f Schiller are also rich in particular traits
borrowed from the poems of the ancients, and into them he has often
introduced a higher significance than is found in the original. Let me
refer in this connection to his description of death from _The
Artists_--"The gentle bow of necessity"--which so beautifully recalls
the _gentle darts_ of Homer, where, however, the transfer of the
adjective from _darts_ to _bow_ gives to the thought a more tender and
a deeper significance.

Confidence in the intellectual power of man heightened to poetic form
is expressed in the distichs entitled _Columbus_, which are among the
most peculiar poetic productions that Schiller has given us. Belief in
the invisible force inherent in man, in the opinion, which is sublime
and deeply true, that there must be an inward mystic harmony between
it and the force which orders and governs the entire universe (for all
truth can only be a reflection of the eternal primal Truth), was a
characteristic feature of Schiller's way of thinking. It harmonized
also with the persistence with which he followed up every intellectual
task until it was satisfactorily completed. We see the same thought
expressed in the same kind of metaphor in the bold but beautiful
expression which occurs in the letters from Raphael to Julius in the
magazine, _The Thalia_--

"When Columbus made the risky wager with an untraveled sea." * * *

[Illustration: #UNIVERSITY OF BERLIN# With the statues of Wilhelm and
Alexander von Humboldt]

Art and poetry were directly joined to what was most noble in man;
they were represented to be the medium by means of which he first
awakens to the consciousness of that nature, reaching out beyond the
finite, which dwells within him. Both of them were thus placed upon
the height from which they really originate. To safeguard them upon
this height, to save them from being desecrated by every paltry and
belittling view, to rescue them from every sentiment which did not
spring from their purity, was really Schiller's aim, and appeared to
him as his true life-mission determined for him by the original
tendency of his nature.

His first and most urgent demands are, therefore, addressed to the
poet himself, from whom he requires not merely genius and talent
isolated, as it were, in their activity, but a mood which takes
possession of the entire soul and is in harmony with the sublimity of
his vocation; it must be not a mere momentary exaltation, but an