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man of powerful mind is liable to no such danger. Of all our authors, Gray is, perhaps, the only one that from fastidiousness of taste has written less than he should have done: there are thousands that have erred the other way. What would a Spanish reader give had Lope de Vega composed a hundred times as little, and that little a hundred times as well!

Schiller's own ideas on these points appear to be sufficiently sound: they are sketched in the following extract of a letter, interesting also as a record of his purposes and intellectual condition at this period.

Criticism must now make good to me the damage she herself has done. And damaged me she has most certainly; for the boldness, the living glow which I felt before a rule was known to me, have for several years been wanting. I now see myself create and form; I watch the play of inspiration, and my fancy, knowing she is not without witnesses of her movements, no longer moves with equal freedom. I hope, however, ultimately to advance so far that art will become a second nature, as polite manners are to a well bred man; then the imagination will regain its former freedom, and submit to none but voluntary limitations.

Schiller's subsequent writings are the best proof that in these expectations he had not miscalculated.

The historical and critical studies in which he had been so extensively and seriously engaged could not remain without effect on Schiller's general intellectual character. He had spent five active years in studies directed almost solely to the understanding, or the faculties connected with it: and such industry united to such ardour had produced an immense accession of ideas. History had furnished him with pictures of manners and events, of strange conjunctures and conditions of existence; it had given him more minute and truer conceptions of human nature in its many forms, new and more accurate opinions on the character and end of man. The domain of his mind was both enlarged and enlightened; a multitude of images and detached facts and perceptions had been laid up in his memory; and his intellect was at

his

once enriched by acquired thoughts, and strengthened by increased exercise on a wider circle of knowledge. But to understand was not enough for Schiller; there were in him faculties, which this could not employ, and therefore could not satisfy. The primary vocation of his nature was poetry: the acquisitions of his other faculties served but as the materials for his poetic faculty to act upon, and seemed imperfect till they had been sublimated into the pure and perfect forms of beauty, which it is the business of this to elicit from them. New thoughts gave birth to new feelings; and both of these he was now called upon to body forth, to represent by visible types, to animate and adorn with the magic of creative genius. The first youthful blaze of poetic ardour had long since passed away; but this large increase of his knowledge awakened it anew, refined by years and experience into a steadier and clearer flame. Vague shadows of unaccomplished excellence, gleams of ideal beauty were now hovering fitfully them into shape, and give them a across his mind: he longed to turn local habitation and a name. Criticism, likewise, had exalted his notions of art: the modern writers on subjects of taste, Aristotle, the ancient poets, he had lately studied; he had carefully endeavoured to extract the truth from each, and to amalgamate their principles with his own; in choosing, he was now more difficult to satisfy. Minor poems had all along been partly occupying his attention; but they yielded no space for the intensity of his impulses, and the magnificent ideas that were rising in his fancy. Conscious of his strength, he dreaded not engaging with the highest species of his art: the perusal of the Greek tragedians had given rise to some late translations; the perusal of Homer seems now to have suggested the idea of an epic poem. The hero whom he first contemplated was Gustavus Adolphus; he afterwards changed to Frederick the Great of Prussia.

Epic poems, since the time of the Epigonias and Leonidas, and especially since that of some more recent at

These were a fine version of Euripides' Iphigenia in Aulide, and a few scenes of

tempts, have with us become a mighty dull affair. That Schiller aimed at something infinitely higher than these faint and superannuated imitations, far higher than even Klopstock has effected, will appear by the following extract from one of his letters.

An epic poem in the eighteenth century should be quite a different thing from such a poem in the childhood of the world. And it is that very circumstance, which attracts me so much towards this project. Our manners, the finest essence of our philosophies, our politics, economy, arts, in short, of all we know and do, would require to be introduced without constraint, and interwoven in such a composition, to live there in beautiful harmonious freedom, as all the branches of Greek culture live and are made visible in Homer's Iliad. Nor am I disinclined to invent a species of machinery for this purpose; being anxious to fulfil with hair's-breadth accuracy all the requisitions that are made of the epic poet even on the side of form. Besides, this machinery, which, in so modern a subject, in so prosaic an age, seems to present the greatest difficulty, might exalt the interest in a high degree, if it were suitably adapted to this same modern spirit. Crowds of confused ideas on this matter are rolling to and fro within my head: something

distinct will come out of them at last.

