The jealous cadet who plots criminally against his more fortunate brother is common to both Leisewitz and Klinger, but in neither is he an intriguing villain. In 'Julius of Tarentum' Guido is really the more masterful man of the two. He despises his brother as a weakling and asserts no other claim than that of the strongest. In Klinger's play, as we have seen, everything is made to turn upon Guido's cankering doubt of his brother's seniority. One gets the impression that if the doubt could be settled by indisputable evidence in favor of Ferdinando, there would be no casus belli; the younger son would bow to the law of primogeniture and that would end the matter. Schiller, however, felt the need of a bolder contrast to his hero. The 'sublime criminal' required a colossal foil; and as equality with the sword was out of the question, the most obvious recourse was to pit natural depravity against natural greatness; scheming intellect against hot blood.

In working out his conception Schiller took counsel freely of Shakspere, whose name had now become for young Germany the symbol of all things great in dramatic writing. The first soliloquy of Franz Moor reminds one at once of Edmund in 'Lear', though there is none of the kind of borrowing which makes easy prey for the philologist. Both villains covet the wealth and station of a preferred brother; both make use of a specious obstetrical argument and both operate with forged letters. In general, however, the portrait of Franz was more influenced by Richard the Third than by Edmund, or Iago, or any of the other Shaksperian villains. Franz is the British Richard divested of his Shaksperian lordliness, transferred to a humbler sphere of action and provided with the mental outfit of an eighteenth-century philosophe, as seen by hostile critics. Both descant on their own deformity and confide to the public their villainous designs. But while Richard speaks in a tone of genial cynicism, as if his principal concern were only to bring a little variety into the tameness of "these fair, well-spoken days", the German villain solemnly turns himself inside out and regales us ad nauseam with the metaphysics of iniquity. This is his mode of reasoning:

Why did nature put upon me this burden of ugliness—this Laplander's nose, this Moorish mouth, these Hottentot eyes? Death and destruction! Why was she such a partisan?—But no, I do her injustice. She gave us wit when she placed us naked and miserable on the shore of this great ocean-world. Swim who can, and whoso is too clumsy let him sink. The right is with him that prevails. Family honor? A valuable capital for him that knows how to profit by it.—Conscience? An excellent scarecrow with which to frighten sparrows from cherry-trees.—Filial love? Where is the obligation? Did my father beget me because he loved me? Did he think of me at all? Is there anything holy in his gratification of carnal appetite? Or shall I love him because he loves me? That is mere vanity, the usual predilection of the artist for his own work.

Such is the ethical attitude of Franz Moor, as we gather it from his first soliloquy. One sees that Schiller was concerned to portray a scoundrel who had read deeply and come to the conclusion that in a world like this there is no valid reason why a man should be virtuous. Evidently the author had himself breathed the mephitic air of eighteenth-century skepticism. His natural goodness of heart safeguarded him from corruption, but it pleased him as artist to dip his pen in the blackest ink and draw the picture of the devil with whom he had wrestled in moments of solitary musing.

In spite of his intellectual subtlety, however, Franz is a rather dull villain. His philosophical and physiological pedantry—for Schiller endows him lavishly with the special lore of the medical man—obfuscates his vision for the ordinary facts of human nature. He has upon the whole a more intelligible motive for his rascality than Iago, but he is much less interesting, much less picturesque, for simple lack of mother-wit. What a woeful blunder, for example, is his attempt to win Amalia by depicting her absent lover, at great length and with all manner of revolting details, as the victim of the most loathsome of diseases! And why should such a crafty schemer risk his neck and put himself in the hands of a dangerous confederate for the purpose of hastening by a few hours the demise of a childish old man who is already in his power? And in his final agony of terror, when we should expect him to hide himself or try to escape, how absurd that he should summon Pastor Moser merely for the purpose of arguing with him upon immortality and judgment! We see that he is after all a wretched coward who has merely cheated us into the belief that he has put away the superstitions of orthodox belief, while in reality they still linger in his blood. We miss in him the invincible sang-froid of villainy which might have given a touch of Shaksperian grandeur to his character. As it is, he is not grand, but pitiable and revolting. When he strangles himself with his hat-band, one is quite satisfied with the unheroic manner of his taking-off.

The subordinate characters of the piece are hardly worth discussing at any length. The elder Moor is a mere nonentity,—a dummy in a rocking-chair would have done as well. Evidently Schiller was concerned to make the way as easy as possible for the clumsy villainy of Franz. A more vigorous father, he may have felt, would have necessitated a more subtle and plausible intrigue, which would have diverted attention from the main issue of the contrasted sons. The heroine Amalia has always been recognized, and was immediately recognized by Schiller himself, as the weakest character in the play. But posterity's criticism is hardly that formulated by him, namely, that we miss in Amalia the 'gentle, suffering, pining thing—the maiden.'[27] Of gentle, suffering, pining things there is no dearth in the German drama, and they were not in Schiller's line. Nearly all of his women are made of heroic stuff, and we honor him not the less for that. No one should blame Amalia for boxing the ears of Franz or drawing the sword upon him: it is unladylike conduct, but very good storm-and-stress realism.

What one must deplore, however, is the general mental inadequacy that is paired with this spasmodic energy of scorn. Common sense is not the highest of dramatic qualities, but a modicum of it would have made Schiller's first heroine, to say the least, more interesting. She has no power of initiative and seems made only to be duped. Her inability to recognize her lover in the fourth act is a terrible strain upon one's patience. Indeed the whole love-affair between her and Karl is utterly un-human. What can one think, for example of a pair of ecstatically faithful lovers to whom it has evidently never occurred to write to each other? Here, if anywhere, one recalls Schiller's oft-quoted observation that he had attempted in 'The Robbers' to depict human beings before he had seen any.[28] Aside from his acquaintance with Franziska von Hohenheim, and an occasional nearer view of the coy maidens of the ecole des demoiselles, the female sex and the grand passion were for him only bookish mysteries.

Of the subordinate outlaws there are several whose portraits are very well drawn. Here Schiller was able to profit by the psychological observations he had made upon his comrades in the academy. There were no cutthroats there, but there were traits and exploits, animosities and fidelities, which only needed to be heated in the poetic crucible in order to befit the role of robbers in the Bohemian Forest. In particular we may guess that the blatherskite Jew, Spiegelberg, with his swaggering self-conceit and his bestial vulgarity, was copied to some extent from life, though nothing definite is known of his original. Taken as a whole the robbers form a picturesque company, each with his own character. Shakspere would probably have been content to say 'first robber','second robber', etc.; but for Schiller, accustomed to the pose of leadership among his fellows, to company drill and to the weighing of men according to their moral qualities, this was not enough. There had to be sheep and goats, classified according to their loyalty. On the one hand, closest to the leader stand the devoted Roller, the sturdy Schweizer and the romantic idealist, Kosinsky; on the other are the envious malcontent, Spiegelberg, and the wretched Schufterle. The others, less distinctly characterized, represent the mass.

It will now be in order to look at 'The Robbers' a moment from the point of view of dramatic art.[29] In a suppressed preface to the first edition Schiller expressed himself very contemptuously with regard to the stage, declaring that he had essayed a dramatized story and not a stage-play. He would not advise that his work be put upon the boards; for the rabble of the theater would not understand him, would take him for an apologist of vice, and so forth. There seems no good reason to doubt the essential sincerity of these expressions, though their author quickly changed his tune when the staging of 'The Robbers' became a practical question. In the heat of authorship, however, he had aimed at a literary rather than a dramatic triumph. His chief models were literary dramas. 'Goetz von Berlichingen' had won its way into favor as a book for the reader. The dramatic works of Klinger, Lenz, Wagner and the like, were for the most part too extravagant and amorphous for representation, and Shakspere's day had not yet come.

This being so, it is a fact of interest that 'The Robbers' first captured the public as a stage-play, and that too in a very much modified version, from which all references to contemporary society had been expunged, the action having been dated back into the fifteenth century. This indicates that the initial success of the work was not due mainly to the social 'tendency' which we see in it, but to its dramatic power. And the dramatic power is there. With but slender knowledge of the rules and the conventions, without ever having seen a moderately good play in his life, with little help save from the poet's eye in a fine frenzy rolling, the young student had shown himself at a stroke the coming dramatist of his nation.

Let us freely admit that he had not shown himself a master of dramatic craftsmanship. Faulty the piece no doubt is in several particulars. The soliloquies of Franz are too long-winded, and the same may be said of some of the robber-scenes. Spiegelberg's vulgar tongue is allowed to wag too freely. Contempt of quotidian probability is now and then carried so far as to produce an unintended effect of burlesque: as when the robbers, who are merely dissolute students from Leipzig, fight with twenty times their number of soldiers, lose one man and slay three hundred. Again, one does not quite see the moral necessity of honest Schweizer's killing himself, when he has the misfortune to find Franz dead. He has indeed promised to capture him or die in the attempt, but his promise was never meant to cover the case of the villain's suicide. Under the circumstances his shooting himself is mere exuberance of dramatic bloodshed.

But how absurd it would be to dwell upon these things as if they were serious defects! Young Schiller undertook to Shaksperize. His parole was not to be the natural and the probable, but the extraordinary, the tremendous. Why then should he have been more timid than the author of 'Lear' and 'Macbeth'? One who is borne along by a whirlwind may be pardoned for ignoring the rules and the proprieties. Of course it is not intended to compare 'The Robbers' with the riper works of Shakspere. That would be absurd, and yet no more absurd than to gird at Schiller for doing what we pardon or even admire in Shakspere. Like every great dramatist Schiller has an indefeasible right to demand that we take his point of view, make his assumptions and enter into the spirit of his creation. And when we do this, how magnificently he carries us along! What animation in the dialogue everywhere, and what fire in the robber-scenes! From first to last the play fairly throbs with passion, and always with passion made visible. It is all action, all meant to be done and seen. Extravagant it is, no doubt; but while there are always hundreds of critics in the world who can see that and say it more or less cleverly, there is but one man in a century who can write such scenes.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 18: The Schubart story is reprinted by Weltrich, I, p. 183 ff., who attempts to trace its provenience. It was not entirely fiction. Cf. Minor, I, 298, to whom this chapter is indebted in many places.]

