Kitabı oku: «The Life of Friedrich Schiller»

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 Würtemberg, 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 Würtemberg, 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 Würtemberg 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."

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 bonæ spei.

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 Würtemberg 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 Götz 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.

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.

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 coöperation 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 Kindesmörderinn (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

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.

'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.'

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

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 Fräulein 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.'

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.

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 Lützen 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.

On the whole, the present work is still the best historical performance which Germany can boast of. Müller'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.

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.

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, Fräulein, 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 reëcho 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; Fräulein 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; Fräulein 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

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 Tübingen, 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 Staël, 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 Académie 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 valdè 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.
 

Scene V.
A Knight [in haste]

 
Charles. How now?
 
 
Knight.The enemy has pass'd the Marne;
Is forming as for battle.
 
 
Joanna [as if inspired]. Arms and battle!
My soul has cast away its bonds! To arms!
Prepare yourselves, while I prepare the rest![She hastens out
 

[Trumpets sound with a piercing tone, and while the scene is changing pass into a wild tumultuous sound of battle.]

Scene VI

[The scene changes to an open space encircled with trees. During the music, soldiers are seen hastily retreating across the background.]

Talbot, leaning upon Fastolf, and accompanied by Soldiers. Soon after, Lionel.

 
Talbot. Here set me down beneath this tree, and you
Betake yourselves again to battle: quick!
I need no help to die.
 
 
Fastolf.O day of woe![Lionel enters.
Look, what a sight awaits you, Lionel!
Our General expiring of his wounds!
 
 
Lionel. Now God forbid! Rise, noble Talbot! This
Is not a time for you to faint and sink.
Yield not to Death; force faltering Nature
By your strength of soul, that life depart not!
 
 
Talbot. In vain! The day of Destiny is come
That prostrates with the dust our power in France.
In vain, in the fierce clash of desp'rate battle,
Have I risk'd our utmost to withstand it:
The bolt has smote and crush'd me, and I lie
To rise no more forever. Rheims is lost;
Make haste to rescue Paris.
 
 
Lionel.Paris has surrender'd
To the Dauphin: an express is just arriv'd
With tidings.
 
 
Talbot [tears away his bandages].
Then flow out, ye life-streams;
I am grown to loathe this Sun.
 
 
Lionel.They want me!
Fastolf, bear him to a place of safety:
We can hold this post few instants longer,
The coward knaves are giving way on all sides,
Irresistible the Witch is pressing on.
 
 
Talbot. Madness, thou conquerest, and I must yield:
Stupidity can baffle the very gods.
High Reason, radiant Daughter of God's Head,
Wise Foundress of the system of the Universe,
Conductress of the stars, who art thou, then,
If, tied to th' tail o' th' wild horse Superstition,
Thou must plunge, eyes open, vainly shrieking,
Sheer down with that drunk Beast to the Abyss?
Cursed who sets his life upon the great
And dignified; and with forecasting spirit
Forms wise projects! The Fool-king rules this world.
 
 
Lionel. O, Death is near you! Think of your Creator!
 
 
Talbot. Had we as brave men been defeated
By brave men, we might have consoled ourselves
With common thoughts of Fortune's fickleness:
But that a sorry farce should be our ruin!—
Did our earnest toilsome struggle merit
No graver end than this?
 
 
Lionel [grasps his hand]. Talbot, farewell!
The meed of bitter tears I'll duly pay you,
When the fight is done, should I outlive it.
Now Fate calls me to the field, where yet
She wav'ring sits, and shakes her doubtful urn.
Farewell! we meet beyond the unseen shore.
Brief parting for long friendship! God be with you![Exit.
 
 
Talbot. Soon it is over, and to th' Earth I render,
To the everlasting Sun, the atoms,
Which for pain and pleasure join'd to form me;
And of the mighty Talbot, whose renown
Once fill'd the world, remains nought but a handful
Of light dust. Thus man comes to his end;
And our one conquest in this fight of life
Is the conviction of life's nothingness,
And deep disdain of all that sorry stuff
We once thought lofty and desirable.
 

Scene VII

Enter Charles; Burgundy; Dunois; Du Chatel; and Soldiers.

 
Burgun. The trench is storm'd.
 
 
Dunois.The victory is ours.
 
 
Charles [observing Talbot].
Ha! who is this that to the light of day
Is bidding his constrained and sad farewell?
His bearing speaks no common man: go, haste,
Assist him, if assistance yet avail.
 

[Soldiers from the Dauphin's suite step forward.

 
Fastolf. Back! Keep away! Approach not the Departing,
Whom in life ye never wish'd too near you.
 
 
Burgun. What do I see? Lord Talbot in his blood!
 

[He goes towards him. Talbot gazes fixedly at him, and dies.

 
Fastolf. Off, Burgundy! With th' aspect of a traitor
Poison not the last look of a hero.
 
 
Dunois. Dreaded Talbot! stern, unconquerable!
Dost thou content thee with a space so narrow,
And the wide domains of France once could not
Stay the striving of thy giant spirit?—
Now for the first time, Sire, I call you King:
The crown but totter'd on your head, so long
As in this body dwelt a soul.
 
 
Charles [after looking at the dead in silence]. It was
A higher hand that conquer'd him, not we.
Here on the soil of France he sleeps, as does
A hero on the shield he would not quit.
Bring him away.[Soldiers lift the corpse, and carry it off.
And peace be with his dust!
A fair memorial shall arise to him
I' th' midst of France: here, where the hero's course
And life were finished, let his bones repose.
Thus far no other foe has e'er advanced.
His epitaph shall be the place he fell on.
 

Scene IX

Another empty space in the field of battle. In the distance are seen the towers of Rheims illuminated by the sun.

A Knight, cased in black armour, with his visor shut. Joanna follows him to the front of the scene, where he stops and awaits her.

 
Joanna. Deceiver! Now I see thy craft. Thou hast,
By seeming flight, enticed me from the battle,
And warded death and destiny from off the head
Of many a Briton. Now they reach thy own.
 
 
Knight. Why dost thou follow me, and track my stops
With murd'rous fury? I am not appointed
To die by thee.
 
 
Joanna.Deep in my lowest soul
I hate thee as the Night, which is thy colour.
To sweep thee from the face of Earth, I feel
Some irresistible desire impelling me.
Who art thou? Lift thy visor: had not I
Seen Talbot fall, I should have named thee Talbot.
 
 
Knight. Speaks not the prophesying Spirit in thee?
 
 
Joanna. It tells me loudly, in my inmost bosom,
That Misfortune is at hand.
 
 
Knight.Joanna d'Arc!
Up to the gates of Rheims hast thou advanced,
Led on by victory. Let the renown
Already gain'd suffice thee! As a slave
Has Fortune serv'd thee: emancipate her,
Ere in wrath she free herself; fidelity
She hates; no one obeys she to the end.
 
 
Joanna. How say'st thou, in the middle of my course,
That I should pause and leave my work unfinish'd?
I will conclude it, and fulfil my vow.
 
 
Knight. Nothing can withstand thee; thou art most strong;
In ev'ry battle thou prevailest. But go
Into no other battle. Hear my warning!
 
 
Joanna. This sword I quit not, till the English yield.
 
 
Knight. Look! Yonder rise the towers of Rheims, the goal
And purpose of thy march; thou seest the dome
Of the cathedral glittering in the sun:
There wouldst thou enter in triumphal pomp,
To crown thy sov'reign and fulfil thy vow.
Enter not there. Turn homewards. Hear my warning!
 
 
Joanna. Who art thou, false, double-tongued betrayer,
That wouldst frighten and perplex me? Dar'st thou
Utter lying oracles to me?
 

[The Black Knight attempts to go; she steps in his way.

 
No!
Thou shalt answer me, or perish by me!
 

[She lifts her arm to strike him.

 
Knight [touches her with his hand: she stands immovable].
Kill what is mortal!
 

[Darkness, lightning and thunder. The Knight sinks.

 
Joanna [stands at first amazed: but soon recovers herself].
It was nothing earthly.
Some delusive form of Hell, some spirit
Of Falsehood, sent from th' everlasting Pool
To tempt and terrify my fervent soul!
Bearing the sword of God, what do I fear?
Victorious will I end my fated course;
Though Hell itself with all its fiends assail me,
My heart and faith shall never faint or fail me.[She is going.
 

Scene X.
Lionel, Joanna

 
Lionel. Accursed Sorceress, prepare for battle:
Not both of us shall leave the place alive.
Thou hast destroyed the chosen of my host;
Brave Talbot has breath'd out his mighty spirit
In my bosom. I will avenge the Dead,
Or share his fate. And wouldst thou know the man
Who brings thee glory, let him die or conquer,
I am Lionel, the last survivor
Of our chiefs; and still unvanquish'd is this arm.
 

[He rushes towards her; after a short contest, she strikes the sword from his hand.

 
Faithless fortune![He struggles with her.
 
 
Joanna [seizes him by the plume from behind, and tears his helmet
violently down, so that his face is exposed: at
the same time she lifts her sword with the right
hand].
 
 
Suffer what thou soughtest!
The Virgin sacrifices thee through me!
 

[At this moment she looks in his face; his aspect touches her; she stands immovable, and then slowly drops her arm.

 
Lionel. Why lingerest thou, and stayest the stroke of death?
My honour thou hast taken, take my life:
'Tis in thy hands to take it; I want not mercy.
 

[She gives him a sign with her hand to depart.

 
Fly from thee? Owe thee my life? Die rather!
 
 
Joanna [her face turned away].
I will not remember that thou owedst
Thy life to me.
 
 
Lionel.I hate thee and thy gift.
I want not mercy. Kill thy enemy,
Who meant to kill thee, who abhors thee!
 
 
Joanna. Kill me, and fly!
 
 
Lionel.Ha! How is this?
 
 
Joanna [hides her face].Woe's me!
 
 
Lionel [approaches her].
Thou killest every Briton, I have heard,
Whom thou subdu'st in battle: why spare me?
 
 
Joanna [lifts her sword with a rapid movement against him,
but quickly lets it sink again, when she observes his
face]. O Holy Virgin!
 
 
Lionel.Wherefore namest thou
The Virgin? She knows nothing of thee; Heaven
Has nought to say to thee.
 
 
Joanna [in violent anguish]. What have I done!
My vow, my vow is broke![Wrings her hands in despair.
 
 
Lionel [looks at her with sympathy, and comes nearer].
Unhappy girl!
I pity thee; thou touchest me; thou showedst
Mercy to me alone. My hate is going:
I am constrain'd to feel for thee. Who art thou?
Whence comest thou?
 
 
Joanna.Away! Begone!
 
 
Lionel.Thy youth,
Thy beauty melt and sadden me; thy look
Goes to my heart: I could wish much to save thee;
Tell me how I may! Come, come with me! Forsake
This horrid business; cast away those arms!
 
 
Joanna. I no more deserve to bear them!
 
 
Lionel.Cast them
Away, then, and come with me!
 
 
Joanna [with horror].Come with thee!
 
 
Lionel. Thou mayst be sav'd: come with me! I will save thee.
But delay not. A strange sorrow for thee
Seizes me, and an unspeakable desire
To save thee.[Seizes her arm.
 
 
Joanna.Ha! Dunois! 'Tis they!
If they should find thee!—
Lionel.Fear not; I will guard thee.
Joanna. I should die, were they to kill thee.
Lionel.Am I
Dear to thee?
Joanna.Saints of Heaven!
 
 
Lionel.Shall I ever
See thee, hear of thee, again?
 
 
Joanna.Never! Never!
 
 
Lionel. This sword for pledge that I will see thee!
 

[He wrests the sword from her.

 
Joanna.Madman!
Thou dar'st?
 
 
Lionel. I yield to force; again I'll see thee.[Exit.
 

The introduction of supernatural agency in this play, and the final aberration from the truth of history, have been considerably censured by the German critics: Schlegel, we recollect, calls Joanna's end a 'rosy death.' In this dramaturgic discussion, the mere reader need take no great interest. To require our belief in apparitions and miracles, things which we cannot now believe, no doubt for a moment disturbs our submission to the poet's illusions: but the miracles in this story are rare and transient, and of small account in the general result: they give our reason little trouble, and perhaps contribute to exalt the heroine in our imaginations. It is still the mere human grandeur of Joanna's spirit that we love and reverence; the lofty devotedness with which she is transported, the generous benevolence, the irresistible determination. The heavenly mandate is but the means of unfolding these qualities, and furnishing them with a proper passport to the minds of her age. To have produced, without the aid of fictions like these, a Joanna so beautified and exalted, would undoubtedly have yielded greater satisfaction: but it may be questioned whether the difficulty would not have increased in a still higher ratio. The sentiments, the characters, are not only accurate, but exquisitely beautiful; the incidents, excepting the very last, are possible, or even probable: what remains is but a very slender evil.

After all objections have been urged, and this among others has certainly a little weight, the Maid of Orleans will remain one of the very finest of modern dramas. Perhaps, among all Schiller's plays, it is the one which evinces most of that quality denominated genius in the strictest meaning of the word. Wallenstein embodies more thought, more knowledge, more conception; but it is only in parts illuminated by that ethereal brightness, which shines over every part of this. The spirit of the romantic ages is here imaged forth; but the whole is exalted, embellished, ennobled. It is what the critics call idealised. The heart must be cold, the imagination dull, which the Jungfrau von Orleans will not move.

In Germany this case did not occur: the reception of the work was beyond example flattering. The leading idea suited the German mind; the execution of it inflamed the hearts and imaginations of the people; they felt proud of their great poet, and delighted to enthusiasm with his poetry. At the first exhibition of the play in Leipzig, Schiller being in the theatre, though not among the audience, this feeling was displayed in a rather singular manner. When the curtain dropped at the end of the first act, there arose on all sides a shout of "Es lebe Friedrich Schiller!" accompanied by the sound of trumpets and other military music: at the conclusion of the piece, the whole assembly left their places, went out, and crowded round the door through which the poet was expected to come; and no sooner did he show himself, than his admiring spectators, uncovering their heads, made an avenue for him to pass; and as he waited along, many, we are told, held up their children, and exclaimed, "That is he!"³⁶

This must have been a proud moment for Schiller; but also an agitating, painful one; and perhaps on the whole, the latter feeling, for the time, prevailed. Such noisy, formal, and tumultuous plaudits were little to his taste: the triumph they confer, though plentiful, is coarse; and Schiller's modest nature made him shun the public gaze, not seek it. He loved men, and did not affect to despise their approbation; but neither did this form his leading motive. To him art, like virtue, was its own reward; he delighted in his tasks for the sake of the fascinating feelings which they yielded him in their performance. Poetry was the chosen gift of his mind, which his pleasure lay in cultivating: in other things he wished not that his habits or enjoyments should be different from those of other men.

At Weimar his present way of life was like his former one at Jena: his business was to study and compose; his recreations were in the circle of his family, where he could abandon himself to affections, grave or trifling, and in frank and cheerful intercourse with a few friends. Of the latter he had lately formed a social club, the meetings of which afforded him a regular and innocent amusement. He still loved solitary walks: in the Park at Weimar he might frequently be seen wandering among the groves and remote avenues, with a note-book in his hand; now loitering slowly along, now standing still, now moving rapidly on; if any one appeared in sight, he would dart into another alley, that his dream might not be broken.³⁷ 'One of his favourite resorts,' we are told, 'was the thickly-overshadowed rocky path which leads to the Römische Haus, a pleasure-house of the Duke's, built under the direction of Goethe. There he would often sit in the gloom of the crags, overgrown with cypresses and boxwood; shady hedges before him; not far from the murmur of a little brook, which there gushes in a smooth slaty channel, and where some verses of Goethe are cut upon a brown plate of stone, and fixed in the rock.' He still continued to study in the night: the morning was spent with his children and his wife, or in pastimes such as we have noticed; in the afternoon he revised what had been last composed, wrote letters, or visited his friends. His evenings were often passed in the theatre; it was the only public place of amusement which he ever visited; nor was it for the purpose of amusement that he visited this: it was his observatory, where he watched the effect of scenes and situations; devised new schemes of art, or corrected old ones. To the players he was kind, friendly: on nights when any of his pieces had been acted successfully or for the first time, he used to invite the leaders of the company to a supper in the Stadthaus, where the time was spent in mirthful diversions, one of which was frequently a recitation, by Genast, of the Capuchin's sermon in Wallenstein's Camp. Except on such rare occasions, he returned home directly from the theatre, to light his midnight lamp, and commence the most earnest of his labours.

The assiduity, with which he struggled for improvement in dramatic composition, had now produced its natural result: the requisitions of his taste no longer hindered the operation of his genius; art had at length become a second nature. A new proof at once of his fertility, and of his solicitude for farther improvement, appeared in 1803. The Braut von Messina was an experiment; an attempt to exhibit a modern subject and modern sentiments in an antique garb. The principle on which the interest of this play rests is the Fatalism of the ancients: the plot is of extreme simplicity; a Chorus also is introduced, an elaborate discussion of the nature and uses of that accompaniment being prefixed by way of preface. The experiment was not successful: with a multitude of individual beauties this Bride of Messina is found to be ineffectual as a whole: it does not move us; the great object of every tragedy is not attained. The Chorus, which Schiller, swerving from the Greek models, has divided into two contending parts, and made to enter and depart with the principals to whom they are attached, has in his hands become the medium of conveying many beautiful effusions of poetry; but it retards the progress of the plot; it dissipates and diffuses our sympathies; the interest we should take in the fate and prospects of Manuel and Cæsar, is expended on the fate and prospects of man. For beautiful and touching delineations of life; for pensive and pathetic reflections, sentiments, and images, conveyed in language simple but nervous and emphatic, this tragedy stands high in the rank of modern compositions. There is in it a breath of young tenderness and ardour, mingled impressively with the feelings of gray-haired experience, whose recollections are darkened with melancholy, whose very hopes are chequered and solemn. The implacable Destiny which consigns the brothers to mutual enmity and mutual destruction, for the guilt of a past generation, involving a Mother and a Sister in their ruin, spreads a sombre hue over all the poem; we are not unmoved by the characters of the hostile Brothers, and we pity the hapless and amiable Beatrice, the victim of their feud. Still there is too little action in the play; the incidents are too abundantly diluted with reflection; the interest pauses, flags, and fails to produce its full effect. For its specimens of lyrical poetry, tender, affecting, sometimes exquisitely beautiful, the Bride of Messina will long deserve a careful perusal; but as exemplifying a new form of the drama, it has found no imitators, and is likely to find none.

