f Demeter, the chief personage in the group of agricultural
deities, a figure as wonderful as it was appealing, by uniting in her
breast human feelings with divine. It was long a cherished plan with
Schiller to treat in epic form the earliest Attic civilization
resulting from foreign immigration. _The Eleusinian Festival_,
however, replaced this plan, which was never executed. * * *

The merely emotional, the fervid, the simply descriptive, in fact
every variety of poetry derived directly from contemplation and
feeling, are found in Schiller in countless single passages and in
whole poems. * * * But the most remarkable evidence of the consummate
genius of the poet is seen in _The Song of the Bell_, which, in
changing metre, in descriptions full of vivacity where a few touches
represent a whole picture, runs through the varied experiences in the
life of man and of society; for it expresses the feelings which arise
in each of them, and ever adapts the whole, symbolically, to the tones
of the bell, the casting and completing of which the poem accompanies
throughout in all its various stages. I know of no poem, in any
language, which shows so wide a poetic world in so small a compass,
that so runs through the scale of all that is deepest in human
feelings, and, in the guise of a lyric, depicts life in its important
events and epochs as if in an epic poem confined within natural
limits. But the poetic clearness is enhanced by the fact that a
subject which is portrayed as actually existing, corresponds with the
shadowy visions of the imagination; and the two series thus formed run
parallel with each other to the same end. * * *

Schiller was snatched from the world in the full maturity of his
intellectual power, though he would undoubtedly have been able to
perform an endless amount of additional work. His scope was so
unlimited that he would never have been able to find a goal, and the
constantly increasing activity of his mind would never have allowed
him time for stopping. For long years ahead he would have been able to
enjoy the happiness, the rapture, yes, the bliss of his occupation as
a poet, as he so inimitably describes it in one of the letters in this
collection, written about a plan for an idyl. His life ended indeed
before the customary limit had been reached, yet, while it lasted, he
worked exclusively and uninterruptedly in the realm of ideas and
fancy.

Of no one else, perhaps, can it be said so truthfully t