[Footnote 19: Eckermann's "Gespraeche mit Goethe", under date of Jan. 17, 1827.]

[Footnote 20: "Schiller, sein Leben und seine Werke," I, 299.]

[Footnote 21: Bitter family fends, and particularly the fiction of the hostile brothers,—with motives of rivalry, jealousy and hatred, with paternal curses and parricide and fratricide and filicide,—were just then a literary fashion. It is worth noting in this connection that J.M.R. Lenz published in 1776 a story entitled "Die beiden Alten", in which a son shuts up his father in a cellar and sends a man to kill him. But the man's heart fails him and the prisoner escapes,—to reappear like a ghost among his kin. That Schiller read this story is at any rate thinkable, though there is no direct evidence of the fact.]

[Footnote 22: Cf. Minor, I, 300: "Die Raeuber des jungen Schiller, welcher sich damals nicht einmal um den nordamerikanischen Freiheitskrieg, geschweige denn um das gewitterschwuele Frankreich bekuemmerte, waren nur ein Symptom und eine Vorahnung; eine Wirkung im Kleinen vor der groszen Katastrophe."]

[Footnote 23: Cf. Minor, I, 313 ff.]

[Footnote 24: Act IV, scene I.]

[Footnote 25: "Don Quixote," Chapter 89.]

[Footnote 26: "Grundrisz zur Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung", V, 19.]

[Footnote 27: Saemmtliche Schriften, II, 365. Citations from Schiller refer, unless otherwise expressly indicated, to Goedeke's historico-critical edition in 15 vols. Stuttgart, 1867-1876.]

[Footnote 28: Saemmtliche Schriften, III, 529.]

[Footnote 29: Cf. Bulthaupt, "Dramaturgie des Schauspiels," I, 209, who has some excellent remarks upon the dramatic qualities of the play and the histrionic problems connected with it.]



CHAPTER III

The Stuttgart Medicus

So gewisz ich sein Werk verstehe, so musz er starke Dosen in Emeticis ebenso lieben als in Aestheticis, und ich moechte ihm lieber zehen Pferde als meine Frau zur Kur uebergeben.—Review of 'The Robbers', 1782.

The career that opened before Schiller on his release from the academy, in December, 1780, turned out a wretched mockery of his hopes. He had, or supposed he had, the right to expect a decent position in the public service and a measure of liberty befitting a man who had served his time under tutelage. What his august master saw fit to mete out to him, however, was neither the one nor the other: he was stationed at Stuttgart as 'medicus' to an ill-famed regiment consisting largely of invalids. His pay was eighteen florins a month—say seven or eight dollars. His duties consisted of routine visits to the hospital and daily appearance at parade, with reports upon the condition of the luckless patients whom he doctored savagely with drastic medicines. Withal he was required to wear a stiff, ungainly uniform which did not carry with it the distinction of an 'officer' and exposed him to the derision of his friends. A humble petition of Captain Schiller that his son be permitted to wear the dress of a civilian and extend his practice among the people of the city met with a curt refusal.

Of Schiller's personal appearance at about this time we have two or three descriptions by friends who knew him well.[30] Putting them together we get a picture something like the following: He was about five feet and nine inches in height, erect of bearing and knock-kneed. He had reddish hair, a broad forehead, and bushy eyebrows which came close together over a long, thin, arched nose. He was near-sighted. His eyes, of a bluish-gray color, were usually inflamed, but very expressive when he spoke with animation. One friend credits him with an 'eagle's glance', another with an uncanny, demonic expression. He had a strong chin, a prominent under-lip, and sunken, freckled cheeks. Altogether his face and bearing told of immense energy.—One can imagine how the creator of Karl Moor must have felt in his new situation. The young lion had escaped from one cage into another that was even worse.

Nevertheless the new life did not altogether preclude an occasional sip from the cup of earthly cheer. The young medicus found himself within easy reach of a number of jovial friends whom he had known at the academy. With one of these, a youth named Kappf, he hired a room of a certain Frau Vischer, a widow who was to become the muse of his high-keyed songs to Laura. The furniture consisted of a table and two benches. In one corner were usually to be seen a pile of potatoes and some plates. Here the friends feasted upon sausage and potato-salad of their own make, a bottle of wine being added if the host happened to be in funds. Sometimes there were convivial card-parties at a local inn, where more than enough wine was drunk and bills were run up that still remain unpaid. Tradition tells of a military banquet from which our medicus had to be assisted home.

A nobler pleasure incident to the new life was the opportunity of frequent visits to Castle Solitude. For eight years Schiller had been cut off from intercourse with his parents and sisters, save through the medium of officially inspected letters. Returning now at last he found his mother in frail health, but his father still vigorous and active. Sister Christophine had grown into a strong and self-reliant young woman, the mainstay of the household. She took an interest in literature, loved her brother devotedly, had a sister's boundless faith in his genius, and now became his confidante and amanuensis. Another sister, Louise, had reached the age of fourteen, two others had died, and the youngest of all, Nanette, was now three years old. It was a happy, sensible, affectionate family-circle, in which the long-lost son and brother found sweet relief from the misere of Stuttgart. The only cloud in the sky was the mother's anxiety for the welfare of her son's soul, with the resulting necessity of replying somewhat disingenuously to her tender inquiries into his religious condition. To his parents and sister the disgruntled medicus expressed freely his disappointment at the provision which the duke had made for him. A hard fate, indeed, to have studied seven years for the privilege of starving one's mind and body as an insignificant army doctor!

It was partly the hope of earning money that led him to seek a publisher for 'The Robbers'. Friend Petersen was exhorted to find one, if possible, and was promised whatever he could get for the piece over and above fifty florins. But Petersen had no luck and at last the ambitious author decided, as the author of 'Goetz' had done before him, to print his drama at his own expense. The money that he borrowed for the purpose, on the security of a friend, involved him in debts that were to hang over him for years and cause him endless trouble.

His plan once formed he began to take counsel with friends and revise his manuscript in the light of their criticisms. Even after the printing had begun, the revision continued. Things looked differently in the cold type of the proof-sheet, and he saw that he had occasionally gone too far in the direction of coarseness and extravagance. Thus the original draft had provided that Amalia should actually be sent to a convent, and that the furious Karl should appear with his robbers and threaten to convert the nunnery into a brothel unless his sweetheart should be delivered to him. This scene was condemned and the exploit given a more appropriate place among the res gestae of Spiegelberg. In many places extravagant diction was toned down. The original preface, which was mainly occupied with a labored defence of the literary drama as against the stage-play, was rejected, and a new preface written which was devoted chiefly to moral considerations. The author here admitted that he had portrayed characters who would offend the virtuous, but insisted that he could not do otherwise if he was to copy nature, because in the real world virtue shines only in contrast with vice. He went on to say:

He who makes it his object to overthrow vice, and to avenge religion, morality and social law upon their enemies, must unveil vice in all its naked hideousness and bring it before the eyes of mankind in colossal size; he must himself wander temporarily through its nocturnal labyrinths and must be able to force himself into states of feeling that revolt his soul by their unnaturalness. I may properly claim for my work, in view of its remarkable catastrophe, a place among moral books. Vice meets the end that befits it. The wanderer returns to the track of law. Virtue triumphs. Whoever is fair enough to read me through and try to understand me, from him I may expect, not that he admire the poet, but that he respect the right-minded man.

This attempt to recommend 'The Robbers' as a text-book in morality has now a curious sound. It is a safe guess that the young attorney for the defence wrote with his tongue in his cheek and an eye on the censor.

The first edition, which appeared in May, 1781, was styled a 'Schauspiel' and bore the Hippocratic motto: Quae medicamenta non sanant, ferrum sanat; quae ferrum non sanat, ignis sanat. The author's name was not given and the work purported (fallaciously) to have been published at Frankfurt and Leipzig. The anonymity was not taken seriously, however, and the Stuttgart medicus soon found himself a bit of a literary lion. He was pointed out on the street as the man who had written 'The Robbers', and distinguished travellers began to call upon him. The reviewers mingled praise and blame, and the most thoughtful of them, one Timme, declared in the Erfurt Zeitung that here if anywhere was the coming Shakspere,—which was a little wild from posterity's point of view, but not an unpleasant thing for a young author to read in a newspaper.

Luckily for Schiller his work was not long left to make its way as 'mere literature'. Among those to whom he had sent the sheets was a Mannheim bookseller, named Schwan, who had an eye for dramatic merit. Before Schwan had read many pages it came over him that here was a prize for the stage, and he hurried with it to Baron Dalberg, intendant of the Mannheim theater. Dalberg was easily convinced,—only the work would need to be radically revised. A complimentary letter was addressed to Schiller, proposing a stage version of 'The Robbers' and offering to bring out future plays that he might write. Schiller was quite willing, notwithstanding his preface, and about the middle of August he addressed himself to his task. Profiting by the suggestions of Dalberg and the reviewers, he devoted six weeks to adding, subtracting, re-writing, and re-arranging,—a new masterpiece, he averred, would have cost him less labor. But Dalberg was not yet satisfied; correspondence ensued about various points, Schiller showing himself very tractable, and it was not until the close of the year that the stage version was finally ready. It was played on the 12th of January, 1782,—its author having stolen away from Stuttgart to see the performance,—and scored an unheard-of success.[31] Shortly afterwards the new version, in slightly modified form, was published by Schwan under the name of a 'Trauerspiel' by Friedrich Schiller.