The slight degree of failure or miscalculation which occurred in the present instance, was next year abundantly redeemed. Wilhelm Tell, sent out in 1804, is one of Schiller's very finest dramas; it exhibits some of the highest triumphs which his genius, combined with his art, ever realised. The first descent of Freedom to our modern world, the first unfurling of her standard on the rocky pinnacle of Europe, is here celebrated in the style which it deserved. There is no false timsel-decoration about Tell, no sickly refinement, no declamatory sentimentality. All is downright, simple, and agreeable to Nature; yet all is adorned and purified and rendered beautiful, without losing its resemblance. An air of freshness and wholesomeness breathes over it; we are among honest, inoffensive, yet fearless peasants, untainted by the vices, undazzled by the theories, of more complex and perverted conditions of society. The opening of the first scene sets us down among the Alps. It is 'a high rocky shore of the Luzern Lake, opposite to Schwytz. The lake makes a little bight in the land, a hut stands at a short distance from the bank, the fisher-boy is rowing himself about in his boat. Beyond the lake, on the other side, we see the green meadows, the hamlets and farms of Schwytz, lying in the clear sunshine. On our left are observed the peaks of the Hacken surrounded with clouds: to the right, and far in the distance, appear the glaciers. We hear the rance des vaches and the tinkling of cattle-bells.' This first impression never leaves us; we are in a scene where all is grand and lovely; but it is the loveliness and grandeur of unpretending, unadulterated Nature. These Switzers are not Arcadian shepherds or speculative patriots; there is not one crook or beechen bowl among them, and they never mention the Social Contract, or the Rights of Man. They are honest people, driven by oppression to assert their privileges; and they go to work like men in earnest, bent on the despatch of business, not on the display of sentiment. They are not philosophers or tribunes; but frank, stalwart landmen: even in the field of Rütli, they do not forget their common feelings; the party that arrive first indulge in a harmless little ebullition of parish vanity: "We are first here!" they say, "we Unterwaldeners!" They have not charters or written laws to which they can appeal; but they have the traditionary rights of their fathers, and bold hearts and strong arms to make them good. The rules by which they steer are not deduced from remote premises, by a fine process of thought; they are the accumulated result of experience, transmitted from peasant sire to peasant son. There is something singularly pleasing in this exhibition of genuine humanity; of wisdom, embodied in old adages and practical maxims of prudence; of magnanimity, displayed in the quiet unpretending discharge of the humblest every-day duties. Truth is superior to Fiction: we feel at home among these brave good people; their fortune interests us more than that of all the brawling, vapid, sentimental heroes in creation. Yet to make them interest us was the very highest problem of art; it was to copy lowly Nature, to give us a copy of it embellished and refined by the agency of genius, yet preserving the likeness in every lineament. The highest quality of art is to conceal itself: these peasants of Schiller's are what every one imagines he could imitate successfully; yet in the hands of any but a true and strong-minded poet they dwindle into repulsive coarseness or mawkish insipidity. Among our own writers, who have tried such subjects, we remember none that has succeeded equally with Schiller. One potent but ill-fated genius has, in far different circumstances and with far other means, shown that he could have equalled him: the Cotter's Saturday Night of Burns is, in its own humble way, as quietly beautiful, as simplex munditiis, as the scenes of Tell. No other has even approached them; though some gifted persons have attempted it. Mr. Wordsworth is no ordinary man; nor are his pedlars, and leech-gatherers, and dalesmen, without their attractions and their moral; but they sink into whining drivellers beside Rösselmann the Priest, Ulric the Smith, Hans of the Wall, and the other sturdy confederates of Rütli.

The skill with which the events are concatenated in this play corresponds to the truth of its delineation of character. The incidents of the Swiss Revolution, as detailed in Tschudi or Müller, are here faithfully preserved, even to their minutest branches. The beauty of Schiller's descriptions all can relish; their fidelity is what surprises every reader who has been in Switzerland. Schiller never saw the scene of his play; but his diligence, his quickness and intensity of conception, supplied this defect. Mountain and mountaineer, conspiracy and action, are all brought before us in their true forms, all glowing in the mild sunshine of the poet's fancy. The tyranny of Gessler, and the misery to which it has reduced the land; the exasperation, yet patient courage of the people; their characters, and those of their leaders, Fürst, Stauffacher, and Melchthal; their exertions and ultimate success, described as they are here, keep up a constant interest in the piece. It abounds in action, as much as the Bride of Messina is defective in that point.

But the finest delineation is undoubtedly the character of Wilhelm Tell, the hero of the Swiss Revolt, and of the present drama. In Tell are combined all the attributes of a great man, without the help of education or of great occasions to develop them. His knowledge has been gathered chiefly from his own experience, and this is bounded by his native mountains: he has had no lessons or examples of splendid virtue, no wish or opportunity to earn renown: he has grown up to manhood, a simple yeoman of the Alps, among simple yeomen; and has never aimed at being more. Yet we trace in him a deep, reflective, earnest spirit, thirsting for activity, yet bound in by the wholesome dictates of prudence; a heart benevolent, generous, unconscious alike of boasting or of fear. It is this salubrious air of rustic, unpretending honesty that forms the great beauty in Tell's character: all is native, all is genuine; he does not declaim: he dislikes to talk of noble conduct, he exhibits it. He speaks little of his freedom, because he has always enjoyed it, and feels that he can always defend it. His reasons for destroying Gessler are not drawn from jurisconsults and writers on morality, but from the everlasting instincts of Nature: the Austrian Vogt must die; because if not, the wife and children of Tell will be destroyed by him. The scene, where the peaceful but indomitable archer sits waiting for Gessler in the hollow way among the rocks of Küssnacht, presents him in a striking light. Former scenes had shown us Tell under many amiable and attractive aspects; we knew that he was tender as well as brave, that he loved to haunt the mountain tops, and inhale in silent dreams the influence of their wild and magnificent beauty: we had seen him the most manly and warm-hearted of fathers and husbands; intrepid, modest, and decisive in the midst of peril, and venturing his life to bring help to the oppressed. But here his mind is exalted into stern solemnity; its principles of action come before us with greater clearness, in this its fiery contest. The name of murder strikes a damp across his frank and fearless spirit; while the recollection of his children and their mother proclaims emphatically that there is no remedy. Gessler must perish: Tell swore it darkly in his secret soul, when the monster forced him to aim at the head of his boy; and he will keep his oath. His thoughts wander to and fro, but his volition is unalterable; the free and peaceful mountaineer is to become a shedder of blood: woe to them that have made him so!

Travellers come along the pass; the unconcern of their every-day existence is strikingly contrasted with the dark and fateful purposes of Tell. The shallow innocent garrulity of Stüssi the Forester, the maternal vehemence of Armgart's Wife, the hard-hearted haughtiness of Gessler, successively presented to us, give an air of truth to the delineation, and deepen the impressiveness of the result.

Act IV. Scene III

The hollow way at Küssnacht. You descend from behind amid rocks; and travellers, before appearing on the scene, are seen from the height above. Rocks encircle the whole space; on one of the foremost is a projecting crag overgrown with brushwood.

 
Tell [enters with his bow].
Here through the hollow way he'll pass; there is
No other road to Küssnacht: here I'll do it!
The opportunity is good; the bushes
Of alder there will hide me; from that point
My arrow hits him; the strait pass prevents
Pursuit. Now, Gessler, balance thy account
With Heaven! Thou must be gone: thy sand is run.
Remote and harmless I have liv'd; my bow
Ne'er bent save on the wild beast of the forest;
My thoughts were free of murder. Thou hast scar'd me
From my peace; to fell asp-poison hast thou
Changed the milk of kindly temper in me;
Thou hast accustom'd me to horrors. Gessler!
The archer who could aim at his boy's head
Can send an arrow to his enemy's heart.
 
 
Poor little boys! My kind true wife! I will
Protect them from thee, Landvogt! When I drew
That bowstring, and my hand was quiv'ring,
And with devilish joy thou mad'st me point it
At the child, and I in fainting anguish
Entreated thee in vain; then with a grim
Irrevocable oath, deep in my soul,
I vow'd to God in Heav'n, that the next aim
I took should be thy heart. The vow I made
In that despairing moment's agony
Became a holy debt; and I will pay it.
 
 
Thou art my master, and my Kaiser's Vogt;
Yet would the Kaiser not have suffer'd thee
To do as thou hast done. He sent thee hither
To judge us; rigorously, for he is angry;
But not to glut thy savage appetite
With murder, and thyself be safe, among us:
There is a God to punish them that wrong us.
 
 
Come forth, thou bringer once of bitter sorrow,
My precious jewel now, my trusty yew!
A mark I'll set thee, which the cry of woe
Could never penetrate: to thee it shall not
Be impenetrable. And, good bowstring!
Which so oft in sport hast serv'd me truly,
Forsake me not in this last awful earnest;
Yet once hold fast, thou faithful cord; thou oft
For me hast wing'd the biting arrow;
Now send it sure and piercing, now or never!
Fail this, there is no second in my quiver.
 

[Travellers cross the scene.

 
Here let me sit on this stone bench, set up
For brief rest to the wayfarer; for here
There is no home. Each pushes on quick, transient,
Regarding not the other or his sorrows.
Here goes the anxious merchant, and the light
Unmoneyed pilgrim; the pale pious monk,
The gloomy robber, and the mirthful showman;
The carrier with his heavy-laden horse,
Who comes from far-off lands; for every road
Will lead one to the end o' th' World.
They pass; each hastening forward on his path,
Pursuing his own business: mine is death![Sits down.
 
 
Erewhile, my children, were your father out,
There was a merriment at his return;
For still, on coming home, he brought you somewhat,
Might be an Alpine flower, rare bird, or elf-bolt,
Such as the wand'rer finds upon the mountains:
Now he is gone in quest of other spoil
On the wild way he sits with thoughts of murder:
'Tis for his enemy's life he lies in wait
And yet on you, dear children, you alone
He thinks as then: for your sake is he here;
To guard you from the Tyrant's vengeful mood,
He bends his peaceful bow for work of blood.[Rises.
 
 
No common game I watch for. Does the hunter
Think it nought to roam the livelong day,
In winter's cold; to risk the desp'rate leap
From crag to crag, to climb the slipp'ry face
O' th' dizzy steep, glueing his steps in's blood;
And all to catch a pitiful chamois?
Here is a richer prize afield: the heart
Of my sworn enemy, that would destroy me.
 

[A sound of gay music is heard in the distance; it approaches.

 
All my days, the bow has been my comrade,
I have trained myself to archery; oft
Have I took the bull's-eye, many a prize
Brought home from merry shooting; but today
I will perform my master-feat, and win me
The best prize in the circuit of the hills.
 

[A wedding company crosses the scene, and mounts up through the Pass. Tell looks at them, leaning on his bow; Stüssi the Forester joins him.

 
Stüssi. 'Tis Klostermey'r of Morlischachen holds
His bridal feast today: a wealthy man;
Has half a score of glens i' th' Alps. They're going
To fetch the bride from Imisee; tonight
There will be mirth and wassail down at Küssnacht.
Come you! All honest people are invited.
 
 
Tell. A serious guest befits not bridal feasts.
 
 
Stüssi. If sorrow press you, dash it from your heart!
Seize what you can: the times are hard; one needs
To snatch enjoyment nimbly while it passes.
Here 'tis a bridal, there 'twill be a burial.
 
 
Tell. And oftentimes the one leads to the other.
 
 
Stüssi. The way o' th' world at present! There is nought
But mischief everywhere: an avalanche
Has come away in Glarus; and, they tell me,
A side o' th' Glarnish has sunk under ground.
 
 
Tell. Do, then, the very hills give way! On earth
Is nothing that endures.
 
 
Stüssi.In foreign parts, too,
Are strange wonders. I was speaking with a man
From Baden: a Knight, it seems, was riding
To the King; a swarm of hornets met him
By the way, and fell on's horse, and stung it
Till it dropt down dead of very torment,
And the poor Knight was forced to go afoot.
 
 
Tell. Weak creatures too have stings.
 

[Armgart's Wife enters with several children, and places herself at the entrance of the Pass.

 
Stüssi.'Tis thought to bode
Some great misfortune to the land; some black
Unnatural action.
 
 
Tell.Ev'ry day such actions
Occur in plenty: needs no sign or wonder
To foreshow them.
 
 
Stüssi.Ay, truly! Well for him
That tills his field in peace, and undisturb'd
Sits by his own fireside!
 
 
Tell.The peacefulest
Dwells not in peace, if wicked neighbours hinder.
 

[Tell looks often, with restless expectation, towards the top of the Pass.

 
Stüssi. Too true.—Good b'ye!—You're waiting here for some one?
 
 
Tell. That am I.
Stüssi.Glad meeting with your friends!
You are from Uri? His Grace the Landvogt
Is expected thence today.
 
 
Traveller [enters]. Expect not
The Landvogt now. The waters, from the rain,
Are flooded, and have swept down all the bridges.[Tell stands up.
 
 
Armgart [coming forward].
The Vogt not come!
 
 
Stüssi.Did you want aught with him?
 
 
Armgart. Ah! yes, indeed!
 
 
Stüssi.Why have you placed yourself
In this strait pass to meet him?
 
 
Armgart.In the pass
He cannot turn aside from me, must hear me.
 
 
Friesshardt [comes hastily down the Pass, and calls into the Scene].
Make way! make way! My lord the Landvogt
Is riding close at hand.
 
 
Armgart.The Landvogt coming!
 

[She goes with her children to the front of the Scene. Gessler and Rudolph der Harras appear on horseback at the top of the Pass.

 
Stüssi [to Friesshardt].
How got you through the water, when the flood
Had carried down the bridges?
 
 
Friess.We have battled
With the billows, friend; we heed no Alp-flood.
 
 
Stüssi. Were you o' board i' th' storm?
 
 
Friess.That were we;
While I live, I shall remember 't.
 
 
Stüssi.Stay, stay!
O, tell me!
 
 
Friess. Cannot; must run on t' announce
His lordship in the Castle. [Exit.
 
 
Stüssi.Had these fellows
I' th' boat been honest people, 't would have sunk
With ev'ry soul of them. But for such rakehells,
Neither fire nor flood will kill them. [He looks round.] Whither
Went the Mountain-man was talking with me?[Exit.
 

Gessler and Rudolph der Harras on horseback.

 
Gessler. Say what you like, I am the Kaiser's servant,
And must think of pleasing him. He sent me
Not to caress these hinds, to soothe or nurse them:
Obedience is the word! The point at issue is
Shall Boor or Kaiser here be lord o' th' land.
 
 
Armgart. Now is the moment! Now for my petition!
[Approaches timidly.
 
 
Gessler. This Hat at Aldorf, mark you, I set up
Not for the joke's sake, or to try the hearts
O' th' people; these I know of old: but that
They might be taught to bend their necks to me,
Which are too straight and stiff: and in the way
Where they are hourly passing, I have planted
This offence, that so their eyes may fall on't,
And remind them of their lord, whom they forget.
 
 
Rudolph. But yet the people have some rights—
 
 
Gessler.Which now
Is not a time for settling or admitting.
Mighty things are on the anvil. The house
Of Hapsburg must wax powerful; what the Father
Gloriously began, the Son must forward:
This people is a stone of stumbling, which
One way or t'other must be put aside.
 

[They are about to pass along. The Woman throws herself before the Landvogt.

 
Armgart. Mercy, gracious Landvogt! Justice! Justice!
 
 
Gessler. Why do you plague me here, and stop my way,
I' th' open road? Off! Let me pass!
 
 
Armgart.My husband
Is in prison; these orphans cry for bread.
Have pity, good your Grace, have pity on us!
 
 
Rudolph. Who or what are you, then? Who is your husband?
 
 
Armgart. A poor wild-hay-man of the Rigiberg,
Whose trade is, on the brow of the abyss,
To mow the common grass from craggy shelves
And nooks to which the cattle dare not climb.
 
 
Rudolph [to Gessler]. By Heaven, a wild and miserable life!
Do now! do let the poor drudge free, I pray you!
Whatever be his crime, that horrid trade
Is punishment enough.
[To the Woman] You shall have justice:
In the Castle there, make your petition;
This is not the place.
 
 
Armgart.No, no! I stir not
From the spot till you give up my husband!
'Tis the sixth month he has lain i' th' dungeon,
Waiting for the sentence of some judge, in vain.
 
 
Gessler. Woman! Wouldst' lay hands on me? Begone!
 
 
Armgart. Justice, Landvogt! thou art judge o' th' land here,
I' th' Kaiser's stead and God's. Perform thy duty!
As thou expectest justice from above,
Show it to us.
 
 
Gessler. Off! Take the mutinous rabble
From my sight.
 
 
Armgart [catches the bridle of the horse].
No, no! I now have nothing
More to lose. Thou shalt not move a step, Vogt,
Till thou hast done me right. Ay, knit thy brows,
And roll thy eyes as sternly as thou wilt;
We are so wretched, wretched now, we care not
Aught more for thy anger.
 
 
Gessler.Woman, make way!
Or else my horse shall crush thee.
 
 
Armgart.Let it! there—
 

[She pulls her children to the ground, and throws herself along with them in his way.

 
Here am I with my children: let the orphans
Be trodden underneath thy horse's hoofs!
'Tis not the worst that thou hast done.
 
 
Rudolph. Woman! Art' mad?
 
 
Armgart [with still greater violence].
'Tis long that thou hast trodden.
The Kaiser's people under foot. Too long!
O, I am but a woman; were I a man,
I should find something else to do than lie
Here crying in the dust.
 

[The music of the Wedding is heard again, at the top of the Pass, but softened by distance.

 
Gessler.Where are my servants?
Quick! Take her hence! I may forget myself,
And do the thing I shall repent.
 
 
Rudolph.My lord,
The servants cannot pass; the place above
Is crowded by a bridal company.
 
 
Gessler. I've been too mild a ruler to this people;
They are not tamed as they should be; their tongues
Are still at liberty. This shall be alter'd!
I will break that stubborn humour; Freedom
With its pert vauntings shall no more be heard of:
I will enforce a new law in these lands;
There shall not—
 

[An arrow pierces him; he claps his hand upon his heart, and is about to sink. With a faint voice

 
God be merciful to me!
 
 
Rudolph. Herr Landvogt—God! What is it? Whence came it?
 
 
Armgart [springing up].
Dead! dead! He totters, sinks! 'T has hit him!
 
 
Rudolph [springs from his horse].
Horrible!—O God of Heaven!—Herr Ritter,
Cry to God for mercy! You are dying.
 
 
Gessler. 'Tis Tell's arrow.
 

[Has slid down from his horse into Rudolph's arms, who sets him on the stone bench.

 
Tell [appears above, on the point of the rock].
Thou hast found the archer;
Seek no other. Free are the cottages,
Secure is innocence from thee; thou wilt
Torment the land no more.
[Disappears from the height. The people rush in.
 
 
Stüssi [foremost].What? What has happen'd?
 
 
Armgart. The Landvogt shot, kill'd by an arrow.
People [rushing in].Who?
Who is shot?
 

[Whilst the foremost of the wedding company enter on the Scene, the hindmost are still on the height, and the music continues.

 
Rudolph. He's bleeding, bleeding to death.
Away! Seek help; pursue the murderer!
Lost man! Must it so end with thee? Thou wouldst not
Hear my warning!
 
 
Stüssi.Sure enough! There lies he
Pale and going fast.
 
 
Many Voices.Who was it killed him?
 
 
Rudolph. Are the people mad, that they make music
Over murder? Stop it, I say!
 

[The music ceases suddenly; more people come crowding round.

 
Herr Landvogt,
Can you not speak to me? Is there nothing
You would entrust me with?
 

[Gessler makes signs with his hand, and vehemently repeats them, as they are not understood.

 
Where shall I run?
To Küssnacht! I cannot understand you:
O, grow not angry! Leave the things of Earth,
And think how you shall make your peace with Heaven!
 

[The whole bridal company surround the dying man with an expression of unsympathising horror.

 
Stüssi. Look there! How pale he grows! Now! Death is coming
Round his heart: his eyes grow dim and fixed.
 
