er hand, perceived in Goethe the true dignity of a
poet. At Jena his ambition was to have the title of Professor of History;
at Weimar he saw that it was a greater honor to be called a poet, and the
friend of Goethe. When he saw that Goethe treated him as his friend, and
that the Duke and his brilliant court looked upon him as his equal,
Schiller, too modest to suppose he had earned such favors, was filled with
a new zeal, and his poetical genius displayed for a time an almost
inexhaustible energy. Scarcely had his "Wallenstein" been finished, in
1799, when he began his "Mary Stuart." This play was finished in the
summer of 1800, and a new one was taken in hand in the same year,--the
"Maid of Orleans." In the spring of 1801 the "Maid of Orleans" appeared on
the stage, to be followed in 1803 by the "Bride of Messina," and in 1804
by his last great work, his "William Tell." During the same time Schiller
composed his best ballads, his "Song of the Bell," his epigrams, and his
beautiful Elegy, not to mention his translations and adaptations of
English and French plays for the theatre at Weimar. After his "William
Tell" Schiller could feel that he no longer owed his place by the side of
Goethe to favor and friendship, but to his own work and worth. His race
was run, his laurels gained. His health, however, was broken, and his
bodily frame too weak to support the strain of his mighty spirit. Death
came to his relief, giving rest to his mind, and immortality to his name.

Let us look back once more on the life of Schiller. The lives of great men
are the lives of martyrs; we cannot regard them as examples to follow, but
rather as types of human excellence to study and to admire. The life of
Schiller was not one which many of us would envy; it was a life of toil
and suffering, of aspiration rather than of fulfillment, a long battle
with scarcely a moment of rest for the conqueror to enjoy his hard-won
triumphs. To an ambitious man the last ten years of the poet's life might
seem an ample reward for the thirty years' war of life which he had to
fight single-handed. But Schiller was too great a man to be ambitious.
Fame with him was a means, never an object. There was a higher, a nobler
aim in his life, which upheld him in all his struggles. From the very
beginning of his career Schiller seems to have felt that his life was not
his. He never lived for himself; he lived and worked for mankind. He
discovered within himself how much th