The changes made in the new version do not reflect the free play of Schiller's dramatic instinct so much as his deferential attitude towards Dalberg. Thus we know that the most important of them all, the shifting of the action back into the age of expiring feudalism, was made reluctantly. Schiller felt, and had reason to feel, that the modernity of his drama was its very life-blood;[32] for the squeamish Dalberg, however, the robbers in the age of Frederick the Great were a painful anachronism. So they were put back three centuries and costumed in the style of the 'Ritterstueck'. Other less dubious changes were also made. Thus the long soliloquies of Franz and the ribald garrulities of Spiegelberg were reduced to more tolerable proportions. Robber Schwarz and Pastor Moser were omitted, and the bastard Hermann was vitalized into a person of some account by means of his counter-plot against Franz. The un-lyrical songs by which Schiller had set great store were dropped, and the catastrophe was so changed as to bring the two brothers finally face to face. The life of Schweizer was spared and Franz, instead of being torn limb from limb, was derisively pardoned by his great-souled brother and then, amid mocking laughter, thrust into the selfsame dungeon in which he had confined his father. Much against Schiller's will Amalia was made to kill herself with a dagger snatched from one of the outlaws, instead of receiving her death at the hands of her lover.

The prodigious success of 'The Robbers' upon the Mannheim stage, and upon other stages where it was soon produced in more or less garbled form, made the work famous. Famous and at the same time notorious. New editions, most of them pirated, began to appear, and a mania similar to the Werther-mania of the previous decade spread over Germany. The newspapers told of conspiring schoolboys whose heads had been turned toward a career of crime. A well-born youth who had essayed the role of Robin Hood near Strassburg and was hanged there in October, 1783, confessed suspiciously that he had been brought to his fate by the reading of bad books. The sedate authorities of Leipzig forbade the further performance of the play in their city because they had observed a sudden increase of burglary and petit larceny. An edition of 1782, which the publisher, possibly without Schiller's knowledge, had adorned with a rampant lion and the motto In Tirannos, probably added to the vogue of the piece as a revolutionary document. A French translation appeared in 1785 and drew the attention of the turbulent Gauls to that 'Monsieur Gille', who was in time to receive the diploma of a French citizen. The first English translation dates from 1792.

It is not difficult to imagine the emotions with which Schiller, now at the fervid age of twenty-two, returned to his post after that intoxicating visit to Mannheim, and, his ears still tingling with the thunderous plaudits of the theater and the complimentary babble of his new friends, resumed the dosing of his sick grenadiers in Stuttgart. For a while things went on very much as before. In order to better his position in a professional way, he formed the plan of taking his doctor's degree and then qualifying for a professorship in physiology. But from the first the poet in him prevailed more and more over the medical man. Soon after leaving the academy he had published a long elegy upon the death of a young friend named Weckerlin. It is a rebellious, declamatory poem, in which the pathos of untimely death is made the occasion for ventilating radical views as to the goodness of God and the consolations of religion. Passages like the following show the young Schiller at his best as a poet:

Liebe wird Dein Auge nie vergolden, Nie umhalsen Deine Braut wirst Du, Nie, wenn unsere Thraenen stromweis rollten, Ewig, ewig, ewig sinkt Dein Auge zu.[33]

For the rest, the death of Weckerlin is a 'discord on the great lute', and a 'barbarous doom'. And yet, the poem continues, the dead youth has drawn the better lot; he will sleep calmly in his narrow house, unmindful of the wretched tragi-comedy going on above his head. So his friends are bidden 'to clap their hands and shout a loud plaudite'. As for a reunion, there will be one, but it will not be in the 'paradise of the rabble'.—In another poem dating from this period, 'The Chariot of Venus,' the love-goddess is put on trial and castigated for her sins. Her havoc among the sons of men is described in half a hundred rhetorical stanzas which were evidently inspired by the genius of the clinic or the hospital, rather than by one of the sacred nine.

Besides these poems a large number of others were written by Schiller during the year 1781, prior to the time when Dalberg's invitation caused him to turn his attention to the stage. It was of course important to acquaint the public with his lucubrations, but poetry in large quantities was not an easily marketable commodity. The usual mode of publication was the poetic 'almanac' or 'calendar', in which a number of ambitious verse-makers would unite their wares in a single volume. Of such almanacs there were several in Germany and one at least in Suabia. It was edited by one Staeudlin, a rival whom Schiller thought it would be both feasible and pleasant to outshine. So he sent out letters to his friends inviting contributions, and in due time there appeared, after a fresh outlay of borrowed money, an 'Anthology for the Year 1782'. It consisted of some four-score poems, signed with all manner of intentionally misleading symbols and purporting to emanate from Tobolsko, in Siberia. The most of the verses were the work of Schiller.[34]

Among the poems of the 'Anthology' there are none that have become very popular, none that are capable of affording any very keen delight to the lover of poetry. One sees that their author's lyric gift was not of the highest order. What is heard is not so much the note of honest feeling as the effort of an active intellect, searching heaven and earth for clever and striking things to say. Instead of learning from the folk-song, Schiller had learned originally from Klopstock; and what he had learned was to pose and philosophize and invest fictitious sentiment with a maze of bewildering and far-fetched imagery. Then he had lost sympathy with Klopstock's religiosity, had acquired a better opinion of the things of sense, and had had his introduction to doubt and disgust and rebellion. When now these moods sought expression in verse, the verse took the form of impassioned rhetoric. He sang not as the bird sings, but as a fervid youth sings who is eager to assert as strongly as possible his emancipation from conventional modes of thought and feeling.

The poems of the 'Anthology' are too numerous and in the main too unimportant for an exhaustive review; it must suffice to glance at a few of the more noteworthy. Several had been written at the academy and were now published with more or less of retouching. To this number, it would seem, belongs the one entitled 'The Glory of Creation', which is a perfectly serious and devout poem on the grandeur and beauty of the world. Along with this, however, we find another, entitled 'To God', which tells of moods like those which had led Werther to characterize Nature as 'an eternally ruminating monster'. It consists of five unrimed stanzas, all but one ending with an emphatic 'Thou big thing'.

Thou who didst summon earth and sky, And earth and sky came forth; Who sayest the word and worlds arise, Who art thou, mighty thing?

O big, amazingly big thing! My head swims when I look; I shudder and start back afraid And fall—upon my knees.

These verses—the translation may hold up its head quite unabashed beside the original—hardly rise above the plane of doggerel; they signify nothing except that their author has had his little quarrel with this best of all possible worlds and is not unwilling to shock people.

Of far greater poetic interest are the verses entitled 'Rousseau', whose neglected grave (he died in 1778) is made the point of departure for a vigorous denunciation of the bigotry that had driven him from place to place and denied him peace among the living. The poem foresees a time when streams of blood shall flow for the honor of calling him son. There is no effort at portraiture, and no suggestion of any repellent or pitiable traits.[35] We get not Byron's "self-torturing sophist", but a martyred sage who suffered and died at the hands of Christians,—'he who makes out of Christians human beings'. Toward the end he is apostrophized as the 'Great Endurer, and bidden to leap joyously into Charon's boat and go tell the spirits about this 'dream of the war of frogs and mice, the hand-organ doodle-doodle of this life'.[36]

In this poem there is certainly no lack of that 'fire' which Duke Karl found in Schiller's dissertation. Indeed fire abounds everywhere in his youthful versifying. He never contemplates, never dwells upon a temperate emotion. The poetry of common things and of the gentler feelings seems to have been nonexistent for him. His imagination likes to occupy itself with the supernal, the stupendous, or else with the awful and the revolting. This is seen in the two poems 'Elysium' and 'A Group from Tartarus'; the one aiming to portray a land of ineffable happiness, where sorrow has no name and the only pain is a gentle ecstasy, the other depicting the infinite misery of the inferno. In both there is a free blending of Christian with pagan conceptions, 'Elysium' being put for heaven and 'Tartarus' for hell. A similar blending is noticeable in many of the other poems, ancient mythology being made to furnish forth the setting and the symbols of modern passion. So it is, for example, in the lyric operetta 'Semele', the longest and most pretentious of the 'Anthology' poems. It consists of two scenes in irregular verses, dealing with Jupiter's love for the mortal Semele' and Juno's jealousy. Artistically it is much in need of the file, and Its sustained note of passionate pathos hardly comports, perhaps, with the type of the operetta. Nevertheless it contains powerful passages and telling stage effects. One can see that the young student—'Semele' appears to have been written at the academy—had learned, through, his occasional visits to the opera, how to manage a conventional theme and conventional machinery in such a way as to startle and thrill.

More noteworthy, for the characterization of the youthful Schiller, is the ode entitled 'Friendship', which purports to be taken 'from the letters of Julius to Raphael, an unpublished novel'. In this poem we have not so much the expression of a real human affection as a philosophy of friendship; just as in the Laura poems we have a philosophy of love. The verses remind one immediately of Rousseau's saying that he was 'intoxicated with love without an object'. Friendship is described as a mystic attraction of souls, identical with the attraction of gravitation. This it is which makes the beauty and the glory of the spiritual world. 'We are dead groups when we hate, gods when we love.'

If in creation's All I stood alone, Souls would I dream into the senseless stone And kiss them in a fond embrace.

Then we hear of a hierarchy of spirits, ascending 'from the Mongol to the Greek seer, who precedes the last of the seraphs'; and in this harmonious ring-dance of souls Raphael and Julius 'sweep onward to where time and space are submerged in the sea of eternal glory'.