 
Armgart [lifts up one of her children].
See, children, how a miscreant departs!
 
 
Rudolph. Out on you, crazy hags! Have ye no touch
Of feeling in you, that ye feast your eyes
On such an object? Help me, lend your hands!
Will no one help to pull the tort'ring arrow
From his breast?
 
 
Women [start back]. We touch him whom God has smote!
 
 
Rudolph. My curse upon you![Draws his sword.
 
 
Stüssi [lays his hand on Rudolph's arm].
Softly, my good Sir!
Your government is at an end. The Tyrant
Is fallen: we will endure no farther violence:
We are free.
 
 
All [tumultuously]. The land is free!
 
 
Rudolph.Ha! runs it so?
Are rev'rence and obedience gone already?
 

[To the armed Attendants, who press in.

 
You see the murd'rous deed that has been done.
Our help is vain, vain to pursue the murd'rer;
Other cares demand us. On! To Küssnacht!
To save the Kaiser's fortress! For at present
All bonds of order, duty, are unloosed,
No man's fidelity is to be trusted.
 

[Whilst he departs with the Attendants, appear six Fratres Misericordiæ.

 
Armgart. Room! Room! Here come the Friars of Mercy.
 
 
Stüssi. The victim slain, the ravens are assembling!
 
 
Fratres Misericordiæ [form a half-circle round the dead body, and sing in a deep tone].
With noiseless tread death comes on man,
No plea, no prayer delivers him;
From midst of busy life's unfinished plan,
With sudden hand, it severs him:
And ready or not ready,—no delay,
Forth to his Judge's bar he must away!
 

The death of Gessler, which forms the leading object of the plot, happens at the end of the fourth act; the fifth, occupied with representing the expulsion of his satellites, and the final triumph and liberation of the Swiss, though diversified with occurrences and spectacles, moves on with inferior animation. A certain want of unity is, indeed, distinctly felt throughout all the piece; the incidents do not point one way; there is no connexion, or a very slight one, between the enterprise of Tell and that of the men of Rütli. This is the principal, or rather sole, deficiency of the present work; a deficiency inseparable from the faithful display of the historical event, and far more than compensated by the deeper interest and the wider range of action and delineation, which a strict adherence to the facts allows. By the present mode of management, Alpine life in all its length and breadth is placed before us: from the feudal halls of Attinghausen to Ruodi the Fisher of the Luzern Lake, and Armgart,—

 
The poor wild-hay-man of the Rigiberg,
Whose trade is, on the brow of the abyss,
To mow the common grass from craggy shelves
And nooks to which the cattle dare not climb,—
 

we stand as if in presence of the Swiss, beholding the achievement of their freedom in its minutest circumstances, with all its simplicity and unaffected greatness. The light of the poet's genius is upon the Four Forest Cantons, at the opening of the Fourteenth Century: the whole time and scene shine as with the brightness, the truth, and more than the beauty, of reality.

The tragedy of Tell wants unity of interest and of action; but in spite of this, it may justly claim the high dignity of ranking with the very best of Schiller's plays. Less comprehensive and ambitious than Wallenstein, less ethereal than the Jungfrau, it has a look of nature and substantial truth, which neither of its rivals can boast of. The feelings it inculcates and appeals to are those of universal human nature, and presented in their purest, most unpretending form. There is no high-wrought sentiment, no poetic love. Tell loves his wife as honest men love their wives; and the episode of Bertha and Rudenz, though beautiful, is very brief, and without effect on the general result. It is delightful and salutary to the heart to wander among the scenes of Tell: all is lovely, yet all is real. Physical and moral grandeur are united; yet both are the unadorned grandeur of Nature. There are the lakes and green valleys beside us, the Schreckhorn, the Jungfrau, and their sister peaks, with their avalanches and their palaces of ice, all glowing in the southern sun; and dwelling among them are a race of manly husbandmen, heroic without ceasing to be homely, poetical without ceasing to be genuine.

We have dwelt the longer on this play, not only on account of its peculiar fascinations, but also—as it is our last! Schiller's faculties had never been more brilliant than at present: strong in mature age, in rare and varied accomplishments, he was now reaping the full fruit of his studious vigils; the rapidity with which he wrote such noble poems, at once betokened the exuberant riches of his mind and the prompt command which he enjoyed of them. Still all that he had done seemed but a fraction of his appointed task: a bold imagination was carrying him forward into distant untouched fields of thought and poetry, where triumphs yet more glorious were to be gained. Schemes of new writings, new kinds of writing, were budding in his fancy; he was yet, as he had ever been, surrounded by a multitude of projects, and full of ardour to labour in fulfilling them. But Schiller's labours and triumphs were drawing to a close. The invisible Messenger was already near, which overtakes alike the busy and the idle, which arrests man in the midst of his pleasures or his occupations, and changes his countenance and sends him away.

In 1804, having been at Berlin witnessing the exhibition of his Wilhelm Tell, he was seized, while returning, with a paroxysm of that malady which for many years had never wholly left him. The attack was fierce and violent; it brought him to the verge of the grave; but he escaped once more; was considered out of danger, and again resumed his poetical employments. Besides various translations from the French and Italian, he had sketched a tragedy on the history of Perkin Warbeck, and finished two acts of one on that of a kindred but more fortunate impostor, Dimitri of Russia. His mind, it would appear, was also frequently engaged with more solemn and sublime ideas. The universe of human thought he had now explored and enjoyed; but he seems to have found no permanent contentment in any of its provinces. Many of his later poems indicate an incessant and increasing longing for some solution of the mystery of life; at times it is a gloomy resignation to the want and the despair of any. His ardent spirit could not satisfy itself with things seen, though gilded with all the glories of intellect and imagination; it soared away in search of other lands, looking with unutterable desire for some surer and brighter home beyond the horizon of this world. Death he had no reason to regard as probably a near event; but we easily perceive that the awful secrets connected with it had long been familiar to his contemplation. The veil which hid them from his eyes was now shortly, when he looked not for it, to be rent asunder.

The spring of 1805, which Schiller had anticipated with no ordinary hopes of enjoyment and activity, came on in its course, cold, bleak, and stormy; and along with it his sickness returned. The help of physicians was vain; the unwearied services of trembling affection were vain: his disorder kept increasing; on the 9th of May it reached a crisis. Early in the morning of that day, he grew insensible, and by degrees delirious. Among his expressions, the word Lichtenberg was frequently noticed; a word of no import; indicating, as some thought, the writer of that name, whose works he had lately been reading; according to others, the castle of Leuchtenberg, which, a few days before his sickness, he had been proposing to visit. The poet and the sage was soon to lie low; but his friends were spared the farther pain of seeing him depart in madness. The fiery canopy of physical suffering, which had bewildered and blinded his thinking faculties, was drawn aside; and the spirit of Schiller looked forth in its wonted serenity, once again before it passed away forever. After noon his delirium abated; about four o'clock he fell into a soft sleep, from which he ere long awoke in full possession of his senses. Restored to consciousness in that hour, when the soul is cut off from human help, and man must front the King of Terrors on his own strength, Schiller did not faint or fail in this his last and sharpest trial. Feeling that his end was come, he addressed himself to meet it as became him; not with affected carelessness or superstitious fear, but with the quiet unpretending manliness which had marked the tenor of his life. Of his friends and family he took a touching but a tranquil farewell: he ordered that his funeral should be private, without pomp or parade. Some one inquiring how he felt, he said "Calmer and calmer;" simple but memorable words, expressive of the mild heroism of the man. About six he sank into a deep sleep; once for a moment he looked up with a lively air, and said, "Many things were growing plain and clear to him!" Again he closed his eyes; and his sleep deepened and deepened, till it changed into the sleep from which there is no awakening; and all that remained of Schiller was a lifeless form, soon to be mingled with the clods of the valley.

The news of Schiller's death fell cold on many a heart: not in Germany alone, but over Europe, it was regarded as a public loss, by all who understood its meaning. In Weimar especially, the scene of his noblest efforts, the abode of his chosen friends, the sensation it produced was deep and universal. The public places of amusement were shut; all ranks made haste to testify their feelings, to honour themselves and the deceased by tributes to his memory. It was Friday when Schiller died; his funeral was meant to be on Sunday; but the state of his remains made it necessary to proceed before. Doering thus describes the ceremony:

'According to his own directions, the bier was to be borne by private burghers of the city; but several young artists and students, out of reverence for the deceased, took it from them. It was between midnight and one in the morning, when they approached the churchyard. The overclouded heaven threatened rain. But as the bier was set down beside the grave, the clouds suddenly split asunder, and the moon, coming forth in peaceful clearness, threw her first rays on the coffin of the Departed. They lowered him into the grave; and the moon again retired behind her clouds. A fierce tempest of wind began to howl, as if it were reminding the bystanders of their great, irreparable loss. At this moment who could have applied without emotion the poet's own words:

 
Alas, the ruddy morning tinges
A silent, cold, sepulchral stone;
And evening throws her crimson fringes
But round his slumber dark and lone!'
 

So lived and so died Friedrich Schiller; a man on whose history other men will long dwell with a mingled feeling of reverence and love. Our humble record of his life and writings is drawing to an end: yet we still linger, loth to part with a spirit so dear to us. From the scanty and too much neglected field of his biography, a few slight facts and indications may still be gleaned; slight, but distinctive of him as an individual, and not to be despised in a penury so great and so unmerited.

Schiller's age was forty-five years and a few months when he died.³⁸ Sickness had long wasted his form, which at no time could boast of faultless symmetry. He was tall and strongly boned; but unmuscular and lean: his body, it might be perceived, was wasting under the energy of a spirit too keen for it. His face was pale, the cheeks and temples rather hollow, the chin somewhat deep and slightly projecting, the nose irregularly aquiline, his hair inclined to auburn. Withal his countenance was attractive, and had a certain manly beauty. The lips were curved together in a line, expressing delicate and honest sensibility; a silent enthusiasm, impetuosity not unchecked by melancholy, gleamed in his softly kindled eyes and pale cheeks, and the brow was high and thoughtful. To judge from his portraits, Schiller's face expressed well the features of his mind: it is mildness tempering strength; fiery ardour shining through the clouds of suffering and disappointment, deep but patiently endured. Pale was its proper tint; the cheeks and temples were best hollow. There are few faces that affect us more than Schiller's; it is at once meek, tender, unpretending, and heroic.

In his dress and manner, as in all things, he was plain and unaffected. Among strangers, something shy and retiring might occasionally be observed in him: in his own family, or among his select friends, he was kind-hearted, free, and gay as a little child. In public, his external appearance had nothing in it to strike or attract. Of an unpresuming aspect, wearing plain apparel, his looks as he walked were constantly bent on the ground; so that frequently, as we are told, 'he failed to notice the salutation of a passing acquaintance; but if he heard it, he would catch hastily at his hat, and give his cordial "Guten Tag."' Modesty, simplicity, a total want of all parade or affectation were conspicuous in him. These are the usual concomitants of true greatness, and serve to mitigate its splendour. Common things he did as a common man. His conduct in such matters was uncalculated, spontaneous; and therefore natural and pleasing.

Concerning his mental character, the greater part of what we had to say has been already said, in speaking of his works. The most cursory perusal of these will satisfy us that he had a mind of the highest order; grand by nature, and cultivated by the assiduous study of a lifetime. It is not the predominating force of any one faculty that impresses us in Schiller; but the general force of all. Every page of his writings bears the stamp of internal vigour; new truths, new aspects of known truth, bold thought, happy imagery, lofty emotion. Schiller would have been no common man, though he had altogether wanted the qualities peculiar to poets. His intellect is clear, deep, and comprehensive; its deductions, frequently elicited from numerous and distant premises, are presented under a magnificent aspect, in the shape of theorems, embracing an immense multitude of minor propositions. Yet it seems powerful and vast, rather than quick or keen; for Schiller is not notable for wit, though his fancy is ever prompt with its metaphors, illustrations, comparisons, to decorate and point the perceptions of his reason. The earnestness of his temper farther disqualified him for this: his tendency was rather to adore the grand and the lofty than to despise the little and the mean. Perhaps his greatest faculty was a half-poetical, half-philosophical imagination: a faculty teeming with magnificence and brilliancy; now adorning, or aiding to erect, a stately pyramid of scientific speculation; now brooding over the abysses of thought and feeling, till thoughts and feelings, else unutterable, were embodied in expressive forms, and palaces and landscapes glowing in ethereal beauty rose like exhalations from the bosom of the deep.

Combined and partly of kindred with these intellectual faculties was that vehemence of temperament which is necessary for their full development. Schiller's heart was at once fiery and tender; impetuous, soft, affectionate, his enthusiasm clothed the universe with grandeur, and sent his spirit forth to explore its secrets and mingle warmly in its interests. Thus poetry in Schiller was not one but many gifts. It was not the 'lean and flashy song' of an ear apt for harmony, combined with a maudlin sensibility, or a mere animal ferocity of passion, and an imagination creative chiefly because unbridled: it was, what true poetry is always, the quintessence of general mental riches, the purified result of strong thought and conception, and of refined as well as powerful emotion. In his writings, we behold him a moralist, a philosopher, a man of universal knowledge: in each of these capacities he is great, but also in more; for all that he achieves in these is brightened and gilded with the touch of another quality; his maxims, his feelings, his opinions are transformed from the lifeless shape of didactic truths, into living shapes that address faculties far finer than the understanding.

The gifts by which such transformation is effected, the gift of pure, ardent, tender sensibility, joined to those of fancy and imagination, are perhaps not wholly denied to any man endowed with the power of reason; possessed in various degrees of strength, they add to the products of mere intellect corresponding tints of new attractiveness; in a degree great enough to be remarkable they constitute a poet. Of this peculiar faculty how much had fallen to Schiller's lot, we need not attempt too minutely to explain. Without injuring his reputation, it may be admitted that, in general, his works exhibit rather extraordinary strength than extraordinary fineness or versatility. His power of dramatic imitation is perhaps never of the very highest, the Shakspearean kind; and in its best state, it is farther limited to a certain range of characters. It is with the grave, the earnest, the exalted, the affectionate, the mournful, that he succeeds: he is not destitute of humour, as his Wallenstein's Camp will show, but neither is he rich in it; and for sprightly ridicule in any of its forms he has seldom shown either taste or talent. Chance principally made the drama his department; he might have shone equally in many others. The vigorous and copious invention, the knowledge of life, of men and things, displayed in his theatrical pieces, might have been available in very different pursuits; frequently the charm of his works has little to distinguish it from the charm of intellectual and moral force in general; it is often the capacious thought, the vivid imagery, the impetuous feeling of the orator, rather than the wild pathos and capricious enchantment of the poet. Yet that he was capable of rising to the loftiest regions of poetry, no reader of his Maid of Orleans, his character of Thekla, or many other of his pieces, will hesitate to grant. Sometimes we suspect that it is the very grandeur of his general powers which prevents us from exclusively admiring his poetic genius. We are not lulled by the syren song of poetry, because her melodies are blended with the clearer, manlier tones of serious reason, and of honest though exalted feeling.

SUPPLEMENT OF 1872

HERR SAUPE'S BOOK.
[NOTE IN PEOPLE'S EDITION.]

In the end of Autumn last a considerately kind old Friend of mine brought home to me, from his Tour in Germany, a small Book by a Herr Saupe, one of the Head-masters of Gera High-School,—Book entitled 'Schiller and His Father's Household,'⁴²—of which, though it has been before the world these twenty years and more, I had not heard till then. The good little Book,—an altogether modest, lucid, exact and amiable, though not very lively performance, offering new little facts about the Schiller world, or elucidations and once or twice a slight correction of the old,—proved really interesting and instructive; awoke, in me especially, multifarious reflections, mournfully beautiful old memories;—and led to farther readings in other Books touching on the same subject, particularly in these three mentioned below,⁴³—the first two of them earlier than Saupe's, the third later and slightly corrective of him once or twice;—all which agreeably employed me for some weeks, and continued to be rather a pious recreation than any labour.

To this accident of Saupe's little Book there was, meanwhile, added another not less unexpected: a message, namely, from Bibliopolic Head-quarters that my own poor old Book on Schiller was to be reprinted, and that in this "People's Edition" it would want (on deduction of the German Piece by Goethe, which had gone into the "Library Edition," but which had no fitness here) some sixty or seventy pages for the proper size of the volume. Saupe, which I was still reading, or idly reading-about, offered the ready expedient:—and here accordingly Saupe is. I have had him faithfully translated, and with some small omissions or abridgments, slight transposals here and there for clearness' sake, and one or two elucidative patches, gathered from the three subsidiary Books already named, all duly distinguished from Saupe's text;—whereby the gap or deficit of pages is well filled up, almost of its own accord. And thus I can now certify that, in all essential respects, the authentic Saupe is here made accessible to English readers as to German; and hope that to many lovers of Schiller among us, who are likely to be lovers also of humbly beautiful Human Worth, and of such an unconsciously noble scene of Poverty made richer than any California, as that of the elder Schiller Household here manifests, it may be a welcome and even profitable bit of reading.

T. C.

Chelsea, Nov. 1872.

SAUPE'S
"SCHILLER AND HIS FATHER'S HOUSEHOLD."

I. THE FATHER

'Schiller's Father, Johann Caspar Schiller, was born at Bittenfeld, a parish hamlet in the ancient part of Würtemberg, a little north of Waiblingen, on the 27th October 1723. He had not yet completed his tenth year when his Father, Johannes Schiller, Schultheiss, "Petty Magistrate," of the Village, and by trade a Baker, died, at the age of fifty-one. Soon after which the fatherless Boy, hardly fitted out with the most essential elements of education, had to quit school, and was apprenticed to a Surgeon; with whom, according to the then custom, he was to learn the art of "Surgery;" but in reality had little more to do than follow the common employment of a Barber.

'After completing his apprenticeship and proof-time, the pushing young lad, eager to get forward in the world, went, during the Austrian-Succession War, in the year 1745, with a Bavarian Hussar Regiment, as "Army-Doctor," into the Netherlands. Here, as his active mind found no full employment in the practice of his Art, he willingly undertook, withal, the duties of a sub-officer in small military enterprises. On the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, 1748, when a part of this Regiment was disbanded, and Schiller with them, he returned to his homeland; and set himself down in Marbach, a pleasant little country town on the Neckar, as practical Surgeon there. Here, in 1749, he married the Poet's Mother; then a young girl of sixteen: Elisabetha Dorothea, born at Marbach in the year 1733, the daughter of a respectable townsman, Georg Friedrich Kodweis, who, to his trade of Baker adding that of Innkeeper and Woodmeasurer, had gathered a little fortune, and was at this time counted well-off, though afterwards, by some great inundation of the Neckar,' date not given, 'he was again reduced to poverty. The brave man by this unavoidable mischance came, by degrees, so low that he had to give-up his house in the Market-Place, and in the end to dwell in a poor hut, as Porter at one of the Toll-Gates of Marbach. Elisabetha was a comely girl to look upon; slender, well-formed, without quite being tall; the neck long, hair high-blond, almost red, brow broad, eyes as if a little sorish, face covered with freckles; but with all these features enlivened by a soft expression of kindliness and good-nature.

