is considerable. He had a fair measure of constructive skill, but very
little of poetic impulse or of dramatic verve. His best scenes interest
us more for their good sense than for any more stirring qualities. His
nearest approach to a strong character is the paterfamilias himself, who
is certainly much less "woolly and mawkish"[52] than his pendant in
Diderot. Next one may place the artist Wehrmann. Karl is a poor stick,
Amaldi is rather colorless, and Lotte would be quite insipid but for her
impending motherhood, on which everything is made to turn. Such as it
was, however, the play excited the cordial admiration of Schiller, who
read it soon after its appearance. Very likely it may have suggested to
him the thought of trying his own hand upon a drama in the bourgeois
sphere, but it was not until July, 1782,--just after he had finished
reading Wagner's 'Infanticide',--that the plan of 'Louise Miller' began
to take shape in his mind. Gemmingen's poor artist, Wehrmann, became the
poor fiddler, Miller, and the daughter Lotte was rechristened Louise.
The aristocratic lover, Gemmingen's Karl, was named Ferdinand von
Walter, and Amaldi was converted into Lady Milford. One of Gemmingen's
subordinate characters, the foppish nobleman, Dromer, who goes about
making compliments to everybody, reappears in Schiller's play as the
perfumed tale-bearer and exquisite ladies' man, Chamberlain von Kalb.
The places represented are three in number and the same in both plays.
Here, however, the parallel ends. Instead of Gemmingen's high-minded
paterfamilias we have the rascally President von Walter, who, with his
tool Wurm, reminds one of Lessing's Prince and Marinelli. And what is
much more important, the relation of the lovers is so portrayed that we
get the pure poetry of passion, such as it is, without any tinge of
grossness.

In its earliest phase Schiller's plan looked toward a telling
tragi-comedy for the stage, with a plenty of rough humor and caustic