emotion and bodied
forth in gorgeous imagery. Its doctrine is that only by taking refuge
in the realm of the Ideal can we escape from the tyranny of the flesh,
the bondage of Nature's law, the misery of struggle and defeat. Yet it
is not a doctrine of quietism that is here preached, as if inner peace
were the supreme thing in life, but rather one of hopeful endeavor.
_The Walk_, one of the finest elegies in the German language, is a
pensive retrospect of the origins of civilization, loving
contemplation of Nature giving rise to reflections on man and his
estate. _The Song of the Bell_, probably the best known of all
Schiller's poems, gives expression to his feeling for the dignity of
labor and for the poetry of man's social life. Perhaps we may say that
the heart of his message is found in this stanza of _The Words of
Illusion_:

And so, noble soul, forget not the law,
And to the true faith be leal;
What ear never heard and eye never saw,
The Beautiful, the True, they are real.
Look not without, as the fool may do;
It is in thee and ever created anew.

In 1797--_Hermann and Dorothea_ was just then under way--Goethe and
Schiller interchanged views by letter on the subject of epic poetry in
general and the ballad in particular. As they had both written ballads
in their youth, it was but natural that they should be led to fresh
experiments with the species. So they both began to make ballads for
next year's _Musenalmanach_. Schiller contributed five, among them the
famous _Diver_ and _The Cranes of Ibycus_. In after years he wrote
several more, of which the best, perhaps, are _The Pledge_, a stirring
version of the Damon and Pythias story, and _The Battle with the
Dragon_, which, however, was called a romanza instead of a ballad. The
interest of all these poems turns mainly, of course, on the story, but
also, in no small degree, on the splendid art which the poet displays.
They are quite unlike any earlier German ballads, owing nothing to the
folk-song and making no use of the uncanny, the gruesome, or the
supernatural. There is no mystery in them, no resort to verbal tricks
such as Buerger had employed in _Lenore_. The subjects are not derived
from German folk-lore, but from Greek legend or medieval romance.
Their great merit is the strong and vivid, yet always noble, style
with which the details are set forth.

[Illustration: THE CHURCH IN WHICH SCHILLER WAS MARRIED]

We come back now to the pro