'This marriage, for the first eight years, was childless; after that, they gradually had six children, two of whom died soon after birth; the Poet Schiller was the second of these six, and the only Boy. The young couple had to live in a very narrow, almost needy condition, as neither of them had any fortune; and the Husband's business could hardly support a household. There is still in existence a legal Marriage Record and Inventory, such as is usual in these cases, which estimates the money and money's worth brought together by the young people at a little over 700 gulden (70l.). Out of the same Inventory, one sees, by the small value put upon the surgical instruments, and the outstanding debts of patients, distinctly enough, that Caspar Schiller's practice, at that point of time, did not much exceed that of a third-class Surgeon, and was scarcely adequate, as above stated, to support the thriftiest household. And therefore it is not surprising that Schiller, intent on improving so bare a position, should, at the breaking-out of the Seven-Years War, have anew sought a military appointment, as withal more fit for employing his young strength and ambitions.

'In the beginning of the year 1757 he went, accordingly, as Ensign and Adjutant, into the Würtemberg Regiment Prince Louis; which in several of the campaigns in the Seven-Years War belonged to an auxiliary corps of the Austrian Army.'—Was he at the Ball of Fulda, one wonders? Yes, for certain! He was at the Ball of Fulda (tragi-comical Explosion of a Ball, not yet got to the dancing-point); and had to run for life, as his Duke, in a highly-ridiculous manner, had already done. And, again, tragically, it is certain that he stood on the fated Austrian left-wing at the Battle of Leuthen; had his horse shot under him there, and was himself nearly drowned in a quagmire, struggling towards Breslau that night.⁴⁴

'In Bohemia this Corps was visited by an infectious fever, and suffered by the almost pestilential disorder a good deal of loss. In this bad time, Schiller, who by his temperance and frequent movement in the open air had managed to retain perfect health, showed himself very active and helpful; and cheerfully undertook every kind of business in which he could be of use. He attended the sick, there being a scarcity of Doctors; and served at the same time as Chaplain to the Regiment, so far as to lead the Psalmody, and read the Prayers. When, after this, he was changed into another Würtemberg Regiment, which served in Hessen and Thüringen, he employed every free hour in filling up, by his own industrious study, the many deeply-felt defects in his young schooling; and was earnestly studious. By his perseverant zeal and diligence, he succeeded in the course of these war-years in acquiring not only many medical, military and agricultural branches of knowledge, but also, as his Letters prove, in amassing a considerable amount of general culture. Nor did his praiseworthy efforts remain without recognition and external reward. At the end of the Seven-Years War, he had risen to be a Captain, and had even saved a little money.

'His Wife, who, during these War-times, lived, on money sent by him, in her Father's house at Marbach, he could only visit seldom, and for short periods in winter-quarters, much as he longed for his faithful Wife; who, after the birth of a Daughter, in September 1757, was dearer to him than ever. But never had the rigid fetters of War-discipline appeared more oppressive than when, two years later, in November 1759, a Son, the Poet, was born. With joyful thanks to God, he saluted this dear Gift of Heaven; in daily prayer commended Mother and Child to "the Being of all Beings;" and waited now with impatience the time when he should revisit his home, and those that were his there. Yet there still passed four years before Father Schiller, on conclusion of the Hubertsburg Peace, 1763, could return home from the War, and again take up his permanent residence in his home-country. Where, on his return, his first Garrison quarters were, whether at Ludwigsburg, Cannstadt or what other place, is not known. On the other hand, all likelihoods are, that, so soon as he could find it possible, he carried over his Wife and his two Children, the little Daughter Christophine six, and the little Friedrich now four, out of Marbach to his own quarters, wherever these were.'

There is no date to the Neckar Inundation above mentioned; but we have elsewhere evidence that the worthy Father Kodweis with his Wife, at this time, still dwelt in their comfortable house in the Market-Place. We know also, though it is not mentioned in the text, that their pious Daughter struggled zealously to the last to alleviate their sore poverty; and the small effect, so far as money goes, may testify how poor and straitened the Schiller Family itself then was.

'With the Father's return out of War, there came a new element into the Family, which had so long been deprived of its natural Guardian and Counsellor. To be House-Father in the full sense of the word was now all the more Captain Schiller's need and duty, the longer his War-service had kept him excluded from the sacred vocation of Husband and Father. For he was throughout a rational and just man, simple, strong, expert, active for practical life, if also somewhat quick and rough. This announced itself even in the outward make and look of him; for he was of short stout stature and powerful make of limbs; the brow high-arched, eyes sharp and keen. Withal, his erect carriage, his firm step, his neat clothing, as well as his clear and decisive mode of speech, all testified of strict military training; which also extended itself over his whole domestic life, and even over the daily devotions of the Family. For although the shallow Illuminationism of that period had produced some influence on his religious convictions, he held fast by the pious principles of his forebears; read regularly to his household out of the Bible; and pronounced aloud, each day, the Morning and Evening Prayer. And this was, in his case, not merely an outward decorous bit of discipline, but in fact the faithful expression of his Christian conviction, that man's true worth and true happiness can alone be found in the fear of the Lord, and the moral purity of his heart and conduct. He himself had even, in the manner of those days, composed a long Prayer, which he in later years addressed to God every morning, and which began with the following lines:

 
True Watcher of Israel!
To Thee be praise, thanks and honour.
Praying aloud I praise Thee,
That earth and Heaven may hear.⁴⁵
 

'If, therefore, a certain otherwise accredited Witness calls him a kind of crotchety, fantastic person, mostly brooding over strange thoughts and enterprises, this can only have meant that Caspar Schiller in earlier years appeared such, namely at the time when, as incipient Surgeon at Marbach, he saw himself forced into a circle of activity which corresponded neither to his inclination, strength nor necessities.

'On the spiritual development of his Son this conscientious Father employed his warmest interest and activities; and appears to have been for some time assisted herein by a near relation, a certain Johann Friedrich Schiller from Bittenfeld; the same who, as Studiosus Philosophiæ, was, in 1759, Godfather to the Boy. He is said to have given the little Godson Fritz his first lessons in Writing, Natural-History and Geography. A more effective assistance in this matter the Father soon after met with on removing to Lorch.

'In the year 1765, the reigning Duke, Karl of Würtemberg, sent Captain Schiller as Recruiting Officer to the Imperial Free-Town Schwäbish-Gmünd; with permission to live with his Family in the nearest Würtemberg place, the Village and Cloister of Lorch. Lorch lies in a green meadow-ground, surrounded by beech-woods, at the foot of a hill, which is crowned by the weird buildings of the Cloister, where the Hohenstaufen graves are; opposite the Cloister and Hamlet, rise the venerable ruins of Hohenstaufen itself, with a series of hills; at the bottom winds the Rems,' a branch of the Neckar, 'towards still fruitfuler regions. In this attractive rural spot the Schiller Family resided for several years; and found from the pious and kindly people of the Hamlet, and especially from a friend of the house, Moser, the worthy Parish-Parson there, the kindliest reception. The Schiller children soon felt themselves at home and happy in Lorch, especially Fritz did, who, in the Parson's Son, Christoph Ferdinand Moser, a soft gentle child, met with his first boy-friend. In this worthy Parson's house he also received, along with the Parson's own Sons, the first regular and accurate instruction in reading and writing, as also in the elements of Latin and Greek. This arrangement pleased and comforted Captain Schiller not a little: for the more distinctly he, with his clear and candid character, recognised the insufficiency of his own instruction and stock of knowledge, the more impressively it lay on him that his Son should early acquire a good foundation in Languages and Science, and learn something solid and effective. What he could himself do in that particular he faithfully did; bringing out, with this purpose, partly the grand historical memorials of that neighbourhood, partly his own life-experiences, in instructive and exciting dialogues with his children. He would point out to the listening little pair the venerable remains of the Hohenstaufen Ancestral Castle, or tell them of his own soldier-career. He took the Boy with him into the Exercise Camp, to the Woodmen in the Forest, and even into the farther-distant pleasure-castle of Hohenheim; and thereby led their youthful imagination into many changeful imaginings of life.⁴⁶

'Externally little Fritz and his Sister were not like; Christophine more resembling the Father, whilst Friedrich was the image of the Mother. On the other hand, they had internally very much in common; both possessed a lively apprehension for whatever was true, beautiful or good. Both had a temper capable of enthusiasm, which early and chiefly turned towards the sublime and grand: in short, the strings of their souls were tuned on a cognate tone. Add to this, that both, in the beautifulest, happiest period of their life, had been under the sole care and direction of the pious genial Mother; and that Fritz, at least till his sixth year, was exclusively limited to Christophine's society, and had no other companion. They two had to be, and were, all to each other. Christophine on this account stood nearer to her Brother throughout all his life than the Sisters who were born later.

'In rural stillness, and in almost uninterrupted converse with out-door nature, flowed by for Fritz and her the greatest part of their childhood and youth. Especially dear to them was their abode in this romantic region. Every hour that was free from teaching or other task, they employed in roaming about in the neighbourhood; and they knew no higher joy than a ramble into the neighbouring hills. In particular they liked to make pilgrimages together to a chapel on the Calvary Hill at Gmünd, a few miles off, to which the way was still through the old monkish grief-stations, on to the Cloister of Lorch noticed above. Often they would sit with closely-grasped hands, under the thousand-years-old Linden, which stood on a projection before the Cloister-walls, and seemed to whisper to them long-silent tales of past ages. On these walks the hearts of the two clasped each other ever closer and more firmly, and they faithfully shared their little childish joys and sorrows. Christophine would bitterly weep when her vivacious Brother had committed some small misdeed and was punished for it. In such cases, she often enough confessed Fritz's faults as her own, and was punished when she had in reality had no complicity in them. It was with great sorrow that they two parted from their little Paradise; and both of them always retained a great affection for Lorch and its neighbourhood. Christophine, who lived to be ninety, often even in her latter days looked back with tender affection to their abode there.⁴⁷

'In his family-circle, the otherwise hard-mannered Father showed always to Mother and Daughters the tenderest respect and the affectionate tone which the heart suggests. Thus, if at table a dish had chanced to be especially prepared for him, he would never eat of it without first inviting the Daughters to be helped. As little could he ever, in the long-run, withstand the requests of his gentle Wife; so that not seldom she managed to soften his rough severity. The Children learned to make use of this feature in his character; and would thereby save themselves from the first outburst of his anger. They confessed beforehand to the Mother their bits of misdoings, and begged her to inflict the punishment, and prevent their falling into the heavier paternal hand. Towards the Son again, whose moral development his Father anxiously watched over, his wrath was at times disarmed by touches of courage and fearlessness on the Boy's part. Thus little Fritz, once on a visit at Hohenheim, in the house where his Father was calling, and which formed part of the side-buildings of the Castle, whilst his Father followed his business within doors, had, unobserved, clambered out of a saloon-window, and undertaken a voyage of discovery over the roofs. The Boy, who had been missed and painfully sought after, was discovered just on the point of trying to have a nearer view of the Lion's Head, by which one of the roof-gutters discharges itself, when the terrified Father got eye on him, and called out aloud. Cunning Fritz, however, stood motionless where he was on the roof, till his Father's anger had stilled itself, and pardon was promised him.'—Here farther is a vague anecdote made authentic: 'Another time the little fellow was not to be found at the evening meal, while, withal, there was a heavy thunderstorm in the sky, and fiery bolts were blazing through the black clouds. He was searched for in vain, all over the house; and at every new thunder-clap the misery of his Parents increased. At last they found him, not far from the house, on the top of the highest lime-tree, which he was just preparing to descend, under the crashing of a very loud peal. "In God's name, what hast thou been doing there?" cried the agitated Father. "I wanted to know," answered Fritz, "where all that fire in the sky was coming from!"

'Three full years the Schiller Family lived at Lorch; and this in rather narrow circumstances, as the Father, though in the service of his Prince, could not, during the whole of this time, receive the smallest part of his pay, but had to live on the little savings he had made during War-time. Not till 1768, after the most impressive petitioning to the Duke, was he at last called away from his post of Recruiting Officer, and transferred to the Garrison of Ludwigsburg, where he, by little and little, squeezed out the pay owing him.

'Upon his removal, the Father's first care was to establish his little Boy, now nine years old,—who, stirred-on probably by the impressions he had got in the Parsonage at Lorch, and the visible wish of his Parents, had decided for the Clerical Profession,—in the Latin school at Ludwigsburg. This done, he made it his chief care that his Son's progress should be swift and satisfying there. But on that side, Fritz could never come up to his expectations, though the Teachers were well enough contented. But out of school-time, Fritz was not so zealous and diligent as could be wished; liked rather to spring about and sport in the garden. The arid, stony, philological instruction of his teacher, Johann Friedrich Jahn, who was a solid Latiner, and nothing more, was not calculated to make a specially alluring impression on the clever and lively Boy; thus it was nothing but the reverence and awe of his Father that could drive him on to diligence.

'To this time belongs the oldest completely preserved Poem of Schiller's; it is in the form of a little Hymn, in which, on New-year's day 1769, the Boy, now hardly over nine years old, presents to his Parents the wishes of the season. It may stand here by way of glimpse into the position of the Son towards his Parents, especially towards his Father.

Much-loved Parents.⁴⁸

 
Parents, whom I lovingly honour,
Today my heart is full of thankfulness!
This Year may a gracious God increase
What is at all times your support!
 
 
The Lord, the Fountain of all joy,
Remain always your comfort and portion;
His Word be the nourishment of your heart,
And Jesus your wished-for salvation.
 
 
I thank you for all your proofs of love,
For all your care and patience;
My heart shall praise all your goodness,
And ever comfort itself in your favour.
 
 
Obedience, diligence and tender love
I promise you for this Year.
God send me only good inclinations,
And make true all my wishes! Amen.
 

1 January 1769. Johann Friedrich Schiller.

'According to the pious wish of their Son, this year, 1769, did bring somewhat which "comforted" them. Captain Schiller, from of old a lover of rural occupations, and skilful in gardening and nursery affairs, had, at Ludwigsburg, laid-out for himself a little Nursery. It was managed on the same principles which he afterwards made public in his Book, Die Baumzucht im Grossen (Neustrelitz, 1795, and second edition, Giessen, 1806); and was prospering beautifully. The Duke, who had noticed this, signified satisfaction in the thing; and he appointed him, in 1770, to shift to his beautiful Forest-Castle, Die Solitüde, near Stuttgart, as overseer of all his Forest operations there. Hereby to the active man was one of his dearest wishes fulfilled; and a sphere of activity opened, corresponding to his acquirements and his inclination. At Solitüde, by the Duke's order, he laid-out a Model Nursery for all Würtemberg, which he managed with perfect care and fidelity; and in this post he so completely satisfied the expectations entertained of him, that his Prince by and by raised him to the rank of Major.' He is reckoned to have raised from seeds, and successfully planted, 60,000 trees, in discharge of this function, which continued for the rest of his life.

'His Family, which already at Lorch, in 1766, had been increased by the birth of a Daughter, Luise, waited but a short time in Ludwigsburg till the Father brought them over to the new dwelling at Solitüde. Fritz, on the removal of his Parents, was given over as boarder to his actual Teacher, the rigorous pedant Jahn; and remained yet two years at the Latin school in Ludwigsburg. During this time, the lively, and perhaps also sometimes mischievous Boy, was kept in the strictest fetters; and, by the continual admonitions, exhortations, and manually practical corrections of Father and of Teacher, not a little held down and kept in fear. The fact, for instance, that he liked more the potent Bible-words and pious songs of a Luther, a Paul Gerhard, and Gellert, than he did the frozen lifeless catechism-drill of the Ludwigsburg Institute, gave surly strait-laced Jahn occasion to lament from time to time to the alarmed Parents, that "their Son had no feeling whatever for religion." In this respect, however, the otherwise so irritable Father easily satisfied himself, not only by his own observations of an opposite tendency, but chiefly by stricter investigation of one little incident that was reported to him. The teacher of religion in the Latin school, Superintendent Zilling, whose name is yet scornfully remembered, had once, in his dull awkwardness, introduced even Solomon's Song as an element of nurture for his class; and was droning out, in an old-fashioned way, his interpretation of it as symbolical of the Christian Church and its Bridegroom Christ, when he was, on the sudden, to his no small surprise and anger, interrupted by the audible inquiry of little Schiller, "But was this Song, then, actually sung to the Church?" Schiller Senior took the little heretic to task for this rash act; and got as justification the innocent question, "Has the Church really got teeth of ivory?" The Father was enlightened enough to take the Boy's opposition for a natural expression of sound human sense; nay, he could scarcely forbear a laugh; whirled swiftly round, and murmured to himself, "Occasionally she has Wolf's teeth." And so the thing was finished.⁴⁹

'At Ludwigsburg Schiller and Christophine first saw a Theatre; where at that time, in the sumptuous Duke's love of splendour, only pompous operas and ballets were given. The first effect of this new enjoyment, which Fritz and his Sister strove to repeat as often as they could, was that at home, with little clipped and twisted paper dolls, they set about representing scenes; and on Christophine's part it had the more important result of awakening and nourishing, at an early age, her æsthetic taste. Schiller considered her, ever after these youthful sports, as a true and faithful companion in his poetic dreams and attempts; and constantly not only told his Sister, whose silence on such points could be perfect, of all that he secretly did in the way of verse-making in the Karl's School,—which, as we shall see, he entered in 1773,—but if possible brought it upon the scene with her. Scenes from the lyrical operetta of Semele were acted by Schiller and Christophine, on those terms; which appears in a complete shape for the first time in Schiller's Anthology, printed 1782.⁵⁰

'So soon as Friedrich had gone through the Latin school at Ludwigsburg, which was in 1772, he was, according to the standing regulation, to enter one of the four Lower Cloister-schools; and go through the farther curriculum for a Würtemberg clergyman. But now there came suddenly from the Duke to Captain Schiller an offer to take his Son, who had been represented to him as a clever boy, into the new Military Training-School, founded by his Highness at Solitüde, in 1771; where he would be brought up, and taken charge of, free of cost.

'In the Schiller Family this offer caused great consternation and painful embarrassment. The Father was grieved to be obliged to sacrifice a long-cherished paternal plan to the whim of an arbitrary ruler; and the Son felt himself cruelly hurt to be torn away so rudely from his hope and inclination. Accordingly, how dangerous soever for the position of the Family a declining of the Ducal grace might seem, the straightforward Father ventured nevertheless to lay open to the Duke, in a clear and distinct statement, how his purpose had always been to devote his Son, in respect both of his inclination and his hitherto studies, to the Clerical Profession; for which in the new Training-School he could not be prepared. The Duke showed no anger at this step of the elder Schiller's; but was just as little of intention to let a capable and hopeful scholar, who was also the Son of one of his Officers and Dependents, escape him. He simply, with brevity, repeated his wish, and required the choice of another study, in which the Boy would have a better career and outlook than in the Theological Department. Nill they, will they, there was nothing for the Parents but compliance with the so plainly intimated will of this Duke, on whom their Family's welfare so much depended.

'Accordingly, 17th January 1773, Friedrich Schiller, then in his fourteenth year, stept over to the Military Training-School at Solitüde.

