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drama, I might, it is possible, have speedily seen my endeavours surpassed by the more felicitous exertions of others. In the latter, however, while I seem to feel for its cultivation the happier and more fitting congeniality of my powers, I may affirm, without the imputation of excessive vanity, that my poetical efforts may perhaps be found more difficult to be equalled or surpassed. I rejoice, that, in my dramatic labours, I have now acquired considerable facility in framing my iambic verse*. I flatter myself that the use of this measure cannot fail to impart additional dignity, and a rich er and more impressive poetical embellishment, to my Don Carlos.

I look forward to the winter with eager and delighted feelings of anticipation. I find myself once more in the full and unremitting exercise of my poetical powers, and I trust, ere long, to produce what shall amply compensate for the unpropitious and barren interval of nearly a year, occasioned by partial attacks of indisposition. I am resolved, if possible, that our theatre shall be enriched, through my sedulous exertions, by various admirable dramatic pieces, at present unknown on our stage, among which I purpose to include "Macbeth" and " Cymon," ,"besides several by distinguished French writers. When I shall have completed "Carlos," I design immediately to enter upon the composition of the second part of the "Robbers." In the general bearing and cast of its incidents, and its clear and ostensible moral, I intend that it shall hold out for its author a convincing apology for its former more questionable part; and it shall be my solicitous endeavour, that, whatever might there have been regarded as too carelessly free or immoral, shall be disarmed of all noxious influence, in the strictness of the poetical justice, and the impressive dignity of

its moral and instructive tendency. This, I feel, assuredly opens up a very wide and arduous range for my poetical exertions ↑.

Perhaps your Excellency may here, in the exuberance of my poetical plans and purposes, experience some feelings of incredulity gradually gaining upon you. But if you dispassionately reflect how frequently indisposition, and the cares and disquietudes of a dependent condition, have shed their baleful and enervating gloom across my mind, and warred with my fondest wishes and endeavours, you will, I feel assured, allow that it is no decisive and marked feature of my character, to form literary projects, and afterwards vainly and capriciously abandon them.

As to my intention of prosecuting the medical profession, and those other literary purposes and pursuits which I inseparably associate with it, I beg to reserve myself, on these points, for the confidence of a personal communing with your Excellency; as I find I should be unable to embrace, within the limits of a letter, the views which press upon me on so momentous and important a matter. I may, however, thus far assure your Excellency, that my resolution is decisively taken; and that, amidst my other pursuits, I do not neglect the acquisition of what may aid and facilitate the attainment of my great object.

Madame Von Kalb has now established her residence here, and desires nothing with greater ardour and impatience than to be introduced to the acquaintance of your Excellency, and Madame Von Dalberg. I may confidently say, you will find in her a person most estimable and engaging; who, without o'erstepping what is due to the amiable and retiring gentleness of her sex, is strikingly interesting and original in the characteristic traits of her conversation.

Iffland's Lear is here rapturously

Schiller, in adopting this verse, is said to have been swayed by the example of Lessing, in his admirable drama of "Nathan."

+Perhaps it cannot be much regretted that Schiller never executed the dramatic design which he here meditated. It is probable it would have added little to his poetical celebrity, as those dramas, written to enforce and illustrate some moral and philosophical truth, seem invariably the least animated and inviting, because the most circumscribed in the free natural range, and bold and felicitous selection of their incidents and characters.

and enthusiastically admired; and even the most discriminating and fastidious among our critics lavish on his skilful and admirable perform ance of this part their unqualified commendation.

I have perused Horace's Epistles in the translation of Wieland with sentiments of the most lively and ardent satisfaction. What pure, per spicuous, and richly-instructive philosophy, conveyed with so rare a grace, and matchless felicity of idiomatic expression, and at the same time accompanied, and delicately seasoned, by the piquant allurements of the most witty, the most archlysarcastic, and the most delicately and dexterously playful satire! The translation is indeed throughout of the highest excellence, and, with the unrestrained freedom of an original, unites the most pure and accurate use of our national tongue.

Of the dramatic performances of this week I can say little that is favourable. But after the rich repast of two representations of "Lear," the public ought not, perhaps, greatly to complain of being compelled occasionally to taste of much simpler and coarser fare.

With the greatest impatience I look forward to the happiness of meeting your Excellency, agreeably to your promise, on the Sunday; and with the most perfect esteem, I remain, &c. &c.

