s, at one time thought of writing an _ Epic Poem
upon Friedrich the Great, _ 'upon some action of Friedrich's,' Schiller
says. Happily Schiller did not do it. By oversetting fact, disregarding
reality, and tumbling time and space topsy-turvy, Schiller with his fine
gifts might no doubt have written a temporary 'epic poem,' of the kind
read an admired by many simple persons. But that would have helped
little, and could not have lasted long. It is not the untrue imaginary
Picture of a man and his life that I want from my Schiller, but the
actual natural Likeness, true as the face itself, nay TRUER, in a sense.
Which the Artist, if there is one, might help to give, and the Botcher _
(Pfuscher)_ never can! Alas, and the Artist does not even try it; leaves
it altogether to the Botcher, being busy otherwise!--

"Men surely will at length discover again, emerging from these dismal
bewilderments in which the modern Ages reel and stagger this long while,
that to them also, as to the most ancient men, all Pictures that cannot
be credited are--Pictures of an idle nature; to be mostly swept out of
doors. Such veritably, were it never so forgotten, is the law! Mistakes
enough, lies enough will insinuate themselves into our most earnest
portrayings of the True: but that we should, deliberately and of
forethought, rake together what we know to be not true, and introduce
that in the hope of doing good with it? I tell you, such practice was
unknown in the ancient earnest times; and ought again to become unknown
except to the more foolish classes!" That is Sauerteig's strange notion,
not now of yesterday, as readers know:--and he goes then into "Homer's
Iliad," the "Hebrew Bible," "terrible Hebrew VERACITY of every line of
it;" discovers an alarming "kinship of Fiction to lying;" and asks,
If anybody can compute "the damage we poor moderns have got from our
practices of fiction in Literature itself, not to speak of awfully
higher provinces? Men will either see into all this by and by,"
continues he; "or plunge head foremost, in neglect of all this, whither
they little dream as yet!--

"But I think all real Poets, to this hour, are Psalmists and Iliadists
after their sort; and have in them a divine impatience of lies, a divine
incapacity of living among lies. Likewise, which is a corollary, that
the highest Shakspeare producible is properly the fittest Historian
producible;--and that it is frightful to see the _ Gelehrte Dummkopf _
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