'In September of the following year, Schiller's Parents had, conformably to a fundamental law of the Institution, to acknowledge and engage by a written Bond, "That their Son, in virtue of his entrance into this Ducal Institution, did wholly devote himself to the service of the Würtemberg Ducal House; that he, without special Ducal permission, was not empowered to go out of it; and that he had, with his best care, to observe not only this, but all other regulations of the Institute." By this time, indeed directly upon signature of this strict Bond, young Schiller had begun to study Jurisprudence;—which, however, when next year, 1775, the Training-School, raised now to be a "Military Academy," had been transferred to Stuttgart, he either of his own accord, or in consequence of a discourse and interview of the Duke with his Father, exchanged for the Study of Medicine.

'From the time when Schiller entered this "Karl's School"' (Military Academy, in official style), 'he was nearly altogether withdrawn from any tutelage of his Father; for it was only to Mothers, and to Sisters still under age, that the privilege of visiting their Sons and Brothers, and this on the Sunday only, was granted: beyond this, the Karl's Scholars, within their monastic cells, were cut off from family and the world, by iron-doors and sentries guarding them. This rigorous seclusion from actual life and all its friendly impressions, still more the spiritual constraint of the Institution, excluding every free activity, and all will of your own, appeared to the Son in a more hateful light than to the Father, who, himself an old soldier, found it quite according to order that the young people should be kept in strict military discipline and subordination. What filled the Son with bitter discontent and indignation, and at length brought him to a kind of poetic outburst of revolution in the Robbers, therein the Father saw only a wholesome regularity, and indispensable substitute for paternal discipline. Transient complaints of individual teachers and superiors little disturbed the Father's mind; for, on the whole, the official testimonies concerning his Son were steadily favourable. The Duke too treated young Schiller, whose talents had not escaped his sharpness of insight, with particular goodwill, nay distinction. To this Prince, used to the accurate discernment of spiritual gifts, the complaints of certain Teachers, that Schiller's slow progress in Jurisprudence proceeded from want of head, were of no weight whatever; and he answered expressly, "Leave me that one alone; he will come to something yet!" But that Schiller gave his main strength to what in the Karl's School was a strictly forbidden object, to poetry namely, this I believe was entirely hidden from his Father, or appeared to him, on occasional small indications, the less questionable, as he saw that, in spite of this, the Marketable-Sciences were not neglected.

'Schiller had left his loved ones at Solitüde whole and well; and with the firm hope that he would see them all again. And the next-following years did pass untroubled over the prosperous Family. But "ill-luck," as the proverb says, "comes with a long stride." In the Spring of 1796, when the French, under Jourdan and Moreau, had overrun South Germany, there reached Schiller, on a sudden, alarming tidings from Solitüde. In the Austrian chief Hospital, which had been established in the Castle there, an epidemic fever had broken out; and had visited the Schiller Family among others. The youngest Daughter Nanette had sunk under this pestilence, in the flower of her years; and whilst the second Daughter Luise lay like to die of the same, the Father also was laid bedrid with gout. For fear of infection, nobody except the Doctors would risk himself at Solitüde; and so the poor weakly Mother stood forsaken there, and had, for months long, to bear alone the whole burden of the household distress. Schiller felt it painfully that he was unable to help his loved ones, in so terrible a posture of affairs; and it cost him great effort to hide these feelings from his friends. In his pain and anxiety, he turned himself at last to his eldest Sister Christophine, Wife of Hofrath Reinwald in Meiningen; and persuaded her to go to Solitüde to comfort and support her people there. Had not the true Sister-heart at once acceded to her Brother's wishes, he had himself taken the firm determination to go in person to Swabia, in the middle of May, and bring his Family away from Solitüde, and make arrangements for their nursing and accommodation. The news of his Sister's setting-out relieved him of a great and continual anxiety. "Heaven bless thee," writes he to her on the 6th May, "for this proof of thy filial love." He earnestly entreats her to prevent his dear Parents from delaying, out of thrift, any wholesome means of improvement to their health; and declares himself ready, with joy, to bear all costs, those of travelling included: she is to draw on Cotta in Tübingen for whatever money she needs. Her Husband also he thanks, in a cordial Letter, for his consent to this journey of his Wife.

'July 11, 1796, was born to the Poet, who had been in much trouble about his own household for some time, his second Son, Ernst. Great fears had been entertained for the Mother; which proving groundless, the happy event lifted a heavy burden from his heart; and he again took courage and hope. But soon after, on the 15th August, he writes again to the faithful Körner about his kinsfolk in Swabia: "From the War we have not suffered so much; but all the more from the condition of my Father, who, broken-down under an obstinate and painful disease, is slowly wending towards death. How sad this fact is, thou mayest think."

'Within few weeks after, 7th September 1796, the Father died; in his seventy-third year, after a sick-bed of eight months. Though his departure could not be reckoned other than a blessing, yet the good Son was deeply shattered by the news of it. What his filially faithful soul suffered, in these painful days, is touchingly imaged in two Letters, which may here make a fitting close to this Life-sketch of Schiller's Father. It was twelve days after his Father's death when he wrote to his Brother-in-law, Reinwald, in Meiningen:

"Thou hast here news, dear Brother, of the release of our good Father; which, much as it had to be expected, nay wished, has deeply affected us all. The conclusion of so long and withal so active a life is, even for bystanders, a touching object: what must it be to those whom it so nearly concerns? I have to tear myself away from thinking of this painful loss, since it is my part to help the dear remaining ones. It is a great comfort to thy Wife that she has been able to continue and fulfil her daughterly duty till her Father's last release. She would never have consoled herself, had he died a few days after her departure home.

"Thou understandest how in the first days of this fatal breach among us, while so many painful things storm-in upon our good Mother, thy Christophine could not have left, even had the Post been in free course. But this still remains stopped, and we must wait the War-events on the Franconian, Swabian and Palatinate borders. How much this absence of thy Wife must afflict, I feel along with thee; but who can fight against such a chain of inevitable destinies? Alas, public and universal disorder rolls up into itself our private events too, in the fatalest way.

"Thy Wife longs from her heart for home; and she only the more deserves our regard that she, against her inclination and her interest, resolved to be led only by the thought of her filial duties. Now, however, she certainly will not delay an hour longer with her return, the instant it can be entered upon without danger and impossibility. Comfort her too when thou writest to her; it grieves her to know thee forsaken, and to have no power to help thee.

"Fare right well, dear Brother.—Thine,

Schiller."

'Nearly at the same time he wrote to his Mother:

"Grieved to the heart, I take up the pen to lament with you and my dear Sisters the loss we have just sustained. In truth, for a good while past I have expected nothing else: but when the inevitable actually comes, it is always a sad and overwhelming stroke. To think that one who was so dear to us, whom we hung upon with the feelings of early childhood, and also in later years were bound to by respect and love, that such an object is gone from the world, that with all our striving we cannot bring it back,—to think of this is always something frightful. And when, like you, my dearest best Mother, one has shared with the lost Friend and Husband joy and sorrow for so many long years, the parting is all the painfuler. Even when I look away from what the good Father that is gone was to myself and to us all, I cannot without mournful emotion contemplate the close of so steadfast and active a life, which God continued to him so long, in such soundness of body and mind, and which he managed so honourably and well. Yes truly, it is not a small thing to hold out so faithfully upon so long and toilsome a course; and like him, in his seventy-third year, to part from the world in so childlike and pure a mood. Might I but, if it cost me all his sorrows, pass away from my life as innocently as he from his! Life is so severe a trial; and the advantages which Providence, in some respects, may have granted me compared with him, are joined with so many dangers for the heart and for its true peace!

"I will not attempt to comfort you and my dear Sisters. You all feel, like me, how much we have lost; but you feel also that Death alone could end these long sorrows. With our dear Father it is now well; and we shall all follow him ere long. Never shall the image of him fade from our hearts; and our grief for him can only unite us still closer together.

"Five or six years ago it did not seem likely that you, my dear ones, should, after such a loss, find a Friend in your Brother,—that I should survive our dear Father. God has ordered it otherwise; and He grants me the joy to feel that I may still be something to you. How ready I am thereto, I need not assure you. We all of us know one another in this respect, and are our dear Father's not unworthy children."

This earnest and manful lamentation, which contains also a just recognition of the object lamented, may serve to prove, think Saupe and others, what is very evident, that Caspar Schiller, with his stiff, military regulations, spirit of discipline and rugged, angular ways, was, after all, the proper Father for a wide-flowing, sensitive, enthusiastic, somewhat lawless Friedrich Schiller; and did beneficently compress him into something of the shape necessary for his task in this world.

II. THE MOTHER

Of Schiller's Mother, Elisabetha Dorothea Kodweis, born at Marbach 1733, the preliminary particulars have been given above: That she was the daughter of an Innkeeper, Woodmeasurer and Baker; prosperous in the place when Schiller Senior first arrived there. We should have added, what Saupe omits, that the young Surgeon boarded in their house; and that by the term Woodmeasurer (Holzmesser, Measurer of Wood) is signified an Official Person appointed not only to measure and divide into portions the wood supplied as fuel from the Ducal or Royal Forests, but to be responsible also for payment of the same. In which latter capacity, Kodweis, as Father Schiller insinuates, was rash, imprudent and unlucky, and at one time had like to have involved that prudent, parsimonious Son-in-law in his disastrous economics. We have also said what Elisabetha's comely looks were, and particular features; pleasing and hopeful, more and more, to the strict young Surgeon, daily observant of her and them.

'In her circle,' Saupe continues, 'she was thought by her early playmates a kind of enthusiast; because she, with average faculties of understanding combined deep feeling, true piety and love of Nature, a talent for Music, nay even for Poetry. But perhaps it was the very reverse qualities in her, the fact namely that what she wanted in culture, and it may be also in clearness and sharpness of understanding, was so richly compensated by warmth and lovingness of character,—perhaps it was this which most attracted to her the heart of her deeply-reasonable Husband. And never had he cause to repent his choice. For she was, and remained, as is unanimously testified of her by trustworthy witnesses, an unpretending, soft and dutiful Wife; and, as all her Letters testify, had the tenderest mother-heart. She read a good deal, even after her marriage, little as she had of time for reading. Favourite Books with her were those on Natural History; but she liked best of all to study the Biographies of famous men, or to dwell in the spiritual poetising of an Utz, a Gellert and Klopstock. She also liked, and in some measure had the power, to express her own feelings in verses; which, with all their simplicity, show a sense for rhythm and some expertness in diction. Here is one instance; her salutation to the Husband who was her First-love, on New-year's day 1757, the ninth year of their as yet childless marriage:

 
O could I but have found forget-me-not in the Valley,
And roses beside it! Then had I plaited thee
In fragrant blossoms the garland for this New Year,
Which is still brighter to me than that of our Marriage was.
 
 
I grumble, in truth, that the cold North now governs us,
And every flowret's bud is freezing in the cold earth!
Yet one thing does not freeze, I mean my loving heart;
Thine that is, and shares with thee its joys and sorrows.⁵⁸
 

'The Seven-Years War threw the young Wife into manifold anxiety and agitation; especially since she had become a Mother, and in fear for the life of her tenderly-loved Husband, had to tremble for the Father of her children too. To this circumstance Christophine ascribes, certainly with some ground, the world-important fact that her Brother had a much weaker constitution than herself. He had in fact been almost born in a camp. In late Autumn 1759, the Infantry Regiment of Major-General Romann, in which Caspar Schiller was then a Lieutenant, had, for sake of the Autumn Manœuvres of the Würtemberg Soldiery, taken Camp in its native region. The Mother had thereupon set out from Marbach to visit her long-absent Husband in the Camp; and it was in his tent that she felt the first symptoms of her travail. She rapidly hastened back to Marbach; and by good luck still reached her Father's house in the Market-Place there, near by the great Fountain; where she, on the 11th November, was delivered of a Boy. For almost four years the little Friedrich with Christophine and Mother continued in the house of the well-contented Grandparents (who had not yet fallen poor), under her exclusive care. With self-sacrificing love and careful fidelity, she nursed her little Boy; whose tender body had to suffer not only from the common ailments of children, but was heavily visited with fits of cramp. In a beautiful region, on the bosom of a tender Mother, and in these first years far from the oversight of a rigorous Father, the Child grew up, and unfolded himself under cheerful and harmonious impressions.

'On the return of his Father from the War, little Fritz, now four years old, was quite the image of his Mother; long-necked, freckled and reddish-haired like her. It was the pious Mother's work, too, that a feeling of religion, early and vivid, displayed itself in him. The easily-receptive Boy was indeed keenly attentive to all that his Father, in their Family-circle, read to them, and inexhaustible in questions till he had rightly caught the meaning of it: but he listened with most eagerness when his Father read passages from the Bible, or vocally uttered them in prayer. "It was a touching sight," says his eldest Sister, "the expression of devotion on the dear little Child's countenance. With its blue eyes directed towards Heaven, its high-blond hair about the clear brow, and its fast-clasped little hands. It was like an angel's head to look upon."

'With Father's return, the happy Mother conscientiously shared with him the difficult and important business of bringing up their Son; and both in union worked highly beneficially for his spiritual development. The practical and rigorous Father directed his chief aim to developing the Boy's intellect and character; the mild, pious, poetic-minded Mother, on the other hand, strove for the ennobling nurture of his temper and his imagination. It was almost exclusively owing to her that his religious feeling, his tender sense of all that was good and beautiful, his love of mankind, tolerance, and capability of self-sacrifice, in the circle of his Sisters and playmates, distinguished the Boy.

'On Sunday afternoons, when she went to walk with both the Children, she was wont to explain to them the Church-Gospel of the day. "Once," so stands it in Christophine's Memorials, "when we two, as children, had set out walking with dear Mamma to see our Grandparents, she took the way from Ludwigsburg to Marbach, which leads straight over the Hill, a walk of some four miles. It was a beautiful Easter Monday, and our Mother related to us the history of the two Disciples to whom, on their journey to Emmaus, Jesus had joined himself. Her speech and narrative grew ever more inspired; and when we got upon the Hill, we were all so much affected that we knelt down and prayed. This Hill became a Tabor to us."

'At other times she entertained the children with fairy-tales and magic histories. Already while in Lorch she had likewise led the Boy, so far as his power of comprehension and her own knowledge permitted, into the domains of German Poetry. Klopstock's Messias, Opitz's Poems, Paul Gerhard's and Gellert's pious Songs, were made known to him in this tender age, through his Mother; and were, for that reason, doubly dear. At one time also the artless Mother made an attempt on him with Hofmannswaldau;⁵⁹ but the sugary and windy tone of him hurt the tender poet-feeling of the Boy. With smiling dislike he pushed the Book away; and afterwards was wont to remark, when, at the new year, rustic congratulants with their foolish rhymes would too liberally present themselves, "Mother, there is a new Hofmannswaldau at the door!" Thus did the excellent Mother guide forward the soul of her docile Boy, with Bible-passages and Church-symbols, with tales, histories and poems, into gradual form and stature. Never forgetting, withal, to awaken and nourish his sense for the beauties of Nature. Before long, Nature had become his dearest abode; and only love of that could sometimes tempt him to little abridgments of school-hours. Often, in the pretty region of Lorch, he wished the Sun goodnight in open song; or with childish pathos summoned Stuttgart's Painters to represent the wondrous formation and glorious colouring of the sunset clouds. If, in such a humour, a poor man met him, his overflowing little heart would impel him to the most active pity; and he liberally gave away whatever he had by him and thought he could dispense with. The Father, who, as above indicated, never could approve or even endure such unreasonable giving-up of one's feelings to effeminate impressions, was apt to intervene on these occasions, even with manual punishment,—unless the Mother were at hand to plead the little culprit off.

'But nothing did the Mother forward with more eagerness, by every opportunity, than the kindling inclination of her Son to become a Preacher; which even showed itself in his sports. Mother or Sister had to put a little cowl on his head, and pin round him by way of surplice a bit of black apron; then would he mount a chair and begin earnestly to preach; ranging together in his own way, not without some traces of coherency, all that he had retained from teaching and church-visiting in this kind, and interweaving it with verses of songs. The Mother, who listened attentively and with silent joy, put a higher meaning into this childish play; and, in thought, saw her Son already stand in the Pulpit, and work, rich in blessings, in a spiritual office. The spiritual profession was at that time greatly esteemed, and gave promise of an honourable existence. Add to this, that the course of studies settled for young Würtemberg Theologians not only offered important pecuniary furtherances and advantages, but also morally the fewest dangers. And thus the prudent and withal pious Father, too, saw no reason to object to this inclination of the Son and wish of the Mother.

'It had almost happened, however, that the Latin School, in Ludwigsburg (where our Fritz received the immediately preparatory teaching for his calling) had quite disgusted him with his destination for theology. The Teacher of Religion in the Institute, a narrow-minded, angry-tempered Pietist,' as we have seen, 'used the sad method of tormenting his scholars with continual rigorous, altogether soulless, drillings and trainings in matters of mere creed; nay he threatened often to whip them thoroughly, if, in the repetition of the catechism, a single word were wrong. And thus to the finely-sensitive Boy instruction was making hateful to him what domestic influences had made dear. Yet these latter did outweigh and overcome, in the end; and he remained faithful to his purpose of following a spiritual career.

'When young Schiller, after the completion of his course at the Latin School, 1777, was to be confirmed, his Mother and her Husband came across to Ludwigsburg the day before that solemn ceremony. Just on their arrival, she saw her Son wandering idle and unconcerned about the streets; and impressively represented to him how greatly his indifference to the highest and most solemn transaction of his young life troubled her. Struck and affected hereby, the Boy withdrew; and, after a few hours, handed to his Parents a German Poem, expressive of his feelings over the approaching renewal of his baptismal covenant. The Father, who either hadn't known the occasion of this, or had looked upon his Son's idling on the street with less severe eyes, was highly astonished, and received him mockingly with the question, "Hast thou lost thy senses, Fritz?" The Mother, on the other hand, was visibly rejoiced at that poetic outpouring, and with good cause. For, apart from all other views of the matter, she recognised in it how firmly her Son's inclination was fixed on the study of Theology.'—(This anecdote, if it were of any moment whatever, appears to be a little doubtful.)

'The painfuler, therefore, was it to the Mother's heart when her Son, at the inevitable entrance into the Karl's School, had to give-up Theology; and renounce withal, for a long time, if not forever, her farther guidance and influence. But she was too pious not to recognise by degrees, in this change also, a Higher Hand; and could trustfully expect the workings of the same. Besides, her Son clung so tenderly to her, that at least there was no separation of him from the Mother's heart to be dreaded. The heart-warm attachment of childish years to the creed taught him by his Mother might, and did, vanish; but not the attachment to his Mother herself whose dear image often enough charmed back the pious sounds and forms of early days, and for a time scared away doubts and unbelief.

'Years came and went; and Schiller, at last, about the end of 1780, stept out of the Academy, into the actual world, which he as yet knew only by hearsay. Delivered from that long unnatural constraint of body and spirit, he gave free course to his fettered inclinations; and sought, as in Poetry so also in Life, unlimited freedom! The tumults of passion and youthful buoyancy, after so long an imprisonment, had their sway; and embarrassments in money, their natural consequence, often brought him into very sad moods.

