s exertion of his will. In other
points, he had little to complain of, and much to rejoice in. He was
happy in his family, the chosen scene of his sweetest, most lasting
satisfaction; by the world he was honoured and admired; his wants were
provided for; he had tasks which inspired and occupied him; friends
who loved him, and whom he loved. Schiller had much to enjoy, and most
of it he owed to himself.

In his mode of life at Jena, simplicity and uniformity were the most
conspicuous qualities; the single excess which he admitted being that
of zeal in the pursuits of literature, the sin which all his life had
most easily beset him. His health had suffered much, and principally,
it was thought, from the practice of composing by night: yet the
charms of this practice were still too great for his self-denial; and,
except in severe fits of sickness, he could not discontinue it. The
highest, proudest pleasure of his mind was that glow of intellectual
production, that 'fine frenzy,' which makes the poet, while it lasts,
a new and nobler creature; exalting him into brighter regions, adorned
by visions of magnificence and beauty, and delighting all his
faculties by the intense consciousness of their exerted power. To
enjoy this pleasure in perfection, the solitary stillness of night,
diffusing its solemn influence over thought as well as earth and air,
had at length in Schiller's case grown indispensable. For this
purpose, accordingly, he was accustomed, in the present, as in former
periods, to invert the common order of things: by day he read,
refreshed himself with the aspect of nature, conversed or corresponded
with his friends; but he wrote and studied in the night. And as his
bodily feelings were too often those of languor and exhaustion, he
adopted, in impatience of such mean impediments, the pernicious
expedient of stimulants, which yield a momentary strength, only to
waste our remaining fund of it more speedily and surely.

'During summer, his place of study was in a garden, which at length he
purchased, in the suburbs of Jena, not far from the Weselhoefts' house,
where at that time was the office of the _Allgemeine Litteratur-Zeitung_.
Reckoning from the market-place of Jena, it lies on the south-west
border of the town, between the Engelgatter and the Neuthor, in a
hollow defile, through which a part of the Leutrabach flows round the
city. On the top of the acclivity, from which there is a beautiful
prospect into the