes; and, at all events, that I may put it in your power to

take some preparatory steps, in one place or another, for my

settlement. My demands are, in truth, confoundedly naive, but your

goodness has spoiled me.

'The first part of the _Thalia_ must already be in your possession;

the doom of _Carlos_ will ere now be pronounced. Yet I will take it

from you orally. Had we five not been acquainted, who knows but we

might have become so on occasion of this very _Carlos_?'

Schiller went accordingly to Leipzig; though whether Huber received

him, or he found his humble necessaries elsewhere, we have not

learned. He arrived in the end of March 1785, after eighteen months'

residence at Mannheim. The reception he met with, his amusements,

occupations, and prospects are described in a letter to the Kammerrath

Schwann, a bookseller at Mannheim, alluded to above. Except Dalberg,

Schwann had been his earliest friend; he was now endeared to him by

subsequent familiarity, not of letters and writing, but of daily

intercourse; and what was more than all, by the circumstance that

_Laura_ was his daughter. The letter, it will be seen, was written

with a weightier object than the pleasure of describing Leipzig: it is

dated 24th April 1785.

'You have an indubitable right to be angry at my long silence; yet I

know your goodness too well to be in doubt that you will pardon me.

'When a man, unskilled as I am in the busy world, visits Leipzig for

the first time, during the Fair, it is, if not excusable, at least

intelligible, that among the multitude of strange things running

through his head, he should for a few days lose recollection of

himself. Such, my dearest friend, has till today been nearly my case;

and even now I have to steal from many avocations the pleasing moments

which, in idea, I mean to spend with you at Mannheim.

'Our journey hither, of which Herr Goetz will give you a circumstantial

description, was the most dismal you can well imagine; Bog, Snow and

Rain were the three wicked foes that by turns assailed us; and though

we used an additional pair of horses all the way from Vach, yet our

travelling, which should have ended on Friday, was spun-out till

Sunday. It is universally maintained that the Fair has visibly

suffered by the shocking state of the roads; at all events, even in my

eyes, the crowd of sellers and buyers is far _beneath_ the description

I used to get of it in the Empire.

'In the very first week of my residence here, I made innumerable new

acquaintances; among whom, Weisse, Oeser, Hiller, Zollikofer,

Professor Huber, Juenger, the famous actor Reinike, a few merchants'

families of the place, and some Berlin people, are the most

interesting. During Fair-time, as you know well, a person cannot get

the _full_ enjoyment of any one; our attention to the individual is

dissipated in the noisy multitude.

'My most pleasant recreation hitherto has been to visit Richter's

coffee-house, where I constantly find half the _world_ of Leipzig

assembled, and extend my acquaintance with foreigners and natives.

'From various quarters I have had some alluring invitations to Berlin

and Dresden; which it will be difficult for me to withstand. It is

quite a peculiar case, my friend, to have a literary name. The few men

of worth and consideration who offer you their intimacy on that score,

and whose regard is really worth coveting, are too disagreeably

counterweighed by the baleful swarm of creatures who keep humming

round you, like so many flesh-flies; gape at you as if you were a

monster, and condescend moreover, on the strength of one or two

blotted sheets, to present themselves as colleagues. Many people

cannot understand how a man that wrote the _Robbers_ should look like

another son of Adam. Close-cut hair, at the very least, and

postillion's boots, and a hunter's whip, were expected.

'Many families are in the habit here of spending the summer in some

of the adjacent villages, and so enjoying the pleasures of the

country. I mean to pass a few months in Gohlis, which lies only a

quarter of a league from Leipzig, with a very pleasant walk leading to

it, through the Rosenthal. Here I purpose being very diligent, working

at _Carlos_ and the _Thalia_; that so, which perhaps will please you

more than anything, I may gradually and silently return to my medical

profession. I long impatiently for that epoch of my life, when my

prospects may be settled and determined, when I may follow my darling

pursuits merely for my own pleasure. At one time I studied medicine

_con amore_; could I not do it now with still greater keenness?

'This, my best friend, might of itself convince you of the truth and

firmness of my purpose; but what should offer you the most complete

security on that point, what must banish all your doubts about my

steadfastness, I have yet kept secret. _Now or never_ I must speak it

out. Distance alone gives me courage to express the wish of my heart.

Frequently enough, when I used to have the happiness of being near

you, has this confession hovered on my tongue; but my confidence

always forsook me, when I tried to utter it. My best friend! Your

goodness, your affection, your generosity of heart, have encouraged me

in a hope which I can justify by nothing but the friendship and

respect you have always shown me. My free, unconstrained access to

your house afforded me the opportunity of intimate acquaintance with

your amiable daughter; and the frank, kind treatment with which both

you and she honoured me, tempted my heart to entertain the bold wish

of becoming your son. My prospects have hitherto been dim and vague;

they now begin to alter in my favour. I will strive with more

continuous vigour when the goal is clear; do you decide whether I can

reach it, when the dearest wish of my heart supports my zeal.

'Yet two short years and my whole fortune will be determined. I feel

how _much_ I ask, how boldly, and with how little right I ask it. A

year is past since this thought took possession of my soul; but my

esteem for you and your excellent daughter was too high to allow room

for a wish, which at that time I could found on no solid basis. I made

it a duty with myself to visit your house less frequently, and to

dissipate such feelings by absence; but this poor artifice did not

avail me.

'The Duke of Weimar was the first person to whom I disclosed myself.

His anticipating goodness, and the declaration that he took an

interest in my happiness, induced me to confess that this happiness

depended on a union with your noble daughter; and he expressed his

satisfaction at my choice. I have reason to hope that he will do more,

should it come to the point of completing my happiness by this union.

'I shall add nothing farther: I know well that hundreds of others

might afford your daughter a more splendid fate than I at this moment

can promise her; but that any other _heart_ can be more worthy of her,

I venture to deny. Your decision, which I look for with impatience and

fearful expectation, will determine whether I may venture to write in

person to your daughter. Fare you well, forever loved by--Your--

'FRIEDRICH SCHILLER.'

Concerning this proposal, we have no farther information to

communicate; except that the parties did not marry, and did not cease

being friends. That Schiller obtained the permission he concludes with

requesting, appears from other sources. Three years afterwards, in

writing to the same person, he alludes emphatically to his eldest

daughter; and what is more ominous, _apologises_ for his silence to

her. Schiller's situation at this period was such as to preclude the

idea of present marriage; perhaps, in the prospect of it, _Laura_ and

he commenced corresponding; and before the wished-for change of

fortune had arrived, both of them, attracted to other objects, had

lost one another in the vortex of life, and ceased to regard their

finding one another as desirable.

Schiller's medical project, like many which he formed, never came to

any issue. In moments of anxiety, amid the fluctuations of his lot,

the thought of this profession floated through his mind, as of a

distant stronghold, to which, in time of need, he might retire. But

literature was too intimately interwoven with his dispositions and his

habits to be seriously interfered with; it was only at brief intervals

that the pleasure of pursuing it exclusively seemed overbalanced by

its inconveniences. He needed a more certain income than poetry could

yield him; but he wished to derive it from some pursuit less alien to

his darling study. Medicine he never practised after leaving

Stuttgard.

In the mean time, whatever he might afterwards resolve on, he

determined to complete his _Carlos_, the half of which, composed a

considerable time before, had lately been running the gauntlet of

criticism in the _Thalia_.[13] With this for his chief occupation,

Gohlis or Leipzig for his residence, and a circle of chosen friends

for his entertainment, Schiller's days went happily along. His _Lied

an die Freude_ (Song to Joy), one of his most spirited and beautiful

lyrical productions, was composed here: it bespeaks a mind impetuous

even in its gladness, and overflowing with warm and earnest emotions.

[Footnote 13: Wieland's rather harsh and not too judicious

sentence on it may be seen at large in Gruber's _Wieland

Geschildert_, B. ii. S. 571.]

But the love of change is grounded on the difference between

anticipation and reality, and dwells with man till the age when habit

becomes stronger than desire, or anticipation ceases to be hope.

Schiller did not find that his establishment at Leipzig, though

pleasant while it lasted, would realise his ulterior views: he yielded

to some of his 'alluring invitations,' and went to Dresden in the end

of summer. Dresden contained many persons who admired him, more who

admired his fame, and a few who loved himself. Among the latter, the

Appellationsrath Koerner deserves especial mention.[14] Schiller found

a true friend in Koerner, and made his house a home. He parted his time

between Dresden and Loeschwitz, near it, where that gentleman resided:

it was here that _Don Carlos_, the printing of which was meanwhile

proceeding at Leipzig, received its completion and last

corrections.[15] It was published in 1786.

[Footnote 14: The well-written life, prefixed to the

Stuttgard and Tuebingen edition of Schiller's works, is by

this Koerner. The Theodor Koerner, whose _Lyre and Sword_

became afterwards famous, was his son.]

[Footnote 15: In vol. x. of the Vienna edition of Schiller

are some ludicrous verses, almost his sole attempt in the way

of drollery, bearing a title equivalent to this: 'To the

Right Honourable the Board of Washers, the most humble

Memorial of a downcast Tragic Poet, at Loeschwitz;' of which

Doering gives the following account. 'The first part of _Don

Carlos_ being already printed, by Goeschen, in Leipzig, the

poet, pressed for the remainder, felt himself obliged to stay

behind from an excursion which the Koerner family were making,

in a fine autumn day. Unluckily, the lady of the house,

thinking Schiller was to go along with them, had locked all

her cupboards and the cellar. Schiller found himself without

meat or drink, or even wood for fuel; still farther

exasperated by the dabbling of some washer-maids beneath his

window, he produced these lines.' The poem is of the kind

which cannot be translated; the first three stanzas are as

follows:

"Die Waesche klatscht vor meiner Thuer,

Es plarrt die Kuechenzofe,

Und mich, mich fuhrt das Fluegelthier

Zu Koenig Philips Hofe.

Ich eile durch die Gallerie

Mit schnellem Schritt, belausche

Dort die Prinzessin Eboli

Im suessen Liebesrausche.

Schon ruft das schoene Weib: Triumph!

Schon hoer' ich--Tod und Hoelle!

Was hoer' ich--einen nassen Strumpf

Geworfen in die Welle."]

The story of Don Carlos seems peculiarly adapted for dramatists. The

spectacle of a royal youth condemned to death by his father, of which

happily our European annals furnish but another example, is among the

most tragical that can be figured; the character of that youth, the

intermixture of bigotry and jealousy, and love, with the other strong

passions, which brought on his fate, afford a combination of

circumstances, affecting in themselves, and well calculated for the

basis of deeply interesting fiction. Accordingly they have not been

neglected: Carlos has often been the theme of poets; particularly

since the time when his history, recorded by the Abbe St. Real, was

exposed in more brilliant colours to the inspection of every writer,

and almost of every reader.

The Abbe St. Real was a dexterous artist in that half-illicit species

of composition, the historic novel: in the course of his operations,

he lighted on these incidents; and, by filling-up according to his

fancy, what historians had only sketched to him, by amplifying,

beautifying, suppressing, and arranging, he worked the whole into a

striking little narrative, distinguished by all the symmetry, the

sparkling graces, the vigorous description, and keen thought, which

characterise his other writings. This French Sallust, as his

countrymen have named him, has been of use to many dramatists. His

_Conjuraison contre Venise_ furnished Otway with the outline of his

best tragedy; _Epicaris_ has more than once appeared upon the stage;

and _Don Carlos_ has been dramatised in almost all the languages of

Europe. Besides Otway's _Carlos_ so famous at its first appearance,

many tragedies on this subject have been written: most of them are

gathered to their final rest; some are fast going thither; two bid

fair to last for ages. Schiller and Alfieri have both drawn their plot

from St. Real; the former has expanded and added; the latter has

compressed and abbreviated.

Schiller's _Carlos_ is the first of his plays that bears the stamp of

anything like full maturity. The opportunities he had enjoyed for

extending his knowledge of men and things, the sedulous practice of

the art of composition, the study of purer models, had not been

without their full effect. Increase of years had done something for

him; diligence had done much more. The ebullience of youth is now

chastened into the steadfast energy of manhood; the wild enthusiast,

that spurned at the errors of the world, has now become the

enlightened moralist, that laments their necessity, or endeavours to

find out their remedy. A corresponding alteration is visible in the

external form of the work, in its plot and diction. The plot is

contrived with great ingenuity, embodying the result of much study,

both dramatic and historical. The language is blank verse, not prose,

as in the former works; it is more careful and regular, less ambitious

in its object, but more certain of attaining it. Schiller's mind had

now reached its full stature: he felt and thought more justly; he

could better express what he felt and thought.

The merit we noticed in _Fiesco_, the fidelity with which the scene of

action is brought before us, is observable to a still greater degree

in _Don Carlos_. The Spanish court in the end of the sixteenth

century; its rigid, cold formalities; its cruel, bigoted, but

proud-spirited grandees; its inquisitors and priests; and Philip, its

head, the epitome at once of its good and its bad qualities, in all

his complex interests, are exhibited with wonderful distinctness and

address. Nor is it at the surface or the outward movements alone that

we look; we are taught the mechanism of their characters, as well as

shown it in action. The stony-hearted Despot himself must have been an

object of peculiar study to the author. Narrow in his understanding,

dead in his affections, from his birth the lord of Europe, Philip has

existed all his days above men, not among them. Locked up within

himself, a stranger to every generous and kindly emotion, his gloomy

spirit has had no employment but to strengthen or increase its own

elevation, no pleasure but to gratify its own self-will. Superstition,

harmonising with these native tendencies, has added to their force,

but scarcely to their hatefulness: it lends them a sort of sacredness

in his own eyes, and even a sort of horrid dignity in ours. Philip is

not without a certain greatness, the greatness of unlimited external

power, and of a will relentless in its dictates, guided by principles,

false, but consistent and unalterable. The scene of his existence is

haggard, stern and desolate; but it is all his own, and he seems

fitted for it. We hate him and fear him; but the poet has taken care

to secure him from contempt.

The contrast both of his father's fortune and character are those of

Carlos. Few situations of a more affecting kind can be imagined, than

the situation of this young, generous and ill-fated prince. From

boyhood his heart had been bent on mighty things; he had looked upon

the royal grandeur that awaited his maturer years, only as the means

of realising those projects for the good of men, which his beneficent

soul was ever busied with. His father's dispositions, and the temper

of the court, which admitted no development of such ideas, had given

the charm of concealment to his feelings; his life had been in

prospect; and we are the more attached to him, that deserving to be

glorious and happy, he had but expected to be either. Bright days,

however, seemed approaching; shut out from the communion of the Albas

and Domingos, among whom he lived a stranger, the communion of another

and far dearer object was to be granted him; Elizabeth's love seemed

to make him independent even of the future, which it painted with

still richer hues. But in a moment she is taken from him by the most

terrible of all visitations; his bride becomes his mother; and the

stroke that deprives him of her, while it ruins him forever, is more

deadly, because it cannot be complained of without sacrilege, and

cannot be altered by the power of Fate itself. Carlos, as the poet

represents him, calls forth our tenderest sympathies. His soul seems

once to have been rich and glorious, like the garden of Eden; but the

desert-wind has passed over it, and smitten it with perpetual blight.

Despair has overshadowed all the fair visions of his youth; or if he

hopes, it is but the gleam of delirium, which something sterner than

even duty extinguishes in the cold darkness of death. His energy

survives but to vent itself in wild gusts of reckless passion, or

aimless indignation. There is a touching poignancy in his expression

of the bitter melancholy that oppresses him, in the fixedness of

misery with which he looks upon the faded dreams of former years, or

the fierce ebullitions and dreary pauses of resolution, which now

prompts him to retrieve what he has lost, now withers into

powerlessness, as nature and reason tell him that it cannot, must not

be retrieved.

Elizabeth, no less moving and attractive, is also depicted with

masterly skill. If she returns the passion of her amiable and once

betrothed lover, we but guess at the fact; for so horrible a thought

has never once been whispered to her own gentle and spotless mind. Yet

her heart bleeds for Carlos; and we see that did not the most sacred

feelings of humanity forbid her, there is no sacrifice she would not

make to restore his peace of mind. By her soothing influence she

strives to calm the agony of his spirit; by her mild winning eloquence

she would persuade him that for Don Carlos other objects must remain,

when his hopes of personal felicity have been cut off; she would

change his love for her into love for the millions of human beings

whose destiny depends on his. A meek vestal, yet with the prudence of

a queen, and the courage of a matron, with every graceful and generous

quality of womanhood harmoniously blended in her nature, she lives in

a scene that is foreign to her; the happiness she should have had is

beside her, the misery she must endure is around her; yet she utters

no regret, gives way to no complaint, but seeks to draw from duty

itself a compensation for the cureless evil which duty has inflicted.

Many tragic queens are more imposing and majestic than this Elizabeth

of Schiller; but there is none who rules over us with a sway so soft

and feminine, none whom we feel so much disposed to love as well as

reverence.

The virtues of Elizabeth are heightened by comparison with the

principles and actions of her attendant, the Princess Eboli. The

character of Eboli is full of pomp and profession; magnanimity and

devotedness are on her tongue, some shadow of them even floats in her

imagination; but they are not rooted in her heart; pride, selfishness,

unlawful passion are the only inmates there. Her lofty boastings of

generosity are soon forgotten when the success of her attachment to

Carlos becomes hopeless; the fervour of a selfish love once

extinguished in her bosom, she regards the object of it with none but

vulgar feelings. Virtue no longer according with interest, she ceases

to be virtuous; from a rejected mistress the transition to a jealous

spy is with her natural and easy. Yet we do not hate the Princess:

there is a seductive warmth and grace about her character, which makes

us lament her vices rather than condemn them. The poet has drawn her

at once false and fair.

In delineating Eboli and Philip, Schiller seems as if struggling

against the current of his nature; our feelings towards them are

hardly so severe as he intended; their words and deeds, at least those

of the latter, are wicked and repulsive enough; but we still have a

kind of latent persuasion that they meant better than they spoke or

acted. With the Marquis of Posa, he had a more genial task. This Posa,

we can easily perceive, is the representative of Schiller himself. The

ardent love of men, which forms his ruling passion, was likewise the

constant feeling of his author; the glowing eloquence with which he

advocates the cause of truth, and justice, and humanity, was such as

Schiller too would have employed in similar circumstances. In some

respects, Posa is the chief character of the piece; there is a

preeminent magnificence in his object, and in the faculties and

feelings with which he follows it. Of a splendid intellect, and a

daring devoted heart, his powers are all combined upon a single

purpose. Even his friendship for Carlos, grounded on the likeness of

their minds, and faithful as it is, yet seems to merge in this

paramount emotion, zeal for the universal interests of man. Aiming,

with all his force of thought and action, to advance the happiness and

best rights of his fellow-creatures; pursuing this noble aim with the

skill and dignity which it deserves, his mind is at once unwearied,

earnest and serene. He is another Carlos, but somewhat older, more

experienced, and never crossed in hopeless love. There is a calm

strength in Posa, which no accident of fortune can shake. Whether

cheering the forlorn Carlos into new activity; whether lifting up his

voice in the ear of tyrants and inquisitors, or taking leave of life

amid his vast unexecuted schemes, there is the same sedate

magnanimity, the same fearless composure: when the fatal bullet

strikes him, he dies with the concerns of others, not his own, upon

his lips. He is a reformer, the perfection of reformers; not a

revolutionist, but a prudent though determined improver. His

enthusiasm does not burst forth in violence, but in manly and

enlightened energy; his eloquence is not more moving to the heart than

his lofty philosophy is convincing to the head. There is a majestic

vastness of thought in his precepts, which recommends them to the mind

independently of the beauty of their dress. Few passages of poetry are

more spirit-stirring than his last message to Carlos, through the

Queen. The certainty of death seems to surround his spirit with a kind

of martyr glory; he is kindled into transport, and speaks with a

commanding power. The pathetic wisdom of the line, 'Tell him, that

when he is a man, he must reverence the dreams of his youth,' has

often been admired: that scene has many such.

The interview with Philip is not less excellent. There is something so

striking in the idea of confronting the cold solitary tyrant with 'the

only man in all his states that does not need him;' of raising the

voice of true manhood for once within the gloomy chambers of thraldom

and priestcraft, that we can forgive the stretch of poetic license by

which it is effected. Philip and Posa are antipodes in all respects.

Philip thinks his new instructor is 'a Protestant;' a charge which

Posa rebuts with calm dignity, his object not being separation and

contention, but union and peaceful gradual improvement. Posa seems to

understand the character of Philip better; not attempting to awaken in

his sterile heart any feeling for real glory, or the interests of his

fellow-men, he attacks his selfishness and pride, represents to him

the intrinsic meanness and misery of a throne, however decked with

adventitious pomp, if built on servitude, and isolated from the

sympathies and interests of others.

We translate the entire scene; though not by any means the best, it is

among the fittest for extraction of any in the piece. Posa has been

sent for by the King, and is waiting in a chamber of the palace to

know what is required of him; the King enters, unperceived by Posa,

whose attention is directed to a picture on the wall:

ACT III. SCENE X.

The KING and MARQUIS DE POSA.

[_The latter, on noticing the King, advances towards him, and kneels,

then rises, and waits without any symptom of embarrassment._]

KING. [_looks at him with surprise_].

We have met before, then?

MAR. No.

KING. You did my crown

Some service: wherefore have you shunn'd my thanks?

Our memory is besieged by crowds of suitors;

Omniscient is none but He in Heaven.

You should have sought my looks: why did you not?

MAR. 'Tis scarcely yet two days, your Majesty,

Since I returned to Spain.

KING. I am not used

To be my servants' debtor; ask of me

Some favour.

MAR. I enjoy the laws.

KING. That right

The very murd'rer has.

MAR. And how much more

The honest citizen!--Sire, I'm content.

KING [_aside_]. Much self-respect indeed, and lofty daring!

But this was to be looked for: I would have

My Spaniards haughty; better that the cup

Should overflow than not be full.--I hear

You left my service, Marquis.

MAR. Making way

For men more worthy, I withdrew.

KING. 'Tis wrong:

When spirits such as yours play truant,

My state must suffer. You conceive, perhaps,

Some post unworthy of your merits

Might be offer'd you?

MAR. No, Sire, I cannot doubt

But that a judge so skilful, and experienced

In the gifts of men, has at a glance discover'd

Wherein I might do him service, wherein not.

I feel with humble gratitude the favour,

With which your Majesty is loading me

By thoughts so lofty: yet I can-- [_He stops._

KING. You pause?

MAR. Sire, at the moment I am scarce prepar'd

To speak, in phrases of a Spanish subject,

What as a citizen o' th' world I've thought.

Truth is, in parting from the Court forever,

I held myself discharged from all necessity

Of troubling it with reasons for my absence.

