n 1845 in order to prevent
piratical reprints. In his introduction to the second edition,
Carlyle pleads for the indulgence of the reader, asking him to
remember constantly that "it was written twenty years ago." It
has indeed been superseded by more temperate studies of
Schiller, but its tone of enthusiasm gives it a great value of
its own.

_Schiller's Youth_ (1759-1784)

Distinguished alike for the splendour of his intellectual faculties, and
the elevation of his tastes and feelings, Friedrich Schiller has left
behind him in his works a noble emblem of these great qualities. Much of
his life was deformed by inquietude and disease, and it terminated at
middle age; he composed in a language then scarcely settled into form;
yet his writings are remarkable for their extent, their variety, and
their intrinsic excellence, and his own countrymen are not his only, or,
perhaps, his principal admirers.

Born on November 10, 1759, a few months later than Robert Burns, he was
a native of Marbach in Wuertemberg. His father had been a surgeon in the
army, and was now in the pay of the Duke of Wuertemberg; and the
benevolence, integrity and devoutness of his parents were expanded and
beautified in the character of their son. His education was irregular;
desiring at first to enter the clerical profession, he was put to the
study of law and then of medicine; but he wrenched asunder his fetters
with a force that was felt at the extremities of Europe. In his
nineteenth year he began the tragedy of the "Robbers," and its
publication forms an era in the literature of the world.

It is a work of tragic interest, bordering upon horror. A grim,
inexpiable Fate is made the ruling principle; it envelops and
overshadows the whole; and under its souring influence, the fiercest
efforts of human will appear but like flashes that illuminate the wild
scene with a brief and terrible splendour, and are lost forever in the
darkness. The unsearchable abysses of man's destiny are laid open before
us, black and profound, and appalling, as they seem to the young mind
when it first attempts to explore them.

Schiller had meanwhile become a surgeon in the Wuertemberg army; and the
Duke, scandalised at the moral errors of the "Robbers," and not less at
its want of literary merit, forbade him to write more poetry. Dalberg,
superintendent of the Manheim theatre, put the play on the stage in
1781, and in October, 1782, Sc