The historical and critical studies, in which he had been so
extensively and seriously engaged, could not remain without effect on
Schiller's general intellectual character. He had spent five active
years in studies directed almost solely to the understanding, or the
faculties connected with it; and such industry united to such ardour
had produced an immense accession of ideas. History had furnished him
with pictures of manners and events, of strange conjunctures and
conditions of existence; it had given him more minute and truer
conceptions of human nature in its many forms, new and more accurate
opinions on the character and end of man. The domain of his mind was
both enlarged and enlightened; a multitude of images and detached
facts and perceptions had been laid up in his memory; and his
intellect was at once enriched by acquired thoughts, and strengthened
by increased exercise on a wider circle of knowledge.

But to understand was not enough for Schiller; there were in him
faculties which this could not employ, and therefore could not
satisfy. The primary vocation of his nature was poetry: the
acquisitions of his other faculties served but as the materials for
his poetic faculty to act upon, and seemed imperfect till they had
been sublimated into the pure and perfect forms of beauty, which it is
the business of this to elicit from them. New thoughts gave birth to
new feelings: and both of these he was now called upon to body forth,
to represent by visible types, to animate and adorn with the magic of
creative genius. The first youthful blaze of poetic ardour had long
since passed away; but this large increase of knowledge awakened it
anew, refined by years and experience into a steadier and clearer
flame. Vague shadows of unaccomplished excellence, gleams of ideal
beauty, were now hovering fitfully across his mind: he longed to turn
them into shape, and give them a local habitation and a name.
Criticism, likewise, had exalted his notions of art: the modern
writers on subjects of taste, Aristotle, the ancient poets, he had
lately studied; he had carefully endeavoured to extract the truth from
each, and to amalgamate their principles with his own; in choosing, he
was now more difficult to satisfy. Minor poems had all along been
partly occupying his attention; but they yielded no space for the
intensity of his impulses, and the magnificent ideas that were rising
in his fancy. Conscious of his strength, he dreaded not