The Life of Friedrich Schiller

Had prudence been the dominant quality in Schiller's character, this practice would undoubtedly have been abandoned, or rather never taken up. It was an error so to waste his strength; but one of those which increase rather than diminish our respect; originating, as it did, in generous ardour for what was best and grandest, they must be cold censurers that can condemn it harshly. For ourselves, we but lament and honour this excess of zeal; its effects were mournful, but its origin was noble. Who can picture Schiller's feelings in this solitude, without participating in some faint reflection of their grandeur! The toil-worn but devoted soul, alone, under the silent starry canopy of Night, offering up the troubled moments of existence on the altar of Eternity! For here the splendour that gleamed across the spirit of a mortal, transient as one of us, was made to be perpetual; these images and thoughts were to pass into other ages and distant lands; to glow in human hearts, when the heart that conceived them had long been mouldered into common dust. To the lovers of genius, this little garden-house might have been a place to visit as a chosen shrine; nor will they learn without regret that the walls of it, yielding to the hand of time, have already crumbled into ruin, and are now no longer to be traced. The piece of ground that it stood on is itself hallowed with a glory that is bright, pure and abiding; but the literary pilgrim could not have surveyed, without peculiar emotion, the simple chamber, in which Schiller wrote the Reich der Schatten, the Spaziergang, the Ideal, and the immortal scenes of Wallenstein.

The last-named work had cost him many an anxious, given him many a pleasant, hour. For seven years it had continued in a state of irregular, and oft-suspended progress; sometimes 'lying endless and formless' before him; sometimes on the point of being given up altogether. The multitude of ideas, which he wished to incorporate in the structure of the piece, retarded him; and the difficulty of contenting his taste, respecting the manner of effecting this, retarded him still more. In Wallenstein he wished to embody the more enlarged notions which experience had given him of men, especially which history had given him of generals and statesmen; and while putting such characters in action, to represent whatever was, or could be made, poetical, in the stormy period of the Thirty-Years War. As he meditated on the subject, it continued to expand; in his fancy, it assumed successively a thousand forms; and after all due strictness of selection, such was still the extent of materials remaining on his hands, that he found it necessary to divide the play into three parts, distinct in their arrangements, but in truth forming a continuous drama of eleven acts. In this shape it was sent forth to the world, in 1799; a work of labour and persevering anxiety, but of anxiety and labour, as it then appeared, which had not been bestowed in vain. Wallenstein is by far the best performance he had yet produced; it merits a long chapter of criticism by itself; and a few hurried pages are all that we can spend on it.

As a porch to the great edifice stands Part first, entitled Wallenstein's Camp, a piece in one act. It paints, with much humour and graphical felicity, the manners of that rude tumultuous host which Wallenstein presided over, and had made the engine of his ambitious schemes. Schiller's early experience of a military life seems now to have stood him in good stead; his soldiers are delineated with the distinctness of actual observation; in rugged sharpness of feature, they sometimes remind us of Smollett's seamen. Here are all the wild lawless spirits of Europe assembled within the circuit of a single trench. Violent, tempestuous, unstable is the life they lead. Ishmaelites, their hands against every man, and every man's hand against them; the instruments of rapine; tarnished with almost every vice, and knowing scarcely any virtue but those of reckless bravery and uncalculating obedience to their leader, their situation still presents some aspects which affect or amuse us; and these the poet has seized with his accustomed skill. Much of the cruelty and repulsive harshness of these soldiers, we are taught to forget in contemplating their forlorn houseless wanderings, and the practical magnanimity, with which even they contrive to wring from Fortune a tolerable scantling of enjoyment. Their manner of existence Wallenstein has, at an after period of the action, rather movingly expressed:

'Our life was but a battle and a march,And, like the wind's blast, never-resting, homeless,We storm'd across the war-convulsed Earth.'