Schiller to Von Dalberg.

Manheim, 19th Jan. 1785. I Now, for the first time, venture to speak to your Excellency my free and undisguised sentiments of the performance of my dramatic pieces. And I should not, assuredly, for many reasons, have felt induced to take so painful and invidious a step, did not the high and affectionate respect I cherish towards your Excellency seem imperatively to prescribe this to me as a duty, before, at least, I take a more public and decisive mode of animadverting on the injurious and offensive professional negligence of several of our actors.

I know not to what mystical refinement of professional policy we shall ascribe it, that our Manheim performers, with few exceptions, to find so singular and per

seem

verted a satisfaction in lavishing the most anxious and emulative efforts of their art upon dialogue the least inviting and impressive, and of carelessly and insensibly passing over what, in its greater dramatic richness and power, demands the noblest and most discriminating efforts of their professional skill. Assuredly, one of the least marks of deference which can well be expressed towards the dramatic poet, is, that the actor shall at least be fully master of the words of his part. This slender gratification, however, has even been denied to me. It has often cost me hours before I have been able to satisfy myself, in giving to my periods the last arduous and significant touches of their fitting embellishment. Yet I have been compelled to endure the mortification and disappointment of seeing what I have effected by such sedulous exertion, at once defaced by the negligence or design of the performer, and of having my dramatic dialogue, which I have so solicitously and carefully framed, often singularly metamorphosed into language (I need not say the least of all poetical, but rather) the most vulgar, and halting, and incorrect.

Of what antiquity, I pray you, is this singular theatrical usage, which allows the actor thus capriciously and absolutely to play his part, and to trample upon the unfortunate dramatic author?

I felt more sensibly this grievance last evening than upon any former occasion. My "Cabal and Love," owing to the very negligent and ineffective performance of nearly the whole actors, was deprived, I may say, of all its wonted dramatic interest and force. I was frequently, in place of the language of the piece, compelled to listen to the extemporaneous, nonsensical ebullitions of the actors. If such a licence can at any time be at all indulged to a performer, it ought only, assuredly, to be when he is so fully and accurately in possession of his part, that these casual expressions of the overflowing of his vivacity or sensibility shall not run cruelly counter to the poetic spirit and bearing of the character he supports. It fills me with unfeigned regret, to detail to your Excellency so flagrant a negligence in

your corps dramatique; and it yet more sensibly afflicts me, as I fear I must here rather ascribe it to some studied slight, or inveterate hostility towards myself, than to any common or unavoidable deficiencies of performance; for I have often witnessed, with sentiments of admiration and delight, the efforts of these same performers in pieces of very inferior merit, while, in my ill-fated dramas, they seemed at once to fall off from every power or capacity of natural or impressive delineation. How, then, shall I otherwise interpret such strange and opposite exertions of their professional art? With the exception of the female performers, and Beck, whose natural and exquisite touches of delineation I can readily allow to atone for his less intimate familiarity with some of the characteristics of his part, all the other actors displayed the most gross and studied negligence. In so far as I am here personally interested, I could have willingly endeavoured to preserve myself callous to such flagrant and intentional slights; for I may, without presumption, affirm, that the theatrical establishment has been more decidedly benefited through the instrumentality of my dramatic pieces, than what these have been aided, or enforced, or illustrated, by any professional endeavours of the performers. I shall never, assuredly, be willing to abide in a situation which shall, in the slightest degree, subject me to the humiliating necessity of having the appreciation of my dramatic productions in some sort dependant on the vain and shifting humours, or the capricious and unmanly resentments of the performers. As, however, I shall speedily submit to the public some critical views and considerations on our Manheim stage, I have felt it impossible to view this matter with the unconcern or indifference I might perhaps otherwise have done.

I leave it to your Excellency to make what use you may think fit of the detail I have now given you. Whatever steps, however, you may be led to adopt, I have resolved to take a full and decisive review of the whole of this matter in the "Rheinische Thalia." Permit me to conclude, in saying, that a poet, who

has already contributed to the stage three dramatic pieces, one of which is the "Robbers," ought, perhaps, to be allowed some right to stand publicly forth, and, with modesty, yet firmness, to complain that he has been withheld that courtesy and respect which his talents and arduous exertions might not unjustly have challenged.

Schiller to the same.

