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

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

ACT IV. SCENE III.

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

TELL [enters with his bow].

Here through the hollow way he'll pass; there is No other road to Kuessnacht: here I'll do it! The opportunity is good; the bushes Of alder there will hide me; from that point My arrow hits him; the strait pass prevents Pursuit. Now, Gessler, balance thy account With Heaven! Thou must be gone: thy sand is run.

Remote and harmless I have liv'd; my bow Ne'er bent save on the wild beast of the forest; My thoughts were free of murder. Thou hast scar'd me From my peace; to fell asp-poison hast thou Changed the milk of kindly temper in me; Thou hast accustom'd me to horrors. Gessler! The archer who could aim at his boy's head Can send an arrow to his enemy's heart.

Poor little boys! My kind true wife! I will Protect them from thee, Landvogt! When I drew That bowstring, and my hand was quiv'ring, And with devilish joy thou mad'st me point it At the child, and I in fainting anguish Entreated thee in vain; then with a grim Irrevocable oath, deep in my soul, I vow'd to God in Heav'n, that the next aim I took should be thy heart. The vow I made In that despairing moment's agony Became a holy debt; and I will pay it.

Thou art my master, and my Kaiser's Vogt; Yet would the Kaiser not have suffer'd thee To do as thou hast done. He sent thee hither To judge us; rigorously, for he is angry; But not to glut thy savage appetite With murder, and thyself be safe, among us: There is a God to punish them that wrong us.

Come forth, thou bringer once of bitter sorrow, My precious jewel now, my trusty yew! A mark I'll set thee, which the cry of woe Could never penetrate: to thee it shall not Be impenetrable. And, good bowstring! Which so oft in sport hast serv'd me truly, Forsake me not in this last awful earnest; Yet once hold fast, thou faithful cord; thou oft For me hast wing'd the biting arrow; Now send it sure and piercing, now or never! Fail this, there is no second in my quiver.

[Travellers cross the scene.

Here let me sit on this stone bench, set up For brief rest to the wayfarer; for here There is no home. Each pushes on quick, transient, Regarding not the other or his sorrows. Here goes the anxious merchant, and the light Unmoneyed pilgrim; the pale pious monk, The gloomy robber, and the mirthful showman; The carrier with his heavy-laden horse, Who comes from far-off lands; for every road Will lead one to the end o' th' World. They pass; each hastening forward on his path, Pursuing his own business: mine is death! [Sits down.

Erewhile, my children, were your father out, There was a merriment at his return; For still, on coming home, he brought you somewhat, Might be an Alpine flower, rare bird, or elf-bolt, Such as the wand'rer finds upon the mountains: Now he is gone in quest of other spoil On the wild way he sits with thoughts of murder: 'Tis for his enemy's life he lies in wait And yet on you, dear children, you alone He thinks as then: for your sake is he here; To guard you from the Tyrant's vengeful mood, He bends his peaceful bow for work of blood. [Rises.

No common game I watch for. Does the hunter Think it nought to roam the livelong day, In winter's cold; to risk the desp'rate leap From crag to crag, to climb the slipp'ry face O' th' dizzy steep, glueing his steps in's blood; And all to catch a pitiful chamois? Here is a richer prize afield: the heart Of my sworn enemy, that would destroy me.

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

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

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

STUeSSI. 'Tis Klostermey'r of Morlischachen holds His bridal feast today: a wealthy man; Has half a score of glens i' th' Alps. They're going To fetch the bride from Imisee; tonight There will be mirth and wassail down at Kuessnacht. Come you! All honest people are invited.

TELL. A serious guest befits not bridal feasts.

STUeSSI. If sorrow press you, dash it from your heart! Seize what you can: the times are hard; one needs To snatch enjoyment nimbly while it passes. Here 'tis a bridal, there 'twill be a burial.

TELL. And oftentimes the one leads to the other.

STUeSSI. The way o' th' world at present! There is nought But mischief everywhere: an avalanche Has come away in Glarus; and, they tell me, A side o' th' Glarnish has sunk under ground.

TELL. Do, then, the very hills give way! On earth Is nothing that endures.

STUeSSI. In foreign parts, too, Are strange wonders. I was speaking with a man From Baden: a Knight, it seems, was riding To the King; a swarm of hornets met him By the way, and fell on's horse, and stung it Till it dropt down dead of very torment, And the poor Knight was forced to go afoot.

TELL. Weak creatures too have stings.

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

STUeSSI. 'Tis thought to bode Some great misfortune to the land; some black Unnatural action.

TELL. Ev'ry day such actions Occur in plenty: needs no sign or wonder To foreshow them.

STUeSSI. Ay, truly! Well for him That tills his field in peace, and undisturb'd Sits by his own fireside!

TELL. The peacefulest Dwells not in peace, if wicked neighbours hinder.

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

STUeSSI. Too true.—Good b'ye!—You're waiting here for some one?