Still farther to soften the asperities of the scene, the dialogue is cast into a rude Hudibrastic metre, full of forced rhymes, and strange double-endings, with a rhythm ever changing, ever rough and lively, which might almost be compared to the hard, irregular, fluctuating sound of the regimental drum. In this ludicrous doggrel, with phrases and figures of a correspondent cast, homely, ridiculous, graphic, these men of service paint their hopes and doings. There are ranks and kinds among them; representatives of all the constituent parts of the motley multitude, which followed this prince of Condottieri. The solemn pedantry of the ancient Wachtmeister is faithfully given; no less so are the jocund ferocity and heedless daring of Holky's Jägers, or the iron courage and stern camp-philosophy of Pappenheim's Cuirassiers. Of the Jäger the sole principle is military obedience; he does not reflect or calculate; his business is to do whatever he is ordered, and to enjoy whatever he can reach. 'Free wished I to live,' he says,

'Free wished I to live, and easy and gay,And see something new on each new day;In the joys of the moment lustily sharing,'Bout the past or the future not thinking or caring:To the Kaiser, therefore, I sold my bacon,And by him good charge of the whole is taken.Order me on 'mid the whistling fiery shot,Over the Rhine-stream rapid and roaring wide,A third of the troop must go to pot,—Without loss of time, I mount and ride;But farther, I beg very much, do you see,That in all things else you would leave me free.'

The Pappenheimer is an older man, more sedate and more indomitable; he has wandered over Europe, and gathered settled maxims of soldierly principle and soldierly privilege: he is not without a rationale of life; the various professions of men have passed in review before him, but no coat that he has seen has pleased him like his own 'steel doublet,' cased in which, it is his wish,

'Looking down on the world's poor restless scramble,Careless, through it, astride of his nag to ramble.'

Yet at times with this military stoicism there is blended a dash of homely pathos; he admits,

'This sword of ours is no plough or spade,You cannot delve or reap with the iron blade;For us there falls no seed, no corn-field grows,Neither home nor kindred the soldier knows:Wandering over the face of the earth,Warming his hands at another's hearth:From the pomp of towns he must onward roam;In the village-green with its cheerful game,In the mirth of the vintage or harvest-home,No part or lot can the soldier claim.Tell me then, in the place of goods or pelf,What has he unless to honour himself?Leave not even this his own, what wonderThe man should burn and kill and plunder?

But the camp of Wallenstein is fall of bustle as well as speculation; there are gamblers, peasants, sutlers, soldiers, recruits, capuchin friars, moving to and fro in restless pursuit of their several purposes. The sermon of the Capuchin is an unparalleled composition;34 a medley of texts, puns, nicknames, and verbal logic, conglutinated by a stupid judgment, and a fiery catholic zeal. It seems to be delivered with great unction, and to find fit audience in the camp: towards the conclusion they rush upon him, and he narrowly escapes killing or ducking, for having ventured to glance a censure at the General. The soldiers themselves are jeering, wrangling, jostling; discussing their wishes and expectations; and, at last, they combine in a profound deliberation on the state of their affairs. A vague exaggerated outline of the coming events and personages is imaged to us in their coarse conceptions. We dimly discover the precarious position of Wallenstein; the plots which threaten him, which he is meditating: we trace the leading qualities of the principal officers; and form a high estimate of the potent spirit which, binds this fierce discordant mass together, and seems to be the object of universal reverence where nothing else is revered.

In the Two Piccolomini, the next division of the work, the generals for whom we have thus been prepared appear in person on the scene, and spread out before us their plots and counterplots; Wallenstein, through personal ambition and evil counsel, slowly resolving to revolt; and Octavio Piccolomini, in secret, undermining his influence among the leaders, and preparing for him that pit of ruin, into which, in the third Part, Wallenstein's Death, we see him sink with all his fortunes. The military spirit which pervades the former piece is here well sustained. The ruling motives of these captains and colonels are a little more refined, or more disguised, than those of the Cuirassiers and Jägers; but they are the same in substance; the love of present or future pleasure, of action, reputation, money, power; selfishness, but selfishness distinguished by a superficial external propriety, and gilded over with the splendour of military honour, of courage inflexible, yet light, cool and unassuming. These are not imaginary heroes, but genuine hired men of war: we do not love them; yet there is a pomp about their operations, which agreeably fills up the scene. This din of war, this clash of tumultuous conflicting interests, is felt as a suitable accompaniment to the affecting or commanding movements of the chief characters whom it envelops or obeys.

