The Life of Friedrich Schiller Part 7

[Footnote 23: See Appendix I., No. 4.]

On the whole, the present work is still the best historical performance which Germany can boast of. Muller's histories are distinguished by merits of another sort; by condensing, in a given s.p.a.ce, and frequently in lucid order, a quant.i.ty of information, copious and authentic beyond example: but as intellectual productions, they cannot rank with Schiller's. Woltmann of Berlin has added to the _Thirty-Years War_ another work of equal size, by way of continuation, ent.i.tled _History of the Peace of Munster_; with the first negotiations of which treaty the former concludes. Woltmann is a person of ability; but we dare not say of him, what Wieland said of Schiller, that by his first historical attempt he 'has discovered a decided capability of rising to a level with Hume, Robertson and Gibbon.' He will rather rise to a level with Belsham or Smollett.

This first complete specimen of Schiller's art in the historical department, though but a small fraction of what he meant to do, and could have done, proved in fact to be the last he ever undertook. At present very different cares awaited him: in 1791, a fit of sickness overtook him; he had to exchange the inspiring labours of literature for the disgusts and disquietudes of physical disease. His disorder, which had its seat in the chest, was violent and threatening; and though nature overcame it in the present instance, the blessing of entire health never more returned to him. The cause of this severe affliction seemed to be the unceasing toil and anxiety of mind, in which his days had hitherto been pa.s.sed: his frame, which, though tall, had never been robust, was too weak for the vehement and sleepless soul that dwelt within it; and the habit of nocturnal study had, no doubt, aggravated all the other mischiefs. Ever since his residence at Dresden, his const.i.tution had been weakened: but this rude shock at once shattered its remaining strength; for a time the strictest precautions were required barely to preserve existence. A total cessation from every intellectual effort was one of the most peremptory laws prescribed to him. Schiller's habits and domestic circ.u.mstances equally rebelled against this measure; with a beloved wife depending on him for support, inaction itself could have procured him little rest. His case seemed hard; his prospects of innocent felicity had been too banefully obscured. Yet in this painful and difficult position, he did not yield to despondency; and at length, a.s.sistance, and partial deliverance, reached him from a very unexpected quarter. Schiller had not long been sick, when the hereditary Prince, now reigning Duke of Holstein-Augustenburg, jointly with the Count Von Schimmelmann, conferred on him a pension of a thousand crowns for three years.[24] No stipulation was added, but merely that he should be careful of his health, and use every attention to recover. This speedy and generous aid, moreover, was presented with a delicate politeness, which, as Schiller said, touched him more than even the gift itself. We should remember this Count and this Duke; they deserve some admiration and some envy.

[Footnote 24: It was to Denmark likewise that Klopstock owed the means of completing his _Messias_.]

This disorder introduced a melancholy change into Schiller's circ.u.mstances: he had now another enemy to strive with, a secret and fearful impediment to vanquish, in which much resolute effort must be sunk without producing any positive result. Pain is not entirely synonymous with Evil; but bodily pain seems less redeemed by good than almost any other kind of it. From the loss of fortune, of fame, or even of friends, Philosophy pretends to draw a certain compensating benefit; but in general the permanent loss of health will bid defiance to her alchymy. It is a universal diminution; the diminution equally of our resources and of our capacity to guide them; a penalty unmitigated, save by love of friends, which then first becomes truly dear and precious to us; or by comforts brought from beyond this earthly sphere, from that serene Fountain of peace and hope, to which our weak Philosophy cannot raise her wing. For all men, in itself, disease is misery; but chiefly for men of finer feelings and endowments, to whom, in return for such superiorities, it seems to be sent most frequently and in its most distressing forms. It is a cruel fate for the poet to have the sunny land of his imagination, often the sole territory he is lord of, disfigured and darkened by the shades of pain; for one whose highest happiness is the exertion of his mental faculties, to have them chained and paralysed in the imprisonment of a distempered frame. With external activity, with palpable pursuits, above all, with a suitable placidity of nature, much even in certain states of sickness may be performed and enjoyed. But for him whose heart is already over-keen, whose world is of the mind, ideal, internal; when the mildew of lingering disease has struck that world, and begun to blacken and consume its beauty, nothing seems to remain but despondency and bitterness and desolate sorrow, felt and antic.i.p.ated, to the end.

Woe to him if his will likewise falter, if his resolution fail, and his spirit bend its neck to the yoke of this new enemy! Idleness and a disturbed imagination will gain the mastery of him, and let loose their thousand fiends to hara.s.s him, to torment him into madness.

Alas! the bondage of Algiers is freedom compared with this of the sick man of genius, whose heart has fainted and sunk beneath its load. His clay dwelling is changed into a gloomy prison; every nerve is become an avenue of disgust or anguish; and the soul sits within, in her melancholy loneliness, a prey to the spectres of despair, or stupefied with excess of suffering, doomed as it were to a 'life in death,' to a consciousness of agonised existence, without the consciousness of power which should accompany it. Happily, death, or entire fatuity, at length puts an end to such scenes of ign.o.ble misery; which, however, ign.o.ble as they are, we ought to view with pity rather than contempt.

