The World's Greatest Books - Volume 9 Part 10

The pet.i.tion being settled, Parliament is prorogued till January, 1658; when there will be a House of Lords (not the old Peers!), and the excluded members will be admitted. May there not then be new troubles?

The Spanish Charles Stuart invasion plot is indeed afoot, and that union abroad of the Protestant powers for which we crave is by no means accomplished. Therefore, says the Protector, you must be ready to fight on land as well as by sea. No time this for disunion, trumpery quarrels over points of form. Yet such debate has begun and continues.

After this dissolution speech, and a letter as to Vaudois persecution, there are no more letters or speeches. On September 3, 1658, for him "the ugly evil is all over, and thy part in it manfully done--manfully and fruitfully, to all eternity." Oliver is gone, and with him England's Puritanism.

The Life of Friedrich Schiller

Carlyle was under thirty years of age, and was occupied as a private tutor, when he wrote the "Life of Friedrich Schiller; comprehending an examination of his works," which had been commissioned by the "London Magazine." It was his first essay in the study of German literature, which he did so much to popularise in Britain. It appeared in book form in 1825, and a second edition was published in 1845 in order to prevent piratical reprints. In his introduction to the second edition, Carlyle pleads for the indulgence of the reader, asking him to remember constantly that "it was written twenty years ago." It has indeed been superseded by more temperate studies of Schiller, but its tone of enthusiasm gives it a great value of its own.

_Schiller's Youth_ (1759-1784)

Distinguished alike for the splendour of his intellectual faculties, and the elevation of his tastes and feelings, Friedrich Schiller has left behind him in his works a n.o.ble emblem of these great qualities. Much of his life was deformed by inquietude and disease, and it terminated at middle age; he composed in a language then scarcely settled into form; yet his writings are remarkable for their extent, their variety, and their intrinsic excellence, and his own countrymen are not his only, or, perhaps, his princ.i.p.al admirers.

Born on November 10, 1759, a few months later than Robert Burns, he was a native of Marbach in Wurtemberg. His father had been a surgeon in the army, and was now in the pay of the Duke of Wurtemberg; and the benevolence, integrity and devoutness of his parents were expanded and beautified in the character of their son. His education was irregular; desiring at first to enter the clerical profession, he was put to the study of law and then of medicine; but he wrenched asunder his fetters with a force that was felt at the extremities of Europe. In his nineteenth year he began the tragedy of the "Robbers," and its publication forms an era in the literature of the world.

It is a work of tragic interest, bordering upon horror. A grim, inexpiable Fate is made the ruling principle; it envelops and overshadows the whole; and under its souring influence, the fiercest efforts of human will appear but like flashes that illuminate the wild scene with a brief and terrible splendour, and are lost forever in the darkness. The unsearchable abysses of man's destiny are laid open before us, black and profound, and appalling, as they seem to the young mind when it first attempts to explore them.

Schiller had meanwhile become a surgeon in the Wurtemberg army; and the Duke, scandalised at the moral errors of the "Robbers," and not less at its want of literary merit, forbade him to write more poetry. Dalberg, superintendent of the Manheim theatre, put the play on the stage in 1781, and in October, 1782, Schiller decided his destiny by escaping secretly from Stuttgart beyond the frontier. A generous lady, Madam von Wollzogen, invited him to her estate of Bauerbach, near Meiningen.

Here he resumed his poetical employments, and published, within a year, the tragedies "Verschworung des Fiesco" and "Kabale und Liebe." This "Conspiracy of Fiesco," the story of the political and personal relations of the Genoese n.o.bility, has the charm of a kind of colossal magnitude. The chief incidents have a dazzling magnificence; the chief characters, an aspect of majesty and force. The other play, "Court-intriguing and Love," is a tragedy of domestic life; it shows the conflict of cold worldly wisdom with the pure impa.s.sioned movements of the young heart. Now, in September, 1783, Schiller went to Manheim as poet to the theatre, a post of respectability and reasonable profit.

Here he undertook his "Thalia," a periodical work devoted to poetry and the drama, in 1784. Naturalised by law in his new country, surrounded by friends that honoured him, he was now exclusively a man of letters for the rest of his days.

_From His Settlement at Manheim to His Settlement at Jena_ (1783-1790)

Schiller had his share of trials to encounter, but he was devoted with unchanging ardour to the cause he had embarked in. Few men have been more resolutely diligent than he, and he was warmly seconded by the taste of the public. For the Germans consider the stage as an organ for refining the hearts and minds of men, and the theatre of Manheim was one of the best in Germany.

Besides composing dramatic pieces and training players, Schiller wrote poems, the products of a mind brooding over dark and mysterious things, and his "Philosophic Letters" unfold to us many a gloomy conflict of the soul, surveying the dark mora.s.s of infidelity yet showing no causeway through it. The first acts of "Don Carlos," printed in "Thalia," had attracted the attention of the Duke of Sachsen-Weimar, who conferred on their author the t.i.tle of Counsellor. Schiller was loved and admired in Manheim, yet he longed for a wider sphere of action, and he determined to take up his residence at Leipzig.

