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1823.]

His Youth (1759—1784).

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der a certain dreary patience, which only shows them more painfully. He pored over his lexicons and insipid tasks with an artificial composure; but his spirit pined within him like a captive’s, when he looked forth into the cheerful world, or recollected the affection of parents, the hopes and frolicksome enjoyments of past years. The misery he endured in this severe and lonely mode of existence strengthened or produced in him a habit of constraint and shyness, which clung to his character through life.

The study of law, for which he had never felt any predilection, naturally grew in his mind to be the representative of all these evils, and his distaste for it went on increasing. On this point he made no secret of his feelings. One of the exercises prescribed yearly in the school was, a delineation of his own character, which each of the scholars was required to give in at an appointed time: Schiller, on the first of these exhibitions, ventured to state his persuasion, that he was not made to be a jurist, but called rather by his inclinations and faculties to the clerical profession. This statement of course produced no effect; he was forced to continue the accustomed course, and his dislike for law kept fast approaching to absolute disgust. In 1775, he was fortunate enough to get it relinquished, though at the expense of adopting another employment, for which, in different circumstances, he would hardly have declared himself. The study of medicine, for which a new institution was about this time added to the Stuttgard school, had no attractions for Schiller: he accepted it only as a galling servitude in exchange for one more galling. His mind was bent on higher objects; and he still felt all his present vexations aggravated by the thought that his fairest expectations from the future had been sacrificed to worldly convenience, and the humblest necessities of life.

Meanwhile the youth was waxing into manhood, and the fetters of discipline lay heavier on him, as his powers grew stronger, and his eyes became open to the stirring and variegated interests of the world, now unfolding itself to him under new and more glowing colours. As yet he contemplated the scene only from afar, and it seemed but the more gorgeous on that account. He longed to mingle in its busy current, and delighted to view the image of its movements in his favourite poets and historians. Plutarch and Shakspeare;^[1] the writings of Klopstock, Lessing, Garve, Herder, Gerstenberg, Goethe, and a multitude of others, which marked the dawning literature of Germany, he had studied with a secret avidity: they gave him vague ideas of men and life, or awakened in him splendid visions of literary glory. Klopstock’s Messias, combined with his own religious tendencies, had early turned him to sacred poetry: before the end of his fourteenth year, he had finished what he called an “epic poem,” entitled “Moses.” The extraordinary popularity of Gerstenberg’s Ugolino, and Goethe’s Götz von Berlichingen, next directed his attention to the drama; and as admiration in a mind like his, full of blind activity and nameless aspirings, naturally issues in imitation, he plunged with equal ardour into this new subject, and produced his first tragedy Cosmo von Medicis, some fragments of which he retained and inserted in his Robbers. A mass of minor performances, preserved among his papers, or published in the Magazines of the time, serve sufficiently to show that his mind had already dimly discovered its destination, and was striving with a restless vehemence to reach it, in spite of every obstacle. <references>

↑ The feeling produced in him by Shakspeare he described long afterwards: it throws light on the general state of his temper and tastes. “When I first, at a very early age,” he says, “became acquainted with this poet, I felt indignant at his coldness, his hardness of heart, which permitted him in the most melting pathos to utter jests,—to mar, by the introduction of a fool, the soul-searching scenes of Hamlet, Lear, &c.; which now kept him still where my sensibilities hastened forward, now drove him carelessly onward where I would so gladly have lingered. * * * He was the object of my reverence and zealous study, for years before I could love himself. I was not yet capable of comprehending Nature at first hand: I had but learned to admire her image reflected in the understanding and put in order by rules.” Werke, Bd. viii. 2, S. 77.

[1] The feeling produced in him by Shakspeare he described long afterwards: it throws light on the general state of his temper and tastes. “When I first, at a very early age,” he says, “became acquainted with this poet, I felt indignant at his coldness, his hardness of heart, which permitted him in the most melting pathos to utter jests,—to mar, by the introduction of a fool, the soul-searching scenes of Hamlet, Lear, &c.; which now kept him still where my sensibilities hastened forward, now drove him carelessly onward where I would so gladly have lingered. * * * He was the object of my reverence and zealous study, for years before I could love himself. I was not yet capable of comprehending Nature at first hand: I had but learned to admire her image reflected in the understanding and put in order by rules.” Werke, Bd. viii. 2, S. 77.

[1]