is intellect is clear, deep,
and comprehensive; its deductions, frequently elicited from numerous
and distant premises, are presented under a magnificent aspect, in the
shape of theorems, embracing an immense multitude of minor
propositions. Yet it seems powerful and vast, rather than quick or
keen; for Schiller is not notable for wit, though his fancy is ever
prompt with its metaphors, illustrations, comparisons, to decorate and
point the perceptions of his reason. The earnestness of his temper
farther disqualified him for this: his tendency was rather to adore
the grand and the lofty than to despise the little and the mean.
Perhaps his greatest faculty was a half-poetical, half-philosophical
imagination: a faculty teeming with magnificence and brilliancy; now
adorning, or aiding to erect, a stately pyramid of scientific
speculation; now brooding over the abysses of thought and feeling,
till thoughts and feelings, else unutterable, were embodied in
expressive forms, and palaces and landscapes glowing in ethereal
beauty rose like exhalations from the bosom of the deep.

Combined and partly of kindred with these intellectual faculties was
that vehemence of temperament which is necessary for their full
development. Schiller's heart was at once fiery and tender; impetuous,
soft, affectionate, his enthusiasm clothed the universe with grandeur,
and sent his spirit forth to explore its secrets and mingle warmly in
its interests. Thus poetry in Schiller was not one but many gifts. It
was not the 'lean and flashy song' of an ear apt for harmony, combined
with a maudlin sensibility, or a mere animal ferocity of passion, and
an imagination creative chiefly because unbridled: it was, what true
poetry is always, the quintessence of general mental riches, the
purified result of strong thought and conception, and of refined as
well as powerful emotion. In his writings, we behold him a moralist, a
philosopher, a man of universal knowledge: in each of these capacities
he is great, but also in more; for all that he achieves in these is
brightened and gilded with the touch of another quality; his maxims,
his feelings, his opinions are transformed from the lifeless shape of
didactic truths, into living shapes that address faculties far finer
than the understanding.

The gifts by which such transformation is effected, the gift of pure,
ardent, tender sensibility, joined to those of fancy and imagination,
are perhaps not wholly denied to