to the gift; he was simply to follow his inclination, free from all
anxiety about a livelihood. Without hesitation he accepted the gift
and thus found himself, for the first time in his life, really free to
do as he chose. What he chose was to use his freedom for a grapple
with Kant's philosophy. Today this seems a strange choice for a sick
poet, but let Schiller himself explain what lay in his mind. He wrote
to Körner:

"It is precisely for the sake of artistic creation that I wish to
philosophize. Criticism must repair the damage it has done me. And it
has done me great damage indeed; for I miss in myself these many years
that boldness, that living fire, that was mine before I knew a rule.
Now I see myself in the act of creating and fashioning; I observe the
play of inspiration, and my imagination works less freely, since it is
conscious of being watched. But if I once reach the point where
artistic procedure becomes natural, like education for the
well-nurtured man, then my fancy will get back its old freedom and
know no bounds but those of its own making."

From these words we understand the nature of Schiller's enterprise--he
wished to fathom the laws of beauty. It seemed to him that beauty
could not be altogether a matter of changing taste, opinion, and
fashion; that somehow or other it must be grounded in eternal laws
either of the external world or of human nature. He felt, too, that a
knowledge of these laws, could it once become second nature, would be
very helpful to him as a dramatic poet. Whether he was right in so
thinking is a question too large to be discussed here, nor can we
follow him in the details of his esthetic speculation. The subject is
too abstruse to be dispatched in a few words. Suffice it to say that a
number of minor papers, the most important being _On Winsomeness and