Other poems which rise above the general level are 'The Bad Monarchs', a poetic castigation (without mention of names) of the type of ruler perfectly exemplified by Duke Karl of Wuerttemberg, up to about the year 1770; 'In a Battle', a powerful description of the rage of combat, with all its sickening and inspiring details; 'The Pestilence', a gruesome tribute to the power of God as manifested in the horrors of the plague, and 'Count Eberhard the Quarreler', a patriotic battle-ballad in honor of a locally renowned Suabian fighter. Better than any of these, however, from a poetic point of view, is the 'Funeral Fantasy', which was occasioned by the death of young Von Hoven in 1780. One may perhaps doubt the genuineness of the grief that could find expression in such a pomp of words, but there is no doubting the poetic power of pictures like this:

Pale, at its ghastly noon, Pauses above the death-still wood the moon; The night-sprite sighing, through the dim air stirs; The clouds descend in rain; Mourning, the wan stars wane, Flickering like dying lamps in sepulchres!

Haggard as spectres, vision-like and dumb, Dark with the pomp of Death, and moving slow, Towards that sad lair the pale Procession come Where the Grave closes on the Night below.[37]

But the most famous and on the whole the most interesting of the effusions in the 'Anthology' are the erotic verses addressed to Laura. Whether Schiller was humanly in love with his landlady, Frau Luise Vischer, is a rather futile question which German erudition has argued pro and con these many years without coming to an inexpugnable conclusion. Probably he was not, though he may have thought that he was. If he had been we should have heard of it sooner or later in authentic prose. But she interested him as the first of her sex who had come under his close observation. There were on his part the small gallantries of daily life, and on hers the responsiveness of a not very prudish widow quite willing to be adored. She played the piano. It was enough: the needy Petrarch had found a sufficient Laura—and never was a poet's goddess worshiped in such singular strains. We miss in them altogether that captivating simplicity which the young Goethe, and later the young Heine, caught from the songs of the people. Schiller is always in pursuit of the intense, the extraordinary, the ecstatic, and sometimes fails to impress through sheer superabundance of the impressive. His imagination wanders between a wild sensuality,—so lubricious in its suggestions, now and then, as to occasion gossip to the effect that he had become a libertine,—and a sublimated philosophy based on Platonic conceptions of a prenatal existence, or upon Leibnitzian conceptions of a pre-established harmony. But while the Laura poems are sufficiently sensual, they are not sensuous; or if they try to be, the sensuous element is unreal and unimaginable. Some of them, with their overstrained vehemence of expression, their fervid and far-fetched tropes, their involved and sometimes obscure diction, are little more than intellectual puzzles: they so occupy the mind in the mere effort of comprehension that little room is left for any emotion whatever. They leave one altogether cold.

A 'Fantasie to Laura' identifies the rapturous passion with the force of gravitation which holds planets and systems in order. 'Blot it out from the mechanism of nature and the All bursts asunder in fragments; your worlds thunder into chaos; weep, Newtons, for their giant fall!' And then Laura's kiss!

Aus den Schranken schwellen alle Sehnen, Seine Ufer ueberwallt das Blut; Koerper will in Koerper ueberstuerzen, Lodern Seelen in vereinter Glut.[38]

When Laura plays the piano, her adorer stands there, one moment an exanimate statue, the next a disembodied spirit,—while the listening zephyrs murmur more softly in reverence. In a 'Reproach to Laura' she is taxed with being the ruin of her lover's ambition. Because of her the 'giant has shriveled to a dwarf'. She has 'blown away the mountains', that he had 'rolled up' to the sunny heights of glory. In another poem, 'Mystery of Reminiscence', we hear of a cosmic golden age in which Laura, one with her poet, was a part of the Godhead. One and yet two, they swept through space in unimaginable ecstasy. Somehow,—the point is not made very clear,—there came a great cataclysm and separated them. Now they are beautiful fragments of the God, evermore yearning to restore the lost unity:

Darum Laura dieses Wutverlangen, Ewig starr an deinen Mund zu hangen, Und die Wollust deinen Hauch zu trinken, In dein Wesen, wenn sich Blicke winken, Sterbend zu versinken.[39]

Without lingering longer over the erotic poems of the 'Anthology', one may say that they are characterized, like 'The Robbers', by a fiery intensity of expression which, in the search after the sublime, occasionally passes the bounds of good taste. Their author already has at his command a gorgeous poetic diction that is all his own. One is often amazed at his mere command of words, the audacity of his tropes, the sweep of his imagination. But he does not convince. When at his best he only produces an impression of magnificent feigning. The reader soon sees that, notwithstanding all the impassioned hyperboles, it is really intellectual poetry,—a youth philosophizing about his passion. And the philosophy is little more than a matter of fine-sounding but vacuous analogies that have no root in the facts of experience.[40] And so the poetry does not take hold of one. Nor does it charm with its music; there is vigor and sweep and swing, but the subtler elements of melodious verse are lacking.

These qualities of the youthful Schiller's poetry foretell that he will never be a great lyrist, but they promise well enough for the poetic tale. This promise is seen notably in the poem called 'The Infanticide'. It is a gruesome thing, with the pathos here and there overstrained, but what a power of vivid narration! What a gift for the portraiture of frenzied passion! For the rest, it should not go unrecorded that certain poems of the 'Anthology' went altogether too far in the defiance of conventional morality. The study of medicine, combined with the ardor of youthful revolt and the seductions of a new bohemian life, had so sensualized the mind of Schiller that, for a brief period in his career, he found pleasure in exploiting the indecent. It was but a passing phase, and not very bad at its worst. Still, if Heine, and the other emancipators of the flesh who came later, had felt the need of supporting their cause by an appeal to distinguished authority, they might have referred quite unabashed to the youthful sins of the idealist Schiller.

Little notice was taken of the 'Anthology' even in Suabia, and none at all, apparently, in the outside German world. The investment brought no immediate returns in fame or in money, and other experiments of a different character turned out but little better.

As early as the spring of 1781 Schiller had assumed the editorial charge of a would-be popular magazine intended to contribute to the 'benefit and pleasure' of the Suabians. It was a weak provincial affair that soon died of inanition. The hack-work that Schiller did for it is of no biographical interest, save that it brought him into connection with Suabian writers and suggested to him that with a freer hand he might produce a better journal. In the following year, accordingly, we find him starting, in conjunction with his friends Abel and Petersen, the Wirtemberg Repertory of Literature. It was to be a quarterly, and bore the ominous legend: 'at the expense of the editors'. To this journal Schiller contributed various essays and reviews which show that as a critic he had been influenced by Lessing, but had not acquired the knack of Lessing's luminous and straightforward style. In a rather badly written paper on 'The Present Condition of the German Theater', he takes up a question which was destined to interest him later,—that of the relation of the drama to morality. He has no difficulty in showing that people are not deterred from the vices or impelled to the virtues that they see represented on the stage.

But by far the most important of these contributions to the Repertory are two reviews (of course anonymous) of his own writings. In a long notice of 'The Robbers' he discusses the work with a coolness that is simply amazing. His own child has become a corpus vile that he has the nerve to dissect without the slightest tremor of parental sympathy. Nearly everything that a century's criticism has found to urge against the play,—the dubiousness of the entire invention, the impossibility of such a devil as Franz, the insipidity of Amalia and the old Count Moor, the faults of the diction and the barbarism of the action,—is here set forth with remorseless severity. The review closes with the facetious comment which appears at the head of this chapter. Not quite so caustic is the notice of the 'Anthology', but it contains a significant 'admonition to our young poets' to the effect that 'extravagance is not strength, that violation of the rules of taste and propriety is not boldness and originality, that fancy is not feeling, and high-flown rhetoric is not the talisman on which the arrows of criticism break and recoil'.

Verily it is not given every young author to see himself thus clearly in the glass of criticism. We may guess, however, that these critical mystifications were not altogether free from the element of calculating humbug. Schiller knew full well that to be castigated in public would not be a bad thing for his budding reputation; and so, as no one else came forward to do the slashing, he did it himself. It is amusing to read that a Frankfurt correspondent was so pained by the review of 'The Robbers' that he sent in a defence of the piece and was greatly surprised to learn that reviewer and author were one and the same person.

These contributions to the Repertory appeared in the first two numbers; before the third came out Schiller had turned his back for good and all upon his native Wuerttemberg. Ever since that first visit to Mannheim he had felt drawn to the 'Greek climate of the Palatinate'. On the 1st of April, 1782, we find him writing to Dalberg that it 'would be untrue were he to deny his growing inclination for the drama'. The letter goes on to say that he was then expecting to be very much occupied, for several months, with medical studies; but he hoped to finish a new play, 'Fiesco', by the end of the year. Toward the end of May, taking advantage of the absence of the duke, he visited Mannheim again and saw a second representation of 'The Robbers'. Through the indiscreet gossip of the friends who accompanied him, the duke got wind of this unauthorized journey, ordered 'the deserter' under arrest for two weeks, and forbade him all further intercourse with foreign parts.

Schiller made use of his enforced leisure to work upon 'Fiesco', and to plan a third drama, 'Louise Miller', which promised a chance of revenge upon the petty tyrant who sought to own him body and soul. After serving his time in the guard-house he wrote an urgent appeal to Dalberg, to rescue him from his intolerable situation by giving him employment at Mannheim. But Dalberg, a fearsome and politic creature, had no mind to compromise himself by befriending a youth who had quarreled with the powerful duke of Wuerttemberg. Schiller now began to think of running away, and his thoughts were soon quickened into resolution by fresh exasperations.