'In this season of time, so dangerous for the moral purity of the young man, his Mother again was his good Genius; a warning and request, in her soft tone of love sufficed to recall youthful levity within the barriers again, and restore the balance. She anxiously contrived, too, that the Son, often and willingly, visited his Father's house. Whenever Schiller had decided to give himself a good day, he wandered out with some friend as far as Solitüde.' (Only some four or five miles.) '"What a baking and a roasting then went on by that good soul," says one who witnessed it, "for the dear Prodigy of a Son and the comrade who had come with him; for whom the good Mother never could do enough! Never have I seen a better maternal heart, a more excellent, more domestic, more womanly woman."

'The admiring recognition which the Son had already found among his youthful friends, and in wider circles, was no less grateful to her heart than the gradual perception that his powerful soul, welling forth from the interior to the outward man, diffused itself into his very features, and by degrees even advantageously altered the curvatures and the form of his body. His face about this time got rid of its freckles and irregularities of skin; and strikingly improved, moreover, by the circumstance that the hitherto rather drooping nose gradually acquired its later aquiline form. And withal, the youthful Poet, with the growing consciousness of his strength and of his worth, assumed an imposing outward attitude; so that a witty Stuttgart Lady, whose house Schiller often walked past, said of him: "Regiment's Dr. Schiller steps out as if the Duke were one of his inferior servants!"

'The indescribable impression which the Robbers, the gigantic first-born of a Karl's Scholar, made in Stuttgart, communicated itself to the Mother too; innocently she gave herself up to the delight of seeing her Son's name wondered at and celebrated; and was, in her Mother-love, inventive enough to overcome all doubts and risks which threatened to dash her joy. By Christophine's mediations, and from the Son himself as well, she learned many a disquieting circumstance, which for the present had to be carefully concealed from her Husband; but nothing whatever could shake her belief in her Son and his talent. Without murmur, with faithful trust in God, she resigned herself even to the bitter necessity of losing for a long time her only Son; having once got to see, beyond disputing, that his purpose was firm to withdraw himself by flight from the Duke's despotic interference with his poetical activity as well as with his practical procedures; and that this purpose of his was rigorously demanded by the circumstances. Yet a sword went through her soul when Schiller, for the last time, appeared at Solitüde, secretly to take leave of her.' Her feelings on this tragic occasion have been described above; and may well be pictured as among the painfulest, tenderest and saddest that a Mother's heart could have to bear. Our Author continues:

'In reality, it was to the poor Mother a hard and lamentable time. Remembrance of the lately bright and safe-looking situation, now suddenly rent asunder and committed to the dubious unknown; anxiety about their own household and the fate of her Son; the Father's just anger, and perhaps some tacit self-reproach that she had favoured a dangerous game by keeping it concealed from her honest-hearted Husband,—lay like crushing burdens on her heart. And if many a thing did smooth itself, and many a thing, which at first was to be feared, did not take place, one thing remained fixed continually,—painful anxiety about her Son. To the afflicted Mother, in this heavy time, Frau von Wolzogen devoted the most sincere and beneficent sympathy; a Lady of singular goodness of heart, who, during Schiller's eight hidden months at Bauerbach, frequently went out to see his Family at Solitüde. By her oral reports about Schiller, whom she herself several times visited at Bauerbach, his Parents were more soothed than by his own somewhat excited Letters. With reference to this magnanimous service of friendship, Schiller wrote to her at Stuttgart in February 1783: "A Letter to my Parents is getting on its way; yet, much as I had to speak of you, I have said nothing whatever" (from prudent motives) "of your late appearance here, or of the joyful moments of our conversation together. You yourself still, therefore, have all that to tell, and you will presumably find a pair of attentive hearers." Frau von Wolzogen ventured also to apply to a high court lady, Countess von Hohenheim' (Duke's finale in the illicit way, whom he at length wedded), 'personally favourable to Schiller, and to direct her attention, before all, upon the heavy-laden Parents. Nor was this without effect. For the Countess's persuasion seems essentially to have contributed to the result that Duke Karl, out of respect for the deserving Father, left the evasion of his own Pupil unpunished.

'It must, therefore, have appeared to the still-agitated Mother, who reverenced the Frau von Wolzogen as her helpful guardian, a flagrant piece of ingratitude, when she learnt that her Son was allowing himself to be led into a passionate love for the blooming young Daughter of his Benefactress. She grieved and mourned in secret to see him exposed to new storms; foreseeing clearly, in this passion, a ready cause for his removal from Bauerbach. To such agitations her body was no longer equal; a creeping, eating misery undermined her health. She wrote to her Son at Mannheim, with a soft shadow of reproof, that in this year, since his absence, she had become ten years older in health and looks. Not long after, she had actually to take to bed, because of painful cramps, which, proceeding from the stomach, spread themselves over breast, head, back and loins. The medicines which the Son, upon express account of symptoms by the Father, prescribed for her, had no effect. By degrees, indeed, these cramps abated or left-off; but she tottered about in a state of sickness, years long: the suffering mind would not let the body come to strength. For though her true heart was filled with a pious love, which hopes all, believes and suffers all, yet she was neither blind to the faults of her Son, nor indifferent to the thought of seeing her Family's good repute and well-being threatened by his non-performances and financial confusions.

'With the repose and peace which the news of her Son's appointment to Jena, and intended marriage, had restored to his Family, there appeared also (beginning of 1790) an improvement to be taking place in the Mother's health. Learning this by a Letter from his Father, Schiller wrote back with lightened heart: "How welcome, dearest Father, was your last Letter to me, and how necessary! I had, the very day before, got from Christophine the sad news that my dearest Mother's state had grown so much worse; and what a blessed turn now has this weary sickness taken! If in the future regimen vitæ (diet arrangements) of my dearest Mother, there is strict care taken, her long and many sufferings, with the source of them, may be removed. Thanks to a merciful Providence, which saves and preserves for us the dear Mother of our youth. My soul is moved with tenderness and gratitude. I had to think of her as lost to us forever; and she has now been given back." In reference to his approaching marriage with Lottchen von Lengefeld, he adds, "How did it lacerate my heart to think that my dearest Mother might not live to see the happiness of her Son! Heaven bless you with thousandfold blessings, best Father, and grant to my dear Mother a cheerful and painless life!"

'Soon, however, his Mother again fell sick, and lay in great danger. Not till August following could the Father announce that she was saved, and from day to day growing stronger. The annexed history of the disorder seemed so remarkable to Schiller, that he thought of preparing it for the public; unless the Physician, Court-Doctor Consbruch, liked better to send it out in print himself. "On this point," says Schiller, "I will write to him by the first post; and give him my warmest thanks for the inestimable service he has done us all, by his masterly cure of our dear Mamma; and for his generous and friendly behaviour throughout." "How heartily, my dearest Parents," writes he farther, "did it rejoice us both" (this Letter is of 29th December; on the 20th February of that year he had been wedded to his Lotte), "this good news of the still-continuing improvement of our dearest Mother! With full soul we both of us join in the thanks which you give to gracious Heaven for this recovery; and our heart now gives way to the fairest hopes that Providence, which herein overtops our expectations, will surely yet prepare a joyful meeting for us all once more."

'Two years afterwards this hope passed into fulfilment. The Mother being now completely cured of her last disorder, there seized her so irresistible a longing for her Son, that even her hesitating Husband, anxious lest her very health should suffer, at last gave his consent to the far and difficult journey to Jena. On the 3d Sept. 1792, Schiller, in joyful humour, announces to his friend in Dresden, "Today I have received from home the very welcome tidings that my good Mother, with one of my Sisters, is to visit us here this month. Her arrival falls at a good time, when I hope to be free and loose from labour; and then we have ahead of us mere joyful undertakings." The Mother came in company with her youngest Daughter, bright little Nane, or Nanette; and surprised him two days sooner than, by the Letters from Solitüde, he had expected her. Unspeakable joy and sweet sorrow seized Mother and Son to feel themselves, after ten years of separation, once more in each other's arms. The long journey, bad weather and roads had done her no harm. "She has altered a little, in truth," writes he to Körner, "from what she was ten years ago; but after so many sicknesses and sorrows, she still has a healthy look. It rejoices me much that things have so come about, that I have her with me again, and can be a joy to her."

'The Mother likewise soon felt herself at home and happy in the trusted circle of her children; only too fast flew-by the beautiful and happy days, which seemed to her richly to make amends for so many years of sorrows and cares. Especially it did her heart good to see for herself what a beneficent influence the real and beautiful womanhood of her Daughter-in-law exercised upon her Son. Daily she learnt to know the great advantages of mind and heart in her; daily she more deeply thanked God that for her Son, who, on account even of his weak health, was not an altogether convenient Husband, there had been so tender-hearted and so finely-cultivated a Wife given him as life-companion. The conviction that the domestic happiness of her Son was secure contributed essentially also to alleviate the pain of departure.

'Still happier days fell to her when Schiller, stirred up by her visit, came the year after, with his Wife, to Swabia; and lived there from August 1793 till May 1794. It was a singular and as if providential circumstance, which did not escape the pious Mother, that Schiller, in the same month in which he had, eleven years ago, hurried and in danger, fled out of Stuttgart to Ludwigsburg, should now in peace and without obstruction come, from Heilbronn by the same Ludwigsburg, to the near neighbourhood of his Parents. With bitter tears of sorrow, her eye had then followed the fugitive, in his dark trouble and want of everything; with sweet tears of joy she now received her fame-crowned Son, whom God, through sufferings and mistakes and wanderings, had led to happiness and wisdom. The birth of the Grandson gave to her life a new charm, as if of youth returned. She felt herself highly favoured that God had spared her life to see her dear Son's first-born with her own eyes. It was a touching spectacle to see the Grandmother as she sat by the cradle of the little "Gold Son," and listened to every breath-drawing of the child; or when, with swelling heart, she watched the approaching steps of her Son, and observed his true paternal pleasure over his first-born.

'Well did the excellent Grandmother deserve such refreshment of heart; for all-too soon there came again upon her troublous and dark days. Schiller had found her stronger and cheerfuler than on her prior visit to Jena; and had quitted his Home-land with the soothing hope that his good Mother would reach a long and happy age. Nor could he have the least presentiment of the events which, three years later, burst-in, desolating and destroying, upon his family, and brought the health and life of his dear Mother again into peril. It is above stated, in our sketch of the Husband, in what extraordinary form the universal public misery, under which, in 1796, all South Germany was groaning, struck the Schiller Family at Solitüde. Already on the 21st March of this year, Schiller had written to his Father, "How grieved I am for our good dear Mother, on whom all manner of sorrows have stormed-down in this manner! But what a mercy of God it is, too, that she still has strength left not to sink under these circumstances, but to be able still to afford you so much help! Who would have thought, six or seven years ago, that she, who was so infirm and exhausted, would now be serving you all as support and nurse? In such traits I recognise a good Providence which watches over us; and my heart is touched by it to the core."

'Meanwhile the poor Mother's situation grew ever frightfuler from day to day; and it needed her extraordinary strength of religious faith to keep her from altogether sinking under the pains, sorrows and toils, which she had for so many weeks to bear all alone, with the help only of a hired maid. The news of such misery threw Schiller into the deepest grief. He saw only one way of sending comfort and help to his poor Mother, and immediately adopted it; writing to his eldest Sister in Meiningen, as follows:

"Thou too wilt have heard, dearest Sister, that Luise has fallen seriously ill; and that our poor dear Mother is thereby robbed of all consolation. If Luise's case were to grow worse, or our Father's even, our poor Mother would be left entirely forsaken. Such misery would be unspeakable. Canst thou make it possible, think'st thou, that thy strength could accomplish such a thing? If so, at once make the journey thither. What it costs I will pay with joy. Reinwald might accompany thee; or, if he did not like that, come over to me here, where I would brother-like take care of him.

"Consider, my dear Sister, that Parents, in such extremity of need, have the justest claim upon their children for help. O God, why am not I myself in such health as in my journey thither three years ago! Nothing should have hindered me from hastening to them; but that I have scarcely gone over the threshold for a year past makes me so weak that I either could not stand the journey, or should fall down into sickness myself in that afflicted house. Alas, I can do nothing for them but help with money; and, God knows, I do that with joy. Consider that our dear Mother, who has held up hitherto with an admirable courage, must at last break down under so many sorrows. I know thy childlike loving heart, I know the perfect fairness and equitable probity of my Brother-in-law. Both these facts will teach you better than I under the circumstances. Salute him cordially.—Thy faithful Brother,

"Schiller."

Christophine failed not to go, as we saw above. 'From the time of her arrival there, no week passed without Schiller's writing home; and his Letters much contributed to strengthen and support the heavy-laden Mother. The assurance of being tenderly loved by such a Son was infinitely grateful to her; she considered him as a tried faithful friend, to whom one, without reluctance, yields his part in one's own sorrows. Schiller thus expressed himself on this matter in a Letter to Christophine of 9th May. "The last Letter of my dear good Mother has deeply affected me. Ah, how much has this good Mother already undergone; and with what patience and courage has she borne it! How touching is it that she opened her heart to me; and what woe was mine that I cannot immediately comfort and soothe her! Hadst thou not gone, I could not have stayed here. The situation of our dear ones was horrible; so solitary, without help from loving friends, and as if forsaken by their two children, living far away! I dare not think of it. What did not our good Mother do for her Parents; and how greatly has she deserved the like from us! Thou wilt comfort her, dear Sister; and me thou wilt find heartily ready for all that thou canst propose to me. Salute our dear Parents in the tenderest way, and tell them that their Son feels their sorrows."

'The excellent Christophine did her utmost in these days of sorrow. She comforted her Mother, and faithfully nursed her Father to his last breath; nay she saved him and the house, with great presence of mind, on a sudden inburst of French soldiers. Nor did she return to Meiningen till all tumult of affairs was past, and the Mother was again a little composed. And composure the Mother truly needed; for in a short space she had seen a hopeful Daughter and a faithful Husband laid in their graves; and by the death of her Husband a union severed which, originating in mutual affection, had for forty-seven years been blessed with the same mutual feeling. To all which in her position was now added the doubly-pressing care about her future days. Here, however, the Son so dear to her interposed with loving readiness, and the tender manner natural to him:

"You, dear Mother," he writes, "must now choose wholly for yourself what your way of life is to be; and let there be, I charge you, no care about me or others in your choice. Ask yourself where you would like best to live,—here with me, or with Christophine, or in our native country with Luise. Whithersoever your choice falls, there will we provide the means. For the present, of course, in the circumstances given, you would remain in Würtemberg a little while; and in that time all would be arranged. I think you might pass the winter months most easily at Leonberg" (pleasant Village nearest to Solitüde); "and then with the Spring you would come with Luise to Meiningen; where, however, I would expressly advise that you had a household of your own. But of all this, more next time. I would insist upon your coming here to me, if I did not fear things would be too foreign and too unquiet for you. But were you once in Meiningen, we will find means enough to see each other, and to bring your dear Grandchildren to you. It were a great comfort, dearest Mother, at least to know you, for the first three or four weeks after Christophine's departure, among people of your acquaintance; as the sole company of our Luise would too much remind you of times that are gone. But should there be no Pension granted by the Duke, and the Sale of Furniture, &c. did not detain you too long, you might perhaps travel with both the Sisters to Meiningen; and there compose yourself in the new world so much the sooner. All that you need for a convenient life must and shall be yours, dear Mother. It shall be henceforth my care that no anxiety on that head be left you. After so many sorrows, the evening of your life must be rendered cheerful, or at least peaceful; and I hope you will still, in the bosom of your Children and Grandchildren, enjoy many a good day." In conclusion, he bids her send him everything of Letters and MSS. which his dear Father left; hereby to fulfil his last wish; which also shall have its uses to his dear Mother.

'The Widow had a Pension granted by the Duke, of 200 gulden' (near 20l.); 'and therein a comfortable proof that official people recognised the worth of her late Husband, and held him in honour. She remained in her native country; and lived the next three years, according to her Son's counsel, with Luise in the little village of Leonberg, near to Solitüde, where an arrangement had been made for her. Here a certain Herr Roos, a native of Würtemberg, had made some acquaintance with her, in the winter 1797-8; to whom we owe the following sketch of portraiture. "She was a still-agreeable old person of sixty-five or six, whose lean wrinkly face still bespoke cheerfulness and kindliness. Her thin hair was all gray; she was of short" (middle) "stature, and her attitude slightly stooping; she had a pleasant tone of voice; and her speech flowed light and cheerful. Her bearing generally showed native grace, and practical acquaintance with social life."

'Towards the end of 1799, there opened to the Mother a new friendly outlook in the marriage of her Luise to the young Parson, M. Frankh, in Clever-Sulzbach, a little town near Heilbronn. The rather as the worthy Son-in-law would on no account have the Daughter separated from the Mother.' Error on Saupe's part. The Mother Schiller continued to occupy her own house at Leonberg till near the end of her life; she naturally made frequent little visits to Clever-Sulzbach; and her death took place there.⁶⁰ 'Shortly before the marriage, Schiller wrote, heartily wishing Mother and Sister happiness in this event. It would be no small satisfaction to his Sister, he said, that she could lodge and wait upon her good dear Mother in a well-appointed house of her own; to his Mother also it must be a great comfort to see her children all settled, and to live up again in a new generation.

'Almost contemporary with the removal of the Son from Jena to Weimar was the Mother's with her Daughter to Clever-Sulzbach. The peaceful silence which now environed them in their rural abode had the most salutary influence both on her temper of mind and on her health; all the more as Daughter and Son-in-law vied with each other in respectful attention to her. The considerable distance from her Son, when at times it fell heavy on her, she forgot in reading his Letters; which were ever the unaltered expression of the purest and truest child-love. She forgot it too, as often, over the immortal works out of which his powerful spirit spoke to her. She lived to hear the name of Friedrich Schiller celebrated over all Germany with reverent enthusiasm; and ennobled by the German People sooner and more gloriously than an Imperial Patent could do it. Truly a Mother that has had such joys in her Son is a happy one; and can and may say, "Lord, now let me depart in peace; I have lived enough!"

'In the beginning of the year 1802, Schiller's Mother again fell ill. Her Daughter Luise hastened at once to Stuttgart, where she then chanced to be, and carried her home to Clever-Sulzbach, to be under her own nursing. So soon as Schiller heard of this, he wrote, in well-meant consideration of his Sister's frugal economies, to Dr. Hoven, a friend of his youth at Ludwigsburg; and empowered him to take his Mother over thither, under his own medical care: he, Schiller, would with pleasure pay all that was necessary for lodging and attendance. But the Mother stayed with her Daughter; wrote, however, in her last Letter to Schiller: "Thy unwearied love and care for me God reward with thousandfold love and blessings! Ah me! another such Son there is not in the world!" Schiller, in his continual anxiety about the dear Patient, had his chief solace in knowing her to be in such tender hands; and he wrote at once, withal, to his Sister: "Thou wilt permit me also that on my side I try to do something to lighten these burdens for thee. I therefore make this agreement with my Bookseller Cotta that he shall furnish my dear Mother with the necessary money to make good, in a convenient way, the extra outlays which her illness requires."