TELL. That am I.

STUeSSI. Glad meeting with your friends! You are from Uri? His Grace the Landvogt Is expected thence today.

TRAVELLER [enters]. Expect not The Landvogt now. The waters, from the rain, Are flooded, and have swept down all the bridges. [Tell stands up.

ARMGART [coming forward].

The Vogt not come!

STUeSSI. Did you want aught with him?

ARMGART. Ah! yes, indeed!

STUeSSI. Why have you placed yourself In this strait pass to meet him?

ARMGART. In the pass He cannot turn aside from me, must hear me.

FRIESSHARDT [comes hastily down the Pass, and calls into the Scene].

Make way! make way! My lord the Landvogt Is riding close at hand.

ARMGART. The Landvogt coming!

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

STUeSSI [to Friesshardt]. How got you through the water, when the flood Had carried down the bridges?

FRIESS. We have battled With the billows, friend; we heed no Alp-flood.

STUeSSI. Were you o' board i' th' storm?

FRIESS. That were we; While I live, I shall remember 't.

STUeSSI. Stay, stay! O, tell me!

FRIESS. Cannot; must run on t' announce His lordship in the Castle. [Exit.

STUeSSI. Had these fellows I' th' boat been honest people, 't would have sunk With ev'ry soul of them. But for such rakehells, Neither fire nor flood will kill them. [He looks round.] Whither Went the Mountain-man was talking with me? [Exit.

GESSLER and RUDOLPH DER HARRAS on horseback.

GESSLER. Say what you like, I am the Kaiser's servant, And must think of pleasing him. He sent me Not to caress these hinds, to soothe or nurse them: Obedience is the word! The point at issue is Shall Boor or Kaiser here be lord o' th' land.

ARMGART. Now is the moment! Now for my petition!

[Approaches timidly.

GESSLER. This Hat at Aldorf, mark you, I set up Not for the joke's sake, or to try the hearts O' th' people; these I know of old: but that They might be taught to bend their necks to me, Which are too straight and stiff: and in the way Where they are hourly passing, I have planted This offence, that so their eyes may fall on't, And remind them of their lord, whom they forget.

RUDOLPH. But yet the people have some rights—

GESSLER. Which now Is not a time for settling or admitting. Mighty things are on the anvil. The house Of Hapsburg must wax powerful; what the Father Gloriously began, the Son must forward: This people is a stone of stumbling, which One way or t'other must be put aside.

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

ARMGART. Mercy, gracious Landvogt! Justice! Justice!

GESSLER. Why do you plague me here, and stop my way, I' th' open road? Off! Let me pass!

ARMGART. My husband Is in prison; these orphans cry for bread. Have pity, good your Grace, have pity on us!

RUDOLPH. Who or what are you, then? Who is your husband?

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

RUDOLPH [to Gessler]. By Heaven, a wild and miserable life! Do now! do let the poor drudge free, I pray you! Whatever be his crime, that horrid trade Is punishment enough. [To the Woman] You shall have justice: In the Castle there, make your petition; This is not the place.

ARMGART. No, no! I stir not From the spot till you give up my husband! 'Tis the sixth month he has lain i' th' dungeon, Waiting for the sentence of some judge, in vain.

GESSLER. Woman! Wouldst' lay hands on me? Begone!

ARMGART. Justice, Landvogt! thou art judge o' th' land here, I' th' Kaiser's stead and God's. Perform thy duty! As thou expectest justice from above, Show it to us.

GESSLER. Off! Take the mutinous rabble From my sight.

ARMGART [catches the bridle of the horse]. No, no! I now have nothing More to lose. Thou shalt not move a step, Vogt, Till thou hast done me right. Ay, knit thy brows, And roll thy eyes as sternly as thou wilt; We are so wretched, wretched now, we care not Aught more for thy anger.

GESSLER. Woman, make way! Or else my horse shall crush thee.

ARMGART. Let it! there—

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

Here am I with my children: let the orphans Be trodden underneath thy horse's hoofs! 'Tis not the worst that thou hast done.

RUDOLPH. Woman! Art' mad?

ARMGART [with still greater violence]. 'Tis long that thou hast trodden. The Kaiser's people under foot. Too long! O, I am but a woman; were I a man, I should find something else to do than lie Here crying in the dust.

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

GESSLER. Where are my servants? Quick! Take her hence! I may forget myself, And do the thing I shall repent.

RUDOLPH. My lord, The servants cannot pass; the place above Is crowded by a bridal company.

GESSLER. I've been too mild a ruler to this people; They are not tamed as they should be; their tongues Are still at liberty. This shall be alter'd! I will break that stubborn humour; Freedom With its pert vauntings shall no more be heard of: I will enforce a new law in these lands; There shall not—

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

God be merciful to me!

RUDOLPH. Herr Landvogt—God! What is it? Whence came it?

ARMGART [springing up]. Dead! dead! He totters, sinks! 'T has hit him!

