t them. We part with him in
pity and sorrow; looking less at his misdeeds than at their frightful
expiation.

The subordinate personages, though diminished in extent and varied in
their forms, are of a similar quality with the hero; a strange mixture
of extravagance and true energy. In perusing the work which represents
their characters and fates, we are alternately shocked and inspired;
there is a perpetual conflict between our understanding and our
feelings. Yet the latter on the whole come off victorious. The
_Robbers_ is a tragedy that will long find readers to astonish, and,
with all its faults, to move. It stands, in our imagination, like
some ancient rugged pile of a barbarous age; irregular, fantastic,
useless; but grand in its height and massiveness and black frowning
strength. It will long remain a singular monument of the early genius
and early fortune of its author.

The publication of such a work as this naturally produced an
extraordinary feeling in the literary world. Translations of the
_Robbers_ soon appeared in almost all the languages of Europe, and
were read in all of them with a deep interest, compounded of
admiration and aversion, according to the relative proportions of
sensibility and judgment in the various minds which contemplated the
subject. In Germany, the enthusiasm which the _Robbers_ excited was
extreme. The young author had burst upon the world like a meteor; and
surprise, for a time, suspended the power of cool and rational
criticism. In the ferment produced by the universal discussion of this
single topic, the poet was magnified above his natural dimensions,
great as they were: and though the general sentence was loudly in his
favour, yet he found detractors as well as praisers, and both equally
beyond the limits of moderation.

One charge brought against him must have damped the joy of literary
glory, and stung Schiller's pure and virtuous mind more deeply than
any other. He was accused of having injured the cause of morality by
his work; of having set up to the impetuous and fiery temperament of
youth a model of imitation which the young were too likely to pursue
with eagerness, and which could only lead them from the safe and
beaten tracks of duty into error and destruction. It has even been
stated, and often been repeated since, that a practical
exemplification of this doctrine occurred, about this time, in
Germany. A young nobleman, it was said, of the fairest gifts and
prosp