clude him from the rank of great Poets. properly the exponent of low things; that | pieces, which here and there breathes of the which first renders them poetical to the mind. very highest region of Art. Nor are the naThe man of Humour sees common life, even tural or accidental defects we have noticed in mean life, under the new light of sportfulness | his genius, even as it stands, such as to ex and love; whatever has existence has a charm for him. Humour has justly been regarded as the finest perfection of poetic genius. He who wants it, be his other gifts what they may, has only half a mind; an eye for what is above him, not for what is about him or below him. Now, among all writers of any real poetic genius, we cannot recollect one who, in this respect, exhibits such total deficiency as Schiller. In his whole writings there is scarcely any vestige of it, scarcely any attempt that way. His nature was without Humour; and he had too true a feeling to adopt any counterfeit in its stead. Thus no drollery or caricature, still less any barren mockery, which, in the hundred cases, are all that we find passing current as Humour, discover themselves in Schiller. His works are full of laboured earnestness; he is the gravest of all writers. Some of his critical discussions, especially in the Aesthetische Briefe, where he designates the ultimate height of man's culture | by the title Spieltrieb, (literally, Sport-impulse,) prove that he knew what Humour was, and how essential; as indeed, to his intellect, all forms of excellence, even the most alien to his own, were painted with a wonderful fidelity. It was as a Dramatic Author that Schiller Nevertheless, he himself attains not that height distinguished himself to the world: yet often which he saw so clearly; to the last the Spiel- we feel as if chance rather than a natural tentrieb could be little more than a theory with |dency had led him into this province; as if him. With the single exception of Wallen- his talent were essentially, in a certain style, stein's Lager, where, too, the Humour, if it be | lyrical, perhaps even epic, rather than dramasuch, is not deep, his other attempts at mirth, tic. He dwelt within himself, and could not fortunately very few, are of the heaviest. A without effort, and then only within a certain rigid intensity, a serious enthusiastic ardour, range, body forth other forms of being. Nay, majesty rather than grace, still more than much of what is called his poetry seems to lightness or sportfulness, characterizes him. us, as hinted above, oratorical rather than poWit he had, such wit as keen intellectual in-etical; his first bias might have led him to be sight can give; yet even of this no large a speaker, rather than a singer. Nevertheendowment. Perhaps he was too honest, too sincere, for the exercise of wit; too intent on the deeper relations of things to note their more transient collisions. Besides, he dealt in Affirmation, and not in Negation; in which last, it has been said, the material of wit chiefly lies. large portions in its course. less, a pure fire dwelt deep in his soul; and only in Poetry, of one or the other sort, coula this find utterance. The rest of his nature, at the same time, has a certain prosaic rigour; so that no. without strenuous and complex endeavours, long persisted in, could its poetic quality evolve itself. Quite pure, and as the These observations are to point out for us all-sovereign element, it perhaps never did the special department and limits of Schiller's evolve itself; and among such complex enexcellence; nowise to call in question its re-deavours, a small accident might influence ality. Of his noble sense for Truth, both in speculation and in action; of his deep, genial insight into nature; and the living harmony in which he renders back what is highest and grandest in Nature, no reader of his works need be reminded. In whatever belongs to the pathetic, the heroic, the tragically elevating, Schiller is at home; a master; nay, perhaps the greatest of all late poets. To the assiduous student, moreover, much else that lay in Schiller, but was never worked into shape, will become partially visible: deep inexhaustible mines of thought and feeling; a whole world of gifts, the finest produce of which was but beginning to be realized. To his high-minded, unwearied efforts what was impossible, had length of years been granted him! There is a tone in some of his later Of Schiller's honest, undivided zeal in this great problem of self-cultivation, we have often spoken. What progress he had made, and in spite of what difficulties, appears, if we contrast his earlier compositions with those of his later years. A few specimens of both sorts we shall here present. By this means, too, such of our readers as are unacquainted with Schiller, may gain some clearer notion of his poetic individuality than any description of ours could give. We shall take the Robbers, as his first performance, what he himself calls "a monster produced by the unnatural union of Genius with Thraldom;" the fierce fuliginous fire that burns in that singular piece will still be discernible in separa ed passages. The following Scene, even in the Moor. See, how lovely the Harvest looks!