[37] This story, the heroes of which are more properly known to us under the names of Damon and Pythias (or Phintias), Schiller took from Hyginus in whom the friends are called Moerus and Selinuntius. Schiller has somewhat amplified the incidents in the original, in which the delay of Moerus is occasioned only by the swollen stream--the other hindrances are of Schiller's invention. The subject, like "The Ring of Polycrates," does not admit of that rich poetry of description with which our author usually adorns some single passage in his narratives. The poetic spirit is rather shown in the terse brevity with which picture after picture is not only sketched but finished--and in the great thought at the close. Still it is not one of Schiller's best ballads. His additions to the original story are not happy. The incident of the robbers is commonplace and poor. The delay occasioned by the thirst of Moerus is clearly open to Goethe's objection (an objection showing very nice perception of nature)--that extreme thirst was not likely to happen to a man who had lately passed through a stream on a rainy day, and whose clothes must have been saturated with moisture--nor in the traveller's preoccupied state of mind, is it probable that he would have so much felt the mere physical want. With less reason has it been urged by other critics, that the sudden relenting of the tyrant is contrary to his character. The tyrant here has no individual character at all. He is the mere personation of disbelief in truth and love--which the spectacle of sublime self-abnegation at once converts. In this idea lies the deep philosophical truth, which redeems all the defects of the piece--for poetry, in its highest form, is merely this--"Truth made beautiful." [38] The somewhat irregular metre of the original has been preserved in this ballad, as in other poems; although the perfect anapaestic metre is perhaps more familiar to the English ear. [39] "Die Gestalt"--Form, the Platonic Archetype. [40] More literally translated thus by the author of the article on Schiller in the Foreign and Colonial Review, July, 1843-- "Thence all witnesses forever banished Of poor human nakedness." [41] The law, i. e., the Kantian ideal of truth and virtue. This stanza and the next embody, perhaps with some exaggeration, the Kantian doctrine of morality. [42] "But in God's sight submission is command." "Jonah," by the Rev. F. Hodgson. Quoted in Foreign and Colonial Review, July, 1843: Art. Schiller, p. 21. [43] It seems generally agreed that poetry is allegorized in these stanzas; though, with this interpretation, it is difficult to reconcile the sense of some of the lines--for instance, the last in the first stanza. How can poetry be said to leave no trace when she takes farewell?