subject of Beaumarchais'—and earlier in the same year appeared

Die Leiden des jungen Werther-the "Sorrows of Young Werther"-formerly so much beloved by the admirers of the sentimental style in literature. The book, written in a series of letters by the hero, Werther, is false in morality and sentiment, but possesses great and remarkable beauties. The descriptions of nature are among the finest Goethe ever penned. The motive of the tale is the suicide of the young Jerusalem, which had just occurred at Wetzlar, blended with the story of his own love for Charlotte Buff. But with that discretion which is undoubtedly, in such a case, the better part of valour, Goethe refrained from the decisive pistol-shot by which his hero ended his moaning, and as an alternative wrote the history of his sorrows.

Werther loves Charlotte. She is already betrothed to Albert, and in due course marries him. Werther tries to tear himself away from the scene of his unhappy love, tries to feel friendship only for the wife of his friend, but the effort is beyond his strength. He determines on suicide. Under the pretext of starting on a journey, he sends to borrow Albert's pistols, reflecting as he does so that Charlotte will take them down and dust them before sending them to him, and with these desirably-dusted weapons he shoots himself, after much deliberation and attention to accessories.

The affectation of the book, its mawkish sentimentality and unmanly weakness are apparent enough to us now, but at the time of its publication it created a fureur, and exercised an incredible, and, we must add, baneful influence. A principal reason of this was that it was a work of genius -unmistakable, though misapplied.

Goethe himself mocked his own "Werther in after life. It had served his purpose; by writing the story of his unfortunate affection he had cured himself of it.

"Götz" and "Werther are his two principal works of the "Sturm und Drang" period.

The other great dramatist of Germany,

Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller,

born November 10th, 1759, at Marbach, died May 9th, 1805, at Weimar, was in a greater degree than Goethe driven to revolutionary ideas, by his early experience of petty tyranny in his native Würtemberg. He was an army-surgeon in Stuttgart, and to avoid imprisonment without trial fled from the territory of the duke, whose anger was excited by Schiller's poetical work.

In 1781 Schiller's first play,

Die Räuber, was published, bearing a lion on the title-page and the inscription, "In tyrannos." The whole play was the cry of the oppressed against the oppressor, of the victim of social order against social order, and, with the immaturity of youthful judgment, the good is dashed away with the bad, and the just and the unjust are united in one sweeping condemnation.

The hero, Karl Moor, becomes the chief of a band of robbers. He is driven to this by a diabolically wicked brother Franz, who ousts him from his father's house and from his father's love, then attempts to kill the father and win the affections of Karl's betrothed, the indifferently drawn heroine, Amalia. The father dies, a victim of the abominable cruelty of Franz. Karl stabs Amalia. Franz, in abject terror at the retribution threatening his heavilyladen soul, puts an end to his own life, so that the sequel is wholly tragic. Karl Moor, with a price of a thousand Louis d'or on his head, goes to put himself in the power of a starving workman with the words, "Dem Mann kann geholfen werden."

This heroic robber, Karl Moor-the type of a noble

youth driven by injustice to wrong-doing-cries out against the state of his country, and openly calls for a republic. Some scenes in the play are coarse and repellent, the whole is exaggerated and crude; but Schiller's dramatic genius made itself felt from the first. He may shock, but he never wearies.

The poet's absence without leave in order to be present at the first performance of "Die Räuber" at Mannheim in 1782, was the climax of his offences in the Duke's eyes, and the immediate cause of his flight from Würtemberg territory.

Schiller produced another tragedy in 1783,

Fiesco, the story of a brilliant conspiracy against tyrannical power in Genoa. Again the hero is endowed with the ideal beauty of character and nobility of purpose which distinguished all Schiller's heroes, again the horrors of despotic power are depicted with a powerful hand. "Fiesco was followed the next year by

Kabale und Liebe, a tragedy in which the abuses of the petty German courts were handled mercilessly. President von Walter, the unscrupulous minister of the prince, and his villainous secretary, together with an unprincipled favourite, Lady Milford, unite against and cause the ruin of the hero and heroine the son of the minister, and a Bürgermädchen," Luise Miller.

66

In addition to the ignoble court intrigues, another abuse censured here is the "Soldatenhandel "-the traffic in soldiers, by which bands of unfortunate young men were drafted off by their prince to serve in foreign armies -simply sold as slaves, and slaves whose duty was to fight, and shed their blood for strangers.

These three tragedies were the principal products of Schiller's "Sturm und Drang" period. The ideal of liberty, chastened and refined, and rather poetic than practical, remained the constant inspiration of Schiller's works;

but the crudities and exaggerations were softened away, and only the imaginings of a pure and noble soul, tried by suffering, struggling against petty domestic cares, but filled with the worship of a beauty for which reality was too low, lived on in Schiller's unchangeable and sublime idealism.

CHAPTER X.

GOETHE.

THE name of Goethe is one of the few enrolled in the first rank of the poets of all nations, those poets who have given to the world works which will endure while language lasts. It is not by any means in all his writings that he has attained this pre-eminent rank. Among his voluminous works there is much which posterity has already ceased to value; much which was forced, written with divided heart, without spontaneity, or under the influence of a passing style. But though his genius may occasionally be obscured, it is never wholly hidden, and it bursts forth at times with dazzling splendour and almost overwhelming force. No one will deny to the first part of "Faust" its place among the masterpieces of all ages.

A comparison between the two men, Goethe and Schiller, as men, certainly shows Schiller the purer, the nobler. A comparison between them as poets gives the higher place to Goethe. Schiller, in his essay "Über naive und sentimentalische Dichtung," says: "Der Dichter ist entweder Natur, oder er wird sie suchen. Jenes macht den naiven, dieses den sentimentalischen Dichter." In his own opinion he himself is the "sentimental poet," Goethe the "naïve poet," therefore nature itself, while Schiller only seeks nature. This distinction, which establishes Goethe's superiority as a writer, accounts, perhaps, for Schiller's greater moral worth. Schiller was in many ways above