“I do my business very differently from what I used to do. The subject seems to be so much outside me that I can hardly get up any feeling for it. The subject I treat leaves me cold and indifferent, and yet I am full of enthusiasm for my work. With the exception of two characters to which I feel attached, Max Piccolomini and Thekla, I treat all the rest, and particularly the principal character of the play, only with the pure love of the artist. But I can promise you that they will not suffer from this. I look to history for limitation, in order to give, through surrounding circumstances, a stricter form and reality to my ideals. I feel sure that the historical will not draw me down or cripple me. I only desire through it to impart life to my characters and their actions. The life and soul must come from another source, through that power which I have already perhaps shown elsewhere, and without which even the first conception of this work would, of course, have been impossible.” How different is this from what Schiller felt in former years! In writing “Don Carlos,” he laid down as a principle, that the poet must not be the painter but the lover of his heroes, and in his early days he found it intolerable in Shakespeare’s dreams that he could nowhere lay his hand on the poet himself. He was then, as he himself expresses it, unable to understand nature, except at second-hand. Goethe was Schiller’s friend, but he was also Schiller’s rival. There is a perilous period in the lives of great men, namely, the time when they begin to feel that their position is made, that they have no more rivals to fear. Goethe was feeling this at the time when he met Schiller. He was satiated with applause, and his bearing towards the public at large became careless and offensive. In order to find men with whom he might measure himself, he began to write on the history of Art, and to devote himself to natural philosophy. Schiller, too, had gained his laurels chiefly as a dramatic poet; and though he still valued the applause of the public, yet his ambition as a poet was satisfied; he was prouder of his “Thirty Years’ War” than of his “Robbers” and “Don Carlos.” When Goethe became intimate with Schiller, and discovered in him those powers which as yet were hidden to others, he felt that there was a man with whom even he might run a race. Goethe was never jealous of Schiller. He felt conscious of his own great powers, and he was glad to have those powers again called out by one who would be more difficult to conquer than all his former rivals. Schiller, on the other hand, perceived in Goethe the true dignity of a poet. At Jena his ambition was to have the title of Professor of History; at Weimar he saw that it was a greater honor to be called a poet, and the friend of Goethe. When he saw that Goethe treated him as his friend, and that the Duke and his brilliant court looked upon him as his equal,