-married together by the spirit of peace!-The The Trees almost breaking under their load. whole world one family, its Father above-that The vine full of hope. Father not mine!-I alone the castaway,alone struck out from the company of the just; GRIMM. It is a plentiful year. MOOR. Think'st thou?-And so one toil in-for me no child to lisp my name,-never for the world will be repaid. One?-Yet over me the languishing look of one whom I love; night there may come a hailstorm, and shatter never, never, the embracing of a bosom friend it all to ruin. (dashing wildly back.) Encircled with murderSCHWARZ. Possible enough, it might all beers,-serpents hissing round me,-rushing ruined two hours before reaping. MOOR. Ay, so say I. It will all be ruined. Why should man prosper in what he has from the Ant; when he fails in what makes him like the Gods?—or is this the true aim of his Destiny? SCHWARZ. I know it not. down to the gulph of perdition on the eddying torrent of wickedness,-amid the flowers of the glad world, a howling Abaddon! SCHWARZ (to the rest.) How is this? I never saw him so. Moon (with piercing sorrow.) Oh, that I might return into my mother's womb,-that I might be born a beggar!-No! I durst not pray, O Heaven, to be as one of these day-labourersOh! I would toil till the blood ran down my temples to buy myself the pleasure of one noontide sleep, the blessedness of a single tear. GRIMM (to the rest.) Patience, a moment. The fit is passing. MOOR. Thou hast said well; and done still better, if thou never tri'dst to know it!-Brother,—I have looked at men, at their insectanxieties, and giant projects-their godlike schemes and mouselike occupations their wondrous race-running after Happiness;-he trusting to the gallop of his horse,-he to the hose of his ass,-a third to his own legs; this whirling lottery of life, in which so many a creature stakes his innocence, and his Hea-weep-O ye days of peace, thou castle of my ven! all trying for a prize, and-blanks are the whole drawing, there was not a prize in the batch. It is a drama, Brother, to bring tears into thy eyes, if it tickle thy midriff to laughter. SCHWARZ. How gloriously the sun is setting yonder! MOOR (lost in the view.) So dies a Hero!To be worshipped! GRIMM. It seems to move thee. MOOR. When I was a lad-it was my darling thought to live so, to die so-(with suppressed -(with suppressed pain.) It was a lad's thought! GRIMM. I hope so, truly. MOOR. There was a time too when I could father, ye green lovely valleys! O all ye Elysian scenes of my childhood! will ye never come again, never with your balmy sighing cool my burning bosom? Mourn with me, Nature! They will never come again, never cool my burning bosom with their balmy sighing. They are gone! gone! and will not return! Or take that still wilder monologue of Moor's on the old subject of suicide; in the midnight Forest, among the sleeping Robbers: (He lays aside the lute, and walks up and down in deep thought.) Who shall warrant me?--'Tis all so Moon (draws his hat down on his face.) There dark,-perplexed labyrinths,-no outlet, no was a time-Leave me alone, comrades. loadstar-were it but over with this last draught SCHWARZ. Moor! Moor! What, Devil?of breath-Over, like a sorry farce. But whence How his colour goes! this fierce Hunger after Happiness? whence this GRIMM. Ha! What ails him! Is he ill? ideal of a never-reached perfection? this continuaMoor. There was a time when I could not tion of uncompleted plans?-if the pitifu. sleep, if my evening prayer had been forgot-pressure of this pitiful thing (holding out a pistol) makes the wise man equal with the fool, GRIMM. Art thou going crazed? Will Moor the coward with the brave, the nobleminded let such milksop fancies tutor him? ten with the caitiff?-There is so divine a harmo MOOR (lays his head on Grimm's breast.) Bro-ny in all irrational Nature, why should there ther! Brother! GRIMM. Come! don't be a child,-I beg- be this dissonance in rational? No! no! there is somewhat beyond, for I have yet never known happiness. FASTOLF. O day of wo! (Lionel entero.) LIONEL. Think ye, I will tremble? spirits of my murdered ones! I will not tremble. (Trembling violently.)