Biographical Essays

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"Quid poetea est a faire?
Saignare
Baignare
Ensuita purgare," &c.

Now is it reasonable to ascribe some share in the restoration of
good to Klopstock, both because his own writings exhibit nothing of
this most abject euphuism, (a euphuism expressing itself not in
fantastic refinements on the staple of the language, but altogether
in rejecting it for foreign words and idioms,) and because he wrote
expressly on the subject of style and composition?

Wieland, meantime, if not enjoying so intense an acceptation as
Klopstock, had a more extensive one; and it is in vain to deny him
the praise of a festive, brilliant, and most versatile wit. The
Schlegels showed the haughty malignity of their ungenerous natures,
in depreciating Wieland, at a time when old age had laid a freezing
hand upon the energy which he would once have put forth in
defending himself. He was the Voltaire of Germany, and very much
more than the Voltaire; for his romantic and legendary poems are
above the level of Voltaire. But, on the other hand, he was a
Voltaire in sensual impurity. To work, to carry on a plot, to
affect his readers by voluptuous impressions,--these were the
unworthy aims of Wieland; and though a good-natured critic would
not refuse to make some allowance for a youthful poet's aberrations
in this respect, yet the indulgence cannot extend itself to mature
years. An old man corrupting his readers, attempting to corrupt
them, or relying for his effect upon corruptions already effected,
in the purity of their affections, is a hideous object; and that
must be a precarious influence indeed which depends for its
durability upon the licentiousness of men. Wieland, therefore,
except in parts, will not last as a national idol; but such he was
nevertheless for a time.

Burger wrote too little of any expansive compass to give the
measure of his powers, or to found national impression;
Lichtenberg, though a very sagacious observer, never rose into what
can be called a power, he did not modify his age; yet these were
both men of extraordinary talent, and Burger a man of undoubted
genius. On the other hand, Lessing was merely a man of talent, but
of talent in the highest degree adapted to popularity. His very
defects, and the shallowness of his philosophy, promoted his
popularity; and by comparison with the French critics on the
dramatic or scenical proprieties he is ever profound. His plummet,
if not suited to the soundless depths of Shakspeare, was able ten
times over to fathom the little rivulets of Parisian philosophy.
This he did effectually, and thus unconsciously levelled the paths
for Shakspeare, and for that supreme dominion which he has since
held over the German stage, by crushing with his sarcastic
shrewdness the pretensions of all who stood in the way. At that
time, and even yet, the functions of a literary man were very
important in Germany; the popular mind and the popular instinct
pointed one way, those of the little courts another. Multitudes of
little German states (many of which were absorbed since 1816 by the
process of _mediatizing_) made it their ambition to play at
keeping mimic armies in their pay, and to ape the greater military
sovereigns, by encouraging French literature only, and the French
language at their courts. It was this latter propensity which had
generated the anomalous macaronic dialect, of which we have already
spoken as a characteristic circumstance in the social features of
literary Germany during the first half of the eighteenth century.
Nowhere else, within the records of human follies, do we find a
corresponding case, in which the government and the patrician
orders in the state, taking for granted, and absolutely postulating
the utter worthlessness for intellectual aims of those in and by
whom they maintained their own grandeur and independence,
undisguisedly and even professedly sought to ally themselves with a
foreign literature, foreign literati, and a foreign language. In
this unexampled display of scorn for native resources, and the
consequent collision between the two principles of action, all
depended upon the people themselves. For a time the wicked and most
profligate contempt of the local governments for that native merit
which it was their duty to evoke and to cherish, naturally enough
produced its own justification. Like Jews or slaves, whom all the
world have agreed to hold contemptible, the German literati found
it hard to make head against so obstinate a prejudgment; and too
often they became all that they were presumed to be. _Sint
Maecenates, non deerunt, Flacce, Marones._ And the converse too
often holds good--that when all who should have smiled scowl upon a
man, he turns out the abject thing they have predicted. Where
Frenchified Fredericks sit upon German thrones, it should not
surprise us to see a crop of Gottscheds arise as the best fruitage
of the land. But when there is any latent nobility in the popular
mind, such scorn, by its very extremity, will call forth its own
counteraction. It was perhaps good for Germany that a prince so
eminent in one aspect as _Fritz der einziger,_[Footnote: _"
Freddy the unique;"_ which is the name by which the Prussians
expressed their admiration of the martial and indomitable, though
somewhat fantastic, king.] should put on record so emphatically his
intense conviction, that no good thing could arise out of Germany.
This creed was expressed by the quality of the French minds which
he attracted to his court. The very refuse and dregs of the
Parisian coteries satisfied his hunger for French garbage; the very
offal of their shambles met the demand of his palate; even a
Maupertuis, so long as he could produce a French baptismal
certificate, was good enough to manufacture into the president of a
Berlin academy. Such scorn challenged a reaction: the contest lay
between the thrones of Germany and the popular intellect, and the
final result was inevitable. Once aware that they were insulted,
once enlightened to the full consciousness of the scorn which
trampled on them as intellectual and predestined Helots, even the
mild-tempered Germans became fierce, and now began to aspire, not
merely under the ordinary instincts of personal ambition, but with
a vindictive feeling, and as conscious agents of retribution. It
became a pleasure with the German author, that the very same works
which elevated himself, wreaked his nation upon their princes, and
poured retorted scorn upon their most ungenerous and unparental
sovereigns. Already, in the reign of the martial Frederick, the men
who put most weight of authority into his contempt of Germans,
--Euler, the matchless Euler, Lambert, and Immanuel Kant,--had
vindicated the preeminence of German mathematics. Already, in 1755,
had the same Immanuel Kant, whilst yet a probationer for the chair
of logic in a Prussian university, sketched the outline of that
philosophy which has secured the admiration, though not the assent
of all men known and proved to have understood it, of all men able
to state its doctrines in terms admissible by its disciples.
Already, and even previously, had Haller, who wrote in German,
placed himself at the head of the current physiology. And in the
fields of science or of philosophy, the victory was already decided
for the German intellect in competition with the French.

