open
to Goethe's objection (an objection showing very nice perception of
nature)--that extreme thirst was not likely to happen to a man who had
lately passed through a stream on a rainy day, and whose clothes must
have been saturated with moisture--nor in the traveller's preoccupied
state of mind, is it probable that he would have so much felt the mere
physical want. With less reason has it been urged by other critics, that
the sudden relenting of the tyrant is contrary to his character. The
tyrant here has no individual character at all. He is the mere
personation of disbelief in truth and love--which the spectacle of
sublime self-abnegation at once converts. In this idea lies the deep
philosophical truth, which redeems all the defects of the piece--for
poetry, in its highest form, is merely this--"Truth made beautiful."

[38] The somewhat irregular metre of the original has been preserved
in this ballad, as in other poems; although the perfect anapaestic metre
is perhaps more familiar to the English ear.

[39] "Die Gestalt"--Form, the Platonic Archetype.

[40] More literally translated thus by the author of the article on
Schiller in the Foreign and Colonial Review, July, 1843--

"Thence all witnesses forever banished
Of poor human nakedness."

[41] The law, i. e., the Kantian ideal of truth and virtue. This stanza
and the next embody, perhaps with some exaggeration, the Kantian doctrine
of morality.

[42] "But in God's sight submission is command." "Jonah," by the Rev.
F. Hodgson. Quoted in Foreign and Colonial Review, July, 1843: Art.
Schiller, p. 21.

[43] It seems generally agreed that poetry is allegorized in these
stanzas; though, with this interpretation, it is difficult to
reconcile the sense of some of the lines--for instance, the last in
the first stanza. How can poetry be said to leave no trace when she
takes farewell?

[44] "I call the living--I mourn the dead--I break the lightning."
These words are inscribed on the great bell of the Minster of
Schaffhausen--also on that of the Church of Art near Lucerne. There was
an old belief in Switzerland that the undulation of air caused by the
sound of a bell, broke the electric fluid of a thunder-cloud.

[45] A piece of clay pipe, which becomes vitrified if the metal is
sufficiently heated.

[46] The translator adheres to the original, in forsaking the rhyme in
these lines and some others.

[47] Written in the time of the French war.

[48] L