KING. Are your reasons bad, then? Dare you not risk

Disclosing them?

MAR. My life, and joyfully,

Were scope allow'd me to disclose them _all_.

'Tis not myself but Truth that I endanger,

Should the King refuse me a full hearing.

Your anger or contempt I fain would shun;

But forced to choose between them, I had rather

Seem to you a man deserving punishment

Than pity.

KING [_with a look of expectation_]. Well?

MAR. The servant of a prince

I cannot be. [_The King looks at him with astonishment._

I will not cheat my merchant:

If you deign to take me as your servant,

You expect, you wish, my actions only;

You wish my arm in fight, my thought in counsel;

Nothing more you will accept of: not my actions,

Th' approval they might find at Court becomes

The object of my acting. Now for me

Right conduct has a value of its own:

The happiness my king might cause me plant

I would myself produce; and conscious joy,

And free selection, not the force of duty,

Should impel me. Is it thus your Majesty

Requires it? Could you suffer new creators

In your own creation? Or could I

Consent with patience to become the chisel,

When I hoped to be the statuary?

I love mankind; and in a monarchy,

Myself is all that I can love.

KING. This fire

Is laudable. You would do good to others;

How you do it, patriots, wise men think

Of little moment, so it be but done.

Seek for yourself the office in my kingdoms

That will give you scope to gratify

This noble zeal.

MAR. There is not such an office.

KING. How?

MAR. What the king desires to spread abroad

Through these weak hands, is it the good of men?

That good which my unfetter'd love would wish them?

Pale majesty would tremble to behold it!

No! Policy has fashioned in her courts

Another sort of human good; a sort

Which _she_ is rich enough to give away,

Awakening with it in the hearts of men

New cravings, such as _it_ can satisfy.

Truth she keeps coining in her mints, such truth

As she can tolerate; and every die

Except her own she breaks and casts away.

But is the royal bounty wide enough

For me to wish and work in? Must the love

I hear my brother pledge itself to be

My brother's jailor? Can I call him happy

When he dare not think? Sire, choose some other

To dispense the good which _you_ have stamped for us.

With me it tallies not; a prince's servant

I cannot be.

KING [_rather quickly_].

You are a Protestant.

MAR. [_after some reflection_]

Sire, your creed is also mine. [_After a pause._

I find

I am misunderstood: 'tis as I feared.

You see me draw the veil from majesty,

And view its mysteries with steadfast eye:

How should you know if I regard as holy

What I no more regard as terrible?

Dangerous I seem, for bearing thoughts too high:

My King, I am not dangerous: my wishes

Lie buried here. [_Laying his hand on his breast._

The poor and purblind rage

Of innovation, that but aggravates

The weight o' th' fetters which it cannot break,

Will never heat _my_ blood. The century

Admits not my ideas: I live a citizen

Of those that are to come. Sire, can a picture

Break your rest? Your breath obliterates it.

KING. No other knows you harbour such ideas?

MAR. Such, no one.

KING [_rises, walks a few steps, then stops opposite the Marquis.

--Aside_]. New at least, this dialect!

Flattery exhausts itself: a man of parts

Disdains to imitate. For once let's have

A trial of the opposite! Why not?

The strange is oft the lucky.--If so be

This is your principle, why let it pass!

I will conform; the crown shall have a servant

New in Spain,--a liberal!

MAR. Sire, I see

How very meanly you conceive of men;

How, in the language of the frank true spirit

You find but another deeper artifice

Of a more practis'd coz'ner: I can also

Partly see what causes this. 'Tis men;

'Tis men that force you to it: they themselves

Have cast away their own nobility,

Themselves have crouch'd to this degraded posture.

Man's innate greatness, like a spectre, frights them;

Their poverty seems safety; with base skill

They ornament their chains, and call it virtue

To wear them with an air of grace. Twas thus

You found the world; thus from your royal father

Came it to you: how in this distorted,

Mutilated image could you honour man?

KING. Some truth there is in this.

MAR. Pity, however,

That in taking man from the Creator,

And changing him into _your_ handiwork,

And setting up yourself to be the god

Of this new-moulded creature, you should have

Forgotten one essential; you yourself

Remained a man, a very child of Adam!

You are still a suffering, longing mortal,

You call for sympathy, and to a god

We can but sacrifice, and pray, and tremble!

O unwise exchange! unbless'd perversion!

When you have sunk your brothers to be play'd

As harp-strings, who will join in harmony

With you the player?

KING [_aside_]. By Heaven, he touches me!

MAR. For you, however, this is unimportant;

It but makes you separate, peculiar;

'Tis the price you pay for being a god.

And frightful were it if you failed in this!

If for the desolated good of millions,

You the Desolator should gain--nothing!

If the very freedom you have blighted

And kill'd were that alone which could exalt

Yourself!--Sire, pardon me, I must not stay:

The matter makes me rash: my heart is full,

Too strong the charm of looking on the one

Of living men to whom I might unfold it.

[_The Count de Lerma enters, and whispers a few words to the King. The

latter beckons to him to withdraw, and continues sitting in his former

posture._

KING [_to the Marquis, after Lerma is gone_].

Speak on!

MAR. [_after a pause_] I feel, Sire, all the worth--

KING. Speak on!

Y' had something more to say.

MAR. Not long since, Sire,

I chanced to pass through Flanders and Brabant.

So many rich and flourishing provinces;

A great, a mighty people, and still more,

An honest people!--And this people's Father!

That, thought I, must be divine: so thinking,

I stumbled on a heap of human bones.

[_He pauses; his eyes rest on the King, who endeavours to return his

glance, but with an air of embarrassment is forced to look upon the

ground._

You are in the right, you _must_ proceed so.

That you _could_ do, what you saw you _must_ do,

Fills me with a shuddering admiration.

Pity that the victim welt'ring in its blood

Should speak so feeble an eulogium

On the spirit of the priest! That mere men,

Not beings of a calmer essence, write

The annals of the world! Serener ages

Will displace the age of Philip; these will bring

A milder wisdom; the subject's good will then

Be reconcil'd to th' prince's greatness;

The thrifty State will learn to prize its children,

And necessity no more will be inhuman.

KING. And when, think you, would those blessed ages

Have come round, had I recoil'd before

The curse of this? Behold my Spain! Here blooms

The subject's good, in never-clouded peace:

_Such_ peace will I bestow on Flanders.

MAR. Peace of a churchyard! And you hope to end

What you have entered on? Hope to withstand

The timeful change of Christendom; to stop

The universal Spring that shall make young

The countenance o' th' Earth? _You_ purpose, single

In all Europe, alone, to fling yourself

Against the wheel of Destiny that rolls

For ever its appointed course; to clutch

Its spokes with mortal arm? You may not, Sire!

Already thousands have forsook your kingdoms,

Escaping glad though poor: the citizen

You lost for conscience' sake, he was your noblest.

With mother's arms Elizabeth receives

The fugitives, and rich by foreign skill,

In fertile strength her England blooms. Forsaken

Of its toilsome people, lies Grenada

Desolate; and Europe sees with glad surprise

Its enemy faint with self-inflicted wounds.

[_The King seems moved: the Marquis observes it, and advances some

steps nearer._

Plant for Eternity and death the seed?

Your harvest will be nothingness. The work

Will not survive the spirit of its former;

It will be in vain that you have labour'd;

That you have fought the fight with Nature;

And to plans of Ruin consecrated

A high and royal lifetime. Man is greater

Than you thought. The bondage of long slumber

He will break; his sacred rights he will reclaim.

With Nero and Busiris will he rank

The name of Philip, and--that grieves me, for

You once were good.

KING. How know you that?

MAR. [_with warm energy_] You were;

Yes, by th' All-Merciful! Yes, I repeat it.

Restore to us what you have taken from us.

Generous as strong, let human happiness

Stream from your horn of plenty, let souls ripen

Round you. Restore us what you took from us.

Amid a thousand kings become a king.

[_He approaches him boldly, fixing on him firm and glowing looks._

Oh, could the eloquence of all the millions,

Who participate in this great moment,

Hover on my lips, and raise into a flame

That gleam that kindles in your eyes!

Give up this false idolatry of self,

Which makes your brothers nothing! Be to us

A pattern of the Everlasting and the True!

Never, never, did a mortal hold so much,

To use it so divinely. All the kings

Of Europe reverence the name of Spain:

Go on in front of all the kings of Europe!

One movement of your pen, and new-created

Is the Earth. Say but, Let there be freedom!

[_Throwing himself at his feet._

KING [_surprised, turning his face away, then again towards Posa_].

Singular enthusiast! Yet--rise--I--

MAR. Look round and view God's lordly universe:

On Freedom it is founded, and how rich

Is it with Freedom! He, the great Creator,

Has giv'n the very worm its sev'ral dewdrop;

Ev'n in the mouldering spaces of Decay,

He leaves Free-will the pleasures of a choice.

This world of _yours_! how narrow and how poor!

The rustling of a leaf alarms the lord

Of Christendom. You quake at every virtue;

He, not to mar the glorious form of Freedom,

Suffers that the hideous hosts of Evil

Should run riot in his fair Creation.

Him the maker we behold not; calm

He veils himself in everlasting laws,

Which and not Him the sceptic seeing exclaims,

'Wherefore a God? The World itself is God.'

And never did a Christian's adoration

So praise him as this sceptic's blasphemy.

KING. And such a model you would undertake,

On Earth, in my domains to imitate?

MAR. You, you can: who else? To th' people's good

Devote the kingly power, which far too long

Has struggled for the greatness of the throne.

Restore the lost nobility of man.

Once more make of the subject what he was,

The purpose of the Crown; let no tie bind him,

Except his brethren's right, as sacred as

His own. And when, given back to self-dependence,

Man awakens to the feeling of his worth,

And freedom's proud and lofty virtues blossom,

Then, Sire, having made _your_ realms the happiest

In the Earth, it may become your duty

To subdue the realms of others.

KING [_after a long pause_].

I have heard you to an end.

Not as in common heads, the world is painted

In that head of yours: nor will I mete you

By the common standard. I am the first

To whom your heart has been disclosed:

I know this, so believe it. For the sake

Of such forbearance; for your having kept

Ideas, embraced with such devotion, secret

Up to this present moment, for the sake

Of that reserve, young man, I will forget

That I have learned them, and how I learned them.

Arise. The headlong youth I will set right,

Not as his sovereign, but as his senior.

I will, because I will. So! bane itself,

I find, in generous natures may become

Ennobled into something better. But

Beware my Inquisition! It would grieve me

If you--

MAR. Would it? would it?

KING [_gazing at him, and lost in surprise_].

Such a mortal

Till this hour I never saw. No, Marquis!

No! You do me wrong. To you I will not

Be a Nero, not to you. _All_ happiness

Shall not be blighted by me: you yourself

Shall be permitted to remain a man

Beside me.

MAR. [_quickly_] And my fellow-subjects, Sire?

Oh, not for _me_, not _my_ cause was I pleading.

And your subjects, Sire?

KING. You see so clearly

How posterity will judge of me; yourself

Shall teach it how I treated men so soon

As I had found one.

MAR. O Sire! in being

The most just of kings, at the same instant

Be not the most unjust! In your Flanders

Are many thousands worthier than I.

'Tis but yourself,--shall I confess it, Sire?--

That under this mild form first truly see

What freedom is.

KING [_with softened earnestness_].

Young man, no more of this.

Far differently will you think of men,

When you have seen and studied them as I have.

Yet our first meeting must not be our last;

How shall I try to make you mine?

MAR. Sire, let me

Continue as I am. What good were it

To you, if I like others were corrupted?

KING. This pride I will not suffer. From this moment

You are in my service. No remonstrance!

I will have it so. * * * * *

Had the character of Posa been drawn ten years later, it would have

been imputed, as all things are, to the 'French Revolution;' and

Schiller himself perhaps might have been called a Jacobin. Happily, as

matters stand, there is room for no such imputation. It is pleasing to

behold in Posa the deliberate expression of a great and good man's

sentiments on these ever-agitated subjects: a noble monument,

embodying the liberal ideas of his age, in a form beautified by his

own genius, and lasting as its other products.[16]

[Footnote 16: Jean Paul nevertheless, not without some show

of reason, has compared this Posa to the tower of a

lighthouse: 'high, far-shining,--empty!' (_Note of 1845._)]

Connected with the superior excellence of Posa, critics have remarked

a dramatic error, which the author himself was the first to

acknowledge and account for. The magnitude of Posa throws Carlos into

the shade; the hero of the first three acts is no longer the hero of

the other two. The cause of this, we are informed, was that Schiller

kept the work too long upon his own hands:

'In composing the piece,' he observes, 'many interruptions occurred;

so that a considerable time elapsed between beginning and concluding

it; and, in the mean while, much within myself had changed. The

various alterations which, during this period, my way of thinking and

feeling underwent, naturally told upon the work I was engaged with.

What parts of it had at first attracted me, began to produce this

effect in a weaker degree, and, in the end, scarcely at all. New

ideas, springing up in the interim, displaced the former ones; Carlos

himself had lost my favour, perhaps for no other reason than because I

had become his senior; and, from the opposite cause, Posa had occupied

his place. Thus I commenced the fourth and fifth acts with quite an

altered heart. But the first three were already in the hands of the

public; the plan of the whole could not now be re-formed; nothing

therefore remained but to suppress the piece entirely, or to fit the

second half to the first the best way I could.'

The imperfection alluded to is one of which the general reader will

make no great account; the second half is fitted to the first with

address enough for his purposes. Intent not upon applying the dramatic

gauge, but on being moved and exalted, we may peruse the tragedy

without noticing that any such defect exists in it. The pity and love

we are first taught to feel for Carlos abide with us to the last; and

though Posa rises in importance as the piece proceeds, our admiration

of his transcendent virtues does not obstruct the gentler feelings

with which we look upon the fate of his friend. A certain confusion

and crowding together of events, about the end of the play, is the

only fault in its plan that strikes us with any force. Even this is

scarcely prominent enough to be offensive.

An intrinsic and weightier defect is the want of ease and lightness in

the general composition of the piece; a defect which, all its other

excellencies will not prevent us from observing. There is action

enough in the plot, energy enough in the dialogue, and abundance of

individual beauties in both; but there is throughout a certain air of

stiffness and effort, which abstracts from the theatrical illusion.

The language, in general impressive and magnificent, is now and then

inflated into bombast. The characters do not, as it were, verify their

human nature, by those thousand little touches and nameless turns,

which distinguish the genius essentially dramatic from the genius

merely poetical; the Proteus of the stage from the philosophic

observer and trained imitator of life. We have not those careless

felicities, those varyings from high to low, that air of living

freedom which Shakspeare has accustomed us, like spoiled children, to

look for in every perfect work of this species. Schiller is too

elevated, too regular and sustained in his elevation, to be altogether

natural.

Yet with all this, _Carlos_ is a noble tragedy. There is a stately

massiveness about the structure of it; the incidents are grand and

affecting; the characters powerful, vividly conceived, and

impressively if not completely delineated. Of wit and its kindred

graces Schiller has but a slender share: nor among great poets is he

much distinguished for depth or fineness of pathos. But what gives him

a place of his own, and the loftiest of its kind, is the vastness and

intense vigour of his mind; the splendour of his thoughts and imagery,

and the bold vehemence of his passion for the true and the sublime,

under all their various forms. He does not thrill, but he exalts us.

His genius is impetuous, exuberant, majestic; and a heavenly fire

gleams through all his creations. He transports us into a holier and

higher world than our own; everything around us breathes of force and

solemn beauty. The looks of his heroes may be more staid than those of

men, the movements of their minds may be slower and more calculated;

but we yield to the potency of their endowments, and the loveliness of

the scene which they animate. The enchantments of the poet are strong

enough to silence our scepticism; we forbear to inquire whether it is

true or false.

The celebrity of Alfieri generally invites the reader of _Don Carlos_

to compare it with _Filippo_. Both writers treat the same subject;

both borrow their materials from the same source, the _nouvelle

historique_ of St. Real: but it is impossible that two powerful minds

could have handled one given idea in more diverse manners. Their

excellencies are, in fact, so opposite, that they scarcely come in

competition. Alfieri's play is short, and the characters are few. He

describes no scene: his personages are not the King of Spain and his

courtiers, but merely men; their place of action is not the Escurial

or Madrid, but a vacant, objectless platform anywhere in space. In all

this, Schiller has a manifest advantage. He paints manners and

opinions, he sets before us a striking pageant, which interests us of

itself, and gives a new interest to whatever is combined with it. The

principles of the antique, or perhaps rather of the French drama, upon

which Alfieri worked, permitted no such delineation. In the style

there is the same diversity. A severe simplicity uniformly marks

Alfieri's style; in his whole tragedy there is not a single figure. A

hard emphatic brevity is all that distinguishes his language from that

of prose. Schiller, we have seen, abounds with noble metaphors, and

all the warm exciting eloquence of poetry. It is only in expressing

the character of Philip that Alfieri has a clear superiority. Without

the aid of superstition, which his rival, especially in the

catastrophe, employs to such advantage, Alfieri has exhibited in his

Filippo a picture of unequalled power. Obscurity is justly said to be

essential to terror and sublimity; and Schiller has enfeebled the

effect of his Tyrant, by letting us behold the most secret recesses of

his spirit: we understand him better, but we fear him less. Alfieri

does not show us the internal combination of Filippo: it is from its

workings alone that we judge of his nature. Mystery, and the shadow of

horrid cruelty, brood over his Filippo: it is only a transient word or

act that gives us here and there a glimpse of his fierce, implacable,

tremendous soul; a short and dubious glimmer that reveals to us the

abysses of his being, dark, lurid, and terrific, 'as the throat of the

infernal Pool.' Alfieri's Filippo is perhaps the most wicked man that

human imagination has conceived.

Alfieri and Schiller were again unconscious competitors in the history

of Mary Stuart. But the works before us give a truer specimen of their

comparative merits. Schiller seems to have the greater genius; Alfieri

the more commanding character. Alfieri's greatness rests on the stern

concentration of fiery passion, under the dominion of an adamantine

will: this was his own make of mind; and he represents it, with

strokes in themselves devoid of charm, but in their union terrible as

a prophetic scroll. Schiller's moral force is commensurate with his

intellectual gifts, and nothing more. The mind of the one is like the

ocean, beautiful in its strength, smiling in the radiance of summer,

and washing luxuriant and romantic shores: that of the other is like

some black unfathomable lake placed far amid the melancholy mountains;

bleak, solitary, desolate; but girdled with grim sky-piercing cliffs,

overshadowed with storms, and illuminated only by the red glare of the

lightning. Schiller is magnificent in his expansion, Alfieri is

overpowering in his condensed energy; the first inspires us with

greater admiration, the last with greater awe.

This tragedy of _Carlos_ was received with immediate and universal

approbation. In the closet and on the stage, it excited the warmest

applauses equally among the learned and unlearned. Schiller's

expectations had not been so high: he knew both the excellencies and

the faults of his work; but he had not anticipated that the former

would be recognised so instantaneously. The pleasure of this new

celebrity came upon him, therefore, heightened by surprise. Had

dramatic eminence been his sole object, he might now have slackened

his exertions; the public had already ranked him as the first of their

writers in that favourite department. But this limited ambition was

not his moving principle; nor was his mind of that sort for which rest

is provided in this world. The primary disposition of his nature urged

him to perpetual toil: the great aim of his life, the unfolding of his

mental powers, was one of those which admit but a relative not an

absolute progress. New ideas of perfection arise as the former have

been reached; the student is always attaining, never has attained.

Schiller's worldly circumstances, too, were of a kind well calculated

to prevent excess of quietism. He was still drifting at large on the

tide of life; he was crowned with laurels, but without a home. His

heart, warm and affectionate, fitted to enjoy the domestic blessings

which it longed for, was allowed to form no permanent attachment: he

felt that he was unconnected, solitary in the world; cut off from the

exercise of his kindlier sympathies; or if tasting such pleasures, it

was 'snatching them rather than partaking of them calmly.' The vulgar

desire of wealth and station never entered his mind for an instant:

but as years were added to his age, the delights of peace and

continuous comfort were fast becoming more acceptable than any other;

and he looked with anxiety to have a resting-place amid his

wanderings, to be a man among his fellow-men.

For all these wishes, Schiller saw that the only chance of fulfilment

depended on unwearied perseverance in his literary occupations. Yet

though his activity was unabated, and the calls on it were increasing

rather than diminished, its direction was gradually changing. The

Drama had long been stationary, and of late been falling in his

estimation: the difficulties of the art, as he viewed it at present,

had been overcome, and new conquests invited him in other quarters.

The latter part of _Carlos_ he had written as a task rather than a

pleasure; he contemplated no farther undertaking connected with the

Stage. For a time, indeed, he seems to have wavered among a

multiplicity of enterprises; now solicited to this, and now to that,

without being able to fix decidedly on any. The restless ardour of his

mind is evinced by the number and variety of his attempts; its

fluctuation by the circumstance that all of them are either short in

extent, or left in the state of fragments. Of the former kind are his

lyrical productions, many of which were composed about this period,

during intervals from more serious labours. The character of these

performances is such as his former writings gave us reason to expect.

With a deep insight into life, and a keen and comprehensive sympathy

with its sorrows and enjoyments, there is combined that impetuosity of

feeling, that pomp of thought and imagery which belong peculiarly to

Schiller. If he had now left the Drama, it was clear that his mind was

still overflowing with the elements of poetry; dwelling among the

grandest conceptions, and the boldest or finest emotions; thinking

intensely and profoundly, but decorating its thoughts with those

graces, which other faculties than the understanding are required to

afford them. With these smaller pieces, Schiller occupied himself at

intervals of leisure throughout the remainder of his life. Some of

them are to be classed among the most finished efforts of his genius.

The _Walk_, the _Song of the Bell_, contain exquisite delineations of

the fortunes and history of man; his _Ritter Toggenburg_, his _Cranes

of Ibycus_, his _Hero and Leander_, are among the most poetical and

moving ballads to be found in any language.

Of these poems, the most noted written about this time, the

_Freethinking of Passion_ (_Freigeisterei der Leidenschaft_), is said

to have originated in a real attachment. The lady, whom some

biographers of Schiller introduce to us by the mysterious designation

of the 'Fraeulein A * * *, one of the first beauties in Dresden,' seems

to have made a deep impression on the heart of the poet. They tell us

that she sat for the picture of the princess Eboli, in his _Don

Carlos_; that he paid his court to her with the most impassioned

fervour, and the extreme of generosity. They add one or two anecdotes

of dubious authenticity; which, as they illustrate nothing, but show

us only that love could make Schiller crazy, as it is said to make all

gods and men, we shall use the freedom to omit.

