we take his point of view, make his assumptions and enter into the
spirit of his creation. And when we do this, how magnificently he
carries us along! What animation in the dialogue everywhere, and what
fire in the robber-scenes! From first to last the play fairly throbs
with passion, and always with passion made visible. It is all action,
all meant to be done and seen. Extravagant it is, no doubt; but while
there are always hundreds of critics in the world who can see that and
say it more or less cleverly, there is but one man in a century who can
write such scenes.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 18: The Schubart story is reprinted by Weltrich, I, p. 183
ff., who attempts to trace its provenience. It was not entirely fiction.
Cf. Minor, I, 298, to whom this chapter is indebted in many places.]

[Footnote 19: Eckermann's "Gespraeche mit Goethe", under date of Jan.
17, 1827.]

[Footnote 20: "Schiller, sein Leben und seine Werke," I, 299.]

[Footnote 21: Bitter family fends, and particularly the fiction of the
hostile brothers,--with motives of rivalry, jealousy and hatred, with
paternal curses and parricide and fratricide and filicide,--were just
then a literary fashion. It is worth noting in this connection that
J.M.R. Lenz published in 1776 a story entitled "Die beiden Alten", in
which a son shuts up his father in a cellar and sends a man to kill him.
But the man's heart fails him and the prisoner escapes,--to reappear
like a ghost among his kin. That Schiller read this story is at any rate
thinkable, though there is no direct evidence of the fact.]