In this "romantic tragedy,"
as Schiller called it, he images forth with wonderful accuracy the
romantic spirit of the age, which rendered such apparitions and super-
natural agencies credible.
as Schiller called it, he images forth with wonderful accuracy the
romantic spirit of the age, which rendered such apparitions and super-
natural agencies credible.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v22 - Sac to Sha
If it does not
seek the beautiful, it finds the charming. Its character is not
grand, but it has a character.
It has set a seal upon all that it has produced: buildings,
furniture, pictures. When, two or three years ago, an exhibition
brought together the works of the principal painters of the
French school in the eighteenth century, the canvases of Greuze,
of Boucher, of Watteau, of Fragonard, of Chardin, great was the
astonishment to find so much frankness under all that affectation,
originality in that mannerism, vitality in that conventional school
of art. We should never lose sight of one thing: the epoch
under consideration had what was lacking in some other epochs,
-in the Empire, for example,- an art and a literature. That
is not enough to make a great century, but it can aid a century
to make a figure in history.
But observe what still better characterizes French society
before the Revolution. That society is animated with intellect-
ual curiosity. It has the taste for letters, and in letters the taste
for new things, for adventures. It devours voyages, history, phi-
losophy. It is concerned about the Chinese and the Hindus;
it desires to know what Rome was, and what England is; it
studies popular institutions and the faculties of the human under-
standing. The ladies have great quartos on their dressing-tables
(that is the accepted size). Nothing discourages them. They
read Raynal's 'Philosophic History,' Hume's 'Stuarts' [History
of England], Montesquieu's 'Spirit of Laws. ' But it is with
the sciences that they are most smitten. It is there that their
trouble of mind is best diverted. Fontenelle discourses to them
on the worlds, and Galiani on political economy. The new arts,
the progress of industry, excite their enthusiasm. They wish to
see all, to know all. They follow courses, they frequent labora-
tories, they assist at experiments, they discuss systems, they read
memoirs. Run after these charming young women,- they go
to the Jardin des Plantes to see a theriac put together; to the
Abbé Mical to hear an automaton speak; to Rouelle to witness
the volatilization of the diamond; to Réveillon, there to salute
Pilâtre de Rozier, before an ascension. This morning they have
paid a visit to the great cactus that only blossoms once in fifty
years, this afternoon they will attend experiments upon inflam-
mable air or upon electricity. Nothing even in medicine or
## p. 12873 (#295) ##########################################
EDMOND SCHÉRER
12873
anatomy is without attraction for their unfettered curiosity: the
Countess de Voisenon prescribes for her friends; the Countess de
Coigny is only eighteen, and she dissects!
This tendency to hyper-enthusiasm is a sign of mobility; and
mobility is one of the distinguishing features of the eighteenth
century. It has had a result that has not been fully noted. The
eighteenth century had its crisis; or if you will, its conversion.
A day came when it turned against itself. The change was per-
haps not very profound, but it was very marked.
From having
the man of nature constantly preached to them, they wished to
resemble him somewhat. The men gave up the French coat
and ceased to carry the sword. The women laid down their hoops,
they covered their bosoms, they substituted caps for towering
head-dresses, low-heeled for high-heeled shoes, linen for brocade.
Simplicity was pushed to pastoralism. Their dreams took the
form of idyls. They had cottages, they played at keeping dai-
ries, they made butter. But the true name of this new cult,
whose prophet was Jean-Jacques, is sensibility. They talked
now only of attraction, affinity, sympathy. It is the epoch of
groups in bisque, symbols: hearts on fire, altars, doves. There
are chains made of hair, bracelets with portraits. Madame de
Blot wears upon her neck a miniature of the church where her
brother is buried. Formerly beauty was piquant, now it aspires
to be "touching. " Its triumph is to "leave an emotion. " The feel-
ings should be expansive. Every woman is ambitious to love like
Julie. Every mother will raise her son like Émile. And since
it is the Genevese philosopher who has revealed to the world
the gospel of sensibility, upon him most of all will that gift
be lavished with which he seems all at once to have endowed
French society. His handwriting is kissed: things that belonged
to him are converted into relics. "There is not a truly sympa-
thetic woman living," exclaims the most yirtuous of the beau-
ties of those days, "who would not need an extraordinary virtue
to keep her from consecrating her life to Rousseau, could she
be certain of being passionately loved by him! "
All this has the semblance of passion, but little depth. It
would seem, in truth, that the eighteenth century was too frivo-
lous ever to be truly moved. And nevertheless it has been moved,
it has had a passion, perhaps the most noble of all- that of
humanity. Pity, in the times that precede it, appears almost as
foreign to polite society as the feeling for nature. Who, in the
## p. 12874 (#296) ##########################################
12874
EDMOND SCHÉRER
seventeenth century, was agitated if some poor devil of a vil-
lager was crushed by the taxes, if a Protestant was condemned
to his Majesty's galleys? Who troubled himself about the treat-
ment of the insane, about the régime of prisons, the barbarities
of the rack and the wheel? The eighteenth century, on the con-
trary, is seized with an immense compassion for all sufferings.
It is kindled with generous ideas; it desires tolerance, justice,
equality. Its heroes are useful men, agriculturists, benefactors
of the people. It embraces all the nations in its reforms. It
rises to the conception of human solidarity. It makes itself
a golden age where the philosopher's theories mingle with the
reveries of the mere dreamer. Every one is caught by the
glorious chimera. The author of 'La Pucelle' has his hours of
philanthropy. Turgot finds support in the salons. Madame de
Genlis speaks like Madame Roland or Madame de Staël. Utopia,
a Utopia at once rational as geometry and blind as enthusiasm,—
the whole of the French Revolution is there already.
The eighteenth century has received the name of the philo-
sophical century, and with good reason if an independent spirit
of inquiry is the distinguishing feature of philosophy. It rejected
everything in the nature of convention and tradition. It declared
an implacable war on what is called prejudice. It desired truths
that stand on their own legs. It sought in man, in the mere
nature of things, the foundation of the true and the good. The
doctrines of this epoch are not exalted, but they have that
species of vigor that the absence of partiality gives. The prob-
lem of problems, for this century, is how to live; and to the
solution of that problem it brings only natural methods. The
men of those times, to use the expression of the brothers Gon-
court, "keep themselves at the height of their own heart, without
aid, by their own strength. Emancipated from all dogma and
system of belief, they draw their lights from the recesses of their
own hearts, and their powers from the same source. " There are
some who "afford in this superficial century the grand spectacle
of a conscience at equilibrium in the void, a spectacle forgotten
of humanity since the Antonines. " The Countess de Boufflers,
with whom M. Sainte-Beuve has lately made us acquainted, had
maxims framed and hung in her chamber; among them might
be read such words as the following: "In conduct, simplicity and
sense. In methods, justice and generosity. In adversity, cour-
age and self-respect. Sacrifice all for peace of mind. When an
## p. 12875 (#297) ##########################################
EDMOND SCHÉRER
12875
important duty is to be fulfilled, consider perils and death only
as drawbacks, not as obstacles. " See what thoughts made up the
daily meditations of a woman of the world. Adversity was sup-
ported with cheerful courage. Old age was accepted without
pride or effort, without surprise or consternation. One detached
oneself little by little, composed oneself, conformed to the changed
condition, extinguished oneself, discreetly, quite simply, with de-
corum, and so to speak with spirit. Let us take care when we
speak of the eighteenth century-let us take care not to forget
the trials of the emigration and the prisons of the Terror!
I have spoken of the greatness and the debasement of the
epoch that the brothers Goncourt set themselves to interpret.
If there is some contradiction between the two halves of the
picture, I am not far from thinking that this very contradiction
might well be a proof of correctness. Human judgments are
true only on the condition of perpetually putting the yes by the
side of the no. The truth is, one can say of the eighteenth cen.
tury what our authors somewhere say of the Duchess of Mirepoix:
in default of esteem it inspires sympathy. The French century
above all others, it has our defects and our qualities. Endowed
with more intelligence than firmness, argumentative rather than
philosophic, didactic rather than moral, it has given lessons rather
than examples to the world, examples rather than models. It
was not entirely fixed, either in good or in evil. However low
it fell, it was far from making an utter failure. Carried to
extremes, it showed its strength most of all in extremity. It is
an assemblage of contradictions where all happens without prece-
dent, and it is safest to take nothing in it too literally. It will
ever be a bad sign in France, when this century is underrated
and when it is overrated; but it would be above all a sinister
day if we should ever adopt its frivolity and corruption, and
leave unappropriated its noble instincts and its capacity for en-
thusiasm.
Translated for A Library of the World's Best Literature' by Lucy C. Bull.
## p. 12876 (#298) ##########################################
12876
EDMOND SCHÉRER
A LITERARY HERESY
"Here I stand. I cannot otherwise. God help me! Amen. »
- LUTHER at the Diet of Worms.
I
SHALL never cease to protest against the infatuations that in
our day exercise a kind of tyranny in literature. To raise
personal preferences to the dignity of a creed is not enough.
A cult once established, a dogma once accepted,- no more free-
dom of analysis, no more independent criticism, no more per-
missible dissent: the order is to "admire like a beast. " Mental
indolence is of course at the bottom of this fashion: it is easier
to accept an opinion than to form one. But these habits of
mind are an exceedingly curious study, for the reason that never
has the tendency to slavish partisanship been more general, nor
the despotism of ready-made judgments more absolute, than in
these times of pretended emancipation and so-called individual-
ism. Doubtless it is the same with enfranchised intelligence as
with political rights: great efforts are made to secure them, and
when they are secured we no longer care for their exercise.
I will cite the cult of which Goethe is the object in Germany.
as an example of the propensity that I have in mind. This cult
has all the characteristics of superstition. The Germans long
since exhausted their critical acumen upon the Trinity; of the
infallibility of the Church or the Holy Scriptures they have left
standing not a stone: but they have overleaped themselves in
the case of Goethe. They have made a seer, nay, a divinity,
of him. His works have become, beyond the Rhine, the Bible
of cultivated men: a Bible in twenty volumes, but a true Bible,
treated with the superstitious care that befits the study of an
inspired text. If we do not put all the writings of this author
on the same plane, if we admit preferences, we thereby relin-
quish the idea that all are divine, that none of them may be
rejected or deprecated, that we need penetrate only a little fur-
ther to find depths in what looked flat, hidden meanings in what
seemed commonplace or tedious.
Instead of Goethe read Molière, and you will realize that
France is not far from falling into the same habit as Germany.
Among us, admiration for Molière is tending to that state of
orthodoxy outside of which there is no salvation. We read little
nowadays; we read badly, inattentively, without reflecting, without
analyzing, without tasting.
## p. 12876 (#299) ##########################################
## p. 12876 (#300) ##########################################
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SCHILLER.
