had been declared to be a work of the highest genius, he
penned the following remarkable condemnation of the play: "An
extraordinary mistake of nature doomed me, in my birthplace, to be a
poet. An inclination for poetry was an offence against the laws of the
institution in which I was educated. For eight years my enthusiasm had
to struggle with military discipline; but a passion for poetry is
strong and ardent as first love. It only served to inflame what it was
designed to extinguish. To escape from things that were a torment to
me my soul expatiated in an ideal world; but, unacquainted with the
real world, from which I was separated by iron bars--unacquainted with
mankind, for the four hundred fellow-creatures around me were but one
and the same individual, or rather faithful casts from the same model
which plastic nature solemnly disowned--unacquainted with the passions
and propensities of independent agents, for here only one arrived at
maturity (one that I shall not now mention)--unacquainted with the
fair sex, for it is well known that the doors of this institution are
not open to females, except before they begin to be interesting and
when they have ceased to be so--my pencil could not but miss that
middle line between angels and devils, and produce a monster, which
fortunately had no existence in the world, and to which I wish
immortality merely that it may serve as a specimen of the issue
engendered by the unnatural union of subordination and genius. I
allude to 'The Robbers.' The whole moral world had accused the author
of high treason. He has no other excuse to offer than the climate
under which this piece was born. If any of the numberless censures
launched against 'The Robbers' be just, it is this, that I had the
presumption to delineate men two years before I knew anything about
them." He was but twenty-one when The "Robbers" appeared in print and
was produced upon the stage, and while he was hailed on all sides as
the German Shakespeare, he lived in want and extreme privation.

Duke Carl was deeply incensed by the patriotic and independent
sentiments of the poet, and he sent an official mandate to Schiller,
ordering him to discontinue all further literary work and composition.
To disobey the despotic command and to remain in the Duke's service,
would have entailed imprisonment. He resolved upon flight from
Solitude, and on the night following that on which "The Robbers" was
being enacted for the first tim