We have dwelt the longer on this play, not only on account of its peculiar fascinations, but also—as it is our last! Schiller's faculties had never been more brilliant than at present: strong in mature age, in rare and varied accomplishments, he was now reaping the full fruit of his studious vigils; the rapidity with which he wrote such noble poems, at once betokened the exuberant riches of his mind and the prompt command which he enjoyed of them. Still all that he had done seemed but a fraction of his appointed task: a bold imagination was carrying him forward into distant untouched fields of thought and poetry, where triumphs yet more glorious were to be gained. Schemes of new writings, new kinds of writing, were budding in his fancy; he was yet, as he had ever been, surrounded by a multitude of projects, and full of ardour to labour in fulfilling them. But Schiller's labours and triumphs were drawing to a close. The invisible Messenger was already near, which overtakes alike the busy and the idle, which arrests man in the midst of his pleasures or his occupations, and changes his countenance and sends him away.
In 1804, having been at Berlin witnessing the exhibition of his Wilhelm Tell, he was seized, while returning, with a paroxysm of that malady which for many years had never wholly left him. The attack was fierce and violent; it brought him to the verge of the grave; but he escaped once more; was considered out of danger, and again resumed his poetical employments. Besides various translations from the French and Italian, he had sketched a tragedy on the history of Perkin Warbeck, and finished two acts of one on that of a kindred but more fortunate impostor, Dimitri of Russia. His mind, it would appear, was also frequently engaged with more solemn and sublime ideas. The universe of human thought he had now explored and enjoyed; but he seems to have found no permanent contentment in any of its provinces. Many of his later poems indicate an incessant and increasing longing for some solution of the mystery of life; at times it is a gloomy resignation to the want and the despair of any. His ardent spirit could not satisfy itself with things seen, though gilded with all the glories of intellect and imagination; it soared away in search of other lands, looking with unutterable desire for some surer and brighter home beyond the horizon of this world. Death he had no reason to regard as probably a near event; but we easily perceive that the awful secrets connected with it had long been familiar to his contemplation. The veil which hid them from his eyes was now shortly, when he looked not for it, to be rent asunder.
The spring of 1805, which Schiller had anticipated with no ordinary hopes of enjoyment and activity, came on in its course, cold, bleak, and stormy; and along with it his sickness returned. The help of physicians was vain; the unwearied services of trembling affection were vain: his disorder kept increasing; on the 9th of May it reached a crisis. Early in the morning of that day, he grew insensible, and by degrees delirious. Among his expressions, the word Lichtenberg was frequently noticed; a word of no import; indicating, as some thought, the writer of that name, whose works he had lately been reading; according to others, the castle of Leuchtenberg, which, a few days before his sickness, he had been proposing to visit. The poet and the sage was soon to lie low; but his friends were spared the farther pain of seeing him depart in madness. The fiery canopy of physical suffering, which had bewildered and blinded his thinking faculties, was drawn aside; and the spirit of Schiller looked forth in its wonted serenity, once again before it passed away forever. After noon his delirium abated; about four o'clock he fell into a soft sleep, from which he ere long awoke in full possession of his senses. Restored to consciousness in that hour, when the soul is cut off from human help, and man must front the King of Terrors on his own strength, Schiller did not faint or fail in this his last and sharpest trial. Feeling that his end was come, he addressed himself to meet it as became him; not with affected carelessness or superstitious fear, but with the quiet unpretending manliness which had marked the tenor of his life. Of his friends and family he took a touching but a tranquil farewell: he ordered that his funeral should be private, without pomp or parade. Some one inquiring how he felt, he said "Calmer and calmer;" simple but memorable words, expressive of the mild heroism of the man. About six he sank into a deep sleep; once for a moment he looked up with a lively air, and said, "Many things were growing plain and clear to him!" Again he closed his eyes; and his sleep deepened and deepened, till it changed into the sleep from which there is no awakening; and all that remained of Schiller was a lifeless form, soon to be mingled with the clods of the valley.