In the second act of 'The Robbers' he had made Spiegelberg refer to the Swiss canton of the Grisons as the 'Athens of modern scalawags.' Tradition has it that the passage was a thrust at an unpopular Swiss overseer in the academy. It is probable, however, that it was in no way malicious, but merely a thoughtless jest at the expense of a canton which had actually got a bad reputation for lax enforcement of the law. Be this as it may, the passage gave offence to a patriotic Swiss named Amstein, who aired his grievance in print and demanded a retraction. When Schiller paid no attention to this, Amstein appealed to one Walter, a fussy official living at Ludwigsburg. Walter took up the case of the traduced canton with great zeal, and brought it to the attention of the duke. The result was a summons to Schiller, a sharp reproof, and an order to write no more 'comedies'. He was to confine himself strictly to medicine or he would be cashiered.

Matters now came swiftly to a head. On September 1, 1782, Schiller addressed to his sovereign a very humble letter of remonstrance, setting forth that his authorship had added more than five hundred florins to his income,[41] and that this money was absolutely necessary for the prosecution of his studies; that he was winning reputation and thus bringing honor to the academy and to its illustrious founder, and so forth. The duke's reply was to threaten him with arrest in case he should write any more letters upon this subject. Schiller now resolved to take his fate in his own hands. Resistance and submission to the autocrat were alike out of the question; the only recourse was flight from Wuerttemberg.

In the days of German absolutism, this was a dangerous step to take. Technically he would be a deserter. He had reason to fear that he would not be allowed to make his way in the world by his own merit, unharmed and unhelped, but would be dogged by the malice of a despot and perhaps brought back to undergo the fate of Schubart. Worse still was the possibility that his father might be made to suffer from the duke's anger. Nevertheless he resolved to take the risk. He made known his purpose to a very few friends, one of whom, Frau von Wolzogen, offered him her house in Bauerbach, in the event of his sometime needing a quiet refuge. Another friend, Andreas Streicher, nobly offered to share his fortunes, Streicher, to whom we owe a classical account of this episode in Schiller's life, was a young musician living with his mother in Stuttgart. It had been planned that he should visit Hamburg in the near future, but he now persuaded his mother to advance him the money that was to have been devoted to his journey, in order that he might accompany his beloved Schiller into exile. So the friends bided their time and meanwhile 'Fiesco' made rapid progress.

The wished-for opportunity came on the 22nd of September. The court was in a flutter over the visit of a Russian prince for whose reception great preparations had been made. In the general excitement Schiller counted upon getting away unobserved. So he bade a tearful farewell to his mother and sisters, who knew of the secret that had been kept away from the father for reasons of policy, and in the evening he drove out of Stuttgart with his friend Streicher, giving to the guard the names of Dr. Ritter and Dr. Wolf. The friends set their faces northward towards Mannheim. As they passed the brilliantly illuminated Castle Solitude, so Streicher relates, Schiller fell into a long revery. At last the exclamation 'My Mother!' told the tale of his thoughts. But the mood of sadness did not last long. Cheerful talk enlivened the journey, and when the two travellers crossed the boundary of the Palatinate Schiller was jubilant. He felt that he had entered a land of freedom and enlightenment, where art was esteemed and talent honored.

He had with him, virtually complete, the manuscript of the new play upon which he had built illusory hopes. It will be in order to consider 'Fiesco' before we follow its author into the vicissitudes of his exile.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 30: The somewhat conflicting data are subjected to a critical scrutiny by Weltrich, I, 323 ff.]

[Footnote 31: Bulthaupt, I, 210, quotes from Pichler's history of the Mannheim theater the following account by an eye-witness; 'The theater was like a mad-house,—rolling eyes, clenched fists, stamping feet and hoarse shrieks from the spectators. Strangers fell sobbing into each other's arms, and women staggered to the door at the point of fainting. There was a general dissolution, as in chaos, from the mists of which a new creation bursts forth.' This description is perhaps the best possible antidote to Matthew Arnold's fastidious observation that 'The Robbers' is violent and tiresome.]

[Footnote 32: In a letter of Dec. 12, 1781, to Dalberg, he admits the cogency of the objection to his horde of robbers 'in our enlightened century' and virtually expresses regret that he had not himself, from the beginning, imagined an earlier date for the action. But he fears that to change the time, now that the piece is finished, will result in making it a monstrosity, a 'crow with peacock's feathers'.]

[Footnote 33:

"Love gilds not for thee all the world with its glow, Never Bride in the clasp of thine arms shall repose; Thou canst see not our tears, though in torrents they flow. Those eyes in the calm of eternity close." —Bulwer's Translation.]

[Footnote 34: As different poems undoubtedly Schiller's were variously signed, and as many of his youthful effusions were excluded by him from the collection of 1801, the sifting out of his share in the 'Anthology' and the ascription of the remaining poems to their proper authors are tasks of no small difficulty. The critical student should consult Weltrich, I, 501 ff.]

[Footnote 35: Schiller seems to have got his idea of Rousseau chiefly from H.P. Sturz's "Denkwuerdigkeiten von Johann Jakob Rousseau" (1779). The famous 'Confessions' did not begin to appear until 1781. Curiously enough our poem refers to Rousseau as 'suckled on the banks of the Seine', and as having 'stood like a meteor on the banks of the Garonne'.]

[Footnote 36:

Geh, du Opfer dieses Trillingsdrachen, Huepfe freudig in den Todesnachen, Grosser Dulder, frank und frei! Geh, erzaehl' dort in der Geister Kreise Diesen Traum vom Krieg der Froesch' und Maeuse, Dieses Lebens Jahrmarktsdudelei.]

[Footnote 37: Bulwer's translation, which is here particularly good.]

[Footnote 38:

"Out from their bounds swell nerve, and pulse, and sense, The veins in tumult would their shores o'erflow; Body to body rapt—and, charmed thence, Soul drawn to soul with intermingled glow." —Bulwer's Translation.]

[Footnote 39:

"And therefore came to me the wish to woo thee— Still, lip to lip, to cling for aye unto thee; This made thy glances to my soul the link— This made me burn thy very breath to drink— My life in thine to sink." —Bulwer's Translation, ]

[Footnote 40: Concerning the provenience and the philosophic connection of the youthful Schiller's ideas of love and friendship the reader will do well to consult Kuno Fischer, "Schiller-Schriften", I, 41 ff.]

[Footnote 41: Of course this roseate statement to his Highness took no account of his debts, which had not yet begun to be particularly pressing.]



CHAPTER IV

The Conspiracy of Fiesco at Genoa

Ein Diadem erkaempfen ist grosz; es wegwerfen ist goettlich. 'Fiesco'.

As we have seen, 'Fiesco' was written during the summer and fall of 1782. The following winter, having been rejected by the Mannheim stage, it was published as a literary drama. This first edition bore the sub-title: 'A Republican Tragedy.'

There is a very general agreement that 'Fiesco' is upon the whole the weakest of Schiller's plays. As a 'republican tragedy' it is a disappointment, since its political import, though obvious enough to one acquainted with Schiller from other sources, is not brought out distinctly in the play itself. Neither the friend nor the enemy of republicanism, in any historical or human sense of the word, can derive the slightest edification from 'Fiesco,' The political talk is vague and unpractical, and we get no clear idea of the contending forces. When the curtain goes down upon the chaos of intrigue, one is at a loss to know how one is expected to feel. And yet the play is full of powerful scenes, developed with masterly dramatic skill. As a mere spectacle it rivals 'The Robbers', to which as a drama it is decidedly inferior. In general its defects strike the reader more than the spectator. It is not the hand of the dramatist but the eye of the historian that is lacking. In other words the author, with all his seeming profundity of philosophic reflection, was simply not ripe for historical tragedy.

The bare facts of Fiesco's conspiracy, related with as little ascription of motive as possible, are these: In the year 1528 Andrea Doria, who had won great distinction as an admiral in the French service, but had now quarreled with the King of France and hoisted the colors of Emperor Charles the Fifth, landed an expedition in Genoa and captured the city from the French. Historians agree that he could easily have made himself sovereign, but instead of doing so he restored the old aristocratic republic, thus winning for himself the enduring title of 'father and liberator of his country.' Although Doria was simply an influential citizen of Genoa and enjoyed the general esteem of his countrymen, his prominence in the state gave rise to animosities among the noble families, and these were increased when he made his young and headstrong kinsman, Gianettino, his heir. In the year 1547 the malcontents found a leader in the person of Giovanni Ludovigi Fiesco, Count of Lavagna. Fiesco was young, handsome, rich and ambitious—a dashing and unscrupulous cavalier. His first thought was to restore the French domination and make himself only a viceroy of the French king; but a fellow conspirator, Verrina, persuaded him to seize for himself the sovereign power to which his rank and talents entitled him. The conspiracy was carefully matured, Fiesco meanwhile, to divert suspicion, acting the part of a giddy spendthrift and man of fashion. On the night of January 2, 1547, the conspirators made their attack upon the city. Gianettino Doria was killed, but the aged Andrea made his escape. The success of Fiesco appeared to be complete, but as he was going on board a galley the gang-plank turned, he fell into the sea and his heavy armor bore him down. Without a leader the conspiracy instantly collapsed. On the following day Andrea returned and the Genoese republic went on as before,

It was a hint from Rousseau that suggested to Schiller, during his last year in the academy, the idea of dramatizing this episode of Genoese history. In the German 'Memoirs of Rousseau' by H.P. Sturz, referred to in the preceding chapter, he found Rousseau quoted as follows:

The reason why Plutarch wrote such noble biographies is that he never selected half-great men, such as exist by the thousands in quiet states, but grand exemplars of virtue or sublime criminals. In modern history there is a man deserving of his brush, and that is Count Fiesco, whose training made him the very man to liberate his country from the rule of the Dorias.... There was no other thought in his soul than to dethrone the usurper.[42]

Here was a tempting theme for a young dramatist who had fed his own soul upon Plutarch, was enamored of 'greatness' in whatever form, and had already tried his hand upon a 'sublime criminal.' What could be better for his purpose than a daring conspiracy, led by a Plutarchian hero who was at the same time a single-minded patriot? In his earliest musings it is probable that Schiller accepted Rousseau's view of Fiesco at its face value, and when he began to consult the historians he found at first some support for his preconception. Among his sources was the 'Conjuration du Comte de Fiesque', by De Retz; a book which was written, according to a somewhat doubtful tradition, when its author was but eighteen years old, and which, by its clever perversion of history and its subtle insinuation of revolutionary ideas, is said to have drawn from Richelieu the comment: 'There is a dangerous man!'[43] In the sophisticated narrative of De Retz Fiesco appears as a modern Brutus, whose thought of personal aggrandizement was altogether subordinate to the thought of his country's welfare. He is made much better than he really was, and the two Dorias much worse.