Such are frequently the fruits of protracted sickness, in men otherwise of estimable qualities and gifts, but whose sensibility exceeds their strength of mind. In Schiller, its worst effects were resisted by the only availing antidote, a strenuous determination to neglect them. His spirit was too vigorous and ardent to yield even in this emergency: he disdained to dwindle into a pining valetudinarian; in the midst of his infirmities, he persevered with unabated zeal in the great business of his life. As he partially recovered, he returned as strenuously as ever to his intellectual occupations; and often, in the glow of poetical conception, he almost forgot his maladies. By such resolute and manly conduct, he disarmed sickness of its cruelest power to wound; his frame might be in pain, but his spirit retained its force, unextinguished, almost unimpeded; he did not lose his relish for the beautiful, the grand, or the good, in any of their shapes; he loved his friends as formerly, and wrote his finest and sublimest works when his health was gone. Perhaps no period of his life displayed more heroism than the present one.

After this severe attack, and the kind provision which he had received from Denmark, Schiller seems to have relaxed his connexion with the University of Jena: the weightiest duties of his cla.s.s appear to have been discharged by proxy, and his historical studies to have been forsaken. Yet this was but a change, not an abatement, in the activity of his mind. Once partially free from pain, all his former diligence awoke; and being also free from the more pressing calls of duty and economy, he was now allowed to turn his attention to objects which attracted it more. Among these one of the most alluring was the Philosophy of Kant.

The transcendental system of the Konigsberg Professor had, for the last ten years, been spreading over Germany, which it had now filled with the most violent contentions. The powers and accomplishments of Kant were universally acknowledged; the high pretensions of his system, pretensions, it is true, such as had been a thousand times put forth, a thousand times found wanting, still excited notice, when so backed by ability and reputation. The air of mysticism connected with these doctrines was attractive to the German mind, with which the vague and the vast are always pleasing qualities; the dreadful array of first principles, the forest huge of terminology and definitions, where the panting intellect of weaker men wanders as in pathless thickets, and at length sinks powerless to the earth, oppressed with fatigue, and suffocated with scholastic miasma, seemed sublime rather than appalling to the Germans; men who shrink not at toil, and to whom a certain degree of darkness appears a native element, essential for giving play to that deep meditative enthusiasm which forms so important a feature in their character. Kant's Philosophy, accordingly, found numerous disciples, and possessed them with a zeal unexampled since the days of Pythagoras. This, in fact, resembled spiritual fanaticism rather than a calm ardour in the cause of science; Kant's warmest admirers seemed to regard him more in the light of a prophet than of a mere earthly sage. Such admiration was of course opposed by corresponding censure; the transcendental neophytes had to encounter sceptical gainsayers as determined as themselves. Of this latter cla.s.s the most remarkable were Herder and Wieland. Herder, then a clergyman of Weimar, seems never to have comprehended what he fought against so keenly: he denounced and condemned the Kantean metaphysics, because he found them heterodox. The young divines came back from the University of Jena with their minds well nigh delirious; full of strange doctrines, which they explained to the examinators of the Weimar Consistorium in phrases that excited no idea in the heads of these reverend persons, but much horror in their hearts.[25] Hence reprimands, and objurgations, and excessive bitterness between the applicants for ordination and those appointed to confer it: one young clergyman at Weimar shot himself on this account; heresy, and jarring, and unprofitable logic, were universal. Hence Herder's vehement attacks on this 'pernicious quackery;' this delusive and destructive 'system of words.'[26] Wieland strove against it for another reason.

He had, all his life, been labouring to give currency among his countrymen to a species of diluted epicurism; to erect a certain smooth, and elegant, and very slender scheme of taste and morals, borrowed from our Shaftesbury and the French. All this feeble edifice the new doctrine was sweeping before it to utter ruin, with the violence of a tornado. It grieved Wieland to see the work of half a century destroyed: he fondly imagined that but for Kant's philosophy it might have been perennial. With scepticism quickened into action by such motives, Herder and he went forth as brother champions against the transcendental metaphysics; they were not long without a mult.i.tude of hot a.s.sailants. The uproar produced among thinking men by the conflict, has scarcely been equalled in Germany since the days of Luther. Fields were fought, and victories lost and won; nearly all the minds of the nation were, in secret or openly, arrayed on this side or on that. Goethe alone seemed altogether to retain his wonted composure; he was clear for allowing the Kantean scheme to 'have its day, as all things have.' Goethe has already lived to see the wisdom of this sentiment, so characteristic of his genius and turn of thought.

[Footnote 25: Sch.e.l.ling has a book on the 'Soul of the World:' Fichte's expression to his students, "Tomorrow, gentlemen, I shall create G.o.d," is known to most readers.]

[Footnote 26: See _Herder's Leben_, by his Widow. That Herder was not usually troubled with any unphilosophical scepticism, or aversion to novelty, may be inferred from his patronising Dr. Gall's system of Phrenology, or 'Skull-doctrine' as they call it in Germany. But Gall had referred with acknowledgment and admiration to the _Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit_. Here lay a difference.]

