NO. 1. PAGE 31. DANIEL SCHUBART.

The enthusiastic discontent so manifest in the Robbers has by some been in part attributed to Schiller's intercourse with Schubart. This seems as wise as the hypothesis of Gray's Alderman, who, after half a century of turtle-soup, imputed the ruin of his health to eating two unripe grapes: 'he felt them cold upon his stomach, the moment they were over; he never got the better of them.' Schiller, it appears, saw Schubart only once, and their conversation was not of a confidential kind. For any influence this interview could have produced upon the former, the latter could have merited no mention here: it is on other grounds that we refer to him. Schubart's history, not devoid of interest in itself, unfolds in a striking light the circumstances under which Schiller stood at present; and may serve to justify the violence of his alarms, which to the happy natives of our Island might otherwise appear pusillanimous and excessive. For these reasons we subjoin a sketch of it.

Schubart's character is not a new one in literature; nor is it strange that his life should have been unfortunate. A warm genial spirit; a glowing fancy, and a friendly heart; every faculty but diligence, and every virtue but 'the understrapping virtue of discretion:' such is frequently the constitution of the poet; the natural result of it also has frequently been pointed out, and sufficiently bewailed. This man was one of the many who navigate the ocean of life with 'more sail than ballast;' his voyage contradicted every rule of seamanship, and necessarily ended in a wreck.

Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart was born at Obersontheim in Swabia, on the 26th of April 1739. His father, a well-meaning soul, officiated there in the multiple capacity of schoolmaster, precentor, and curate; dignities which, with various mutations and improvements, he subsequently held in several successive villages of the same district. Daniel, from the first, was a thing of inconsistencies; his life proceeded as if by fits and starts. At school, for a while, he lay dormant: at the age of seven he could not read, and had acquired the reputation of a perfect dunce. But 'all at once,' says his biographer, 'the rind which enclosed his spirit started asunder;' and Daniel became the prodigy of the school! His good father determined to make a learned man of him: he sent him at the age of fourteen to the Nordlingen Lyceum, and two years afterwards to a similar establishment at Nürnberg. Here Schubart began to flourish with all his natural luxuriance; read classical and domestic poets; spouted, speculated; wrote flowing songs; discovered 'a decided turn for music,' and even composed tunes for the harpsichord! In short, he became an acknowledged genius: and his parents consented that he should go to Jena, and perform his cursus of Theology.

Schubart's purposes were not at all like the decrees of Fate: he set out towards Jena; and on arriving at Erlangen, resolved to proceed no farther, but perform his cursus where he was. For a time he studied well; but afterwards 'tumultuously,' that is, in violent fits, alternating with fits as violent of idleness and debauchery. He became a Bursche of the first water; drank and declaimed, rioted and ran in debt; till his parents, unable any longer to support such expenses, were glad to seize the first opening in his cursus, and recall him. He returned to them with a mind fevered by intemperance, and a constitution permanently injured; his heart burning with regret, and vanity, and love of pleasure; his head without habits of activity or principles of judgment, a whirlpool where fantasies and hallucinations and 'fragments of science' were chaotically jumbled to and fro. But he could babble college-latin; and talk with a trenchant tone about the 'revolutions of Philosophy.' Such accomplishments procured him pardon from his parents: the precentorial spirit of his father was more than reconciled on discovering that Daniel could also preach and play upon the organ. The good old people still loved their prodigal, and would not cease to hope in him.

As a preacher Schubart was at first very popular; he imitated Cramer; but at the same time manifested first-rate pulpit talents of his own. These, however, he entirely neglected to improve: presuming on his gifts and their acceptance, he began to 'play such fantastic tricks before high Heaven,' as made his audience sink to yawning, or explode in downright laughter. He often preached extempore; once he preached in verse! His love of company and ease diverted him from study: his musical propensities diverted him still farther. He had special gifts as an organist; but to handle the concordance and to make 'the heaving bellows learn to blow' were inconsistent things.

