the manuscript to the end of the year
1800, interrupted by these and innumerable other observations from
Goethe, he put aside the papers, and had a little supper placed at one
end of the table at which we were sitting. We partook of it, but Goethe
did not touch a morsel; indeed, I have never seen him eat in the
evening. He sat down with us, filled our glasses, snuffed the candles,
and intellectually regaled us with the most agreeable conversation. His
remembrance of Schiller was so lively, that the conversation during the
latter part of the evening was devoted to him alone.

Riemer spoke of Schiller's personal appearance. "The build of his limbs,
his gait in the street, all his motions," said he, "were proud; his eyes
only were soft."

"Yes," said Goethe, "everything else about him was proud and majestic,
only the eyes were soft. And his talent was like his outward form. He
seized boldly on a great subject, and turned it this way and that, and
handled it this way and that. But he saw his object, as it were, only in
the outside; a quiet development from its interior was not within his
province. His talent was desultory. Thus he was never decided--could
never have done. He often changed a part just before a rehearsal.

"And, as he went so boldly to work, he did not take sufficient pains
about _motives_. I recollect what trouble I had with him, when he wanted
to make Gessler, in Tell, abruptly break an apple from the tree, and
have it shot from the boy's head. This was quite against my nature, and
I urged him to give at least some motive to this barbarity, by making
the boy boast to Gessler of his father's dexterity, and say that he
could shoot an apple from a tree at a hundred paces. Schiller, at first,
would have nothing of the sort: but at last he yielded to my arguments
and intentions, and did as I advised him. I, on the other hand, by too
great attention to _motives_, kept my pieces from the theatre. My
_Eugenie_[16] is nothing but a chain of _motives_, and this cannot
succeed on the stage.

"Schiller's genius was really made for the theatre. With every piece he
progressed, and became more finished; but, strange to say, a certain
love for the horrible adhered to him from the time of _The Robbers_,
which never quite left him even in his prime. I still recollect
perfectly well, that in the prison scene in my 'Egmont,' where the
sentence is read to him, Schiller would have made Alva appear in the
background, masked a