The Life of Friedrich Schiller: Comprehending an Examination of His WorksCarlyle, Thomas
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The Life of Friedrich Schiller: Comprehending an Examination of His Works
Carlyle, Thomas
Authors, German -- 18th century -- Biography; Schiller, Friedrich, 1759-1805; Schubart, Christian Friedrich Daniel, 1739-1791
On the whole, we may pronounce him happy. His days passed in the
contemplation of ideal grandeurs, he lived among the glories and
solemnities of universal Nature; his thoughts were of sages and
heroes, and scenes of elysian beauty. It is true, he had no rest, no
peace; but he enjoyed the fiery consciousness of his own activity,
which stands in place of it for men like him. It is true, he was long
sickly; but did he not even then conceive and body-forth Max
Piccolomini, and Thekla, and the Maid of Orleans, and the scenes of
_Wilhelm Tell_? It is true, he died early; but the student will
exclaim with Charles XII. in another case, "Was it not enough of life
when he had conquered kingdoms?" These kingdoms which Schiller
conquered were not for one nation at the expense of suffering to
another; they were soiled by no patriot's blood, no widow's, no
orphan's tear: they are kingdoms conquered from the barren realms of
Darkness, to increase the happiness, and dignity, and power, of all
men; new forms of Truth, new maxims of Wisdom, new images and scenes
of Beauty, won from the 'void and formless Infinite;' a κτημα ες αιει,
'a possession forever,' to all the generations of the Earth.
SUPPLEMENT OF 1872.
HERR SAUPE'S BOOK.
[NOTE IN PEOPLE'S EDITION.]
In the end of Autumn last a considerately kind old Friend of mine
brought home to me, from his Tour in Germany, a small Book by a Herr
Saupe, one of the Head-masters of Gera High-School,—Book entitled
'Schiller and His Father's Household,'[42]—of which, though it has
been before the world these twenty years and more, I had not heard
till then. The good little Book,—an altogether modest, lucid, exact
and amiable, though not very lively performance, offering new little
facts about the Schiller world, or elucidations and once or twice a
slight correction of the old,—proved really interesting and
instructive; awoke, in me especially, multifarious reflections,
mournfully beautiful old memories;—and led to farther readings in
other Books touching on the same subject, particularly in these three
mentioned below,[43]—the first two of them earlier than Saupe's, the
third later and slightly corrective of him once or twice;—all which
agreeably employed me for some weeks, and continued to be rather a
pious recreation than any labour.
[Footnote 42: _Schiller und sein Väterliches Haus._ Von Ernst
Julius Saupe, Subconrector am Gymnasium zu Gera. Leipzig:
Verlagsbuchhandlung von J. J. Weber, 1851.]
[Footnote 43: _Schiller's Leben von Gustav Schwab_
(Stuttgart, 1841).
_Schiller's Leben, verfasst aus_, &c. By Caroline von
Wolzogen, _born_ von Lengefeld (Schiller's Sister-in-law):
Stuttgart und Tübingen, 1845.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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