[28] Are our hopes from Mr. Coleridge always to be fruitless? Sneers at the common-sense philosophy of the Scotch are of little use: it is a poor philosophy, perhaps; but not so poor as none at all, which seems to be the state of matters here at present.
[29] These were a fine version, of Euripides' Iphigenia in Aulide, and a few scenes of his Phœnissæ.
[30] So called from ξἑνιον, munus hospitale; a title borrowed from Martial, who has thus designated a series of personal epigrams in his Thirteenth Book.
[31] This is but a lame account of the far-famed Xenien and their results. See more of the matter in Franz Horn's Poesie und Beredtsamkeit; in Carlyle's Miscellanies (i. 67); &c. (Note of 1845.)
[32] 'The street leading from Schiller's dwelling-house to this, was by some wags named the Xenien-gasse; a name not yet entirely disused.'
[33] Doering, pp. 118-131.
[34] Said to be by Goethe; the materials faithfully extracted from a real sermon (by the Jesuit Santa Clara) of the period it refers to.—There were various Jesuits Santa Clara, of that period: this is the German one, Abraham by name; specimens of whose Sermons, a fervent kind of preaching-run-mad, have been reprinted in late years, for dilettante purposes, (Note of 1845.)
[35] Wallenstein has been translated into French by M. Benjamin Constant; and the last two parts of it have been faithfully rendered into English by Mr. Coleridge. As to the French version, we know nothing, save that it is an improved one; but that little is enough: Schiller, as a dramatist, improved by M. Constant, is a spectacle we feel no wish to witness. Mr. Coleridge's translation is also, as a whole, unknown to us: but judging from many large specimens, we should pronounce it, excepting Sotheby's Oberon, to be the best, indeed the only sufferable, translation from the German with which our literature has yet been enriched.
[36] Doering (p. 176);—who adds as follows: 'Another testimony of approval, very different in its nature, he received at the first production of the play in Weimar. Knowing and valuing, as he did, the public of that city, it could not but surprise him greatly, when a certain young Doctor S—— called out to him, "Bravo, Schiller!" from the gallery, in a very loud tone of voice. Offended at such impertinence, the poet hissed strongly, in which the audience joined him. He likewise expressed in words his displeasure at this conduct; and the youthful sprig of medicine was, by direction of the Court, farther punished for his indiscreet applause, by some admonitions from the police.'
[37] 'Whatever he intended to write, he first composed in his head, before putting down a line of it on paper. He used to call a work ready so soon as its existence in his spirit was complete: hence in the public there often were reports that such and such a piece of his was finished, when, in the common sense, it was not even begun.'—Jördens Lexicon, § Schiller.