RUDOLPH [springs from his horse]. Horrible!—O God of Heaven!—Herr Ritter, Cry to God for mercy! You are dying.

GESSLER. 'Tis Tell's arrow.

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

TELL [appears above, on the point of the rock]. Thou hast found the archer; Seek no other. Free are the cottages, Secure is innocence from thee; thou wilt Torment the land no more.

[Disappears from the height. The people rush in.

STUeSSI [foremost]. What? What has happen'd?

ARMGART. The Landvogt shot, kill'd by an arrow.

PEOPLE [rushing in]. Who? Who is shot?

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

RUDOLPH. He's bleeding, bleeding to death. Away! Seek help; pursue the murderer! Lost man! Must it so end with thee? Thou wouldst not Hear my warning!

STUeSSI. Sure enough! There lies he Pale and going fast.

MANY VOICES. Who was it killed him?

RUDOLPH. Are the people mad, that they make music Over murder? Stop it, I say!

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

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

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

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

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

STUeSSI. Look there! How pale he grows! Now! Death is coming Round his heart: his eyes grow dim and fixed.

ARMGART [lifts up one of her children]. See, children, how a miscreant departs!

RUDOLPH. Out on you, crazy hags! Have ye no touch Of feeling in you, that ye feast your eyes On such an object? Help me, lend your hands! Will no one help to pull the tort'ring arrow From his breast?

WOMEN [start back]. We touch him whom God has smote!

RUDOLPH. My curse upon you! [Draws his sword.

STUeSSI [lays his hand on Rudolph's arm]. Softly, my good Sir! Your government is at an end. The Tyrant Is fallen: we will endure no farther violence: We are free.

ALL [tumultuously]. The land is free!

RUDOLPH. Ha! runs it so? Are rev'rence and obedience gone already?

[To the armed Attendants, who press in.

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

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

ARMGART. Room! Room! Here come the Friars of Mercy.

STUeSSI. The victim slain, the ravens are assembling!

FRATRES MISERICORDIAE [form a half-circle round the dead body, and sing in a deep tone].

With noiseless tread death comes on man, No plea, no prayer delivers him; From midst of busy life's unfinished plan, With sudden hand, it severs him: And ready or not ready,—no delay, Forth to his Judge's bar he must away!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 38: 'He left a widow, two sons, and two daughters,' of whom we regret to say that we have learned nothing. 'Of his three sisters, the youngest died before him; the eldest is married to the Hofrath Reinwald, in Meinungen; the second to Herr Frankh, the clergyman of Meckmuhl, in Wuertemberg.' Doering.]

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

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

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

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

Much laborious discussion has been wasted in defining genius, particularly by the countrymen of Schiller, some of whom have narrowed the conditions of the term so far, as to find but three men of genius since the world was created: Homer, Shakspeare, and Goethe! From such rigid precision, applied to a matter in itself indefinite, there may be an apparent, but there is no real, increase of accuracy. The creative power, the faculty not only of imitating given forms of being, but of imagining and representing new ones, which is here attributed with such distinctness and so sparingly, has been given by nature in complete perfection to no man, nor entirely denied to any. The shades of it cannot be distinguished by so loose a scale as language. A definition of genius which excludes such a mind as Schiller's will scarcely be agreeable to philosophical correctness, and it will tend rather to lower than to exalt the dignity of the word. Possessing all the general mental faculties in their highest degree of strength, an intellect ever active, vast, powerful, far-sighted; an imagination never weary of producing grand or beautiful forms; a heart of the noblest temper, sympathies comprehensive yet ardent, feelings vehement, impetuous, yet full of love and kindliness and tender pity; conscious of the rapid and fervid exercise of all these powers within him, and able farther to present their products refined and harmonised, and 'married to immortal verse,' Schiller may or may not be called a man of genius by his critics; but his mind in either case will remain one of the most enviable which can fall to the share of a mortal.