-Your feeble dying moan,- Look what a sight awaits you, Lionel! your black-choked faces,-your faces, your frightfully Our leader wounded, dying! gaping wounds are but links of an unbreakable chain of Destiny; and depend at last on my childish sports, on the whims of my nurses and pedagogues, on the temperament of my father, on the blood of my mother(shaken with horror.) Why has my Perillus made of me a Brazen Bull to roast mankind in my glowing belly? O noble Talbot, this is not a time to die. TALBOT. In vain! the day of Destiny is come Make haste to rescue Paris. LIONEL. Paris is the Dauphin's: (Gazing on the Pistol.) TIME and ETERNITY -linked together by a single moment!-Dread key, that shuttest behind me the prison of life, and before me openest the dwelling of eternal Night-say-O say-whither,-whither wilt thou lead me? Foreign, never circumnavigated Land!-See, manhood waxes faint under this image; the effort of the finite gives up, and A post arrived even now with th' evil news Fancy, the capricious ape of Sense, juggles our credulity with strange shadows.-No! No! It becomes not a man to waver. Be what thou wilt, nameless Yonder-so this me keep but true. This Sun is growing loathsome to me. Be what thou wilt, so I take myself along with me-!-Outward things are but the colouring of the man-I am my Heaven and my Hell. It had surrender'd. TALBOT (tears away his bandages.) LIONEL. Fastolf, TALBOT. Madness, thou conquerest, and I must yield : Conductress of the Stars, who art thou, then, What if thou shouldst send me companionless to some burnt and blasted circle of the Universe; which thou hast banished from thy sight; where the lone darkness and the motionless desert were my prospects-for ever? -I would people the silent wilderness with my fantasies; I should have Eternity for leisure to unravel the perplexed image of the boundless wo.-Or wilt Thou lead me through still other births! still other scenes of pain, from stage to stage-Onwards to Annihilation? The life-threads that are to be woven for me Yonder, cannot I tear them asunder, as I do these?-Thou canst make me Nothing;-this freedom canst Thou not take from me. (He Oh! Death is near! Think of your God, and pray! loads the Pistol. Suddenly he Stops.) And shall I for terror of a miserable life-die?-Shall I give wretchedness the victory over me?—No, I will endure it. (He throws the Pistol away.) Let misery blunt itself on my pride! I will go through with it.-Act IV. Scene VI. And now with these ferocities, and Sybilline frenzies, compare the placid strength of the following delineation, also of a stern character, from the Maid of Orleans; where Talbot, the gray veteran, dark, unbelieving, indomitable, passes down, as he thinks, to the land of utter Nothingness, contemptuous even of the Fate that destroys him, and "In death reposes on the soil of France, Like hero on his unsurrender'd shield." LIONEL. TALBOT. T had been but Fortune's common fickleness: Were we, as brave men, worsted by the brave, Deserve no graver issue? LIONEL (grasps his hand.) TALBOT. Soon it is over, and to the earth I render, It is the sixth Scene of the third Act; in the Which for pain and pleasure join'd to form me; heat of a Battle: (The scene changes to an open Space encircled with TALBOT, leaning on FASTOLF, and accompanied by TALBOT. Here, set me down beneath this tree, and you And of the mighty Talbot, whose renown Is knowledge that 't is Nothing, and contempt SCENE VII. Enter CHARLES, BURGUNDY, DUNOIS, DU CHATEL, and Soldiers. BURGUNDY. The trench is stormed. DUNOIS. Bravo! The fight is ours. CHARLES (observing TALBOT.) Ha! who is this that to the light of day Is bidding his constrained and sad farewell? (Soldiers from the Dauphin's suite step forward.) FASTOLF. Back! Keep away! Approach not the Departing, Him whom in life ye never wished too near. BURGUNDY. What do I see? Great Talbot in his blood! (He goes towards him. TALBOT gazes fixedly at him and dies.) FASTOLF. Off, Burgundy! With the aspect of a Traitor The "Power-words and Thunder-words," as the Germans call them, so frequent in the Robbers,* are altogether wanting here; that volcanic fury has assuaged itself; instead of smoke and red lava, we have sunshine and a verdant world. For still more striking examples of this benignant change, we might refer to many scenes, (too long for our present purposes) in Wallenstein, and indeed in all the Dramas which followed this, and most of all in Wilhelm Tell, which is the latest of them. The careful, and in general truly poetic structure of these works, considered as complete Poems, would exhibit it infinitely better; but for this object, larger limits than ours at present, and studious Readers as well as a Reviewer, were essential. In his smaller Poems, the like progress is visible. Schiller's works should all be dated, as we study them; but indeed the most, by internal evidence, date themselves.