Text: C. F. Briggs (?), Literary, Broadway Journal (New York), December 6, 1845, vol. 2, no. 22, p. ??

Critical Notices.

Appleton's Literary Miscellany, No. V. The Life of Frederick Schiller. By Thomas Carlyle.

It is but a few years since the Life of Schiller, by Carlyle, was first published in this country. The author's name was not prefixed: and the book found readers only among the cultivated few who felt an interest in the subject, or were able to discover the rare excellence of the work as a literary biography. We cannot help thinking it the most delightful of all the writings of Carlyle. It was written before he had adopted the eccentricities and affectations of style, which have obscured so many fine thoughts. He was then only a “secluded individual,” on whose mind and heart were painted the character of the poet by whom he had been charmed, instructed, cheered and moved, and who represented this form to others, that they, too, might be inspired by its grace and majesty. And nobly did he execute a noble task. We rejoice that it was completed before the simplicity of his spirit had been invaded and corrupted by caprice; before the Fountain of Beauty in his soul had been turned into a turbid vortex; before he appeared a foreign and portentious shape to his century — not to purify — but to bewilder and mislead it! Nothing but what was great and elevating could emanate from a mind that avowed, and abided by such a creed as this:

The treasures of Literature are celestial, imperishable, beyond all price; with her is the shrine of our best hopes; the palladium of pure manhood; to be among the guardians and servants of this is the noblest function that can be entrusted to a mortal. Genius, even in its faintest scintillations, is the ‘inspired gift of God ‘; a solemn mandate to its owner, to go forth and labor in his sphere; to keep alive the ‘sacred fire’ among his brethren, which the heavy and polluted atmosphere of this world is torever threatening to extinguish. Wo to him if he neglect this mandate, if he hear not its still, small voice! Wo to him, if he turn this inspired gift into the servant of his vile or ignoble passions; if he offer it on the altar of vanity — if he sell it for a piece of money.

This biography — (the present is a new edition, revised and reprinted by the author) — is not merely a sketch of the poet's life. Nor is it simply a picture of him, personally and mentally, as he appears in his maturity, and as the world and posterity know him. It is a gradual de-velopement of his heart and mind, of his nature as a poet and a man, that endears him more to us, while it enables us more thoroughly to comprehend him. We can trace here the growth of his faculties, and his progress amidst the struggles and obstacles of his early career; from the [page 337:]

time when his “strong, untutored spirit,” consumed by its awn activity, was chaung blindly, like ocean waves, against the barriers that restrained it — through difficulties and vexations which only his burning energy of soul enabled him to overcome — up to that calm, intellectual elevation, in the lucid expansion of which he could watch the workings of his imagination, and subject the operations of genius to the requisitions of taste. Each of these separate eras in Schiller's existence is marked by the character of his productions; so that his personal is blended with his intellectual history. Thus Carlyle has divided his biography into three parts. The first embraces his youth, and his first plays, the Robbers, Fiesco, and Kahale and Liebe; a season of wild aberrations, of stormy confusion, and of unregulated, exasperated enthusiasm. — The second period in his literary history includes the time that elapsed from his settlement at Manheim, to that at Jena. The play of Don Carlos was composed at this time. The third, and concluding portion, extends from his settlement at Jena, to his death. His greatest works were produced in these last years; his character became fully formed.; his clear, deep and comprehensive intellect was in the zenith of its glory. Yet, “his child-like simplicity” — that last perfection of his other excellences — was the most discernible. “His was a mighty spirit, unheedful of its might. He walked the earth in calm power; the staff of his spear was like a weaver's beam;’ but he wielded it like a wand.”

The translations from the tragedies of Schiller, in this volume, are very imperfectly executed. It is evident the translator has no ear for rhythm. The literal meaning is given, but the subtle spirit of poetry is lost in the transition )f thought from one language to the other. But in the analysis of the plays, and in the just and discriminating criticisms, the reader may be guided safely and most agreeably. He will lay down the book not merely with intense admiration of it, but with a more elevated sense of the dignity of the poet's mission, and a deeper reverence for the truth that still lives in fiction. He will exclaim, at the touching death-bed scene — “ Was it not enough of life, when he had conquered kingdoms?” — “These kingdoms,” truly observes the author, “which Schiller conquered, were not for one nation at the expense of suffering to another; they were soiled by no patriot's blood; no widows’, no orphans’ tears: 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 possession forever to all the generations of the Earth.’