Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 7.djvu/168

 118 ARTISTS AND AUTHORS read and admired ; but the editor spoke of it in terms of praise, and predicted that its author would become an honor to Germany. He wrote in secret, and was already busy sketching "The Robbers," and writing scenes in that famous drama; he and his young friends used to meet clandestinely and declaim their composi- tions, concealing their manuscripts when their rooms were searched and in- spected by the ushers and masters. He suffered intensely in his friendships, and his letters breathed rather the spirit of a man who had lived to see his fondest idols shattered, than that of a youth who had scarcely reached his spring-time. In his criticisms upon himself he was unsparingly harsh, and long after " The Robbers" had been declared to be a work of the highest genius, he penned the following remarkable condemnation of the play : " An extraordinary mistake of nature doomed me, in my birthplace, to be a poet. An inclination for poetry was an offence against the laws of the institution in which I was educated. For eight years my enthusiasm had to struggle with military discipline ; but a passion for poetry is strong and ardent as first love. It only served to inflame what it was designed to extinguish. To escape from things that were a torment to me my soul expatiated,in an ideal world ; but, unacquainted with the real world, from which I was separated by iron bars unacquainted with mankind, for the four hundred fellow-creatures around me were but one and the same individual, or rather faithful casts from the same model which plastic nature solemnly disowned unacquainted with the passions and propensities of independent agents, for here only one arrived at maturity (one that I shall not now mention) unac- quainted with the fair sex, for it is well known that the doors of this institution are not open to females, except before they begin to be interesting and when they have ceased to be so my pencil could not but miss that middle line be- tween angels and devils, and produce a monster, which fortunately had no exist- ence in the world, and to which I wish immortality merely that it may serve as a specimen of the issue engendered by the unnatural union of subordination and genius. I allude to ' The Robbers.' The whole moral world had accused the author of high treason. He has no other excuse to offer than the climate under which this piece was born. If any of the numberless censures launched against ' The Robbers ' be just, it is this, that I had the presumption to delineate men two years before I knew- anything about them." He was but twenty-one when The " Robbers" appeared in print and was produced upon the stage, and while he was hailed on all sides as the German Shakespeare, he lived in want and ex- treme privation. Duke Carl was deeply incensed by the patriotic and independent sentiments of the poet, and he sent an official mandate to Schiller, ordering him to discon- tinue all further literary work and composition. To disobey the despotic com- mand and to remain in the Duke's service, would have entailed imprisonment. He resolved upon flight from Solitude, and on the night following that on which "The Robbers" was being enacted for the first time in Hamburg to a crowded and enthusiastic audience, he fled, with a friend, from his fatherland to pursue his eventful and turbulent career. A description of his appearance at this period is