## p. 12876 (#301) ##########################################
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## p. 12877 (#303) ##########################################
12877
JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH SCHILLER
(1759-1805)
BY E. P. EVANS
J
OHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH SCHILLER was born November
10th, 1759, at Marbach, a small town of Würtemberg situated
near the junction of the Murr and the Neckar. He was the
second child and only son of Johann Caspar Schiller, a worthy man
of humble origin, but of sterling character and superior abilities; who
began his career as barber and cupper, was advanced to surgeon in a
Bavarian regiment of hussars, received the rank of captain and finally
of major, and died as landscape gardener in the service of the Duke
of Würtemberg. Schiller's mother, Elizabeth Dorothea Kodweiss, the
daughter of an innkeeper in Marbach, was a woman of warm affec-
tions, as well as a person of uncommon intelligence and fine taste,
with a special fondness for poetry, in which she showed a discrimi-
nation rare in people of her class. Both parents were sincerely and
even fervently pious, and wished that their son should study theology;
and this desire corresponded to his own early inclinations. He after-
wards abandoned divinity for jurisprudence, and then exchanged law
for medicine, before finding his true vocation in literature.
The dull military drill and preceptorial pedantry of the school
founded by Duke Karl, and entered by Schiller at the age of four-
teen, were extremely irksome to him, and tended to repress and
stunt rather than to cherish and develop the natural propensities
and powers of his mind. His love of letters, and especially his pas-
sion for poetry, could be gratified only by stealth, or by the feint of
a headache or a sore throat, which enabled him to evade for a few
hours the stern eye of the pedagogical task-master and to devote
himself to his favorite pursuits in his own room. But notwithstand-
ing these depressing circumstances, his genius kept its native bent
with laudable firmness, and he succeeded in cultivating the best
literature of his day,- Klopstock's 'Messias,' Goethe's 'Götz von
Berlichingen' and 'Werther,' Miller's 'Siegwart,' Müller's Faust,'
Gerstenberg's 'Ugolino,' Leisewitz's Julius von Tarent,' Lessing's
dramas, Klinger's tragedies, and other products of the "storm and
stress" period; and Shakespeare, through the somewhat imperfect
medium of Wieland's translation. To his over-intense and effusive
## p. 12878 (#304) ##########################################
12878
JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH SCHILLER
sentimentalism the ruggedly healthy English poet seemed cold and
cynical, and the introduction of clowns and fools with their jests in
the most pathetic scenes of 'Hamlet' and 'King Lear' jarred upon
his sensibilities; but as he afterwards confesses, this indignation had
its source in his own limited knowledge of human nature.
He left the Ducal Academy December 14th, 1780, as a doctor of
medicine, and even practiced this profession for a time as assistant
surgeon in a grenadier regiment at a salary of eighteen florins ($7. 50)
a month. Meanwhile, when he was scarcely eighteen years of age,
he had written The Robbers'; the existence of which he prudently
kept secret until after his graduation, and then, not being able to
find a publisher, printed it at his own expense, and even borrowed
the money for this purpose. This play, in which not only his hatred
of the galling personal restraints and daily vexations he had suffered,
but also the restless and impetuous spirit of the storm and stress
movement, found vigorous expression, excited great enthusiasm in
Germany, and was soon translated into the principal languages of
Europe. It also made a strong but by no means favorable impression
on the mind of the Duke of Würtemberg, who punished the author
with a fortnight's arrest for going clandestinely to Mannheim to see
it performed in January 1782, and forbade him "henceforth and for-
ever to compose comedies or anything of the sort. " Having before
his eyes the fate of the poet Schubart, whom for a less heinous
offense the same paternal sovereign had confined for ten years in the
fortress of Hohenasperg, he took advantage of some public festivity
on September 17th, 1782, to slip out of the gates of Stuttgart and flee
to Mannheim, beyond the reach of Würtemberg bailiffs.
"The Robbers' is a work of unquestionable but undisciplined gen-
ius; a generous wine in the first stages of fermentation. The char-
acters are the mental creations of an ardent and enthusiastic youth,
taking shape and color in a great measure from the dramatic litera-
ture on which his imagination had fed. As Schiller himself confessed,
it was an attempt to portray men by one who had not the slightest
knowledge of mankind. Its power and popularity, in spite of all de-
fects, and the firm hold it still has of each rising generation, are due
to the sincere spirit of revolt against social, political, and intellectual
tyranny that permeates it, and is the sole source of its verity and
vitality.
Not feeling himself safe from ducal catchpolls at Mannheim,
Schiller went to Bauerbach near Meiningen, where he was hospitably
received by Frau von Wolzogen, the mother of one of his school-
fellows; and remained for several months under the name of Dr.
Ritter. In this friendly retreat and place of refuge he finished 'The
Conspiracy of Fiesco,' brought in a rough draught from Stuttgart;
## p. 12879 (#305) ##########################################
JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH SCHILLER
12879
and wrote 'Cabal and Love,' or 'Luise Miller' as it was originally
called. The first of these plays marks a decided advance in artistic
execution: the situations are more probable and the characters truer
to life; indeed, the ambitions, intrigues, loves, hatreds, pomp and
pageantry of the Genoese nobility in the sixteenth century are viv-
idly and vigorously delineated, although a certain crudeness in laying
on the glowing colors, and a conspicuous lack of delicacy in blend-
ing them, still betray the hand of the novice. 'Cabal and Love' is
a bold exposure of the selfish greed, corruption, and cruelty of con-
temporary court life in Germany; and puts the Hessian landgrave
(who sold his subjects to England as soldiers to fight against Amer-
ican independence, to get money to squander on his mistresses) in
the pillory forever. The plan of this tragedy formed itself in his
mind while undergoing the fourteen days' arrest already referred to,
and this circumstance doubtless added to the impressiveness of his
protest against the oppression of the middle and lower classes by.
arbitrary power; the enthusiastic applause with which it was received,
proved that it dared to utter the thoughts and feelings timorously
concealed in the bosom of every citizen.
During his stay at Bauerbach he began a new drama, 'Don Carlos,'
based chiefly on a historical novel with the same title published by
the Abbé de Saint-Réal at Paris in 1672. This partially finished piece
he took with him to Mannheim, whither he went as poet to the thea-
tre in July 1783; but he did not complete and print it until 1786,
when he was living with Körner at Loschwitz near Dresden. This is
his first drama in blank verse, and it is in every respect maturer
than the earlier ones, which are all in prose; it follows them also in
its tendency as a fit and logical sequence. In the three former plays
he inveighs vehemently against existing evils; in 'Don Carlos' he
sets forth his own ideas of humanity and liberty, in the utterances of
the Infante and especially of Marquis Posa. Schiller's intention was
to make the prince the hero of the piece, and he did so in the first
three acts: but as the composition was delayed, the marquis gradually
usurped this place in the poet's imagination, and finally overshadowed
Carlos altogether; and although this change may mar the artistic
unity of the plot, it adds immensely to the energy of the action in
the last two acts and to the impressiveness of the whole.
The poet now turned his attention to historical and philosophical
studies, as the best means of correcting the defects — arising from
inadequate acquaintance with human nature and human affairs, and
from imperfect knowledge of æsthetic principles-that had hitherto
characterized his dramatic productions. In 1787 he went to Weimar,
where he enjoyed the friendship of Herder and Wieland. In 1788 he
published The History of the Revolt of the United Netherlands,'
## p. 12880 (#306) ##########################################
12880
JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH SCHILLER
and in the following year was appointed to a professorship in the
philosophical faculty of Jena. From 1790 to 1793 appeared his 'His-
tory of the Thirty Years' War,' in three volumes. These works,
while showing careful and conscientious research, are most remark-
able for the vivid descriptions of events and lifelike delineations of
individual characters, congenial to the pre-eminently plastic taste and
talent of the dramatist. In the province of æsthetics he wrote a
series of thoughtful and readable dissertations bearing throughout the
visible stamp of Kantean criticism and speculation: 'On Tragic Art,'
'On Grace and Dignity,' On the Sublime,' 'Letters on Man's Æs-
thetic Education,' and finally a less abstract and more distinctively
literary essay On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry. ' Meanwhile he
did not cease his devotion to the Muses; although exchanging for a
time the service of the buskined Melpomene for that of Euterpe the
delightful goddess of the softly breathing flute, and Erato with the
lyre. Besides some occasional poems and amatory odes to Laura,
evidently suggested by Petrarch's canzoni, he wrote at this time the
exalted and exultant hymn To Joy,' subsequently set to music in
Beethoven's ninth symphony. This was followed by numerous lyrics
and ballads, the most noteworthy of which are 'The Gods of Greece,'
The Artists, The Knight Toggenburg,' The Sharing of the Earth,'
'The Visit (dithyramb), The Power of Song,' 'Worth of Women,'
'German Art,' The Fight with the Dragon,' The Glove,' The
Maiden from Afar,' 'Resignation,' and The Song of the Bell. ' As
a purely lyrical poet Schiller is decidedly inferior to Goethe; and
the best of his minor poems are those in which the qualities of
the historian, the philosopher, and the poet are combined, and epic
narration and didactic meditation are blended and fused with lyrical
emotion, as in The Song of the Bell. '
(
It is the historical drama for which Schiller showed a strong pre-
dilection and peculiar talent, and in which he stands pre-eminent.
While engaged in his 'History of the Thirty Years' War' he was
irresistibly attracted by the imposing form of Wallenstein, and re-
solved to make him the hero of a drama; which was originally
conceived as a single piece in five acts, but was gradually expanded
into three parts: Wallenstein's Camp' (one act), 'The Piccolomini'
(five acts), and Wallenstein's Death' (five acts). In the following
year (1800) appeared 'Maria Stuart'; then 'The Maid of Orleans'
(1801), The Bride of Messina' (1803), and William Tell' (1804),—
of which the last mentioned surpasses all the others in dramatic con-
tinuity and creative power: the individuals are admirably portrayed,
and the idyllic life and occupations of the honest, fearless, freedom-
loving Swiss peasants brought out with wonderful fidelity, in contrast
to the blind brutality of their Austrian oppressors. Indeed, the very
## p. 12881 (#307) ##########################################
JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH SCHILLER
12881
fact (which some critics have regarded as defect) that there is no
outward connection between the deed of Tell and the oath of the
men of Rütli, so far from disturbing the unity of the plot, renders it
more effective; since they both work together, like unconscious forces
of nature, for the attainment of the same noble end. The first part
of 'Wallenstein' is a masterpiece of its kind; in the second part
the action drags somewhat, but in the third moves on with the force
and irresistibility of fate, in a tumult of conflicting aims and inter-
ests, and with touches of tender pathos, as in the relations of Max
to Thekla, to its tragical conclusion. Maria Stuart' violates to some
extent the truth of history, by making the conflict chiefly a matter of
personal animosity instead of an antagonism of political principles
and religious systems; but is distinguished for depth of psychological
insight in the delineation of the characters of the rival queens and
the principal statesmen and courtiers, -Burleigh, Talbot, Leicester,
Mortimer, and Shrewsbury. In 'The Maid of Orleans' the heroine is
the pure-souled and patriotic representative of her people, and the
Divinely chosen defender of her country; and the contest is between
nations. She is here no longer the devil's satellite and sorceress of
her English foes and of Shakespeare, and her memory is cleansed of
the filth with which Voltaire defiled it.