Yet withal it was impossible to hate poor Schubart, or even seriously to dislike him. A joyful, piping, guileless mortal, good nature, innocence of heart, and love of frolic beamed from every feature of his countenance; he wished no ill to any son of Adam. He was musical and poetical, a maker and a singer of sweet songs; humorous also, speculative, discursive; his speech, though aimless and redundant, glittered with the hues of fancy, and here and there with the keenest rays of intellect. He was vain, but had no touch of pride; and the excellencies which he loved in himself, he acknowledged and as warmly loved in others. He was a man of few or no principles, but his nervous system was very good. Amid his chosen comrades, a jug of indifferent beer and a pipe of tobacco could change the earth into elysium for him, and make his brethren demigods. To look at his laughing eyes, and his effulgent honest face, you were tempted to forget that he was a perjured priest, that the world had duties for him which he was neglecting. Had life been all a may-game, Schubart was the best of men, and the wisest of philosophers.

Unluckily it was not: the voice of Duty had addressed him in vain; but that of Want was more impressive. He left his father's house, and engaged himself as tutor in a family at Königsbronn. To teach the young idea how to shoot had few delights for Schubart: he soon gave up this place in favour of a younger brother; and endeavoured to subsist, for some time, by affording miscellaneous assistance to the clergy of the neighbouring villages. Ere long, preferring even pedagogy to starvation, he again became a teacher. The bitter morsel was sweetened with a seasoning of music; he was appointed not only schoolmaster but also organist of Geisslingen. A fit of diligence now seized him: his late difficulties had impressed him; and the parson of the place, who subsequently married Schubart's sister, was friendly and skilful enough to turn the impression to account. Had poor Schubart always been in such hands, the epithet 'poor' could never have belonged to him. In this little village-school he introduced some important reforms and improvements, and in consequence attracted several valuable scholars. Also for his own behoof, he studied honestly. His conduct here, if not irreprehensible, was at least very much amended. His marriage, in his twenty-fifth year, might have improved it still farther; for his wife was a good, soft-hearted, amiable creature, who loved him with her whole heart, and would have died to serve him.

But new preferments awaited Schubart, and with them new temptations. His fame as a musician was deservedly extending: in time it reached Ludwigsburg, and the Grand Duke of Würtemberg himself heard Schubart spoken of! The schoolmaster of Geisslingen was, in 1768, promoted to be organist and band-director in this gay and pompous court. With a bounding heart, he tossed away his ferula, and hastened to the scene, where joys for evermore seemed calling on him. He plunged into the heart of business and amusement. Besides the music which he taught and played, publicly and privately, with great applause, he gave the military officers instruction in various branches of science; he talked and feasted; he indited songs and rhapsodies; he lectured on History and the Belles Lettres. All this was more than Schubart's head could stand. In a little time he fell in debt; took up with virtuosi; began to read Voltaire, and talk against religion in his drink. From the rank of genius, he was fast degenerating into that of profligate: his affairs grew more and more embarrassed; and he had no gift of putting any order in them. Prudence was not one of Schubart's virtues; the nearest approximation he could make to it was now and then a little touch of cunning. His wife still loved him; loved him with that perverseness of affection, which increases in the inverse ratio of its requital: she had long patiently endured his follies and neglect, happy if she could obtain a transient hour of kindness from him. But his endless course of riot, and the straits to which it had reduced their hapless family, at length overcame her spirits: she grew melancholy, almost broken-hearted; and her father took her home to him, with her children, from the spendthrift who had been her ruin. Schubart's course in Ludwigsburg was verging to its close; his extravagance increased, and debts pressed heavier and heavier on him: for some scandal with a young woman of the place, he was cast into prison; and let out of it, with an injunction forthwith to quit the dominions of the Grand Duke.

