Schubart had been condemned to life-long confinement by this same Duke Charles. Schiller, in fleeing his benefactor’s dominions, had not only thrown away all his chances in life, but he had placed his safety and the safety of his family in extreme danger. It was a bold, perhaps a reckless step. But whatever we may think of it in a moral point of view, as historians we must look upon it as the Hegira in the life of the poet. Schiller was now a man of one or two and twenty, thrown upon the world penniless, with nothing to depend on but his brains. The next ten years were hard years for him; they were years of unsettledness, sometimes of penury and despair, sometimes of extravagance and folly. This third period in Schiller’s life is not marked by any great literary achievements. It would be almost a blank were it not for the “Don Carlos,” which he wrote during his stay near Dresden, between 1785-87. His “Fiesco” and “Cabale und Liebe,” though they came out after his flight from Stuttgard, had been conceived before, and they were only repeated protests, in the form of tragedies, against the tyranny of rulers and the despotism of society. They show no advance in the growth of Schiller’s mind. Yet that mind, though less productive than might have been expected, was growing as every mind grows between the years of twenty and thirty; and it was growing chiefly through contact with men. We must make full allowance for the powerful influence exercised at that time by the literature of the day (by the writings of Herder, Lessing, and Goethe), and by political events, such as the French Revolution. But if we watch Schiller’s career carefully, we see that his character was chiefly moulded by his intercourse with men. His life was rich in friendships, and what mainly upheld him in his struggles and dangers was the sympathy of several high-born and high-minded persons, in whom the ideals of his own mind seemed to have found their fullest realization.