ld and
indifferent, and yet I am full of enthusiasm for my work. With the
exception of two characters to which I feel attached, Max
Piccolomini and Thekla, I treat all the rest, and particularly the
principal character of the play, only with the pure love of the
artist. But I can promise you that they will not suffer from this.
I look to history for limitation, in order to give, through
surrounding circumstances, a stricter form and reality to my
ideals. I feel sure that the historical will not draw me down or
cripple me. I only desire through it to impart life to my
characters and their actions. The life and soul must come from
another source, through that power which I have already perhaps
shown elsewhere, and without which even the first conception of
this work would, of course, have been impossible."

How different is this from what Schiller felt in former years! In writing
"Don Carlos," he laid down as a principle, that the poet must not be the
painter but the lover of his heroes, and in his early days he found it
intolerable in Shakespeare's dreams that he could nowhere lay his hand on
the poet himself. He was then, as he himself expresses it, unable to
understand nature, except at second-hand.

Goethe was Schiller's friend, but he was also Schiller's rival. There is a
perilous period in the lives of great men, namely, the time when they
begin to feel that their position is made, that they have no more rivals
to fear. Goethe was feeling this at the time when he met Schiller. He was
satiated with applause, and his bearing towards the public at large became
careless and offensive. In order to find men with whom he might measure
himself, he began to write on the history of Art, and to devote himself to
natural philosophy. Schiller, too, had gained his laurels chiefly as a
dramatic poet; and though he still valued the applause of the public, yet
his ambition as a poet was satisfied; he was prouder of his "Thirty Years'
War" than of his "Robbers" and "Don Carlos." When Goethe became intimate
with Schiller, and discovered in him those powers which as yet were hidden
to others, he felt that there was a man with whom even he might run a
race. Goethe was never jealous of Schiller. He felt conscious of his own
great powers, and he was glad to have those powers again called out by one
who would be more difficult to conquer than all his former rivals.
Schiller, on the oth