any man endowed with the power of
reason; possessed in various degrees of strength, they add to the
products of mere intellect corresponding tints of new attractiveness;
in a degree great enough to be remarkable they constitute a poet. Of
this peculiar faculty how much had fallen to Schiller's lot, we need
not attempt too minutely to explain. Without injuring his reputation,
it may be admitted that, in general, his works exhibit rather
extraordinary strength than extraordinary fineness or versatility. His
power of dramatic imitation is perhaps never of the very highest, the
Shakspearean kind; and in its best state, it is farther limited to a
certain range of characters. It is with the grave, the earnest, the
exalted, the affectionate, the mournful, that he succeeds: he is not
destitute of humour, as his _Wallenstein's Camp_ will show, but
neither is he rich in it; and for sprightly ridicule in any of its
forms he has seldom shown either taste or talent. Chance principally
made the drama his department; he might have shone equally in many
others. The vigorous and copious invention, the knowledge of life, of
men and things, displayed in his theatrical pieces, might have been
available in very different pursuits; frequently the charm of his
works has little to distinguish it from the charm of intellectual and
moral force in general; it is often the capacious thought, the vivid
imagery, the impetuous feeling of the orator, rather than the wild
pathos and capricious enchantment of the poet. Yet that he was capable
of rising to the loftiest regions of poetry, no reader of his _Maid of
Orleans_, his character of Thekla, or many other of his pieces, will
hesitate to grant. Sometimes we suspect that it is the very grandeur
of his general powers which prevents us from exclusively admiring his
poetic genius. We are not lulled by the syren song of poetry, because
her melodies are blended with the clearer, manlier tones of serious
reason, and of honest though exalted feeling.

Much laborious discussion has been wasted in defining genius,
particularly by the countrymen of Schiller, some of whom have narrowed
the conditions of the term so far, as to find but three _men of
genius_ since the world was created: Homer, Shakspeare, and Goethe!
From such rigid precision, applied to a matter in itself indefinite,
there may be an apparent, but there is no real, increase of accuracy.
The creative power, the faculty not only of imitating given