Further study of the subject, however, soon opened the eyes of Schiller to the other side of the question; for in Robertson's 'Charles the Fifth' he found Fiesco portrayed as an ambitious revolutionist who sought to overthrow the Dorias only in order that he might make himself the master of Genoa—in short as a Catiline instead of a Brutus. The dramatic problem then turned from the first upon the character of Fiesco. In the 'Dramaturgic' of Lessing the doctrine had been proclaimed that the dramatist is not bound by the so-called facts of history; that he may deal with them as suits his artistic purpose. But what was the purpose to be in this case? Should it be a tragedy of austere patriotism going down against a relatively bad order too strong to be resisted, or a tragedy of corrupt ambition dashing itself to death against a relatively good order too strong to be overthrown? Either conception, if consistently worked out, might have sufficed for the groundwork of a good historical tragedy. What Schiller did, however, was to vacillate between the two, to blend them in a confusing way, and finally to let the interest of his play turn largely upon the hero's mental struggle between selfish ambition and unselfish patriotism.

The Catiline conception required an avenger of Genoa, for it was evident[44] that the accidental drowning of Fiesco in the moment of his triumph would never do in a play. It was necessary that his death appear as a punishment, a nemesis. So for the role of avenger Schiller invented a stern patriot to whom, without historical warrant, he gave the name of Verrina. Verrina is the real Brutus. To furnish the conspirators with a definite grievance Gianettino was made to violate the helpless Bertha, who was then provided with an avenger in the person of the young Bourgognino. Leonora, the wife of Fiesco, is historical. Robertson relates that on the night of the uprising Fiesco went to take leave of his wife, "whom he loved with tender affection." He found her "in all the anguish of uncertainty and fear"; and her terror was increased when she learned what was on foot. She endeavored by her tears and entreaties and her despair to divert him from his purpose. But in vain; he left her with the exclamation: "Farewell! You shall either never see me more, or you shall behold to-morrow everything in Genoa subject to your power." On the other hand, the intrigue of Fiesco and Julia, the sister of Gianettino, is unhistorical. It was invented by Schiller as a part of the general scheme of duplicity and frivolity by which Fiesco should seek to quiet the suspicion of the Dorias. If this particular invention was upon the whole unfortunate—the matter will be discussed further on,—the same cannot be said of the Moor Hassan, who becomes Fiesco's factotum and ends his career on the gallows. The rascally Moor is the most picturesque figure and the most telling role in the whole piece.

Schiller introduces Fiesco as a seemingly frivolous roue, flirting desperately with the Countess Julia, to the great torment of his wife Leonora. We soon see, however, that the frivolity is only a mask: he has a serious purpose and that purpose is to make himself master of Genoa. At first, indeed, he toys with the idea of a nobler fame. In a soliloquy at the end of the second act he exclaims: 'To conquer a diadem is grand; to throw it away is divine. Down, tyrant! Let Genoa be free and me be its happiest citizen!' But this mood does not long withstand the intoxication of power. To rule, to rule alone, to feel that Genoa owes everything to him only,—this soon becomes his all-absorbing ambition. At the last, when the revolution has succeeded, he puts on the ducal purple and the people are ready to acquiesce in the new regime. But old Verrina is not so tractable. When he cannot prevail upon Fiesco to doff the hateful insignia, he pushes him into the sea and exclaims in disgust: 'I am going to Andrea!'

Such a scheme, it is evident, does not provide for a 'republican tragedy', except in a very loose sense. If we had a republican idealist pitting his strength against a tyrant and going down in the battle, either because of his adversary's superior strength or because of some weakness in his own character, that would be a tragedy of republicanism. In Schiller's play, however, the conflict is not of that character. At heart Fiesco is never a republican, though he sometimes takes his mouth full of fine republican phrases. His mainspring of action is not the welfare of Genoa, but his own aggrandizement. Old Andrea, whose power he plots to overthrow and whose magnanimity puts him to shame, is actually a better man than he. If he has a measure of our sympathy in his feud with the younger Doria, that is only because Gianettino is portrayed as a vulgar brute deserving of nothing but the gallows. Politically there is little to choose between the two, so long as we regard virtue as consisting in an unselfish devotion to an ideal of republican liberty.

The character of Fiesco being what it is, his final catastrophe produces no very clear impression. One does not see precisely what bearing it is to have on the political fortunes of Genoa. At first blush the conclusion seems to mean that the state has been saved from the clutches of a tyrant who was about to subvert its liberties. But if we look at the matter in that light we have a tragedy, not of republicanism, but of the "vaulting ambition which o'erleaps itself and falls on the other." With the usurper Fiesco, and the brute Gianettino, out of the way, the state returns to the good regimen of Andrea, who represents the only republicanism then thinkable, democracy in the modern sense being nowhere in question. But it is doubtful whether Schiller intends Fiesco to be thus reprobated. The hot-blooded Italian has certain traits that win sympathy; and even his consuming ambition is so invested with a glamour of romantic enthusiasm that it is difficult to reckon him among the dangerous tyrants. If he is false to his better nature, we at any rate see that he has a better nature. One is thus tempted to regard Verrina's act as that of a madman who cares more for form than for substance and sees danger where there is none.

For Verrina, who plays the part of Brutus to his country's Caesar and seems to represent the sternest type of republican virtue, is a repulsive fanatic. The horrible curse that he pronounces upon his daughter when he hears that she has been outraged is significant at once for his character and for the young Schiller's notion of tragic pathos. Throwing a black veil over her head he vociferates thus:

Be blind! Accursed be the air that fans your cheek! Accursed be the sleep that refreshes you! Accursed be every human trace that is welcome to your misery! Go down into the deepest dungeon of my house! Moan! Howl! Drag out the time with your woe. Let your life be the slimy writhing of the dying worm,—the obstinate, crushing struggle between being and not-being. And this curse shall rest upon you until Gianettino has gasped out his last breath.

After this it is difficult to look up to Verrina as a competent savior of society, however much one may sympathize with him in his private feud. His cynical tergiversation at the end makes his previous conduct ridiculous. It seems to say that he has been participating in a tragic farce which is now ended. One might almost get the impression that the whole play is only a satire upon republican clap-trap.

Satire, however, was very far from Schiller's thoughts. His enthusiasm for liberty was much too genuine to permit any trifling with the sacred theme. There is no doubt that he began 'Fiesco' supposing that it would prove a convenient setting for those inspiring ideas of liberty which he had absorbed from the reading of ancient history and of modern revolutionary literature. They were vague and tumultuous ideas, which had very little relation to a definite theory of government, but he was very much in earnest with them, especially after his rasping experience with the Duke of Wuerttemberg. No one can mistake the autobiographic note in the speech of Bourgognino which closes the first act: 'I have long felt in my breast something that would not be satisfied. Now of a sudden I know what it was. (Springing up heroically) I have a tyrant.' But the young dramatist had not proceeded far before he discovered that his ideal requirement was out of tune with the facts. To represent Fiesco as a would-be liberator of his country was impossible without a violent perversion of history for which he was not prepared. Out of deference to history he was led to abase his hero into something like a Catilinarian conspirator. But he could not give up the idea of a republican tragedy; so he tried to save it by depicting his hero as a man who had it in him to become a noble liberator, but is corrupted by the dazzling lures of power and so led on to ruin.

There are those who regard Fiesco's inconsistency as an artistic complexity of motive going to show that Schiller had progressed in the knowledge of life and become aware that human heroism is apt to be more or less mixed with base alloy. One writer[45] thinks it shows "how intelligently he had studied the Italian Renaissance and how correctly he had grasped its spirit." But this is to give him a credit that he does not fully deserve. The simple truth is that 'Fiesco' was written very hastily and that its author had spent precious little time in studying the Italian Renaissance, though it must be admitted that he possessed a remarkable gift for visualizing the little that he had read. Complexity of motive is all very well,—very human and very Italian; but the difficulty is that in this case it is not properly subordinated to a luminous dramatic idea. When a man's motives become so complex and contradictory that one does not know how to take him, he ceases to be available for the higher purposes of tragedy. That 'Fiesco' produces this bewildering effect is due to the fact that the inner logic of the piece had not been fully and consistently thought out when the writing began.

And this is not all. The author seems unable to control and guide the unruly spirits whom he has conjured into life. There is no lucid grouping of historical forces. France, Germany and the Pope stand dimly in the background like mechanical puppets, and we never learn what they severally represent in relation to Genoese politics, Gianettino pulls a string and has a sanction for the wholesale murder of his countrymen. Fiesco pulls another string and gets men and galleys ad libitum. We do not see an intelligible clash of great political ideas, but a wild melee, in the outcome of which we have no reason to be particularly interested. It is all as little tragic as a back-country vendetta, or a factional fight in the halls of a modern parliament.