-Besides the Lied der Glocke, already mentioned, there are many lyrical pieces of high merit; particularly a whole series of Ballads, nearly every one of which is true and poetical. The Ritter Toggenberg, the Dragon-fight, the Diver, are all well known; the Cranes of Ibycus has in it, under this simple form, something Old-Grecian, an emphasis, a prophetic gloom, which might seem borrowed even from the spirit of Eschylus. But on these, or any farther on the other poetical works of Schiller, we must not dilate at present. One little piece, which lies by us translated, we may give as a specimen of his style in this lyrical province, and therewith terminate this part of our subject. It is entitled Alpenlied, (Song of the Alps,) and seems to require no commentary. Perhaps something of the clear, melodious, yet still somewhat metallic tone of the original may penetrate even through our version: That Bridge with its dizzying, perilous span By his hand that grim old arch was bended? The water is boiling and hissing-for ever will hiss. That Gate through the rocks is as darksome and drear, As if to the region of Shadows it carried: Yet enter! A sweet laughing landscape is here, Where the Spring with the Autumn is married. From the world with its sorrows and warfare and wail, O could I but hide in this bright little vale! Four Rivers rush down from on high, Their spring will be hidden for ever; Their course is to all the four points of the sky, And fast as they start from their old Mother's feet, Her head serene, and azure, and lone A diamond crown encloses ; Of Schiller's Philosophic talent, still more of the results he had arrived at in philosophy, there were much to be said and thought, which we must not enter upon here. As hinted above, his primary endowment seems to us fully as much philosophical as poetical; his intellect, at all events, is peculiarly of that character; strong, penetrating, yet systematic and scholastic, rather than intuitive; and manifesting this tendency both in the objects it treats, and in its mode of treating them. The transcendental Philosophy, which arose in Schiller's busiest era, could not remain without influence on him; he had carefully studied Kant's System, and appears to have not only admitted but zealously appropriated its fundamental doctrines; remoulding them, however, into his own peculiar forms, so that they seem no longer borrowed, but permanently acquired, not less Schiller's than Kant's. Some, perhaps, little aware of his natural wants and tendencies, are of opinion that these speculations did not profit him: Schiller himself, on the other hand, appears to have been well contented with his Philosophy; in which, as harmonized with his Poetry, the assurance and safe anchorage for his moral nature might lie. "From the opponents of the New Philosophy," says he, "I expect not that tolerance, better seen into than this: for Kant's Philowhich is shown to every other system, no sophy itself, in its leading points, practises no tolerance; and bears much too rigorous a character, to leave any room for accommodation. But in my eyes this does it honour; proving how little it can endure to have truth tampered with. Such a Philosophy will not be discussed with a mere shake of the head. In the open, clear, accessible field of Inquiry it builds up its system; seeks no shade, makes no reservation; but even as it treats its neighbours, so it requires to be treated; and may in the long run, all speculation turns, may in truth afford such a nature matter for poetic play, but can never become serious concerns and necessities for it.”—II. 131. This last seems a singular opinion; and may prove, if it be correct, that Schiller himself was no "healthy poetic nature;" for undoubt concerns and necessities;" as many portions of his works, and various entire treatises, will testify. Nevertheless, it plays an important part in his theories of Poetry; and often, under milder forms, returns on us there. be forgiven for lightly esteeming every thing but Proofs. Nor am I terrified to think that the law of Change, from which no human and no divine work finds grace, will operate on this Philosophy, as on every other, and one day its Form will be destroyed: but its Foundations will not have this destiny to fear; for ever since mankind has existed, and any Rea-edly with him those three points were "serious son among mankind, these same first principles have been admitted, and on the whole acted upon."