But the fields of literature were still comparatively barren.
Klopstock was at least an anomaly; Lessing did not present himself
in the impassioned walks of literature; Herder was viewed too much
in the exclusive and professional light of a clergyman; and, with
the exception of John Paul Bichter, a man of most original genius,
but quite unfitted for general popularity, no commanding mind arose
in Germany with powers for levying homage from foreign nations,
until the appearance, as a great scenical poet, of Frederick
Schiller.

The father of this great poet was Caspar Schiller, an officer in
the military service of the Duke of Wurtemberg. He had previously
served as a surgeon in the Bavarian army; but on his final return
to his native country of Wurtemberg, and to the service of his
native prince, he laid aside his medical character for ever, and
obtained a commission as ensign and adjutant. In 1763, the peace of
Paris threw him out of his military employment, with the nominal
rank of captain. But, having conciliated the duke's favor, he was
still borne on the books of the ducal establishment; and, as a
planner of ornamental gardens, or in some other civil capacity, he
continued to serve his serene highness for the rest of his life.

The parents of Schiller were both pious, upright persons, with that
loyal fidelity to duty, and that humble simplicity of demeanor
towards their superiors, which is so often found among the
unpretending natives of Germany. It is probable, however, that
Schiller owed to his mother exclusively the preternatural
endowments of his intellect. She was of humble origin, the daughter
of a baker, and not so fortunate as to have received much
education. But she was apparently rich in gifts of the heart and
the understanding. She read poetry with delight; and through the
profound filial love with which she had inspired her son, she found
it easy to communicate her own literary tastes. Her husband was not
illiterate, and had in mature life so laudably applied himself to
the improvement of his own defective knowledge, that at length he
thought himself capable of appearing before the public as an
author. His book related simply to the subjects of his professional
experience as a horticulturist, and was entitled _Die Baumzurht
im Grossen_(On the Management of Forests.) Some merit we must
suppose it to have had, since the public called for a second
edition of it long after his own death, and even after that of his
illustrious son. And although he was a plain man, of no
pretensions, and possibly even of slow faculties, he has left
behind him a prayer, in which there is one petition of sublime and
pathetic piety, worthy to be remembered by the side of Agar's wise
prayer against the almost equal temptations of poverty and riches.
At the birth of his son, he had been reflecting with sorrowful
anxiety, not unmingled with self-reproach, on his own many
disqualifications for conducting the education of the child.

