w
chastened into the steadfast energy of manhood; the wild enthusiast,
that spurned at the errors of the world, has now become the
enlightened moralist, that laments their necessity, or endeavours to
find out their remedy. A corresponding alteration is visible in the
external form of the work, in its plot and diction. The plot is
contrived with great ingenuity, embodying the result of much study,
both dramatic and historical. The language is blank verse, not prose,
as in the former works; it is more careful and regular, less ambitious
in its object, but more certain of attaining it. Schiller's mind had
now reached its full stature: he felt and thought more justly; he
could better express what he felt and thought.

The merit we noticed in _Fiesco_, the fidelity with which the scene of
action is brought before us, is observable to a still greater degree
in _Don Carlos_. The Spanish court in the end of the sixteenth
century; its rigid, cold formalities; its cruel, bigoted, but
proud-spirited grandees; its inquisitors and priests; and Philip, its
head, the epitome at once of its good and its bad qualities, in all
his complex interests, are exhibited with wonderful distinctness and
address. Nor is it at the surface or the outward movements alone that
we look; we are taught the mechanism of their characters, as well as
shown it in action. The stony-hearted Despot himself must have been an
object of peculiar study to the author. Narrow in his understanding,
dead in his affections, from his birth the lord of Europe, Philip has
existed all his days above men, not among them. Locked up within
himself, a stranger to every generous and kindly emotion, his gloomy
spirit has had no employment but to strengthen or increase its own
elevation, no pleasure but to gratify its own self-will. Superstition,
harmonising with these native tendencies, has added to their force,
but scarcely to their hatefulness: it lends them a sort of sacredness
in his own eyes, and even a sort of horrid dignity in ours. Philip is
not without a certain greatness, the greatness of unlimited external
power, and of a will relentless in its dictates, guided by principles,
false, but consistent and unalterable. The scene of his existence is
haggard, stern and desolate; but it is all his own, and he seems
fitted for it. We hate him and fear him; but the poet has taken care
to secure him from contempt.

The contrast both of his father's fortune and character are tho