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

was stationed as a recruiting officer in her native village. The couple draw from us most cordial respect, as they proceed onward through the hardships of a lowly station. Besides Friedrich, their family consisted of three daughters; the parents lived on into old age, and were permitted at last to breathe the fragrance of the wreaths heaped by enthusiastic Europe about the feet of their gifted

son.

The father is prudent and devout, yet marked with a certain sternness, the echo in the home of the harshness in the world without. When the wars were done he was established as a forester at the duke's country-seat, gaining reputation gradually for skill in wood-craft; and it is a pleasant thing to read how, in his old age, the famous son takes his father's notes on tree-culture, finds a publisher for them, and introduces the veteran to the world under the prestige of his own name. The mother is in character all that is lovely, and full of poetic sensibility. As the boy Schiller comes forward, he is destined to be a minister, but when fourteen the duke offers him a place in a school which he has established to train youths for the public service. It shows the subjection of the people that the parents do not dare to refuse the offer, although they would have gladly done so, and the prospect was utterly repulsive to the boy himself. It seems to have been an irksome restraint into which he was put, through which five or six years later his impetuous spirit was forced to burst a way to emancipation.

The destination marked out for him now was that of army surgeon, and here is his portrait as a friend

of his drew it when at length he was qualified: "Crushed into the stiff, tasteless old Prussian uniform; on each of his temples three stiff rolls, as if done with gypsum; the tiny, cocked hat scarcely covering his crown; so much thicker the long pigtail, with the slender neck crammed into a very narrow horse-hair stock; the feet put under the white spatterdashes, smirched by traces of shoe-blacking, giving to the legs a bigger diameter than the thighs, squeezed into their tight-fitting breeches, could boast of. Hardly or not at all able to bend his knees, the whole man moved like a stork." Not more irksome upon the spirited boy of twenty-one was this absurd dress than the training which he had received was upon his soul. What wonder, then, that when that soul now uttered itself, it should have been such an outbreak of flame as when a conflagration makes a way for itself to the air! Such an outburst is "The Robbers." It was full of wild extravagance, but at the same time of splendor and truth. It was received in Germany enthusiastically, and the high-cravated youth who moved like a stork was at once a famous man. He fled from Stuttgart, liable to arrest, for he had been, as it were, sold into the service of the duke. At Mannheim, at a distance of 120 miles, he became poet of the theatre, but his position was not yet secure. While here he wrote two other plays, "Fiesco,' and Kabale und Liebe." The young man of twenty-three worked, let us hope, dressed now in

1 Scharffenstein.

somewhat looser fashion, but in a dreary room in an outlying village, the November rain beating in through the paper that did duty for glass in the window, pinched with poverty, and in dread of being borne back to bondage. The new plays deepened the impression which "The Robbers" had produced. Fame, which had come with such promptness, was now followed by fortune, which had been tardier. The enlightened duke of Saxe Weimar, Karl August, honored him with a title; still other potentates with a pension. Danger of pursuit ceased. He moved with freedom from Mannheim to Leipsig, from Leipsig to Dresden, thence to Jena, thence to Weimar, where at length the end was to come. The stream that had at first been turbid and destructive, as it tore in "The Robbers," through the barriers, rapidly ran itself clear, flowing at length pure, deep, and quiet, but with no less force and majesty than at first. Schiller gives himself for a time to other studies. He writes his historical works, and touches metaphysics in a reading of Kant. He is now known and honored by the noblest of the land. He comes to Jena as professor of history, and very notably lives henceforth in close intimacy with Göthe, a friendship most honorable to both, rich in its effects upon the genius of both, going forward without break, without jealousy on either side, until severed by death.

Schiller's life was one of tireless industry. While at work upon dramas and prose writings he found time for his superb lyrics. At length, after ten years' interruption, he returns again to the kind of

composition for which he feels he is best fitted,— the drama. Now it is that, at forty years of age, when his power is at the highest, all his natural force unabated, but calmed and trained by experience of life and study, he opens his second dramatic period with "Wallenstein." Sickness has overtaken him; he has burned his candle at both ends, studying through the night, and busy through the day with some form of labor. He has married Charlotte von Lengenfeld, and has a happy home. Without respite come "Marie Stuart," the "Maid of Orleans," theBride of Messina," and, at length, his most popular work, "Wilhelm Tell." Perhaps we may say that never has there been in an author's life a more symmetrical climax. From "The Robbers,' his first piece, to "Wilhelm Tell," his last, it is an almost constantly ascending stair, each footing in a region more bright and pure than that below, without a downward turn. Happy the poet who can forever soar as he sings, nor feel that the pinion cripples or the sunward-gazing eye grows dim!

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He was but forty-five, but the end had come. May, 1805," says the journal of an eye-witness, "Schiller, on awakening from sleep, asked to see his youngest child. The baby, Emilie, was brought. He turned his head around, took the little hand in his, and, with an inexpressible look of love and sorrow, gazed into the little face, then burst into bitter weeping, hid his face in the pillows, and made a sign to take the child away. Toward evening he asked to see the sun once more. The curtain was opened; with bright eyes and face he gazed into the beautiful