But at length, reading in his own manifold imperfections but so
many reiterations of the necessity that he should rely upon God's
bounty, converting his very defects into so many arguments of hope
and confidence in heaven, he prayed thus: "Oh God, that knowest my
poverty in good gifts for my son's inheritance, graciously permit
that, even as the want of bread became to thy Son's hunger-stricken
flock in the wilderness the pledge of overflowing abundance, so
likewise my darkness may, in its sad extremity, carry with it the
measure of thy unfathomable light; and because I, thy worm, cannot
give to my son the least of blessings, do thou give the greatest;
because in my hands there is not any thing, do thou from thine pour
out all things; and that temple of a new-born spirit, which I
cannot adorn even with earthly ornaments of dust and ashes, do thou
irradiate with the celestial adornment of thy presence, and finally
with that peace that passeth all understanding." Reared at the feet
of parents so pious and affectionate, Schiller would doubtless pass
a happy childhood; and probably to this utter tranquillity of his
earlier years, to his seclusion from all that could create pain, or
even anxiety, we must ascribe the unusual dearth of anecdotes from
this period of his life; a dearth which has tempted some of his
biographers into improving and embellishing some puerile stories,
which a man of sense will inevitably reject as too trivial for his
gravity or too fantastical for his faith. That nation is happy,
according to a common adage, which furnishes little business to the
historian; for such a vacuity in facts argues a condition of
perfect peace and silent prosperity. That childhood is happy, or
may generally be presumed such, which has furnished few records of
external experience, little that has appeared in doing or in
suffering to the eyes of companions; for the child who has been
made happy by early thoughtfulness, and by infantine struggles with
the great ideas of his origin and his destination, (ideas which
settle with a deep, dove-like brooding upon the mind of childhood,
more than of mature life, vexed with inroads from the noisy world,)
will not manifest the workings of his spirit by much of external
activity. The _fallentis semita vitae_, that path of noiseless
life, which eludes and deceives the conscious notice both of its
subject and of all around him, opens equally to the man and to the
child; and the happiest of all childhoods will have been that of
which the happiness has survived and expressed itself, not in
distinct records, but in deep affection, in abiding love, and the
hauntings of meditative power.

Such a childhood, in the bosom of maternal tenderness, was probably
passed by Schiller; and his first awaking to the world of strife
and perplexity happened in his fourteenth year. Up to that period
his life had been vagrant, agreeably to the shifting necessities of
the ducal service, and his education desultory and domestic. But in
the year 1773 he was solemnly entered as a member of a new
academical institution, founded by the reigning duke, and recently
translated to his little capital of Stuttgard. This change took
place at the special request of the duke, who, under the mask of
patronage, took upon himself the severe control of the whole simple
family. The parents were probably both too humble and dutiful in
spirit towards one whom they regarded in the double light of
sovereign lord and of personal benefactor, ever to murmur at the
ducal behests, far less to resist them. The duke was for them an
earthly providence; and they resigned themselves, together with
their child, to the disposal of him who dispensed their earthly
blessings, not less meekly than of Him whose vicegerent they
presumed him to be. In such a frame of mind, requests are but
another name for commands; and thus it happened that a second
change arose upon the first, even more determinately fatal to the
young Schiller's happiness. Hitherto he had cherished a day-dream
pointing to the pastoral office in some rural district, as that
which would harmonize best with his intellectual purposes, with his
love of quiet, and by means of its preparatory requirements, best
also with his own peculiar choice of studies. But this scheme he
now found himself compelled to sacrifice; and the two evils which
fell upon him concurrently in his new situation were, first, the
formal military discipline and monotonous routine of duty;
secondly, the uncongenial direction of the studies, which were
shaped entirely to the attainment of legal knowledge, and the
narrow service of the local tribunals. So illiberal and so
exclusive a system of education was revolting to the expansive mind
of Schiller; and the military bondage under which this system was
enforced, shocked the aspiring nobility of his moral nature, not
less than the technical narrowness of the studies shocked his
understanding. In point of expense the whole establishment cost
nothing at all to those parents who were privileged servants of the
duke: in this number were the parents of Schiller, and that single
consideration weighed too powerfully upon his filial piety to allow
of his openly murmuring at his lot; while on _their_ part the
parents were equally shy of encouraging a disgust which too
obviously tended to defeat the promises of ducal favor. This system
of monotonous confinement was therefore carried to its completion,
and the murmurs of the young Schiller were either dutifully
suppressed, or found vent only in secret letters to a friend. In
one point only Schiller was able to improve his condition; jointly
with the juristic department, was another for training young
aspirants to the medical profession. To this, as promising a more
enlarged scheme of study, Schiller by permission transferred
himself in 1775. But whatever relief he might find in the nature of
his new studies, he found none at all in the system of personal
discipline which prevailed.