In these controversies, soon pushed beyond the bounds of temperate or wholesome discussion, Schiller took no part: but the noise they made afforded him a fresh inducement to investigate a set of doctrines, so important in the general estimation. A system which promised, even with a very little plausibility, to accomplish all that Kant a.s.serted his complete performance of; to explain the difference between Matter and Spirit, to unravel the perplexities of Necessity and Free-will; to show us the true grounds of our belief in G.o.d, and what hope nature gives us of the soul's immortality; and thus at length, after a thousand failures, to interpret the enigma of our being,-hardly needed that additional inducement to make such a man as Schiller grasp at it with eager curiosity. His progress also was facilitated by his present circ.u.mstances; Jena had now become the chief well-spring of Kantean doctrine, a distinction or disgrace it has ever since continued to deserve. Reinhold, one of Kant's ablest followers, was at this time Schiller's fellow-teacher and daily companion: he did not fail to encourage and a.s.sist his friend in a path of study, which, as he believed, conducted to such glorious results. Under this tuition, Schiller was not long in discovering, that at least the 'new philosophy was more poetical than that of Leibnitz, and had a grander character;' persuasions which of course confirmed him in his resolution to examine it.

How far Schiller penetrated into the arcana of transcendentalism it is impossible for us to say. The metaphysical and logical branches of it seem to have afforded him no solid satisfaction, or taken no firm hold of his thoughts; their influence is scarcely to be traced in any of his subsequent writings. The only department to which he attached himself with his ordinary zeal was that which relates to the principles of the imitative arts, with their moral influences, and which in the Kantean nomenclature has been designated by the term _aesthetics_,[27] or the doctrine of sentiments and emotions. On these subjects he had already ama.s.sed a mult.i.tude of thoughts; to see which expressed by new symbols, and arranged in systematic form, and held together by some common theory, would necessarily yield enjoyment to his intellect, and inspire him with fresh alacrity in prosecuting such researches. The new light which dawned, or seemed to dawn, upon him, in the course of these investigations, is reflected, in various treatises, evincing, at least, the honest diligence with which he studied, and the fertility with which he could produce. Of these the largest and most elaborate are the essays on _Grace and Dignity_; on _Nave and Sentimental Poetry_; and the _Letters on the aesthetic Culture of Man_: the other pieces are on _Tragic Art_; on the _Pathetic_; on the _Cause of our Delight in Tragic Objects_; on _Employing the Low and Common in Art_.

[Footnote 27: From the verb a?s?a??a?, _to feel_.-The term is Baumgarten's; prior to Kant (1845).]

Being cast in the mould of Kantism, or at least clothed in its garments, these productions, to readers unacquainted with that system, are enc.u.mbered here and there with difficulties greater than belong intrinsically to the subject. In perusing them, the uninitiated student is mortified at seeing so much powerful thought distorted, as he thinks, into such fantastic forms: the principles of reasoning, on which they rest, are apparently not those of common logic; a dimness and doubt overhangs their conclusions; scarcely anything is proved in a convincing manner. But this is no strange quality in such writings.

To an exoteric reader the philosophy of Kant almost always appears to invert the common maxim; its end and aim seem not to be 'to make abstruse things simple, but to make simple things abstruse.' Often a proposition of inscrutable and dread aspect, when resolutely grappled with, and torn from its shady den, and its bristling entrenchments of uncouth terminology, and dragged forth into the open light of day, to be seen by the natural eye, and tried by merely human understanding, proves to be a very harmless truth, familiar to us from of old, sometimes so familiar as to be a truism. Too frequently, the anxious novice is reminded of Dryden in the _Battle of the Books_: there is a helmet of rusty iron, dark, grim, gigantic; and within it, at the farthest corner, is a head no bigger than a walnut. These are the general errors of Kantean criticism; in the present works, they are by no means of the worst or most pervading kind; and there is a fundamental merit which does more than counterbalance them. By the aid of study, the doctrine set before us can, in general, at length be comprehended; and Schiller's fine intellect, recognisable even in its masquerade, is ever and anon peering forth in its native form, which all may understand, which all must relish, and presenting us with pa.s.sages that show like bright verdant islands in the misty sea of metaphysics.