Manheim, 19th March 1785. THE publication of the "Rheinische Thalia" has, I am informed, given rise, in several of the perfor mers, to the violent expression of feelings of enmity and disappointment, which, assuredly, I could not have anticipated, from the general respectability of your theatrical establishment. I may venture to assure your Excellency, that, had I spoken out more decidedly and explicitly in my public critical estimate, my favourable impression of the professional merits of Rennschüb, and also of his wife, within a limited range of character,—although in this I should only, I believe, have expressed the true sentiments of the more discriminating part of the public,-I might then, it is not improbable, have had cause to apprehend some personal violence from the jealousy and embittered disappointment of the other performers. I can easily, therefore, forgive, in the lady, those expressions of resentment which my critical reserve may have in part occasioned; although, looking to their intemperate and foolish violence, it is probable that no excess of critical gallantry could have soothed the over-weening vanity in which they seem to have been dictated. I confess, in the clearer insight which the whole details of this matter have afforded me, of the characters and capricious humours of so rare an assemblage of extravagant histrionic pretension, I cannot but feel high astonishment, how your Excellency, for the space of five years, has been enabled so happily to regulate and conduct your theatrical management, as not to have given rise, amidst a set of performers so restlessly jealous and inflammable, to any expression of hostility or dissatisfaction towards yourself. What, however, in this

matter, I cannot tamely brook, is the flagrant and outrageous conduct of Bök, and it is probable I shall speedily take the decisive step of exposing it to the censure and reprehension of the public. I think I may justly say, that, in my critical notice of the merits and characteristics of the different performers, I have spoken of Bök with a discreet and lenient forbearance, and have, at the same time, awarded to him a heightened measure of praise, which, I fear, his professional abilities cannot justly arrogate. Yet this is the person who, callous to every feeling of modesty or propriety, does not he sitate to assail mne on the stage with his slanderous abuse, and who basely avails himself of the aids and facilities of his professional calling, to win to his side the clamour and violence of the popular favour. Such, I am well informed, has been the outrageous conduct of this individual towards me; and did your Excellency require any thing farther, to heighten or confirm

your opinion of its indecency and injustice, you might at once find it, in contrasting his present demeanour with the manner in which I have spoken in my journal of his talents as a performer. The real cause, however, of this clamorous and violent exacerbation of spirit, it is not difficult to discover. Bök, I believe, looked with confidence, and eager longing, for the acceptable incense of rapturous encomiastic eulogy, and found nothing to gratify the credulous and excessive vanity of his expectations. He also feels indignant at the high and justly-merited terms of commendation in which I have spoken of the professional powers of Beil*, Beck, and Iffland; and I have, besides, inflicted a deep and galling wound on his pride and exuberant conceit, which he can never forgive, in not at once elevating him to the enviable and desired throne of supremacy above all his theatrical compeers. But at what a vast and humiliating distance, in professional

Nature

Beil appears to have been one of the most celebrated actors of his time. seemed alone to have singularly fitted him for eminence in his professional art, in bestowing upon him a figure at once beautiful and commanding, the most ardent and susceptible feeling of poetical excellence, and a voice richly impressive, and, in the natural truth and flexibility of its modulation, fitted to impart energy or tenderness to every passion or emotion of the heart. The effect produced upon him by the striking performances of the great actors, Reinecke, Opitz, Thering, and others, is said to have decided him in adopting the stage as his profession. He seems to have possessed a singular versatility and commanding power in his art, which enabled him strikingly to delineate characters the most opposite and dissimilar in their poetical qualities and attributes. This great and decided excellence, however, lay in characters of a tragic cast. In these he might be said to have no equal, but his gifted friend and associate, Iffland, and no superior but the inimitable Schröder-the most enlightened and finely discriminative, and the most irresistibly touching and impressive of all the German actors. Beil was the author of a variety of pieces for the stage, which often display much beauty, and considerable felicity and art of dramatic invention. The impulses and dictates, however, of a sensibility, too undiscerning in the objects of its poetical choice and exercise, have betrayed him into many striking and singular dramatic defects, which the salutary correctives and unerring guidance of purer models, than those he seems to have studied, might otherwise have easily enabled him to avoid. His dramas abound with the obtrusive and incessant display of the sentiments of a vague and undiscriminating philanthropy, and with the illtimed workings of a sensibility, which seems to recognise, in every incident, however trivial and unimportant, the fitting opportunity for its lavish and sickening indulgence. His dramas once enjoyed their full share of the popular favour, but seem not to have outlived that wayward and capricious aberration of the poetical taste of his countrymen, caused by the peculiar productions of Kotzebue and his numerous followers. In these plays of Beil, the hints by which he thinks fit to indicate to the reader the effects of the supposed mental agitations and feelings of his dramatic personages, on their outward movements and demeanour, are the most amazingly circumstantial which are perhaps to be met with, even among the dramas of a people who seem to hold, in singular favour and estimation, such cunning commentaries. It is remarkable that the author himself, a distinguished and original actor, should, in this, have played so arbitrary and tyrannical a part towards his theatrical brethren, and paid so ambiguous a compliment to the clearness and intelligibility of his own dramatic dia