This enchanting and not inexorable spinster perhaps displaced the

Mannheim _Laura_ from her throne; but the gallant assiduities, which

she required or allowed, seem not to have abated the zeal of her

admirer in his more profitable undertakings. Her reign, we suppose,

was brief and without abiding influence. Schiller never wrote or

thought with greater diligence than while at Dresden. Partially

occupied with conducting his _Thalia_, or with those more slight

poetical performances, his mind was hovering among a multitude of

weightier plans, and seizing with avidity any hint that might assist

in directing its attempts. To this state of feeling we are probably

indebted for the _Geisterseher_, a novel, naturalised in our

circulating libraries by the title of the _Ghostseer_, two volumes of

which were published about this time. The king of quacks, the renowned

Cagliostro, was now playing his dextrous game at Paris; harrowing-up

the souls of the curious and gullible of all ranks in that capital,

by various thaumaturgic feats; raising the dead from their graves;

and, what was more to the purpose, raising himself from the station of

a poor Sicilian lacquey to that of a sumptuous and extravagant count.

The noise of his exploits appears to have given rise to this work of

Schiller's. It is an attempt to exemplify the process of hoodwinking

an acute but too sensitive man; of working on the latent germ of

superstition, which exists beneath his outward scepticism; harassing

his mind by the terrors of magic,--the magic of chemistry and natural

philosophy and natural cunning; till, racked by doubts and agonising

fears, and plunging from one depth of dark uncertainty into another,

he is driven at length to still his scruples in the bosom of the

Infallible Church. The incidents are contrived with considerable

address, displaying a familiar acquaintance, not only with several

branches of science, but also with some curious forms of life and

human nature. One or two characters are forcibly drawn; particularly

that of the amiable but feeble Count, the victim of the operation. The

strange Foreigner, with the visage of stone, who conducts the business

of mystification, strikes us also, though we see but little of him.

The work contains some vivid description, some passages of deep

tragical effect: it has a vein of keen observation; in general, a

certain rugged power, which might excite regret that it was never

finished. But Schiller found that his views had been mistaken: it was

thought that he meant only to electrify his readers, by an

accumulation of surprising horrors, in a novel of the Mrs. Radcliffe

fashion. He felt, in consequence, discouraged to proceed; and finally

abandoned it.

Schiller was, in fact, growing tired of fictitious writing.

Imagination was with him a strong, not an exclusive, perhaps not even

a predominating faculty: in the sublimest flights of his genius,

intellect is a quality as conspicuous as any other; we are frequently

not more delighted with the grandeur of the drapery in which he

clothes his thoughts, than with the grandeur of the thoughts

themselves. To a mind so restless, the cultivation of all its powers

was a peremptory want; in one so earnest, the love of truth was sure

to be among its strongest passions. Even while revelling, with unworn

ardour, in the dreamy scenes of the Imagination, he had often cast a

longing look, and sometimes made a hurried inroad, into the calmer

provinces of reason: but the first effervescence of youth was past,

and now more than ever, the love of contemplating or painting things

as they should be, began to yield to the love of knowing things as

they are. The tendency of his mind was gradually changing; he was

about to enter on a new field of enterprise, where new triumphs

awaited him.

For a time he had hesitated what to choose; at length he began to

think of History. As a leading object of pursuit, this promised him

peculiar advantages. It was new to him; and fitted to employ some of

his most valuable gifts. It was grounded on reality, for which, as we

have said, his taste was now becoming stronger; its mighty revolutions

and events, and the commanding characters that figure in it, would

likewise present him with things great and moving, for which his taste

had always been strong. As recording the past transactions, and

indicating the prospects of nations, it could not fail to be

delightful to one, for whom not only human nature was a matter of most

fascinating speculation, but who looked on all mankind with the

sentiments of a brother, feeling truly what he often said, that 'he

had no dearer wish than to see every living mortal happy and contented

with his lot.' To all these advantages another of a humbler sort was

added, but which the nature of his situation forbade him to lose

sight of. The study of History, while it afforded him a subject of

continuous and regular exertion, would also afford him, what was even

more essential, the necessary competence of income for which he felt

reluctant any longer to depend on the resources of poetry, but which

the produce of his pen was now the only means he had of realising.

For these reasons, he decided on commencing the business of historian.

The composition of _Don Carlos_ had already led him to investigate the

state of Spain under Philip II.; and, being little satisfied with

Watson's clear but shallow Work on that reign, he had turned to the

original sources of information, the writings of Grotius, Strada, De

Thou, and many others. Investigating these with his usual fidelity and

eagerness, the Revolt of the Netherlands had, by degrees, become

familiar to his thoughts; distinct in many parts where it was

previously obscure; and attractive, as it naturally must be to a

temper such as his. He now determined that his first historical

performance should be a narrative of that event. He resolved to

explore the minutest circumstance of its rise and progress; to arrange

the materials he might collect, in a more philosophical order; to

interweave with them the general opinions he had formed, or was

forming, on many points of polity, and national or individual

character; and, if possible, to animate the whole with that warm

sympathy, which, in a lover of Freedom, this most glorious of her

triumphs naturally called forth.

In the filling-up of such an outline, there was scope enough for

diligence. But it was not in Schiller's nature to content himself with

ordinary efforts; no sooner did a project take hold of his mind, than,

rallying round it all his accomplishments and capabilities, he

stretched it out into something so magnificent and comprehensive, that

little less than a lifetime would have been sufficient to effect it.

This History of the Revolt of the Netherlands, which formed his chief

study, he looked upon but as one branch of the great subject he was

yet destined to engage with. History at large, in all its bearings,

was now his final aim; and his mind was continually occupied with

plans for acquiring, improving, and diffusing the knowledge of it.

Of these plans many never reached a describable shape; very few

reached even partial execution. One of the latter sort was an intended

_History of the most remarkable Conspiracies and Revolutions in the

Middle and Later Ages_. A first volume of the work was published in

1787. Schiller's part in it was trifling; scarcely more than that of a

translator and editor. St. Real's _Conspiracy of Bedmar against

Venice_, here furnished with an extended introduction, is the best

piece in the book. Indeed, St. Real seems first to have set him on

this task: the Abbe had already signified his predilection for plots

and revolutions, and given a fine sample of his powers in treating

such matters. What Schiller did was to expand this idea, and

communicate a systematic form to it. His work might have been curious

and valuable, had it been completed; but the pressure of other

engagements, the necessity of limiting his views to the Netherlands,

prevented this for the present; it was afterwards forgotten, and never

carried farther.

Such were Schiller's occupations while at Dresden; their extent and

variety are proof enough that idleness was not among his vices. It

was, in truth, the opposite extreme in which he erred. He wrote and

thought with an impetuosity beyond what nature always could endure.

His intolerance of interruptions first put him on the plan of studying

by night; an alluring but pernicious practice, which began at

Dresden, and was never afterwards forsaken. His recreations breathed a

similar spirit; he loved to be much alone, and strongly moved. The

banks of the Elbe were the favourite resort of his mornings: here

wandering in solitude amid groves and lawns, and green and beautiful

places, he abandoned his mind to delicious musings; watched the fitful

current of his thoughts, as they came sweeping through his soul in

their vague, fantastic, gorgeous forms; pleased himself with the

transient images of memory and hope; or meditated on the cares and

studies which had lately been employing, and were again soon to employ

him. At times, he might be seen floating on the river in a gondola,

feasting himself with the loveliness of earth and sky. He delighted

most to be there when tempests were abroad; his unquiet spirit found a

solace in the expression of his own unrest on the face of Nature;

danger lent a charm to his situation; he felt in harmony with the

scene, when the rack was sweeping stormfully across the heavens, and

the forests were sounding in the breeze, and the river was rolling its

chafed waters into wild eddying heaps.

Yet before the darkness summoned him exclusively to his tasks,

Schiller commonly devoted a portion of his day to the pleasures of

society. Could he have found enjoyment in the flatteries of admiring

hospitality, his present fame would have procured them for him in

abundance. But these things were not to Schiller's taste. His opinion

of the 'flesh-flies' of Leipzig we have already seen: he retained the

same sentiments throughout all his life. The idea of being what we

call a _lion_ is offensive enough to any man, of not more than common

vanity, or less than common understanding; it was doubly offensive to

him. His pride and his modesty alike forbade it. The delicacy of his

nature, aggravated into shyness by his education and his habits,

rendered situations of display more than usually painful to him; the

_digito praetereuntium_ was a sort of celebration he was far from

coveting. In the circles of fashion he appeared unwillingly, and

seldom to advantage: their glitter and parade were foreign to his

disposition; their strict ceremonial cramped the play of his mind.

Hemmed in, as by invisible fences, among the intricate barriers of

etiquette, so feeble, so inviolable, he felt constrained and helpless;

alternately chagrined and indignant. It was the giant among pigmies;

Gulliver, in Lilliput, tied down by a thousand packthreads. But there

were more congenial minds, with whom he could associate; more familiar

scenes, in which he found the pleasures he was seeking. Here Schiller

was himself; frank, unembarrassed, pliant to the humour of the hour.

His conversation was delightful, abounding at once in rare and simple

charms. Besides the intellectual riches which it carried with it,

there was that flow of kindliness and unaffected good humour, which

can render dulness itself agreeable. Schiller had many friends in

Dresden, who loved him as a man, while they admired him as a writer.

Their intercourse was of the kind he liked, sober, as well as free and

mirthful. It was the careless, calm, honest effusion of his feelings

that he wanted, not the noisy tumults and coarse delirium of

dissipation. For this, under any of its forms, he at no time showed

the smallest relish.

A visit to Weimar had long been one of Schiller's projects: he now

first accomplished it in 1787. Saxony had been, for ages, the Attica

of Germany; and Weimar had, of late, become its Athens. In this

literary city, Schiller found what he expected, sympathy and

brotherhood with men of kindred minds. To Goethe he was not

introduced;[17] but Herder and Wieland received him with a cordial

welcome; with the latter he soon formed a most friendly intimacy.

Wieland, the Nestor of German letters, was grown gray in the service:

Schiller reverenced him as a father, and he was treated by him as a

son. 'We shall have bright hours,' he said; 'Wieland is still young,

when he loves.' Wieland had long edited the _Deutsche Mercur_: in

consequence of their connexion, Schiller now took part in contributing

to that work. Some of his smaller poems, one or two fragments of the

History of the Netherlands, and the _Letters on Don Carlos_, first

appeared here. His own _Thalia_ still continued to come out at

Leipzig. With these for his incidental employments, with the Belgian

Revolt for his chief study, and the best society in Germany for his

leisure, Schiller felt no wish to leave Weimar. The place and what it

held contented him so much, that he thought of selecting it for his

permanent abode. 'You know the men,' he writes, 'of whom Germany is

proud; a Herder, a Wieland, with their brethren; and one wall now

encloses me and them. What excellencies are in Weimar! In this city,

at least in this territory, I mean to settle for life, and at length

once more to get a country.'

[Footnote 17: Doering says, 'Goethe was at this time absent

in Italy;' an error, as will by and by appear.]

So occupied and so intentioned, he continued to reside at Weimar. Some

months after his arrival, he received an invitation from his early

patroness and kind protectress, Madam von Wolzogen, to come and visit

her at Bauerbach. Schiller went accordingly to this his ancient city

of refuge; he again found all the warm hospitality, which he had of

old experienced when its character could less be mistaken; but his

excursion thither produced more lasting effects than this. At

Rudolstadt, where he stayed for a time on occasion of this journey, he

met with a new friend. It was here that he first saw the Fraeulein

Lengefeld, a lady whose attractions made him loth to leave

Rudolstadt, and eager to return.

Next year he did return; he lived from May till November there or in

the neighbourhood. He was busy as usual, and he visited the Lengefeld

family almost every day. Schiller's views on marriage, his longing for

'a civic and domestic existence,' we already know. 'To be united with

a person,' he had said, 'that shares our sorrows and our joys, that

responds to our feelings, that moulds herself so pliantly, so closely

to our humours; reposing on her calm and warm affection, to relax our

spirit from a thousand distractions, a thousand wild wishes and

tumultuous passions; to dream away all the bitterness of fortune, in

the bosom of domestic enjoyment; this the true delight of life.' Some

years had elapsed since he expressed these sentiments, which time had

confirmed, not weakened: the presence of the Fraeulein Lengefeld awoke

them into fresh activity. He loved this lady; the return of love, with

which she honoured him, diffused a sunshine over all his troubled

world; and, if the wish of being hers excited more impatient thoughts

about the settlement of his condition, it also gave him fresh strength

to attain it. He was full of occupation, while in Rudolstadt; ardent,

serious, but not unhappy. His literary projects were proceeding as

before; and, besides the enjoyment of virtuous love, he had that of

intercourse with many worthy and some kindred minds.

Among these, the chief in all respects was Goethe. It was during his

present visit, that Schiller first met with this illustrious person;

concerning whom, both by reading and report, his expectations had been

raised so high. No two men, both of exalted genius, could be possessed

of more different sorts of excellence, than the two that were now

brought together, in a large company of their mutual friends. The

English reader may form some approximate conception of the contrast,

by figuring an interview between Shakspeare and Milton. How gifted,

how diverse in their gifts! The mind of the one plays calmly, in its

capricious and inimitable graces, over all the provinces of human

interest; the other concentrates powers as vast, but far less various,

on a few subjects; the one is catholic, the other is sectarian. The

first is endowed with an all-comprehending spirit; skilled, as if by

personal experience, in all the modes of human passion and opinion;

therefore, tolerant of all; peaceful, collected; fighting for no class

of men or principles; rather looking on the world, and the various

battles waging in it, with the quiet eye of one already reconciled to

the futility of their issues; but pouring over all the forms of

many-coloured life the light of a deep and subtle intellect, and the

decorations of an overflowing fancy; and allowing men and things of

every shape and hue to have their own free scope in his conception, as

they have it in the world where Providence has placed them. The other

is earnest, devoted; struggling with a thousand mighty projects of

improvement; feeling more intensely as he feels more narrowly;

rejecting vehemently, choosing vehemently; at war with the one half of

things, in love with the other half; hence dissatisfied, impetuous,

without internal rest, and scarcely conceiving the possibility of such

a state. Apart from the difference of their opinions and mental

culture, Shakspeare and Milton seem to have stood in some such

relation as this to each other, in regard to the primary structure of

their minds. So likewise, in many points, was it with Goethe and

Schiller. The external circumstances of the two were, moreover, such

as to augment their several peculiarities. Goethe was in his

thirty-ninth year; and had long since found his proper rank and

settlement in life. Schiller was ten years younger, and still without

a fixed destiny; on both of which accounts, his fundamental scheme of

thought, the principles by which he judged and acted, and maintained

his individuality, although they might be settled, were less likely to

be sobered and matured. In these circumstances we can hardly wonder

that on Schiller's part the first impression was not very pleasant.

Goethe sat talking of Italy, and art, and travelling, and a thousand

other subjects, with that flow of brilliant and deep sense, sarcastic

humour, knowledge, fancy and good nature, which is said to render him

the best talker now alive.[18] Schiller looked at him in quite a

different mood; he felt his natural constraint increased under the

influence of a man so opposite in character, so potent in resources,

so singular and so expert in using them; a man whom he could not agree

with, and knew not how to contradict. Soon after their interview, he

thus writes:

'On the whole, this personal meeting has not at all diminished the

idea, great as it was, which I had previously formed of Goethe; but I

doubt whether we shall ever come into any close communication with

each other. Much that still interests me has already had its epoch

with him. His whole nature is, from its very origin, otherwise

constructed than mine; his world is not my world; our modes of

conceiving things appear to be essentially different. From such a

combination, no secure, substantial intimacy can result. Time will

try.'

[Footnote 18: 1825.]

The aid of time was not, in fact, unnecessary. On the part of Goethe

there existed prepossessions no less hostile; and derived from sources

older and deeper than the present transitory meeting, to the

discontents of which they probably contributed. He himself has lately

stated them with his accustomed frankness and good humour, in a

paper, part of which some readers may peruse with an interest more

than merely biographical.

'On my return from Italy,' he says, 'where I had been endeavouring to

train myself to greater purity and precision in all departments of

art, not heeding what meanwhile was going on in Germany, I found here

some older and some more recent works of poetry, enjoying high esteem

and wide circulation, while unhappily their character to me was

utterly offensive. I shall only mention Heinse's _Ardinghello_ and

Schiller's _Robbers_. The first I hated for its having undertaken to

exhibit sensuality and mystical abstruseness, ennobled and supported

by creative art: the last, because in it, the very paradoxes moral and

dramatic, from which I was struggling to get liberated, had been laid

hold of by a powerful though an immature genius, and poured in a

boundless rushing flood over all our country.

'Neither of these gifted individuals did I blame for what he had

performed or purposed: it is the nature and the privilege of every

mortal to attempt working in his own peculiar way; he attempts it

first without culture, scarcely with the consciousness of what he is

about; and continues it with consciousness increasing as his culture

increases; whereby it happens that so many exquisite and so many

paltry things are to be found circulating in the world, and one

perplexity is seen to rise from the ashes of another.

'But the rumour which these strange productions had excited over

Germany, the approbation paid to them by every class of persons, from

the wild student to the polished court-lady, frightened me; for I now

thought all my labour was to prove in vain; the objects, and the way

of handling them, to which I had been exercising all my powers,

appeared as if defaced and set aside. And what grieved me still more

was, that all the friends connected with me, Heinrich Meyer and

Moritz, as well as their fellow-artists Tischbein and Bury, seemed in

danger of the like contagion. I was much hurt. Had it been possible, I

would have abandoned the study of creative art, and the practice of

poetry altogether; for where was the prospect of surpassing those

performances of genial worth and wild form, in the qualities which

recommended them? Conceive my situation. It had been my object and my

task to cherish and impart the purest exhibitions of poetic art; and

here was I hemmed in between Ardinghello and Franz von Moor!

'It happened also about this time that Moritz returned from Italy, and

stayed with me awhile; during which, he violently confirmed himself

and me in these persuasions. I avoided Schiller, who was now at

Weimar, in my neighbourhood. The appearance of _Don Carlos_ was not

calculated to approximate us; the attempts of our common friends I

resisted; and thus we still continued to go on our way apart.'

By degrees, however, both parties found that they had been mistaken.

The course of accidents brought many things to light, which had been

hidden; the true character of each became unfolded more and more

completely to the other; and the cold, measured tribute of respect was

on both sides animated and exalted by feelings of kindness, and

ultimately of affection. Ere long, Schiller had by gratifying proofs

discovered that 'this Goethe was a very worthy man;' and Goethe, in

his love of genius, and zeal for the interests of literature, was

performing for Schiller the essential duties of a friend, even while

his personal repugnance continued unabated.

A strict similarity of characters is not necessary, or perhaps very

favourable, to friendship. To render it complete, each party must no

doubt be competent to understand the other; both must be possessed of

dispositions kindred in their great lineaments: but the pleasure of

comparing our ideas and emotions is heightened, when there is

'likeness in unlikeness.' _The same sentiments, different opinions_,

Rousseau conceives to be the best material of friendship: reciprocity

of kind words and actions is more effectual than all. Luther loved

Melancthon; Johnson was not more the friend of Edmund Burke than of

poor old Dr. Levitt. Goethe and Schiller met again; as they ultimately

came to live together, and to see each other oftener, they liked each

other better; they became associates, friends; and the harmony of

their intercourse, strengthened by many subsequent communities of

object, was never interrupted, till death put an end to it. Goethe, in

his time, has done many glorious things; but few on which he should

look back with greater pleasure than his treatment of Schiller.

Literary friendships are said to be precarious, and of rare

occurrence: the rivalry of interest disturbs their continuance; a

rivalry greater, where the subject of competition is one so vague,

impalpable and fluctuating, as the favour of the public; where the

feeling to be gratified is one so nearly allied to vanity, the most

irritable, arid and selfish feeling of the human heart. Had Goethe's

prime motive been the love of fame, he must have viewed with

repugnance, not the misdirection but the talents of the rising genius,

advancing with such rapid strides to dispute with him the palm of

intellectual primacy, nay as the million thought, already in

possession of it; and if a sense of his own dignity had withheld him

from offering obstructions, or uttering any whisper of discontent,

there is none but a truly patrician spirit that would cordially have

offered aid. To being secretly hostile and openly indifferent, the

next resource was to enact the patron; to solace vanity, by helping

the rival whom he could not hinder, and who could do without his help.

Goethe adopted neither of these plans. It reflects much credit on him

that he acted as he did. Eager to forward Schiller's views by exerting

all the influence within his power, he succeeded in effecting this;

and what was still more difficult, in suffering the character of

benefactor to merge in that of equal. They became not friends only,

but fellow-labourers: a connection productive of important

consequences in the history of both, particularly of the younger and

more undirected of the two.

Meanwhile the _History of the Revolt of the United Netherlands_ was in

part before the world; the first volume came out in 1788. Schiller's

former writings had given proofs of powers so great and various, such

an extent of general intellectual strength, and so deep an

acquaintance, both practical and scientific, with the art of

composition, that in a subject like history, no ordinary work was to

be looked for from his hands. With diligence in accumulating

materials, and patient care in elaborating them, he could scarcely

fail to attain distinguished excellence. The present volume was well

calculated to fulfil such expectations. The _Revolt of the

Netherlands_ possesses all the common requisites of a good history,

and many which are in some degree peculiar to itself. The information

it conveys is minute and copious; we have all the circumstances of the

case, remote and near, set distinctly before us. Yet, such is the

skill of the arrangement, these are at once briefly and impressively

presented. The work is not stretched out into a continuous narrative;

but gathered up into masses, which are successively exhibited to view,

the minor facts being grouped around some leading one, to which, as

to the central object, our attention is chiefly directed. This method

of combining the details of events, of proceeding as it were, _per

saltum_, from eminence to eminence, and thence surveying the

surrounding scene, is undoubtedly the most philosophical of any: but

few men are equal to the task of effecting it rightly. It must be

executed by a mind able to look on all its facts at once; to

disentangle their perplexities, referring each to its proper head; and

to choose, often with extreme address, the station from which the

reader is to view them. Without this, or with this inadequately done,

a work on such a plan would be intolerable. Schiller has accomplished

it in great perfection; the whole scene of affairs was evidently clear

before his own eye, and he did not want expertness to discriminate and

seize its distinctive features. The bond of cause and consequence he

never loses sight of; and over each successive portion of his

narrative he pours that flood of intellectual and imaginative

brilliancy, which all his prior writings had displayed. His

reflections, expressed or implied, are the fruit of strong,

comprehensive, penetrating thought. His descriptions are vivid; his

characters are studied with a keen sagacity, and set before us in

their most striking points of view; those of Egmont and Orange occur

to every reader as a rare union of perspicacity and eloquence. The

work has a look of order; of beauty joined to calm reposing force. Had

it been completed, it might have ranked as the very best of Schiller's

prose compositions. But no second volume ever came to light; and the

first concludes at the entrance of Alba into Brussels. Two fragments

alone, the _Siege of Antwerp_, and the _Passage of Alba's Army_, both

living pictures, show us still farther what he might have done had he

proceeded. The surpassing and often highly-picturesque movements of

this War, the devotedness of the Dutch, their heroic achievement of

liberty, were not destined to be painted by the glowing pen of

Schiller, whose heart and mind were alike so qualified to do them

justice.[19]

[Footnote 19: If we mistake not, Madame de Stael, in her

_Revolution Francaise_, had this performance of Schiller's in

her eye. Her work is constructed on a similar though a rather

looser plan of arrangement: the execution of it bears the

same relation to that of Schiller; it is less irregular; more

ambitious in its rhetoric; inferior in precision, though

often not in force of thought and imagery.]