We have been compelled to offer these remarks on Kant's Philosophy; but it is right to add that they are the result of only very limited acquaintance with the subject. We cannot wish that any influence of ours should add a note, however feeble, to the loud and not at all melodious cry which has been raised against it in this country. When a cla.s.s of doctrines so involved in difficulties, yet so sanctioned by ill.u.s.trious names, is set before us, curiosity must have a theory respecting them, and indolence and other humbler feelings are too ready to afford her one. To call Kant's system a laborious dream, and its adherents crazy mystics, is a brief method, brief but false. The critic, whose philosophy includes the _craziness_ of men like these, so easily and smoothly in its formulas, should render thanks to Heaven for having gifted him with science and ac.u.men, as few in any age or country have been gifted. Meaner men, however, ought to recollect that where we do not understand, we should postpone deciding, or, at least, keep our decision for our own exclusive benefit. We of England may reject this Kantean system, perhaps with reason; but it ought to be on other grounds than are yet before us. Philosophy is science, and science, as Schiller has observed, cannot always be explained in 'conversations by the parlour fire,' or in written treatises that resemble such. The _cui bono_ of these doctrines may not, it is true, be expressible by arithmetical computations: the subject also is perplexed with obscurities, and probably with manifold delusions; and too often its interpreters with us have been like 'tenebrific stars,'

that 'did ray out darkness' on a matter itself sufficiently dark. But what then? Is the jewel always to be found among the common dust of the highway, and always to be estimated by its value in the common judgment? It lies embosomed in the depths of the mine; rocks must be rent before it can be reached; skilful eyes and hands must separate it from the rubbish where it lies concealed, and kingly purchasers alone can prize it and buy it. This law of _ostracism_ is as dangerous in science as it was of old in politics. Let us not forget that many things are true which cannot be demonstrated by the rules of _Watts's Logic_; that many truths are valuable, for which no price is given in Paternoster Row, and no preferment offered at St. Stephen's! Whoever reads these treatises of Schiller with attention, will perceive that they depend on principles of an immensely higher and more complex character than our 'Essays on Taste,' and our 'Inquiries concerning the Freedom of the Will.' The laws of criticism, which it is their purpose to establish, are derived from the inmost nature of man; the scheme of morality, which they inculcate, soars into a brighter region, very far beyond the ken of our 'Utilities' and 'Reflex-senses.'

They do not teach us 'to judge of poetry and art as we judge of dinner,' merely by observing the impressions it produced in us; and they _do_ derive the duties and chief end of man from other grounds than the philosophy of Profit and Loss. These _Letters on aesthetic Culture_, without the aid of anything which the most sceptical could designate as superst.i.tion, trace out and attempt to sanction for us a system of morality, in which the sublimest feelings of the Stoic and the Christian are represented but as stages in our progress to the pinnacle of true human grandeur; and man, isolated on this fragment of the universe, encompa.s.sed with the boundless desolate Unknown, at war with Fate, without help or the hope of help, is confidently called upon to rise into a calm cloudless height of internal activity and peace, and _be_, what he has fondly named himself, the G.o.d of this lower world. When such are the results, who would not make an effort for the steps by which they are attained? In Schiller's treatises, it must be owned, the reader, after all exertions, will be fortunate if he can find them. Yet a second perusal will satisfy him better than the first; and among the shapeless immensities which fill the Night of Kantism, and the meteoric coruscations, which perplex him rather than enlighten, he will fancy he descries some streaks of a serener radiance, which he will pray devoutly that time may purify and ripen into perfect day. The Philosophy of Kant is probably combined with errors to its very core; but perhaps also, this ponderous unmanageable dross may bear in it the everlasting gold of truth! Mighty spirits have already laboured in refining it: is it wise in us to take up with the base pewter of Utility, and renounce such projects altogether? We trust, not.[28]

[Footnote 28: Are our hopes from Mr. Coleridge always to be fruitless? Sneers at the common-sense philosophy of the Scotch are of little use: it is a poor philosophy, perhaps; but not so poor as none at all, which seems to be the state of matters here at present.]

That Schiller's _genius_ profited by this laborious and ardent study of aesthetic Metaphysics, has frequently been doubted, and sometimes denied. That, after such investigations, the process of composition would become more difficult, might be inferred from the nature of the case. That also the principles of this critical theory were in part erroneous, in still greater part too far-fetched and fine-spun for application to the business of writing, we may farther venture to a.s.sert. But excellence, not ease of composition, is the thing to be desired; and in a mind like Schiller's, so full of energy, of images and thoughts and creative power, the more sedulous practice of selection was little likely to be detrimental. And though considerable errors might mingle with the rules by which he judged himself, the habit of judging carelessly, or not at all, is far worse than that of sometimes judging wrong. Besides, once accustomed to attend strictly to the operations of his genius, and rigorously to try its products, such a man as Schiller could not fail in time to discover what was false in the principles by which he tried them, and consequently, in the end, to retain the benefits of this procedure without its evils.

There is doubtless a purism in taste, a rigid fantastical demand of perfection, a horror at approaching the limits of impropriety, which obstructs the free impulse of the faculties, and if excessive, would altogether deaden them. But the excess on the other side is much more frequent, and, for high endowments, infinitely more pernicious. After the strongest efforts, there may be little realised; without strong efforts, there must be little. That too much care does hurt in any of our tasks is a doctrine so flattering to indolence, that we ought to receive it with extreme caution. In works impressed with the stamp of true genius, their quality, not their extent, is what we value: a dull man may spend his lifetime writing little; better so than writing much; but a man of powerful mind is liable to no such danger. Of all our authors, Gray is perhaps the only one that from fastidiousness of taste has written less than he should have done: there are thousands that have erred the other way. What would a Spanish reader give, had Lope de Vega composed a hundred times as little, and that little a hundred times as well!

