own like the club of Hercules; the stroke is
often of a crushing force, but its sweep is irregular and awkward.
When Moor is involved in the deepest intricacies of the old question,
necessity and free will, and has convinced himself that he is but an
engine in the hands of some dark and irresistible power, he cries out:
"Why has my Perillus made of me a brazen bull to roast men in my
glowing belly?" The stage-direction says, 'shaken with horror:' no
wonder that he shook!

Schiller has admitted these faults, and explained their origin, in
strong and sincere language, in a passage of which we have already
quoted the conclusion. 'A singular miscalculation of nature,' he says,
'had combined my poetical tendencies with the place of my birth. Any
disposition to poetry did violence to the laws of the institution
where I was educated, and contradicted the plan of its founder. For
eight years my enthusiasm struggled with military discipline; but the
passion for poetry is vehement and fiery as a first love. What
discipline was meant to extinguish, it blew into a flame. To escape
from arrangements that tortured me, my heart sought refuge in the
world of ideas, when as yet I was unacquainted with the world of
realities, from which iron bars excluded me. I was unacquainted with
men; for the four hundred that lived with me were but repetitions of
the same creature, true casts of one single mould, and of that very
mould which plastic nature solemnly disclaimed. * * * Thus
circumstanced, a stranger to human characters and human fortunes, to
hit the medium line between angels and devils was an enterprise in
which I necessarily failed. In attempting it, my pencil necessarily
brought out a monster, for which by good fortune the world had no
original, and which I would not wish to be immortal, except to
perpetuate an example of the offspring which Genius in its unnatural
union with Thraldom may give to the world. I allude to the
_Robbers_.'[5]

[Footnote 5: _Deutsches Museum v. Jahr_ 1784, cited by
Doering.]

Yet with all these excrescences and defects, the unbounded popularity
of the _Robbers_ is not difficult to account for. To every reader, the
excitement of emotion must be a chief consideration; to the mass of
readers it is the sole one: and the grand secret of moving others is,
that the poet be himself moved. We have seen how well Schiller's
temper and circumstances qualified him to fulfil this condition:
treatment, not o