In a poet worthy of that name, the powers of the intellect are indissolubly interwoven with the moral feelings, and the exercise of his art depends not more on the perfection of the one than of the other. The poet, who does not feel nobly and justly, as well as passionately, will never permanently succeed in making others feel: the forms of error and falseness, infinite in number, are transitory in duration; truth, of thought and sentiment, but chiefly of sentiment, truth alone is eternal and unchangeable. But, happily, a delight in the products of reason and imagination can scarcely ever be divided from, at least, a love for virtue and genuine greatness. Our feelings are in favour of heroism; we wish to be pure and perfect. Happy he whose resolutions are so strong, or whose temptations are so weak, that he can convert these feelings into action! The severest pang, of which a proud and sensitive nature can be conscious, is the perception of its own debasement. The sources of misery in life are many: vice is one of the surest. Any human creature, tarnished with guilt, will in general be wretched; a man of genius in that case will be doubly so, for his ideas of excellence are higher, his sense of failure is more keen. In such miseries, Schiller had no share. The sentiments, which animated his poetry, were converted into principles of conduct; his actions were as blameless as his writings were pure. With his simple and high predilections, with his strong devotedness to a noble cause, he contrived to steer through life, unsullied by its meanness, unsubdued by any of its difficulties or allurements. With the world, in fact, he had not much to do; without effort, he dwelt apart from it; its prizes were not the wealth which could enrich him. His great, almost his single aim, was to unfold his spiritual faculties, to study and contemplate and improve their intellectual creations. Bent upon this, with the steadfastness of an apostle, the more sordid temptations of the world passed harmlessly over him. Wishing not to seem, but to be, envy was a feeling of which he knew but little, even before he rose above its level. Wealth or rank he regarded as a means, not an end; his own humble fortune supplying him with all the essential conveniences of life, the world had nothing more that he chose to covet, nothing more that it could give him. He was not rich; but his habits were simple, and, except by reason of his sickness and its consequences, unexpensive. At all times he was far above the meanness of self-interest, particularly in its meanest shape, a love of money. Doering tells us, that a bookseller having travelled from a distance expressly to offer him a higher price for the copyright of Wallenstein, at that time in the press, and for which he was on terms with Cotta of Tuebingen, Schiller answering, "Cotta deals steadily with me, and I with him," sent away this new merchant, without even the hope of a future bargain. The anecdote is small; but it seems to paint the integrity of the man, careless of pecuniary concerns in comparison with the strictest uprightness in his conduct. In fact, his real wealth lay in being able to pursue his darling studies, and to live in the sunshine of friendship and domestic love. This he had always longed for; this he at last enjoyed. And though sickness and many vexations annoyed him, the intrinsic excellence of his nature chequered the darkest portions of their gloom with an effulgence derived from himself. The ardour of his feelings, tempered by benevolence, was equable and placid: his temper, though overflowing with generous warmth, seems almost never to have shown any hastiness or anger. To all men he was humane and sympathising; among his friends, open-hearted, generous, helpful; in the circle of his family, kind, tender, sportive. And what gave an especial charm to all this was, the unobtrusiveness with which it was attended: there was no parade, no display, no particle of affectation; rating and conducting himself simply as an honest man and citizen, he became greater by forgetting that he was great.

Such were the prevailing habits of Schiller. That in the mild and beautiful brilliancy of their aspect there must have been some specks and imperfections, the common lot of poor humanity, who knows not? That these were small and transient, we judge from the circumstance that scarcely any hint of them has reached us: nor are we anxious to obtain a full description of them. For practical uses, we can sufficiently conjecture what they were; and the heart desires not to dwell upon them. This man is passed away from our dim and tarnished world: let him have the benefit of departed friends; let him be transfigured in our thoughts, and shine there without the little blemishes that clung to him in life.

Schiller gives a fine example of the German character: he has all its good qualities in a high degree, with very few of its defects. We trace in him all that downrightness and simplicity, that sincerity of heart and mind, for which the Germans are remarked; their enthusiasm, their patient, long-continuing, earnest devotedness; their imagination, delighting in the lofty and magnificent; their intellect, rising into refined abstractions, stretching itself into comprehensive generalisations. But the excesses to which such a character is liable are, in him, prevented by a firm and watchful sense of propriety. His simplicity never degenerates into ineptitude or insipidity; his enthusiasm must be based on reason; he rarely suffers his love of the vast to betray him into toleration of the vague. The boy Schiller was extravagant; but the man admits no bombast in his style, no inflation in his thoughts or actions. He is the poet of truth; our understandings and consciences are satisfied, while our hearts and imaginations are moved. His fictions are emphatically nature copied and embellished; his sentiments are refined and touchingly beautiful, but they are likewise manly and correct; they exalt and inspire, but they do not mislead. Above all, he has no cant; in any of its thousand branches, ridiculous or hateful, none. He does not distort his character or genius into shapes, which he thinks more becoming than their natural one: he does not hang out principles which are not his, or harbour beloved persuasions which he half or wholly knows to be false. He did not often speak of wholesome prejudices; he did not 'embrace the Roman Catholic religion because it was the grandest and most comfortable.' Truth with Schiller, or what seemed such, was an indispensable requisite: if he but suspected an opinion to be false, however dear it may have been, he seems to have examined it with rigid scrutiny, and if he found it guilty, to have plucked it out, and resolutely cast it forth. The sacrifice might cause him pain, permanent pain; real damage, he imagined, it could hardly cause him. It is irksome and dangerous to travel in the dark; but better so, than with an Ignis-fatuus to guide us. Considering the warmth of his sensibilities, Schiller's merit on this point is greater than we might at first suppose. For a man with whom intellect is the ruling or exclusive faculty, whose sympathies, loves, hatreds, are comparatively coarse and dull, it may be easy to avoid this half-wilful entertainment of error, and this cant which is the consequence and sign of it. But for a man of keen tastes, a large fund of innate probity is necessary to prevent his aping the excellence which he loves so much, yet is unable to attain. Among persons of the latter sort, it is extremely rare to meet with one completely unaffected. Schiller's other noble qualities would not have justice, did we neglect to notice this, the truest proof of their nobility. Honest, unpretending, manly simplicity pervades all parts of his character and genius and habits of life. We not only admire him, we trust him and love him.

