The Life of Friedrich Schiller. Томас Карлейль

the lost nobility of man.

      Once more make of the subject what he was,

      The purpose of the Crown; let no tie bind him,

      Except his brethren's right, as sacred as

      His own. And when, given back to self-dependence,

      Man awakens to the feeling of his worth,

      And freedom's proud and lofty virtues blossom,

      Then, Sire, having made your realms the happiest

      In the Earth, it may become your duty

      To subdue the realms of others.

      King [after a long pause].

      I have heard you to an end.

      Not as in common heads, the world is painted

      In that head of yours: nor will I mete you

      By the common standard. I am the first

      To whom your heart has been disclosed:

      I know this, so believe it. For the sake

      Of such forbearance; for your having kept

      Ideas, embraced with such devotion, secret

      Up to this present moment, for the sake

      Of that reserve, young man, I will forget

      That I have learned them, and how I learned them.

      Arise. The headlong youth I will set right,

      Not as his sovereign, but as his senior.

      I will, because I will. So! bane itself,

      I find, in generous natures may become

      Ennobled into something better. But

      Beware my Inquisition! It would grieve me

      If you—

      Mar. Would it? would it?

      King [gazing at him, and lost in surprise].

      Such a mortal

      Till this hour I never saw. No, Marquis!

      No! You do me wrong. To you I will not

      Be a Nero, not to you. All happiness

      Shall not be blighted by me: you yourself

      Shall be permitted to remain a man

      Beside me.

      Mar. [quickly] And my fellow-subjects, Sire?

      Oh, not for me, not my cause was I pleading.

      And your subjects, Sire?

      King.You see so clearly

      How posterity will judge of me; yourself

      Shall teach it how I treated men so soon

      As I had found one.

      Mar.O Sire! in being

      The most just of kings, at the same instant

      Be not the most unjust! In your Flanders

      Are many thousands worthier than I.

      'Tis but yourself,—shall I confess it, Sire?—

      That under this mild form first truly see

      What freedom is.

      King [with softened earnestness].

      Young man, no more of this.

      Far differently will you think of men,

      When you have seen and studied them as I have.

      Yet our first meeting must not be our last;

      How shall I try to make you mine?

      Mar. Sire, let me

      Continue as I am. What good were it

      To you, if I like others were corrupted?

      King. This pride I will not suffer. From this moment

      You are in my service. No remonstrance!

      I will have it so. *  *  *  *  *

      Had the character of Posa been drawn ten years later, it would have been imputed, as all things are, to the 'French Revolution;' and Schiller himself perhaps might have been called a Jacobin. Happily, as matters stand, there is room for no such imputation. It is pleasing to behold in Posa the deliberate expression of a great and good man's sentiments on these ever-agitated subjects: a noble monument, embodying the liberal ideas of his age, in a form beautified by his own genius, and lasting as its other products.16

      Connected with the superior excellence of Posa, critics have remarked a dramatic error, which the author himself was the first to acknowledge and account for. The magnitude of Posa throws Carlos into the shade; the hero of the first three acts is no longer the hero of the other two. The cause of this, we are informed, was that Schiller kept the work too long upon his own hands:

      'In composing the piece,' he observes, 'many interruptions occurred; so that a considerable time elapsed between beginning and concluding it; and, in the mean while, much within myself had changed. The various alterations which, during this period, my way of thinking and feeling underwent, naturally told upon the work I was engaged with. What parts of it had at first attracted me, began to produce this effect in a weaker degree, and, in the end, scarcely at all. New ideas, springing up in the interim, displaced the former ones; Carlos himself had lost my favour, perhaps for no other reason than because I had become his senior; and, from the opposite cause, Posa had occupied his place. Thus I commenced the fourth and fifth acts with quite an altered heart. But the first three were already in the hands of the public; the plan of the whole could not now be re-formed; nothing therefore remained but to suppress the piece entirely, or to fit the second half to the first the best way I could.'

      The imperfection alluded to is one of which the general reader will make no great account; the second half is fitted to the first with address enough for his purposes. Intent not upon applying the dramatic gauge, but on being moved and exalted, we may peruse the tragedy without noticing that any such defect exists in it. The pity and love we are first taught to feel for Carlos abide with us to the last; and though Posa rises in importance as the piece proceeds, our admiration of his transcendent virtues does not obstruct the gentler feelings with which we look upon the fate of his friend. A certain confusion and crowding together of events, about the end of the play, is the only fault in its plan that strikes us with any force. Even this is scarcely prominent enough to be offensive.

      An intrinsic and weightier defect is the want of ease and lightness in the general composition of the piece; a defect which, all its other excellencies will not prevent us from observing. There is action enough in the plot, energy enough in the dialogue, and abundance of individual beauties in both; but there is throughout a certain air of stiffness and effort, which abstracts from the theatrical illusion. The language, in general impressive and magnificent, is now and then inflated into bombast. The characters do not, as it were, verify their human nature, by those thousand little touches and nameless turns, which distinguish the genius essentially dramatic from the genius merely poetical; the Proteus of the stage from the philosophic observer and trained imitator of life. We have not those careless felicities, those varyings from high to low, that air of living freedom which Shakspeare has accustomed us, like spoiled children, to look for in every perfect work of this species. Schiller is too elevated, too regular and sustained in his elevation, to be altogether natural.

      Yet with all this, Carlos is a noble tragedy. There is a stately massiveness about the structure of it; the incidents are grand and affecting; the characters powerful, vividly conceived, and impressively if not completely delineated. Of wit and its kindred graces Schiller has but a slender share: nor among great poets is he much distinguished for depth or fineness of pathos. But what gives him a place of his own, and the loftiest of its kind, is the vastness and intense vigour of his mind; the splendour of his thoughts and imagery, and the bold vehemence of

16

Jean Paul nevertheless, not without some show of reason, has compared this Posa to the tower of a lighthouse: 'high, far-shining,—empty!' (Note of 1845.)