In 1856 he was again stricken by what seemed to be the same mysterious illness, never fully explained, that had befallen him in Leipzig. He recovered, to be sure, for the time being, but his ailments returned again and again. From about 1860 Ludwig practically never was a well man. Confined to the house and soon to his bed, he slowly wasted away. The tenderest care of his devoted wife and the affection of a few loyal friends could do but little to relieve the most excruciating pain or to keep away the actual want that began to knock at his door. Ludwig had never learned to look upon his art as a commercial asset; his few published works had never brought him much return, and his own slender means had for some time been exhausted. Some gifts of honor were bestowed upon the invalid by authors' societies and princely patrons, but they came too late to prevent the inevitable. As late as 1859 Ludwig still had hope for the future. "I see before me," he wrote in his diary, "a veritable world of conceptions and forms which I might conquer if, freed from the weight that keeps me down, I could take wings again. I believe it would not be too late yet." It was not to be. Successful production of a high order would probably have been impossible under such circumstances in any case. With Ludwig it was further prevented by an obstacle of a psychological nature. As the feeling of health and strength and ease of mind departed from him, there came in its place an ever growing, almost morbid, spirit of self-questioning criticism and doubt. As the springs of creative energy ceased flowing, Ludwig thought he could replenish them by turning to theory and analysis. In the free intervals between the attacks of his illness, when his mind worked as vigorously as ever, the luckless poet filled volume upon volume with esthetic and ethical reflections upon poetry and literature. From Shakespeare especially he thought he might be able to wrest those last secrets of an art which tantalizingly hovered before his vision. In these studies, fragmentary, ill-organized, not prepared for publication as they are, we nevertheless possess a veritable treasure-house of soundest reflection and subtlest intuition on many of the fundamental questions of poetry, especially of the drama. They have often been compared with Lessing's _Hamburg Dramaturgy_, of which, in many respects, they are the worthiest continuation. But in this unequal struggle Ludwig became less and less able to give life and color to his own conceptions or to be satisfied with his results when he had done so. How many could safely try to measure up to a standard taken directly from Shakespeare! Plan upon plan was started and laid aside. A field of ruins, disquieting, threatening, piled up around the lonesome fighter who slowly succumbed beneath the crushing greatness of his vision. Noble, but also tragic beyond words it is when, shortly before his death, Ludwig declared to one of his friends that even in his suffering