How loosely the play is articulated, and how little of logical compulsion there Is in the catastrophe, is shown with fatal clearness by Schiller's procedure in revising his work for the Mannheim stage. By a few strokes of the pen at the end he changed its entire character. In the original draft his vacillating mind had leaned more and more decisively towards the Catilinarian conception of his hero, and the book-version of 1783 was accordingly supplied with a motto from Sallust's 'Catiline.' The sentence runs: Nam id facinus imprimis ego memorabile existimo, sceleris atque periculi novitate. So the conspiracy was to be a facinus and a scelus, and the hero, of course, another 'exalted criminal' in the style of Karl Moor. In the stage version we observe that the motto from Sallust has been dropped, and that while the title of 'tragedy' (Trauerspiel) is retained, the adjective 'republican' is omitted. Furthermore, without any radical revision of the preceding portraiture taken as a whole, a non-tragical conclusion has been substituted for the final catastrophe. Fiesco, hard pressed by the strenuous Verrina, declares that his heart has been right all along; only he was resolved that Genoa's freedom should be his work and his alone. So he breaks his scepter, concludes an eternal friendship with the amazed Verrina, and bids the people embrace their 'happiest fellow-citizen.' Thus the original version, which had called itself a republican tragedy and was a tragedy without being republican, became a play which is truly republican without being called so, but is no longer a tragedy.

This singular volte-face on the part of our dramatist has of course been the subject of infinite discussion. The most of the critics appear to regard it as a mistake, to say the least. One of them, Bellermann,[46] surmises that Schiller made the change against his will to meet the views of Dalberg. But of this there is no clear proof; and surely we cannot suppose that Schiller would have consented even reluctantly to a change which he himself felt to be utterly absurd because a complete stultification of the preceding plot. He must have felt that the new ending was artistically at least possible. And so it is. It is with 'Fiesco' somewhat as with the Bible: the conclusion that one reaches must depend upon the particular texts that one selects for emphasis. If we accent certain passages and pass lightly over others, we get the impression that it is a tragedy of selfish ambition doomed to disaster. If we accent a different set of passages, we are sure that it is a drama of republican idealism, sorely tempted by autocratic ambition, but destined to triumph finally over the baser motive. In the one view Verrina is a virtuous patriot; in the other he is a mad fanatic who does not understand the greatness of his chief. After Fiesco declares in soliloquy,—when a dramatic character is supposed to speak his real sentiments if anywhere,—that it is far nobler to renounce a diadem than to win it, we are certainly justified in expecting that he will seek the higher glory for himself. Thus either ending is possible, and which is the better is mainly a question of stage effect. Neither is historical, and neither gives a republican tragedy.

It would be pedantic indeed to have devoted so many words to a mere matter of name. If a drama is good it signifies but little what we call it, or whether its title be exactly appropriate. In this case, however, we have to do with a vital defect and not merely with a misnomer. A play may be good in different ways; and what the preceding criticism is intended to bring out is the fact that the strength of 'Fiesco', such as it has, does not lie in the intellectual organization of the whole. The mind of Schiller, but little trained hitherto upon historical studies, had not yet learned how to extract a clear poetic essence from a confused medley of recorded facts and opinions. Nature had endowed him with a vivid imagination for details, but study had not yet fitted him to exercise in a large and luminous way the sovereignty of the artist. His facts confused him and pulled him this way and that. And so we miss in 'Fiesco' that 'monumental fresco-painting', as it has been called, which constitutes the charm of his riper historical dramas.

But average play-goers are wont to bother their heads but little over these questions of higher artistic import which are apt to bulk so large before the mind of the literary critic. There are hundreds of literary dramas that are impossible or deadly dull upon the stage; and conversely dramatic talent will often make an interesting play out of a succession of scenes that lead the philosophic mind no whither. If 'Fiesco' remains a fairly good stage-play, it is because the interest turns not upon its ultimate import, but upon its elaborate intrigue, its exciting situations and its general picturesqueness. The intrigue carries one along by its very audacity, notwithstanding that in the light of reason much of it appears rather absurd. Thus we wonder how a mere brute like Gianettino can have become such a power in the state right under the eyes of the wise and good Andrea, who is subject to no illusions with regard to him. No objection can be made to Fiesco's mask of gayety and cynicism in the first two acts, for that is historical. But was it necessary for him to deceive and torture the wife to whom in the end he appears loyally devoted? In any case it is clear that the exposition should have hinted somehow at the true condition of affairs, for it is a good old rule that while the people on the stage may disguise themselves and befool one another as they will, the audience must be kept posted.

As it is, there is no suggestion of make-believe in Fiesco's courting of Julia. When he exclaims in soliloquy that she loves him and he 'envies no god', one is justified in assuming that chivalrous devotion to his wife is not among his virtues. It is to be supposed, apparently, that he makes love to Julia in order to be seen of men; but as a matter of fact nothing comes of his flirtation except the torture of his wife. No one is deceived whom it was important for him to deceive, and the whole incident serves only to put his character in a dubious light. Is this what Schiller intended? Did he feel that his hot-blooded Italian should not be made too much of an idealist in his relation to women? Did he wish it to be understood that Fiesco is honestly infatuated with the voluptuous Julia until he learns of her attempt to poison his wife? These are queries to which the play gives no very clear answer. So far as the conspiracy is concerned the whole affair with Julia is rather badly motivated.

Still more dubious, from a rational point of view, is Fiesco's relation to the Moor. That a man having large political designs requiring secrecy and fidelity should, on the spur of the moment, choose as his confidential agent a venal scoundrel who has just tried to murder him, is, to say the least, a little improbable. Here Schiller was evidently trying to Shaksperize again; trying, that is, to assert the poet's sovereign lordship over the petty bonds of Philistine logic. The Moor's frank exposition of the professional ethics of rascality, the dash with which he does his work, his ubiquitous serviceableness, and his rogue's humor make him a picturesque character and account for his having become on the stage the most popular figure in the piece; but that Fiesco should be willing to trust himself and his cause to such a scamp, and that such remarkable results should be achieved by the black man's kaleidoscopic activity, brings into the play an element of buffoonery that injures it on the serious side. The daring play of master and man excites a certain interest in their game, but it is impossible to care very much who wins. From a dramaturgic point of view, however, the Moor is a very useful invention, since Fiesco is thereby enabled to direct the whole conspiracy from his palace, and at the same time, in the person of his lieutenant, to be in every part of the city. Thus the action is concentrated and changes of scene are avoided.

As a portrayer of female character the author of 'Fiesco' has clearly made some progress since his first lame attempt in 'The Robbers', but the improvement is by no means dazzling. Both Leonora and Julia are singular creatures, and their unaccountableness is not of the right feminine kind that offers an attractive role to a good actress. Why should the Countess Fiesco, herself an aristocrat and a woman with heroic blood in her veins, submit so meekly in her own house to the coarse effrontery of the woman who has wronged her? We get the impression that she is only a crushed flower,—a helpless, wan-cheeked thing, with nothing womanly about her except her jealousy. And then, at the end, she suddenly develops into a heroine. And what a strange heroine! No one will chide her for resorting on the fatal night to the protection of male attire,—a good enough Shaksperian device,—but how remarkable that a woman wandering crazily in the dark, and already sufficiently disguised, should borrow a tell-tale cloak and a worse than useless sword from a corpse that she happens to stumble upon! No wonder that Schiller in revising for the stage decided to let Leonora live rather than provide for her death by such a stagy tour de force. In the stage version, however, she does not reappear after the parting scene, and so we are left to wonder why she was introduced at all.

In Madame Julia we have a type of woman who was meant to be repulsive, and so far forth the young artist must be admitted to have wrought successfully. She is somewhat minutely described as a 'tall and plump widow of twenty-five; a proud coquette, her beauty spoiled by its oddity; dazzling and not pleasing, and with a wicked, cynical expression.' That such a woman should befool Fiesco and rejoice in her triumph is quite thinkable, but her qualities are those which usually go with a certain amount of discretion. That she should suddenly lose her head and throw herself away in a voluptuous frenzy hardly comports with the type. Nor is there anything in the inventory of her qualities that prepares us for her sudden assumption of the role of poisoner, when she is already, as she must suppose, the mistress of the situation. In her altercation with Leonora in the second scene of Act II she uses a number of coarse expressions befitting a woman of vulgar birth,—wherein some of the critics see an evidence of Schiller's unfamiliarity with the ways of refined ladies. It is quite possible, however, that we have to do instead with a realistic attempt to make her language match the essential vulgarity of her character. At any rate it is interesting to know that the scene was offensive to Schiller himself. He worked upon it with repugnance and was glad to be able to omit it entirely from the stage version.[47]

In respect of its diction 'Fiesco' is in no way essentially different from 'The Robbers', albeit some have imagined that a faint improvement is discernible. There is the same tearing of passion to tatters, the same predilection for florid rhetoric in the sentimental passages, and for frenzied talk and action in passages of more violent emotion. When Fiesco discovers that he has killed his wife, he first thrashes about him furiously with his sword. Then he gnashes his teeth at God in heaven and expresses himself thus: 'If I only had His universe between my teeth, I feel in a mood to tear all nature into a grinning monster having the semblance of my pain.' In his final expostulation with the would-be tyrant, Verrina delivers himself of this sentence: 'Had I too been such an honest dolt as not to recognize the rogue in you, Fiesco, by all the horrors of eternity, I would twist a cord out of my own intestines and throttle you with it, so that my fleeing soul should bespatter you with yeasty foam-bubbles.'