Schiller's own ideas on these points appear to be sufficiently sound: they are sketched in the following extract of a letter, interesting also as a record of his purposes and intellectual condition at this period:

'Criticism must now make good to me the damage she herself has done.

And damaged me she most certainly has; for the boldness, the living glow which I felt before a rule was known to me, have for several years been wanting. I now _see_ myself _create_ and _form_: I watch the play of inspiration; and my fancy, knowing she is not without witnesses of her movements, no longer moves with equal freedom. I hope, however, ultimately to advance so far that _art_ shall become a second _nature_, as polished manners are to well-bred men; then Imagination will regain her former freedom, and submit to none but voluntary limitations.'

Schiller's subsequent writings are the best proof that in these expectations he had not miscalculated.

The historical and critical studies, in which he had been so extensively and seriously engaged, could not remain without effect on Schiller's general intellectual character. He had spent five active years in studies directed almost solely to the understanding, or the faculties connected with it; and such industry united to such ardour had produced an immense accession of ideas. History had furnished him with pictures of manners and events, of strange conjunctures and conditions of existence; it had given him more minute and truer conceptions of human nature in its many forms, new and more accurate opinions on the character and end of man. The domain of his mind was both enlarged and enlightened; a mult.i.tude of images and detached facts and perceptions had been laid up in his memory; and his intellect was at once enriched by acquired thoughts, and strengthened by increased exercise on a wider circle of knowledge.

But to understand was not enough for Schiller; there were in him faculties which this could not employ, and therefore could not satisfy. The primary vocation of his nature was poetry: the acquisitions of his other faculties served but as the materials for his poetic faculty to act upon, and seemed imperfect till they had been sublimated into the pure and perfect forms of beauty, which it is the business of this to elicit from them. New thoughts gave birth to new feelings: and both of these he was now called upon to body forth, to represent by visible types, to animate and adorn with the magic of creative genius. The first youthful blaze of poetic ardour had long since pa.s.sed away; but this large increase of knowledge awakened it anew, refined by years and experience into a steadier and clearer flame. Vague shadows of unaccomplished excellence, gleams of ideal beauty, were now hovering fitfully across his mind: he longed to turn them into shape, and give them a local habitation and a name.

Criticism, likewise, had exalted his notions of art: the modern writers on subjects of taste, Aristotle, the ancient poets, he had lately studied; he had carefully endeavoured to extract the truth from each, and to amalgamate their principles with his own; in choosing, he was now more difficult to satisfy. Minor poems had all along been partly occupying his attention; but they yielded no s.p.a.ce for the intensity of his impulses, and the magnificent ideas that were rising in his fancy. Conscious of his strength, he dreaded not engaging with the highest species of his art: the perusal of the Greek tragedians had given rise to some late translations;[29] the perusal of Homer seems now to have suggested the idea of an epic poem. The hero whom he first contemplated was Gustavus Adolphus; he afterwards changed to Frederick the Great of Prussia.

[Footnote 29: These were a fine version, of Euripides'

_Iphigenia in Aulide_, and a few scenes of his _Phnissae_.]

Epic poems, since the time of the _Epigoniad_, and _Leonidas_, and especially since that of some more recent attempts, have with us become a mighty dull affair. That Schiller aimed at something infinitely higher than these faint and superannuated imitations, far higher than even Klopstock has attained, will appear by the following extract from one of his letters:

'An epic poem in the eighteenth century should be quite a different thing from such a poem in the childhood of the world. And it is that very circ.u.mstance which attracts me so much towards this project. Our manners, the finest essence of our philosophies, our politics, economy, arts, in short, of all we know and do, would require to be introduced without constraint, and interwoven in such a composition, to live there in beautiful harmonious freedom, as all the branches of Greek culture live and are made visible in Homer's _Iliad_. Nor am I disinclined to invent a species of machinery for this purpose; being anxious to fulfil, with hairsbreadth accuracy, all the requisitions that are made of epic poets, even on the side of form. Besides, this machinery, which, in a subject so modern, in an age so prosaic, appears to present the greatest difficulty, might exalt the interest in a high degree, were it suitably adapted to this same modern spirit.

Crowds of confused ideas on this matter are rolling to and fro within my head; something distinct will come out of them at last.

'As for the sort of metre I would choose, this I think you will hardly guess: no other than _ottave rime_. All the rest, except iambic, are become insufferable to me. And how beautifully might the earnest and the lofty be made to play in these light fetters! What attractions might the epic _substance_ gain by the soft yielding _form_ of this fine rhyme! For, the poem must, not in name only, but in very deed, be capable of being _sung_; as the _Iliad_ was sung by the peasants of Greece, as the stanzas of _Jerusalem Delivered_ are still sung by the Venetian gondoliers.