The accession of reputation, which this work procured its author, was

not the only or the principal advantage he derived from it. Eichhorn,

Professor of History, was at this time about to leave the University

of Jena: Goethe had already introduced his new acquaintance Schiller

to the special notice of Amelia, the accomplished Regent of

Sachsen-Weimar; he now joined with Voigt, the head Chaplain of the

Court, in soliciting the vacant chair for him. Seconded by the general

voice, and the persuasion of the Princess herself, he succeeded.

Schiller was appointed Professor at Jena; he went thither in 1789.

With Schiller's removal to Jena begins a new epoch in his public and

private life. His connexion with Goethe here first ripened into

friendship, and became secured and cemented by frequency of

intercourse.[20] Jena is but a few miles distant from Weimar; and the

two friends, both settled in public offices belonging to the same

Government, had daily opportunities of interchanging visits.

Schiller's wanderings were now concluded: with a heart tired of so

fluctuating an existence, but not despoiled of its capacity for

relishing a calmer one; with a mind experienced by much and varied

intercourse with men; full of knowledge and of plans to turn it to

account, he could now repose himself in the haven of domestic

comforts, and look forward to days of more unbroken exertion, and more

wholesome and permanent enjoyment than hitherto had fallen to his lot.

In the February following his settlement at Jena, he obtained the hand

of Fraeulein Lengefeld; a happiness, with the prospect of which he had

long associated all the pleasures which he hoped for from the future.

A few months after this event, he thus expresses himself, in writing

to a friend:

'Life is quite a different thing by the side of a beloved wife, than

so forsaken and alone; even in Summer. Beautiful Nature! I now for the

first time fully enjoy it, live in it. The world again clothes itself

around me in poetic forms; old feelings are again awakening in my

breast. What a life I am leading here! I look with a glad mind around

me; my heart finds a perennial contentment without it; my spirit so

fine, so refreshing a nourishment. My existence is settled in

harmonious composure; not strained and impassioned, but peaceful and

clear. I look to my future destiny with a cheerful heart; now when

standing at the wished-for goal, I wonder with myself how it all has

happened, so far beyond my expectations. Fate has conquered the

difficulties for me; it has, I may say, forced me to the mark. From

the future I expect everything. A few years, and I shall live in the

full enjoyment of my spirit; nay, I think my very youth will be

renewed; an inward poetic life will give it me again.'

[Footnote 20: The obstacles to their union have already been

described in the words of Goethe; the steps by which these

were surmounted, are described by him in the same paper with

equal minuteness and effect. It is interesting, but cannot be

inserted here. See Appendix I., No. 3.]

To what extent these smiling hopes were realised will be seen in the

next and concluding Part of this Biography.

PART III.

FROM HIS SETTLEMENT AT JENA TO HIS DEATH.

(1790-1805.)

PART THIRD.

[1790-1805.]

The duties of his new office naturally called upon Schiller to devote

himself with double zeal to History: a subject, which from choice he

had already entered on with so much eagerness. In the study of it, we

have seen above how his strongest faculties and tastes were exercised

and gratified: and new opportunities were now combined with new

motives for persisting in his efforts. Concerning the plan or the

success of his academical prelections, we have scarcely any notice: in

his class, it is said, he used most frequently to speak extempore; and

his delivery was not distinguished by fluency or grace, a circumstance

to be imputed to the agitation of a public appearance; for, as

Woltmann assures us, 'the beauty, the elegance, ease, and true

instructiveness with which he could continuously express himself in

private, were acknowledged and admired by all his friends.' His

matter, we suppose, would make amends for these deficiencies of

manner: to judge from his introductory lecture, preserved in his

works, with the title, _What is Universal History, and with what views

should it be studied_, there perhaps has never been in Europe another

course of history sketched out on principles so magnificent and

philosophical.[21] But college exercises were far from being his

ultimate object, nor did he rest satisfied with mere visions of

perfection: the compass of the outline he had traced, for a proper

Historian, was scarcely greater than the assiduity with which he

strove to fill it up. His letters breathe a spirit not only of

diligence but of ardour; he seems intent with all his strength upon

this fresh pursuit; and delighted with the vast prospects of untouched

and attractive speculation, which were opening around him on every

side. He professed himself to be 'exceedingly contented with his

business;' his ideas on the nature of it were acquiring both extension

and distinctness; and every moment of his leisure was employed in

reducing them to practice. He was now busied with the _History of the

Thirty-Years War_.

[Footnote 21: The paper entitled _Hints on the Origin of

Human Society, as indicated in the Mosaic Records_, the

_Mission of Moses_, the _Laws of Solon and Lycurgus_, are

pieces of the very highest order; full of strength and

beauty; delicious to the lovers of that plastic philosophy,

which employs itself in giving form and life to the 'dry

bones' of those antique events, that lie before us so

inexplicable in the brief and enigmatic pages of their

chroniclers. The _Glance over Europe at the period of the

first Crusade_; the _Times of the Emperor Frederick I._; the

_Troubles in France_, are also masterly sketches, in a

simpler and more common style.]

This work, which appeared in 1791, is considered by the German critics

as his chief performance in this department of literature: _The Revolt

of the Netherlands_, the only one which could have vied with it, never

was completed; otherwise, in our opinion, it might have been superior.

Either of the two would have sufficed to secure for Schiller a

distinguished rank among historians, of the class denominated

philosophical; though even both together, they afford but a feeble

exemplification of the ideas which he entertained on the manner of

composing history. In his view, the business of history is not merely

to record, but to interpret; it involves not only a clear conception

and a lively exposition of events and characters, but a sound,

enlightened theory of individual and national morality, a general

philosophy of human life, whereby to judge of them, and measure their

effects. The historian now stands on higher ground, takes in a wider

range than those that went before him; he can now survey vast tracts

of human action, and deduce its laws from an experience extending over

many climes and ages. With his ideas, moreover, his feelings ought to

be enlarged: he should regard the interests not of any sect or state,

but of mankind; the progress not of any class of arts or opinions, but

of universal happiness and refinement. His narrative, in short, should

be moulded according to the science, and impregnated with the liberal

spirit of his time.

Voltaire is generally conceived to have invented and introduced a new

method of composing history; the chief historians that have followed

him have been by way of eminence denominated philosophical. This is

hardly correct. Voltaire wrote history with greater talent, but

scarcely with a new species of talent: he applied the ideas of the

eighteenth century to the subject; but in this there was nothing

radically new. In the hands of a thinking writer history has always

been 'philosophy teaching by experience;' that is, such philosophy as

the age of the historian has afforded. For a Greek or Roman, it was

natural to look upon events with an eye to their effect on his own

city or country; and to try them by a code of principles, in which the

prosperity or extension of this formed a leading object. For a monkish

chronicler, it was natural to estimate the progress of affairs by the

number of abbeys founded; the virtue of men by the sum-total of

donations to the clergy. And for a thinker of the present day, it is

equally natural to measure the occurrences of history by quite a

different standard: by their influence upon the general destiny of

man, their tendency to obstruct or to forward him in his advancement

towards liberty, knowledge, true religion and dignity of mind. Each

of these narrators simply measures by the scale which is considered

for the time as expressing the great concerns and duties of humanity.

Schiller's views on this matter were, as might have been expected, of

the most enlarged kind. 'It seems to me,' said he in one of his

letters, 'that in writing history for the moderns, we should try to

communicate to it such an interest as the History of the Peloponnesian

War had for the Greeks. Now this is the problem: to choose and arrange

your materials so that, to interest, they shall not need the aid of

decoration. We moderns have a source of interest at our disposal,

which no Greek or Roman was acquainted with, and which the _patriotic_

interest does not nearly equal. This last, in general, is chiefly of

importance for unripe nations, for the youth of the world. But we may

excite a very different sort of interest if we represent each

remarkable occurrence that happened to _men_ as of importance to

_man_. It is a poor and little aim to write for one nation; a

philosophic spirit cannot tolerate such limits, cannot bound its views

to a form of human nature so arbitrary, fluctuating, accidental. The

most powerful nation is but a fragment; and thinking minds will not

grow warm on its account, except in so far as this nation or its

fortunes have been influential on the progress of the species.'

That there is not some excess in this comprehensive cosmopolitan

philosophy, may perhaps be liable to question. Nature herself has,

wisely no doubt, partitioned us into 'kindreds, and nations, and

tongues:' it is among our instincts to grow warm in behalf of our

country, simply for its own sake; and the business of Reason seems to

be to chasten and direct our instincts, never to destroy them. We

require individuality in our attachments: the sympathy which is

expanded over all men will commonly be found so much attenuated by

the process, that it cannot be effective on any. And as it is in

nature, so it is in art, which ought to be the image of it. Universal

philanthropy forms but a precarious and very powerless rule of

conduct; and the 'progress of the species' will turn out equally

unfitted for deeply exciting the imagination. It is not with freedom

that we can sympathise, but with free men. There ought, indeed, to be

in history a spirit superior to petty distinctions and vulgar

partialities; our particular affections ought to be enlightened and

purified; but they should not be abandoned, or, such is the condition

of humanity, our feelings must evaporate and fade away in that extreme

diffusion. Perhaps, in a certain sense, the surest mode of pleasing

and instructing all nations _is_ to write for one.

This too Schiller was aware of, and had in part attended to. Besides,

the Thirty-Years War is a subject in which nationality of feeling may

be even wholly spared, better than in almost any other. It is not a

German but a European subject; it forms the concluding portion of the

Reformation, and this is an event belonging not to any country in

particular, but to the human race. Yet, if we mistake not, this

over-tendency to generalisation, both in thought and sentiment, has

rather hurt the present work. The philosophy, with which it is embued,

now and then grows vague from its abstractness, ineffectual from its

refinement: the enthusiasm which pervades it, elevated, strong,

enlightened, would have told better on our hearts, had it been

confined within a narrower space, and directed to a more specific

class of objects. In his extreme attention to the philosophical

aspects of the period, Schiller has neglected to take advantage of

many interesting circumstances, which it offered under other points of

view. The Thirty-Years War abounds with what may be called

picturesqueness in its events, and still more in the condition of the

people who carried it on. Harte's _History of Gustavus_, a wilderness

which mere human patience seems unable to explore, is yet enlivened

here and there with a cheerful spot, when he tells us of some scalade

or camisado, or speculates on troopers rendered bullet-proof by

art-magic. His chaotic records have, in fact, afforded to our Novelist

the raw materials of Dugald Dalgetty, a cavalier of the most singular

equipment, of character and manners which, for many reasons, merit

study and description. To much of this, though, as he afterwards

proved, it was well known to him, Schiller paid comparatively small

attention; his work has lost in liveliness by the omission, more than

it has gained in dignity or instructiveness.

Yet, with all its imperfections, this is no ordinary history. The

speculation, it is true, is not always of the kind we wish; it

excludes more moving or enlivening topics, and sometimes savours of

the inexperienced theorist who had passed his days remote from

practical statesmen; the subject has not sufficient unity; in spite of

every effort, it breaks into fragments towards the conclusion: but

still there is an energy, a vigorous beauty in the work, which far

more than redeems its failings. Great thoughts at every turn arrest

our attention, and make us pause to confirm or contradict them; happy

metaphors,[22] some vivid descriptions of events and men, remind us of

the author of _Fiesco_ and _Don Carlos_. The characters of Gustavus

and Wallenstein are finely developed in the course of the narrative.

Tilly's passage of the Lech, the battles of Leipzig and Luetzen figure

in our recollection, as if our eyes had witnessed them: the death of

Gustavus is described in terms which might draw 'iron tears' from the

eyes of veterans.[23] If Schiller had inclined to dwell upon the mere

visual or imaginative department of his subject, no man could have

painted it more graphically, or better called forth our emotions,

sympathetic or romantic. But this, we have seen, was not by any means

his leading aim.

[Footnote 22: Yet we scarcely meet with one so happy as that

in the _Revolt of the Netherlands_, where he finishes his

picture of the gloomy silence and dismay that reigned in

Brussels on the first entrance of Alba, by this striking

simile: 'Now that the City had received the Spanish General

within its walls, it had the air as of a man that has drunk a

cup of poison, and with shuddering expectation watches, every

moment, for its deadly agency.']

[Footnote 23: See Appendix I., No. 4.]

On the whole, the present work is still the best historical

performance which Germany can boast of. Mueller's histories are

distinguished by merits of another sort; by condensing, in a given

space, and frequently in lucid order, a quantity of information,

copious and authentic beyond example: but as intellectual productions,

they cannot rank with Schiller's. Woltmann of Berlin has added to the

_Thirty-Years War_ another work of equal size, by way of continuation,

entitled _History of the Peace of Munster_; with the first

negotiations of which treaty the former concludes. Woltmann is a

person of ability; but we dare not say of him, what Wieland said of

Schiller, that by his first historical attempt he 'has discovered a

decided capability of rising to a level with Hume, Robertson and

Gibbon.' He will rather rise to a level with Belsham or Smollett.

This first complete specimen of Schiller's art in the historical

department, though but a small fraction of what he meant to do, and

could have done, proved in fact to be the last he ever undertook. At

present very different cares awaited him: in 1791, a fit of sickness

overtook him; he had to exchange the inspiring labours of literature

for the disgusts and disquietudes of physical disease. His disorder,

which had its seat in the chest, was violent and threatening; and

though nature overcame it in the present instance, the blessing of

entire health never more returned to him. The cause of this severe

affliction seemed to be the unceasing toil and anxiety of mind, in

which his days had hitherto been passed: his frame, which, though

tall, had never been robust, was too weak for the vehement and

sleepless soul that dwelt within it; and the habit of nocturnal study

had, no doubt, aggravated all the other mischiefs. Ever since his

residence at Dresden, his constitution had been weakened: but this

rude shock at once shattered its remaining strength; for a time the

strictest precautions were required barely to preserve existence. A

total cessation from every intellectual effort was one of the most

peremptory laws prescribed to him. Schiller's habits and domestic

circumstances equally rebelled against this measure; with a beloved

wife depending on him for support, inaction itself could have procured

him little rest. His case seemed hard; his prospects of innocent

felicity had been too banefully obscured. Yet in this painful and

difficult position, he did not yield to despondency; and at length,

assistance, and partial deliverance, reached him from a very

unexpected quarter. Schiller had not long been sick, when the

hereditary Prince, now reigning Duke of Holstein-Augustenburg, jointly

with the Count Von Schimmelmann, conferred on him a pension of a

thousand crowns for three years.[24] No stipulation was added, but

merely that he should be careful of his health, and use every

attention to recover. This speedy and generous aid, moreover, was

presented with a delicate politeness, which, as Schiller said, touched

him more than even the gift itself. We should remember this Count and

this Duke; they deserve some admiration and some envy.

[Footnote 24: It was to Denmark likewise that Klopstock owed

the means of completing his _Messias_.]

This disorder introduced a melancholy change into Schiller's

circumstances: he had now another enemy to strive with, a secret and

fearful impediment to vanquish, in which much resolute effort must be

sunk without producing any positive result. Pain is not entirely

synonymous with Evil; but bodily pain seems less redeemed by good than

almost any other kind of it. From the loss of fortune, of fame, or

even of friends, Philosophy pretends to draw a certain compensating

benefit; but in general the permanent loss of health will bid defiance

to her alchymy. It is a universal diminution; the diminution equally

of our resources and of our capacity to guide them; a penalty

unmitigated, save by love of friends, which then first becomes truly

dear and precious to us; or by comforts brought from beyond this

earthly sphere, from that serene Fountain of peace and hope, to which

our weak Philosophy cannot raise her wing. For all men, in itself,

disease is misery; but chiefly for men of finer feelings and

endowments, to whom, in return for such superiorities, it seems to be

sent most frequently and in its most distressing forms. It is a cruel

fate for the poet to have the sunny land of his imagination, often the

sole territory he is lord of, disfigured and darkened by the shades of

pain; for one whose highest happiness is the exertion of his mental

faculties, to have them chained and paralysed in the imprisonment of a

distempered frame. With external activity, with palpable pursuits,

above all, with a suitable placidity of nature, much even in certain

states of sickness may be performed and enjoyed. But for him whose

heart is already over-keen, whose world is of the mind, ideal,

internal; when the mildew of lingering disease has struck that world,

and begun to blacken and consume its beauty, nothing seems to remain

but despondency and bitterness and desolate sorrow, felt and

anticipated, to the end.

Woe to him if his will likewise falter, if his resolution fail, and

his spirit bend its neck to the yoke of this new enemy! Idleness and a

disturbed imagination will gain the mastery of him, and let loose

their thousand fiends to harass him, to torment him into madness.

Alas! the bondage of Algiers is freedom compared with this of the sick

man of genius, whose heart has fainted and sunk beneath its load. His

clay dwelling is changed into a gloomy prison; every nerve is become

an avenue of disgust or anguish; and the soul sits within, in her

melancholy loneliness, a prey to the spectres of despair, or stupefied

with excess of suffering, doomed as it were to a 'life in death,' to a

consciousness of agonised existence, without the consciousness of

power which should accompany it. Happily, death, or entire fatuity, at

length puts an end to such scenes of ignoble misery; which, however,

ignoble as they are, we ought to view with pity rather than contempt.

Such are frequently the fruits of protracted sickness, in men

otherwise of estimable qualities and gifts, but whose sensibility

exceeds their strength of mind. In Schiller, its worst effects were

resisted by the only availing antidote, a strenuous determination to

neglect them. His spirit was too vigorous and ardent to yield even in

this emergency: he disdained to dwindle into a pining valetudinarian;

in the midst of his infirmities, he persevered with unabated zeal in

the great business of his life. As he partially recovered, he returned

as strenuously as ever to his intellectual occupations; and often, in

the glow of poetical conception, he almost forgot his maladies. By

such resolute and manly conduct, he disarmed sickness of its cruelest

power to wound; his frame might be in pain, but his spirit retained

its force, unextinguished, almost unimpeded; he did not lose his

relish for the beautiful, the grand, or the good, in any of their

shapes; he loved his friends as formerly, and wrote his finest and

sublimest works when his health was gone. Perhaps no period of his

life displayed more heroism than the present one.

After this severe attack, and the kind provision which he had received

from Denmark, Schiller seems to have relaxed his connexion with the

University of Jena: the weightiest duties of his class appear to have

been discharged by proxy, and his historical studies to have been

forsaken. Yet this was but a change, not an abatement, in the activity

of his mind. Once partially free from pain, all his former diligence

awoke; and being also free from the more pressing calls of duty and

economy, he was now allowed to turn his attention to objects which

attracted it more. Among these one of the most alluring was the

Philosophy of Kant.

The transcendental system of the Koenigsberg Professor had, for the

last ten years, been spreading over Germany, which it had now filled

with the most violent contentions. The powers and accomplishments of

Kant were universally acknowledged; the high pretensions of his

system, pretensions, it is true, such as had been a thousand times put

forth, a thousand times found wanting, still excited notice, when so

backed by ability and reputation. The air of mysticism connected with

these doctrines was attractive to the German mind, with which the

vague and the vast are always pleasing qualities; the dreadful array

of first principles, the forest huge of terminology and definitions,

where the panting intellect of weaker men wanders as in pathless

thickets, and at length sinks powerless to the earth, oppressed with

fatigue, and suffocated with scholastic miasma, seemed sublime rather

than appalling to the Germans; men who shrink not at toil, and to

whom a certain degree of darkness appears a native element, essential

for giving play to that deep meditative enthusiasm which forms so

important a feature in their character. Kant's Philosophy,

accordingly, found numerous disciples, and possessed them with a zeal

unexampled since the days of Pythagoras. This, in fact, resembled

spiritual fanaticism rather than a calm ardour in the cause of

science; Kant's warmest admirers seemed to regard him more in the

light of a prophet than of a mere earthly sage. Such admiration was of

course opposed by corresponding censure; the transcendental neophytes

had to encounter sceptical gainsayers as determined as themselves. Of

this latter class the most remarkable were Herder and Wieland. Herder,

then a clergyman of Weimar, seems never to have comprehended what he

fought against so keenly: he denounced and condemned the Kantean

metaphysics, because he found them heterodox. The young divines came

back from the University of Jena with their minds well nigh delirious;

full of strange doctrines, which they explained to the examinators of

the Weimar Consistorium in phrases that excited no idea in the heads

of these reverend persons, but much horror in their hearts.[25] Hence

reprimands, and objurgations, and excessive bitterness between the

applicants for ordination and those appointed to confer it: one young

clergyman at Weimar shot himself on this account; heresy, and jarring,

and unprofitable logic, were universal. Hence Herder's vehement

attacks on this 'pernicious quackery;' this delusive and destructive

'system of words.'[26] Wieland strove against it for another reason.

He had, all his life, been labouring to give currency among his

countrymen to a species of diluted epicurism; to erect a certain

smooth, and elegant, and very slender scheme of taste and morals,

borrowed from our Shaftesbury and the French. All this feeble edifice

the new doctrine was sweeping before it to utter ruin, with the

violence of a tornado. It grieved Wieland to see the work of half a

century destroyed: he fondly imagined that but for Kant's philosophy

it might have been perennial. With scepticism quickened into action by

such motives, Herder and he went forth as brother champions against

the transcendental metaphysics; they were not long without a multitude

of hot assailants. The uproar produced among thinking men by the

conflict, has scarcely been equalled in Germany since the days of

Luther. Fields were fought, and victories lost and won; nearly all the

minds of the nation were, in secret or openly, arrayed on this side or

on that. Goethe alone seemed altogether to retain his wonted

composure; he was clear for allowing the Kantean scheme to 'have its

day, as all things have.' Goethe has already lived to see the wisdom

of this sentiment, so characteristic of his genius and turn of

thought.

[Footnote 25: Schelling has a book on the 'Soul of the

World:' Fichte's expression to his students, "Tomorrow,

gentlemen, I shall create God," is known to most readers.]