In this "romantic tragedy,"
as Schiller called it, he images forth with wonderful accuracy the
romantic spirit of the age, which rendered such apparitions and super-
natural agencies credible. Touchingly human and true is the scene
with Lionel, in which the invincible and inexorable virgin is suddenly
transformed into a tender-hearted and weak-handed woman through
the power of earthly love. The fable of 'The Bride of Messina,' the
fatal enmity of two brothers, rivals in love, was the theme of Greek
tragedy, and forms the plots of Klinger's 'The Twins' and Leisewitz's
'Julius of Tarentum. ' The dialogue is interspersed with choral odes,
suitable to the action and summing up the supposed reflections of
the spectators; and the traditional idea of fate pervades the whole,
although Schiller gives larger scope to free-will, and makes the indi-
vidual in reality the author of his own destiny through the inevita-
ble sequence of cause and effect. The poet comprises it all in the
concluding verse: "Life is not the chief good, and the greatest of
evils is guilt. " Schiller's dramatic style is the grand style, and rather
ornate and oratorical. He is truly eloquent, and in the glittering coils
of his rhetoric there is no pinchbeck; but his speeches are often too
long, and in the mouths of second-rate actors are apt to degenerate
into rant. It would be unjust, however, to hold the poet responsible
for the deficiencies of the player.
While holding his professorship at Jena, Schiller married, on Feb-
ruary 22d, 1790, Charlotte von Lengefeld; by whom he had two sons
(Carl and Ernst) and two daughters (Caroline and Emilie), and who
XXII-806
## p. 12882 (#308) ##########################################
12882
JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH SCHILLER
died at Bonn July 9th, 1826, thus surviving her husband more than
twenty-one years. In 1799 he settled permanently in Weimar; in
1802 he was raised to the nobility,- a distinction for which he cared
little himself, but which he thought might be of some advantage to
his children. Personally he prized far more highly the honorary
citizenship of the French Republic, which had been conferred upon
him by the National Convention in 1793. In 1797 he was chosen a
member of the Academy of Sciences in Stockholm. In 1791 he had a
severe attack of catarrhal fever, from the effects of which he never
wholly recovered. Fortunately his pecuniary anxieties were partially
relieved by the Danish poet Jens Baggesen, who induced the Duke
of Holstein-Augustenburg, and the Danish minister Count von Schim-
melmann, to grant him pension of a thousand speciesdaler (equiva-
lent to about $1000), with the injunction to take care of his health
and not overwork. In the spring of 1804 he went to Berlin to a rep-
resentation of William Tell,' but the exertion caused a recurrence of
his old malady. He grew better, however; translated Racine's 'Phè-
dre' in twenty-six days, and completed two acts of a new play, 'The
False Demetrius,' when a return of catarrhal fever ended his days
on May 9th, 1805.
―
During the last ten years of his life, Schiller's relations to Goethe
were those of cordial friendship and literary co-operation; one of the
most important results of which was the joint production of a series
of satirical epigrams called 'Xenien,' and published in the Musenal-
manach in 1797. The more philosophic and less personal, or what
Schiller called the "harmless" ones, were also collected and printed
under the title of Tabulæ Votivæ (Votive Tablets). 'Xenia' (§ɛívia,
gifts to guests) is the title of the thirteenth book of the epigrams
of the Roman poet Martial, from whom the term was borrowed by
Goethe, who first mentioned it in a letter to Schiller dated December
23d, 1795; Schiller immediately replied that the idea is splendid,
and must be carried out. " The epigrams contain many happy hits at
the isms and ologies of the day, as well as at individual foibles.
They were evidently thrown off hastily, and are not always perfect in
form; but they are full of pointed wit and pungency, and made an im-
mense sensation. Some writers by whom they were fiercely resented,
ought to have been gratified and grateful, since the allusions to them
in these distichs have alone saved their names from oblivion.
In the ordinary relations of life Schiller was a simple-hearted,
noble-minded, and clear-sighted man, all alive with enthusiasm and
full of delicate sensibility, but free from every sort of affectation.
He was endowed with an intellect of high order, which he spared no
pains to cultivate by assiduous and systematic study. The versatility
of his genius was remarkable; and he might have excelled as a phi-
losopher or historian, had it not been for the predominance of his
## p. 12883 (#309) ##########################################
JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH SCHILLER
12883
(
poetic gifts, to which he made all acquisitions of learning subordi
nate and contributory. Perhaps the least conspicuous of his mental
powers was humor; but the scenes in Wallenstein's Camp,' 'The
Famous Wife, an Epistle from One Husband to Another,' and some
of his epigrams and parables, show that he was by no means des-
titute of this rare faculty. Remembering that he died before he was
forty-six, and suffered severely from sickness during the last decade
of his life, one cannot but wonder at the extent and brilliancy of his
achievements as a poet and scholar.
Е. Р. Егот
TO LAURA
(RAPTURE)
AURA, above this world methinks I fly,
L
And feel the glow of some May-lighted sky,
When thy looks beam on mine!
And my soul drinks a more ethereal air,
When mine own shape I see reflected there
In those blue eyes of thine!
A lyre sound from the Paradise afar,
A harp note trembling from some gracious star,
Seems the wild ear to fill;
And my Muse feels the Golden Shepherd hours,
When from thy lips the silver music pours
Slow, as against its will.
I see the young Loves flutter on the wing —
Move the charmed trees, as when the Thracian's string
Wild life to forests gave;
Swifter the globe's swift circle seems to fly,
When in the whirling dance thou glidest by,
Light as a happy wave.
Thy looks, when there Love's smiles their gladness
wreathe,
Could life itself to lips of marble breathe,
Lend rocks a pulse divine;
Reading thine eyes, my veriest life but seems
Made up and fashioned from my wildest dreams,-
Laura, sweet Laura, mine!
Bulwer's Translation.
## p. 12884 (#310) ##########################################
12884
JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH SCHILLER
THE KNIGHT TOGGENBURG
NIGHT, a sister's quiet love
Gives my heart to thee!
Ask me not for other love,
For it paineth me!
Calmly couldst thou greet me now.
"K
Calmly from me go;
Calmly ever,-why dost thou
Weep in silence so? »
Sadly - not a word he said –
To the heart she wrung,
Sadly clasped he once the maid,
On his steed he sprung!
"Up, my men of Switzerland! »
Up, awake the brave!
Forth they go-the Red-Cross band-
To the Savior's grave!
High your deeds, and great your fame,
Heroes of the tomb!
Glancing through the carnage came
Many a dauntless plume.
Terror of the Moorish foe,
Toggenburg, thou art!
But thy heart is heavy! oh,
Heavy is thy heart!
Heavy was the load his breast
For a twelvemonth bore:
Never can his trouble rest!
And he left the shore.
Lo! a ship on Joppa's strand,
Breeze and billow fair,-
On to that beloved land
Where she breathes the air!
Knocking at the castle gate
Was the pilgrim heard;
Woe the answer from the grate!
Woe the thunder-word!
"She thou seekest lives-a Nun!
To the world she died
When, with yester-morning's sun,
Heaven received a Bride! "
## p. 12885 (#311) ##########################################
JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH SCHILLER
12885
From that day his father's hall
Ne'er his home may be;
Helm and hauberk, steed and all,
Evermore left he!
Where his castle-crownèd height
Frowns the valley down,
Dwells unknown the hermit knight,
In a sackcloth gown.
Rude the hut he built him there,
Where his eyes may view
Wall and cloister glisten fair
Dusky lindens through.
There when dawn was in the skies,
Till the eve-star shone,
Sate he with mute wistful eyes,
Sate he there alone!
Looking to the cloister still,
Looking forth afar,
Looking to her lattice till
Clinked the lattice bar.
Tilla passing glimpse allowed-
Paused her image pale,
Calm and angel-mild, and bowed
Meekly towards the vale.
Then the watch of day was o'er;
Then, consoled awhile,
Down he lay, to greet once more
Morning's early smile.
Days and years are gone, and still
Looks he forth afar,
Uncomplaining, hoping-till
Clinks the lattice bar;
a passing glimpse allowed-
Paused her image pale,
Calm and angel-mild, and bowed
Meekly towards the vale.
So upon that lonely spot
Sate he, dead at last,
With the look where life was not,
Towards the casement cast.
Till
-
Bulwer's Translation.
## p. 12886 (#312) ##########################################
12886
JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH SCHILLER
THE SHARING OF THE EARTH
AKE the world," cried the God from his heaven
To men-"I proclaim you its heirs;
To divide it amongst you 'tis given:
You have only to settle the shares. "
"TAKE
Each takes for himself as it pleases,
Old and young have alike their desire:
The harvest the husbandman seizes;
Through the wood and the chase sweeps the squire.
The merchant his warehouse is locking;
The abbot is choosing his wine;
Cries the monarch, the thoroughfare blocking,
"Every toll for the passage is mine! "
All too late, when the sharing was over,
Comes the poet,— he came from afar;
Nothing left can the laggard discover,
Not an inch but its owners there are.
"Woe is me! is there nothing remaining
For the son who best loves thee alone! "
Thus to Jove went his voice in complaining,
As he fell at the Thunderer's throne.
"In the land of thy dreams if abiding,"
Quoth the God, "Canst thou murmur at me?
Where wert thou when the earth was dividing? "
"I was," said the poet, "by thee!
"Mine eye by thy glory was captured,
Mine ear by thy music of bliss:
Pardon him whom thy world so enraptured
As to lose him his portion in this! "
"Alas," said the God, "earth is given!
Field, forest, and market, and all!
What say you to quarters in heaven?
We'll admit you whenever you call! "
Bulwer's Translation.
## p. 12887 (#313) ##########################################
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12887
THE BEST STATE
HOW
ow the best state to know? It is found out:
Like the best woman-that least talked about.
Bulwer's Translation.
Y NO kind Augustus reared,
To no Medici endeared,
German Art arose:
Β΄
GERMAN ART
Fostering glory smiled not on her;
Ne'er with kingly smiles to sun her,
Did her blooms unclose.
No, she went by monarchs slighted,
Went unhonored, unrequited,
From high Frederick's throne;
Praise and pride be all the greater,
That man's genius did create her
From man's worth alone.
Therefore, all from loftier mountains,
Purer wells and richer fountains,
Streams our poet-art:
So no rule to curb its rushing;
All the fuller flows it gushing
From its deep,- the heart.
THE MAIDEN'S LAMENT
THE
HE wind rocks the forest,
The clouds gather o'er;
The maiden sits lonely
Beside the green shore;
The breakers are dashing with might, with might:
And she mingles her sighs with the gloomy night,
And her eyes are dim with tears.
"The earth is a desert,
And broken my heart,
Nor aught to my wishes
The world can impart.
Bulwer's Translation.
## p. 12888 (#314) ##########################################
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JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH SCHILLER
Thou Holy One, call now thy child from below;
I have known all the joys that the world can bestow-
I have lived and have loved. " —
"In vain, oh how vainly,
Flows tear upon tear!
Human woe never waketh
Dull Death's heavy ear!
Yet say what can soothe for the sweet vanished love,
And I, the Celestial, will shed from above
The balm for thy breast. "
Let ever, though vainly,
Flow tear upon tear;
Human woe never waketh
Dull Death's heavy ear:
Yet still when the heart mourns the sweet vanished love,
No balm for its wound can descend from above
Like Love's sorrows and tears.