Of the individuals that figure in this world of war, Wallenstein himself, the strong Atlas which supports it all, is by far the most imposing. Wallenstein is the model of a high-souled, great, accomplished man, whose ruling passion is ambition. He is daring to the utmost pitch of manhood; he is enthusiastic and vehement; but the fire of his soul burns hid beneath a deep stratum of prudence, guiding itself by calculations which extend to the extreme limits of his most minute concerns. This prudence, sometimes almost bordering on irresolution, forms the outward rind of his character, and for a while is the only quality which we discover in it. The immense influence which his genius appears to exert on every individual of his many followers, prepares us to expect a great man; and, when Wallenstein, after long delay and much forewarning, is in fine presented to us, we at first experience something like a disappointment. We find him, indeed, possessed of a staid grandeur; yet involved in mystery; wavering between two opinions; and, as it seems, with all his wisdom, blindly credulous in matters of the highest import. It is only when events have forced decision on him, that he rises in his native might, that his giant spirit stands unfolded in its strength before us;

'Night must it be, ere Friedland's star will beam:'

amid difficulties, darkness and impending ruin, at which the boldest of his followers grow pale, he himself is calm, and first in this awful crisis feels the serenity and conscious strength of his soul return. Wallenstein, in fact, though preeminent in power, both external and internal, of high intellect and commanding will, skilled in war and statesmanship beyond the best in Europe, the idol of sixty thousand fearless hearts, is not yet removed above our sympathy. We are united with him by feelings, which he reckons weak, though they belong to the most generous parts of his nature. His indecision partly takes its rise in the sensibilities of his heart, as well as in the caution of his judgment: his belief in astrology, which gives force and confirmation to this tendency, originates in some soft kindly emotions, and adds a new interest to the spirit of the warrior; it humbles him, to whom the earth is subject, before those mysterious Powers which weigh the destinies of man in their balance, in whose eyes the greatest and the least of mortals scarcely differ in littleness. Wallenstein's confidence in the friendship of Octavio, his disinterested love for Max Piccolomini, his paternal and brotherly kindness, are feelings which cast an affecting lustre over the harsher, more heroic qualities wherewith they are combined. His treason to the Emperor is a crime, for which, provoked and tempted as he was, we do not greatly blame him; it is forgotten in our admiration of his nobleness, or recollected only as a venial trespass. Schiller has succeeded well with Wallenstein, where it was not easy to succeed. The truth of history has been but little violated; yet we are compelled to feel that Wallenstein, whose actions individually are trifling, unsuccessful, and unlawful, is a strong, sublime, commanding character; we look at him with interest, our concern at his fate is tinged with a shade of kindly pity.

In Octavio Piccolomini, his war-companion, we can find less fault, yet we take less pleasure. Octavio's qualities are chiefly negative: he rather walks by the letter of the moral law, than by its spirit; his conduct is externally correct, but there is no touch of generosity within. He is more of the courtier than of the soldier: his weapon is intrigue, not force. Believing firmly that 'whatever is, is best,' he distrusts all new and extraordinary things; he has no faith in human nature, and seems to be virtuous himself more by calculation than by impulse. We scarcely thank him for his loyalty; serving his Emperor, he ruins and betrays his friend: and, besides, though he does not own it, personal ambition is among his leading motives; he wishes to be general and prince, and Wallenstein is not only a traitor to his sovereign, but a bar to this advancement. It is true, Octavio does not personally tempt him towards his destruction; but neither does he warn him from it; and perhaps he knew that fresh temptation was superfluous. Wallenstein did not deserve such treatment from a man whom he had trusted as a brother, even though such confidence was blind, and guided by visions and starry omens. Octavio is a skilful, prudent, managing statesman; of the kind praised loudly, if not sincerely, by their friends, and detested deeply by their enemies. His object may be lawful or even laudable; but his ways are crooked; we dislike him but the more that we know not positively how to blame him.