'The character of child-like simplicity,' he has himself observed,[39] 'which genius impresses on its works, it shows also in its private life and manners. It is bashful, for nature is ever so; but it is not prudish, for only corruption is prudish. It is clear-sighted, for nature can never be the contrary; but it is not cunning, for this only art can be. It is faithful to its character and inclinations; but not so much because it is directed by principles, as because after all vibrations nature constantly reverts to her original position, constantly renews her primitive demand. It is modest, nay timid, for genius is always a secret to itself; but it is not anxious, for it knows not the dangers of the way which it travels. Of the private habits of the persons who have been peculiarly distinguished by their genius, our information is small; but the little that has been recorded for us of the chief of them,—of Sophocles, Archimedes, Hippocrates; and in modern times, of Dante and Tasso, of Rafaelle, Albrecht Duerer, Cervantes, Shakspeare, Fielding, and others,—confirms this observation.' Schiller himself confirms it; perhaps more strongly than most of the examples here adduced. No man ever wore his faculties more meekly, or performed great works with less consciousness of their greatness. Abstracted from the contemplation of himself, his eye was turned upon the objects of his labour, and he pursued them with the eagerness, the entireness, the spontaneous sincerity, of a boy pursuing sport. Hence this 'child-like simplicity,' the last perfection of his other excellencies. His was a mighty spirit unheedful of its might. He walked the earth in calm power: 'the staff of his spear was like a weaver's beam;' but he wielded it like a wand.

[Footnote 39: Naive und sentimentalische Dichtung.]

Such, so far as we can represent it, is the form in which Schiller's life and works have gradually painted their character in the mind of a secluded individual, whose solitude he has often charmed, whom he has instructed, and cheered, and moved. The original impression, we know, was faint and inadequate, the present copy of it is still more so; yet we have sketched it as we could: the figure of Schiller, and of the figures he conceived and drew are there; himself, 'and in his hand a glass which shows us many more.' To those who look on him as we have wished to make them, Schiller will not need a farther panegyric. For the sake of Literature, it may still be remarked, that his merit was peculiarly due to her. Literature was his creed, the dictate of his conscience; he was an Apostle of the Sublime and Beautiful, and this his calling made a hero of him. For it was in the spirit of a true man that he viewed it, and undertook to cultivate it; and its inspirations constantly maintained the noblest temper in his soul. The end of Literature was not, in Schiller's judgment, to amuse the idle, or to recreate the busy, by showy spectacles for the imagination, or quaint paradoxes and epigrammatic disquisitions for the understanding: least of all was it to gratify in any shape the selfishness of its professors, to minister to their malignity, their love of money, or even of fame. For persons who degrade it to such purposes, the deepest contempt of which his kindly nature could admit was at all times in store. 'Unhappy mortal!' says he to the literary tradesman, the man who writes for gain, 'Unhappy mortal, who with science and art, the noblest of all instruments, effectest and attemptest nothing more than the day-drudge with the meanest; who, in the domain of perfect Freedom, bearest about in thee the spirit of Slave!' As Schiller viewed it, genuine Literature includes the essence of philosophy, religion, art; whatever speaks to the immortal part of man. The daughter, she is likewise the nurse of all that is spiritual and exalted in our character. The boon she bestows is truth; truth not merely physical, political, economical, such as the sensual man in us is perpetually demanding, ever ready to reward, and likely in general to find; but truth of moral feeling, truth of taste, that inward truth in its thousand modifications, which only the most ethereal portion of our nature can discern, but without which that portion of it languishes and dies, and we are left divested of our birthright, thenceforward 'of the earth earthy,' machines for earning and enjoying, no longer worthy to be called the Sons of Heaven. The treasures of Literature are thus celestial, imperishable, beyond all price: with her is the shrine of our best hopes, the palladium of pure manhood; to be among the guardians and servants of this is the noblest function that can be intrusted to a mortal. Genius, even in its faintest scintillations, is 'the inspired gift of God;' a solemn mandate to its owner to go forth and labour in his sphere, to keep alive 'the sacred fire' among his brethren, which the heavy and polluted atmosphere of this world is forever threatening to extinguish. Woe to him if he neglect this mandate, if he hear not its small still voice! Woe to him if he turn this inspired gift into the servant of his evil or ignoble passions; if he offer it on the altar of vanity, if he sell it for a piece of money!