Here he arrived in March, 1785, and at once made innumerable acquaintances, but went to Dresden in the end of the summer, and here "Don Carlos" was completed. This, the story of a royal youth condemned to death by his father, is the first of Schiller's plays to bear the stamp of maturity. The Spanish court in the sixteenth century; its rigid, cold formalities; its cruel, bigoted, but proud-spirited grandees; its inquisitors and priests; and Philip, its head, the epitome at once of its good and bad qualities, are exhibited with wonderful distinctness and address. Herr Schiller's genius does not thrill, but exalts us; it is impetuous, exuberant, majestic. The tragedy was, received with immediate and universal approbation.

He now contemplated no further undertaking connected with the stage, but his mind was overflowing with the elements of poetry, and with these smaller pieces he occupied himself at intervals through the remainder of his life. "The Walk," the "Song of the Bell," contain exquisite delineations of the fortunes of man; the "Cranes of Ibycus," and "Hero and Leander," are among the most moving ballads in any language.

Schiller never wrote or thought with greater diligence than while at Dresden. A novel, "The Ghostseer," was a great popular success, but Schiller had begun to think of history. Very few of his projects in this direction reached even partial execution; portions of a "History of the Most Remarkable Conspiracies and Revolutions in the Middle and Later Ages," and of a "History of the Revolt of the Netherlands," were published.

A visit to Weimar, the Athens of Germany, was accomplished in 1787; to Goethe he was not introduced, but was welcomed by Wieland and Herder.

Thence he went to see his early patroness at Bauerbach, and on this journey, at Rudolstadt, he met the Fraulein Lengefeld, whose attractions made him loath to leave and eager to return. The visit was repeated next year, and this lady honoured him with a return of love. At this time, too, he first met the ill.u.s.trious Goethe, whom we may contrast with Schiller as we should contrast Shakespeare with Milton. Goethe was now in his thirty-ninth year, Schiller ten years younger, and each affected the other with feelings of estrangement, almost of repugnance.

Ultimately they liked each other better, and became friends; there are few things on which Goethe should look back with greater pleasure than on his treatment of Schiller.

The "Revolt of the Netherlands," of which the first volume appeared in 1788, is accurate, vivid and coherent, and unites beauty to a calm force. It happened that the professorship at the University of Jena was about to be vacant, and through Goethe's solicitations Schiller was appointed to it in 1789. In the February following he obtained the hand of Fraulein Lengefeld. "Life is quite a different thing by the side of a beloved wife," he wrote a few months later; "the world again clothes itself around me in poetic forms."

_From His Settlement at Jena to His Death_ (1790-1805)

The duties of his new office called upon Schiller to devote himself with double zeal to history. We have scarcely any notice of the plan or success of his academical prelections; his delivery was not distinguished by fluency or grace, but his matter, we suppose, would make amends for these deficiencies of manner. His letters breathe a spirit not only of diligence but of ardour, and he was now busied with his "History of the Thirty-Years War." This work, published in 1791, is considered his chief historical treatise, for the "Revolt of the Netherlands" was never completed. In Schiller's view, the business of the historian is not merely to record, but also to interpret; his narrative should be moulded according to the science, and impregnated with the liberal spirit of his time.

In one of his letters he says--"The problem is, to choose and arrange your materials so that, to interest, they shall not need the aid of decoration. We moderns have a source of interest at our disposal, which no Greek or Roman was acquainted with, and which the _patriotic_ interest does not nearly equal. This last, in general, is chiefly of importance to unripe nations, for the youth of the world. But we may excite a very different sort of interest if we represent each remarkable occurrence that happened to _men_ as of importance to _man_. It is a poor and little aim to write for one nation; the most powerful nation is but a fragment."

In 1791, Schiller was overtaken by a violent and threatening disorder in the chest, and though nature overcame it in the present instance, the blessing of entire health never returned to him. Total cessation from intellectual effort was prescribed to him, and his prospect was a hard one; but the hereditary Prince of Holstein-Augustenberg came to his a.s.sistance with a pension of a thousand crowns for three years, presented with a delicate politeness which touched Schiller even more than the gift itself. He bore bodily pain with a strenuous determination and with an unabated zeal in the great business of his life. No period of his life displayed more heroism than the present one.

He now released his connection with the University; his weightiest duties were discharged by proxy; and his historical studies were forsaken. His mind was being attracted by the philosophy of Kant. This transcendental system had filled Germany with violent contentions; Herder and Wieland were opposing it vehemently; Goethe alone retained his wonted composure, willing to allow this theory to "have its day, as all things have." How far Schiller penetrated its arena we cannot say, but he wrote several essays, imbued in its spirit, upon aesthetic subjects; notably, "Grace and Dignity," "Naive and Sentimental Poetry,"

and "Letters on the Aesthetic Culture of Man."