[Footnote 26: See _Herder's Leben_, by his Widow. That Herder

was not usually troubled with any unphilosophical scepticism,

or aversion to novelty, may be inferred from his patronising

Dr. Gall's system of Phrenology, or 'Skull-doctrine' as they

call it in Germany. But Gall had referred with acknowledgment

and admiration to the _Philosophie der Geschichte der

Menschheit_. Here lay a difference.]

In these controversies, soon pushed beyond the bounds of temperate or

wholesome discussion, Schiller took no part: but the noise they made

afforded him a fresh inducement to investigate a set of doctrines, so

important in the general estimation. A system which promised, even

with a very little plausibility, to accomplish all that Kant asserted

his complete performance of; to explain the difference between Matter

and Spirit, to unravel the perplexities of Necessity and Free-will;

to show us the true grounds of our belief in God, and what hope nature

gives us of the soul's immortality; and thus at length, after a

thousand failures, to interpret the enigma of our being,--hardly

needed that additional inducement to make such a man as Schiller grasp

at it with eager curiosity. His progress also was facilitated by his

present circumstances; Jena had now become the chief well-spring of

Kantean doctrine, a distinction or disgrace it has ever since

continued to deserve. Reinhold, one of Kant's ablest followers, was at

this time Schiller's fellow-teacher and daily companion: he did not

fail to encourage and assist his friend in a path of study, which, as

he believed, conducted to such glorious results. Under this tuition,

Schiller was not long in discovering, that at least the 'new

philosophy was more poetical than that of Leibnitz, and had a grander

character;' persuasions which of course confirmed him in his

resolution to examine it.

How far Schiller penetrated into the arcana of transcendentalism it is

impossible for us to say. The metaphysical and logical branches of it

seem to have afforded him no solid satisfaction, or taken no firm hold

of his thoughts; their influence is scarcely to be traced in any of

his subsequent writings. The only department to which he attached

himself with his ordinary zeal was that which relates to the

principles of the imitative arts, with their moral influences, and

which in the Kantean nomenclature has been designated by the term

_AEsthetics_,[27] or the doctrine of sentiments and emotions. On these

subjects he had already amassed a multitude of thoughts; to see which

expressed by new symbols, and arranged in systematic form, and held

together by some common theory, would necessarily yield enjoyment to

his intellect, and inspire him with fresh alacrity in prosecuting

such researches. The new light which dawned, or seemed to dawn, upon

him, in the course of these investigations, is reflected, in various

treatises, evincing, at least, the honest diligence with which he

studied, and the fertility with which he could produce. Of these the

largest and most elaborate are the essays on _Grace and Dignity_; on

_Naive and Sentimental Poetry_; and the _Letters on the AEsthetic

Culture of Man_: the other pieces are on _Tragic Art_; on the

_Pathetic_; on the _Cause of our Delight in Tragic Objects_; on

_Employing the Low and Common in Art_.

[Footnote 27: From the verb [Greek: aisthanomai], _to

feel_.--The term is Baumgarten's; prior to Kant (1845).]

Being cast in the mould of Kantism, or at least clothed in its

garments, these productions, to readers unacquainted with that system,

are encumbered here and there with difficulties greater than belong

intrinsically to the subject. In perusing them, the uninitiated

student is mortified at seeing so much powerful thought distorted, as

he thinks, into such fantastic forms: the principles of reasoning, on

which they rest, are apparently not those of common logic; a dimness

and doubt overhangs their conclusions; scarcely anything is proved in

a convincing manner. But this is no strange quality in such writings.

To an exoteric reader the philosophy of Kant almost always appears to

invert the common maxim; its end and aim seem not to be 'to make

abstruse things simple, but to make simple things abstruse.' Often a

proposition of inscrutable and dread aspect, when resolutely grappled

with, and torn from its shady den, and its bristling entrenchments of

uncouth terminology, and dragged forth into the open light of day, to

be seen by the natural eye, and tried by merely human understanding,

proves to be a very harmless truth, familiar to us from of old,

sometimes so familiar as to be a truism. Too frequently, the anxious

novice is reminded of Dryden in the _Battle of the Books_: there is a

helmet of rusty iron, dark, grim, gigantic; and within it, at the

farthest corner, is a head no bigger than a walnut. These are the

general errors of Kantean criticism; in the present works, they are by

no means of the worst or most pervading kind; and there is a

fundamental merit which does more than counterbalance them. By the aid

of study, the doctrine set before us can, in general, at length be

comprehended; and Schiller's fine intellect, recognisable even in its

masquerade, is ever and anon peering forth in its native form, which

all may understand, which all must relish, and presenting us with

passages that show like bright verdant islands in the misty sea of

metaphysics.

We have been compelled to offer these remarks on Kant's Philosophy;

but it is right to add that they are the result of only very limited

acquaintance with the subject. We cannot wish that any influence of

ours should add a note, however feeble, to the loud and not at all

melodious cry which has been raised against it in this country. When a

class of doctrines so involved in difficulties, yet so sanctioned by

illustrious names, is set before us, curiosity must have a theory

respecting them, and indolence and other humbler feelings are too

ready to afford her one. To call Kant's system a laborious dream, and

its adherents crazy mystics, is a brief method, brief but false. The

critic, whose philosophy includes the _craziness_ of men like these,

so easily and smoothly in its formulas, should render thanks to Heaven

for having gifted him with science and acumen, as few in any age or

country have been gifted. Meaner men, however, ought to recollect that

where we do not understand, we should postpone deciding, or, at least,

keep our decision for our own exclusive benefit. We of England may

reject this Kantean system, perhaps with reason; but it ought to be on

other grounds than are yet before us. Philosophy is science, and

science, as Schiller has observed, cannot always be explained in

'conversations by the parlour fire,' or in written treatises that

resemble such. The _cui bono_ of these doctrines may not, it is true,

be expressible by arithmetical computations: the subject also is

perplexed with obscurities, and probably with manifold delusions; and

too often its interpreters with us have been like 'tenebrific stars,'

that 'did ray out darkness' on a matter itself sufficiently dark. But

what then? Is the jewel always to be found among the common dust of

the highway, and always to be estimated by its value in the common

judgment? It lies embosomed in the depths of the mine; rocks must be

rent before it can be reached; skilful eyes and hands must separate it

from the rubbish where it lies concealed, and kingly purchasers alone

can prize it and buy it. This law of _ostracism_ is as dangerous in

science as it was of old in politics. Let us not forget that many

things are true which cannot be demonstrated by the rules of _Watts's

Logic_; that many truths are valuable, for which no price is given in

Paternoster Row, and no preferment offered at St. Stephen's! Whoever

reads these treatises of Schiller with attention, will perceive that

they depend on principles of an immensely higher and more complex

character than our 'Essays on Taste,' and our 'Inquiries concerning

the Freedom of the Will.' The laws of criticism, which it is their

purpose to establish, are derived from the inmost nature of man; the

scheme of morality, which they inculcate, soars into a brighter

region, very far beyond the ken of our 'Utilities' and 'Reflex-senses.'

They do not teach us 'to judge of poetry and art as we judge of

dinner,' merely by observing the impressions it produced in us; and

they _do_ derive the duties and chief end of man from other grounds

than the philosophy of Profit and Loss. These _Letters on AEsthetic

Culture_, without the aid of anything which the most sceptical could

designate as superstition, trace out and attempt to sanction for us a

system of morality, in which the sublimest feelings of the Stoic and

the Christian are represented but as stages in our progress to the

pinnacle of true human grandeur; and man, isolated on this fragment of

the universe, encompassed with the boundless desolate Unknown, at war

with Fate, without help or the hope of help, is confidently called

upon to rise into a calm cloudless height of internal activity and

peace, and _be_, what he has fondly named himself, the god of this

lower world. When such are the results, who would not make an effort

for the steps by which they are attained? In Schiller's treatises, it

must be owned, the reader, after all exertions, will be fortunate if

he can find them. Yet a second perusal will satisfy him better than

the first; and among the shapeless immensities which fill the Night of

Kantism, and the meteoric coruscations, which perplex him rather than

enlighten, he will fancy he descries some streaks of a serener

radiance, which he will pray devoutly that time may purify and ripen

into perfect day. The Philosophy of Kant is probably combined with

errors to its very core; but perhaps also, this ponderous unmanageable

dross may bear in it the everlasting gold of truth! Mighty spirits

have already laboured in refining it: is it wise in us to take up with

the base pewter of Utility, and renounce such projects altogether? We

trust, not.[28]

[Footnote 28: Are our hopes from Mr. Coleridge always to be

fruitless? Sneers at the common-sense philosophy of the

Scotch are of little use: it is a poor philosophy, perhaps;

but not so poor as none at all, which seems to be the state

of matters here at present.]

That Schiller's _genius_ profited by this laborious and ardent study

of AEsthetic Metaphysics, has frequently been doubted, and sometimes

denied. That, after such investigations, the process of composition

would become more difficult, might be inferred from the nature of the

case. That also the principles of this critical theory were in part

erroneous, in still greater part too far-fetched and fine-spun for

application to the business of writing, we may farther venture to

assert. But excellence, not ease of composition, is the thing to be

desired; and in a mind like Schiller's, so full of energy, of images

and thoughts and creative power, the more sedulous practice of

selection was little likely to be detrimental. And though considerable

errors might mingle with the rules by which he judged himself, the

habit of judging carelessly, or not at all, is far worse than that of

sometimes judging wrong. Besides, once accustomed to attend strictly

to the operations of his genius, and rigorously to try its products,

such a man as Schiller could not fail in time to discover what was

false in the principles by which he tried them, and consequently, in

the end, to retain the benefits of this procedure without its evils.

There is doubtless a purism in taste, a rigid fantastical demand of

perfection, a horror at approaching the limits of impropriety, which

obstructs the free impulse of the faculties, and if excessive, would

altogether deaden them. But the excess on the other side is much more

frequent, and, for high endowments, infinitely more pernicious. After

the strongest efforts, there may be little realised; without strong

efforts, there must be little. That too much care does hurt in any of

our tasks is a doctrine so flattering to indolence, that we ought to

receive it with extreme caution. In works impressed with the stamp of

true genius, their quality, not their extent, is what we value: a dull

man may spend his lifetime writing little; better so than writing

much; but a man of powerful mind is liable to no such danger. Of all

our authors, Gray is perhaps the only one that from fastidiousness of

taste has written less than he should have done: there are thousands

that have erred the other way. What would a Spanish reader give, had

Lope de Vega composed a hundred times as little, and that little a

hundred times as well!

Schiller's own ideas on these points appear to be sufficiently sound:

they are sketched in the following extract of a letter, interesting

also as a record of his purposes and intellectual condition at this

period:

'Criticism must now make good to me the damage she herself has done.

And damaged me she most certainly has; for the boldness, the living

glow which I felt before a rule was known to me, have for several

years been wanting. I now _see_ myself _create_ and _form_: I watch

the play of inspiration; and my fancy, knowing she is not without

witnesses of her movements, no longer moves with equal freedom. I

hope, however, ultimately to advance so far that _art_ shall become a

second _nature_, as polished manners are to well-bred men; then

Imagination will regain her former freedom, and submit to none but

voluntary limitations.'

Schiller's subsequent writings are the best proof that in these

expectations he had not miscalculated.

The historical and critical studies, in which he had been so

extensively and seriously engaged, could not remain without effect on

Schiller's general intellectual character. He had spent five active

years in studies directed almost solely to the understanding, or the

faculties connected with it; and such industry united to such ardour

had produced an immense accession of ideas. History had furnished him

with pictures of manners and events, of strange conjunctures and

conditions of existence; it had given him more minute and truer

conceptions of human nature in its many forms, new and more accurate

opinions on the character and end of man. The domain of his mind was

both enlarged and enlightened; a multitude of images and detached

facts and perceptions had been laid up in his memory; and his

intellect was at once enriched by acquired thoughts, and strengthened

by increased exercise on a wider circle of knowledge.

But to understand was not enough for Schiller; there were in him

faculties which this could not employ, and therefore could not

satisfy. The primary vocation of his nature was poetry: the

acquisitions of his other faculties served but as the materials for

his poetic faculty to act upon, and seemed imperfect till they had

been sublimated into the pure and perfect forms of beauty, which it is

the business of this to elicit from them. New thoughts gave birth to

new feelings: and both of these he was now called upon to body forth,

to represent by visible types, to animate and adorn with the magic of

creative genius. The first youthful blaze of poetic ardour had long

since passed away; but this large increase of knowledge awakened it

anew, refined by years and experience into a steadier and clearer

flame. Vague shadows of unaccomplished excellence, gleams of ideal

beauty, were now hovering fitfully across his mind: he longed to turn

them into shape, and give them a local habitation and a name.

Criticism, likewise, had exalted his notions of art: the modern

writers on subjects of taste, Aristotle, the ancient poets, he had

lately studied; he had carefully endeavoured to extract the truth from

each, and to amalgamate their principles with his own; in choosing, he

was now more difficult to satisfy. Minor poems had all along been

partly occupying his attention; but they yielded no space for the

intensity of his impulses, and the magnificent ideas that were rising

in his fancy. Conscious of his strength, he dreaded not engaging with

the highest species of his art: the perusal of the Greek tragedians

had given rise to some late translations;[29] the perusal of Homer

seems now to have suggested the idea of an epic poem. The hero whom he

first contemplated was Gustavus Adolphus; he afterwards changed to

Frederick the Great of Prussia.

[Footnote 29: These were a fine version, of Euripides'

_Iphigenia in Aulide_, and a few scenes of his _Phoenissae_.]

Epic poems, since the time of the _Epigoniad_, and _Leonidas_, and

especially since that of some more recent attempts, have with us

become a mighty dull affair. That Schiller aimed at something

infinitely higher than these faint and superannuated imitations, far

higher than even Klopstock has attained, will appear by the following

extract from one of his letters:

'An epic poem in the eighteenth century should be quite a different

thing from such a poem in the childhood of the world. And it is that

very circumstance which attracts me so much towards this project. Our

manners, the finest essence of our philosophies, our politics,

economy, arts, in short, of all we know and do, would require to be

introduced without constraint, and interwoven in such a composition,

to live there in beautiful harmonious freedom, as all the branches of

Greek culture live and are made visible in Homer's _Iliad_. Nor am I

disinclined to invent a species of machinery for this purpose; being

anxious to fulfil, with hairsbreadth accuracy, all the requisitions

that are made of epic poets, even on the side of form. Besides, this

machinery, which, in a subject so modern, in an age so prosaic,

appears to present the greatest difficulty, might exalt the interest

in a high degree, were it suitably adapted to this same modern spirit.

Crowds of confused ideas on this matter are rolling to and fro within

my head; something distinct will come out of them at last.

'As for the sort of metre I would choose, this I think you will hardly

guess: no other than _ottave rime_. All the rest, except iambic, are

become insufferable to me. And how beautifully might the earnest and

the lofty be made to play in these light fetters! What attractions

might the epic _substance_ gain by the soft yielding _form_ of this

fine rhyme! For, the poem must, not in name only, but in very deed, be

capable of being _sung_; as the _Iliad_ was sung by the peasants of

Greece, as the stanzas of _Jerusalem Delivered_ are still sung by the

Venetian gondoliers.

'The epoch of Frederick's life that would fit me best, I have

considered also. I should wish to select some unhappy situation; it

would allow me to unfold his mind far more poetically. The chief

action should, if possible, be very simple, perplexed with no

complicated circumstances, that the whole might easily be comprehended

at a glance, though the episodes were never so numerous. In this

respect there is no better model than the _Iliad_.'

Schiller did not execute, or even commence, the project he has here so

philosophically sketched: the constraints of his present situation,

the greatness of the enterprise compared with the uncertainty of its

success, were sufficient to deter him. Besides, he felt that after all

his wide excursions, the true home of his genius was the Drama, the

department where its powers had first been tried, and were now by

habit or nature best qualified to act. To the Drama he accordingly

returned. The _History of the Thirty-Years War_ had once suggested the

idea of Gustavus Adolphus as the hero of an epic poem; the same work

afforded him a subject for a tragedy: he now decided on beginning

_Wallenstein_. In this undertaking it was no easy task that he

contemplated; a common play did not now comprise his aim; he required

some magnificent and comprehensive object, in which he could expend

to advantage the new poetical and intellectual treasures which he had

for years been amassing; something that should at once exemplify his

enlarged ideas of art, and give room and shape to his fresh stores of

knowledge and sentiment. As he studied the history of Wallenstein, and

viewed its capabilities on every side, new ideas gathered round it:

the subject grew in magnitude, and often changed in form. His progress

in actual composition was, of course, irregular and small. Yet the

difficulties of the subject, increasing with his own wider, more

ambitious conceptions, did not abate his diligence: _Wallenstein_,

with many interruptions and many alterations, sometimes stationary,

sometimes retrograde, continued on the whole, though slowly, to

advance.

This was for several years his chosen occupation, the task to which he

consecrated his brightest hours, and the finest part of his faculties.

For humbler employments, demanding rather industry than inspiration,

there still remained abundant leisure, of which it was inconsistent

with his habits to waste a single hour. His occasional labours,

accordingly, were numerous, varied, and sometimes of considerable

extent. In the end of 1792, a new object seemed to call for his

attention; he once about this time seriously meditated mingling in

politics. The French Revolution had from the first affected him with

no ordinary hopes; which, however, the course of events, particularly

the imprisonment of Louis, were now fast converting into fears. For

the ill-fated monarch, and the cause of freedom, which seemed

threatened with disgrace in the treatment he was likely to receive,

Schiller felt so deeply interested, that he had determined, in his

case a determination not without its risks, to address an appeal on

these subjects to the French people and the world at large. The voice

of reason advocating liberty as well as order might still, he

conceived, make a salutary impression in this period of terror and

delusion; the voice of a distinguished man would at first sound like

the voice of the nation, which he seemed to represent. Schiller was

inquiring for a proper French translator, and revolving in his mind

the various arguments that might be used, and the comparative

propriety of using or forbearing to use them; but the progress of

things superseded the necessity of such deliberation. In a few months,

Louis perished on the scaffold; the Bourbon family were murdered, or

scattered over Europe; and the French government was changed into a

frightful chaos, amid the tumultuous and bloody horrors of which, calm

truth had no longer a chance to be heard. Schiller turned away from

these repulsive and appalling scenes, into other regions where his

heart was more familiar, and his powers more likely to produce effect.

The French Revolution had distressed and shocked him; but it did not

lessen his attachment to liberty, the name of which had been so

desecrated in its wild convulsions. Perhaps in his subsequent writings

we can trace a more respectful feeling towards old establishments;

more reverence for the majesty of Custom; and with an equal zeal, a

weaker faith in human perfectibility: changes indeed which are the

common fruit of years themselves, in whatever age or climate of the

world our experience may be gathered.

Among the number of fluctuating engagements, one, which for ten years

had been constant with him, was the editing of the _Thalia_. The

principles and performances of that work he had long looked upon as

insufficient: in particular, ever since his settlement at Jena, it had

been among his favourite projects to exchange it for some other,

conducted on a more liberal scheme, uniting more ability in its

support, and embracing a much wider compass of literary interests.

Many of the most distinguished persons in Germany had agreed to assist

him in executing such a plan; Goethe, himself a host, undertook to go

hand in hand with him. The _Thalia_ was in consequence relinquished at

the end of 1793: and the first number of the _Horen_ came out early in

the following year. This publication was enriched with many valuable

pieces on points of philosophy and criticism; some of Schiller's

finest essays first appeared here: even without the foreign aids which

had been promised him, it already bade fair to outdo, as he had meant

it should, every previous work of that description.

The _Musen-Almanach_, of which he likewise undertook the

superintendence, did not aim so high: like other works of the same

title, which are numerous in Germany, it was intended for preserving

and annually delivering to the world, a series of short poetical

effusions, or other fugitive compositions, collected from various

quarters, and often having no connexion but their juxtaposition. In

this work, as well as in the _Horen_, some of Schiller's finest

smaller poems made their first appearance; many of these pieces being

written about this period, especially the greater part of his ballads,

the idea of attempting which took its rise in a friendly rivalry with

Goethe. But the most noted composition sent forth in the pages of the

_Musen-Almanach_, was the _Xenien_;[30] a collection of epigrams which

originated partly, as it seems, in the mean or irritating conduct of

various contemporary authors. In spite of the most flattering

promises, and of its own intrinsic character, the _Horen_, at its

first appearance, instead of being hailed with welcome by the leading

minds of the country, for whom it was intended as a rallying point,

met in many quarters with no sentiment but coldness or hostility. The

controversies of the day had sown discord among literary men; Schiller

and Goethe, associating together, had provoked ill-will from a host of

persons, who felt the justice of such mutual preference, but liked not

the inferences to be drawn from it; and eyed this intellectual

duumvirate, however meek in the discharge of its functions and the

wearing of its honours, with jealousy and discontent.

[Footnote 30: So called from [Greek: xenion], _munus

hospitale_; a title borrowed from Martial, who has thus

designated a series of personal epigrams in his Thirteenth

Book.]

The cavilling of these people, awkwardly contrasted with their

personal absurdity and insipidity, at length provoked the serious

notice of the two illustrious associates: the result was this German

Dunciad; a production of which the plan was, that it should comprise

an immense multitude of detached couplets, each conveying a complete

thought within itself, and furnished by one of the joint operators.

The subjects were of unlimited variety; 'the most,' as Schiller says,

'were wild satire, glancing at writers and writings, intermixed with

here and there a flash of poetical or philosophic thought.' It was at

first intended to provide about a thousand of these pointed

monodistichs; unity in such a work appearing to consist in a certain

boundlessness of size, which should hide the heterogeneous nature of

the individual parts: the whole were then to be arranged and

elaborated, till they had acquired the proper degree of consistency

and symmetry; each sacrificing something of its own peculiar spirit to

preserve the spirit of the rest. This number never was completed: and,

Goethe being now busy with his _Wilhelm Meister_, the project of

completing it was at length renounced; and the _Xenien_ were published

as unconnected particles, not pretending to constitute a whole. Enough

appeared to create unbounded commotion among the parties implicated:

the _Xenien_ were exclaimed against, abused, and replied to, on all

hands; but as they declared war not on persons but on actions; not

against Gleim, Nicolai, Manso, but against bad taste, dulness, and

affectation, nothing criminal could be sufficiently made out against

them.[31] The _Musen-Almanach_, where they appeared in 1797, continued

to be published till the time of Schiller's leaving Jena: the _Horen_

ceased some months before.

