plucked student's resentment. Nevertheless it is only natural to
suppose that his proud and ambitious spirit chafed more or less under
the requirements of an academic routine that his manhood had
outgrown. That he succeeded after all, at the end of the year 1779,
in capturing a number of prizes and received them in the presence of
Goethe and the Duke of Weimar, who happened just then to be visiting
Stuttgart, could do but little to sweeten the bitter dose that had
been prescribed for him.

He now set about the preparation of a new thesis, and in the intervals
of his professional occupation he worked with feverish energy upon 'The
Robbers'. To gain time for writing he would often feign illness, and
when the duke or an inspector surprised him would hide his manuscript in
a big medical treatise kept at hand for the purpose. A few comrades who
were in the secret eagerly watched the progress of his work and
vociferously applauded the scenes which he now and then read to them.
One of these comrades has left it on record that in the excitement of
composition Schiller would often stamp and snort and roar.--And thus it
was, in the stolen hours of the night and driven by the demon that
possessed him, that he bodied forth his titanic drama of revolt. It was
virtually finished during the year 1780. In after-time Schiller reasoned
himself into the conviction that art must be 'cheerful',[15] but very
little of cheerfulness went to the composition of 'The Robbers'. It was
the disburthening of an oppressed soul that suffered horribly at times
from morbid melancholy--the chicken-pox of youthful genius. A letter of
June, 1780, shows how he had battled with the specters of despair.
Writing to Captain von Hoven, whose son had lately died, he says:

A thousand times I envied your son as he was wrestling with death,
and would have given up my life as calmly as I go to bed. I am not