FOOTNOTES:
[21] The paper entitled Hints on the Origin of Human Society, as indicated in the Mosaic Records, the Mission of Moses, the Laws of Solon and Lycurgus, are pieces of the very highest order; full of strength and beauty; delicious to the lovers of that plastic philosophy, which employs itself in giving form and life to the 'dry bones' of those antique events, that lie before us so inexplicable in the brief and enigmatic pages of their chroniclers. The Glance over Europe at the period of the first Crusade; the Times of the Emperor Frederick I.; the Troubles in France, are also masterly sketches, in a simpler and more common style.
[22] Yet we scarcely meet with one so happy as that in the Revolt of the Netherlands, where he finishes his picture of the gloomy silence and dismay that reigned in Brussels on the first entrance of Alba, by this striking simile: 'Now that the City had received the Spanish General within its walls, it had the air as of a man that has drunk a cup of poison, and with shuddering expectation watches, every moment, for its deadly agency.'
[24] It was to Denmark likewise that Klopstock owed the means of completing his Messias.
[25] Schelling has a book on the 'Soul of the World:' Fichte's expression to his students, "Tomorrow, gentlemen, I shall create God," is known to most readers.
[26] See Herder's Leben, by his Widow. That Herder was not usually troubled with any unphilosophical scepticism, or aversion to novelty, may be inferred from his patronising Dr. Gall's system of Phrenology, or 'Skull-doctrine' as they call it in Germany. But Gall had referred with acknowledgment and admiration to the Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit. Here lay a difference.
[27] From the verb αισθἁνομαι, to feel.—The term is Baumgarten's; prior to Kant (1845).
[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.
[38] 'He left a widow, two sons, and two daughters,' of whom we regret to say that we have learned nothing. 'Of his three sisters, the youngest died before him; the eldest is married to the Hofrath Reinwald, in Meinungen; the second to Herr Frankh, the clergyman of Meckmuhl, in Würtemberg.' Doering.
[39] Naive und sentimentalische Dichtung.
[40] Über die æsthetische Erziehung des Menschen.
[41] On a surgical inspection of his body after death, the most vital organs were found totally deranged. 'The structure of the lungs was in great part destroyed, the cavities of the heart were nearly grown up, the liver had become hard, and the gall-bladder was extended to an extraordinary size.' Doering.