Bulwer's Translation.
THE MAIDEN FROM AFAR
ITHIN a vale each infant year,
When earliest larks first carol free,
To humble shepherds doth appear
A wondrous maiden fair to see.
WITH
Not born within that lowly place;
From whence she wandered, none could tell;
Her parting footsteps left no trace,
When once the maiden sighed farewell.
And blessed was her presence there:
Each heart, expanding, grew more gay;
Yet something loftier still than fair
Kept man's familiar looks away.
From fairy gardens known to none
She brought mysterious fruits and flowers;
The products of a brighter sun,
Of nature more benign than ours.
With each, her gifts the maiden shared,—
To some the fruits, the flowers to some:
## p. 12889 (#315) ##########################################
JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH SCHILLER
12889
Alike the young, the aged, fared:
Each bore a blessing back to home.
Though every guest was welcome there,
Yet some the maiden held more dear;
And culled her rarest sweets whene'er
She saw two loving hearts draw near.
PUNCH SONG
F
OUR elements joined in
An emulous strife
Fashion the world and
Constitute life.
From the sharp citron
The starry juice pour:
Acid to life is
The innermost core.
Now let the sugar
The bitter one meet:
Still be life's bitter
Bulwer's Translation.
Tamed down to the sweet.
Let the bright water
Flow into the bowl:
Water, the calm one,
Embraces the whole.
Drops from the spirit
Pour quickening within:
Life but its life from
The spirit can win.
Haste while it gloweth,
Your vessel to bring:
The wave has but virtue
Drunk hot from the spring.
Bulwer's Translation.
## p. 12890 (#316) ##########################################
12890
JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH SCHILLER
WORTH OF WOMEN
ONOR to Woman! To her it is given
To garden the earth with the roses of Heaven!
All blessed, she linketh the Loves in their choir,-
In the veil of her Graces her beauty concealing,
She tends on each altar that's hallowed to Feeling,
And keeps ever living the fire!
HⓇ
From the bounds of Truth careering,
Man's strong spirit wildly sweeps,
With each hasty impulse veering,
Down to Passion's troubled deeps.
And his heart, contented never,
Greeds to grapple with the far,
Chasing his own dream forever
On through many a distant Star!
But Woman, with looks that can charm and enchain,
Lureth back at her beck that wild truant again
By the spell of her presence beguiled;
In the home of the Mother her modest abode,
And modest the manners by Nature bestowed
On Nature's most exquisite child.
Bruised and worn, but fiercely breasting,
Foe to foe, the angry strife,—
Man the Wild One, never resting,
Roams along the troubled life:
What he planneth, still pursuing;
Vainly as the hydra bleeds,
Crest the severed crest renewing,
Wish to withered wish succeeds.
But Woman at peace with all being reposes,
And seeks from the Moment to gather the roses,
Whose sweets to her culture belong.
Ah! richer than he, though his soul reigneth o'er
The mighty dominion of Genius and Lore,
And the infinite Circle of Song.
Strong and proud and self-depending,
Man's cold bosom beats alone:
Heart with heart divinely blending
In the love that Gods have known,
## p. 12891 (#317) ##########################################
JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH SCHILLER
12891
Soul's sweet interchange of feeling,
Melting tears, - he never knows;
Each hard sense the hard one steeling,
Arms against a world of foes.
Alive as the wind-harp, how lightly soever
If wooed by the Zephyr, to music will quiver,
Is Woman to Hope and to Fear;
Ah, tender one! still at the shadow of grieving,
How quiver the chords - how thy bosom is heaving-
How trembles thy glance through the tear!
Man's dominion, war and labor,
Might to right the Statute gave;
Laws are in the Scythian's sabre;
Where the Mede reigned, see the Slave!
Peace and Meekness grimly routing,
Prowls the War lust, rude and wild;
Eris rages, hoarsely shouting,
Where the vanished Graces smiled.
But Woman, the Soft One, persuasively prayeth;
Of the mild realm of manners the sceptre she swayeth;
She lulls, as she looks from above,
The Discord whose hell for its victims is gaping,
And blending awhile the forever-escaping,
Whispers Hate to the Image of Love.
RIDDLES
I
THE RAINBOW
Bulwer's Translation.
F
ROM pearls her lofty bridge she weaves,
A gray sea arching proudly over;
A moment's toil the work achieves,
And on the height behold her hover!
Beneath that arch securely go
The tallest barks that ride the seas;
No burthen e'er the bridge may know,
And as thou seek'st to near-it flees!
N
·
## p. 12892 (#318) ##########################################
12892
JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH SCHILLER
First with the floods it came, to fade
As rolled the waters from the land;
Say where that wondrous arch is made,
And whose the artist's plastic hand?
II
THE MOON AND STARS
Bulwer's Translation.
O'ER a spacious pasture go
Sheep in thousands, silver-white;
As to-day we see them, so
In the oldest grandsire's sight.
They drink, never waxing old,
Life from an unfailing brook;
There's a shepherd to their fold,
With a silver-hornèd crook.
From a gate of gold let out,
Night by night he counts them over;
Wide the field they rove about,
Never hath he lost a rover.
True the Dog that helps to lead them,
One gay Ram in front we see:
What the flock, and who doth heed them,
Sheep and shepherd,- tell to me?
Bulwer's Translation.
THE POWER OF SONG
A
RAIN-FLOOD from the mountain riven,
It leaps in thunder forth to-day;
Before its rush the crags are driven,
The oaks uprooted whirled away!
Awed yet in awe all wildly gladdening-
The startled wanderer halts below;
He hears the rock-born waters maddening,
Nor wits the source from whence they go:
So, from their high, mysterious founts, along,
Stream on the silenced world the waves of song!
## p. 12893 (#319) ##########################################
JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH SCHILLER
12893
Knit with th threads of life forever,
By those dread powers that weave the woof,-
Whose art the singer's spell can sever?
Whose breast has mail to music proof?
Lo, to the bard a wand of wonder
The herald of the gods has given;
He sinks the soul the death-realm under,
Or lifts it breathless up to heaven,-
Half sport, half earnest, rocking its devotion
Upon the tremulous ladder of emotion.
As when in hours the least unclouded,
Portentous, strides upon the scene
Some fate before from wisdom shrouded,
And awes the startled souls of men,-
Before that stranger from another,
Behold how this world's great ones bow;
Mean joys their idle clamor smother,
The mask is vanished from the brow:
And from truth's sudden, solemn flag unfurled
Fly all the craven falsehoods of the world!
―
So Song-like Fate itself—is given
To scare the idler thoughts away,
To lift the earthly up to heaven,
To wake the spirit from the clay!
One with the gods the bard: before him
All things unclean and earthly fly;
Hushed are all meaner powers, and o'er him
The dark fate swoops unharming by:
And while the soother's magic measures flow,
Smoothed every wrinkle on the brows of woe!
Even as a child, that after pining
For the sweet absent mother, hears
Her voice, and round her neck entwining
Young arms, vents all its soul in tears:
So by harsh custom far estranged,
Along the glad and guileless track,
To childhood's happy home unchanged
The swift song wafts the wanderer back,—
Snatched from the cold and formal world, and prest
By the great mother to her glowing breast!
Bulwer's Translation.
I
## p. 12894 (#320) ##########################################
12894
JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH SCHILLER
HYMN TO JOY
SPAR
PARK from the fire that gods have fed —
Joy-thou elysian child divine,
Fire-drunk, our airy footsteps tread,
O Holy One! thy holy shrine.
Strong custom rends us from each other,
Thy magic all together brings;
And man in man but hails a brother,
Wherever rest thy gentle wings.
Chorus - Embrace, ye millions-let this kiss,
Brothers, embrace the earth below!
Yon starry worlds that shine on this,
One common Father know!
He who this lot from fate can grasp,—
Of one true friend the friend to be,
He who one faithful maid can clasp,-
Shall hold with us his jubilee;
Yes, each who but one single heart
In all the earth can claim his own!
Let him who cannot, stand apart,
And weep beyond the pale, alone!
Chorus Homage to holy Sympathy,
―――
Ye dwellers in our mighty ring;
Up to yon star pavilions - she
Leads to the Unknown King!
All being drinks the mother dew
Of joy from Nature's holy bosom;
And Vice and Worth alike pursue
Her steps that strew the blossom.
Joy in each link: to us the treasure
Of Wine and Love; beneath the sod,
The worm has instincts fraught with pleasure;
In heaven the Cherub looks on God!
Chorus - Why bow ye down-why down-ye millions?
O World, thy Maker's throne to see,
Look upward - search the star pavilions:
There must his mansion be!
## p. 12895 (#321) ##########################################
JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH SCHILLER
12895
Joy is the mainspring in the whole.
Of endless Nature's calm rotation;
Joy moves the dazzling wheels that roll
In the great Timepiece of Creation;
Joy breathes on buds, and flowers they are;
Joy beckons suns come forth from heaven;
Joy rolls the spheres in realms afar,—
Ne'er to thy glass, dim Wisdom, given!
Chorus - Joyous as suns careering gay
Along their paths on high,
Joy from Truth's pure and lambent fires,
Smiles out upon the ardent seeker;
Joy leads to virtue man's desires,
And cheers as Suffering's step grows weaker.
High from the sunny slopes of Faith,
The gales her waving banners buoy;
And through the shattered vaults of Death,
Lo, 'mid the choral Angels - Joy!
Chorus
March, brothers, march your dauntless way,
As chiefs to victory!
-
- Bear this life, millions, bravely bear
Bear this life for the better one!
See the stars! a life is there,
Where the reward is won.
Men like the Gods themselves may be,
Though men may not the Gods requite;
Go soothe the pangs of Misery,
Go share the gladness with delight.
Revenge and hatred both forgot,
Have naught but pardon for thy foe;
May sharp repentance grieve him not,
No curse one tear of ours bestow!
Chorus - Let all the world be peace and love,
Cancel thy debt-book with thy brother;
For God shall judge of us above,
As we shall judge each other!
Joy sparkles to us from the bowl:
Behold the juice whose golden color
To meekness melts the savage soul,
And gives Despair a hero's valor.
## p. 12896 (#322) ##########################################
12896
JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH SCHILLER
Up, brothers! Lo, we crown the cup!
Lo, the wine flashes to the brim!
Let the bright fount spring heavenward! Up!
To the Good Spirit this glass! To him!
Chorus Praised by the ever-whirling ring
Of stars, and tuneful Seraphim,—
To the Good Spirit, the Father-King
In heaven! This glass to him!
Firm mind to bear what fate bestows;
Comfort to tears in sinless eyes;
Faith kept alike with friends and foes;
Man's oath eternal as the skies;
Manhood, the thrones of Kings to girth,
Though bought by life or limb the prize;
Success to merit's honest worth;
Perdition to the brood of lies!
---
Chorus-Draw closer in the holy ring;
YⓇ
Swear by the wine-cup's golden river,
Swear by the stars, and by their King,
To keep this vow forever.
THE GODS OF GREECE
Bulwer's Translation.