'The Artist, it is true,' says Schiller, 'is the son of his age; but pity for him if he is its pupil, or even its favourite! Let some beneficent Divinity snatch him when a suckling from the breast of his mother, and nurse him with the milk of a better time; that he may ripen to his full stature beneath a distant Grecian sky. And having grown to manhood, let him return, a foreign shape, into his century; not, however, to delight it by his presence; but terrible, like the Son of Agamemnon, to purify it. The Matter of his works he will take from the present; but their Form he will derive from a nobler time, nay from beyond all time, from the absolute unchanging unity of his nature. Here from the pure aether of his spiritual essence, flows down the Fountain of Beauty, uncontaminated by the pollutions of ages and generations, which roll to and fro in their turbid vortex far beneath it. His Matter caprice can dishonour as she has ennobled it; but the chaste Form is withdrawn from her mutations. The Roman of the first century had long bent the knee before his Caesars, when the statues of Rome were still standing erect; the temples continued holy to the eye, when their gods had long been a laughing-stock; and the abominations of a Nero and a Commodus were silently rebuked by the style of the edifice which lent them its concealment. Man has lost his dignity, but Art has saved it, and preserved it for him in expressive marbles. Truth still lives in fiction, and from the copy the original will be restored.

'But how is the Artist to guard himself from the corruptions of his time, which on every side assail him? By despising its decisions. Let him look upwards to his dignity and his mission, not downwards to his happiness and his wants. Free alike from the vain activity, that longs to impress its traces on the fleeting instant; and from the discontented spirit of enthusiasm, that measures by the scale of perfection the meagre product of reality, let him leave to common sense, which is here at home, the province of the actual; while he strives from the union of the possible with the necessary to bring out the ideal. This let him imprint and express in fiction and truth, imprint it in the sport of his imagination and the earnest of his actions, imprint it in all sensible and spiritual forms, and cast it silently into everlasting Time.'[40]

[Footnote 40: Ueber die aesthetische Erziehung des Menschen.]

Nor were these sentiments, be it remembered, the mere boasting manifesto of a hot-brained inexperienced youth, entering on literature with feelings of heroic ardour, which its difficulties and temptations would soon deaden or pervert: they are the calm principles of a man, expressed with honest manfulness, at a period when the world could compare them with a long course of conduct. In this just and lofty spirit, Schiller undertook the business of literature; in the same spirit he pursued it with unflinching energy all the days of his life. The common, and some uncommon, difficulties of a fluctuating and dependent existence could not quench or abate his zeal: sickness itself seemed hardly to affect him. During his last fifteen years, he wrote his noblest works; yet, as it has been proved too well, no day of that period could have passed without its load of pain.[41] Pain could not turn him from his purpose, or shake his equanimity: in death itself he was calmer and calmer. Nor has he gone without his recompense. To the credit of the world it can be recorded, that their suffrages, which he never courted, were liberally bestowed on him: happier than the mighty Milton, he found 'fit hearers,' even in his lifetime, and they were not 'few.' His effect on the mind of his own country has been deep and universal, and bids fair to be abiding: his effect on other countries must in time be equally decided; for such nobleness of heart and soul shadowed forth in beautiful imperishable emblems, is a treasure which belongs not to one nation, but to all. In another age, this Schiller will stand forth in the foremost rank among the master-spirits of his century; and be admitted to a place among the chosen of all centuries. His works, the memory of what he did and was, will rise afar off like a towering landmark in the solitude of the Past, when distance shall have dwarfed into invisibility the lesser people that encompassed him, and hid him from the near beholder.

[Footnote 41: On a surgical inspection of his body after death, the most vital organs were found totally deranged. 'The structure of the lungs was in great part destroyed, the cavities of the heart were nearly grown up, the liver had become hard, and the gall-bladder was extended to an extraordinary size.' Doering.]

On the whole, we may pronounce him happy. His days passed in the contemplation of ideal grandeurs, he lived among the glories and solemnities of universal Nature; his thoughts were of sages and heroes, and scenes of elysian beauty. It is true, he had no rest, no peace; but he enjoyed the fiery consciousness of his own activity, which stands in place of it for men like him. It is true, he was long sickly; but did he not even then conceive and body-forth Max Piccolomini, and Thekla, and the Maid of Orleans, and the scenes of Wilhelm Tell? It is true, he died early; but the student will exclaim with Charles XII. in another case, "Was it not enough of life when he had conquered kingdoms?" These kingdoms which Schiller conquered were not for one nation at the expense of suffering to another; they were soiled by no patriot's blood, no widow's, no orphan's tear: they are kingdoms conquered from the barren realms of Darkness, to increase the happiness, and dignity, and power, of all men; new forms of Truth, new maxims of Wisdom, new images and scenes of Beauty, won from the 'void and formless Infinite;' a [Greek: ktema es aiei], 'a possession forever,' to all the generations of the Earth.



SUPPLEMENT OF 1872.



HERR SAUPE'S BOOK.

[NOTE IN PEOPLE'S EDITION.]

