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For Schiller himself this was the bridge that led back from philosophy to poetry. Under Goethe's stimulus he won fresh laurels in that domain of philosophical lyric which he had opened with Die Künstler; and in Das Ideal und das Leben, Die Macht des Gesanges, Würde der Frauen, and Der Spaziergang, he produced masterpieces of reflective poetry which have not their equal in German literature. These poems appeared in the Musenalmanach, a new publication which Schiller began in 1796, the Horen, which had never met with the success it merited, coming to an end in 1797. In the Musenalmanach were also published the &ldquo;Xenien&rdquo; (1797), a collection of distichs by Goethe and Schiller, in which the two friends avenged themselves on the cavilling critics who were not in sympathy with them. The Almanach of the following year, 1798, was even more noteworthy, for it contained a number of Schiller's most popular ballads, &ldquo;Der Ring des Polykrates,&rdquo; &ldquo;Der Handschuh,&rdquo; &ldquo;Ritter Toggenburg,&rdquo; &ldquo;Der Taucher,&rdquo; &ldquo;Die Kraniche des Ibykus&rdquo; and &ldquo;Der Gang nach dem Eisenhammer;&rdquo; &ldquo;Der Kampf mit dem Drachen&rdquo; following in 1799, and &ldquo;Das Lied von der Glocke&rdquo; in 1800. As a ballad poet, Schiller's popularity has been hardly less great than as a dramatist; the bold and simple outline, the terse dramatic characterization appealed directly to the popular mind, which did not let itself be disturbed by the often artificial and rhetorical tone into which the poet falls. But the supreme importance of the last period of Schiller's life lay in the series of master-dramas which he gave to the world between 1799 and 1804. Just as Don Carlos had led him to the study of Dutch history, so now his occupation with the history of the Thirty Years' War supplied him with the theme of his trilogy of Wallenstein (1798-1799). The plan of Wallenstein was of long standing, and it was only towards the end, when Schiller realized the impossibility of saying all he had to say within five acts, that he decided to divide it into three parts, a descriptive prologue, Wallensteins Lager, and the two dramas Die Piccolomini and Wallensteins Tod. Without entirely breaking with the pseudo-classic method he had adopted in Don Carlos &mdash; the two lovers, Max Piccolomini and Thekla, are an obvious concession to the tradition of the French theatre &mdash; Wallenstein shows how much Schiller's art had benefited by his study of Greek tragedy; the fatalism of his hero is a masterly application of an antique motive to a modern theme. His whole conception of life and character had deepened since Don Carlos, and under the influence of Kant's philosophy the drama became the embodiment of ethical problems that are essentially modern. The success of Wallenstein, with which Schiller passed at once into the front rank of European dramatists, was so encouraging that the poet resolved to devote himself with redoubled ardour to dramatic poetry. Towards the end of 1799 he took up his residence permanently in Weimar, not only to be near his friend, but also that he might have the advantage of visiting regularly the theatre of which Goethe was director.

Wallenstein was followed in 1800 by Maria Stuart, a tragedy, which, in spite of its great popularity in and outside of Germany, was felt by the critics to follow too closely the methods of the lachrymose &ldquo;tragedy of common life&rdquo; to maintain a high position among Schiller's works. It is a serious flaw in the play that the fate of the heroine is virtually decided before the curtain rises, and the poet is obliged to create by theatrical devices the semblance of a tragic conflict which, in reality, does not exist. A finer production in every way is Schiller's &ldquo;romantic tragedy,&rdquo; Die Jungfrau von Orleans (1801). The resplendent medieval colouring of the subject, the essentially heroic character of Joan of Arc, gave Schiller an admirable opportunity for the display of his rich imagination and rhetorical gifts; and by an ingenious alteration of the historical tradition, he was able to make the drama a vehicle for his own imperturbable moral optimism. In unity of style and in the high level of its dramatic diction, Die Jungfrau von Orleans is unsurpassed among Schiller's works. Between this drama and its successor, Die Braut von Messina, Schiller translated and adapted to his classic ideals Shakespeare's Macbeth (1801) and Gozzi's Turandot (1802). With Die Braut von Messina (1803) he experimented with a tragedy on purely Greek lines, this drama being as close an approximation to ancient tragedy as its medieval and Christian milieu permitted of. If the experiment cannot be regarded as successful, the fault lies in the difficulty of reconciling the artificial conventions of the Greek theatre, the chorus and the oracle here represented by dreams and superstitions &mdash; with the point of view of the poet's own time. As far as the diction itself is concerned, the lyric outbursts of the chorus gave Schiller's genius an opportunity of which he was not slow to avail himself. In the poet's last completed drama, Wilhelm Tell (1804), he once more, as in Wallenstein, chose a historical subject involving wide issues. Wilhelm Tell is the drama of the Swiss people; its subject is less the personal fate of its hero than the struggle of a nation to free itself from tyranny. This is the reason for the epic breadth of the work, its picturesque and panoramic character. It also justifies the idealization of the hero, on the one hand, and, on the other, the introduction of episodes which have but little relation to his personal fate, or even put his character in a directly unfavourable light. Wilhelm Tell was an attempt to win for the German drama a new field, to widen the domain of dramatic poetry. Besides writing Tell, Schiller had found time in 1803 and 1804 to translate two French comedies by Picard, and to prepare a German version of Racine's Phèdre; and in the last months of his life he began a new tragedy, Demetrius, which gave every promise of being another step forward in his poetic achievement. But Demetrius remains a fragment of hardly two acts.

Schiller died at Weimar on the 9th of May 1805. His last years were darkened by constant ill-health; and indeed it is marvellous that he was able to achieve so much. A visit to Leipzig in 1801, and to Berlin &mdash; where there was some prospect of his being invited to settle &mdash; in 1804, were the chief outward events of his later years. He was ennobled in 1802, and in 1804 the duke of Weimar, unwilling to lose him, doubled his meagre salary of 400 talers. Schiller's art, with its broad, clear lines, its unambiguous moral issues, and its enthusiastic optimism, has appealed with