E IN the age gone by,
Who ruled the world a world how lovely then!
And guided still the steps of happy men
In the light leading-strings of careless joy!
Ah, flourished then your service of delight!
seek the beautiful, it finds the charming. Its character is not
grand, but it has a character.
It has set a seal upon all that it has produced: buildings,
furniture, pictures. When, two or three years ago, an exhibition
brought together the works of the principal painters of the
French school in the eighteenth century, the canvases of Greuze,
of Boucher, of Watteau, of Fragonard, of Chardin, great was the
astonishment to find so much frankness under all that affectation,
originality in that mannerism, vitality in that conventional school
of art. We should never lose sight of one thing: the epoch
under consideration had what was lacking in some other epochs,
-in the Empire, for example,- an art and a literature. That
is not enough to make a great century, but it can aid a century
to make a figure in history.
But observe what still better characterizes French society
before the Revolution. That society is animated with intellect-
ual curiosity. It has the taste for letters, and in letters the taste
for new things, for adventures. It devours voyages, history, phi-
losophy. It is concerned about the Chinese and the Hindus;
it desires to know what Rome was, and what England is; it
studies popular institutions and the faculties of the human under-
standing. The ladies have great quartos on their dressing-tables
(that is the accepted size). Nothing discourages them. They
read Raynal's 'Philosophic History,' Hume's 'Stuarts' [History
of England], Montesquieu's 'Spirit of Laws. ' But it is with
the sciences that they are most smitten. It is there that their
trouble of mind is best diverted. Fontenelle discourses to them
on the worlds, and Galiani on political economy. The new arts,
the progress of industry, excite their enthusiasm. They wish to
see all, to know all. They follow courses, they frequent labora-
tories, they assist at experiments, they discuss systems, they read
memoirs. Run after these charming young women,- they go
to the Jardin des Plantes to see a theriac put together; to the
Abbé Mical to hear an automaton speak; to Rouelle to witness
the volatilization of the diamond; to Réveillon, there to salute
Pilâtre de Rozier, before an ascension. This morning they have
paid a visit to the great cactus that only blossoms once in fifty
years, this afternoon they will attend experiments upon inflam-
mable air or upon electricity. Nothing even in medicine or
## p. 12873 (#295) ##########################################
EDMOND SCHÉRER
12873
anatomy is without attraction for their unfettered curiosity: the
Countess de Voisenon prescribes for her friends; the Countess de
Coigny is only eighteen, and she dissects!
This tendency to hyper-enthusiasm is a sign of mobility; and
mobility is one of the distinguishing features of the eighteenth
century. It has had a result that has not been fully noted. The
eighteenth century had its crisis; or if you will, its conversion.
A day came when it turned against itself. The change was per-
haps not very profound, but it was very marked.
From having
the man of nature constantly preached to them, they wished to
resemble him somewhat. The men gave up the French coat
and ceased to carry the sword. The women laid down their hoops,
they covered their bosoms, they substituted caps for towering
head-dresses, low-heeled for high-heeled shoes, linen for brocade.
Simplicity was pushed to pastoralism. Their dreams took the
form of idyls. They had cottages, they played at keeping dai-
ries, they made butter. But the true name of this new cult,
whose prophet was Jean-Jacques, is sensibility. They talked
now only of attraction, affinity, sympathy. It is the epoch of
groups in bisque, symbols: hearts on fire, altars, doves. There
are chains made of hair, bracelets with portraits. Madame de
Blot wears upon her neck a miniature of the church where her
brother is buried. Formerly beauty was piquant, now it aspires
to be "touching. " Its triumph is to "leave an emotion. " The feel-
ings should be expansive. Every woman is ambitious to love like
Julie. Every mother will raise her son like Émile. And since
it is the Genevese philosopher who has revealed to the world
the gospel of sensibility, upon him most of all will that gift
be lavished with which he seems all at once to have endowed
French society. His handwriting is kissed: things that belonged
to him are converted into relics. "There is not a truly sympa-
thetic woman living," exclaims the most yirtuous of the beau-
ties of those days, "who would not need an extraordinary virtue
to keep her from consecrating her life to Rousseau, could she
be certain of being passionately loved by him! "
All this has the semblance of passion, but little depth. It
would seem, in truth, that the eighteenth century was too frivo-
lous ever to be truly moved. And nevertheless it has been moved,
it has had a passion, perhaps the most noble of all- that of
humanity. Pity, in the times that precede it, appears almost as
foreign to polite society as the feeling for nature. Who, in the
## p. 12874 (#296) ##########################################
12874
EDMOND SCHÉRER
seventeenth century, was agitated if some poor devil of a vil-
lager was crushed by the taxes, if a Protestant was condemned
to his Majesty's galleys? Who troubled himself about the treat-
ment of the insane, about the régime of prisons, the barbarities
of the rack and the wheel? The eighteenth century, on the con-
trary, is seized with an immense compassion for all sufferings.
It is kindled with generous ideas; it desires tolerance, justice,
equality. Its heroes are useful men, agriculturists, benefactors
of the people. It embraces all the nations in its reforms. It
rises to the conception of human solidarity. It makes itself
a golden age where the philosopher's theories mingle with the
reveries of the mere dreamer. Every one is caught by the
glorious chimera. The author of 'La Pucelle' has his hours of
philanthropy. Turgot finds support in the salons. Madame de
Genlis speaks like Madame Roland or Madame de Staël. Utopia,
a Utopia at once rational as geometry and blind as enthusiasm,—
the whole of the French Revolution is there already.
The eighteenth century has received the name of the philo-
sophical century, and with good reason if an independent spirit
of inquiry is the distinguishing feature of philosophy. It rejected
everything in the nature of convention and tradition. It declared
an implacable war on what is called prejudice. It desired truths
that stand on their own legs. It sought in man, in the mere
nature of things, the foundation of the true and the good. The
doctrines of this epoch are not exalted, but they have that
species of vigor that the absence of partiality gives. The prob-
lem of problems, for this century, is how to live; and to the
solution of that problem it brings only natural methods. The
men of those times, to use the expression of the brothers Gon-
court, "keep themselves at the height of their own heart, without
aid, by their own strength. Emancipated from all dogma and
system of belief, they draw their lights from the recesses of their
own hearts, and their powers from the same source. " There are
some who "afford in this superficial century the grand spectacle
of a conscience at equilibrium in the void, a spectacle forgotten
of humanity since the Antonines. " The Countess de Boufflers,
with whom M. Sainte-Beuve has lately made us acquainted, had
maxims framed and hung in her chamber; among them might
be read such words as the following: "In conduct, simplicity and
sense. In methods, justice and generosity. In adversity, cour-
age and self-respect. Sacrifice all for peace of mind. When an
## p. 12875 (#297) ##########################################
EDMOND SCHÉRER
12875
important duty is to be fulfilled, consider perils and death only
as drawbacks, not as obstacles. " See what thoughts made up the
daily meditations of a woman of the world. Adversity was sup-
ported with cheerful courage. Old age was accepted without
pride or effort, without surprise or consternation. One detached
oneself little by little, composed oneself, conformed to the changed
condition, extinguished oneself, discreetly, quite simply, with de-
corum, and so to speak with spirit. Let us take care when we
speak of the eighteenth century-let us take care not to forget
the trials of the emigration and the prisons of the Terror!
I have spoken of the greatness and the debasement of the
epoch that the brothers Goncourt set themselves to interpret.
If there is some contradiction between the two halves of the
picture, I am not far from thinking that this very contradiction
might well be a proof of correctness. Human judgments are
true only on the condition of perpetually putting the yes by the
side of the no. The truth is, one can say of the eighteenth cen.
tury what our authors somewhere say of the Duchess of Mirepoix:
in default of esteem it inspires sympathy. The French century
above all others, it has our defects and our qualities. Endowed
with more intelligence than firmness, argumentative rather than
philosophic, didactic rather than moral, it has given lessons rather
than examples to the world, examples rather than models. It
was not entirely fixed, either in good or in evil. However low
it fell, it was far from making an utter failure. Carried to
extremes, it showed its strength most of all in extremity. It is
an assemblage of contradictions where all happens without prece-
dent, and it is safest to take nothing in it too literally. It will
ever be a bad sign in France, when this century is underrated
and when it is overrated; but it would be above all a sinister
day if we should ever adopt its frivolity and corruption, and
leave unappropriated its noble instincts and its capacity for en-
thusiasm.
Translated for A Library of the World's Best Literature' by Lucy C. Bull.
## p. 12876 (#298) ##########################################
12876
EDMOND SCHÉRER
A LITERARY HERESY
"Here I stand. I cannot otherwise. God help me! Amen. »
- LUTHER at the Diet of Worms.
I
SHALL never cease to protest against the infatuations that in
our day exercise a kind of tyranny in literature. To raise
personal preferences to the dignity of a creed is not enough.
A cult once established, a dogma once accepted,- no more free-
dom of analysis, no more independent criticism, no more per-
missible dissent: the order is to "admire like a beast. " Mental
indolence is of course at the bottom of this fashion: it is easier
to accept an opinion than to form one. But these habits of
mind are an exceedingly curious study, for the reason that never
has the tendency to slavish partisanship been more general, nor
the despotism of ready-made judgments more absolute, than in
these times of pretended emancipation and so-called individual-
ism. Doubtless it is the same with enfranchised intelligence as
with political rights: great efforts are made to secure them, and
when they are secured we no longer care for their exercise.
I will cite the cult of which Goethe is the object in Germany.
as an example of the propensity that I have in mind. This cult
has all the characteristics of superstition. The Germans long
since exhausted their critical acumen upon the Trinity; of the
infallibility of the Church or the Holy Scriptures they have left
standing not a stone: but they have overleaped themselves in
the case of Goethe. They have made a seer, nay, a divinity,
of him. His works have become, beyond the Rhine, the Bible
of cultivated men: a Bible in twenty volumes, but a true Bible,
treated with the superstitious care that befits the study of an
inspired text. If we do not put all the writings of this author
on the same plane, if we admit preferences, we thereby relin-
quish the idea that all are divine, that none of them may be
rejected or deprecated, that we need penetrate only a little fur-
ther to find depths in what looked flat, hidden meanings in what
seemed commonplace or tedious.
Instead of Goethe read Molière, and you will realize that
France is not far from falling into the same habit as Germany.
Among us, admiration for Molière is tending to that state of
orthodoxy outside of which there is no salvation. We read little
nowadays; we read badly, inattentively, without reflecting, without
analyzing, without tasting.
## p. 12876 (#299) ##########################################
## p. 12876 (#300) ##########################################
D
SCHILLER.
