'If my former conduct, if all that your Excellency knows of my character, inspires you with confidence in my love of honour, permit me frankly to ask your assistance. Pressingly as I now need the profit I expect from my _Fiesco_, it will be impossible for me to have the piece in readiness before three weeks: my heart was oppressed; the feeling of my own situation drove me back from my poetic dreams. But if at the specified period, I could make the play not only _ready_, but, as I also hope, _worthy_, I take courage from that persuasion, respectfully to ask that your Excellency would be so obliging as _advance_ for me the price that will then become due. I need it now, perhaps more than I shall ever do again throughout my life. I had near 200 florins of debt in Stuttgard, which I could not pay. I may confess to you, that this gives me more uneasiness than anything about my future destiny. I shall have no rest till I am free on _that_ side. 'In eight days, too, my travelling purse will be exhausted. It is yet utterly impossible for me to labour with my mind. In my hand, therefore, are at present no resources. * * * * * 'My actual situation being clear enough from what I have already said, I hold it needless to afflict your Excellency with any _importuning picture_ of my want. Speedy aid is all that I can now think of or wish. Herr Meyer has been requested to communicate your Excellency's resolution to me, and to save you from the task of writing to me in person at all. With peculiar respect, I call myself,' &c. * * * * * It is pleasing to record that the humble aid so earnestly and modestly solicited by Schiller, was afforded him; and that he never forgot to love the man who had afforded it; who had assisted him, when assistance was of such essential value. In the first fervour of his gratitude, for this and other favours, the poet warmly declared that 'he owed all, all to Dalberg;' and in a state of society where Patronage, as Miss Edgeworth has observed, directly the antipodes of Mercy, is in general 'twice cursed,' cursing him that gives and him that takes, it says not a little for the character both of the obliged and the obliger in the present instance, that neither of them ever ceased to remember their connexion with pleasure. Schiller's first play had been introduced to the Stage by Dalberg, and his last was dedicated to him.[69] The venerable critic, in his eighty-third year, must have received with a calm joy the tragedy of _Tell_, accompanied by an address so full of kindness and respect: it must have gratified him to think that the youth who was once his, and had now become the world's, could, after long experience, still say of him, And fearlessly to thee may _Tell_ be shown, For every noble feeling is thy own.