Octavio Piccolomini and Wallenstein are, as it were, the two opposing forces by which this whole universe of military politics is kept in motion. The struggle of magnanimity and strength combined with treason, against cunning and apparent virtue, aided by law, gives rise to a series of great actions, which are here vividly presented to our view. We mingle in the clashing interests of these men of war; we see them at their gorgeous festivals and stormy consultations, and participate in the hopes or fears that agitate them. The subject had many capabilities; and Schiller has turned them all to profit. Our minds are kept alert by a constant succession of animating scenes of spectacle, dialogue, incident: the plot thickens and darkens as we advance; the interest deepens and deepens to the very end.

But among the tumults of this busy multitude, there are two forms of celestial beauty that solicit our attention, and whose destiny, involved with that of those around them, gives it an importance in our eyes which it could not otherwise have had. Max Piccolomini, Octavio's son, and Thekla, the daughter of Wallenstein, diffuse an ethereal radiance over all this tragedy; they call forth the finest feelings of the heart, where other feelings had already been aroused; they superadd to the stirring pomp of scenes, which had already kindled our imaginations, the enthusiasm of bright unworn humanity, 'the bloom of young desire, the purple light of love.' The history of Max and Thekla is not a rare one in poetry; but Schiller has treated it with a skill which is extremely rare. Both of them are represented as combining every excellence; their affection is instantaneous and unbounded; yet the coolest, most sceptical reader is forced to admire them, and believe in them.

Of Max we are taught from the first to form the highest expectations: the common soldiers and their captains speak of him as of a perfect hero; the Cuirassiers had, at Pappenheim's death, on the field of Lützen, appointed him their colonel by unanimous election. His appearance answers these ideas: Max is the very spirit of honour, and integrity, and young ardour, personified. Though but passing into maturer age, he has already seen and suffered much; but the experience of the man has not yet deadened or dulled the enthusiasm of the boy. He has lived, since his very childhood, constantly amid the clang of war, and with few ideas but those of camps; yet here, by a native instinct, his heart has attracted to it all that was noble and graceful in the trade of arms, rejecting all that was repulsive or ferocious. He loves Wallenstein his patron, his gallant and majestic leader: he loves his present way of life, because it is one of peril and excitement, because he knows no other, but chiefly because his young unsullied spirit can shed a resplendent beauty over even the wastest region in the destiny of man. Yet though a soldier, and the bravest of soldiers, he is not this alone. He feels that there are fairer scenes in life, which these scenes of havoc and distress but deform or destroy; his first acquaintance with the Princess Thekla unveils to him another world, which till then he had not dreamed of; a land of peace and serene elysian felicity, the charms of which he paints with simple and unrivalled eloquence. Max is not more daring than affectionate; he is merciful and gentle, though his training has been under tents; modest and altogether unpretending, though young and universally admired. We conceive his aspect to be thoughtful but fervid, dauntless but mild: he is the very poetry of war, the essence of a youthful hero. We should have loved him anywhere; but here, amid barren scenes of strife and danger, he is doubly dear to us.

His first appearance wins our favour; his eloquence in sentiment prepares us to expect no common magnanimity in action. It is as follows: Octavio and Questenberg are consulting on affairs of state; Max enters: he is just returned from convoying the Princess Thekla and her mother, the daughter and the wife of Friedland, to the camp at Pilsen.

Act I. Scene IV.

Max Piccolomini, Octavio Piccolomini, Questenberg

Max. 'Tis he himself! My father, welcome, welcome!

[He embraces him: on turning round, he observes Questenberg, and draws coldly back.