The news of Schiller's death fell cold on many a heart: not in Germany alone, but over Europe, it was regarded as a public loss, by all who understood its meaning. In Weimar especially, the scene of his noblest efforts, the abode of his chosen friends, the sensation it produced was deep and universal. The public places of amusement were shut; all ranks made haste to testify their feelings, to honour themselves and the deceased by tributes to his memory. It was Friday when Schiller died; his funeral was meant to be on Sunday; but the state of his remains made it necessary to proceed before. Doering thus describes the ceremony:
'According to his own directions, the bier was to be borne by private burghers of the city; but several young artists and students, out of reverence for the deceased, took it from them. It was between midnight and one in the morning, when they approached the churchyard. The overclouded heaven threatened rain. But as the bier was set down beside the grave, the clouds suddenly split asunder, and the moon, coming forth in peaceful clearness, threw her first rays on the coffin of the Departed. They lowered him into the grave; and the moon again retired behind her clouds. A fierce tempest of wind began to howl, as if it were reminding the bystanders of their great, irreparable loss. At this moment who could have applied without emotion the poet's own words:
Alas, the ruddy morning tinges
A silent, cold, sepulchral stone;
And evening throws her crimson fringes
But round his slumber dark and lone!'
So lived and so died Friedrich Schiller; a man on whose history other men will long dwell with a mingled feeling of reverence and love. Our humble record of his life and writings is drawing to an end: yet we still linger, loth to part with a spirit so dear to us. From the scanty and too much neglected field of his biography, a few slight facts and indications may still be gleaned; slight, but distinctive of him as an individual, and not to be despised in a penury so great and so unmerited.
Schiller's age was forty-five years and a few months when he died.[38] Sickness had long wasted his form, which at no time could boast of faultless symmetry. He was tall and strongly boned; but unmuscular and lean: his body, it might be perceived, was wasting under the energy of a spirit too keen for it. His face was pale, the cheeks and temples rather hollow, the chin somewhat deep and slightly projecting, the nose irregularly aquiline, his hair inclined to auburn. Withal his countenance was attractive, and had a certain manly beauty. The lips were curved together in a line, expressing delicate and honest sensibility; a silent enthusiasm, impetuosity not unchecked by melancholy, gleamed in his softly kindled eyes and pale cheeks, and the brow was high and thoughtful. To judge from his portraits, Schiller's face expressed well the features of his mind: it is mildness tempering strength; fiery ardour shining through the clouds of suffering and disappointment, deep but patiently endured. Pale was its proper tint; the cheeks and temples were best hollow. There are few faces that affect us more than Schiller's; it is at once meek, tender, unpretending, and heroic.
In his dress and manner, as in all things, he was plain and unaffected. Among strangers, something shy and retiring might occasionally be observed in him: in his own family, or among his select friends, he was kind-hearted, free, and gay as a little child. In public, his external appearance had nothing in it to strike or attract. Of an unpresuming aspect, wearing plain apparel, his looks as he walked were constantly bent on the ground; so that frequently, as we are told, 'he failed to notice the salutation of a passing acquaintance; but if he heard it, he would catch hastily at his hat, and give his cordial "Guten Tag."' Modesty, simplicity, a total want of all parade or affectation were conspicuous in him. These are the usual concomitants of true greatness, and serve to mitigate its splendour. Common things he did as a common man. His conduct in such matters was uncalculated, spontaneous; and therefore natural and pleasing.
Concerning his mental character, the greater part of what we had to say has been already said, in speaking of his works. The most cursory perusal of these will satisfy us that he had a mind of the highest order; grand by nature, and cultivated by the assiduous study of a lifetime. It is not the predominating force of any one faculty that impresses us in Schiller; but the general force of all. Every page of his writings bears the stamp of internal vigour; new truths, new aspects of known truth, bold thought, happy imagery, lofty emotion. Schiller would have been no common man, though he had altogether wanted the qualities peculiar to poets. His intellect is clear, deep, and comprehensive; its deductions, frequently elicited from numerous and distant premises, are presented under a magnificent aspect, in the shape of theorems, embracing an immense multitude of minor propositions. Yet it seems powerful and vast, rather than quick or keen; for Schiller is not notable for wit, though his fancy is ever prompt with its metaphors, illustrations, comparisons, to decorate and point the perceptions of his reason. The earnestness of his temper farther disqualified him for this: his tendency was rather to adore the grand and the lofty than to despise the little and the mean. Perhaps his greatest faculty was a half-poetical, half-philosophical imagination: a faculty teeming with magnificence and brilliancy; now adorning, or aiding to erect, a stately pyramid of scientific speculation; now brooding over the abysses of thought and feeling, till thoughts and feelings, else unutterable, were embodied in expressive forms, and palaces and landscapes glowing in ethereal beauty rose like exhalations from the bosom of the deep.