As for the sort of metre I would chuse, this I think you will hardly guess: no other than ottave rime. All the rest, except iambic, are become insufferable to

me.

And how beautifully might the earnest and the lofty be made to play in these light fetters! What attractions might the epic substance gain by the soft yielding form of this fine rhyme! For the poem must not in name only, but in very deed, be capable of being sung; as the Iliad was sung by the peasants of Greece, as the stanzas of Jerusalem Delivered are still sung by the Venetian gondoliers.

The epoch of Frederick's life that would best fit me, I have also considered. I should wish to select some unhappy situation; it would allow me to unfold his spirit infinitely more poetically. The chief action should if possible be very simple, perplexed with no complicated circumstances, that the whole might easily be comprehended at a glance, though the episodes were never so numerous. In this respect there is no better model than the Iliad.

Schiller did not execute or even commence the project he has here so philosophically sketched: the constraints of his present situation, the greatness of the enterprise compared with the uncertainty of its success,

were sufficient to deter him. Besides, he felt that after all his wide excursions, the true home of his genius was the drama, the department where its powers had first been tried, and were now by habit or nature best qualified to act. To the drama he accordingly returned. The History of the Thirty Years' War had once suggested the idea of Gustavus Adolphus as the hero of an epic poem ; the same work afforded him a subject for a tragedy: he now decided on beginning Wallenstein. In this undertaking it was no easy task that he contemplated: a common play did not now comprise his aim; he required some magnificent and comprehensive object, in which he could expend to advantage the new poetical and intellectual treasures, which he had for years been amassing; something that should at once exemplify his enlarged ideas of art, and give room and shape to his fresh stores of knowledge and sentiment. As he studied the history of Wallenstein, and viewed its capabilities on every side, new ideas gathered round it: the subject grew in magnitude, and often changed its form. progress in actual composition was the difficulties of the subject, inof course irregular and small. Yet creasing with his own wider, more ambitious conceptions, did not abate his diligence: Wallenstein, with many interruptions and many alterations, sometimes stationary, sometimes retrograde, continued on the whole, though slowly, to advance.

His

This was for several years his chosen occupation, the task to which he consecrated his brightest hours, and the finest part of his faculties. For humbler employments, demanding rather industry than inspiration, there still remained abundant leisure, of which it was inconsistent with his habits to waste a single hour. His occasional labours, accordingly, were numerous, varied, and sometimes of considerable extent. In the end of 1792, a new object seemed to call for his attention; he once about this time seriously meditated mingling in politics. The French Revolution had from the first affected him with no ordinary hopes; which, however, the course of events, particularly the imprisonment of Louis, were now fast converting into fears. For the

ill-fated monarch, and the cause of freedom, which seemed threatened with disgrace in the treatment he was likely to receive, Schiller felt so much interested, that he had determined, in his case a determination not without its risks, to address an appeal on these subjects to the French people and the world at large. The voice of reason advocating liberty as well as order might still, he conceived, make a salutary impression in this period of terror and delusion; the voice of a distinguished man would at first sound like the voice of the nation which he seemed to represent. Schiller was inquiring for a proper French translator, and revolving in his mind the various arguments that might be used, and the comparative propriety of using or forbearing to use them: but the progress of things superseded the necessity of all deliberation. In a few months, Louis perished on the scaffold; the Bourbon family were mur

dered or scattered over Europe; and the French government was changed into a frightful chaos, amid the tumultuous and bloody horrors of which, calm truth had no longer a chance to be heard. Schiller turned away from these repulsive and appalling scenes, into other regions where his heart was more familiar, and his powers more likely to produce effect. The French Revolution had distressed and shocked him; but it did not lessen his attachment to liberty, the name of which had been so desecrated in its wild convulsions. Perhaps in his subsequent writings we can trace a more respectful feeling towards old establishments; more reverence for the majesty of custom; and with an equal zeal, a weaker faith in human perfectibility; changes indeed which are the common fruit of years themselves, in whatever age or climate of the world our experience may be gathered.

(To be concluded in our next Portion.)

NOTES FROM THE POCKET-BOOK OF A LATE OPIUM-EATER.

No. V.

SUPERFICIAL KNOWLEDGE.

