hiller this universal popularity. However
superlative the praises which have lately been heaped on Schiller's poetry
by those who cannot praise except in superlatives, we believe that it was
not the poet, but the man, to whom the world has paid this unprecedented
tribute of love and admiration. After reading Schiller's works we must
read Schiller's life,--the greatest of all his works. It is a life not
unknown to the English public, for it has been written by Carlyle. The
last festivities, however, have given birth to several new biographies.
Palleske's "Life of Schiller" has met with such success in Germany that it
well deserved the honor which it has lately received at the hands of Lady
Wallace, and under the special patronage of the Queen, of being translated
into English. Another very careful and lucid account of the poet's life is
due to the pen of a member of the French Institute, M. A. Regnier, the
distinguished tutor of the Comte de Paris.

In reading these lives, together with the voluminous literature which is
intended to illustrate the character of the German poet, we frequently
felt inclined to ask one question, to which none of Schiller's biographers
has returned a satisfactory answer: "What were the peculiar circumstances
which brought out in Germany, and in the second half of the eighteenth
century, a man of the moral character, and a poet of the creative genius,
of Schiller?" Granted that he was endowed by nature with the highest
talents, how did he grow to be a poet, such as we know him, different from
all other German poets, and yet in thought, feeling, and language the most
truly German of all the poets of Germany? Are we reduced to appeal to the
mysterious working of an unknown power, if we wish to explain to ourselves
why, in the same country and at the same time, poetical genius assumed
such different forms as are seen in the writings of Schiller and Goethe?
Is it to be ascribed to what is called individuality, a word which in
truth explains nothing; or is it possible for the historian and
psychologist to discover the hidden influences which act on the growing
mind, and produce that striking variety of poetical genius which we admire
in the works of contemporaneous poets, such as Schiller and Goethe in
Germany, or Wordsworth and Byron in England? Men grow not only from
within, but also from without. We know that a poet is born,--_poeta
nascitur_,--but we also know that his character must be formed; t