te with
him. In this antique cordwainer, as on a raft at anchor in the stream
of time, he would survey the changes and wonders of two thousand
years: the Roman and the Arab were to figure there; the Crusader and
the Circumnavigator, the Eremite of the Thebaid and the Pope of Rome.
Joannes himself, the Man existing out of Time and Space, Joannes the
unresting and undying, was to be a deeply tragic personage. Schubart
warmed himself with this idea; and talked about it in his cups, to the
astonishment of simple souls. He even wrote a certain rhapsody
connected with it, which is published in his poems. But here he
rested; and the project of the Wandering Jew, which Goethe likewise
meditated in his youth, is still unexecuted. Goethe turned to other
objects: and poor Schubart was surprised by death, in the midst of his
schemes, on the 10th of October 1791.

Of Schubart's character as a man, this record of his life leaves but a
mean impression. Unstable in his goings, without principle or plan, he
flickered through existence like an _ignis-fatuus_; now shooting into
momentary gleams of happiness and generosity, now quenched in the
mephitic marshes over which his zig-zag path conducted him. He had
many amiable qualities, but scarcely any moral worth. From first to
last his circumstances were against him; his education was
unfortunate, its fluctuating aimless wanderings enhanced its ill
effects. The thrall of the passing moment, he had no will; the fine
endowments of his heart were left to riot in chaotic turbulence, and
their forces cancelled one another. With better models and advisers,
with more rigid habits, and a happier fortune, he might have been an
admirable man: as it is, he is far from admirable.

The same defects have told with equal influence on his character as a
writer. Schubart had a quick sense of the beautiful, the moving, and
the true; his nature was susceptible and fervid; he had a keen
intellect, a fiery imagination; and his 'iron memory' secured forever
the various produce of so many gifts. But he had no diligence, no
power of self-denial. His knowledge lay around him like the plunder of
a sacked city. Like this too, it was squandered in pursuit of casual
objects. He wrote in gusts; the _labor limae et mora_ was a thing he
did not know. Yet his writings have great merit. His newspaper essays
abound in happy illustration and brilliant careless thought. His
songs, excluding those of a devotional and theoso