him
on the list of his _proteges_, assigning to him a place at his military
school. It was useless for the father to remonstrate, and explain to the
Duke that his son had a decided inclination for the Church. Schiller was
sent to the Academy in 1773, and ordered to study law. The young student
could not but see that an injustice had been done him, and the irritation
which it caused was felt by him all the more deeply because it would have
been dangerous to give expression to his feelings. The result was that he
made no progress in the subjects which he had been commanded to study. In
1775 he was allowed to give up law, not, however, to return to theology,
but to begin the study of medicine. But medicine, though at first it
seemed more attractive, failed, like law, to call forth his full energies.
In the mean time another interference on the part of the Duke proved even
more abortive, and to a certain extent determined the path which
Schiller's genius was to take in life. The Duke had prohibited all German
classics at his Academy; the boys, nevertheless, succeeded in forming a
secret library, and Schiller read the works of Klopstock, Klinger,
Lessing, Goethe, and Wieland's translations of Shakespeare with rapture,
no doubt somewhat increased by the dangers he braved in gaining access to
these treasures. In 1780, the same year in which he passed his examination
and received the appointment of regimental surgeon, Schiller wrote his
first tragedy, "The Robbers." His taste for dramatic poetry had been
roused partly by Goethe's "Goetz von Berlichingen" and Shakespeare's
plays, partly by his visits to the theatre, which, under the patronage of
the Duke, was then in a very flourishing state. The choice of the subject
of his first dramatic composition was influenced by the circumstances of
his youth. His poetical sympathy for a character such as Karl Moor, a man
who sets at defiance all the laws of God and man, can only be accounted
for by the revulsion of feeling produced on his boyish mind by the strict
military discipline to which all the pupils at the Academy were subjected.
His sense of right and wrong was strong enough to make him paint his hero
as a monster, and to make him inflict on him the punishment he merited.
But the young poet could not resist the temptation of throwing a brighter
light on the redeeming points in the character of a robber and murderer by
pointedly placing him in contrast with the even darker shades o