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

[Footnote 42: Schiller und sein Vaeterliches Haus. Von Ernst Julius Saupe, Subconrector am Gymnasium zu Gera. Leipzig: Verlagsbuchhandlung von J. J. Weber, 1851.]

[Footnote 43: Schiller's Leben von Gustav Schwab (Stuttgart, 1841).

Schiller's Leben, verfasst aus, &c. By Caroline von Wolzogen, born von Lengefeld (Schiller's Sister-in-law): Stuttgart und Tuebingen, 1845.

Schiller's Beziehungen zu Eltern, Geschwistern und der Familie von Wolzogen, aus den Familien-Papieren. By Baroness von Gleichen (Schiller's youngest Daughter) and Baron von Wolzogen (her Cousin): Stuttgart, 1859.]

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

Chelsea, Nov. 1872.

T. C.



SAUPE'S

"SCHILLER AND HIS FATHER'S HOUSEHOLD."

I. THE FATHER.

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 44: See Life of Friedrich (Book xix. chap. 8; Book xviii. chap. 10), and Schiller Senior's rough bit of Autobiography, called 'Meine Lebensgeschichte,' in Schiller's Beziehungen zu Eltern, Geschwistern und der Familie von Wolzogen (mentioned above), p. 1 et seqq.]

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

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 45:

'Treuer Waechter Israels! Dir sei Preis und Dank und Ehren; Laut betend lob' ich Dich, Dass es Erd' und Himmel hoeren' &c.]

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

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

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

[Footnote 46: Saupe, p. 11.]

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

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

[Footnote 47: Saupe, pp. 106-108.]

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

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

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

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

MUCH-LOVED PARENTS.[48]

Parents, whom I lovingly honour, Today my heart is full of thankfulness! This Year may a gracious God increase What is at all times your support!

The Lord, the Fountain of all joy, Remain always your comfort and portion; His Word be the nourishment of your heart, And Jesus your wished-for salvation.

I thank you for all your proofs of love, For all your care and patience; My heart shall praise all your goodness, And ever comfort itself in your favour.

Obedience, diligence and tender love I promise you for this Year. God send me only good inclinations, And make true all my wishes! Amen.

1 January 1769. JOHANN FRIEDRICH SCHILLER.

[Footnote 48:

HERZGELIEBTE ELTERN.

Eltern, die ich zaertlich ehre, Mein Herz ist heut' voll Dankbarkeit! Der treue Gott dies Jahr vermehre Was Sie erquickt zu jeder Zeit!

Der Herr, die Quelle aller Freude, Verbleibe stets Ihr Trost und Theil; Sein Wort sei Ihres Herzens Weide, Und Jesus Ihr erwunschtes Heil.

Ich dank' von alle Liebes-Proben, Von alle Sorgfalt und Geduld, Mein Herz soll alle Guete loben, Und troesten sich stets Ihrer Huld.

Gehorsam, Fleiss und zarte Liebe Verspreche ich auf dieses Jahr. Der Herr schenk' mir nur gute Treibe, Und mache all' mein Wunschen wahr. Amen.

JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH SCHILLER.

Den 1 Januarii Anno 1769.]

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

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

[Footnote 49: Saupe, p. 18.]

'At Ludwigsburg Schiller and Christophine first saw a Theatre; where at that time, in the sumptuous Duke's love of splendour, only pompous operas and ballets were given. The first effect of this new enjoyment, which Fritz and his Sister strove to repeat as often as they could, was that at home, with little clipped and twisted paper dolls, they set about representing scenes; and on Christophine's part it had the more important result of awakening and nourishing, at an early age, her aesthetic taste. Schiller considered her, ever after these youthful sports, as a true and faithful companion in his poetic dreams and attempts; and constantly not only told his Sister, whose silence on such points could be perfect, of all that he secretly did in the way of verse-making in the Karl's School,—which, as we shall see, he entered in 1773,—but if possible brought it upon the scene with her. Scenes from the lyrical operetta of Semele were acted by Schiller and Christophine, on those terms; which appears in a complete shape for the first time in Schiller's Anthology, printed 1782.[50]

[Footnote 50: Ibid. p. 109.]