Under the oppression of this detested system, and by pure reaction
against its wearing persecutions, we learn from Schiller himself,
that in his nineteenth year he undertook the earliest of his
surviving plays, the Robbers, beyond doubt the most tempestuous,
the most volcanic, we might say, of all juvenile creations anywhere
recorded. He himself calls it "a monster," and a monster it is; but
a monster which has never failed to convulse the heart of young
readers with the temperament of intellectual enthusiasm and
sensibility. True it is, and nobody was more aware of that fact
than Schiller himself in after years, the characters of the three
Moors, father and sons, are mere impossibilities; and some readers,
in whom the judicious acquaintance with human life in its realities
has outrun the sensibilities, are so much shocked by these
hypernatural phenomena, that they are incapable of enjoying the
terrific sublimities which on that basis of the visionary do really
exist. A poet, perhaps Schiller might have alleged, is entitled to
assume hypothetically so much in the previous positions or
circumstances of his agents as is requisite to the basis from which
he starts. It is undeniable that Shakspeare and others have availed
themselves of this principle, and with memorable success.
Shakspeare, for instance, _postulates_ his witches, his
Caliban, his Ariel: grant, he virtually says, such modes of
spiritual existence or of spiritual relations as a possibility; do
not expect me to demonstrate this, and upon that single concession
I will rear a superstructure that shall be self-consistent; every
thing shall be _internally_ coherent and reconciled, whatever
be its _external_ relations as to our human experience. But
this species of assumption, on the largest scale, is more within
the limits of credibility and plausible verisimilitude when applied
to modes of existence, which, after all, are in such total darkness
to us, (the limits of the possible being so undefined and shadowy
as to what can or cannot exist,) than the very slightest liberties
taken with human character, or with those principles of action,
motives, and feelings, upon which men would move under given
circumstances, or with the modes of action which in common prudence
they would be likely to adopt. The truth is, that, as a coherent
work of art, the Robbers is indefensible; but, however monstrous it
may be pronounced, it possesses a power to agitate and convulse,
which will always obliterate its great faults to the young, and to
all whose judgment is not too much developed. And the best apology
for Schiller is found in his own words, in recording the
circumstances and causes under which this anomalous production
arose. "To escape," says he, "from the formalities of a discipline
which was odious to my heart, I sought a retreat in the world of
ideas and shadowy possibilities, while as yet I knew nothing at all
of that human world from which I was harshly secluded by iron bars.
Of men, the actual men in this world below, I knew absolutely
nothing at the time when I composed my Robbers. Four hundred human
beings, it is true, were my fellow-prisoners in this abode; but
they were mere tautologies and reiterations of the self-same
mechanic creature, and like so many plaster casts from the same
original statue. Thus situated, of necessity I failed. In making
the attempt, my chisel brought out a monster, of which [and that
was fortunate] the world had no type or resemblance to show."