[Footnote 31: This is but a lame account of the far-famed

_Xenien_ and their results. See more of the matter in Franz

Horn's _Poesie und Beredtsamkeit_; in Carlyle's

_Miscellanies_ (i. 67); &c. (_Note of 1845._)]

The cooeperation of Goethe, which Schiller had obtained so readily in

these pursuits, was of singular use to him in many others. Both

possessing minds of the first order, yet constructed and trained in

the most opposite modes, each had much that was valuable to learn of

the other, and suggest to him. Cultivating different kinds of

excellence, they could joyfully admit each other's merit; connected by

mutual services, and now by community of literary interests, few

unkindly feelings could have place between them. For a man of high

equalities, it is rare to find a meet companion; painful and injurious

to want one. Solitude exasperates or deadens the heart, perverts or

enervates the faculties; association with inferiors leads to dogmatism

in thought, and self-will even in affections. Rousseau never should

have lived in the Val de Montmorenci; it had been good for Warburton

that Hurd had not existed; for Johnson never to have known Boswell or

Davies. From such evils Schiller and Goethe were delivered; their

intimacy seems to have been equal, frank and cordial; from the

contrasts and the endowments of their minds, it must have had peculiar

charms. In his critical theories, Schiller had derived much profit

from communicating with an intellect as excursive as his own, but far

cooler and more sceptical: as he lopped off from his creed the

excrescences of Kantism, Goethe and he, on comparing their ideas,

often found in them a striking similarity; more striking and more

gratifying, when it was considered from what diverse premises these

harmonious conclusions had been drawn. On such subjects they often

corresponded when absent, and conversed when together. They were in

the habit of paying long visits to each other's houses; frequently

they used to travel in company between Jena and Weimar. 'At Triesnitz,

a couple of English miles from Jena, Goethe and he,' we are told,

'might sometimes be observed sitting at table, beneath the shade of a

spreading tree; talking, and looking at the current of passengers.'--There

are some who would have 'travelled fifty miles on foot' to join the

party!

Besides this intercourse with Goethe, he was happy in a kindly

connexion with many other estimable men, both in literary and in

active life. Dalberg, at a distance, was to the last his friend and

warmest admirer. At Jena, he had Schuetz, Paul, Hufland, Reinhold.

Wilhelm von Humboldt, also, brother of the celebrated traveller, had

come thither about this time, and was now among his closest

associates. At Weimar, excluding less important persons, there were

still Herder and Wieland, to divide his attention with Goethe. And

what to his affectionate heart must have been the most grateful

circumstance of all, his aged parents were yet living to participate

in the splendid fortune of the son whom they had once lamented and

despaired of, but never ceased to love. In 1793 he paid them a visit

in Swabia, and passed nine cheerful months among the scenes dearest to

his recollection: enjoying the kindness of those unalterable friends

whom Nature had given him; and the admiring deference of those by whom

it was most delightful to be honoured,--those who had known him in

adverse and humbler circumstances, whether they might have respected

or contemned him. By the Grand Duke, his ancient censor and patron,

he was not interfered with; that prince, in answer to a previous

application on the subject, having indirectly engaged to take no

notice of this journey. The Grand Duke had already interfered too much

with him, and bitterly repented of his interference. Next year he

died; an event which Schiller, who had long forgotten past

ill-treatment, did not learn without true sorrow, and grateful

recollections of bygone kindness. The new sovereign, anxious to repair

the injustice of his predecessor, almost instantly made offer of a

vacant Tuebingen professorship to Schiller; a proposal flattering to

the latter, but which, by the persuasion of the Duke of Weimar, he

respectfully declined.

Amid labours and amusements so multiplied, amid such variety of

intellectual exertion and of intercourse with men, Schiller, it was

clear, had not suffered the encroachments of bodily disease to

undermine the vigour of his mental or moral powers. No period of his

life displayed in stronger colours the lofty and determined zeal of

his character. He had already written much; his fame stood upon a firm

basis; domestic wants no longer called upon him for incessant effort;

and his frame was pining under the slow canker of an incurable malady.

Yet he never loitered, never rested; his fervid spirit, which had

vanquished opposition and oppression in his youth; which had struggled

against harassing uncertainties, and passed unsullied through many

temptations, in his earlier manhood, did not now yield to this last

and most fatal enemy. The present was the busiest, most productive

season of his literary life; and with all its drawbacks, it was

probably the happiest. Violent attacks from his disorder were of rare

occurrence; and its constant influence, the dark vapours with which it

would have overshadowed the faculties of his head and heart, were

repelled by diligence and a courageous exertion of his will. In other

points, he had little to complain of, and much to rejoice in. He was

happy in his family, the chosen scene of his sweetest, most lasting

satisfaction; by the world he was honoured and admired; his wants were

provided for; he had tasks which inspired and occupied him; friends

who loved him, and whom he loved. Schiller had much to enjoy, and most

of it he owed to himself.

In his mode of life at Jena, simplicity and uniformity were the most

conspicuous qualities; the single excess which he admitted being that

of zeal in the pursuits of literature, the sin which all his life had

most easily beset him. His health had suffered much, and principally,

it was thought, from the practice of composing by night: yet the

charms of this practice were still too great for his self-denial; and,

except in severe fits of sickness, he could not discontinue it. The

highest, proudest pleasure of his mind was that glow of intellectual

production, that 'fine frenzy,' which makes the poet, while it lasts,

a new and nobler creature; exalting him into brighter regions, adorned

by visions of magnificence and beauty, and delighting all his

faculties by the intense consciousness of their exerted power. To

enjoy this pleasure in perfection, the solitary stillness of night,

diffusing its solemn influence over thought as well as earth and air,

had at length in Schiller's case grown indispensable. For this

purpose, accordingly, he was accustomed, in the present, as in former

periods, to invert the common order of things: by day he read,

refreshed himself with the aspect of nature, conversed or corresponded

with his friends; but he wrote and studied in the night. And as his

bodily feelings were too often those of languor and exhaustion, he

adopted, in impatience of such mean impediments, the pernicious

expedient of stimulants, which yield a momentary strength, only to

waste our remaining fund of it more speedily and surely.

'During summer, his place of study was in a garden, which at length he

purchased, in the suburbs of Jena, not far from the Weselhoefts' house,

where at that time was the office of the _Allgemeine Litteratur-Zeitung_.

Reckoning from the market-place of Jena, it lies on the south-west

border of the town, between the Engelgatter and the Neuthor, in a

hollow defile, through which a part of the Leutrabach flows round the

city. On the top of the acclivity, from which there is a beautiful

prospect into the valley of the Saal, and the fir mountains of the

neighbouring forest, Schiller built himself a small house, with a

single chamber.[32] It was his favourite abode during hours of

composition; a great part of the works he then wrote were written

here. In winter he likewise dwelt apart from the noise of men; in the

Griesbachs' house, on the outside of the city-trench. * * * On sitting

down to his desk at night, he was wont to keep some strong coffee, or

wine-chocolate, but more frequently a flask of old Rhenish, or

Champagne, standing by him, that he might from time to time repair the

exhaustion of nature. Often the neighbours used to hear him earnestly

declaiming, in the silence of the night: and whoever had an

opportunity of watching him on such occasions, a thing very easy to be

done from the heights lying opposite his little garden-house, on the

other side of the dell, might see him now speaking aloud and walking

swiftly to and fro in his chamber, then suddenly throwing himself down

into his chair and writing; and drinking the while, sometimes more

than once, from the glass standing near him. In winter he was to be

found at his desk till four, or even five o'clock in the morning; in

summer, till towards three. He then went to bed, from which he seldom

rose till nine or ten.'[33]

[Footnote 32: 'The street leading from Schiller's

dwelling-house to this, was by some wags named the

_Xenien-gasse_; a name not yet entirely disused.']

[Footnote 33: Doering, pp. 118-131.]

Had prudence been the dominant quality in Schiller's character, this

practice would undoubtedly have been abandoned, or rather never taken

up. It was an error so to waste his strength; but one of those which

increase rather than diminish our respect; originating, as it did, in

generous ardour for what was best and grandest, they must be cold

censurers that can condemn it harshly. For ourselves, we but lament

and honour this excess of zeal; its effects were mournful, but its

origin was noble. Who can picture Schiller's feelings in this

solitude, without participating in some faint reflection of their

grandeur! The toil-worn but devoted soul, alone, under the silent

starry canopy of Night, offering up the troubled moments of existence

on the altar of Eternity! For here the splendour that gleamed across

the spirit of a mortal, transient as one of us, was made to be

perpetual; these images and thoughts were to pass into other ages and

distant lands; to glow in human hearts, when the heart that conceived

them had long been mouldered into common dust. To the lovers of

genius, this little garden-house might have been a place to visit as a

chosen shrine; nor will they learn without regret that the walls of

it, yielding to the hand of time, have already crumbled into ruin, and

are now no longer to be traced. The piece of ground that it stood on

is itself hallowed with a glory that is bright, pure and abiding; but

the literary pilgrim could not have surveyed, without peculiar

emotion, the simple chamber, in which Schiller wrote the _Reich der

Schatten_, the _Spaziergang_, the _Ideal_, and the immortal scenes of

_Wallenstein_.

The last-named work had cost him many an anxious, given him many a

pleasant, hour. For seven years it had continued in a state of

irregular, and oft-suspended progress; sometimes 'lying endless and

formless' before him; sometimes on the point of being given up

altogether. The multitude of ideas, which he wished to incorporate in

the structure of the piece, retarded him; and the difficulty of

contenting his taste, respecting the manner of effecting this,

retarded him still more. In _Wallenstein_ he wished to embody the more

enlarged notions which experience had given him of men, especially

which history had given him of generals and statesmen; and while

putting such characters in action, to represent whatever was, or could

be made, poetical, in the stormy period of the Thirty-Years War. As he

meditated on the subject, it continued to expand; in his fancy, it

assumed successively a thousand forms; and after all due strictness of

selection, such was still the extent of materials remaining on his

hands, that he found it necessary to divide the play into three parts,

distinct in their arrangements, but in truth forming a continuous

drama of eleven acts. In this shape it was sent forth to the world, in

1799; a work of labour and persevering anxiety, but of anxiety and

labour, as it then appeared, which had not been bestowed in vain.

_Wallenstein_ is by far the best performance he had yet produced; it

merits a long chapter of criticism by itself; and a few hurried pages

are all that we can spend on it.

As a porch to the great edifice stands Part first, entitled

_Wallenstein's Camp_, a piece in one act. It paints, with much humour

and graphical felicity, the manners of that rude tumultuous host which

Wallenstein presided over, and had made the engine of his ambitious

schemes. Schiller's early experience of a military life seems now to

have stood him in good stead; his soldiers are delineated with the

distinctness of actual observation; in rugged sharpness of feature,

they sometimes remind us of Smollett's seamen. Here are all the wild

lawless spirits of Europe assembled within the circuit of a single

trench. Violent, tempestuous, unstable is the life they lead.

Ishmaelites, their hands against every man, and every man's hand

against them; the instruments of rapine; tarnished with almost every

vice, and knowing scarcely any virtue but those of reckless bravery

and uncalculating obedience to their leader, their situation still

presents some aspects which affect or amuse us; and these the poet has

seized with his accustomed skill. Much of the cruelty and repulsive

harshness of these soldiers, we are taught to forget in contemplating

their forlorn houseless wanderings, and the practical magnanimity,

with which even they contrive to wring from Fortune a tolerable

scantling of enjoyment. Their manner of existence Wallenstein has, at

an after period of the action, rather movingly expressed:

'Our life was but a battle and a march,

And, like the wind's blast, never-resting, homeless,

We storm'd across the war-convulsed Earth.'

Still farther to soften the asperities of the scene, the dialogue is

cast into a rude Hudibrastic metre, full of forced rhymes, and strange

double-endings, with a rhythm ever changing, ever rough and lively,

which might almost be compared to the hard, irregular, fluctuating

sound of the regimental drum. In this ludicrous doggrel, with phrases

and figures of a correspondent cast, homely, ridiculous, graphic,

these men of service paint their hopes and doings. There are ranks and

kinds among them; representatives of all the constituent parts of the

motley multitude, which followed this prince of _Condottieri_. The

solemn pedantry of the ancient Wachtmeister is faithfully given; no

less so are the jocund ferocity and heedless daring of Holky's

Jaegers, or the iron courage and stern camp-philosophy of Pappenheim's

Cuirassiers. Of the Jaeger the sole principle is military obedience; he

does not reflect or calculate; his business is to do whatever he is

ordered, and to enjoy whatever he can reach. 'Free wished I to live,'

he says,

'Free wished I to live, and easy and gay,

And see something new on each new day;

In the joys of the moment lustily sharing,

'Bout the past or the future not thinking or caring:

To the Kaiser, therefore, I sold my bacon,

And by him good charge of the whole is taken.

Order me on 'mid the whistling fiery shot,

Over the Rhine-stream rapid and roaring wide,

A third of the troop must go to pot,--

Without loss of time, I mount and ride;

But farther, I beg very much, do you see,

That in all things else you would leave me free.'

The Pappenheimer is an older man, more sedate and more indomitable; he

has wandered over Europe, and gathered settled maxims of soldierly

principle and soldierly privilege: he is not without a _rationale_ of

life; the various professions of men have passed in review before him,

but no coat that he has seen has pleased him like his own 'steel

doublet,' cased in which, it is his wish,

'Looking down on the world's poor restless scramble,

Careless, through it, astride of his nag to ramble.'

Yet at times with this military stoicism there is blended a dash of

homely pathos; he admits,

'This sword of ours is no plough or spade,

You cannot delve or reap with the iron blade;

For us there falls no seed, no corn-field grows,

Neither home nor kindred the soldier knows:

Wandering over the face of the earth,

Warming his hands at another's hearth:

From the pomp of towns he must onward roam;

In the village-green with its cheerful game,

In the mirth of the vintage or harvest-home,

No part or lot can the soldier claim.

Tell me then, in the place of goods or pelf,

What has he unless to honour himself?

Leave not even _this_ his own, what wonder

The man should burn and kill and plunder?

But the camp of Wallenstein is fall of bustle as well as speculation;

there are gamblers, peasants, sutlers, soldiers, recruits, capuchin

friars, moving to and fro in restless pursuit of their several

purposes. The sermon of the Capuchin is an unparalleled

composition;[34] a medley of texts, puns, nicknames, and verbal logic,

conglutinated by a stupid judgment, and a fiery catholic zeal. It

seems to be delivered with great unction, and to find fit audience in

the camp: towards the conclusion they rush upon him, and he narrowly

escapes killing or ducking, for having ventured to glance a censure at

the General. The soldiers themselves are jeering, wrangling, jostling;

discussing their wishes and expectations; and, at last, they combine

in a profound deliberation on the state of their affairs. A vague

exaggerated outline of the coming events and personages is imaged to

us in their coarse conceptions. We dimly discover the precarious

position of Wallenstein; the plots which threaten him, which he is

meditating: we trace the leading qualities of the principal officers;

and form a high estimate of the potent spirit which, binds this fierce

discordant mass together, and seems to be the object of universal

reverence where nothing else is revered.

[Footnote 34: Said to be by Goethe; the materials faithfully

extracted from a real sermon (by the Jesuit Santa Clara) of

the period it refers to.--There were various Jesuits Santa

Clara, of that period: this is the _German_ one, Abraham by

name; specimens of whose Sermons, a fervent kind of

preaching-run-mad, have been reprinted in late years, for

dilettante purposes, (_Note of 1845._)]

In the _Two Piccolomini_, the next division of the work, the generals

for whom we have thus been prepared appear in person on the scene, and

spread out before us their plots and counterplots; Wallenstein,

through personal ambition and evil counsel, slowly resolving to

revolt; and Octavio Piccolomini, in secret, undermining his influence

among the leaders, and preparing for him that pit of ruin, into which,

in the third Part, _Wallenstein's Death_, we see him sink with all his

fortunes. The military spirit which pervades the former piece is here

well sustained. The ruling motives of these captains and colonels are

a little more refined, or more disguised, than those of the

Cuirassiers and Jaegers; but they are the same in substance; the love

of present or future pleasure, of action, reputation, money, power;

selfishness, but selfishness distinguished by a superficial external

propriety, and gilded over with the splendour of military honour, of

courage inflexible, yet light, cool and unassuming. These are not

imaginary heroes, but genuine hired men of war: we do not love them;

yet there is a pomp about their operations, which agreeably fills up

the scene. This din of war, this clash of tumultuous conflicting

interests, is felt as a suitable accompaniment to the affecting or

commanding movements of the chief characters whom it envelops or

obeys.

Of the individuals that figure in this world of war, Wallenstein

himself, the strong Atlas which supports it all, is by far the most

imposing. Wallenstein is the model of a high-souled, great,

accomplished man, whose ruling passion is ambition. He is daring to

the utmost pitch of manhood; he is enthusiastic and vehement; but the

fire of his soul burns hid beneath a deep stratum of prudence, guiding

itself by calculations which extend to the extreme limits of his most

minute concerns. This prudence, sometimes almost bordering on

irresolution, forms the outward rind of his character, and for a while

is the only quality which we discover in it. The immense influence

which his genius appears to exert on every individual of his many

followers, prepares us to expect a great man; and, when Wallenstein,

after long delay and much forewarning, is in fine presented to us, we

at first experience something like a disappointment. We find him,

indeed, possessed of a staid grandeur; yet involved in mystery;

wavering between two opinions; and, as it seems, with all his wisdom,

blindly credulous in matters of the highest import. It is only when

events have forced decision on him, that he rises in his native might,

that his giant spirit stands unfolded in its strength before us;

'Night must it be, ere Friedland's star will beam:'

amid difficulties, darkness and impending ruin, at which the boldest

of his followers grow pale, he himself is calm, and first in this

awful crisis feels the serenity and conscious strength of his soul

return. Wallenstein, in fact, though preeminent in power, both

external and internal, of high intellect and commanding will, skilled

in war and statesmanship beyond the best in Europe, the idol of sixty

thousand fearless hearts, is not yet removed above our sympathy. We

are united with him by feelings, which he reckons weak, though they

belong to the most generous parts of his nature. His indecision partly

takes its rise in the sensibilities of his heart, as well as in the

caution of his judgment: his belief in astrology, which gives force

and confirmation to this tendency, originates in some soft kindly

emotions, and adds a new interest to the spirit of the warrior; it

humbles him, to whom the earth is subject, before those mysterious

Powers which weigh the destinies of man in their balance, in whose

eyes the greatest and the least of mortals scarcely differ in

littleness. Wallenstein's confidence in the friendship of Octavio, his

disinterested love for Max Piccolomini, his paternal and brotherly

kindness, are feelings which cast an affecting lustre over the

harsher, more heroic qualities wherewith they are combined. His

treason to the Emperor is a crime, for which, provoked and tempted as

he was, we do not greatly blame him; it is forgotten in our admiration

of his nobleness, or recollected only as a venial trespass. Schiller

has succeeded well with Wallenstein, where it was not easy to succeed.

The truth of history has been but little violated; yet we are

compelled to feel that Wallenstein, whose actions individually are

trifling, unsuccessful, and unlawful, is a strong, sublime, commanding

character; we look at him with interest, our concern at his fate is

tinged with a shade of kindly pity.

In Octavio Piccolomini, his war-companion, we can find less fault, yet

we take less pleasure. Octavio's qualities are chiefly negative: he

rather walks by the letter of the moral law, than by its spirit; his

conduct is externally correct, but there is no touch of generosity

within. He is more of the courtier than of the soldier: his weapon is

intrigue, not force. Believing firmly that 'whatever is, is best,' he

distrusts all new and extraordinary things; he has no faith in human

nature, and seems to be virtuous himself more by calculation than by

impulse. We scarcely thank him for his loyalty; serving his Emperor,

he ruins and betrays his friend: and, besides, though he does not own

it, personal ambition is among his leading motives; he wishes to be

general and prince, and Wallenstein is not only a traitor to his

sovereign, but a bar to this advancement. It is true, Octavio does not

personally tempt him towards his destruction; but neither does he

warn him from it; and perhaps he knew that fresh temptation was

superfluous. Wallenstein did not deserve such treatment from a man

whom he had trusted as a brother, even though such confidence was

blind, and guided by visions and starry omens. Octavio is a skilful,

prudent, managing statesman; of the kind praised loudly, if not

sincerely, by their friends, and detested deeply by their enemies. His

object may be lawful or even laudable; but his ways are crooked; we

dislike him but the more that we know not positively how to blame him.

Octavio Piccolomini and Wallenstein are, as it were, the two opposing

forces by which this whole universe of military politics is kept in

motion. The struggle of magnanimity and strength combined with

treason, against cunning and apparent virtue, aided by law, gives rise

to a series of great actions, which are here vividly presented to our

view. We mingle in the clashing interests of these men of war; we see

them at their gorgeous festivals and stormy consultations, and

participate in the hopes or fears that agitate them. The subject had

many capabilities; and Schiller has turned them all to profit. Our

minds are kept alert by a constant succession of animating scenes of

spectacle, dialogue, incident: the plot thickens and darkens as we

advance; the interest deepens and deepens to the very end.

But among the tumults of this busy multitude, there are two forms of

celestial beauty that solicit our attention, and whose destiny,

involved with that of those around them, gives it an importance in our

eyes which it could not otherwise have had. Max Piccolomini, Octavio's

son, and Thekla, the daughter of Wallenstein, diffuse an ethereal

radiance over all this tragedy; they call forth the finest feelings of

the heart, where other feelings had already been aroused; they

superadd to the stirring pomp of scenes, which had already kindled

our imaginations, the enthusiasm of bright unworn humanity, 'the bloom

of young desire, the purple light of love.' The history of Max and

Thekla is not a rare one in poetry; but Schiller has treated it with a

skill which is extremely rare. Both of them are represented as

combining every excellence; their affection is instantaneous and

unbounded; yet the coolest, most sceptical reader is forced to admire

them, and believe in them.

Of Max we are taught from the first to form the highest expectations:

the common soldiers and their captains speak of him as of a perfect

hero; the Cuirassiers had, at Pappenheim's death, on the field of

Luetzen, appointed him their colonel by unanimous election. His

appearance answers these ideas: Max is the very spirit of honour, and

integrity, and young ardour, personified. Though but passing into

maturer age, he has already seen and suffered much; but the experience

of the man has not yet deadened or dulled the enthusiasm of the boy.

He has lived, since his very childhood, constantly amid the clang of

war, and with few ideas but those of camps; yet here, by a native

instinct, his heart has attracted to it all that was noble and

graceful in the trade of arms, rejecting all that was repulsive or

ferocious. He loves Wallenstein his patron, his gallant and majestic

leader: he loves his present way of life, because it is one of peril

and excitement, because he knows no other, but chiefly because his

young unsullied spirit can shed a resplendent beauty over even the

wastest region in the destiny of man. Yet though a soldier, and the

bravest of soldiers, he is not this alone. He feels that there are

fairer scenes in life, which these scenes of havoc and distress but

deform or destroy; his first acquaintance with the Princess Thekla

unveils to him another world, which till then he had not dreamed of; a

land of peace and serene elysian felicity, the charms of which he

paints with simple and unrivalled eloquence. Max is not more daring

than affectionate; he is merciful and gentle, though his training has

been under tents; modest and altogether unpretending, though young and

universally admired. We conceive his aspect to be thoughtful but

fervid, dauntless but mild: he is the very poetry of war, the essence

of a youthful hero. We should have loved him anywhere; but here, amid

barren scenes of strife and danger, he is doubly dear to us.

