It requires considerable concentration of mind to follow its meaning through the cloud of its dark and gigantic images. Schiller desired his friend Humboldt to read it in perfect stillness, 'and put away from him all that was profane.' Humboldt, of course, admired it prodigiously; and it is unquestionably full of thought expressed with the power of the highest genius. But, on the other hand, its philosophy, even for a Poet or Idealist, is more than disputable, and it incurs the very worst fault which a Poet can commit, viz. obscurity of idea as well as expression. When the Poet sets himself up for the teacher, he must not forget that the teacher's duty is to be clear; and the higher the mystery he would expound, the more pains he should bestow on the simplicity of the elucidation. For the true Poet does not address philosophical coteries, but an eternal and universal public. Happily this fault is rare in Schiller, and more happily still, his great mind did not long remain a groper amidst the 'Realm of Shadow.' The true Ideal is quite as liable to be lost amidst the maze of metaphysics, as in the actual thoroughfares of work-day life. A plunge into Kant may do more harm to a Poet than a walk through Fleet Street. Goethe, than whom no man had ever more studied the elements of the diviner art, was right as an artist in his dislike to the over-cultivation of the aesthetical. The domain of the Ideal is the heart, and through the heart it operates on the soul. It grows feebler and dimmer in proportion as it seeks to rise above human emotion.... Longinus does not err, when he asserts that Passion (often erroneously translated Pathos) is the best part of the Sublime.) [Footnote 5: Rather, according to Aesthetical Philosophy, is the _actual_ world to be called the _world of appearances_, and the Ideal the world of substance.] TO THE IDEAL. Then wilt thou, with thy fancies holy-- Wilt thou, faithless, fly from me? With thy joy, thy melancholy, Wilt thou thus relentless flee? O Golden Time, O Human May, Can nothing, Fleet One, thee restrain? Must thy sweet river glide away Into the eternal Ocean-Main? The suns serene are lost and vanish'd That wont the path of youth to gild, And all the fair Ideals banish'd From that wild heart they whilome fill'd. Gone the divine and sweet believing In dreams which Heaven itself unfurl'd! What godlike shapes have years bereaving Swept from this real work-day world! As once, with tearful passion fired, The Cyprian Sculptor clasp'd the stone, Till the cold cheeks, delight-inspired, Blush'd--to sweet life the marble grown; So Youth's desire for Nature!--round The Statue, so my arms I wreathed, Till warmth and life in mine it found And breath that poets breathe--it breathed.