Forlorn and homeless, here then was Schubart footing the hard highway, with a staff in his hand, and one solitary thaler in his purse, not knowing whither he should go. At Heilbronn, the Bürgermeister Wachs permitted him to teach his Bürgermeisterinn the harpsichord; and Schubart did not die of hunger. For a space of time he wandered to and fro, with numerous impracticable plans; now talking for his victuals; now lecturing or teaching music; kind people now attracted to him by his genius and misfortunes, and anon repelled from him by the faults which had abased him. Once a gleam of court-preferment revisited his path: the Elector Palatine was made acquainted with his gifts, and sent for him to Schwetzingen to play before him. His playing gratified the Electoral ear; he would have been provided for, had he not in conversation with his Highness happened to express a rather free opinion of the Mannheim Academy, which at that time was his Highness's hobby. On the instant of this luckless oversight, the door of patronage was slammed in Schubart's face, and he stood solitary on the pavement as before.

One Count Schmettau took pity on him; offered him his purse and home; both of which the way-worn wanderer was happy to accept. At Schmettau's he fell in with Baron Leiden, the Bavarian envoy, who advised him to turn Catholic, and accompany the returning embassy to Munich. Schubart hesitated to become a renegade; but departed with his new patron, upon trial. In the way, he played before the Bishop of Würzburg; was rewarded by his Princely Reverence with gold as well as praise; and arrived under happy omens at Munich. Here for a while fortune seemed to smile on him again. The houses of the great were thrown open to him; he talked and played, and fared sumptuously every day. He took serious counsel with himself about the great Popish question; now inclining this way, now that: he was puzzling which to choose, when Chance entirely relieved him of the trouble. 'A person of respectability' in Munich wrote to Würtemberg to make inquiries who or what this general favourite was; and received for answer, that the general favourite was a villain, and had been banished from Ludwigsburg for denying that there was a Holy Ghost!—Schubart was happy to evacuate Munich without tap of drum.

Once more upon the road without an aim, the wanderer turned to Augsburg, simply as the nearest city, and—set up a Newspaper! The Deutsche Chronik flourished in his hands; in a little while it had acquired a decided character for sprightliness and talent; in time it became the most widely circulated journal of the country. Schubart was again a prosperous man: his writings, stamped with the vigorous impress of his own genius, travelled over Europe; artists and men of letters gathered round him; he had money, he had fame; the rich and noble threw their parlours open to him, and listened with delight to his overflowing, many-coloured conversation. He wrote paragraphs and poetry; he taught music and gave concerts; he set up a spouting establishment, recited newly-published poems, read Klopstock's Messias to crowded and enraptured audiences. Schubart's evil genius seemed asleep, but Schubart himself awoke it. He had borne a grudge against the clergy, ever since his banishment from Ludwigsburg; and he now employed the facilities of his journal for giving vent to it. He criticised the priesthood of Augsburg; speculated on their selfishness and cant, and took every opportunity of turning them and their proceedings into ridicule. The Jesuits especially, whom he regarded as a fallen body, he treated with extreme freedom; exposing their deceptions, and holding up to public contumely certain quacks whom they patronised. The Jesuitic Beast was prostrate, but not dead: it had still strength enough to lend a dangerous kick to any one who came too near it. One evening an official person waited upon Schubart, and mentioned an arrest by virtue of a warrant from the Catholic Bürgermeister! Schubart was obliged to go to prison. The heads of the Protestant party made an effort in his favour: they procured his liberty, but not without a stipulation that he should immediately depart from Augsburg. Schubart asked to know his crime; but the Council answered him: "We have our reasons; let that satisfy you:" and with this very moderate satisfaction he was forced to leave their city.

But Schubart was now grown an adept in banishment; so trifling an event could not unhinge his equanimity. Driven out of Augsburg, the philosophic editor sought refuge in Ulm, where the publication of his journal had, for other reasons, already been appointed to take place. The Deutsche Chronik was as brilliant here as ever: it extended more and more through Germany; 'copies of it even came to London, Paris, Amsterdam, and Petersburg.' Nor had its author's fortune altered much; he had still the same employments, and remunerations, and extravagances; the same sort of friends, the same sort of enemies. The latter were a little busier than formerly: they propagated scandals; engraved caricatures, indited lampoons against him; but this he thought a very small matter. A man that has been three or four times banished, and as often put in prison, and for many years on the point of starving, will not trouble himself much about a gross or two of pasquinades. Schubart had his wife and family again beside him, he had money also to support them; so he sang and fiddled, talked and wrote, and 'built the lofty rhyme,' and cared no fig for any one.