IT is asserted that this is the age of Superficial Knowledge; and amongst the proofs of this assertion we find Encyclopædias and other popular abstracts of knowledge particularly insisted on. But in this notion and in its alleged proofs there is equal error-wherever there is much diffusion of knowledge, there must be a good deal of superficiality: prodigious extension implies a due proportion of weak intension; a sealike expansion of knowledge will cover large shallows as well as large depths. But in that quarter in which it is superficially cultivated the intellect of this age is properly opposed in any just comparison to an intellect without any culture at all:leaving the deep soils out of the comparison, the shallow ones of the present day would in any preceding one have been barren wastes. Of this our modern encyclopædias are the best proof. For whom are they designed, and by whom used?-By those who in a former age would

have gone to the fountain heads? No, but by those who in any age preceding the present would have drunk at no waters at all. Encyclopædias are the growth of the last hundred years; not because those who were formerly students of higher learning have descended, but because those who were below encyclopædias have ascended. The greatness of the ascent is marked by the style in which the more recent encyclopædias are executed: at first they were mere abstracts of existing books

well or ill executed: at present they contain many original articles of great merit. As in the periodical literature of the age, so in the encyclopædias it has become a matter of ambition with the publishers to retain the most eminent writers in each several department. And hence it is that our encyclopædias now display one characteristic of this age-the very opposite of superficiality (and which on other grounds we are well assured of)-viz. its tendency in

science, no less than in other applications of industry, to extreme subdivision. In all the employments which are dependent in any degree; upon the political economy of nations, this tendency is too obvious to have been overlooked. Accordingly it has long been noticed for congratulation in manufactures and the useful arts and for censure in the learned professions. We have now, it is alleged, no great and comprehensive lawyers like Coke: and the study of medicine is subdividing itself into a distinct ministry (as it were) not merely upon the several organs of the body (oculists, aurists, dentists, cheiropodists, &c.) but almost upon the several diseases of the same organ: one man is distinguished for the treatment of liver complaints of one class-a second for those of another class; one man for asthma-another for phthisis; and so on. As to the law, the evil (if it be one) lies in the complex state of society which of necessity makes the laws complex: law itself is become unwieldy and beyond the grasp of one man's term of life and possible range of experience: and will never again come within them. With respect to medicine, the case is no evil but a great benefit-so long as the subdividing principle does not descend too low to allow of a perpetual reascent into the generalising principle (the ro commune) which secures the unity of the science. In ancient times all the evil of such a subdivision was no doubt realized in Egypt: for there a distinct body of professors took charge of each organ of the body, not (as we may be assured) from any progress of the science outgrowing the time and attention of the general professor, but simply from an ignorance of the organic structure of the human body and the reciprocal action of the whole upon each part and the parts upon the whole; an ignorance of the same kind which has led sailors seriously (and not merely, as may sometimes have happened, by way of joke) to reserve one ulcerated leg to their own manage ment, whilst the other was given up to the management of the surgeon. With respect to law and medicine then, the difference between ourselves and our ancestors is not subjective but objective; not, i. e. in

our faculties who study them, but in the things themselves which are the objects of study: not we (the stu dents) are grown less, but they (the studies) are grown bigger;—and that our ancestors did not subdivide as much as we do-was something of their luck, but no part of their merit.

Simply as subdividers therefore to the extent which now prevails, we' are less superficial than any former age. In all parts of science the same principle of subdivision holds: here therefore, no less than in those parts of knowledge which are the subjects of distinct civil professions, we are of necessity more profound than our ancestors; but, for the same reason, less comprehensive than they. Is it better to be a profound student, or a comprehensive one? In some degree this must depend upon the di rection of the studies: but generally, I think, it is better for the interests of knowledge that the scholar should aim at profundity, and better for the interests of the individual that he should aim at comprehensiveness. A due balance and equilibrium of the mind is but preserved by a large and multiform knowledge: but knowledge itself is but served by an exclusive (or at least paramount) dedication of one mind to one science. The first proposition is perhaps unconditionally true: but the second with some limitations. There are such people as Leibnitzes on this earth; and their office seems not that of planets-to revolve within the limits of one system, but that of comets (according to the theory of some speculators) to connect dif ferent systems together. No doubt there is much truth in this: a few Leibnitzes in every age would be of much use: but neither are many men fitted by nature for the part of Leibnitz; nor would the aspect of knowledge be better, if they were. We should then have a state of Grecian life amongst us in which every man individually would attain in a moderate degree all the purposes of the sane understanding, but in which all the purposes of the sane understanding would be but moderately attained. What I mean is this:-let all the objects of the understanding in civil life or in science be represented by the letters of the alphabet; in Grecian life each man would se

