So it was with Schiller: he read Rousseau more or less, the early
works of Goethe, Lessing's _Emilia Galotti_, and plays by Klinger,
Leisewitz, Lenz and Wagner--all more or less revolutionary in spirit.
He also made the acquaintance of Shakespeare and steeped himself in
the spirit of antique heroism as he found it in Plutarch.

Perhaps this reading would have made a radical of him even if he had
just then been enjoying the normal freedom of a German university
student. Be that as it may, the time came--it was about 1777--when the
young Schiller, faithfully pursuing his medical course and doing loyal
birthday orations in praise of the duke or the duke's mistress, was
not exactly what he seemed to be. Underneath the calm exterior there
was a soul on fire with revolutionary passion.

It was mainly in 1780--his last year in the Karlschule--that Schiller
wrote _The Robbers_, altogether the loudest explosion of the Storm and
Stress. The hero, Karl Moor, was conceived as a "sublime criminal."
Deceived by the machinations of his villainous brother Franz, he
becomes the captain of a band of outlaws and attempts by murder, arson
and robbery to right the wrongs of the social order. For a while he
believes that he is doing a noble work. When he learns how he has been
deluded he gives himself up to the law. The effect of the play is that
of tremendous power unchecked by any of the restraints of art. The
plot is incredible, the language tense with turbulent passion, and the
characters are extravagantly overdrawn. But the genius of the born
dramatist is there. It is all vividly seen and powerfully bodied
forth. What is more important, the play marks the birth of a new
type--the tragedy of fanaticism. We are left at the end with a
heightened feeling for the mysterious tangle of human destiny which
makes it possible for a really noble nature such as Karl Moor to go
thus disastrously wrong.

Toward the end of 1780 Schiller left the academy and was made doctor
to a regiment of soldiers consisting largely of invalids. He dosed
them with drastic medicines according to his light, but the service
was disagreeable and the pay very small. To make a stir in the world
he borrowed money and published _The Robbers_ as a book for the
reader, with a preface in which he spoke rather slightingly of the
theatre. The book came out in the spring of 1781--with a rampant lion
and the motto _in Tirannos_ on the title-page. Ere long it came to the
attent