But enemies, more fell than these, were lurking for the thoughtless Man of Paragraphs. The Jesuits had still their feline eyes upon him, and longed to have their talons in his flesh. They found a certain General Ried, who joined them on a quarrel of his own. This General Ried, the Austrian Agent at Ulm, had vowed inexpiable hatred against Schubart, it would seem, for a very slight cause indeed: once Schubart had engaged to play before him, and then finding that the harpsichord was out of order, had refused, flatly refused! The General's elevated spirit called for vengeance on this impudent plebeian; the Jesuits encouraged him; and thus all lay in eager watch. An opportunity ere long occurred. One week in 1778, there appeared in Schubart's newspaper an Extract of a Letter from Vienna, stating that 'the Empress Maria Theresa had been struck by apoplexy.' On reading which, the General made instant application to his Ducal Highness, requesting that the publisher of this 'atrocious libel' should be given up to him and 'sent to expiate his crime in Hungary,' by imprisonment—for life. The Duke desired his gallant friend to be at ease, for that he had long had his own eye on this man, and would himself take charge of him. Accordingly, a few days afterwards, Herr von Scholl, Comptroller of the Convent of Blaubeuren, came to Schubart with a multitude of compliments, inviting him to dinner, "as there was a stranger wishing to be introduced to him." Schubart sprang into the Schlitten with this wolf in sheep's clothing, and away they drove to Blaubeuren. Arrived here, the honourable Herr von Scholl left him in a private room, and soon returned with a posse of official Majors and Amtmen, the chief of whom advanced to Schubart, and declared him—an arrested man! The hapless Schubart thought it was a jest; but alas here was no jesting! Schubart then said with a composure scarcely to be looked for, that "he hoped the Duke would not condemn him unheard." In this too he was deceived; the men of office made him mount a carriage with them, and set off without delay for Hohenasperg. The Duke himself was there with his Duchess, when these bloodhounds and their prey arrived: the princely couple gazed from a window as the group went past them, and a fellow-creature took his farewell look of sun and sky!

If hitherto the follies of this man have cast an air of farce upon his sufferings, even when in part unmerited, such sentiments must now give place to that of indignation at his cruel and cold-blooded persecutors. Schubart, who never had the heart to hurt a fly, and with all his indiscretions, had been no man's enemy but his own, was conducted to a narrow subterraneous dungeon, and left, without book or pen, or any sort of occupation or society, to chew the cud of bitter thought, and count the leaden months as they passed over him, and brought no mitigation of his misery. His Serene Transparency of Würtemberg, nay the heroic General himself, might have been satisfied, could they have seen him: physical squalor, combined with moral agony, were at work on Schubart; at the end of a year, he was grown so weak, that he could not stand except by leaning on the walls of his cell. A little while, and he bade fair to get beyond the reach of all his tyrants. This, however, was not what they wanted. The prisoner was removed to a wholesome upper room; allowed the use of certain books, the sight of certain company, and had, at least, the privilege to think and breathe without obstruction. He was farther gratified by hearing that his wife and children had been treated kindly: the boys had been admitted to the Stuttgard school, where Schiller was now studying; to their mother there had been assigned a pension of two hundred gulden. Charles of Würtemberg was undoubtedly a weak and heartless man, but we know not that he was a savage one: in the punishment of Schubart, it is possible enough that he believed himself to be discharging an important duty to the world. The only subject of regret is, that any duty to the world, beyond the duty of existing inoffensively, should be committed to such hands; that men like Charles and Ried, endowed with so very small a fraction of the common faculties of manhood, should have the destiny of any living thing at their control.

