e too
modern, too enlightened for that ancient time. The dialect is
not the right one. That simplicity so vividly presented to us
by the author of _Goetz von Berlichingen_, is altogether
wanting. Many long tirades, touches great and small, nay
entire characters, are taken from the aspect of the present
world, and would not answer for the age of Maximilian. In a
word, this change would reduce the piece into something like
a certain woodcut which I remember meeting with in an edition
of Virgil. The Trojans wore hussar boots, and King Agamemnon
had a pair of pistols in his belt. I should commit a _crime_
against the age of Maximilian, to avoid an _error_ against
the age of Frederick the Second.

'Again, my whole episode of Amelia's love would make a
frightful contrast with the simple chivalry attachment of
that period. Amelia would, at all hazards, need to be
re-moulded into a chivalry maiden; and I need not tell you
that this character, and the sort of love which reigns in my
work, are so deeply and broadly tinted into the whole picture
of the Robber Moor, nay, into the whole piece, that every
part of the delineation would require to be re-painted,
before those tints could be removed. So likewise is it with
the character of Franz, that speculative,
metaphysico-refining knave.

'In a word, I think I may affirm, that this projected
transposition of my work, which, prior to the commencement,
would have lent it the highest splendour and completeness,
could not fail now, when the piece is planned and finished,
to change it into a defective _quodlibet_, a crow with
peacock's feathers.

'Your Excellency will forgive a father this earnest pleading
in behalf of his son. These are but words, and in the
long-run every theatre can make of any piece what they think
proper; the author must content himself. In the present case,
he looks upon it as a happiness that he has fallen into such
hands. With Herr Schwann, however, I will make it a condition
that, at least, he _print_ the piece according to the first
plan. In the theatre I pretend to no vote whatever.

'That other change relating to Amelia's death was perhaps
even more interesting to me. Believe me, your Excellency,
this was the portion of my play which cost me the greatest