-Correspondence with Goethe, I. 58. Schiller's philosophical performances relate chiefly to matters of Art; not, indeed, without significant glances into still more important regions of speculation: nay, Art, as he viewed it, has its basis on the most important interests of man, and of itself involves the harmonious adjustment of these. We have already undertaken to present our readers, on a future occasion, with some abstract of the Esthetic Letters, one of the deepest, most compact pieces of reasoning we are anywhere acquainted with by that opportunity, the general character of Schiller, as a Philosopher, will best fall to be discussed. Meanwhile, the two following brief passages, as some indication of his views on the highest of all philosophical questions, may stand here without commentary. He is speaking of Wilhelm Meister, and in the first extract, of the Fair Saint's Confessions, which occupy the Fifth Book of that work: "The transition from Religion in general to the Christian Religion, by the experience of sin, is excellently conceived. * * I find virtually in the Christian System the rudiments of the Highest and Noblest; and the different phases of this System, in practical life, are so offensive and mean, precisely because they are bungled representations of that same Highest. If you study the specific character of Christianity, what distinguishes it from all monotheistic Religion, it lies in nothing else than in that making dead of the Law, the removal of that Kantean Imperative, instead of which Christianity requires a free Inclination. It is thus, in its pure form, a representing of Moral Beauty, or the Incarnation of the Holy; and in this sense, the only aesthetic Religion: hence, too, I explain to myself why it so prospers with female natures, and only in women is now to be met with under a tolerable figure." -Correspondence, I. 195. "But in seriousness," he says elsewhere, "whence may it proceed that you have had a man educated, and in all points equipt, without ever coming upon certain wants which only Philosophy can meet? I am convinced, it is entirely attributable to the asthetic direction you have taken through the whole Romance. Within the æsthetic temper there arises no want of those grounds of comfort, which are to be drawn from speculation: such a temper has self-subsistence, has infinitude, within it self; only when the Sensual and the Moral in man strive hostilely together, need help be sought of pure Reason. A healthy poetic nature wants, as you yourself say, no Moral Law, no Rights of Man, no Political Metaphysics. You might have added as well, it wants no Deity, no Immortality, to stay and uphold tself withal. Those three points round which, But, without entering farther on those complex topics, we must here for the present take leave of Schiller. Of his merits we have all along spoken rather on the negative side; and we rejoice in feeling authorized to do so. That any German writer, especially one so dear to us, should already stand so high with British readers that, in admiring him, the critic may also, without prejudice to right feeling on the subject, coolly judge of him, cannot be other than a gratifying circumstance. Perhaps there is no other true Poet of that nation with whom the like course would be suitable. Connected with this there is one farther observation we must make before concluding. Among young students of German Literature, the question often arises, and is warmly mooted whether Schiller or Goethe is the greater Poet? Of this question we must be allowed to say that it seems rather a slender one, and for two reasons. First, because Schiller and Goethe are of totally dissimilar endowments and endeavours, in regard to all matters intellectual, and cannot well be compared together as Poets. Secondly, because if the question mean to ask, which Poet is on the whole the rarer and more excellent, as probably it does, it must be considered as long ago abundantly answered. To the clear-sighted and modest Schiller, above all, such a question would have appeared surprising. No one knew better than himself, that as Goethe was a born Poet, so he was in great part a made Poet; that as the one spirit was intuitive, allembracing, instinct with melody, so the other was scholastic, divisive, only partially and as it were artificially melodious. Besides, Goethe has lived to perfect his natural gift, which the less happy Schiller was not permitted to do. The former, accordingly, is the national Poet; the latter is not, and never could have been. We once heard a German remark that readers till their twenty-fifth year usually preferred Schiller; after their twenty-fifth year, Goethe. This probably was no unfair illustration of the question. Schiller can seem higher than Goethe only because he is narrower. Thus to unpractised eyes, a Peak of Teneriffe, nay, a Strasburg Minster, when we stand on it, may seem higher than a Chimborazo; because the former rise abruptly, without abutment or environment; the latter rises gradually, carrying half a world aloft with it; and only the deeper azure of the heavens, the widened horizon, the "eternal sunshine," disclose to the geographer that the "Region of Change" lies far below him. However, let us not divide these two Friends, who in life were so benignantly united. With |