Meantime this demoniac drama produced very opposite results to
Schiller's reputation. Among the young men of Germany it was
received with an enthusiasm absolutely unparalleled, though it is
perfectly untrue that it excited some persons of rank and splendid
expectations (as a current fable asserted) to imitate Charles Moor
in becoming robbers. On the other hand, the play was of too
powerful a cast not in any case to have alarmed his serenity the
Duke of Wurtemberg; for it argued a most revolutionary mind, and
the utmost audacity of self-will. But besides this general ground
of censure, there arose a special one, in a quarter so remote, that
this one fact may serve to evidence the extent as well as intensity
of the impression made. The territory of the Grisons had been
called by Spiegelberg, one of the robbers, "the Thief's Athens."
Upon this the magistrates of that country presented a complaint to
the duke; and his highness having cited Schiller to his presence,
and severely reprimanded him, issued a decree that this dangerous
young student should henceforth confine himself to his medical
studies.

The persecution which followed exhibits such extraordinary
exertions of despotism, even for that land of irresponsible power,
that we must presume the duke to have relied more upon the hold
which he had upon Schiller through his affection for parents so
absolutely dependent on his highness's power, than upon any laws,
good or bad, which he could have pleaded as his warrant. Germany,
however, thought otherwise of the new tragedy than the serene
critic of Wurtemburg: it was performed with vast applause at the
neighboring city of Mannheim; and thither, under a most excusable
interest in his own play, the young poet clandestinely went. On his
return he was placed under arrest. And soon afterwards, being now
thoroughly disgusted, and, with some reason, alarmed by the tyranny
of the duke, Schiller finally eloped to Mannheim, availing himself
of the confusion created in Stuttgard by the visit of a foreign
prince.

At Mannheim he lived in the house of Dalberg, a man of some rank
and of sounding titles, but in Mannheim known chiefly as the
literary manager (or what is called director) of the theatre. This
connection aided in determining the subsequent direction of
Schiller's talents; and his Fiesco, his Intrigue and Love, his Don
Carlos, and his Maria Stuart, followed within a short period of
years. None of these are so far free from the faults of the Robbers
as to merit a separate notice; for with less power, they are almost
equally licentious.

Finally, however, he brought out his Wallenstein, an immortal
drama, and, beyond all competition, the nearest in point of
excellence to the dramas of Shakspeare. The position of the
characters of Max Piccolomini and the Princess Thekla is the finest
instance of what, in a critical sense, is called _relief,_
that literature offers. Young, innocent, unfortunate, among a camp
of ambitious, guilty, and blood-stained men, they offer a depth and
solemnity of impression which is equally required by way of
contrast and of final repose.

From Mannheim, where he had a transient love affair with Laura
Dalberg, the daughter of his friend the director, Schiller removed
to Jena, the celebrated university in the territory of Weimar. The
grand duke of that German Florence was at this time gathering
around him the most eminent of the German intellects; and he was
eager to enroll Schiller in the body of his professors. In 1799
Schiller received the chair of civil history; and not long after he
married Miss Lengefeld, with whom he had been for some time
acquainted. In 1803 he was ennobled; that is, he was raised to the
rank of gentleman, and entitled to attach the prefix of _Von_
to his name. His income was now sufficient for domestic comfort and
respectable independence; while in the society of Goethe, Herder,
and other eminent wits, he found even more relaxation for his
intellect, than his intellect, so fervent and so self-sustained,
could require.

Meantime the health of Schiller was gradually undermined: his lungs
had been long subject to attacks of disease; and the warning
indications which constantly arose of some deep-seated organic
injuries in his pulmonary system ought to have put him on his guard
for some years before his death. Of all men, however, it is
remarkable that Schiller was the most criminally negligent of his
health; remarkable, we say, because for a period of four years
Schiller had applied himself seriously to the study of medicine.
The strong coffee, and the wine, which he drank, may not have been
so injurious as his biographers suppose; but his habit of sitting
up through the night, and defrauding his wasted frame of all
natural and restorative sleep, had something in it of that guilt
which belongs to suicide. On the 9th of May, 1805, his complaint
reached its crisis. Early in the morning he became delirious; at
noon his delirium abated; and at four in the afternoon he fell into
a gentle unagitated sleep, from which he soon awoke. Conscious that
he now stood on the very edge of the grave, he calmly and fervently
took a last farewell of his friends. At six in the evening he fell
again into sleep, from which, however, he again awoke once more to
utter the memorable declaration, "that many things were growing
plain and clear to his understanding." After this the cloud of
sleep again settled upon him; a sleep which soon changed into the
cloud of death.

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