Another mitigating circumstance in Schubart's lot was the character of his gaoler. This humane person had himself tasted the tender mercies of 'paternal' government; he knew the nature of a dungeon better even than his prisoner. 'For four years,' we are told, 'he had seen no human face; his scanty food had been lowered to him through a trap-door; neither chair nor table were allowed him, his cell was never swept, his beard and nails were left to grow, the humblest conveniences of civilised humanity were denied him!'[67] On this man affliction had produced its softening, not its hardening influence: he had grown religious, and merciful in heart; he studied to alleviate Schubart's hard fate by every means within his power. He spoke comfortingly to him; ministered to his infirmities, and, in spite of orders, lent him all his books. These, it is true, were only treatises on theosophy and mystical devotion; but they were the best he had; and to Schubart, in his first lonely dungeon, they afforded occupation and solace.

Human nature will accommodate itself to anything. The King of Pontus taught himself to eat poison: Schubart, cut out from intemperance and jollity, did not pine away in confinement and abstemiousness; he had lost Voltaire and gay company, he found delight in solitude and Jacob Böhm. Nature had been too good to him to let his misery in any case be unalloyed. The vague unguided ebullience of spirit, which had so often set the table in a roar, and made him the most fascinating of debauchees, was now mellowed into a cloudy enthusiasm, the sable of which was still copiously blended with rainbow colours. His brain had received a slight though incurable crack; there was a certain exasperation mixed with his unsettled fervour; but he was not wretched, often even not uncomfortable. His religion was not real; but it had reality enough for present purposes; he was at once a sceptic and a mystic, a true disciple of Böhm as well as of Voltaire. For afflicted, irresolute, imaginative men like Schubart, this is not a rare or altogether ineffectual resource: at the bottom of their minds they doubt or disbelieve, but their hearts exclaim against the slightest whisper of it; they dare not look into the fathomless abyss of Infidelity, so they cover it over with the dense and strangely-tinted smoke of Theosophy. Schubart henceforth now and then employed the phrases and figures of religion; but its principles had made no change in his theory of human duties: it was not food to strengthen the weakness of his spirit, but an opiate to stay its craving.

Schubart had still farther resources: like other great men in captivity, he set about composing the history of his life. It is true, he had no pens or paper; but this could not deter him. A fellow-prisoner, to whom, as he one day saw him pass by the grating of his window, he had communicated his desire, entered eagerly into the scheme: the two contrived to unfasten a stone in a wall that divided their apartments; when the prison-doors were bolted for the night, this volunteer amanuensis took his place, Schubart trailed his mattress to the friendly orifice, and there lay down, and dictated in whispers the record of his fitful story. These memoirs have been preserved; they were published and completed by a son of Schubart's: we have often wished to see them, but in vain.

By day, Schubart had liberty to speak with certain visitors. One of these, as we have said above, was Schiller. That Schubart, in their single interview, was pleased with the enthusiastic friendly boy, we could have conjectured, and he has himself informed us. 'Excepting Schiller,' said the veteran garreteer, in writing afterwards to Gleim, 'I scarcely know of any German youth in whom the sacred spark of genius has mounted up within the soul like flame upon the altar of a Deity. We are fallen into the shameful times, when women bear rule over men; and make the toilet a tribunal before which the most gigantic minds must plead. Hence the stunted spirit of our poets; hence the dwarf products of their imagination; hence the frivolous witticism, the heartless sentiment, crippled and ricketed by soups, ragouts and sweetmeats, which you find in fashionable balladmongers.'