No wonder that critics and actors alike were offended by such insanity of rant and that Schiller himself soon saw the folly of it. He had got the idea that when a man is figuratively 'beside himself', the most effective way to portray his state of feeling is to make him talk and act like a veritable madman. He had yet to learn the profound wisdom, for poets as well as actors, of Hamlet's rule to "acquire and beget, in the whirlwind of passion, a temperance that may give it smoothness."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 42: Schiller refers to the quoted passage in his review of 'The Robbers', Schriften, II, 357. It has not been found in Rousseau's writings. Sturz drew from unpublished sources.]

[Footnote 43: On the character of De Retz's work, and its relation to the original of Mascardi, consult the Notes and Introduction by Chantelauze in Vol. V of the 'Grands Ecrivains' edition of De Retz, p. 473 ff.]

[Footnote 44: It was evident, that is, to Schiller. In the dedication of 'Fiesco' to Professor Abel he wrote; "Die wahre Katastrophe des Komplotts, worin der Graf durch einen ungluecklichen Zufall am Ziel seiner Wuensche zu Grunde geht, muszte durchaus veraendert werden, denn die Natur des Dramas duldet den Finger des Ungefaehrs oder der unmittelbaren Vorsehung nicht."]

[Footnote 45: H. H. Boyesen, in his biography of Schiller, Chapter III.]

[Footnote 46: "Schillers Dramen," Berlin, 1898, I, III ff. Bellermann, who defends through thick and thin the unity and consistency of the original 'Fiesco', thinks that it is from first to last a tragedy of vaulting ambition,—not a political play at all, but a character play,—and that no other idea ever entered Schiller's mind. But his argument is anything but convincing and he carefully refrains from all discussion of the tell-tale phrase, 'a republican tragedy'.]

[Footnote 47: This appears from a letter of Sept. 29, 1783, to Dalberg.]



CHAPTER V

The Fugitive in Hiding

Ich kann nicht Fuerstendiener sein.—'Don Carlos'.

When Schiller arrived at Mannheim, in the latter part of September, 1782, he was soon made aware that he had reckoned badly on the 'Greek climate of the Palatinate'. The friends to whom he showed himself were shocked at the audacity of his conduct; they could only advise him to conciliate the Duke of Wuerttemberg and meanwhile to keep out of sight. So he wrote another very humble letter to his sovereign, explaining the desperate circumstances that had led to his flight and offering to return on condition of being allowed to continue his authorship. This letter he sent to his general, Auge, asking his mediation. In due time Auge replied, advising him to return, as the duke was 'graciously minded.' But this was not enough; Schiller knew his man too well and had probably never expected that his appeal would have any other effect than possibly to mollify the duke a little and thus avert trouble for Captain Schiller.

The fugitive had fixed all his hopes on the production of 'Fiesco' at the Mannheim theater. The manager, Meyer, was well disposed toward him, and it was soon arranged that Schiller should read his new play to a company of actors. The reading turned out a dismal failure. One by one the distressed auditors withdrew, wondering if what they heard was really the work of the same man who had written 'The Robbers'. The next day Meyer looked over the manuscript by himself and saw that it was not so bad after all; it had merely been murdered in the reading by its author's bad voice and extravagant declamation. But the decision did not rest with the friendly Meyer; it rested with Dalberg, who was just then away from home. Meanwhile, as reports came from Stuttgart to the effect that Schiller's disappearance had caused a great sensation and that there was talk of pursuit, or of a possible demand for his extradition, the two friends thought it best not to remain in Mannheim. Schiller did not actually believe that the duke would pursue him, but there was no telling; it was best to be on the safe side.

Accordingly 'Dr. Ritter' and 'Dr. Wolf' set out for Frankfurt. From there Schiller addressed a pathetic letter to Dalberg, setting forth that he was in great distress and asking for an advance of money against the first performance of 'Fiesco'. But the cautious Dalberg, who had just been in Stuttgart, replied coolly that 'Fiesco' was unsuited to the stage and would need to be radically revised. So the luckless author, having no other recourse, returned to the village of Oggersheim, in the vicinity of Mannheim, and there, with the faithful Streicher to keep him company, he spent the next few weeks, partly upon the thankless revision of 'Fiesco' and partly upon 'Louise Miller', which interested him more. Having done his best with 'Fiesco' he sent it to Dalberg, who curtly refused it a second time. His theatrical hopes thus completely baffled, Schiller turned over his play to the bookseller Schwan, who gave him eleven louis d'ors for it and immediately published it as a book for the reader.

In his extremity the exile now bethought him of the kind-hearted lady who had offered him an asylum in case of need. Frau Henriette von Wolzogen was a widow of humble means who had several sons in the academy at Stuttgart. She had conceived a liking for Schiller, and although there was some danger that her role of protectress might, if discovered, offend the Duke of Wuerttemberg, she did not hesitate to keep her word. The necessary arrangements were soon made, and late in November Schiller bade farewell to Streicher and set out for Bauerbach, a little village near Meiningen, to occupy the vacant cottage that had been placed at his disposal. He still kept the name of 'Dr. Ritter',—not so much from the fear of arrest, probably, as from a natural desire to remain in obscurity until he had won a position which would justify his flight in the eyes of the world, and more particularly of his father. While at Oggersheim he had occasionally sent out misleading letters, in which he spoke of journeys here and there, of remarkable prosperity and of brilliant prospects in Leipzig, Berlin and St. Petersburg. But his family knew of his whereabouts, and before leaving the Palatinate he contrived a meeting with his mother and his sister Christophine, who drove over to a half-way village to see him. He arrived at Bauerbach on the 7th of December, and wrote thus to Streicher on the following day: 'At last I am here, happy and contented that I am actually ashore. I found everything in excess of my wishes; needs no longer trouble me, and no annoyances from outside shall disturb my poetic dreams and my idealistic illusions.'—And in this quiet retreat, well supplied by the villagers with the necessaries of physical existence, he did actually find for the next seven months all that he needed. There were books, friendship, leisure, peace,—until the peace was disturbed by a maiden's eyes.

The books came from a man named Reinwald, who was in charge of the ducal library at Meiningen and to whom Schiller, foreseeing his own need, had made haste to introduce himself. Reinwald was some twenty-two years older than Schiller, a bit of a poet and a man of some literary ambition; but he had not got on well in the world. It was fated that he should marry Christophine Schiller, become peevish and sour in the course of time and lose the respect of his brother-in-law. For the present, however, he proved a very useful friend; for he not only executed orders for books and tobacco (Schiller had learned to smoke and take snuff), but he served as general intermediary between the mysterious Dr. Ritter and the outside world. Schiller's nature craved friendship, and his imagination easily endowed Reinwald with the qualities of an ideal companion of the soul. After a while we find him writing in such a strain as this:

Your visit the day before yesterday produced a glorious effect, I feel my spirits renewed and a warmer life courses through all my nerves. My situation in this solitude has drawn upon my soul the fate of stagnant water, which becomes foul unless it Is stirred up a little now and then. And I too hope to become necessary to your heart.[48]

As for Reinwald, he had long since passed the effusive age, but it pleased him to receive the younger man's confidence. He wrote in his diary: 'To-day Schiller opened his heart to me,—a youth who has already been through the school of life,—and I found him worthy to be called my friend. I do not believe that I have given my confidence to an unworthy man. He has an extraordinary mind and I believe that Germany will some day name his name with pride.'—Which was not bad guessing in its way.

Excepting Reinwald and the villagers Schiller saw at first but little of his fellow-mortals. Both on his own account and for the sake of Frau von Wolzogen he wished that the persons who saw him should not know who he was. So he continued to scatter false reports with a liberal hand: he had gone to Hannover, was going to London, to America, and so forth. In the mean time, with no thought of leaving his nest at Bauerbach, he devoted himself to his work. For the first time in his life he was the master of his own movements; he had a chance to collect himself, to browse among his books, to meditate and to dream. And as for mankind in general, he felt that he had no cause to love it. 'With the warmest feeling ', so he wrote after a time, when the first bitterness had passed away, 'I had embraced half the world and found at last that I had in my arms a cold lump of ice.'[49] Withal the demands of work were imperious. He had risked everything upon his chances of literary success and it was necessary to win. He had broken for good and all with the Duke of Wuerttemberg and there was nothing to be hoped for in that quarter. At the same time,—and the fact is characteristic of his large-mindedness,—he resolved not to air his personal grievance. To Frau von Wolzogen, who had been admonishing him never to forget his debt to the Stuttgart Academy, he wrote: 'However it may be with regard to that, you have my word that I will never belittle the Duke of Wuerttemberg.'

Toward the end of December the wintry dullness of his Bauerbach cottage was brightened by the arrival of its owner and her daughter. Lotte von Wolzogen was a blond school-girl who had not yet passed her seventeenth birthday. The records do not credit her with exceptional beauty, but she was sufficiently good-looking and her demure girlish innocence appeared to Schiller very lovable. Not that his plight was at all desperate; he hardly knew his own mind and was in no position to make love to any maiden, least of all to one with that menacing von in her name. Still he liked Fraeulein Lotte very much, and the tenderness which now began to manifest itself in his letters to the mother must be credited in part to the daughter. Were this not so we could hardly account for such expressions as these, which are contained in a letter written after the ladies had left Bauerbach for a short sojourn in the neighboring Waldorf: 'Since your absence I am stolen from myself. To feel a great and lively rapture is like looking at the sun; it is still before you long after you have turned away your face, and the eye is blinded to all weaker rays. But I shall take great care not to extinguish this agreeable illusion.' And again after they had left the Meiningen region for Stuttgart, with a promise to return in May: 'Dearest friend—a week behind me without you. So there is one of the fourteen got rid of. I could wish that time would put on its utmost speed until May, so as to move thereafter so much the more slowly.'