excellence and endowment, is he re moved from his three distinguished and gifted rivals! When, however, I shall proceed with the continuation of my observations on the Manheim stage, I shall deem myself justly warranted in administering to him the wholesome corrective of some spirited strictures upon the intemperate violence of his conduct; and shall endeavour to recall him to some humbler feeling of self-appreciation, by lowering that excessive vanity which often so singularly and inveterately adheres to our comedians.

Should your Excellency find it convenient to indulge me with the favour of waiting upon you for half an hour this afternoon, you will have the goodness to intimate to me the time which may best suit you. &c.

Schiller to Louis F. Huber*. Manheim, 1785. THIS, it is probable, is the last let ter I shall address to you from Manheim. The time, from the 15th of March till now, has seemed to me, amidst the eager impatience of my wishes, to creep lazily and almost imperceptibly on; like those tedious and oppressive intervals, which, to a litigant, confident and assured of success, delay the final sentence of the judge. I rejoice, however, that I shall now speedily have the satisfaction of joining you at Leipsic. Permit me then, my true friend, in addition to the interest you have hitherto taken in my prospects, to impart to you my wishes and designs,

in regard to my future domestic plans and arrangements.

I feel extremely desirous, in establishing myself at Leipsic, to provide against an inconvenience which, at Manheim, has always proved to me highly irksome and unpleasant. It is simply, that I have resolved in future to throw myself free from the teasing superintendance of all household concerns, and no longer to reside alone. The former of these I have felt to be most alien and repugnant to my peculiar biasses and predilections. I might indeed here, almost with truth, affirm, that, in the province of the drama, I have found it an easier task to elucidate the incidents of some dark conspiracy, or great political revolution, than to administer the concerns of my domestic economy; and you know assuredly well, that nothing can be more dangerous, to the undisturbed purity and constancy of poetic excitement, than the vexatious and humiliating calls of such household arrangements. I find myself at once rudely and swiftly recalled, from the visions of the bright and seducing world, whither my kindled enthusiasm has transported me, and in which, so to speak, I roam entranced, when I am impertinently reminded of some of the daily demands and details of my domestic management and economy.

But, besides, to complete fully my enjoyment, I ardently thirst after the endeared society and communion of a kind and intelligent friend, who,

logue, as to deem it necessary to expound and illustrate it, like some of the dark riddles of the ancient Sphinx. Iffland has written the life of this distinguished perfor mer; and thus affectionately commemorated the ardour and sincerity of his own friendship, and the lively and fond appreciation he cherished of the rare and admirable professional excellencies of one, with whom he had so often striven and been conflicted, amidst all the impressive and chequered agitations of the mimic scene.-T. * Huber enjoyed great celebrity as a writer, and seems to have been possessed of very varied and comprehensive powers, improved and refined by the most enlightened studies, and the most pure and ardent devotion for letters. He was the elegant translator of a number of French dramatic pieces for the German stage; and, besides several original productions in this walk of composition, was the author of the “Secret Tribunal," a tragedy singularly interesting and impressive, and the plot and dialogue of which are framed with much effective art and penetrating discernment. Huber was deeply versed in English literature, and published observations on Beaumont and Fletcher and the state of our stage during that early and distinguished period. He was also the writer of several volumes of Tales, which are held in the highest estimation, for the richness and beauty of their invention, and the pure and felicitous graces of their narrative. Huber wrote, besides, several esteemed political treatises, and an excellent critical and philosophical work on the peculiar and distinctive characteristics of the literature of his country.-Tr.

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