'The epoch of Frederick's life that would fit me best, I have considered also. I should wish to select some unhappy situation; it would allow me to unfold his mind far more poetically. The chief action should, if possible, be very simple, perplexed with no complicated circ.u.mstances, that the whole might easily be comprehended at a glance, though the episodes were never so numerous. In this respect there is no better model than the _Iliad_.'

Schiller did not execute, or even commence, the project he has here so philosophically sketched: the constraints of his present situation, the greatness of the enterprise compared with the uncertainty of its success, were sufficient to deter him. Besides, he felt that after all his wide excursions, the true home of his genius was the Drama, the department where its powers had first been tried, and were now by habit or nature best qualified to act. To the Drama he accordingly returned. The _History of the Thirty-Years War_ had once suggested the idea of Gustavus Adolphus as the hero of an epic poem; the same work afforded him a subject for a tragedy: he now decided on beginning _Wallenstein_. In this undertaking it was no easy task that he contemplated; a common play did not now comprise his aim; he required some magnificent and comprehensive object, in which he could expend to advantage the new poetical and intellectual treasures which he had for years been ama.s.sing; something that should at once exemplify his enlarged ideas of art, and give room and shape to his fresh stores of knowledge and sentiment. As he studied the history of Wallenstein, and viewed its capabilities on every side, new ideas gathered round it: the subject grew in magnitude, and often changed in form. His progress in actual composition was, of course, irregular and small. Yet the difficulties of the subject, increasing with his own wider, more ambitious conceptions, did not abate his diligence: _Wallenstein_, with many interruptions and many alterations, sometimes stationary, sometimes retrograde, continued on the whole, though slowly, to advance.

This was for several years his chosen occupation, the task to which he consecrated his brightest hours, and the finest part of his faculties.

For humbler employments, demanding rather industry than inspiration, there still remained abundant leisure, of which it was inconsistent with his habits to waste a single hour. His occasional labours, accordingly, were numerous, varied, and sometimes of considerable extent. In the end of 1792, a new object seemed to call for his attention; he once about this time seriously meditated mingling in politics. The French Revolution had from the first affected him with no ordinary hopes; which, however, the course of events, particularly the imprisonment of Louis, were now fast converting into fears. For the ill-fated monarch, and the cause of freedom, which seemed threatened with disgrace in the treatment he was likely to receive, Schiller felt so deeply interested, that he had determined, in his case a determination not without its risks, to address an appeal on these subjects to the French people and the world at large. The voice of reason advocating liberty as well as order might still, he conceived, make a salutary impression in this period of terror and delusion; the voice of a distinguished man would at first sound like the voice of the nation, which he seemed to represent. Schiller was inquiring for a proper French translator, and revolving in his mind the various arguments that might be used, and the comparative propriety of using or forbearing to use them; but the progress of things superseded the necessity of such deliberation. In a few months, Louis perished on the scaffold; the Bourbon family were murdered, or scattered over Europe; and the French government was changed into a frightful chaos, amid the tumultuous and b.l.o.o.d.y horrors of which, calm truth had no longer a chance to be heard. Schiller turned away from these repulsive and appalling scenes, into other regions where his heart was more familiar, and his powers more likely to produce effect.

The French Revolution had distressed and shocked him; but it did not lessen his attachment to liberty, the name of which had been so desecrated in its wild convulsions. Perhaps in his subsequent writings we can trace a more respectful feeling towards old establishments; more reverence for the majesty of Custom; and with an equal zeal, a weaker faith in human perfectibility: changes indeed which are the common fruit of years themselves, in whatever age or climate of the world our experience may be gathered.

Among the number of fluctuating engagements, one, which for ten years had been constant with him, was the editing of the _Thalia_. The principles and performances of that work he had long looked upon as insufficient: in particular, ever since his settlement at Jena, it had been among his favourite projects to exchange it for some other, conducted on a more liberal scheme, uniting more ability in its support, and embracing a much wider compa.s.s of literary interests.

Many of the most distinguished persons in Germany had agreed to a.s.sist him in executing such a plan; Goethe, himself a host, undertook to go hand in hand with him. The _Thalia_ was in consequence relinquished at the end of 1793: and the first number of the _h.o.r.en_ came out early in the following year. This publication was enriched with many valuable pieces on points of philosophy and criticism; some of Schiller's finest essays first appeared here: even without the foreign aids which had been promised him, it already bade fair to outdo, as he had meant it should, every previous work of that description.

The _Musen-Almanach_, of which he likewise undertook the superintendence, did not aim so high: like other works of the same t.i.tle, which are numerous in Germany, it was intended for preserving and annually delivering to the world, a series of short poetical effusions, or other fugitive compositions, collected from various quarters, and often having no connexion but their juxtaposition. In this work, as well as in the _h.o.r.en_, some of Schiller's finest smaller poems made their first appearance; many of these pieces being written about this period, especially the greater part of his ballads, the idea of attempting which took its rise in a friendly rivalry with Goethe. But the most noted composition sent forth in the pages of the _Musen-Almanach_, was the _Xenien_;[30] a collection of epigrams which originated partly, as it seems, in the mean or irritating conduct of various contemporary authors. In spite of the most flattering promises, and of its own intrinsic character, the _h.o.r.en_, at its first appearance, instead of being hailed with welcome by the leading minds of the country, for whom it was intended as a rallying point, met in many quarters with no sentiment but coldness or hostility. The controversies of the day had sown discord among literary men; Schiller and Goethe, a.s.sociating together, had provoked ill-will from a host of persons, who felt the justice of such mutual preference, but liked not the inferences to be drawn from it; and eyed this intellectual duumvirate, however meek in the discharge of its functions and the wearing of its honours, with jealousy and discontent.