His first appearance wins our favour; his eloquence in sentiment

prepares us to expect no common magnanimity in action. It is as

follows: _Octavio_ and _Questenberg_ are consulting on affairs of

state; _Max_ enters: he is just returned from convoying the _Princess

Thekla_ and her mother, the daughter and the wife of _Friedland_, to

the camp at Pilsen.

ACT I. SCENE IV.

MAX PICCOLOMINI, OCTAVIO PICCOLOMINI, QUESTENBERG.

MAX. 'Tis he himself! My father, welcome, welcome!

[_He embraces him: on turning round, he observes Questenberg, and

draws coldly back._

Busied, I perceive? I will not interrupt you.

OCT. How now, Max? View this stranger better!

An old friend deserves regard and kindness;

The Kaiser's messenger should be rever'd!

MAX. [_drily_] Von Questenberg! If it is good that brings you

To our head-quarters, welcome!

QUEST. [_has taken his hand_] Nay, draw not

Your hand away, Count Piccolomini!

Not on mine own account alone I grasp it,

And nothing common will I say therewith.

Octavio, Max, Piccolomini! [_Taking both their hands._

Names of benignant solemn import! Never

Can Austria's fortune fail while two such stars,

To guide and guard her, gleam above our hosts.

MAX. You play it wrong, Sir Minister! To praise,

I wot, you come not hither; to blame and censure

You are come. Let me be no exception.

OCT. [_to Max._] He comes from Court, where every one is not

So well contented with the Duke as here.

MAX. And what new fault have they to charge him with?

That he alone decides what he alone

Can understand? Well! Should it not be so?

It should and must! This man was never made

To ply and mould himself like wax to others:

It goes against his heart; he cannot do it,

He has the spirit of a ruler, and

The station of a ruler. Well for us

It is so! Few can rule themselves, can use

Their wisdom wisely: happy for the whole

Where there is one among them that can be

A centre and a hold for many thousands;

That can plant himself like a firm column,

For the whole to lean on safely! Such a one

Is Wallenstein; some other man might better

Serve the Court, none else could serve the Army.

QUEST. The Army, truly!

MAX. And it is a pleasure

To behold how all awakes and strengthens

And revives around him; how men's faculties

Come forth; their gifts grow plainer to themselves!

From each he can elicit his endowment,

His peculiar power; and does it wisely;

Leaving each to be the man he found him,

Watching only that he always be so.

I' th' proper place: and thus he makes the talents

Of all mankind his own.

QUEST. No one denies him

Skill in men, and skill to use them. His fault is

That in the ruler he forgets the servant,

As if he had been born to be commander.

MAX. And is he not? By birth he is invested

With all gifts for it, and with the farther gift

Of finding scope to use them; of acquiring

For the ruler's faculties the ruler's office.

QUEST. So that how far the rest of us have rights

Or influence, if any, lies with Friedland?

MAX. He is no common person; he requires

No common confidence: allow him space;

The proper limit he himself will set.

QUEST. The trial shows it!

MAX. Ay! Thus it is with them!

Still so! All frights them that has any depth;

Nowhere are they at ease but in the shallows.

OCT. [_to Quest._] Let him have his way, my friend! The argument

Will not avail us.

MAX. They invoke the spirit

I' th' hour of need, and shudder when he rises.

The great, the wonderful, must be accomplished

Like a thing of course!--In war, in battle,

A moment is decisive; on the spot

Must be determin'd, in the instant done.

With ev'ry noble quality of nature

The leader must be gifted: let him live, then,

In their noble sphere! The oracle within him,

The living spirit, not dead books, old forms,

Not mould'ring parchments must he take to counsel.

OCT. My Son! despise not these old narrow forms!

They are as barriers, precious walls and fences,

Which oppressed mortals have erected

To mod'rate the rash will of their oppressors.

For the uncontrolled has ever been destructive.

The way of Order, though it lead through windings,

Is the best. Right forward goes the lightning

And the cannon-ball: quick, by the nearest path,

They come, op'ning with murderous crash their way,

To blast and ruin! My Son! the quiet road

Which men frequent, where peace and blessings travel,

Follows the river's course, the valley's bendings;

Modest skirts the cornfield and the vineyard,

Revering property's appointed bounds;

And leading safe though slower to the mark.

QUEST. O, hear your Father! him who is at once

A hero and a man!

OCT. It is the child

O' th' camp that speaks in thee, my Son: a war

Of fifteen years has nursed and taught thee; peace

Thou hast never seen. My Son, there is a worth

Beyond the worth of warriors: ev'n in war itself

The object is not war. The rapid deeds

Of power, th' astounding wonders of the moment--

It is not these that minister to man

Aught useful, aught benignant or enduring.

In haste the wandering soldier comes, and builds

With canvas his light town: here in a moment

Is a rushing concourse; markets open;

Roads and rivers crowd with merchandise

And people; Traffic stirs his hundred arms.

Ere long, some morning, look,--and it is gone!

The tents are struck, the host has marched away;

Dead as a churchyard lies the trampled seed-field,

And wasted is the harvest of the year.

MAX. O Father! that the Kaiser _would_ make peace!

The bloody laurel I would gladly change

For the first violet Spring should offer us,

The tiny pledge that Earth again was young!

OCT. How's this? What is it that affects thee so?

MAX. Peace I have never seen? Yes, I have seen it!

Ev'n now I come from it: my journey led me

Through lands as yet unvisited by war.

O Father! life has charms, of which we know not:

We have but seen the barren coasts of life;

Like some wild roving crew of lawless pirates,

Who, crowded in their narrow noisome ship,

Upon the rude sea, with rude manners dwell;

Naught of the fair land knowing but the bays,

Where they may risk their hurried thievish landing.

Of the loveliness that, in its peaceful dales,

The land conceals--O Father!--O, of this,

In our wild voyage we have seen no glimpse.

OCT. [_gives increased attention_]

And did this journey show thee much of it?

MAX. 'Twas the first holiday of my existence.

Tell me, where's the end of all this labour,

This grinding labour that has stolen my youth,

And left my heart uncheer'd and void, my spirit

Uncultivated as a wilderness?

This camp's unceasing din; the neighing steeds;

The trumpet's clang; the never-changing round

Of service, discipline, parade, give nothing

To the heart, the heart that longs for nourishment.

There is no soul in this insipid bus'ness;

Life has another fate and other joys.

OCT. Much hast thou learn'd, my Son, in this short journey!

MAX. O blessed bright day, when at last the soldier

Shall turn back to life, and be again a man!

Through th' merry lines the colours are unfurl'd,

And homeward beats the thrilling soft peace-march;

All hats and helmets deck'd with leafy sprays,

The last spoil of the fields! The city's gates

Fly up; now needs not the petard to burst them:

The walls are crowded with rejoicing people;

Their shouts ring through the air: from every tower

Blithe bells are pealing forth the merry vesper

Of that bloody day. From town and hamlet

Flow the jocund thousands; with their hearty

Kind impetuosity our march impeding.

The old man, weeping that he sees this day,

Embraces his long-lost son: a stranger

He revisits his old home; with spreading boughs

The tree o'ershadows him at his return,

Which waver'd as a twig when he departed;

And modest blushing comes a maid to meet him,

Whom on her nurse's breast he left. O happy,

For whom some kindly door like this, for whom

Soft arms to clasp him shall be open'd!--

QUEST. [_with emotion_] O that

The times you speak of should be so far distant!

Should not be tomorrow, be today!

MAX. And who's to blame for it but you at Court?

I will deal plainly with you, Questenberg:

When I observ'd you here, a twinge of spleen

And bitterness went through me. It is you

That hinder peace; yes, you. The General

Must force it, and you ever keep tormenting him,

Obstructing all his steps, abusing him;

For what? Because the good of Europe lies

Nearer his heart, than whether certain acres

More or less of dirty land be Austria's!

You call him traitor, rebel, God knows what,

Because he spares the Saxons; as if that

Were not the only way to peace; for how

If during war, war end not, _can_ peace follow?

Go to! go to! As I love goodness, so I hate

This paltry work of yours: and here I vow to God,

For him, this rebel, traitor Wallenstein,

To shed my blood, my heart's blood, drop by drop,

Ere I will see you triumph in his fall!

The Princess Thekla is perhaps still dearer to us. Thekla, just

entering on life, with 'timid steps,' with the brilliant visions of a

cloister yet undisturbed by the contradictions of reality, beholds in

Max, not merely her protector and escort to her father's camp, but the

living emblem of her shapeless yet glowing dreams. She knows not

deception, she trusts and is trusted: their spirits meet and mingle,

and 'clasp each other firmly and forever.' All this is described by

the poet with a quiet inspiration, which finds its way into our

deepest sympathies. Such beautiful simplicity is irresistible. 'How

long,' the Countess Terzky asks,

How long is it since you disclosed your heart?

MAX. This morning first I risked a word of it.

COUN. Not till this morning during twenty days?

MAX. 'Twas at the castle where you met us, 'twixt this

And Nepomuk, the last stage of the journey.

On a balcony she and I were standing, our looks

In silence turn'd upon the vacant landscape;

And before us the dragoons were riding,

Whom the Duke had sent to be her escort.

Heavy on my heart lay thoughts of parting,

And with a faltering voice at last I said:

All this reminds me, Fraeulein, that today

I must be parted from my happiness;

In few hours you will find a father,

Will see yourself encircled by new friends;

And I shall be to you nought but a stranger,

Forgotten in the crowd--"Speak with Aunt Terzky!"

Quick she interrupted me; I noticed

A quiv'ring in her voice; a glowing blush

Spread o'er her cheeks; slow rising from the ground,

Her eyes met mine: I could control myself

No longer--

[_The Princess appears at the door, and stops; the Countess, but not

Piccolomini, observing her._

--I clasp'd her wildly in my arms,

My lips were join'd with hers. Some footsteps stirring

I' th' next room parted us; 'twas you; what then

Took place, you know.

COUN. And can you be so modest,

Or incurious, as not once to ask me

For _my_ secret, in return?

MAX. Your secret?

COUN. Yes, sure! On coming in the moment after,

How my niece receiv'd me, what i' th' instant

Of her first surprise she--

MAX. Ha?

THEKLA [_enters hastily_]. Spare yourself

The trouble, Aunt! That he can learn from me.

* * * * *

We rejoice in the ardent, pure and confiding affection of these two

angelic beings: but our feeling is changed and made more poignant,

when we think that the inexorable hand of Destiny is already lifted to

smite their world with blackness and desolation. Thekla has enjoyed

'two little hours of heavenly beauty;' but her native gaiety gives

place to serious anticipations and alarms; she feels that the camp of

Wallenstein is not a place for hope to dwell in. The instructions and

explanations of her aunt disclose the secret: she is not to love Max;

a higher, it may be a royal, fate awaits her; but she is to tempt him

from his duty, and make him lend his influence to her father, whose

daring projects she now for the first time discovers. From that moment

her hopes of happiness have vanished, never more to return. Yet her

own sorrows touch her less than the ruin which she sees about to

overwhelm her tender and affectionate mother. For herself, she waits

with gloomy patience the stroke that is to crush her. She is meek, and

soft, and maiden-like; but she is Friedland's daughter, and does not

shrink from what is unavoidable. There is often a rectitude, and quick

inflexibility of resolution about Thekla, which contrasts beautifully

with her inexperience and timorous acuteness of feeling: on

discovering her father's treason, she herself decides that Max 'shall

obey his first impulse,' and forsake her.

There are few scenes in poetry more sublimely pathetic than this. We

behold the sinking but still fiery glory of Wallenstein, opposed to

the impetuous despair of Max Piccolomini, torn asunder by the claims

of duty and of love; the calm but broken-hearted Thekla, beside her

broken-hearted mother, and surrounded by the blank faces of

Wallenstein's desponding followers. There is a physical pomp

corresponding to the moral grandeur of the action; the successive

revolt and departure of the troops is heard without the walls of the

Palace; the trumpets of the Pappenheimers reecho the wild feelings of

their leader. What follows too is equally affecting. Max being forced

away by his soldiers from the side of Thekla, rides forth at their

head in a state bordering on frenzy. Next day come tidings of his

fate, which no heart is hard enough to hear unmoved. The effect it

produces upon Thekla displays all the hidden energies of her soul. The

first accidental hearing of the news had almost overwhelmed her; but

she summons up her strength: she sends for the messenger, that she may

question him more closely, and listen to his stern details with the

heroism of a Spartan virgin.

ACT IV. SCENE X.

THEKLA; THE SWEDISH CAPTAIN; FRAeULEIN NEUBRUNN.

CAPT. [_approaches respectfully_]

Princess--I--must pray you to forgive me

My most rash unthinking words: I could not--

THEKLA [_with noble dignity_].

You saw me in my grief; a sad chance made you

At once my confidant, who were a stranger.

CAPT. I fear the sight of me is hateful to you:

They were mournful tidings I brought hither.

THEKLA. The blame was mine! 'Twas I that forced them from you;

Your voice was but the voice of Destiny.

My terror interrupted your recital:

Finish it, I pray you.

CAPT. 'Twill renew your grief!

THEKLA. I am prepared for't, I will be prepared.

Proceed! How went the action? Let me hear.

CAPT. At Neustadt, dreading no surprise, we lay

Slightly entrench'd; when towards night a cloud

Of dust rose from the forest, and our outposts

Rush'd into the camp, and cried: The foe was there!

Scarce had we time to spring on horseback, when

The Pappenheimers, coming at full gallop,

Dash'd o'er the palisado, and next moment

These fierce troopers pass'd our camp-trench also.

But thoughtlessly their courage had impelled them

To advance without support; their infantry

Was far behind; only the Pappenheimers

Boldly following their bold leader--

[_Thekla makes a movement. The Captain pauses for a moment, till she

beckons him to proceed._

On front and flank with all our horse we charged them;

And ere long forc'd them back upon the trench,

Where rank'd in haste our infantry presented

An iron hedge of pikes to stop their passage.

Advance they could not, nor retreat a step,

Wedg'd in this narrow prison, death on all sides.

Then the Rheingraf call'd upon their leader,

In fair battle, fairly to surrender:

But Colonel Piccolomini-- [_Thekla, tottering, catches by a seat._

--We knew him

By's helmet-plume and his long flowing hair,

The rapid ride had loosen'd it: to th' trench

He points; leaps first himself his gallant steed

Clean over it; the troop plunge after him:

But--in a twinkle it was done!--his horse

Run through the body by a partisan,

Rears in its agony, and pitches far

Its rider; and fierce o'er him tramp the steeds

O' th' rest, now heeding neither bit nor bridle.

[_Thekla, who has listened to the last words with increasing anguish,

falls into a violent tremor; she is sinking to the ground; Fraeulein

Neubrunn hastens to her, and receives her in her arms._

NEU. Lady, dearest mistress--

CAPT. [_moved_] Let me begone.

THEKLA. 'Tis past; conclude it.

CAPT. Seeing their leader fall,

A grim inexorable desperation

Seiz'd the troops: their own escape forgotten,

Like wild tigers they attack us; their fury

Provokes our soldiers, and the battle ends not

Till the last man of the Pappenheimers falls.

THEKLA [_with a quivering voice_].

And where--where is--You have not told me all.

CAPT. [_after a pause_]

This morning we interr'd him. He was borne

By twelve youths of the noblest families,

And all our host accompanied the bier.

A laurel deck'd his coffin; and upon it

The Rheingraf laid his own victorious sword.

Nor were tears wanting to his fate: for many

Of us had known his noble-mindedness,

And gentleness of manners; and all hearts

Were mov'd at his sad end. Fain would the Rheingraf

Have sav'd him; but himself prevented it;

'Tis said he wish'd to die.

NEU. [_with emotion, to Thekla, who hides her face_]

O! dearest mistress,

Look up! O, why would you insist on this?

THEKLA. Where is his grave?

CAPT. I' th' chapel of a cloister

At Neustadt is he laid, till we receive

Directions from his father.

THEKLA. What is its name?

CAPT. St. Catharine's.

THEKLA. Is't far from this?

CAPT. Seven leagues.

THEKLA. How goes the way?

CAPT. You come by Tirschenreit

And Falkenberg, and through our farthest outposts.

THEKLA. Who commands them?

CAPT. Colonel Seckendorf.

THEKLA [_steps to a table, and takes a ring from her jewel-box_].

You have seen me in my grief, and shown me

A sympathising heart: accept a small

Memorial of this hour [_giving him the ring_]. Now leave me.

CAPT. [_overpowered_] Princess!

[_Thekla silently makes him a sign to go, and turns from

him. He lingers, and attempts to speak; Neubrunn

repeats the sign; he goes._

SCENE XI.

NEUBRUNN; THEKLA.

THEKLA [_falls on Neubrunn's neck_].

Now, good Neubrunn, is the time to show the love

Which thou hast always vow'd me. Prove thyself

A true friend and attendant! We must go,

This very night.

NEU. Go! This very night! And whither?

THEKLA. Whither? There is but one place in the world,

The place where he lies buried: to his grave.

NEU. Alas, what would you there, my dearest mistress?

THEKLA. What there? Unhappy girl! Thou wouldst not ask

If thou hadst ever lov'd. There, there, is all

That yet remains of him; that one small spot

Is all the earth to me. Do not detain me!

O, come! Prepare, think how we may escape.

NEU. Have you reflected on your father's anger?

THEKLA. I dread no mortal's anger now.

NEU. The mockery

Of the world, the wicked tongue of slander!

THEKLA. I go to seek one that is cold and low:

Am I, then, hast'ning to my lover's arms?

O God! I am but hast'ning to his grave!

NEU. And we alone? Two feeble, helpless women?

THEKLA. We will arm ourselves; my hand shall guard thee.

NEU. In the gloomy night-time?

THEKLA. Night will hide us.

NEU. In this rude storm?

THEKLA. Was _his_ bed made of down,

When the horses' hoofs went o'er him?

NEU. O Heaven!

And then the many Swedish posts! They will not

Let us pass.

THEKLA. Are they not men? Misfortune

Passes free through all the earth.

NEU. So far! So--

THEKLA. Does the pilgrim count the miles, when journeying

To the distant shrine of grace?

NEU. How shall we

Even get out of Eger?

THEKLA. Gold opens gates.

Go! Do go!

NEU. If they should recognise us?

THEKLA. In a fugitive despairing woman

No one will look to meet with Friedland's daughter.

NEU. And where shall we get horses for our flight?

THEKLA. My Equerry will find them. Go and call him.

NEU. Will he venture without his master's knowledge?

THEKLA. He will, I tell thee. Go! O, linger not!

NEU. Ah! And what will your mother do when you

Are vanish'd?

THEKLA [_recollecting this, and gazing with a look of anguish_].

O my mother!

NEU. Your good mother!

She has already had so much to suffer.

Must this last heaviest stroke too fall on her?

THEKLA. I cannot help it. Go, I prithee, go!

NEU. Think well what you are doing.

THEKLA. All is thought

That can be thought, already.

NEU. _Were_ we there,

What would you do?

THEKLA. God will direct me, there.

NEU. Your heart is full of trouble: O my lady!

This way leads _not_ to peace.

THEKLA. To that deep peace

Which he has found. O, hasten! Go! No words!

There is some force, I know not what to call it,

Pulls me irresistibly, and drags me

On to his grave: there I shall find some solace

Instantly; the strangling band of sorrow

Will be loosen'd; tears will flow. O, hasten!

Long time ago we might have been o' th' road.

No rest for me till I have fled these walls:

They fall upon me, some dark power repels me

From them--Ha! What's this? The chamber's filling

With pale gaunt shapes! No room is left for me!

More! more! The crowding spectres press on me,

And push me forth from this accursed house.

NEU. You frighten me, my lady: I dare stay

No longer; quickly I'll call Rosenberg.

SCENE XII.

THEKLA.

It is his spirit calls me! 'Tis the host

Of faithful souls that sacrificed themselves

In fiery vengeance for him. They upbraid me

For this loit'ring: _they_ in death forsook him not,

Who in their life had led them; their rude hearts

Were capable of this: and _I_ can live?

No! No! That laurel-garland which they laid

Upon his bier was twined for both of us!

What is this life without the light of love?

I cast it from me, since its worth is gone.

Yes, when we found and lov'd each other, life

Was something! Glittering lay before me

The golden morn: I had two hours of Heaven.

Thou stoodest at the threshold of the scene

Of busy life; with timid steps I cross'd it:

How fair it lay in solemn shade and sheen!

And thou beside me, like some angel, posted

To lead me out of childhood's fairy land

On to life's glancing summit, hand in hand!

My first thought was of joy no tongue can tell,

My first look on _thy_ spotless spirit fell.

[_She sinks into a reverie, then with signs of horror proceeds._

And Fate put forth his hand: inexorable, cold,

My friend it grasp'd and clutch'd with iron hold,

And--under th' hoofs of their wild horses hurl'd:

Such is the lot of loveliness i' th' world!

Thekla has yet another pang to encounter; the parting with her mother:

but she persists in her determination, and goes forth, to die beside

her lover's grave. The heart-rending emotions, which this amiable

creature has to undergo, are described with an almost painful effect:

the fate of Max and Thekla might draw tears from the eyes of a stoic.

Less tender, but not less sublimely poetical, is the fate of

Wallenstein himself. We do not pity Wallenstein; even in ruin he seems

too great for pity. His daughter having vanished like a fair vision

from the scene, we look forward to Wallenstein's inevitable fate with

little feeling save expectant awe:

This kingly Wallenstein, whene'er he falls,

Will drag a world to ruin down with him;

And as a ship that in the midst of ocean

Catches fire, and shiv'ring springs into the air,

And in a moment scatters between sea and sky

The crew it bore, so will he hurry to destruction

Ev'ry one whose fate was join'd with his.

