rapidity with which he wrote
such noble poems, at once betokened the exuberant riches of his mind
and the prompt command which he enjoyed of them. Still all that he had
done seemed but a fraction of his appointed task: a bold imagination
was carrying him forward into distant untouched fields of thought and
poetry, where triumphs yet more glorious were to be gained. Schemes of
new writings, new kinds of writing, were budding in his fancy; he was
yet, as he had ever been, surrounded by a multitude of projects, and
full of ardour to labour in fulfilling them. But Schiller's labours
and triumphs were drawing to a close. The invisible Messenger was
already near, which overtakes alike the busy and the idle, which
arrests man in the midst of his pleasures or his occupations, _and
changes his countenance and sends him away_.

In 1804, having been at Berlin witnessing the exhibition of his
_Wilhelm Tell_, he was seized, while returning, with a paroxysm of
that malady which for many years had never wholly left him. The attack
was fierce and violent; it brought him to the verge of the grave; but
he escaped once more; was considered out of danger, and again resumed
his poetical employments. Besides various translations from the French
and Italian, he had sketched a tragedy on the history of Perkin
Warbeck, and finished two acts of one on that of a kindred but more
fortunate impostor, Dimitri of Russia. His mind, it would appear, was
also frequently engaged with more solemn and sublime ideas. The
universe of human thought he had now explored and enjoyed; but he
seems to have found no permanent contentment in any of its provinces.
Many of his later poems indicate an incessant and increasing longing
for some solution of the mystery of life; at times it is a gloomy
resignation to the want and the despair of any. His ardent spirit
could not satisfy itself with things seen, though gilded with all the
glories of intellect and imagination; it soared away in search of
other lands, looking with unutterable desire for some surer and
brighter home beyond the horizon of this world. Death he had no reason
to regard as probably a near event; but we easily perceive that the
awful secrets connected with it had long been familiar to his
contemplation. The veil which hid them from his eyes was now shortly,
when he looked not for it, to be rent asunder.

The spring of 1805, which Schiller had anticipated with no ordinary
hopes of enjoyment and acti