'Schiller's hope, supported by earlier experiences, that kind Nature would again help his Mother, did not find fulfilment. On the contrary, her case grew worse; she suffered for months the most violent pains; and was visibly travelling towards Death. Two days before her departure, she had the Medallion of her Son handed down to her from the wall; and pressed it to her heart; and, with tears, thanked God, who had given her such good children. On the 29th April 1802, she passed away, in the 69th year of her age. Schiller, from the tenor of the last news received, had given up all hope; and wrote, in presentiment of the bitter loss, to his Sister Frankh at Clever-Sulzbach:

"Thy last letter, dearest Sister, leaves me without hope of our dear Mother. For a fortnight past I have looked with terror for the tidings of her departure; and the fact that thou hast not written in that time, is a ground of fear, not of comfort. Alas! under her late circumstances, life was no good to her more; a speedy and soft departure was the one thing that could be wished and prayed for. But write me, dear Sister, when thou hast recovered thyself a little from these mournful days. Write me minutely of her condition and her utterances in the last hours of her life. It comforts and composes me to busy myself with her, and to keep the dear image of my Mother living before me.

"And so they are both gone from us, our dear Parents; and we Three alone remain. Let us be all the nearer to each other, dear Sister; and believe always that thy Brother, though so far away from thee and thy Sister, carries you both warmly in his heart; and in all the accidents of this life will eagerly meet you with his brotherly love.

"But I can write no more today. Write me a few words soon. I embrace thee and thy dear Husband with my whole heart; and thank him again for all the love he has shown our departed Mother.

"Your true Brother,

"Schiller."

'Soon after this Letter, he received from Frankh, his Brother-in-law, the confirmation of his sad anticipations. From his answer to Frankh we extract the following passage: "May Heaven repay with rich interest the dear Departed One all that she has suffered in life, and done for her children! Of a truth she deserved to have loving children; for she was a good Daughter to her suffering necessitous Parents; and the childlike solicitude she always had for them well deserved the like from us. You, my dear Brother-in-law, have shared the assiduous care of my Sister for Her that is gone; and acquired thereby the justest claim upon my brotherly love. Alas, you had already given your spiritual support and filial service to my late Father, and taken on yourself the duties of his absent Son. How cordially I thank you! Never shall I think of my departed Mother without, at the same time, blessing the memory of him who alleviated so kindly the last days of her life." He then signifies the wish to have, from the effects of his dear Mother, something that, without other worth, will remain a continual memorial of her. And was in effect heartily obliged to his Brother, who sent him a ring which had been hers. "It is the most precious thing that he could have chosen for me," writes he to Luise; "and I will keep it as a sacred inheritance." Painfully had it touched him, withal, that the day of his entering his new house at Weimar had been the death-day of his Mother. He noticed this singular coincidence, as if in mournful presentiment of his own early decease, as a singular concatenation of events by the hand of Destiny.

'A Tree and a plain stone Cross, with the greatly-comprehensive short inscription, "Here rests Schiller's Mother," now mark her grave in Clever-Sulzbach Churchyard.'

III. THE SISTERS

Saupe has a separate Chapter on each of the three Sisters of Schiller; but most of what concerns them, especially in relation to their Brother, has been introduced incidentally above. Besides which, Saupe's flowing pages are too long for our space; so that instead of translating, henceforth, we shall have mainly to compile from Saupe and others, and faithfully abridge.

Christophine (born 4 Sept. 1757; married 'June 1786;' died 31 August 1847). ⁶¹

Till Schiller's flight, in which what endless interest and industries Christophine had we have already seen, the young girls,—Christophine 25, Luise 16, Nanette a rosy little creature of 5,—had known no misfortune; nor, except Christophine's feelings on the death of the two little Sisters, years ago, no heavy sorrow. At Solitüde, but for the general cloud of anxiety and grief about their loved and gifted Brother and his exile, their lives were of the peaceablest description: diligence in household business, sewing, spinning, contented punctuality in all things; in leisure hours eager reading (or at times, on Christophine's part, drawing and painting, in which she attained considerable excellence), and, as choicest recreation, walks amid the flourishing Nurseries, Tree-avenues, and fine solid industries and forest achievements of Papa. Mention is made of a Cavalry Regiment stationed at Solitüde; the young officers of which, without society in that dull place, and with no employment except parade, were considerably awake to the comely Jungfers Schiller and their promenadings in those pleasant woods: one Lieutenant of them (afterwards a Colonel, 'Obrist von Miller of Stuttgart') is said to have manifested honourable aspirations and intentions towards Christophine,—which, however, and all connection with whom or his comrades, the rigorously prudent Father strictly forbade; his piously obedient Daughters, Christophine it is rather thought with some regret, immediately conforming. A Portrait of this Von Miller, painted by Christophine, still exists, it would appear, among the papers of the Schillers.⁶²

The great transaction of her life, her marriage with Reinwald, Court Librarian of Meiningen, had its origin in 1783; the fruit of that forced retreat of Schiller's to Bauerbach, and of the eight months he spent there, under covert, anonymously and in secret, as 'Dr. Ritter,' with Reinwald for his one friend and adviser. Reinwald, who commanded the resources of an excellent Library, and of a sound understanding, long seriously and painfully cultivated, was of essential use to Schiller; and is reckoned to be the first real guide or useful counsellor he ever had in regard to Literature. One of Christophine's Letters to her Brother, written at her Father's order, fell by accident on Reinwald's floor, and was read by him,—awakening in his over-clouded, heavy-laden mind a gleam of hope and aspiration. "This wise, prudent, loving-hearted and judicious young woman, of such clear and salutary principles of wisdom as to economics too, what a blessing she might be to me as Wife in this dark, lonely home of mine!" Upon which hint he spake; and Schiller, as we saw above, who loved him well, but knew him to be within a year or two of fifty, always ailing in health, taciturn, surly, melancholy, and miserably poor, was rebuked by Papa for thinking it questionable. We said, it came about all the same. Schiller had not yet left Mannheim for the second and last time, when, in 1784, Christophine paid him a visit, escorted thither by Reinwald; who had begged to have that honour allowed him; having been at Solitüde, and, either there or on his road to Mannheim, concluded his affair. Streicher, an eyewitness of this visit, says, "The healthy, cheerful and blooming Maiden had determined to share her future lot with a man whose small income and uncertain health seemed to promise little joy. Nevertheless her reasons were of so noble a sort, that she never repented, in times following, this sacrifice of her fancy to her understanding, and to a Husband of real worth."⁶³ They were married "June 1786;" and for the next thirty, or indeed, in all, sixty years, Christophine lived in her dark new home at Meiningen; and never, except in that melancholy time of sickness, mortality and war, appears to have seen Native Land and Parents again.

What could have induced, in the calm and well-discerning Christophine, such a resolution, is by no means clear; Saupe, with hesitation, seems to assign a religious motive, "the desire of doing good." Had that abrupt and peremptory dismissal of Lieutenant Miller perhaps something to do with it? Probably her Father's humour on the matter, at all times so anxious and zealous to see his Daughters settled, had a chief effect. It is certain, Christophine consulted her Parish Clergyman on the affair; and got from him, as Saupe shows us, an affirmatory or at least permissive response. Certain also that she summoned her own best insight of all kinds to the subject, and settled it calmly and irrevocably with whatever faculty was in her.

To the candid observer Reinwald's gloomy ways were not without their excuse. Scarcely above once before this, in his now longish life, had any gleam of joy or success shone on him, to cheer the strenuous and never-abated struggle. His father had been Tutor to the Prince of Meiningen, who became Duke afterwards, and always continued to hold him in honour. Father's death had taken place in 1751, young Reinwald then in his fourteenth year. After passing with distinction his three-years curriculum at Jena, Reinwald returned to Meiningen, expecting employment and preferment;—the rather perhaps as his Mother's bit of property got much ruined in the Seven-Years War then raging. Employment Reinwald got, but of the meanest Kanzlist (Clerkship) kind; and year after year, in spite of his merits, patient faithfulness and undeniable talent, no preferment whatever. At length, however, in 1762, the Duke, perhaps enlightened by experience as to Reinwald, or by personal need of such a talent, did send him as Geheimer Kanzlist (kind of Private Secretary) to Vienna, with a view to have from him reports "about politics and literary objects" there. This was an extremely enjoyable position for the young man; but it lasted only till the Duke's death, which followed within two years. Reinwald was then immediately recalled by the new Duke (who, I think, had rather been in controversy with his Predecessor), and thrown back to nearly his old position; where, without any regard had to his real talents and merits, he continued thirteen years, under the title of Consistorial Kanzlist; and, with the miserablest fraction of yearly pay, 'carried on the slavish, spirit-killing labours required of him.' In 1776,—uncertain whether as promotion or as mere abridgment of labour,—he was placed in the Library as now; that is to say, had become Sub-Librarian, at a salary of about 15l., with all the Library duties to do; an older and more favoured gentleman, perhaps in lieu of pension, enjoying the Upper Office, and doing none of the work.

Under these continual pressures and discouragements poor Reinwald's heart had got hardened into mutinous indignation, and his health had broken down: so that, by this time, he was noted in his little world as a solitary, taciturn, morose and gloomy man; but greatly respected by the few who knew him better, as a clear-headed, true and faithful person, much distinguished by intellectual clearness and veracity, by solid scholarly acquirements and sterling worth of character. To bring a little help or cheerful alleviation to such a down-pressed man, if a wise and gentle Christophine could accomplish it, would surely be a bit of well-doing; but it was an extremely difficult one!

The marriage was childless; not, in the first, or in any times of it, to be called unhappy; but, as the weight of years was added, Christophine's problem grew ever more difficult. She was of a compassionate nature, and had a loving, patient and noble heart; prudent she was; the skilfulest and thriftiest of financiers; could well keep silence, too, and with a gentle stoicism endure much small unreason. Saupe says withal, 'Nobody liked a laugh better, or could laugh more heartily than she, even in her extreme old age.'—Christophine herself makes no complaint, on looking back upon her poor Reinwald, thirty years after all was over. Her final record of it is: "for twenty-nine years we lived contentedly together." But her rugged hypochondriac of a Husband, morbidly sensitive to the least interruption of his whims and habitudes, never absent from their one dim sitting-room, except on the days in which he had to attend at the Library, was in practice infinitely difficult to deal with; and seems to have kept her matchless qualities in continual exercise. He belonged to the class called in Germany Stubengelehrten (Closet Literary-men), who publish little or nothing that brings them profit, but are continually poring and studying. Study was the one consolation he had in life; and formed his continual employment to the end of his days. He was deep in various departments, Antiquarian, Philological, Historical; deep especially in Gothic philology, in which last he did what is reckoned a real feat,—he, Reinwald, though again it was another who got the reward. He had procured somewhere, 'a Transcript of the famous Anglo-Saxon Poem Heliand (Saviour) from the Cotton Library in England,' this he, with unwearied labour and to great perfection, had at last got ready for the press; Translation, Glossary, Original all in readiness;—but could find no Publisher, nobody that would print without a premium. Not to earn less than nothing by his labour, he sent the Work to the München Library; where, in after years, one Schmeller found it, and used it for an editio princeps of his own. Sic vos non vobis; heavy-laden Reinwald!⁶⁴—

To Reinwald himself Christophine's presence and presidency in his dim household were an infinite benefit,—though not much recognised by him, but accepted rather as a natural tribute due to unfortunate down-pressed worth, till towards the very end, when the singular merit of it began to dawn upon him, like the brightness of the Sun when it is setting. Poor man, he anxiously spent the last two weeks of his life in purchasing and settling about a neat little cottage for Christophine; where accordingly she passed her long widowhood, on stiller terms, though not on less beneficent and humbly beautiful, than her marriage had offered.

Christophine, by pious prudence, faith in Heaven, and in the good fruits of real goodness even on Earth, had greatly comforted the gloomy, disappointed, pain-stricken man; enlightened his darkness, and made his poverty noble. Simplex munditiis might have been her motto in all things. Her beautiful Letters to her Brother are full of cheerful, though also, it is true, sad enough, allusions to her difficulties with Reinwald, and partial successes. Poor soul, her hopes, too, are gently turned sometimes on a blessed future, which might still lie ahead: of her at last coming, as a Widow, to live with her Brother, in serene affection, like that of their childhood together; in a calm blessedness such as the world held no other for her! But gloomy Reinwald survived bright Schiller for above ten years; and she had thirty more of lone widowhood, under limited conditions, to spend after him, still in a noble, humbly-admirable, and even happy and contented manner. She was the flower of the Schiller Sisterhood, though all three are beautiful to us; and in poor Nane, there is even something of poetic, and tragically pathetic. For one blessing, Christophine 'lived almost always in good health.' Through life it may be said of her, she was helpful to all about her, never hindersome to any; and merited, and had, the universal esteem, from high and low, of those she had lived among. At Meiningen, 31st August 1847, within a few days of her ninety-first year, without almost one day's sickness, a gentle stroke of apoplexy took her suddenly away, and so ended what may be called a Secular Saintlike existence, mournfully beautiful, wise and noble to all that had beheld it.

Nanette (born 8th September 1777, died 23d March 1796; age not yet 19)

Of Nanette we were told how, in 1792, she charmed her Brother and his Jena circle, by her recitations and her amiable enthusiastic nature; and how, next year, on Schiller's Swabian visit, his love of her grew to something of admiration, and practical hope of helping such a rich talent and noble heart into some clear development,—when, two years afterwards, death put, to the dear Nanette and his hopes about her, a cruel end. We are now to give the first budding-out of those fine talents and tendencies of poor Nanette, and that is all the history the dear little Being has. Saupe proceeds:

'Some two years after Schiller's flight, Nanette as a child of six or seven had, with her elder Sister Luise, witnessed the first representation of Schiller's Kabale und Liebe in the Stuttgart theatre. With great excitement, and breath held-in, she had watched the rolling-up of the curtain; and during the whole play no word escaped her lips; but the excited glance of her eyes, and her heightened colour, from act to act, testified her intense emotion. The stormy applause with which her Brother's Play was received by the audience made an indelible impression on her.

'The Players, in particular, had shone before her as in a magic light; the splendour of which, in the course of years, rather increased than diminished. The child's bright fancy loved to linger on those never-to-be-forgotten people, by whom her Brother's Poem had been led into her sight and understanding. The dawning thought, how glorious it might be to work such wonders herself, gradually settled, the more she read and heard of her dear Brother's poetic achievements, into the ardent but secret wish of being herself able to represent his Tragedies upon the stage. On her visit to Jena, and during her Brother's abode in Swabia, she was never more attentive than when Schiller spoke occasionally of the acting of his Pieces, or unfolded his opinion of the Player's Art.

'The wish of Nanette, secretly nourished in this manner, to be able, on the stage, which represents the world, to contribute to the glory of her Brother, seized her now after his return with such force and constancy, that Schiller's Sister-in-law, Caroline von Wolzogen, urged him to yield to the same; to try his Sister's talent; and if it was really distinguished, to let her enter this longed-for career. Schiller had no love for the Player Profession; but as, in his then influential connections in Weimar, he might steer clear of many a danger, he promised to think the thing over. And thus this kind and amiable protectress had the satisfaction of cheering Nanette's last months with the friendly prospect that her wishes might be fulfilled.—Schiller's hope, after a dialogue with Goethe on the subject, had risen to certainty, when with the liveliest sorrow he learnt that Nanette was ill of that contagious Hospital Fever, and, in a few days more, that she was gone forever.'⁶⁵

Beautiful Nanette; with such a softly-glowing soul, and such a brief tragically-beautiful little life! Like a Daughter of the rosy-fingered Morn; her existence all a sun-gilt soft auroral cloud, and no sultry Day, with its dusts and disfigurements, permitted to follow. Father Schiller seems, in his rugged way, to have loved Nanette best of them all; in an embarrassed manner, we find him more than once recommending her to Schiller's help, and intimating what a glorious thing for her, were it a possible one, education might be. He followed her in few months to her long home; and, by his own direction, 'was buried in the Churchyard at Gerlingen by her side.'

Luise (born 24th January 1766; married 20th October 1799; died 14th September 1836)

Of Luise's life too, except what was shown above, there need little be said. In the dismal pestilential days at Solitüde, while her Father lay dying, and poor Nanette caught the infection, Luise, with all her tender assiduities and household talent, was there; but, soon after Nanette's death, the fever seized her too; and she long lay dangerously ill in that forlorn household; still weak, but slowly recovering, when Christophine arrived.

The Father, a short while before his death, summoned to him that excellent young Clergyman, Frankh, who had been so unweariedly kind to them in this time of sickness when all neighbours feared to look in, To ask him what his intentions towards Luise were. It was in presence of the good old man that they made solemn promise to each other; and at Leonberg, where thenceforth the now-widowed Mother's dwelling was, they were formally betrothed; and some two years after that were married.

Her Mother's death, so tenderly watched over, took place at their Parsonage at Clever-Sulzbach, as we saw above. Frankh, about two years after, was promoted to a better living, Möckmühl by name; and lived there, a well-doing and respected Parson, till his death, in 1834; which Luise's followed in September of the second year afterwards. Their marriage lasted thirty-five years. Luise had brought him three children; and seems to have been, in all respects, an excellent Wife. She was ingenious in intellectuals as well as economics; had a taste for poetry; a boundless enthusiasm for her Brother; seems to have been an anxious Mother, often ailing herself but strenuously doing her best at all times.

A touching memorial of Luise is Schiller's last Letter to her, Letter of affectionate apology for long silence,—apology, and hope of doing better,—written only a few weeks before his own death. It is as follows:

"Weimar, 27th March 1805.

"Yes, it is a long time indeed, good dear Luise, since I have written to thee; but it was not for amusements that I forgot thee; it was because in this time I have had so many hard illnesses to suffer, which put me altogether out of my regular way; for many months I had lost all courage and cheerfulness, and given up all hope of my recovery. In such a humour one does not like to speak; and since then, on feeling myself again better, there was, after the long silence, a kind of embarrassment; and so it was still put off. But now, when I have been anew encouraged by thy sisterly love, I gladly join the thread again; and it shall, if God will, not again be broken.

"Thy dear Husband's promotion to Möckmühl, which I learned eight days ago from our Sister" (Christophine), "has given us great joy, not only because it so much improves your position, but also because it is so honourable a testimony for my dear Brother-in-law's deserts. May you feel yourselves right happy in these new relations, and right long enjoy them! We too are got thereby a few miles nearer you; and on a future journey to Franconia, which we are every year projecting, we may the more easily get over to you.

"How sorry am I, dear Sister, that thy health has suffered so much; and that thou wert again so unfortunate with thy confinement! Perhaps your new situation might permit you, this summer, to visit some tonic watering-place, which might do thee a great deal of good."—

"Of our Family here, my Wife will write thee more at large. Our Children, this winter, have all had chicken-pox; and poor little Emilie" (a babe of four months) "had much to suffer in the affair. Thank God, things are all come round with us again, and my own health too begins to confirm itself.

"A thousand times I embrace thee, dear Sister, and my dear Brother-in-law as well, whom I always wish from the heart to have more acquaintance with. Kiss thy Children in my name; may all go right happily with you, and much joy be in store! How would our dear Parents have rejoiced in your good fortune; and especially our dear Mother, had she been spared to see it! Adieu, dear Luise. With my whole soul,

"Thy faithful Brother,

"Schiller."