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

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

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

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

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

'At the same age, viz. about twenty-two, at which Captain Schiller had made his first military sally into the Netherlands and the Austrian-Succession War, his Son issued from the Karl's School, 15th December 1780; and was immediately appointed Regimental-Doctor at Stuttgart; with a monthly pay of twenty-three gulden' (2l. 6s.=11s. and a fraction per week). 'With this appointment, Schiller had, as it were, openly altogether outgrown all special paternal guardianship or guidance; and was, from this time, treated by his Father as come to majority, and standing on his own feet. If he came out, as frequently happened, with a comrade to Solituede, he was heartily welcome there, and the Father's looks often dwelt on him with visible satisfaction. If in the conscientious and rigorous old man, with his instructive and serious experiences of life, there might yet various anxieties and doubts arise when he heard of the exuberantly genial ways of his hopeful Son at Stuttgart, he still looked upon him with joyful pride, in remarking how those so promising Karl's Scholars, who had entered into the world along with him, recognised his superiority of mind, and willingly ranked themselves under him. Nor could it be otherwise than highly gratifying to his old heart to remark always with what deep love the gifted Son constantly regarded his Parents and Sisters.'[51]—Of Schiller's first procedures in Stuttgart, after his emancipation from the Karl's School, and appointment as Regimental-Surgeon, or rather of his general behaviour and way of life there, which are said to have been somewhat wild, genially, or even ungenially extravagant, and to have involved him in many paltry entanglements of debts, as one bad consequence,—there will be some notice in the next Section, headed "The Mother." His Regimental Doctorship, and stay in Stuttgart altogether, lasted twenty-two months.

[Footnote 51: Saupe, p. 25.]

This is Schiller's bodily appearance, as it first presented itself to an old School-fellow, who, after an interval of eighteen months, saw him again on Parade, as Doctor of the Regiment Auge,—more to his astonishment than admiration.

'Crushed into the stiff tasteless Old-Prussian Uniform; on each of his temples three stiff rolls as if done with gypsum; the tiny three-cocked hat scarcely covering his crown; so much the thicker the long pigtail, with the slender neck crammed into a very narrow horsehair stock; the felt put under the white spatterdashes, smirched by traces of shoe-blacking, giving to the legs a bigger diameter than the thighs, squeezed into their tight-fitting breeches, could boast of. Hardly, or not at all, able to bend his knees, the whole man moved like a stork.'

'The Poet's form,' says this Witness elsewhere, a bit of a dilettante artist it seems, 'had somewhat the following appearance: Long straight stature; long in the legs, long in the arms; pigeon-breasted; his neck very long; something rigorously stiff; in gait and carriage not the smallest elegance. His brow was broad; the nose thin, cartilaginous, white of colour, springing out at a notably sharp angle, much bent,—a parrot-nose, and very sharp in the point (according to Dannecker the Sculptor, Schiller, who took snuff, had pulled it out so with his hand). The red eyebrows, over the deep-lying dark-gray eyes, were bent too close together at the nose, which gave him a pathetic expression. The lips were thin, energetic; the under-lip protruding, as if pushed forward by the inspiration of his feelings; the chin strong; cheeks pale, rather hollow than full, freckly; the eyelids a little inflamed; the bushy hair of the head dark red; the whole head rather ghostlike than manlike, but impressive even in repose, and all expression when Schiller declaimed. Neither the features nor the somewhat shrieky voice could he subdue. Dannecker,' adds the satirical Witness, 'has unsurpassably cut this head in marble for us.'[52]

[Footnote 52: Schwab, Schiller's Leben (Stuttgart, 1841), p. 68.]

'The publication of the Robbers' (Autumn 1781),—'which Schiller, driven on by rage and desperation, had composed in the fetters of the Karl's School,—raised him on the sudden to a phenomenon on which all eyes in Stuttgart were turned. What, with careless exaggeration, he had said to a friend some months before, on setting forth his Elegy on the Death of a Young Man, "The thing has made my name hereabouts more famous than twenty years of practice would have done; but it is a name like that of him who burnt the Temple of Ephesus: God be merciful to me a sinner!" might now with all seriousness be said of the impression his Robbers made on the harmless townsfolk of Stuttgart. But how did Father Schiller at first take up this eccentric product of his Son, which openly declared war on all existing order? Astonishment and terror, anger and detestation, boundless anxiety, with touches of admiration and pride, stormed alternately through the solid honest man's paternal breast, as he saw the frank picture of a Prodigal Son rolled out before him; and had to gaze into the most revolting deeps of the passions and vices. Yet he felt himself irresistibly dragged along by the uncommon vivacity of action in this wild Drama; and at the same time powerfully attracted by the depth, the tenderness and fulness of true feeling manifested in it: so that, at last, out of those contradictory emotions of his, a clear admiration and pride for his Son's bold and rich spirit maintained the upper hand. By Schiller's friends and closer connections, especially by his Mother and Sisters, all pains were of course taken to keep up this favourable humour in the Father, and carefully to hide from him all disadvantageous or disquieting tidings about the Piece and its consequences and practical effects. Thus he heard sufficiently of the huge excitement and noise which the Robbers was making all over Germany, and of the seductive approval which came streaming-in on the youthful Poet, even out of distant provinces; but heard nothing either of the Duke's offended and angry feelings over the Robbers, a production horrible to him; nor of the Son's secret journeys to Mannheim, and the next consequences of these' (his brief arrest, namely), 'nor of the rumour circulating in spiteful quarters, that this young Doctor was neglecting his own province of medicine, and meaning to become a play-actor. How could the old man, in these circumstances, have a thought that the Robbers would be the loss of Family and Country to his poor Fritz! And yet so it proved.