The project of an epic poem brought Schiller back to his art; he first thought of Gustavus Adolphus, then of Frederick the Great of Prussia, for his hero, and intended to adopt the _ottave rime_, and in general construction to follow the model of the "Iliad." He did not even begin to execute this work, but devoted himself instead to the tragedy of "Wallenstein," which occupied him for several years. Among other engagements were, the editing of the "Thalia," which was relinquished at the end of 1793; a new periodical, the "h.o.r.en," which began early in 1794; and another, the "Musen-Almanach," in which the collection of epigrams known as the "Xenien" appeared. In these new publications Schiller was supported by the co-operation of Goethe.

"Wallenstein." by far the best work he had yet produced, was given to the world in 1799. Wallenstein is the model of a high-souled, great, accomplished man, whose ruling pa.s.sion is ambition. A shade of horror, of fateful dreariness, hangs over the hero's death, and except in Macbeth or Oth.e.l.lo we know not where to match it. This tragedy is the greatest work of its century.

Schiller now spent his winters in Weimar, and at last lived there constantly, often staying for months with Goethe. The tragedy of "Maria Stuart," which appeared in 1800, is a beautiful work, but compared with "Wallenstein" its purpose is narrow and its result common. It has no true historical delineation. The "Maid of Orleans," 1801, a tragedy on the subject of Jeanne d'Arc, will remain one of the very finest of modern dramas, and its reception was beyond example flattering. It was followed, in 1803, by the "Bride of Messina," a tragedy which fails to attain its object; there is too little action in the play and the interest flags. But "Wilhelm Tell," 1804, exhibits some of the highest triumphs which Schiller's genius, combined with his art, ever realised.

In Tell are combined all the attributes of a great man, without the help of education or of great occasions to develop them. The play has a look of nature and substantial truth, which neither of its rivals can boast of. Its characters are a race of manly husbandmen, heroic without ceasing to be homely, poetical without ceasing to be genuine.

This was Schiller's last work. The spring of 1805 came in cold, bleak and stormy, and along with it the malady returned. On May 9 the end came. Schiller died at the age of forty-five years and a few months, leaving a widow, two sons and two daughters. The news of his death fell cold on many a heart throughout Europe.

_Schiller's Character_

Physically, Schiller was tall and strongly boned, but unmuscular and lean; his body wasted under the energy of a spirit too keen for it. His face was pale, the cheeks and temples hollow, the chin projecting, the nose aquiline, his hair inclined to auburn. Withal his countenance was attractive, and had a certain manly beauty. To judge from his portraits, his face expressed the features of his mind: it is mildness tempering strength; fiery ardour shining through clouds of suffering and disappointment; it is at once meek, tender, unpretending and heroic.

In his dress and manner, as in all things, he was plain and unaffected.

Among strangers, shy and retiring; in his own family, or among his friends, he was kind-hearted, free and gay as a little child. His looks as he walked were constantly bent on the ground, so that he often failed to notice a pa.s.sing acquaintance.

Schiller's mind was grand by nature, and cultivated by the a.s.siduous study of a life-time. It is not the predominating force of any one faculty that impresses us, but the general force of all. His intellect seems powerful and vast, rather than quick or keen; for he is not notable for wit, though his fancy is ever prompt with his metaphors, ill.u.s.trations and comparisons. Perhaps his greatest faculty was a half poetical, half philosophical imagination, a faculty teeming with magnificence and brilliancy; now adorning a stately pyramid of scientific speculation; now brooding over the abysses of thought and feeling, till thoughts and feelings, else unutterable, were embodied in expressive forms.

Combined with these intellectual faculties was that vehemence of temperament which is necessary for their full development. Schiller's heart was at once fiery and tender; impetuous, soft, affectionate, his enthusiasm clothed the universe with grandeur, and sent his spirit forth to explore its secrets and mingle warmly in its interests. Thus poetry in Schiller was not one but many gifts. It was, what true poetry is always, the quintessence of general mental riches, the purified result of strong thought and conception, and of refined as well as powerful emotion.

His works exhibit rather extraordinary strength than extraordinary fineness or versatility. His power of dramatic imitation is perhaps never of the highest; and in its best state, it is further limited to a certain range of characters. It is with the grave, the earnest, the exalted, the affectionate, the mournful that he succeeds; he is not dest.i.tute of humour, but neither is he rich in it.

The sentiments which animated Schiller's poetry were converted into principles of conduct; his actions were as blameless as his writings were pure. He was unsullied by meanness, unsubdued by the difficulties or allurements of life. With the world, in fact, he had not much to do; without effort, he dwelt apart from it; its prizes were not the wealth which could enrich him. Wishing not to seem, but to be, envy was a feeling of which he knew little, even before he rose above its level. To all men he was humane and sympathising; among his friends, open-hearted, generous, helpful; in his family tender, kind, sportive. Schiller gives a fine example of the German character; he has all its good qualities.

The kingdoms which Schiller conquered were not for one nation at the expense of suffering to another; they are kingdoms conquered from the barren realms of Darkness, to increase the happiness, and dignity, and power, of all men; new forms of Truth, new maxims of Wisdom, new images and scenes of Beauty, won from the "void and formless Infinite"; a "possession for ever," to all the generations of the earth.

BENVENUTO CELLINI

Autobiography