Busied, I perceive? I will not interrupt you.Oct. How now, Max? View this stranger better!An old friend deserves regard and kindness;The Kaiser's messenger should be rever'd!Max. [drily] Von Questenberg! If it is good that brings youTo our head-quarters, welcome!Quest. [has taken his hand] Nay, draw notYour hand away, Count Piccolomini!Not on mine own account alone I grasp it,And nothing common will I say therewith.Octavio, Max, Piccolomini![Taking both their hands.Names of benignant solemn import! NeverCan Austria's fortune fail while two such stars,To guide and guard her, gleam above our hosts.Max. You play it wrong, Sir Minister! To praise,I wot, you come not hither; to blame and censureYou are come. Let me be no exception.Oct. [to Max.] He comes from Court, where every one is notSo well contented with the Duke as here.Max. And what new fault have they to charge him with?That he alone decides what he aloneCan understand? Well! Should it not be so?It should and must! This man was never madeTo ply and mould himself like wax to others:It goes against his heart; he cannot do it,He has the spirit of a ruler, andThe station of a ruler. Well for usIt is so! Few can rule themselves, can useTheir wisdom wisely: happy for the wholeWhere there is one among them that can beA centre and a hold for many thousands;That can plant himself like a firm column,For the whole to lean on safely! Such a oneIs Wallenstein; some other man might betterServe the Court, none else could serve the Army.Quest. The Army, truly!Max.And it is a pleasureTo behold how all awakes and strengthensAnd revives around him; how men's facultiesCome forth; their gifts grow plainer to themselves!From each he can elicit his endowment,His peculiar power; and does it wisely;Leaving each to be the man he found him,Watching only that he always be so.I' th' proper place: and thus he makes the talentsOf all mankind his own.Quest.No one denies himSkill in men, and skill to use them. His fault isThat in the ruler he forgets the servant,As if he had been born to be commander.Max. And is he not? By birth he is investedWith all gifts for it, and with the farther giftOf finding scope to use them; of acquiringFor the ruler's faculties the ruler's office.Quest. So that how far the rest of us have rightsOr influence, if any, lies with Friedland?Max. He is no common person; he requiresNo common confidence: allow him space;The proper limit he himself will set.Quest. The trial shows it!Max.Ay! Thus it is with them!Still so! All frights them that has any depth;Nowhere are they at ease but in the shallows.Oct. [to Quest.] Let him have his way, my friend! The argumentWill not avail us.Max.They invoke the spiritI' th' hour of need, and shudder when he rises.The great, the wonderful, must be accomplishedLike a thing of course!—In war, in battle,A moment is decisive; on the spotMust be determin'd, in the instant done.With ev'ry noble quality of natureThe leader must be gifted: let him live, then,In their noble sphere! The oracle within him,The living spirit, not dead books, old forms,Not mould'ring parchments must he take to counsel.Oct. My Son! despise not these old narrow forms!They are as barriers, precious walls and fences,Which oppressed mortals have erectedTo mod'rate the rash will of their oppressors.For the uncontrolled has ever been destructive.The way of Order, though it lead through windings,Is the best. Right forward goes the lightningAnd the cannon-ball: quick, by the nearest path,They come, op'ning with murderous crash their way,To blast and ruin! My Son! the quiet roadWhich men frequent, where peace and blessings travel,Follows the river's course, the valley's bendings;Modest skirts the cornfield and the vineyard,Revering property's appointed bounds;And leading safe though slower to the mark.Quest. O, hear your Father! him who is at onceA hero and a man!Oct.It is the childO' th' camp that speaks in thee, my Son: a warOf fifteen years has nursed and taught thee; peaceThou hast never seen. My Son, there is a worthBeyond the worth of warriors: ev'n in war itselfThe object is not war. The rapid deedsOf power, th' astounding wonders of the moment—It is not these that minister to manAught useful, aught benignant or enduring.In haste the wandering soldier comes, and buildsWith