Yet still there is some touch of pathos in his gloomy fall; some

visitings of nature in the austere grandeur of his slowly-coming, but

inevitable and annihilating doom. The last scene of his life is among

the finest which poetry can boast of. Thekla's death is still unknown

to him; but he thinks of Max, and almost weeps. He looks at the stars:

dim shadows of superstitious dread pass fitfully across his spirit, as

he views these fountains of light, and compares their glorious and

enduring existence with the fleeting troubled life of man. The strong

spirit of his sister is subdued by dark forebodings; omens are against

him; his astrologer entreats, one of the relenting conspirators

entreats, his own feelings call upon him, to watch and beware. But he

refuses to let the resolution of his mind be overmastered; he casts

away these warnings, and goes cheerfully to sleep, with dreams of hope

about his pillow, unconscious that the javelins are already grasped

which will send him to his long and dreamless sleep. The death of

Wallenstein does not cause tears; but it is perhaps the most

high-wrought scene of the play. A shade of horror, of fateful

dreariness, hangs over it, and gives additional effect to the fire of

that brilliant poetry, which glows in every line of it. Except in

_Macbeth_ or the conclusion of _Othello_, we know not where to match

it. Schiller's genius is of a kind much narrower than Shakspeare's;

but in his own peculiar province, the exciting of lofty, earnest,

strong emotion, he admits of no superior. Others are finer, more

piercing, varied, thrilling, in their influence: Schiller, in his

finest mood, is overwhelming.

This tragedy of _Wallenstein_, published at the close of the

eighteenth century, may safely be rated as the greatest dramatic work

of which that century can boast. France never rose into the sphere of

Schiller, even in the days of her Corneille: nor can our own country,

since the times of Elizabeth, name any dramatist to be compared with

him in general strength of mind, and feeling, and acquired

accomplishment. About the time of _Wallenstein's_ appearance, we of

this gifted land were shuddering at _The Castle Spectre_! Germany,

indeed, boasts of Goethe: and on some rare occasions, it must be owned

that Goethe has shown talents of a higher order than are here

manifested; but he has made no equally regular or powerful exertion of

them: _Faust_ is but a careless effusion compared with _Wallenstein_.

The latter is in truth a vast and magnificent work. What an assemblage

of images, ideas, emotions, disposed in the most felicitous and

impressive order! We have conquerors, statesmen, ambitious generals,

marauding soldiers, heroes, and heroines, all acting and feeling as

they would in nature, all faithfully depicted, yet all embellished by

the spirit of poetry, and all made conducive to heighten one paramount

impression, our sympathy with the three chief characters of the

piece.[35]

[Footnote 35: _Wallenstein_ has been translated into French

by M. Benjamin Constant; and the last two parts of it have

been faithfully rendered into English by Mr. Coleridge. As to

the French version, we know nothing, save that it is an

_improved_ one; but that little is enough: Schiller, as a

dramatist, improved by M. Constant, is a spectacle we feel no

wish to witness. Mr. Coleridge's translation is also, as a

whole, unknown to us: but judging from many large specimens,

we should pronounce it, excepting Sotheby's _Oberon_, to be

the best, indeed the only sufferable, translation from the

German with which our literature has yet been enriched.]

Soon after the publication of _Wallenstein_, Schiller once more

changed his abode. The 'mountain air of Jena' was conceived by his

physicians to be prejudicial in disorders of the lungs; and partly in

consequence of this opinion, he determined henceforth to spend his

winters in Weimar. Perhaps a weightier reason in favour of this new

arrangement was the opportunity it gave him of being near the theatre,

a constant attendance on which, now that he had once more become a

dramatist, seemed highly useful for his farther improvement. The

summer he, for several years, continued still to spend in Jena; to

which, especially its beautiful environs, he declared himself

particularly attached. His little garden-house was still his place of

study during summer; till at last he settled constantly at Weimar.

Even then he used frequently to visit Jena; to which there was a fresh

attraction in later years, when Goethe chose it for his residence,

which, we understand, it still occasionally is. With Goethe he often

stayed for months.

This change of place produced little change in Schiller's habits or

employment: he was now as formerly in the pay of the Duke of Weimar;

now as formerly engaged in dramatic composition as the great object of

his life. What the amount of his pension was, we know not: that the

Prince behaved to him in a princely manner, we have proof sufficient.

Four years before, when invited to the University of Tuebingen,

Schiller had received a promise, that, in case of sickness or any

other cause preventing the continuance of his literary labour, his

salary should be doubled. It was actually increased on occasion of the

present removal; and again still farther in 1804, some advantageous

offers being made to him from Berlin. Schiller seems to have been,

what he might have wished to be, neither poor nor rich: his simple

unostentatious economy went on without embarrassment: and this was all

that he required. To avoid pecuniary perplexities was constantly

among his aims: to amass wealth, never. We ought also to add that, in

1802, by the voluntary solicitation of the Duke, he was ennobled; a

fact which we mention, for his sake by whose kindness this honour was

procured; not for the sake of Schiller, who accepted it with

gratitude, but had neither needed nor desired it.

The official services expected of him in return for so much kindness

seem to have been slight, if any. Chiefly or altogether of his own

accord, he appears to have applied himself to a close inspection of

the theatre, and to have shared with Goethe the task of superintending

its concerns. The rehearsals of new pieces commonly took place at the

house of one of these friends; they consulted together on all such

subjects, frankly and copiously. Schiller was not slow to profit by

the means of improvement thus afforded him; in the mechanical details

of his art he grew more skilful: by a constant observation of the

stage, he became more acquainted with its capabilities and its laws.

It was not long till, with his characteristic expansiveness of

enterprise, he set about turning this new knowledge to account. In

conjunction with Goethe, he remodelled his own _Don Carlos_ and his

friend's _Count Egmont_, altering both according to his latest views

of scenic propriety. It was farther intended to treat, in the same

manner, the whole series of leading German plays, and thus to produce

a national stock of dramatic pieces, formed according to the best

rules; a vast project, in which some progress continued to be made,

though other labours often interrupted it. For the present, Schiller

was engaged with his _Maria Stuart_: it appeared in 1800.

This tragedy will not detain us long. It is upon a subject, the

incidents of which are now getting trite, and the moral of which has

little that can peculiarly recommend it. To exhibit the repentance of

a lovely but erring woman, to show us how her soul may be restored to

its primitive nobleness, by sufferings, devotion and death, is the

object of _Maria Stuart_. It is a tragedy of sombre and mournful

feelings; with an air of melancholy and obstruction pervading it; a

looking backward on objects of remorse, around on imprisonment, and

forward on the grave. Its object is undoubtedly attained. We are

forced to pardon and to love the heroine; she is beautiful, and

miserable, and lofty-minded; and her crimes, however dark, have been

expiated by long years of weeping and woe. Considering also that they

were the fruit not of calculation, but of passion acting on a heart

not dead, though blinded for a time, to their enormity, they seem less

hateful than the cold premeditated villany of which she is the victim.

Elizabeth is selfish, heartless, envious; she violates no law, but she

has no virtue, and she lives triumphant: her arid, artificial

character serves by contrast to heighten our sympathy with her

warm-hearted, forlorn, ill-fated rival. These two Queens, particularly

Mary, are well delineated: their respective qualities are vividly

brought out, and the feelings they were meant to excite arise within

us. There is also Mortimer, a fierce, impetuous, impassioned lover;

driven onward chiefly by the heat of his blood, but still interesting

by his vehemence and unbounded daring. The dialogue, moreover, has

many beauties; there are scenes which have merited peculiar

commendation. Of this kind is the interview between the Queens; and

more especially the first entrance of Mary, when, after long

seclusion, she is once more permitted to behold the cheerful sky. In

the joy of a momentary freedom, she forgets that she is still a

captive; she addresses the clouds, the 'sailors of the air, who 'are

not subjects of Elizabeth,' and bids them carry tidings of her to the

hearts that love her in other lands. Without doubt, in all that he

intended, Schiller has succeeded; _Maria Stuart_ is a beautiful

tragedy; it would have formed the glory of a meaner man, but it cannot

materially alter his. Compared with _Wallenstein_, its purpose is

narrow, and its result is common. We have no manners or true

historical delineation. The figure of the English court is not given;

and Elizabeth is depicted more like one of the French Medici, than

like our own politic, capricious, coquettish, imperious, yet on the

whole true-hearted, 'good Queen Bess.' With abundant proofs of genius,

this tragedy produces a comparatively small effect, especially on

English readers. We have already wept enough for Mary Stuart, both

over prose and verse; and the persons likely to be deeply touched with

the moral or the interest of her story, as it is recorded here, are

rather a separate class than men in general. Madame de Stael, we

observe, is her principal admirer.

Next year, Schiller took possession of a province more peculiarly his

own: in 1801, appeared his _Maid of Orleans_ (_Jungfrau von Orleans_);

the first hint of which was suggested to him by a series of documents,

relating to the sentence of Jeanne d'Arc, and its reversal, first

published about this time by De l'Averdy of the _Academie des

Inscriptions_. Schiller had been moved in perusing them: this tragedy

gave voice to his feelings.

Considered as an object of poetry or history, Jeanne d'Arc, the most

singular personage of modern times, presents a character capable of

being viewed under a great variety of aspects, and with a

corresponding variety of emotions. To the English of her own age,

bigoted in their creed, and baffled by her prowess, she appeared

inspired by the Devil, and was naturally burnt as a sorceress. In this

light, too, she is painted in the poems of Shakspeare. To Voltaire,

again, whose trade it was to war with every kind of superstition, this

child of fanatic ardour seemed no better than a moonstruck zealot; and

the people who followed her, and believed in her, something worse than

lunatics. The glory of what she had achieved was forgotten, when the

means of achieving it were recollected; and the Maid of Orleans was

deemed the fit subject of a poem, the wittiest and most profligate for

which literature has to blush. Our illustrious _Don Juan_ hides his

head when contrasted with Voltaire's _Pucelle_: Juan's biographer,

with all his zeal, is but an innocent, and a novice, by the side of

this arch-scorner.

Such a manner of considering the Maid of Orleans is evidently not the

right one. Feelings so deep and earnest as hers can never be an object

of ridicule: whoever pursues a purpose of any sort with such fervid

devotedness, is entitled to awaken emotions, at least of a serious

kind, in the hearts of others. Enthusiasm puts on a different shape in

every different age: always in some degree sublime, often it is

dangerous; its very essence is a tendency to error and exaggeration;

yet it is the fundamental quality of strong souls; the true nobility

of blood, in which all greatness of thought or action has its rise.

_Quicquid vult valde vult_ is ever the first and surest test of mental

capability. This peasant girl, who felt within her such fiery

vehemence of resolution, that she could subdue the minds of kings and

captains to her will, and lead armies on to battle, conquering, till

her country was cleared of its invaders, must evidently have possessed

the elements of a majestic character. Benevolent feelings, sublime

ideas, and above all an overpowering will, are here indubitably

marked. Nor does the form, which her activity assumed, seem less

adapted for displaying these qualities, than many other forms in which

we praise them. The gorgeous inspirations of the Catholic religion are

as real as the phantom of posthumous renown; the love of our native

soil is as laudable as ambition, or the principle of military honour.

Jeanne d'Arc must have been a creature of shadowy yet far-glancing

dreams, of unutterable feelings, of 'thoughts that wandered through

Eternity.' Who can tell the trials and the triumphs, the splendours

and the terrors, of which her simple spirit was the scene! 'Heartless,

sneering, god-forgetting French!' as old Suwarrow called them,--they

are not worthy of this noble maiden. Hers were errors, but errors

which a generous soul alone could have committed, and which generous

souls would have done more than pardon. Her darkness and delusions

were of the understanding only; they but make the radiance of her

heart more touching and apparent; as clouds are gilded by the orient

light into something more beautiful than azure itself.

It is under this aspect that Schiller has contemplated the Maid of

Orleans, and endeavoured to make us contemplate her. For the latter

purpose, it appears that more than one plan had occurred to him. His

first idea was, to represent Joanna, and the times she lived in, as

they actually were: to exhibit the superstition, ferocity, and

wretchedness of the period, in all their aggravation; and to show us

this patriotic and religious enthusiast beautifying the tempestuous

scene by her presence; swaying the fierce passions of her countrymen;

directing their fury against the invaders of France; till at length,

forsaken and condemned to die, she perished at the stake, retaining

the same steadfast and lofty faith, which had ennobled and redeemed

the errors of her life, and was now to glorify the ignominy of her

death. This project, after much deliberation, he relinquished, as too

difficult. By a new mode of management, much of the homeliness and

rude horror, that defaced and encumbered the reality, is thrown away.

The Dauphin is not here a voluptuous weakling, nor is his court the

centre of vice and cruelty and imbecility: the misery of the time is

touched but lightly, and the Maid of Arc herself is invested with a

certain faint degree of mysterious dignity, ultimately represented as

being in truth a preternatural gift; though whether preternatural, and

if so, whether sent from above or from below, neither we nor she,

except by faith, are absolutely sure, till the conclusion.

The propriety of this arrangement is liable to question; indeed, it

has been more than questioned. But external blemishes are lost in the

intrinsic grandeur of the piece: the spirit of Joanna is presented to

us with an exalting and pathetic force sufficient to make us blind to

far greater improprieties. Joanna is a pure creation, of

half-celestial origin, combining the mild charms of female loveliness

with the awful majesty of a prophetess, and a sacrifice doomed to

perish for her country. She resembled, in Schiller's view, the

Iphigenia of the Greeks; and as such, in some respects, he has treated

her.

The woes and desolation of the land have kindled in Joanna's keen and

fervent heart a fire, which the loneliness of her life, and her deep

feelings of religion, have nourished and fanned into a holy flame. She

sits in solitude with her flocks, beside the mountain chapel of the

Virgin, under the ancient Druid oak, a wizard spot, the haunt of evil

spirits as well as of good; and visions are revealed to her such as

human eyes behold not. It seems the force of her own spirit,

expressing its feelings in forms which react upon itself. The

strength of her impulses persuades her that she is called from on high

to deliver her native France; the intensity of her own faith persuades

others; she goes forth on her mission; all bends to the fiery

vehemence of her will; she is inspired because she thinks herself so.

There is something beautiful and moving in the aspect of a noble

enthusiasm, fostered in the secret soul, amid obstructions and

depressions, and at length bursting forth with an overwhelming force

to accomplish its appointed end: the impediments which long hid it are

now become testimonies of its power; the very ignorance, and meanness,

and error, which still in part adhere to it, increase our sympathy

without diminishing our admiration; it seems the triumph, hardly

contested, and not wholly carried, but still the triumph, of Mind over

Fate, of human volition over material necessity.

All this Schiller felt, and has presented with even more than his

usual skill. The secret mechanism of Joanna's mind is concealed from

us in a dim religious obscurity; but its active movements are

distinct; we behold the lofty heroism of her feelings; she affects us

to the very heart. The quiet, devout innocence of her early years,

when she lived silent, shrouded in herself, meek and kindly though not

communing with others, makes us love her: the celestial splendour

which illuminates her after-life adds reverence to our love. Her words

and actions combine an overpowering force with a calm unpretending

dignity: we seem to understand how they must have carried in their

favour the universal conviction. Joanna is the most noble being in

tragedy. We figure her with her slender lovely form, her mild but

spirit-speaking countenance; 'beautiful and terrible;' bearing the

banner of the Virgin before the hosts of her country; travelling in

the strength of a rapt soul; irresistible by faith; 'the lowly

herdsmaid,' greater in the grandeur of her simple spirit than the

kings and queens of this world. Yet her breast is not entirely

insensible to human feeling, nor her faith never liable to waver. When

that inexorable vengeance, which had shut her ear against the voice of

mercy to the enemies of France, is suspended at the sight of Lionel,

and her heart experiences the first touch of mortal affection, a

baleful cloud overspreads the serene of her mind; it seems as if

Heaven had forsaken her, or from the beginning permitted demons or

earthly dreams to deceive her. The agony of her spirit, involved in

endless and horrid labyrinths of doubt, is powerfully portrayed. She

has crowned the king at Rheims; and all is joy, and pomp, and jubilee,

and almost adoration of Joanna: but Joanna's thoughts are not of joy.

The sight of her poor but kind and true-hearted sisters in the crowd,

moves her to the soul. Amid the tumult and magnificence of this royal

pageant, she sinks into a reverie; her small native dale of Arc,

between its quiet hills, rises on her mind's eye, with its

straw-roofed huts, and its clear greensward; where the sun is even

then shining so brightly, and the sky is so blue, and all is so calm

and motherly and safe. She sighs for the peace of that sequestered

home; then shudders to think that she shall never see it more. Accused

of witchcraft, by her own ascetic melancholic father, she utters no

word of denial to the charge; for her heart is dark, it is tarnished

by earthly love, she dare not raise her thoughts to Heaven. Parted

from her sisters; cast out with horror by the people she had lately

saved from despair, she wanders forth, desolate, forlorn, not knowing

whither. Yet she does not sink under this sore trial: as she suffers

from without, and is forsaken of men, her mind grows clear and strong,

her confidence returns. She is now more firmly fixed in our admiration

than before; tenderness is united to our other feelings; and her

faith has been proved by sharp vicissitudes. Her countrymen recognise

their error; Joanna closes her career by a glorious death; we take

farewell of her in a solemn mood of heroic pity.

Joanna is the animating principle of this tragedy; the scenes employed

in developing her character and feelings constitute its great charm.

Yet there are other personages in it, that leave a distinct and

pleasing impression of themselves in our memory. Agnes Sorel, the

soft, languishing, generous mistress of the Dauphin, relieves and

heightens by comparison the sterner beauty of the Maid. Dunois, the

Bastard of Orleans, the lover of Joanna, is a blunt, frank, sagacious

soldier, and well described. And Talbot, the gray veteran, delineates

his dark, unbelieving, indomitable soul, by a few slight but

expressive touches: he sternly passes down to the land, as he thinks,

of utter nothingness, contemptuous even of the fate that destroys him,

and

'On the soil of France he sleeps, as does

A hero on the shield he would not quit.'

A few scattered extracts may in part exhibit some of these inferior

personages to our readers, though they can afford us no impression of

the Maid herself. Joanna's character, like every finished piece of

art, to be judged of must be seen in all its bearings. It is not in

parts, but as a whole, that the delineation moves us; by light and

manifold touches, it works upon our hearts, till they melt before it

into that mild rapture, free alike from the violence and the

impurities of Nature, which it is the highest triumph of the Artist to

communicate.

ACT III. SCENE IV.

[_The_ Dauphin Charles, _with his suite: afterwards_ Joanna. _She is

in armour, but without her helmet; and wears a garland in her hair._

DUNOIS [_steps forward_].

My heart made choice of her while she was lowly;

This new honour raises not her merit

Or my love. Here, in the presence of my King

And of this holy Archbishop, I offer her

My hand and princely rank, if she regard me

As worthy to be hers.

CHARLES. Resistless Maid,

Thou addest miracle to miracle!

Henceforward I believe that nothing is

Impossible to thee. Thou hast subdued

This haughty spirit, that till now defied

Th' omnipotence of Love.

LA HIRE [_steps forward_]. If I mistake not

Joanna's form of mind, what most adorns her

Is her modest heart. The rev'rence of the great

She merits; but her thoughts will never rise

So high. She strives not after giddy splendours:

The true affection of a faithful soul

Contents her, and the still, sequester'd lot

Which with this hand I offer her.

CHARLES. Thou too,

La Hire? Two valiant suitors, equal in

Heroic virtue and renown of war!

--Wilt thou, that hast united my dominions,

Soften'd my opposers, part my firmest friends?

Both may not gain thee, each deserving thee:

Speak, then! Thy heart must here be arbiter.

AGNES SOREL [_approaches_].

Joanna is embarrass'd and surprised;

I see the bashful crimson tinge her cheeks.

Let her have time to ask her heart, to open

Her clos'd bosom in trustful confidence

With me. The moment is arriv'd when I

In sisterly communion also may

Approach the rigorous Maid, and offer her

The solace of my faithful, silent breast.

First let us women sit in secret judgment

On this matter that concerns us; then expect

What we shall have decided.

CHARLES [_about to go_]. Be it so, then!

JOANNA. Not so, Sire! 'Twas not the embarrassment

Of virgin shame that dy'd my cheeks in crimson:

To this lady I have nothing to confide,

Which I need blush to speak of before men.

Much am I honour'd by the preference

Of these two noble Knights; but it was not

To chase vain worldly grandeurs, that I left

The shepherd moors; not in my hair to bind

The bridal garland, that I girt myself

With warlike armour. To far other work

Am I appointed: and the spotless virgin

Alone can do it. I am the soldier

Of the God of Battles; to no living man

Can I be wife.

ARCHBISHOP. As kindly help to man

Was woman born; and in obeying Nature

She best obeys and reverences Heaven.

When the command of God who summon'd thee

To battle is fulfull'd, thou wilt lay down

Thy weapons, and return to that soft sex

Which thou deny'st, which is not call'd to do

The bloody work of war.

JOANNA. Father, as yet

I know not how the Spirit will direct me:

When the needful time comes round, His voice

Will not be silent, and I will obey it.

For the present, I am bid complete the task.

He gave me. My sov'reign's brow is yet uncrown'd,

His head unwetted by the holy oil,

He is not yet a King.

CHARLES. We are journeying

Towards Rheims.

JOANNA. Let us not linger by the way.

Our foes are busy round us, shutting up

Thy passage: I will lead thee through them all.

DUNOIS. And when the work shall be fulfill'd, when we

Have marched in triumph into Rheims,

Will not Joanna then--

JOANNA. If God see meet

That I return with life and vict'ry from

These broils, my task is ended, and the herdsmaid

Has nothing more to do in her King's palace.

CHARLES [_taking her hand_].

It is the Spirit's voice impels thee now,

And Love is mute in thy inspired bosom.

Believe me, it will not be always mute!

Our swords will rest; and Victory will lead

Meek Peace by th' hand, and Joy will come again

To ev'ry breast, and softer feelings waken

In every heart: in thy heart also waken;

And tears of sweetest longing wilt thou weep,

Such as thine eyes have never shed. This heart,

Now fill'd by Heav'n, will softly open

To some terrestrial heart. Thou hast begun

By blessing thousands; but thou wilt conclude

By blessing one.

JOANNA. Dauphin! Art thou weary

Of the heavenly vision, that thou seekest

To deface its chosen vessel, wouldst degrade

To common dust the Maid whom God has sent thee?

Ye blind of heart! O ye of little faith!

Heaven's brightness is about you, before your eyes

Unveils its wonders; and ye see in me

Nought but a woman. Dare a woman, think ye,

Clothe herself in iron harness, and mingle

In the wreck of battle? Woe, woe to me,

If bearing in my hand th' avenging sword

Of God, I bore in my vain heart a love

To earthly man! Woe to me! It were better

That I never had been born. No more,

No more of this! Unless ye would awake the wrath

Of HIM that dwells in me! The eye of man

Desiring me is an abomination

And a horror.

CHARLES. Cease! 'Tis vain to urge her.

JOANNA. Bid the trumpets sound! This loit'ring grieves

And harasses me. Something chases me

From sloth, and drives me forth to do my mission,

Stern beck'ning me to my appointed doom.