## p. 12876 (#301) ##########################################
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## p. 12876 (#302) ##########################################
## p. 12877 (#303) ##########################################
12877
JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH SCHILLER
(1759-1805)
BY E. P. EVANS
J
OHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH SCHILLER was born November
10th, 1759, at Marbach, a small town of Würtemberg situated
near the junction of the Murr and the Neckar. He was the
second child and only son of Johann Caspar Schiller, a worthy man
of humble origin, but of sterling character and superior abilities; who
began his career as barber and cupper, was advanced to surgeon in a
Bavarian regiment of hussars, received the rank of captain and finally
of major, and died as landscape gardener in the service of the Duke
of Würtemberg. Schiller's mother, Elizabeth Dorothea Kodweiss, the
daughter of an innkeeper in Marbach, was a woman of warm affec-
tions, as well as a person of uncommon intelligence and fine taste,
with a special fondness for poetry, in which she showed a discrimi-
nation rare in people of her class. Both parents were sincerely and
even fervently pious, and wished that their son should study theology;
and this desire corresponded to his own early inclinations. He after-
wards abandoned divinity for jurisprudence, and then exchanged law
for medicine, before finding his true vocation in literature.
The dull military drill and preceptorial pedantry of the school
founded by Duke Karl, and entered by Schiller at the age of four-
teen, were extremely irksome to him, and tended to repress and
stunt rather than to cherish and develop the natural propensities
and powers of his mind. His love of letters, and especially his pas-
sion for poetry, could be gratified only by stealth, or by the feint of
a headache or a sore throat, which enabled him to evade for a few
hours the stern eye of the pedagogical task-master and to devote
himself to his favorite pursuits in his own room. But notwithstand-
ing these depressing circumstances, his genius kept its native bent
with laudable firmness, and he succeeded in cultivating the best
literature of his day,- Klopstock's 'Messias,' Goethe's 'Götz von
Berlichingen' and 'Werther,' Miller's 'Siegwart,' Müller's Faust,'
Gerstenberg's 'Ugolino,' Leisewitz's Julius von Tarent,' Lessing's
dramas, Klinger's tragedies, and other products of the "storm and
stress" period; and Shakespeare, through the somewhat imperfect
medium of Wieland's translation. To his over-intense and effusive
## p. 12878 (#304) ##########################################
12878
JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH SCHILLER
sentimentalism the ruggedly healthy English poet seemed cold and
cynical, and the introduction of clowns and fools with their jests in
the most pathetic scenes of 'Hamlet' and 'King Lear' jarred upon
his sensibilities; but as he afterwards confesses, this indignation had
its source in his own limited knowledge of human nature.
He left the Ducal Academy December 14th, 1780, as a doctor of
medicine, and even practiced this profession for a time as assistant
surgeon in a grenadier regiment at a salary of eighteen florins ($7. 50)
a month. Meanwhile, when he was scarcely eighteen years of age,
he had written The Robbers'; the existence of which he prudently
kept secret until after his graduation, and then, not being able to
find a publisher, printed it at his own expense, and even borrowed
the money for this purpose. This play, in which not only his hatred
of the galling personal restraints and daily vexations he had suffered,
but also the restless and impetuous spirit of the storm and stress
movement, found vigorous expression, excited great enthusiasm in
Germany, and was soon translated into the principal languages of
Europe. It also made a strong but by no means favorable impression
on the mind of the Duke of Würtemberg, who punished the author
with a fortnight's arrest for going clandestinely to Mannheim to see
it performed in January 1782, and forbade him "henceforth and for-
ever to compose comedies or anything of the sort. " Having before
his eyes the fate of the poet Schubart, whom for a less heinous
offense the same paternal sovereign had confined for ten years in the
fortress of Hohenasperg, he took advantage of some public festivity
on September 17th, 1782, to slip out of the gates of Stuttgart and flee
to Mannheim, beyond the reach of Würtemberg bailiffs.
"The Robbers' is a work of unquestionable but undisciplined gen-
ius; a generous wine in the first stages of fermentation. The char-
acters are the mental creations of an ardent and enthusiastic youth,
taking shape and color in a great measure from the dramatic litera-
ture on which his imagination had fed. As Schiller himself confessed,
it was an attempt to portray men by one who had not the slightest
knowledge of mankind. Its power and popularity, in spite of all de-
fects, and the firm hold it still has of each rising generation, are due
to the sincere spirit of revolt against social, political, and intellectual
tyranny that permeates it, and is the sole source of its verity and
vitality.
Not feeling himself safe from ducal catchpolls at Mannheim,
Schiller went to Bauerbach near Meiningen, where he was hospitably
received by Frau von Wolzogen, the mother of one of his school-
fellows; and remained for several months under the name of Dr.
Ritter. In this friendly retreat and place of refuge he finished 'The
Conspiracy of Fiesco,' brought in a rough draught from Stuttgart;
## p. 12879 (#305) ##########################################
JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH SCHILLER
12879
and wrote 'Cabal and Love,' or 'Luise Miller' as it was originally
called. The first of these plays marks a decided advance in artistic
execution: the situations are more probable and the characters truer
to life; indeed, the ambitions, intrigues, loves, hatreds, pomp and
pageantry of the Genoese nobility in the sixteenth century are viv-
idly and vigorously delineated, although a certain crudeness in laying
on the glowing colors, and a conspicuous lack of delicacy in blend-
ing them, still betray the hand of the novice. 'Cabal and Love' is
a bold exposure of the selfish greed, corruption, and cruelty of con-
temporary court life in Germany; and puts the Hessian landgrave
(who sold his subjects to England as soldiers to fight against Amer-
ican independence, to get money to squander on his mistresses) in
the pillory forever. The plan of this tragedy formed itself in his
mind while undergoing the fourteen days' arrest already referred to,
and this circumstance doubtless added to the impressiveness of his
protest against the oppression of the middle and lower classes by.
arbitrary power; the enthusiastic applause with which it was received,
proved that it dared to utter the thoughts and feelings timorously
concealed in the bosom of every citizen.
During his stay at Bauerbach he began a new drama, 'Don Carlos,'
based chiefly on a historical novel with the same title published by
the Abbé de Saint-Réal at Paris in 1672. This partially finished piece
he took with him to Mannheim, whither he went as poet to the thea-
tre in July 1783; but he did not complete and print it until 1786,
when he was living with Körner at Loschwitz near Dresden. This is
his first drama in blank verse, and it is in every respect maturer
than the earlier ones, which are all in prose; it follows them also in
its tendency as a fit and logical sequence. In the three former plays
he inveighs vehemently against existing evils; in 'Don Carlos' he
sets forth his own ideas of humanity and liberty, in the utterances of
the Infante and especially of Marquis Posa. Schiller's intention was
to make the prince the hero of the piece, and he did so in the first
three acts: but as the composition was delayed, the marquis gradually
usurped this place in the poet's imagination, and finally overshadowed
Carlos altogether; and although this change may mar the artistic
unity of the plot, it adds immensely to the energy of the action in
the last two acts and to the impressiveness of the whole.
The poet now turned his attention to historical and philosophical
studies, as the best means of correcting the defects — arising from
inadequate acquaintance with human nature and human affairs, and
from imperfect knowledge of æsthetic principles-that had hitherto
characterized his dramatic productions. In 1787 he went to Weimar,
where he enjoyed the friendship of Herder and Wieland. In 1788 he
published The History of the Revolt of the United Netherlands,'
## p. 12880 (#306) ##########################################
12880
JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH SCHILLER
and in the following year was appointed to a professorship in the
philosophical faculty of Jena. From 1790 to 1793 appeared his 'His-
tory of the Thirty Years' War,' in three volumes. These works,
while showing careful and conscientious research, are most remark-
able for the vivid descriptions of events and lifelike delineations of
individual characters, congenial to the pre-eminently plastic taste and
talent of the dramatist. In the province of æsthetics he wrote a
series of thoughtful and readable dissertations bearing throughout the
visible stamp of Kantean criticism and speculation: 'On Tragic Art,'
'On Grace and Dignity,' On the Sublime,' 'Letters on Man's Æs-
thetic Education,' and finally a less abstract and more distinctively
literary essay On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry. ' Meanwhile he
did not cease his devotion to the Muses; although exchanging for a
time the service of the buskined Melpomene for that of Euterpe the
delightful goddess of the softly breathing flute, and Erato with the
lyre. Besides some occasional poems and amatory odes to Laura,
evidently suggested by Petrarch's canzoni, he wrote at this time the
exalted and exultant hymn To Joy,' subsequently set to music in
Beethoven's ninth symphony. This was followed by numerous lyrics
and ballads, the most noteworthy of which are 'The Gods of Greece,'
The Artists, The Knight Toggenburg,' The Sharing of the Earth,'
'The Visit (dithyramb), The Power of Song,' 'Worth of Women,'
'German Art,' The Fight with the Dragon,' The Glove,' The
Maiden from Afar,' 'Resignation,' and The Song of the Bell. ' As
a purely lyrical poet Schiller is decidedly inferior to Goethe; and
the best of his minor poems are those in which the qualities of
the historian, the philosopher, and the poet are combined, and epic
narration and didactic meditation are blended and fused with lyrical
emotion, as in The Song of the Bell. '
(
It is the historical drama for which Schiller showed a strong pre-
dilection and peculiar talent, and in which he stands pre-eminent.
While engaged in his 'History of the Thirty Years' War' he was
irresistibly attracted by the imposing form of Wallenstein, and re-
solved to make him the hero of a drama; which was originally
conceived as a single piece in five acts, but was gradually expanded
into three parts: Wallenstein's Camp' (one act), 'The Piccolomini'
(five acts), and Wallenstein's Death' (five acts). In the following
year (1800) appeared 'Maria Stuart'; then 'The Maid of Orleans'
(1801), The Bride of Messina' (1803), and William Tell' (1804),—
of which the last mentioned surpasses all the others in dramatic con-
tinuity and creative power: the individuals are admirably portrayed,
and the idyllic life and occupations of the honest, fearless, freedom-
loving Swiss peasants brought out with wonderful fidelity, in contrast
to the blind brutality of their Austrian oppressors. Indeed, the very
## p. 12881 (#307) ##########################################
JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH SCHILLER
12881
fact (which some critics have regarded as defect) that there is no
outward connection between the deed of Tell and the oath of the
men of Rütli, so far from disturbing the unity of the plot, renders it
more effective; since they both work together, like unconscious forces
of nature, for the attainment of the same noble end. The first part
of 'Wallenstein' is a masterpiece of its kind; in the second part
the action drags somewhat, but in the third moves on with the force
and irresistibility of fate, in a tumult of conflicting aims and inter-
ests, and with touches of tender pathos, as in the relations of Max
to Thekla, to its tragical conclusion. Maria Stuart' violates to some
extent the truth of history, by making the conflict chiefly a matter of
personal animosity instead of an antagonism of political principles
and religious systems; but is distinguished for depth of psychological
insight in the delineation of the characters of the rival queens and
the principal statesmen and courtiers, -Burleigh, Talbot, Leicester,
Mortimer, and Shrewsbury. In 'The Maid of Orleans' the heroine is
the pure-souled and patriotic representative of her people, and the
Divinely chosen defender of her country; and the contest is between
nations. She is here no longer the devil's satellite and sorceress of
her English foes and of Shakespeare, and her memory is cleansed of
the filth with which Voltaire defiled it.
