His Æsthetic Discourses.
The very strong inclination of the poet towards the abstract discussion is shown in his “Dissertation on the Connection of the Animal Nature of man with the Spiritual,” written and printed in his twenty-first year: as well as in others nearly as early. And few things of the kind can be more curious than the comparison of the “Briefe über Don Carlos” with such other defences of a man’s own work as Dryden’s or Corneille’s[Corneille’s].[[739]] The Discourses on Tragedy,[[740]] which appeared in the Thalia for 1792, of course have their interest. But Schiller’s most noteworthy exercises in this direction have, I believe, been generally thought to be the æsthetic discourses of the Fourteenth volume[[741]] and those on “Naïve and Sentimental Poetry,”[[742]] and on “The Sublime” in the Fifteenth.
The Bürger review.
This also contains the few reviews preserved. Of these, the most remarkable is the unlucky one on Bürger, as to which I can only say that, having first read it when I had not read A. W. Schlegel’s reply,[[743]] and did not know the tenor of this, I had anticipated Schlegel’s verdict, that it is “an offence against literary morality.” In one case, therefore, however humble, Schiller’s later plea,[[744]] that posterity would do justice to the uprightness of his intentions, has not itself been justified: and I cannot think that it can have been so in many others. For, though the ill side of human nature will always rejoice in its own likeness, and though, even putting this aside, there is still a singular notion abroad that an abusive review must be an honest and well-intentioned one, this review is one of the worst ever written, and in one of its own latter sentences it writes itself down so. Bürger, we are told, has “wealth of poetical painting, the glowing and energetic language of the heart, a streamer of poetry, now waving gorgeously, now caressingly floating, and [finally] an honest heart that speaks from every line.” If it were possible to imagine a reader who did not know Lenore or anything of the rest, and who had worked patiently through the pages on pages of carping and sneering which lead up to this astonishing confession, we can only suppose that he would gasp for breath, and wonder whether he had turned over half a dozen sheets at once and come upon the end of a quite different paper.
The truth appears to be that Schiller, with all his talent, all his genius, was something of a prig: and a prig is capable of almost any discreditable act. It has often been pointed out that for the author of Die Räuber to find fault with Bürger as not being strictly proper is “rather too rich”: but it must be remembered that when Schiller wrote Die Räuber he was a prig too, though a prig in a fit of unconventional, Bohemian, and Sturm-und-Drang priggishness. Here the cold fit had followed the hot. The poet of the Moors is now busied with “the man of culture,” with “Idealising art which collects and mirrors all the morality, all the character, all the wisdom of the time,” and which of course rejects equally raptures about “Molly,” and childish things about the dead riding fast. He informs us, with the true superior air, that Bürger “not seldom mingles with the People, to whom he should only let himself condescend.” And he has succeeded, marvellous to say, in reducing ad absurdum the argument against popularity as a test of poetry, in his very endeavour to reduce thereto the argument for it. “’Tis as much as to say,” cries he with lofty scorn, “‘What pleases excellent judges is good: what pleases all without distinction is better.’” “Why, so it is, oh well-born Court-Counsellor and Professor at Jena,” one may reply.[[745]]
The Xenien.
As for the Xenien, I am afraid I am still more out of accord with Schiller’s admirers here. The ill-nature of them is very suspicious when we find that, in this collaboration, it communicated itself to Goethe, who was certainly not ill-natured as a rule, though he was rather selfish. But the ill-nature is not the worst part. This kind of thing, whether it is done by a Pope, or by a Firm of Goethe, Schiller, & Company, has some of the disgustfulness of pigeon-shooting or even rabbit-coursing. There is hardly any real sport in it; the victims are nearly always rather defenceless, and generally quite harmless: their destruction does little, if any, good to anybody; and the spectacle is demoralising.[[746]]
These Xenien, I confess, appear to me to be one of those superstitions of literature which it is certainly the business of the critic, and the historian of Criticism, to protest against and demolish if he can. I never thought very much of them: and I think still less of them after a very careful study for the purposes of this book.[[747]] They corresponded, of course, in a certain sense, to the nearly contemporary, but much less famous and, as far as their authors are concerned, much less remarkable battues of Rivarol and Gifford in France and England. Goethe and Schiller were not only much more formidable sportsmen, but had much better game—or worse vermin if anybody likes—for quarry. The imperfections of German literature were, as they always have been, much greater than those of French, and much more easily got at than those of English. It is rather ridiculous, and more than rather disgusting, to find even such men treating such others as Wieland and Jean Paul (Herder himself seems only to have escaped because of his personal connection with Weimar) as if they were “Tom Sternhold or Tom Shadwell.” But this is not the worst of it. The Xenien are not, as a rule or in any large proportion, particularly good: and if they did not appeal to the ill-nature of mankind, and had not great names attached to them, few people would think them so. Schiller’s are often very lumbering verse and phrase, regarded merely as phrase and verse: Goethe’s are less often so, but seldom very brilliant as either.[[748]] If more people would read them in comparison with Martial himself, their lameness and awkwardness could hardly fail to be made clear. It would need a rather wider reading (though I at least have as little doubt of the result) to show not merely their pervading ill-nature and arrogance but their frequent miss-fires.