ject of my reverence and zealous study for years
before I could love himself. I was not yet capable of
comprehending Nature at first-hand: I had but learned to
admire her image, reflected in the understanding, and put in
order by rules.' _Werke_, Bd. viii 2, p. 77.]

Such obstacles were in his case neither few nor small. Schiller felt
the mortifying truth, that to arrive at the ideal world, he must first
gain a footing in the real; that he might entertain high thoughts and
longings, might reverence the beauties of nature and grandeur of mind,
but was born to toil for his daily bread. Poetry he loved with the
passionateness of a first affection; but he could not live by it; he
honoured it too highly to wish to live by it. His prudence told him
that he must yield to stern necessity, must 'forsake the balmy climate
of Pindus for the Greenland of a barren and dreary science of terms;'
and he did not hesitate to obey. His professional studies were
followed with a rigid though reluctant fidelity; it was only in
leisure gained by superior diligence that he could yield himself to
more favourite pursuits. Genius was to serve as the ornament of his
inferior qualities, not as an excuse for the want of them.

But if, when such sacrifices were required, it was painful to comply
with the dictates of his own reason, it was still more so to endure
the harsh and superfluous restrictions of his teachers. He felt it
hard enough to be driven from the enchantments of poetry by the dull
realities of duty; but it was intolerable and degrading to be
hemmed-in still farther by the caprices of severe and formal
pedagogues. Schiller brooded gloomily over the constraints and
hardships of his situation. Many plans he formed for deliverance.
Sometimes he would escape in secret to catch a glimpse of the free and
busy world to him forbidden: sometimes he laid schemes for utterly
abandoning a place which he abhorred, and trusting to fortune for the
rest. Often the sight of his class-books and school-apparatus became
irksome beyond endurance; he would feign sickness, that he might be
left in his own chamber to write poetry and pursue his darling studies
without hindrance. Such artifices did not long avail him; the masters
noticed the regularity of his sickness, and sent him tasks to be done
while it lasted. Even Schiller's patience could not brook this; his
natural timidity gave place to indignation; he threw the paper of
exercises at