[Footnote 30: So called from ?e????, _munus hospitale_; a t.i.tle borrowed from Martial, who has thus designated a series of personal epigrams in his Thirteenth Book.]

The cavilling of these people, awkwardly contrasted with their personal absurdity and insipidity, at length provoked the serious notice of the two ill.u.s.trious a.s.sociates: the result was this German Dunciad; a production of which the plan was, that it should comprise an immense mult.i.tude of detached couplets, each conveying a complete thought within itself, and furnished by one of the joint operators.

The subjects were of unlimited variety; 'the most,' as Schiller says, 'were wild satire, glancing at writers and writings, intermixed with here and there a flash of poetical or philosophic thought.' It was at first intended to provide about a thousand of these pointed monodistichs; unity in such a work appearing to consist in a certain boundlessness of size, which should hide the heterogeneous nature of the individual parts: the whole were then to be arranged and elaborated, till they had acquired the proper degree of consistency and symmetry; each sacrificing something of its own peculiar spirit to preserve the spirit of the rest. This number never was completed: and, Goethe being now busy with his _Wilhelm Meister_, the project of completing it was at length renounced; and the _Xenien_ were published as unconnected particles, not pretending to const.i.tute a whole. Enough appeared to create unbounded commotion among the parties implicated: the _Xenien_ were exclaimed against, abused, and replied to, on all hands; but as they declared war not on persons but on actions; not against Gleim, Nicolai, Manso, but against bad taste, dulness, and affectation, nothing criminal could be sufficiently made out against them.[31] The _Musen-Almanach_, where they appeared in 1797, continued to be published till the time of Schiller's leaving Jena: the _h.o.r.en_ ceased some months before.

[Footnote 31: This is but a lame account of the far-famed _Xenien_ and their results. See more of the matter in Franz Horn's _Poesie und Beredtsamkeit_; in Carlyle's _Miscellanies_ (i. 67); &c. (_Note of 1845._)]

The cooperation of Goethe, which Schiller had obtained so readily in these pursuits, was of singular use to him in many others. Both possessing minds of the first order, yet constructed and trained in the most opposite modes, each had much that was valuable to learn of the other, and suggest to him. Cultivating different kinds of excellence, they could joyfully admit each other's merit; connected by mutual services, and now by community of literary interests, few unkindly feelings could have place between them. For a man of high equalities, it is rare to find a meet companion; painful and injurious to want one. Solitude exasperates or deadens the heart, perverts or enervates the faculties; a.s.sociation with inferiors leads to dogmatism in thought, and self-will even in affections. Rousseau never should have lived in the Val de Montmorenci; it had been good for Warburton that Hurd had not existed; for Johnson never to have known Boswell or Davies. From such evils Schiller and Goethe were delivered; their intimacy seems to have been equal, frank and cordial; from the contrasts and the endowments of their minds, it must have had peculiar charms. In his critical theories, Schiller had derived much profit from communicating with an intellect as excursive as his own, but far cooler and more sceptical: as he lopped off from his creed the excrescences of Kantism, Goethe and he, on comparing their ideas, often found in them a striking similarity; more striking and more gratifying, when it was considered from what diverse premises these harmonious conclusions had been drawn. On such subjects they often corresponded when absent, and conversed when together. They were in the habit of paying long visits to each other's houses; frequently they used to travel in company between Jena and Weimar. 'At Triesnitz, a couple of English miles from Jena, Goethe and he,' we are told, 'might sometimes be observed sitting at table, beneath the shade of a spreading tree; talking, and looking at the current of pa.s.sengers.'-There are some who would have 'travelled fifty miles on foot' to join the party!

Besides this intercourse with Goethe, he was happy in a kindly connexion with many other estimable men, both in literary and in active life. Dalberg, at a distance, was to the last his friend and warmest admirer. At Jena, he had Schutz, Paul, Hufland, Reinhold.

