pes_; and those types are mirrored in reality. As a painter
must not only have a hand to execute, but an eye to distinguish--as he
must go here and then there through the real world to catch the
picturesque man, the picturesque scene, which is to live on his
canvas--so the poet must find in that reality, the _literatesque_ man,
the _literatesque_ scene which nature intends for him, and which will
live in his page. Even in reality he will not find this type complete,
or the characteristics perfect; but there, at least, he will find
_something_, some hint, some intimation, some suggestion; whereas, in
the stagnant home of his own thoughts he will find nothing pure,
nothing _as it is_, nothing which does not bear his own mark, which is
not somehow altered by a mixture with himself.

The first conversation of Goethe and Schiller illustrates this
conception of the poet's art. Goethe was at that time prejudiced
against Schiller, we must remember, partly from what he considered the
_outrages_ of the _Robbers_, partly because of the philosophy of Kant.
Schiller's 'Essay on _Grace and Dignity_', he tells us, 'was yet less
of a kind to reconcile me. The philosophy of Kant, which exalts the
dignity of mind so highly, while appearing to restrict it, Schiller
had joyfully embraced: it unfolded the extraordinary qualities which
Nature had implanted in him; and in the lively feeling of freedom and
self-direction, he showed himself unthankful to the Great Mother, who
surely had not acted like a step-dame towards him. Instead of viewing
her as self-subsisting, as producing with a living force, and
according to appointed laws, alike the highest and the lowest of her
works, he took her up under the aspect of some empirical native
qualities of the human mind. Certain harsh passages I could even
directly apply to myself: they exhibited my confession of faith in a
false light; and I felt that if written without particular attention
to me they were still worse; for in that case, the vast chasm which
lay between us, gaped but so much the more distinctly.' After a casual
meeting at a Society for Natural History, they walked home and Goethe
proceeds:

'We reached his house; the talk induced me to go in. I then expounded
to him, with as much vivacity as possible, the _Metamorphosis of
Plants_, drawing out on paper, with many characteristic strokes, a
symbolic Plant for him, as I proceeded. He heard and saw all this,
with much interest and disti