In this "romantic tragedy,"
as Schiller called it, he images forth with wonderful accuracy the
romantic spirit of the age, which rendered such apparitions and super-
natural agencies credible. Touchingly human and true is the scene
with Lionel, in which the invincible and inexorable virgin is suddenly
transformed into a tender-hearted and weak-handed woman through
the power of earthly love. The fable of 'The Bride of Messina,' the
fatal enmity of two brothers, rivals in love, was the theme of Greek
tragedy, and forms the plots of Klinger's 'The Twins' and Leisewitz's
'Julius of Tarentum. ' The dialogue is interspersed with choral odes,
suitable to the action and summing up the supposed reflections of
the spectators; and the traditional idea of fate pervades the whole,
although Schiller gives larger scope to free-will, and makes the indi-
vidual in reality the author of his own destiny through the inevita-
ble sequence of cause and effect. The poet comprises it all in the
concluding verse: "Life is not the chief good, and the greatest of
evils is guilt. " Schiller's dramatic style is the grand style, and rather
ornate and oratorical. He is truly eloquent, and in the glittering coils
of his rhetoric there is no pinchbeck; but his speeches are often too
long, and in the mouths of second-rate actors are apt to degenerate
into rant. It would be unjust, however, to hold the poet responsible
for the deficiencies of the player.
While holding his professorship at Jena, Schiller married, on Feb-
ruary 22d, 1790, Charlotte von Lengefeld; by whom he had two sons
(Carl and Ernst) and two daughters (Caroline and Emilie), and who
XXII-806
## p. 12882 (#308) ##########################################
12882
JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH SCHILLER
died at Bonn July 9th, 1826, thus surviving her husband more than
twenty-one years. In 1799 he settled permanently in Weimar; in
1802 he was raised to the nobility,- a distinction for which he cared
little himself, but which he thought might be of some advantage to
his children. Personally he prized far more highly the honorary
citizenship of the French Republic, which had been conferred upon
him by the National Convention in 1793. In 1797 he was chosen a
member of the Academy of Sciences in Stockholm. In 1791 he had a
severe attack of catarrhal fever, from the effects of which he never
wholly recovered. Fortunately his pecuniary anxieties were partially
relieved by the Danish poet Jens Baggesen, who induced the Duke
of Holstein-Augustenburg, and the Danish minister Count von Schim-
melmann, to grant him pension of a thousand speciesdaler (equiva-
lent to about $1000), with the injunction to take care of his health
and not overwork. In the spring of 1804 he went to Berlin to a rep-
resentation of William Tell,' but the exertion caused a recurrence of
his old malady. He grew better, however; translated Racine's 'Phè-
dre' in twenty-six days, and completed two acts of a new play, 'The
False Demetrius,' when a return of catarrhal fever ended his days
on May 9th, 1805.
―
During the last ten years of his life, Schiller's relations to Goethe
were those of cordial friendship and literary co-operation; one of the
most important results of which was the joint production of a series
of satirical epigrams called 'Xenien,' and published in the Musenal-
manach in 1797. The more philosophic and less personal, or what
Schiller called the "harmless" ones, were also collected and printed
under the title of Tabulæ Votivæ (Votive Tablets). 'Xenia' (§ɛívia,
gifts to guests) is the title of the thirteenth book of the epigrams
of the Roman poet Martial, from whom the term was borrowed by
Goethe, who first mentioned it in a letter to Schiller dated December
23d, 1795; Schiller immediately replied that the idea is splendid,
and must be carried out. " The epigrams contain many happy hits at
the isms and ologies of the day, as well as at individual foibles.
They were evidently thrown off hastily, and are not always perfect in
form; but they are full of pointed wit and pungency, and made an im-
mense sensation. Some writers by whom they were fiercely resented,
ought to have been gratified and grateful, since the allusions to them
in these distichs have alone saved their names from oblivion.
In the ordinary relations of life Schiller was a simple-hearted,
noble-minded, and clear-sighted man, all alive with enthusiasm and
full of delicate sensibility, but free from every sort of affectation.
He was endowed with an intellect of high order, which he spared no
pains to cultivate by assiduous and systematic study. The versatility
of his genius was remarkable; and he might have excelled as a phi-
losopher or historian, had it not been for the predominance of his
## p. 12883 (#309) ##########################################
JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH SCHILLER
12883
(
poetic gifts, to which he made all acquisitions of learning subordi
nate and contributory. Perhaps the least conspicuous of his mental
powers was humor; but the scenes in Wallenstein's Camp,' 'The
Famous Wife, an Epistle from One Husband to Another,' and some
of his epigrams and parables, show that he was by no means des-
titute of this rare faculty. Remembering that he died before he was
forty-six, and suffered severely from sickness during the last decade
of his life, one cannot but wonder at the extent and brilliancy of his
achievements as a poet and scholar.
Е. Р. Егот
TO LAURA
(RAPTURE)
AURA, above this world methinks I fly,
L
And feel the glow of some May-lighted sky,
When thy looks beam on mine!
And my soul drinks a more ethereal air,
When mine own shape I see reflected there
In those blue eyes of thine!
A lyre sound from the Paradise afar,
A harp note trembling from some gracious star,
Seems the wild ear to fill;
And my Muse feels the Golden Shepherd hours,
When from thy lips the silver music pours
Slow, as against its will.
I see the young Loves flutter on the wing —
Move the charmed trees, as when the Thracian's string
Wild life to forests gave;
Swifter the globe's swift circle seems to fly,
When in the whirling dance thou glidest by,
Light as a happy wave.
Thy looks, when there Love's smiles their gladness
wreathe,
Could life itself to lips of marble breathe,
Lend rocks a pulse divine;
Reading thine eyes, my veriest life but seems
Made up and fashioned from my wildest dreams,-
Laura, sweet Laura, mine!
Bulwer's Translation.
## p. 12884 (#310) ##########################################
12884
JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH SCHILLER
THE KNIGHT TOGGENBURG
NIGHT, a sister's quiet love
Gives my heart to thee!
Ask me not for other love,
For it paineth me!
Calmly couldst thou greet me now.
"K
Calmly from me go;
Calmly ever,-why dost thou
Weep in silence so? »
Sadly - not a word he said –
To the heart she wrung,
Sadly clasped he once the maid,
On his steed he sprung!
"Up, my men of Switzerland! »
Up, awake the brave!
Forth they go-the Red-Cross band-
To the Savior's grave!
High your deeds, and great your fame,
Heroes of the tomb!
Glancing through the carnage came
Many a dauntless plume.
Terror of the Moorish foe,
Toggenburg, thou art!
But thy heart is heavy! oh,
Heavy is thy heart!
Heavy was the load his breast
For a twelvemonth bore:
Never can his trouble rest!
And he left the shore.
Lo! a ship on Joppa's strand,
Breeze and billow fair,-
On to that beloved land
Where she breathes the air!
Knocking at the castle gate
Was the pilgrim heard;
Woe the answer from the grate!
Woe the thunder-word!
"She thou seekest lives-a Nun!
To the world she died
When, with yester-morning's sun,
Heaven received a Bride! "
## p. 12885 (#311) ##########################################
JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH SCHILLER
12885
From that day his father's hall
Ne'er his home may be;
Helm and hauberk, steed and all,
Evermore left he!
Where his castle-crownèd height
Frowns the valley down,
Dwells unknown the hermit knight,
In a sackcloth gown.
Rude the hut he built him there,
Where his eyes may view
Wall and cloister glisten fair
Dusky lindens through.
There when dawn was in the skies,
Till the eve-star shone,
Sate he with mute wistful eyes,
Sate he there alone!
Looking to the cloister still,
Looking forth afar,
Looking to her lattice till
Clinked the lattice bar.
Tilla passing glimpse allowed-
Paused her image pale,
Calm and angel-mild, and bowed
Meekly towards the vale.
Then the watch of day was o'er;
Then, consoled awhile,
Down he lay, to greet once more
Morning's early smile.
Days and years are gone, and still
Looks he forth afar,
Uncomplaining, hoping-till
Clinks the lattice bar;
a passing glimpse allowed-
Paused her image pale,
Calm and angel-mild, and bowed
Meekly towards the vale.
So upon that lonely spot
Sate he, dead at last,
With the look where life was not,
Towards the casement cast.
Till
-
Bulwer's Translation.
## p. 12886 (#312) ##########################################
12886
JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH SCHILLER
THE SHARING OF THE EARTH
AKE the world," cried the God from his heaven
To men-"I proclaim you its heirs;
To divide it amongst you 'tis given:
You have only to settle the shares. "
"TAKE
Each takes for himself as it pleases,
Old and young have alike their desire:
The harvest the husbandman seizes;
Through the wood and the chase sweeps the squire.
The merchant his warehouse is locking;
The abbot is choosing his wine;
Cries the monarch, the thoroughfare blocking,
"Every toll for the passage is mine! "
All too late, when the sharing was over,
Comes the poet,— he came from afar;
Nothing left can the laggard discover,
Not an inch but its owners there are.
"Woe is me! is there nothing remaining
For the son who best loves thee alone! "
Thus to Jove went his voice in complaining,
As he fell at the Thunderer's throne.
"In the land of thy dreams if abiding,"
Quoth the God, "Canst thou murmur at me?
Where wert thou when the earth was dividing? "
"I was," said the poet, "by thee!
"Mine eye by thy glory was captured,
Mine ear by thy music of bliss:
Pardon him whom thy world so enraptured
As to lose him his portion in this! "
"Alas," said the God, "earth is given!
Field, forest, and market, and all!
What say you to quarters in heaven?
We'll admit you whenever you call! "
Bulwer's Translation.
## p. 12887 (#313) ##########################################
JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH SCHILLER
12887
THE BEST STATE
HOW
ow the best state to know? It is found out:
Like the best woman-that least talked about.
Bulwer's Translation.
Y NO kind Augustus reared,
To no Medici endeared,
German Art arose:
Β΄
GERMAN ART
Fostering glory smiled not on her;
Ne'er with kingly smiles to sun her,
Did her blooms unclose.
No, she went by monarchs slighted,
Went unhonored, unrequited,
From high Frederick's throne;
Praise and pride be all the greater,
That man's genius did create her
From man's worth alone.
Therefore, all from loftier mountains,
Purer wells and richer fountains,
Streams our poet-art:
So no rule to curb its rushing;
All the fuller flows it gushing
From its deep,- the heart.
THE MAIDEN'S LAMENT
THE
HE wind rocks the forest,
The clouds gather o'er;
The maiden sits lonely
Beside the green shore;
The breakers are dashing with might, with might:
And she mingles her sighs with the gloomy night,
And her eyes are dim with tears.
"The earth is a desert,
And broken my heart,
Nor aught to my wishes
The world can impart.
Bulwer's Translation.
## p. 12888 (#314) ##########################################
12888
JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH SCHILLER
Thou Holy One, call now thy child from below;
I have known all the joys that the world can bestow-
I have lived and have loved. " —
"In vain, oh how vainly,
Flows tear upon tear!
Human woe never waketh
Dull Death's heavy ear!
Yet say what can soothe for the sweet vanished love,
And I, the Celestial, will shed from above
The balm for thy breast. "
Let ever, though vainly,
Flow tear upon tear;
Human woe never waketh
Dull Death's heavy ear:
Yet still when the heart mourns the sweet vanished love,
No balm for its wound can descend from above
Like Love's sorrows and tears.
Bulwer's Translation.
