On the whole, we may pronounce him happy. His days passed in the contemplation of ideal grandeurs, he lived among the glories and solemnities of universal Nature; his thoughts were of sages and heroes, and scenes of elysian beauty. It is true, he had no rest, no peace; but he enjoyed the fiery consciousness of his own activity, which stands in place of it for men like him. It is true, he was long sickly; but did he not even then conceive and body-forth Max Piccolomini, and Thekla, and the Maid of Orleans, and the scenes of _Wilhelm Tell_? It is true, he died early; but the student will exclaim with Charles XII. in another case, "Was it not enough of life when he had conquered kingdoms?" These kingdoms which Schiller conquered were not for one nation at the expense of suffering to another; they were soiled by no patriot's blood, no widow's, no orphan's tear: they are kingdoms conquered from the barren realms of Darkness, to increase the happiness, and dignity, and power, of all men; new forms of Truth, new maxims of Wisdom, new images and scenes of Beauty, won from the 'void and formless Infinite;' a [Greek: ktêma es aiei], 'a possession forever,' to all the generations of the Earth.
In the end of Autumn last a considerately kind old Friend of mine brought home to me, from his Tour in Germany, a small Book by a Herr Saupe, one of the Head-masters of Gera High-School,--Book entitled 'Schiller and His Father's Household,'[42]--of which, though it has been before the world these twenty years and more, I had not heard till then. The good little Book,--an altogether modest, lucid, exact and amiable, though not very lively performance, offering new little facts about the Schiller world, or elucidations and once or twice a slight correction of the old,--proved really interesting and instructive; awoke, in me especially, multifarious reflections, mournfully beautiful old memories;--and led to farther readings in other Books touching on the same subject, particularly in these three mentioned below,[43]--the first two of them earlier than Saupe's, the third later and slightly corrective of him once or twice;--all which agreeably employed me for some weeks, and continued to be rather a pious recreation than any labour.