delivered to him. This scene was condemned and the exploit given a more
appropriate place among the _res gestae_ of Spiegelberg. In many places
extravagant diction was toned down. The original preface, which was
mainly occupied with a labored defence of the literary drama as against
the stage-play, was rejected, and a new preface written which was
devoted chiefly to moral considerations. The author here admitted that
he had portrayed characters who would offend the virtuous, but insisted
that he could not do otherwise if he was to copy nature, because in the
real world virtue shines only in contrast with vice. He went on to say:

He who makes it his object to overthrow vice, and to avenge
religion, morality and social law upon their enemies, must unveil
vice in all its naked hideousness and bring it before the eyes of
mankind in colossal size; he must himself wander temporarily through
its nocturnal labyrinths and must be able to force himself into
states of feeling that revolt his soul by their unnaturalness. I may
properly claim for my work, in view of its remarkable catastrophe, a
place among moral books. Vice meets the end that befits it. The
wanderer returns to the track of law. Virtue triumphs. Whoever is
fair enough to read me through and try to understand me, from him I
may expect, not that he admire the poet, but that he respect the
right-minded man.

This attempt to recommend 'The Robbers' as a text-book in morality has
now a curious sound. It is a safe guess that the young attorney for the
defence wrote with his tongue in his cheek and an eye on the censor.

The first edition, which appeared in May, 1781, was styled a
'Schauspiel' and bore the Hippocratic motto: _Quae medicamenta non
sanant, ferrum sanat; quae ferrum non sanat, ignis sanat_. The author's