THE MAIDEN FROM AFAR
ITHIN a vale each infant year,
When earliest larks first carol free,
To humble shepherds doth appear
A wondrous maiden fair to see.
WITH
Not born within that lowly place;
From whence she wandered, none could tell;
Her parting footsteps left no trace,
When once the maiden sighed farewell.
And blessed was her presence there:
Each heart, expanding, grew more gay;
Yet something loftier still than fair
Kept man's familiar looks away.
From fairy gardens known to none
She brought mysterious fruits and flowers;
The products of a brighter sun,
Of nature more benign than ours.
With each, her gifts the maiden shared,—
To some the fruits, the flowers to some:
## p. 12889 (#315) ##########################################
JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH SCHILLER
12889
Alike the young, the aged, fared:
Each bore a blessing back to home.
Though every guest was welcome there,
Yet some the maiden held more dear;
And culled her rarest sweets whene'er
She saw two loving hearts draw near.
PUNCH SONG
F
OUR elements joined in
An emulous strife
Fashion the world and
Constitute life.
From the sharp citron
The starry juice pour:
Acid to life is
The innermost core.
Now let the sugar
The bitter one meet:
Still be life's bitter
Bulwer's Translation.
Tamed down to the sweet.
Let the bright water
Flow into the bowl:
Water, the calm one,
Embraces the whole.
Drops from the spirit
Pour quickening within:
Life but its life from
The spirit can win.
Haste while it gloweth,
Your vessel to bring:
The wave has but virtue
Drunk hot from the spring.
Bulwer's Translation.
## p. 12890 (#316) ##########################################
12890
JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH SCHILLER
WORTH OF WOMEN
ONOR to Woman! To her it is given
To garden the earth with the roses of Heaven!
All blessed, she linketh the Loves in their choir,-
In the veil of her Graces her beauty concealing,
She tends on each altar that's hallowed to Feeling,
And keeps ever living the fire!
HⓇ
From the bounds of Truth careering,
Man's strong spirit wildly sweeps,
With each hasty impulse veering,
Down to Passion's troubled deeps.
And his heart, contented never,
Greeds to grapple with the far,
Chasing his own dream forever
On through many a distant Star!
But Woman, with looks that can charm and enchain,
Lureth back at her beck that wild truant again
By the spell of her presence beguiled;
In the home of the Mother her modest abode,
And modest the manners by Nature bestowed
On Nature's most exquisite child.
Bruised and worn, but fiercely breasting,
Foe to foe, the angry strife,—
Man the Wild One, never resting,
Roams along the troubled life:
What he planneth, still pursuing;
Vainly as the hydra bleeds,
Crest the severed crest renewing,
Wish to withered wish succeeds.
But Woman at peace with all being reposes,
And seeks from the Moment to gather the roses,
Whose sweets to her culture belong.
Ah! richer than he, though his soul reigneth o'er
The mighty dominion of Genius and Lore,
And the infinite Circle of Song.
Strong and proud and self-depending,
Man's cold bosom beats alone:
Heart with heart divinely blending
In the love that Gods have known,
## p. 12891 (#317) ##########################################
JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH SCHILLER
12891
Soul's sweet interchange of feeling,
Melting tears, - he never knows;
Each hard sense the hard one steeling,
Arms against a world of foes.
Alive as the wind-harp, how lightly soever
If wooed by the Zephyr, to music will quiver,
Is Woman to Hope and to Fear;
Ah, tender one! still at the shadow of grieving,
How quiver the chords - how thy bosom is heaving-
How trembles thy glance through the tear!
Man's dominion, war and labor,
Might to right the Statute gave;
Laws are in the Scythian's sabre;
Where the Mede reigned, see the Slave!
Peace and Meekness grimly routing,
Prowls the War lust, rude and wild;
Eris rages, hoarsely shouting,
Where the vanished Graces smiled.
But Woman, the Soft One, persuasively prayeth;
Of the mild realm of manners the sceptre she swayeth;
She lulls, as she looks from above,
The Discord whose hell for its victims is gaping,
And blending awhile the forever-escaping,
Whispers Hate to the Image of Love.
RIDDLES
I
THE RAINBOW
Bulwer's Translation.
F
ROM pearls her lofty bridge she weaves,
A gray sea arching proudly over;
A moment's toil the work achieves,
And on the height behold her hover!
Beneath that arch securely go
The tallest barks that ride the seas;
No burthen e'er the bridge may know,
And as thou seek'st to near-it flees!
N
·
## p. 12892 (#318) ##########################################
12892
JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH SCHILLER
First with the floods it came, to fade
As rolled the waters from the land;
Say where that wondrous arch is made,
And whose the artist's plastic hand?
II
THE MOON AND STARS
Bulwer's Translation.
O'ER a spacious pasture go
Sheep in thousands, silver-white;
As to-day we see them, so
In the oldest grandsire's sight.
They drink, never waxing old,
Life from an unfailing brook;
There's a shepherd to their fold,
With a silver-hornèd crook.
From a gate of gold let out,
Night by night he counts them over;
Wide the field they rove about,
Never hath he lost a rover.
True the Dog that helps to lead them,
One gay Ram in front we see:
What the flock, and who doth heed them,
Sheep and shepherd,- tell to me?
Bulwer's Translation.
THE POWER OF SONG
A
RAIN-FLOOD from the mountain riven,
It leaps in thunder forth to-day;
Before its rush the crags are driven,
The oaks uprooted whirled away!
Awed yet in awe all wildly gladdening-
The startled wanderer halts below;
He hears the rock-born waters maddening,
Nor wits the source from whence they go:
So, from their high, mysterious founts, along,
Stream on the silenced world the waves of song!
## p. 12893 (#319) ##########################################
JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH SCHILLER
12893
Knit with th threads of life forever,
By those dread powers that weave the woof,-
Whose art the singer's spell can sever?
Whose breast has mail to music proof?
Lo, to the bard a wand of wonder
The herald of the gods has given;
He sinks the soul the death-realm under,
Or lifts it breathless up to heaven,-
Half sport, half earnest, rocking its devotion
Upon the tremulous ladder of emotion.
As when in hours the least unclouded,
Portentous, strides upon the scene
Some fate before from wisdom shrouded,
And awes the startled souls of men,-
Before that stranger from another,
Behold how this world's great ones bow;
Mean joys their idle clamor smother,
The mask is vanished from the brow:
And from truth's sudden, solemn flag unfurled
Fly all the craven falsehoods of the world!
―
So Song-like Fate itself—is given
To scare the idler thoughts away,
To lift the earthly up to heaven,
To wake the spirit from the clay!
One with the gods the bard: before him
All things unclean and earthly fly;
Hushed are all meaner powers, and o'er him
The dark fate swoops unharming by:
And while the soother's magic measures flow,
Smoothed every wrinkle on the brows of woe!
Even as a child, that after pining
For the sweet absent mother, hears
Her voice, and round her neck entwining
Young arms, vents all its soul in tears:
So by harsh custom far estranged,
Along the glad and guileless track,
To childhood's happy home unchanged
The swift song wafts the wanderer back,—
Snatched from the cold and formal world, and prest
By the great mother to her glowing breast!
Bulwer's Translation.
I
## p. 12894 (#320) ##########################################
12894
JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH SCHILLER
HYMN TO JOY
SPAR
PARK from the fire that gods have fed —
Joy-thou elysian child divine,
Fire-drunk, our airy footsteps tread,
O Holy One! thy holy shrine.
Strong custom rends us from each other,
Thy magic all together brings;
And man in man but hails a brother,
Wherever rest thy gentle wings.
Chorus - Embrace, ye millions-let this kiss,
Brothers, embrace the earth below!
Yon starry worlds that shine on this,
One common Father know!
He who this lot from fate can grasp,—
Of one true friend the friend to be,
He who one faithful maid can clasp,-
Shall hold with us his jubilee;
Yes, each who but one single heart
In all the earth can claim his own!
Let him who cannot, stand apart,
And weep beyond the pale, alone!
Chorus Homage to holy Sympathy,
―――
Ye dwellers in our mighty ring;
Up to yon star pavilions - she
Leads to the Unknown King!
All being drinks the mother dew
Of joy from Nature's holy bosom;
And Vice and Worth alike pursue
Her steps that strew the blossom.
Joy in each link: to us the treasure
Of Wine and Love; beneath the sod,
The worm has instincts fraught with pleasure;
In heaven the Cherub looks on God!
Chorus - Why bow ye down-why down-ye millions?
O World, thy Maker's throne to see,
Look upward - search the star pavilions:
There must his mansion be!
## p. 12895 (#321) ##########################################
JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH SCHILLER
12895
Joy is the mainspring in the whole.
Of endless Nature's calm rotation;
Joy moves the dazzling wheels that roll
In the great Timepiece of Creation;
Joy breathes on buds, and flowers they are;
Joy beckons suns come forth from heaven;
Joy rolls the spheres in realms afar,—
Ne'er to thy glass, dim Wisdom, given!
Chorus - Joyous as suns careering gay
Along their paths on high,
Joy from Truth's pure and lambent fires,
Smiles out upon the ardent seeker;
Joy leads to virtue man's desires,
And cheers as Suffering's step grows weaker.
High from the sunny slopes of Faith,
The gales her waving banners buoy;
And through the shattered vaults of Death,
Lo, 'mid the choral Angels - Joy!
Chorus
March, brothers, march your dauntless way,
As chiefs to victory!
-
- Bear this life, millions, bravely bear
Bear this life for the better one!
See the stars! a life is there,
Where the reward is won.
Men like the Gods themselves may be,
Though men may not the Gods requite;
Go soothe the pangs of Misery,
Go share the gladness with delight.
Revenge and hatred both forgot,
Have naught but pardon for thy foe;
May sharp repentance grieve him not,
No curse one tear of ours bestow!
Chorus - Let all the world be peace and love,
Cancel thy debt-book with thy brother;
For God shall judge of us above,
As we shall judge each other!
Joy sparkles to us from the bowl:
Behold the juice whose golden color
To meekness melts the savage soul,
And gives Despair a hero's valor.
## p. 12896 (#322) ##########################################
12896
JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH SCHILLER
Up, brothers! Lo, we crown the cup!
Lo, the wine flashes to the brim!
Let the bright fount spring heavenward! Up!
To the Good Spirit this glass! To him!
Chorus Praised by the ever-whirling ring
Of stars, and tuneful Seraphim,—
To the Good Spirit, the Father-King
In heaven! This glass to him!
Firm mind to bear what fate bestows;
Comfort to tears in sinless eyes;
Faith kept alike with friends and foes;
Man's oath eternal as the skies;
Manhood, the thrones of Kings to girth,
Though bought by life or limb the prize;
Success to merit's honest worth;
Perdition to the brood of lies!
---
Chorus-Draw closer in the holy ring;
YⓇ
Swear by the wine-cup's golden river,
Swear by the stars, and by their King,
To keep this vow forever.
THE GODS OF GREECE
Bulwer's Translation.
E IN the age gone by,
Who ruled the world a world how lovely then!
And guided still the steps of happy men
In the light leading-strings of careless joy!
Ah, flourished then your service of delight!