Wilhelm von Humboldt, also, brother of the celebrated traveller, had come thither about this time, and was now among his closest a.s.sociates. At Weimar, excluding less important persons, there were still Herder and Wieland, to divide his attention with Goethe. And what to his affectionate heart must have been the most grateful circ.u.mstance of all, his aged parents were yet living to partic.i.p.ate in the splendid fortune of the son whom they had once lamented and despaired of, but never ceased to love. In 1793 he paid them a visit in Swabia, and pa.s.sed nine cheerful months among the scenes dearest to his recollection: enjoying the kindness of those unalterable friends whom Nature had given him; and the admiring deference of those by whom it was most delightful to be honoured,-those who had known him in adverse and humbler circ.u.mstances, whether they might have respected or contemned him. By the Grand Duke, his ancient censor and patron, he was not interfered with; that prince, in answer to a previous application on the subject, having indirectly engaged to take no notice of this journey. The Grand Duke had already interfered too much with him, and bitterly repented of his interference. Next year he died; an event which Schiller, who had long forgotten past ill-treatment, did not learn without true sorrow, and grateful recollections of bygone kindness. The new sovereign, anxious to repair the injustice of his predecessor, almost instantly made offer of a vacant Tubingen professors.h.i.+p to Schiller; a proposal flattering to the latter, but which, by the persuasion of the Duke of Weimar, he respectfully declined.

Amid labours and amus.e.m.e.nts so multiplied, amid such variety of intellectual exertion and of intercourse with men, Schiller, it was clear, had not suffered the encroachments of bodily disease to undermine the vigour of his mental or moral powers. No period of his life displayed in stronger colours the lofty and determined zeal of his character. He had already written much; his fame stood upon a firm basis; domestic wants no longer called upon him for incessant effort; and his frame was pining under the slow canker of an incurable malady.

Yet he never loitered, never rested; his fervid spirit, which had vanquished opposition and oppression in his youth; which had struggled against hara.s.sing uncertainties, and pa.s.sed unsullied through many temptations, in his earlier manhood, did not now yield to this last and most fatal enemy. The present was the busiest, most productive season of his literary life; and with all its drawbacks, it was probably the happiest. Violent attacks from his disorder were of rare occurrence; and its constant influence, the dark vapours with which it would have overshadowed the faculties of his head and heart, were repelled by diligence and a courageous exertion of his will. In other points, he had little to complain of, and much to rejoice in. He was happy in his family, the chosen scene of his sweetest, most lasting satisfaction; by the world he was honoured and admired; his wants were provided for; he had tasks which inspired and occupied him; friends who loved him, and whom he loved. Schiller had much to enjoy, and most of it he owed to himself.

In his mode of life at Jena, simplicity and uniformity were the most conspicuous qualities; the single excess which he admitted being that of zeal in the pursuits of literature, the sin which all his life had most easily beset him. His health had suffered much, and princ.i.p.ally, it was thought, from the practice of composing by night: yet the charms of this practice were still too great for his self-denial; and, except in severe fits of sickness, he could not discontinue it. The highest, proudest pleasure of his mind was that glow of intellectual production, that 'fine frenzy,' which makes the poet, while it lasts, a new and n.o.bler creature; exalting him into brighter regions, adorned by visions of magnificence and beauty, and delighting all his faculties by the intense consciousness of their exerted power. To enjoy this pleasure in perfection, the solitary stillness of night, diffusing its solemn influence over thought as well as earth and air, had at length in Schiller's case grown indispensable. For this purpose, accordingly, he was accustomed, in the present, as in former periods, to invert the common order of things: by day he read, refreshed himself with the aspect of nature, conversed or corresponded with his friends; but he wrote and studied in the night. And as his bodily feelings were too often those of languor and exhaustion, he adopted, in impatience of such mean impediments, the pernicious expedient of stimulants, which yield a momentary strength, only to waste our remaining fund of it more speedily and surely.

'During summer, his place of study was in a garden, which at length he purchased, in the suburbs of Jena, not far from the Weselhofts' house, where at that time was the office of the _Allgemeine Litteratur-Zeitung_.

Reckoning from the market-place of Jena, it lies on the south-west border of the town, between the Engelgatter and the Neuthor, in a hollow defile, through which a part of the Leutrabach flows round the city. On the top of the acclivity, from which there is a beautiful prospect into the valley of the Saal, and the fir mountains of the neighbouring forest, Schiller built himself a small house, with a single chamber.[32] It was his favourite abode during hours of composition; a great part of the works he then wrote were written here. In winter he likewise dwelt apart from the noise of men; in the Griesbachs' house, on the outside of the city-trench. * * * On sitting down to his desk at night, he was wont to keep some strong coffee, or wine-chocolate, but more frequently a flask of old Rhenish, or Champagne, standing by him, that he might from time to time repair the exhaustion of nature. Often the neighbours used to hear him earnestly declaiming, in the silence of the night: and whoever had an opportunity of watching him on such occasions, a thing very easy to be done from the heights lying opposite his little garden-house, on the other side of the dell, might see him now speaking aloud and walking swiftly to and fro in his chamber, then suddenly throwing himself down into his chair and writing; and drinking the while, sometimes more than once, from the gla.s.s standing near him. In winter he was to be found at his desk till four, or even five o'clock in the morning; in summer, till towards three. He then went to bed, from which he seldom rose till nine or ten.'[33]

[Footnote 32: 'The street leading from Schiller's dwelling-house to this, was by some wags named the _Xenien-ga.s.se_; a name not yet entirely disused.']