the conqueror's attentions.

At other times his re

1

spect for the mighty of the earth was carried to great excess. When visited by the king of Bavaria, a man of character far from admirable, and whom Heinrich Heine lashed as with a whip of scorpions in one of the bitterest of satires, Göthe felt his head go round with giddiness. "It is no light matter," he said, "to work out the powerful impression produced by the king's presence, -to assimilate it internally. It is difficult to keep one's balance and not lose one's head." Of a letter from the same personage he said: "I thank Heaven for it, as for a quite special favor." These incidents cannot be considered exceptional; in many ways Göthe is simple and manly, but there is sometimes a singular apparent snobbishness. Matthew Arnold's defence of the poet is very amusing, but perhaps the best that can be made. "It is not snobbishness," he says, "but his German corporalism.' A disciplinable and much-disciplined people, with little humor, and without experience of a great national life, regards its official authorities in this devout and awe-struck way. To a German it seems profane and licentious to smile at his Dogberry. He takes him seriously and solemnly at his own valuation."

Can we say that Göthe was inspired with any great moral idea? In Luther's case the thought was to break the force of what he felt to be superstition, and he would have gone to the stake rather

1 Eckermann.

than yield one hair's breadth. With Lessing it was the ardent pursuit of truth, and his life was one long martyrdom in its behalf. With Schiller it was passionate love for freedom, felt from first to last. Göthe cared little for the French revolution, which all lovers of liberty believed at first was so full of promise for man. Strange as it seems to us, he sometimes uttered himself as if he believed in the fragmentary Germany of his time as the best thing possible. "What has made this country great," he said, "but the culture which is spread through it in such a marvellous manner, and pervades equally all parts of the realm? And this culture, does it not emanate from the numerous courts which grant it support and patronage? Suppose we had had in Germany for centuries but two capitals, Vienna and Berlin, or but one? I should like to know how it would have fared with German civilization, or even with that general wellbeing which goes hand in hand with civilization?" And yet what did he do to sustain this order in which he seems to have believed, when it was threatened? During the campaign of Valmy he was present with the army at the request of his sovereign, but he employed his time in far-away studies, without enthusiasm for the cause at stake. Shortly after Jena he received complacently the homage of Napoleon, and while the cannon of Leipsic were thundering, wrote an epilogue for an actress. No great moral ideas inspired him here, or at other times, or in other directions. Can we say it was part of his transcendency? He moved among mor

tals like one of the gods of the classic paganism he admired so much, noting the world's phenomena with a glance as keen as the very eagle of Jove. Like Jove himself, he found from time to time his Ios and Semeles, in whose arms he pleased himself with the thrills of an Olympian passion, and who often were so sadly consumed as he magnificently revealed himself. Of each throb that he felt it pleased him to make a record, as of all his sharp eyes beheld. But with it all there was a sort of supernal indifference to the world's ongoings, as if they were the concerns of a race with which he had little part; he might feel vivid curiosity, but need take no deep interest.

Can we feel such love and enthusiasm for him as for moral heroes like Luther, Lessing, and Schiller? I think not. He was a creature somewhat too supernal. Can we say that the fact that he was merely a wonderful witness, an eye to see, a tongue to report, not a soul thrilled with great ideas, and teaching them to the world, exalts him as a poet and artist? Yes. Such witnesses, at any rate, have been the singers whom the world places highest. Always hidden and unknown is the spirit of Shakespeare behind the magnificent tapestry which he holds extended, whereon are imprinted the perfect counterparts of men and women, as various, as individual, as many-colored. So too with Homer it is marvellous witnessing; so too with Göthe. He has been called an objective poet. The world impressed itself upon him with extraordinary power; these impressions he rendered again with power as

great. In particular is "Faust" a Shakespearian picture; the manly, the coarse, the satanic, the ineffably pure, set side by side, the soul of the poet meantime withdrawn behind the veil. If art is the reproduction of nature, Göthe was the peerless artist. The type to whom we now proceed was rather teacher and preacher. He was subjective, starting from ideas within himself, for which he was thrilled with the noblest enthusiasm, the representation of the universe remaining secondary. Let us place Schiller now side by side with Göthe in the contrast in which they themselves felt that they stood. In this way we can learn to know them both.

CHAPTER XIV.

SCHILLER.

The effects of the Thirty Years' War have not yet disappeared from Germany. One hundred years ago, during the boyhood of Friedrich Schiller, they were much more plain. The land had not recovered from the depopulation which it had undergone ; the destroyed cities had not been rebuilt; throughout the body politic a numbness, as it were, prevailed from the blows of the terrible scourge with which it had been beaten.

Schiller was born in 1759, at the village of Marbach in Wirtemberg, and the circumstances of his father's family and his own early life are all typical, reflecting the sadness of the time, which was to give way at length to something better. Poor Wirtemberg, depleted in every way by the Thirty Years' War, until no trace was left of the magnificent Swabia of the former time, which the Hohenstauffen had loved and ruled, had been given over to princes of ruthless selfishness. The father of Schiller was the dependent, almost the serf, of the reigning duke. He had been an officer of low grade, serving in the Netherlands and during the Seven Years' War. Schiller's mother was the daughter of a baker and innkeeper, and met her fate while Schiller's father