Time and hours wear out the roughest day. The world began to feel an interest in Schubart, and to take some pity on him: his songs and poems were collected and published; their merit and their author's misery exhibited a shocking contrast. His Highness of Würtemberg at length condescended to remember that a mortal, of wants and feelings like his own, had been forced by him to spend, in sorrow and inaction, the third part of an ordinary lifetime; to waste, and worse than waste, ten years of precious time; time, of which not all the dukes and princes in the universe could give him back one instant. He commanded Schubart to be liberated; and the rejoicing Editor (unacquitted, unjudged, unaccused!) once more beheld the blue zenith and the full ring of the horizon. He joined his wife at Stuttgard, and recommenced his newspaper. The Deutsche Chronik was again popular; the notoriety of its conductor made amends for the decay which critics did not fail to notice in his faculties. Schubart's sufferings had in fact permanently injured him; his mind was warped and weakened by theosophy and solitude; bleak northern vapours often flitted over it, and chilled its tropical luxuriance. Yet he wrote and rhymed; discoursed on the corruption of the times, and on the means of their improvement. He published the first portion of his Life, and often talked amazingly about the Wandering Jew, and a romance of which he was to form the subject. The idea of making old Joannes a temporibus, the 'Wandering,' or as Schubart's countrymen denominate him the 'Eternal Jew,' into a novel hero, was a mighty favourite with him. In this antique cordwainer, as on a raft at anchor in the stream of time, he would survey the changes and wonders of two thousand years: the Roman and the Arab were to figure there; the Crusader and the Circumnavigator, the Eremite of the Thebaid and the Pope of Rome. Joannes himself, the Man existing out of Time and Space, Joannes the unresting and undying, was to be a deeply tragic personage. Schubart warmed himself with this idea; and talked about it in his cups, to the astonishment of simple souls. He even wrote a certain rhapsody connected with it, which is published in his poems. But here he rested; and the project of the Wandering Jew, which Goethe likewise meditated in his youth, is still unexecuted. Goethe turned to other objects: and poor Schubart was surprised by death, in the midst of his schemes, on the 10th of October 1791.

Of Schubart's character as a man, this record of his life leaves but a mean impression. Unstable in his goings, without principle or plan, he flickered through existence like an ignis-fatuus; now shooting into momentary gleams of happiness and generosity, now quenched in the mephitic marshes over which his zig-zag path conducted him. He had many amiable qualities, but scarcely any moral worth. From first to last his circumstances were against him; his education was unfortunate, its fluctuating aimless wanderings enhanced its ill effects. The thrall of the passing moment, he had no will; the fine endowments of his heart were left to riot in chaotic turbulence, and their forces cancelled one another. With better models and advisers, with more rigid habits, and a happier fortune, he might have been an admirable man: as it is, he is far from admirable.

The same defects have told with equal influence on his character as a writer. Schubart had a quick sense of the beautiful, the moving, and the true; his nature was susceptible and fervid; he had a keen intellect, a fiery imagination; and his 'iron memory' secured forever the various produce of so many gifts. But he had no diligence, no power of self-denial. His knowledge lay around him like the plunder of a sacked city. Like this too, it was squandered in pursuit of casual objects. He wrote in gusts; the labor limæ et mora was a thing he did not know. Yet his writings have great merit. His newspaper essays abound in happy illustration and brilliant careless thought. His songs, excluding those of a devotional and theosophic cast, are often full of nature, heartiness and true simplicity. 'From his youth upwards,' we are told, 'he studied the true Old-German Volkslied; he watched the artisan on the street, the craftsman in his workshop, the soldier in his guardhouse, the maid by the spinning-wheel; and transferred the genuine spirit of primeval Germanism, which he found in them, to his own songs.' Hence their popularity, which many of them still retain. 'In his larger lyrical pieces,' observes the same not injudicious critic, 'we discover fearless singularity; wild imagination, dwelling rather on the grand and frightful than on the beautiful and soft; deep, but seldom long-continued feeling; at times far-darting thoughts, original images, stormy vehemence; and generally a glowing, self-created, figurative diction. He never wrote to show his art; but poured forth, from the inward call of his nature, the thought or feeling which happened for the hour to have dominion in him.'[68]

Such were Schubart and his works and fortunes; the disjecta membra of a richly-gifted but ill-starred and infatuated poet! The image of his persecutions added speed to Schiller's flight from Stuttgard; may the image of his wasted talents and ineffectual life add strength to our resolves of living otherwise!