disaster. If we accent a different set of passages, we are sure that it
is a drama of republican idealism, sorely tempted by autocratic
ambition, but destined to triumph finally over the baser motive. In the
one view Verrina is a virtuous patriot; in the other he is a mad fanatic
who does not understand the greatness of his chief. After Fiesco
declares in soliloquy,--when a dramatic character is supposed to speak
his real sentiments if anywhere,--that it is far nobler to renounce a
diadem than to win it, we are certainly justified in expecting that he
will seek the higher glory for himself. Thus either ending is possible,
and which is the better is mainly a question of stage effect. Neither is
historical, and neither gives a republican tragedy.

It would be pedantic indeed to have devoted so many words to a mere
matter of name. If a drama is good it signifies but little what we call
it, or whether its title be exactly appropriate. In this case, however,
we have to do with a vital defect and not merely with a misnomer. A play
may be good in different ways; and what the preceding criticism is
intended to bring out is the fact that the strength of 'Fiesco', such as
it has, does not lie in the intellectual organization of the whole. The
mind of Schiller, but little trained hitherto upon historical studies,
had not yet learned how to extract a clear poetic essence from a
confused medley of recorded facts and opinions. Nature had endowed him
with a vivid imagination for details, but study had not yet fitted him
to exercise in a large and luminous way the sovereignty of the artist.
His facts confused him and pulled him this way and that. And so we miss
in 'Fiesco' that 'monumental fresco-painting', as it has been called,
which constitutes the charm of his riper historical dramas.

But average play-goers are wont to bother their heads but little over
these questions of higher artistic import which are apt to bulk so large