Schiller's tone and behaviour to his Sisters is always beautifully human and brotherlike, as here. Full of affection, sincerity and the warmest truest desire to help and cheer. The noble loving Schiller; so mindful always of the lowly, from his own wildly-dangerous and lofty path! He was never rich, poor rather always; but of a spirit royally munificent in these respects; never forgets the poor "birthdays" of his Sisters, whom one finds afterwards gratefully recognising their "beautiful dress" or the like!—

Of date some six weeks after this Letter to Luise, let us take from Eyewitnesses one glimpse of Schiller's own deathbed. It is the eighth day of his illness; his last day but one in this world:

'Morning of 8th May 1805.– —Schiller, on awakening from sleep, asked to see his youngest Child. The Baby' Emilie, spoken of above, 'was brought. He turned his head round; took the little hand in his, and, with an inexpressible look of love and sorrow, gazed into the little face; then burst into bitter weeping, hid his face among the pillows; and made a sign to take the child away.'—This little Emilie is now the Baroness von Gleichen, Co-editress with her Cousin Wolzogen of the clear and useful Book, Beziehungen, often quoted above. It was to that same Cousin Wolzogen's Mother (Caroline von Wolzogen, Authoress of the Biography), and in the course of this same day, that Schiller made the memorable response, "Calmer, and calmer."—'Towards evening he asked to see the Sun once more. The curtain was opened; with bright eyes and face he gazed into the beautiful sunset. It was his last farewell to Nature.

'Thursday 9th May. All the morning, his mind was wandering; he spoke incoherent words, mostly in Latin. About three in the afternoon, complete weakness came on; his breathing began to be interrupted. About four, he asked for naphtha, but the last syllable died on his tongue. He tried to write, but produced only three letters; in which, however, the character of his hand was still visible. Till towards six, no change. His Wife was kneeling at the bedside; he still pressed her offered hand. His Sister-in-law stood, with the Doctor, at the foot of the bed, and laid warm pillows on his feet, which were growing cold. There now darted, as it were, an electrical spasm over all his countenance; the head sank back; the profoundest repose transfigured his face. His features were as those of one softly sleeping,'—wrapt in hard-won Victory and Peace forevermore!⁶⁶—

APPENDIX I

NO. 1. PAGE 31.
DANIEL SCHUBART

The enthusiastic discontent so manifest in the Robbers has by some been in part attributed to Schiller's intercourse with Schubart. This seems as wise as the hypothesis of Gray's Alderman, who, after half a century of turtle-soup, imputed the ruin of his health to eating two unripe grapes: 'he felt them cold upon his stomach, the moment they were over; he never got the better of them.' Schiller, it appears, saw Schubart only once, and their conversation was not of a confidential kind. For any influence this interview could have produced upon the former, the latter could have merited no mention here: it is on other grounds that we refer to him. Schubart's history, not devoid of interest in itself, unfolds in a striking light the circumstances under which Schiller stood at present; and may serve to justify the violence of his alarms, which to the happy natives of our Island might otherwise appear pusillanimous and excessive. For these reasons we subjoin a sketch of it.

Schubart's character is not a new one in literature; nor is it strange that his life should have been unfortunate. A warm genial spirit; a glowing fancy, and a friendly heart; every faculty but diligence, and every virtue but 'the understrapping virtue of discretion:' such is frequently the constitution of the poet; the natural result of it also has frequently been pointed out, and sufficiently bewailed. This man was one of the many who navigate the ocean of life with 'more sail than ballast;' his voyage contradicted every rule of seamanship, and necessarily ended in a wreck.

Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart was born at Obersontheim in Swabia, on the 26th of April 1739. His father, a well-meaning soul, officiated there in the multiple capacity of schoolmaster, precentor, and curate; dignities which, with various mutations and improvements, he subsequently held in several successive villages of the same district. Daniel, from the first, was a thing of inconsistencies; his life proceeded as if by fits and starts. At school, for a while, he lay dormant: at the age of seven he could not read, and had acquired the reputation of a perfect dunce. But 'all at once,' says his biographer, 'the rind which enclosed his spirit started asunder;' and Daniel became the prodigy of the school! His good father determined to make a learned man of him: he sent him at the age of fourteen to the Nordlingen Lyceum, and two years afterwards to a similar establishment at Nürnberg. Here Schubart began to flourish with all his natural luxuriance; read classical and domestic poets; spouted, speculated; wrote flowing songs; discovered 'a decided turn for music,' and even composed tunes for the harpsichord! In short, he became an acknowledged genius: and his parents consented that he should go to Jena, and perform his cursus of Theology.

Schubart's purposes were not at all like the decrees of Fate: he set out towards Jena; and on arriving at Erlangen, resolved to proceed no farther, but perform his cursus where he was. For a time he studied well; but afterwards 'tumultuously,' that is, in violent fits, alternating with fits as violent of idleness and debauchery. He became a Bursche of the first water; drank and declaimed, rioted and ran in debt; till his parents, unable any longer to support such expenses, were glad to seize the first opening in his cursus, and recall him. He returned to them with a mind fevered by intemperance, and a constitution permanently injured; his heart burning with regret, and vanity, and love of pleasure; his head without habits of activity or principles of judgment, a whirlpool where fantasies and hallucinations and 'fragments of science' were chaotically jumbled to and fro. But he could babble college-latin; and talk with a trenchant tone about the 'revolutions of Philosophy.' Such accomplishments procured him pardon from his parents: the precentorial spirit of his father was more than reconciled on discovering that Daniel could also preach and play upon the organ. The good old people still loved their prodigal, and would not cease to hope in him.

As a preacher Schubart was at first very popular; he imitated Cramer; but at the same time manifested first-rate pulpit talents of his own. These, however, he entirely neglected to improve: presuming on his gifts and their acceptance, he began to 'play such fantastic tricks before high Heaven,' as made his audience sink to yawning, or explode in downright laughter. He often preached extempore; once he preached in verse! His love of company and ease diverted him from study: his musical propensities diverted him still farther. He had special gifts as an organist; but to handle the concordance and to make 'the heaving bellows learn to blow' were inconsistent things.

Yet withal it was impossible to hate poor Schubart, or even seriously to dislike him. A joyful, piping, guileless mortal, good nature, innocence of heart, and love of frolic beamed from every feature of his countenance; he wished no ill to any son of Adam. He was musical and poetical, a maker and a singer of sweet songs; humorous also, speculative, discursive; his speech, though aimless and redundant, glittered with the hues of fancy, and here and there with the keenest rays of intellect. He was vain, but had no touch of pride; and the excellencies which he loved in himself, he acknowledged and as warmly loved in others. He was a man of few or no principles, but his nervous system was very good. Amid his chosen comrades, a jug of indifferent beer and a pipe of tobacco could change the earth into elysium for him, and make his brethren demigods. To look at his laughing eyes, and his effulgent honest face, you were tempted to forget that he was a perjured priest, that the world had duties for him which he was neglecting. Had life been all a may-game, Schubart was the best of men, and the wisest of philosophers.

Unluckily it was not: the voice of Duty had addressed him in vain; but that of Want was more impressive. He left his father's house, and engaged himself as tutor in a family at Königsbronn. To teach the young idea how to shoot had few delights for Schubart: he soon gave up this place in favour of a younger brother; and endeavoured to subsist, for some time, by affording miscellaneous assistance to the clergy of the neighbouring villages. Ere long, preferring even pedagogy to starvation, he again became a teacher. The bitter morsel was sweetened with a seasoning of music; he was appointed not only schoolmaster but also organist of Geisslingen. A fit of diligence now seized him: his late difficulties had impressed him; and the parson of the place, who subsequently married Schubart's sister, was friendly and skilful enough to turn the impression to account. Had poor Schubart always been in such hands, the epithet 'poor' could never have belonged to him. In this little village-school he introduced some important reforms and improvements, and in consequence attracted several valuable scholars. Also for his own behoof, he studied honestly. His conduct here, if not irreprehensible, was at least very much amended. His marriage, in his twenty-fifth year, might have improved it still farther; for his wife was a good, soft-hearted, amiable creature, who loved him with her whole heart, and would have died to serve him.

But new preferments awaited Schubart, and with them new temptations. His fame as a musician was deservedly extending: in time it reached Ludwigsburg, and the Grand Duke of Würtemberg himself heard Schubart spoken of! The schoolmaster of Geisslingen was, in 1768, promoted to be organist and band-director in this gay and pompous court. With a bounding heart, he tossed away his ferula, and hastened to the scene, where joys for evermore seemed calling on him. He plunged into the heart of business and amusement. Besides the music which he taught and played, publicly and privately, with great applause, he gave the military officers instruction in various branches of science; he talked and feasted; he indited songs and rhapsodies; he lectured on History and the Belles Lettres. All this was more than Schubart's head could stand. In a little time he fell in debt; took up with virtuosi; began to read Voltaire, and talk against religion in his drink. From the rank of genius, he was fast degenerating into that of profligate: his affairs grew more and more embarrassed; and he had no gift of putting any order in them. Prudence was not one of Schubart's virtues; the nearest approximation he could make to it was now and then a little touch of cunning. His wife still loved him; loved him with that perverseness of affection, which increases in the inverse ratio of its requital: she had long patiently endured his follies and neglect, happy if she could obtain a transient hour of kindness from him. But his endless course of riot, and the straits to which it had reduced their hapless family, at length overcame her spirits: she grew melancholy, almost broken-hearted; and her father took her home to him, with her children, from the spendthrift who had been her ruin. Schubart's course in Ludwigsburg was verging to its close; his extravagance increased, and debts pressed heavier and heavier on him: for some scandal with a young woman of the place, he was cast into prison; and let out of it, with an injunction forthwith to quit the dominions of the Grand Duke.

Forlorn and homeless, here then was Schubart footing the hard highway, with a staff in his hand, and one solitary thaler in his purse, not knowing whither he should go. At Heilbronn, the Bürgermeister Wachs permitted him to teach his Bürgermeisterinn the harpsichord; and Schubart did not die of hunger. For a space of time he wandered to and fro, with numerous impracticable plans; now talking for his victuals; now lecturing or teaching music; kind people now attracted to him by his genius and misfortunes, and anon repelled from him by the faults which had abased him. Once a gleam of court-preferment revisited his path: the Elector Palatine was made acquainted with his gifts, and sent for him to Schwetzingen to play before him. His playing gratified the Electoral ear; he would have been provided for, had he not in conversation with his Highness happened to express a rather free opinion of the Mannheim Academy, which at that time was his Highness's hobby. On the instant of this luckless oversight, the door of patronage was slammed in Schubart's face, and he stood solitary on the pavement as before.

One Count Schmettau took pity on him; offered him his purse and home; both of which the way-worn wanderer was happy to accept. At Schmettau's he fell in with Baron Leiden, the Bavarian envoy, who advised him to turn Catholic, and accompany the returning embassy to Munich. Schubart hesitated to become a renegade; but departed with his new patron, upon trial. In the way, he played before the Bishop of Würzburg; was rewarded by his Princely Reverence with gold as well as praise; and arrived under happy omens at Munich. Here for a while fortune seemed to smile on him again. The houses of the great were thrown open to him; he talked and played, and fared sumptuously every day. He took serious counsel with himself about the great Popish question; now inclining this way, now that: he was puzzling which to choose, when Chance entirely relieved him of the trouble. 'A person of respectability' in Munich wrote to Würtemberg to make inquiries who or what this general favourite was; and received for answer, that the general favourite was a villain, and had been banished from Ludwigsburg for denying that there was a Holy Ghost!—Schubart was happy to evacuate Munich without tap of drum.

Once more upon the road without an aim, the wanderer turned to Augsburg, simply as the nearest city, and—set up a Newspaper! The Deutsche Chronik flourished in his hands; in a little while it had acquired a decided character for sprightliness and talent; in time it became the most widely circulated journal of the country. Schubart was again a prosperous man: his writings, stamped with the vigorous impress of his own genius, travelled over Europe; artists and men of letters gathered round him; he had money, he had fame; the rich and noble threw their parlours open to him, and listened with delight to his overflowing, many-coloured conversation. He wrote paragraphs and poetry; he taught music and gave concerts; he set up a spouting establishment, recited newly-published poems, read Klopstock's Messias to crowded and enraptured audiences. Schubart's evil genius seemed asleep, but Schubart himself awoke it. He had borne a grudge against the clergy, ever since his banishment from Ludwigsburg; and he now employed the facilities of his journal for giving vent to it. He criticised the priesthood of Augsburg; speculated on their selfishness and cant, and took every opportunity of turning them and their proceedings into ridicule. The Jesuits especially, whom he regarded as a fallen body, he treated with extreme freedom; exposing their deceptions, and holding up to public contumely certain quacks whom they patronised. The Jesuitic Beast was prostrate, but not dead: it had still strength enough to lend a dangerous kick to any one who came too near it. One evening an official person waited upon Schubart, and mentioned an arrest by virtue of a warrant from the Catholic Bürgermeister! Schubart was obliged to go to prison. The heads of the Protestant party made an effort in his favour: they procured his liberty, but not without a stipulation that he should immediately depart from Augsburg. Schubart asked to know his crime; but the Council answered him: "We have our reasons; let that satisfy you:" and with this very moderate satisfaction he was forced to leave their city.

But Schubart was now grown an adept in banishment; so trifling an event could not unhinge his equanimity. Driven out of Augsburg, the philosophic editor sought refuge in Ulm, where the publication of his journal had, for other reasons, already been appointed to take place. The Deutsche Chronik was as brilliant here as ever: it extended more and more through Germany; 'copies of it even came to London, Paris, Amsterdam, and Petersburg.' Nor had its author's fortune altered much; he had still the same employments, and remunerations, and extravagances; the same sort of friends, the same sort of enemies. The latter were a little busier than formerly: they propagated scandals; engraved caricatures, indited lampoons against him; but this he thought a very small matter. A man that has been three or four times banished, and as often put in prison, and for many years on the point of starving, will not trouble himself much about a gross or two of pasquinades. Schubart had his wife and family again beside him, he had money also to support them; so he sang and fiddled, talked and wrote, and 'built the lofty rhyme,' and cared no fig for any one.

But enemies, more fell than these, were lurking for the thoughtless Man of Paragraphs. The Jesuits had still their feline eyes upon him, and longed to have their talons in his flesh. They found a certain General Ried, who joined them on a quarrel of his own. This General Ried, the Austrian Agent at Ulm, had vowed inexpiable hatred against Schubart, it would seem, for a very slight cause indeed: once Schubart had engaged to play before him, and then finding that the harpsichord was out of order, had refused, flatly refused! The General's elevated spirit called for vengeance on this impudent plebeian; the Jesuits encouraged him; and thus all lay in eager watch. An opportunity ere long occurred. One week in 1778, there appeared in Schubart's newspaper an Extract of a Letter from Vienna, stating that 'the Empress Maria Theresa had been struck by apoplexy.' On reading which, the General made instant application to his Ducal Highness, requesting that the publisher of this 'atrocious libel' should be given up to him and 'sent to expiate his crime in Hungary,' by imprisonment—for life. The Duke desired his gallant friend to be at ease, for that he had long had his own eye on this man, and would himself take charge of him. Accordingly, a few days afterwards, Herr von Scholl, Comptroller of the Convent of Blaubeuren, came to Schubart with a multitude of compliments, inviting him to dinner, "as there was a stranger wishing to be introduced to him." Schubart sprang into the Schlitten with this wolf in sheep's clothing, and away they drove to Blaubeuren. Arrived here, the honourable Herr von Scholl left him in a private room, and soon returned with a posse of official Majors and Amtmen, the chief of whom advanced to Schubart, and declared him—an arrested man! The hapless Schubart thought it was a jest; but alas here was no jesting! Schubart then said with a composure scarcely to be looked for, that "he hoped the Duke would not condemn him unheard." In this too he was deceived; the men of office made him mount a carriage with them, and set off without delay for Hohenasperg. The Duke himself was there with his Duchess, when these bloodhounds and their prey arrived: the princely couple gazed from a window as the group went past them, and a fellow-creature took his farewell look of sun and sky!

If hitherto the follies of this man have cast an air of farce upon his sufferings, even when in part unmerited, such sentiments must now give place to that of indignation at his cruel and cold-blooded persecutors. Schubart, who never had the heart to hurt a fly, and with all his indiscretions, had been no man's enemy but his own, was conducted to a narrow subterraneous dungeon, and left, without book or pen, or any sort of occupation or society, to chew the cud of bitter thought, and count the leaden months as they passed over him, and brought no mitigation of his misery. His Serene Transparency of Würtemberg, nay the heroic General himself, might have been satisfied, could they have seen him: physical squalor, combined with moral agony, were at work on Schubart; at the end of a year, he was grown so weak, that he could not stand except by leaning on the walls of his cell. A little while, and he bade fair to get beyond the reach of all his tyrants. This, however, was not what they wanted. The prisoner was removed to a wholesome upper room; allowed the use of certain books, the sight of certain company, and had, at least, the privilege to think and breathe without obstruction. He was farther gratified by hearing that his wife and children had been treated kindly: the boys had been admitted to the Stuttgard school, where Schiller was now studying; to their mother there had been assigned a pension of two hundred gulden. Charles of Würtemberg was undoubtedly a weak and heartless man, but we know not that he was a savage one: in the punishment of Schubart, it is possible enough that he believed himself to be discharging an important duty to the world. The only subject of regret is, that any duty to the world, beyond the duty of existing inoffensively, should be committed to such hands; that men like Charles and Ried, endowed with so very small a fraction of the common faculties of manhood, should have the destiny of any living thing at their control.

Another mitigating circumstance in Schubart's lot was the character of his gaoler. This humane person had himself tasted the tender mercies of 'paternal' government; he knew the nature of a dungeon better even than his prisoner. 'For four years,' we are told, 'he had seen no human face; his scanty food had been lowered to him through a trap-door; neither chair nor table were allowed him, his cell was never swept, his beard and nails were left to grow, the humblest conveniences of civilised humanity were denied him!'⁶⁷ On this man affliction had produced its softening, not its hardening influence: he had grown religious, and merciful in heart; he studied to alleviate Schubart's hard fate by every means within his power. He spoke comfortingly to him; ministered to his infirmities, and, in spite of orders, lent him all his books. These, it is true, were only treatises on theosophy and mystical devotion; but they were the best he had; and to Schubart, in his first lonely dungeon, they afforded occupation and solace.

Human nature will accommodate itself to anything. The King of Pontus taught himself to eat poison: Schubart, cut out from intemperance and jollity, did not pine away in confinement and abstemiousness; he had lost Voltaire and gay company, he found delight in solitude and Jacob Böhm. Nature had been too good to him to let his misery in any case be unalloyed. The vague unguided ebullience of spirit, which had so often set the table in a roar, and made him the most fascinating of debauchees, was now mellowed into a cloudy enthusiasm, the sable of which was still copiously blended with rainbow colours. His brain had received a slight though incurable crack; there was a certain exasperation mixed with his unsettled fervour; but he was not wretched, often even not uncomfortable. His religion was not real; but it had reality enough for present purposes; he was at once a sceptic and a mystic, a true disciple of Böhm as well as of Voltaire. For afflicted, irresolute, imaginative men like Schubart, this is not a rare or altogether ineffectual resource: at the bottom of their minds they doubt or disbelieve, but their hearts exclaim against the slightest whisper of it; they dare not look into the fathomless abyss of Infidelity, so they cover it over with the dense and strangely-tinted smoke of Theosophy. Schubart henceforth now and then employed the phrases and figures of religion; but its principles had made no change in his theory of human duties: it was not food to strengthen the weakness of his spirit, but an opiate to stay its craving.