army derives its superiority as a whole, viz. because it is the condition of the possibility of a total surrender of the individual to one exclusive pursuit. In science therefore, and (to speak more generally) in the whole evolution of the human faculties, no less than in Political Economy, the progress of society brings with it a necessity of sacrificing the ideal of what is excellent for the individual, to the ideal of what is excellent for the whole. We need therefore not trouble ourselves (except as a speculative question) with the comparison of the two states; because, as a practical question, it is precluded by the overruling tendencies of the age

parately go through all the letters in a tolerable way; whereas at present each letter is served by a distinct body of men. Consequently the Grecian individual is superior to the modern; but the Grecian whole is inferior: for the whole is made up of the individuals; and the Grecian individual repeats himself. Whereas in modern life the whole derives its superiority from the very circumstances which constitute the inferiority of the parts for modern life is cast dramatically and the difference is as between an army consisting of soldiers who should each individually be competent to go through the duties of a dragoon-of a hussar-of a sharp-shooter-of an artillery-man--which no man could counteract of a pioneer, &c. and an army on its present composition, where the very inferiority of the soldier as an individual-his inferiority in compass and versatility of power and knowledge is the very ground from which the

except in his own single case, i. e. by refusing to adapt himself as a part to the whole, and thus foregoing the advantages of either one state or the other.*

The latter part of what is here said coincides, in a way which is rather remarkable, with a passage in an interesting work of Schiller's which I have since read (on the Æsthetic Education of Men, in a series of letters: vid. letter the 6th). With us, in order to obtain the representative word (as it were) of the total species, we must spell it out by the help of a series of individuals. So that on a survey of society as it actually exists, one might suppose that the faculties of the mind do really in actual experience show themselves in as separate a form, and in as much insulation, as psychology is forced to exhibit them in its analysis. And thus we see not only individuals, but whole classes of men, unfolding only one part of the germs which are laid in them by the hand of nature. In saying this I am fully aware of the advantages which the human species of modern ages has, when considered as a unity, over the best of antiquity: but the comparison should begin with the individuals: and then let me ask where is the modern individual that would have the presumption to step forward against the Athenian individual —man to man, and to contend for the prize of human excellence ?-The polypus nature of the Grecian republics, in which every individual enjoyed a separate life, and if it were necessary could become a whole, has now given place to an artificial watch-work, where many lifeless parts combine to form a mechanic whole. The state and the church, laws and manners, are now torn asunder: labor is divided from enjoyment, the means from the end, the exertion from the reward. Chained for ever to a little individual fraction of the whole, man himself is moulded into a fraction; and, with the monotonous whirling of the wheel which he turns everlastingly in his ear, he never develops the harmony of his being; and, instead of imaging the totality of human nature, becomes a bare abstract of his business or the science which he cultivates. The dead letter takes the place of the living understanding; and a practised memory becomes a surer guide than genius and sensibility. Doubtless the power of genius, as we all know, will not fetter itself within the limits of its occupation; but talents of mediocrity are all exhausted in the monotony of the employment allotted to them; and that man must have no common head who brings with him the geniality of his powers unstripped of their freshness by the ungenial labors of life to the cultivation of the genial."After insisting at some length on this wise, Schiller passes to the other side of the contemplation, and proceeds thus:-"It suited my immediate purpose to point out the injuries of this condition of the species, without displaying the compensations by which nature has balanced them. But I will now readily acknowledge-that, little as this practical condition may suit the interests of the individual, yet the species could in no other way have been progressive. Partial exercise of the faculties (literally one-sidedness in the exercise of the faculties') leads the individual undoubtedly into error, but the species into truth. In no other way than by concentrating the whole energy of our spirit, and by converging our whole being, so to speak, into a single faculty, can we put wings as it were to the individual faculty and carry it by this artificial flight far beyond the limits within which nature has else doomed

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