again."

"Not so very far away from you as you may suppose," answered Cyprian.
"And, at all events, it was your own conversation which opened the door
for my departure. You had been saying so much about Comedy, and Vincenz
was stating his conclusion (justly resulting from experience), that
amongst us the fun which plays with itself is lost. It occurred to me
that, on the other hand, many real talents have displayed themselves in
tragedy, in more and most recent times, and along with this thought I
was struck by the remembrance of a writer who began, with genuine,
high-aspiring genius, but suddenly, as if carried away by some fatal
eddy, went under, so that his name is scarcely ever heard of."

"There," said Ottmar, "you were going in exact opposition to Lothair's
principle--that true genius never goes under."

"And Lothair is right," answered Cyprian, "if he holds that the
fiercest storms of life cannot blow out the flame which blazes forth
from the inner spirit,--that the bitterest adversities, the keenest
misfortunes fight in vain against the inner heavenly might of the soul,
which only bends the bow to deliver the arrow with the greater power.
But how were it if in the first inner germ of the embryo there lurked
the poisonous parasite larva, the worm, which, developing along with
the beautiful blossom, gnaws at its life, so that it bears its death
within itself? No storm is then needed for its destruction."

"In that case," said Lothair, "your genius would be wanting in the
first condition indispensible to the tragic-poet who would enter upon
life free, and in possession of his powers. I mean that such a poet's
genius must be absolutely healthy--sound--free from the slightest
ailment, such as psychic weakness, or, to use your language, anything
such as congenital poison. Who could, and can, congratulate himself
more on such a soundness of mental constitution than our grand
G[oe]the, mighty father of us all? It is with such an unweakened
strength as his, with such an inward purity, that heroes are begotten,
such as Goetz von Berlichingen and Egmont! And if we cannot, perhaps,
admit such a heroic power (in quite the same degree) in our Schiller,
there is, on the other hand, that pure sun-glance of the inner soul
beaming round his heroes in which we, beneficently warmed, feel as
powerful and strong as their creator. And we must not forget the Robber
Moor, whom Ludwig Tieck, with perfect justice, calls the Titanic
cr