canvas his light town: here in a momentIs a rushing concourse; markets open;Roads and rivers crowd with merchandiseAnd people; Traffic stirs his hundred arms.Ere long, some morning, look,—and it is gone!The tents are struck, the host has marched away;Dead as a churchyard lies the trampled seed-field,And wasted is the harvest of the year.Max. O Father! that the Kaiser would make peace!The bloody laurel I would gladly changeFor the first violet Spring should offer us,The tiny pledge that Earth again was young!Oct. How's this? What is it that affects thee so?Max. Peace I have never seen? Yes, I have seen it!Ev'n now I come from it: my journey led meThrough lands as yet unvisited by war.O Father! life has charms, of which we know not:We have but seen the barren coasts of life;Like some wild roving crew of lawless pirates,Who, crowded in their narrow noisome ship,Upon the rude sea, with rude manners dwell;Naught of the fair land knowing but the bays,Where they may risk their hurried thievish landing.Of the loveliness that, in its peaceful dales,The land conceals—O Father!—O, of this,In our wild voyage we have seen no glimpse.Oct. [gives increased attention]And did this journey show thee much of it?Max. 'Twas the first holiday of my existence.Tell me, where's the end of all this labour,This grinding labour that has stolen my youth,And left my heart uncheer'd and void, my spiritUncultivated as a wilderness?This camp's unceasing din; the neighing steeds;The trumpet's clang; the never-changing roundOf service, discipline, parade, give nothingTo the heart, the heart that longs for nourishment.There is no soul in this insipid bus'ness;Life has another fate and other joys.Oct. Much hast thou learn'd, my Son, in this short journey!Max. O blessed bright day, when at last the soldierShall turn back to life, and be again a man!Through th' merry lines the colours are unfurl'd,And homeward beats the thrilling soft peace-march;All hats and helmets deck'd with leafy sprays,The last spoil of the fields! The city's gatesFly up; now needs not the petard to burst them:The walls are crowded with rejoicing people;Their shouts ring through the air: from every towerBlithe bells are pealing forth the merry vesperOf that bloody day. From town and hamletFlow the jocund thousands; with their heartyKind impetuosity our march impeding.The old man, weeping that he sees this day,Embraces his long-lost son: a strangerHe revisits his old home; with spreading boughsThe tree o'ershadows him at his return,Which waver'd as a twig when he departed;And modest blushing comes a maid to meet him,Whom on her nurse's breast he left. O happy,For whom some kindly door like this, for whomSoft arms to clasp him shall be open'd!—Quest. [with emotion]O thatThe times you speak of should be so far distant!Should not be tomorrow, be today!Max. And who's to blame for it but you at Court?I will deal plainly with you, Questenberg:When I observ'd you here, a twinge of spleenAnd bitterness went through me. It is youThat hinder peace; yes, you. The GeneralMust force it, and you ever keep tormenting him,Obstructing all his steps, abusing him;For what? Because the good of Europe liesNearer his heart, than whether certain acresMore or less of dirty land be Austria's!You call him traitor, rebel, God knows what,Because he spares the Saxons; as if thatWere not the only way to peace; for howIf during war, war end not, can peace follow?Go to! go to! As I love goodness, so I hateThis paltry work of yours: and here I vow to God,For him, this rebel, traitor Wallenstein,To shed my blood, my heart's blood, drop by drop,Ere I will see you triumph in his fall!

The Princess Thekla is perhaps still dearer to us. Thekla, just entering on life, with 'timid steps,' with the brilliant visions of a cloister yet undisturbed by the contradictions of reality, beholds in Max, not merely her protector and escort to her father's camp, but the living emblem of her shapeless yet glowing dreams. She knows not deception, she trusts and is trusted: their spirits meet and mingle, and 'clasp each other firmly and forever.' All this is described by the poet with a quiet inspiration, which finds its way into our deepest sympathies. Such beautiful simplicity is irresistible. 'How long,' the Countess Terzky asks,