being is originally different from mine, his world is not my world, our conceptions are radically different. Time will show.' Could he have looked into Goethe's soul he would have seen there was a wider gulf between them than he imagined. In scarcely any other instance was so great a friendship ever formed between men who at first seemed so opposed to each other. At this moment Goethe was peculiarly ill-disposed towards any friendship with Schiller, for he saw in him the powerful Sophist who corrupted and misled the nation. He has told us how pained he was on his return from Italy to find Germany jubilant over Heinse's Ardinghello, and over the Robbers and Fiesco. He had pushed far from him, and forever, the whole Sturm und Drang error; he had outgrown that tendency, and learned to hate his own works which sprang from it; in Italy he had taken a new direction, hoping to make the nation follow him in this higher region, as it had followed him before. But while he advanced, the nation stood still; he passed it like a ship at sea.' Instead of following him, the public followed his most extravagant imitators. He hoped to enchant men with the calm ideal beauty of an Iphigenia, and the sunny heroism of an Egmont; and found every one enraptured with Ardinghello and Karl Moor. His publisher had to complain that the new edition of his works, on which so much time and pains had been bestowed, went off very slowly, while the highlyspiced works of his rivals were bought by thousands. 6 Schüler macht sich der Schwärmer genug, und rühret die Menge *Dreamers make scholars enough, they flatter the weakness of thousands, In this frame of mind it is natural that he should keep aloof from Schiller, and withstand the various efforts made to bring about an intimacy. To be much with Goethe,' Schiller writes in the February following, would make me unhappy; with his nearest friends he has no moments of overflowingness: I believe, indeed, he is an Egoist, in an unusual degree. He has the talent of conquering men, and of binding them by small as well as great attentions; but he always knows how to hold himself free. He makes his existence benevolently felt, but only like a god, without giving himself: this seems to me a consequent and well-planned conduct, which is calculated to ensure the highest enjoyment of self love. . . . Thereby is he hateful to me, although I love his genius from my heart, and think greatly of him. . . . It is a quite peculiar mixture of love and hatred he has awakened in me, a feeling akin to that which Brutus and Cassius must have had for Cæsar. I could kill his spirit, and then love him again from my heart.' These sentences read very strangely now we know how Schiller came to love and reverence the man whom he here so profoundly misunderstands, and whom he judges thus from the surface. But they are interesting sentences in many respects; in none more so than in showing that if he, on nearer acquaintance, came to love the noble nature of his great rival, it is a proof that he had seen how superficial had been his first judgment. Let the reader who has been led to think harshly of Goethe, from one cause or another, take this into consideration, and ask himself whether he too, on better knowledge, might not alter his opinion. While the intelligent man counts his disciples by tens. 'With Goethe,' so runs another letter, 'I will not compare myself, when he puts forth his whole strength. He has far more genius than I have, and greater wealth of knowledge, a more accurate sensuous perception (eine sichere Sinnlichkeit), and to all these he adds an artistic taste, cultivated and sharpened by knowledge of all works of Art.' But with this acknowledgment of superiority there was coupled an unpleasant feeling of envy at Goethe's happier lot, a feeling which his own unhappy position renders very explicable. my heart,' he writes to Körner. this Goethe, stands in my way, and that fate has dealt hardly with me. genius borne by his fate; and how must I even to this moment struggle !' I will let you see into Once for all, this man, recalls to me so often How lightly is his He Fate had indeed treated them very differently. Throughout Schiller's correspondence we are pained by the sight of sordid cares, and anxious struggles for existence. is in bad health, in difficult circumstances. We see him forced to make literature a trade, and it is a bad one. We see him anxious to do hack-work and translation, for a few dollars, quite cheered by the prospect of getting such work, and farming it out to other writers, who will do it for less than he receives. We see him animated with high aspirations, and depressed by low-thoughted care.' He too is struggling through the rebellious epoch of youth, but has not yet attained the clearness of manhood, and no external aids come to help him through the struggle. Goethe, on the contrary, never knows such cares. All his life he has been shielded from the depressing influence of poverty; and now he has leisure, affluence, renown, social position - little from without to make him unhappy. When Schiller therefore thought of all this, he must have felt that fate had been a niggard stepmother to him, as she had been a lavish mother to his rival. Yet Goethe had his sorrows, too, though not of the same kind. He bore within him the flame of genius, a flame which consumes while it irradiates. His struggles were with himself, and not with circumstances. He felt himself a stranger in the land. Few understood his language; none understood his aims. He withdrew into himself. There is one point which must be noticed in this position of the two poets, namely, that however great Schiller may be now esteemed, and was esteemed by Goethe after awhile, he was not at this moment regarded with anything beyond the feeling usually felt for a rising young author.' His early works had indeed a wide popularity; but so had the works of Klinger, Maler Müller, Lenz, Kotzebue and others, who never conquered the great critics; and Schiller was so unrecognized at this time that, on coming to Weimar, he complains, with surprise as much as with offended self-love, that Herder seemed to know nothing of him beyond his name, not having apparently read one of his works. And Goethe, in the official paper which he drew up recommending Schiller to the Jena professorship, speaks of him as a Herr Friedrich Schiller, author of an historical work on the Netherlands.' So that not only was Schiller's tendency antipathetic to all Goethe then prized, he was not even in that position which commands the respect of antagonists; and Goethe held Art as too profoundly important in the development of mankind, for differences of tendency to be overlooked as unimportant. CHAPTER VIII. CHRISTIANE VULPIUS. ONE day in the autumn of 1788, Goethe, walking in the much-loved park, was accosted by a fresh, young, bright-looking girl, who, with many reverences, handed him a petition. He looked into the bright eyes of the petitioner, and then, in a conciliated mood, looked at the petition, which entreated the great poet to exert his influence to procure a post for a young author, then living at Jena by the translation of French and Italian stories. This young author was Vulpius, whose Rinaldo Rinaldini has doubtless made my readers shudder in their youth. His robber romances were at one time very popular; but his name is now only rescued from oblivion, because he was the brother of that Christiane who handed the petition to Goethe, and who thus took the first step on the path which led to their marriage. Christiane is on many accounts an interesting figure to those who are interested in the biography of Goethe; and the love she excited, no less than the devotedness with which for eight-and-twenty years she served him, deserve a more tender memory than has befallen her. Her father was one of those wretched beings whose drunkenness slowly but surely brings a whole family to He would sometimes sell the coat off his back for drink. When his children grew up, they contrived to get want. |