Dignity (Über Anmut and Würde)_ and _On the Sublime_, prepared the way
for a more popular exposition of his views in the _Letters on Esthetic
Education_ and in the memorable essay _On Naïve and Sentimental
Poetry_, which deserves to be called, next to Lessing's _Laocoon_, the
weightiest critical essay of the eighteenth century. The Letters
contain a ripe and pleasing statement of Schiller's philosophy in its
relation to the culture-problems of his epoch.

Along with these philosophic studies Schiller found time for much work
more closely related to his professorship of history. To say nothing
of his minor historical writings, he completed, in 1793, his _History
of the Thirty Years' War_. It appeared in successive numbers of
Göschen's _Ladies' Calendar_, a fact which in itself indicates that it
was not conceived and should not be judged as a monument of research.
The aim was to tell the story of the great war in a readable style.
And in this Schiller succeeded, especially in the parts relating to
his hero, the Swedish king Gustav Adolf. Over Schiller's merit as a
historian there has been much debate, and good critics have caviled at
his sharp contrasts and his lack of care in matters of detail. But the
great fact remains that the _Defection of the Netherlands_ and the
_Thirty Years' War_ are the earliest historical classics in the German
language. Schiller was the first German to make literature out of
history.

The year 1794 brought about a closer relation between Schiller and
Goethe, an event of prime moment in the lives of both. On Goethe's
return from Italy, in the summer of 1788, Schiller was introduced to
him, but the meeting had no immediate consequences. In fact, Schiller
had quietly made up his mind not to like the man whom, for a whole
year, he had heard constantly lauded by the Weimar circle. He thought