rivate
habits of the persons who have been peculiarly distinguished by their
genius, our information is small; but the little that has been
recorded for us of the chief of them,--of Sophocles, Archimedes,
Hippocrates; and in modern times, of Dante and Tasso, of Rafaelle,
Albrecht Duerer, Cervantes, Shakspeare, Fielding, and others,--confirms
this observation.' Schiller himself confirms it; perhaps more strongly
than most of the examples here adduced. No man ever wore his faculties
more meekly, or performed great works with less consciousness of their
greatness. Abstracted from the contemplation of himself, his eye was
turned upon the objects of his labour, and he pursued them with the
eagerness, the entireness, the spontaneous sincerity, of a boy
pursuing sport. Hence this 'child-like simplicity,' the last
perfection of his other excellencies. His was a mighty spirit
unheedful of its might. He walked the earth in calm power: 'the staff
of his spear was like a weaver's beam;' but he wielded it like a wand.

[Footnote 39: _Naive und sentimentalische Dichtung._]

Such, so far as we can represent it, is the form in which Schiller's
life and works have gradually painted their character in the mind of a
secluded individual, whose solitude he has often charmed, whom he has
instructed, and cheered, and moved. The original impression, we know,
was faint and inadequate, the present copy of it is still more so; yet
we have sketched it as we could: the figure of Schiller, and of the
figures he conceived and drew are there; himself, 'and in his hand a
glass which shows us many more.' To those who look on him as we have
wished to make them, Schiller will not need a farther panegyric. For
the sake of Literature, it may still be remarked, that his merit was
peculiarly due to her. Literature was his creed, the dictate of his
conscience; he was an Apostle of the Sublime and Beautiful, and this
his calling made a hero of him. For it was in the spirit of a true man
that he viewed it, and undertook to cultivate it; and its inspirations
constantly maintained the noblest temper in his soul. The end of
Literature was not, in Schiller's judgment, to amuse the idle, or to
recreate the busy, by showy spectacles for the imagination, or quaint
paradoxes and epigrammatic disquisitions for the understanding: least
of all was it to gratify in any shape the selfishness of its
professors, to minister to their malignity, their love of money, or
e