No. LXXXI.

VOL. XIV.

If there be a twenty-year old book in the world that is "as good as MS." -that is to say, that nobody has seen, although many have talked of it, it is the translation of Schiller's Wallenstein, by Mr Coleridge. The fact is, that the existence of such a work had been almost entirely lost sight of, until it was recalled to a sort of " Lifein-death," by being made to furnish some quotations for the beginnings of chapters in The Scotch Novels." The author of those Novels mentioned Wallenstein, on one of these occasions, as more magnificent in the English of Coleridge than in the German of Schiller ;" and in the recent republication of The Friend, Mr Coleridge acknowledges this extravagant compliment in a strain of still more extravagant gratefulness. The author of Waverley understands English better than German-therefore he enjoys the translated Wallenstein more fully than the original; but it was not fair to disparage Schiller in this style. Had Schiller translated the Ancient Mariner into German, he could have produced nothing so good as Coleridge's original; and Coleridge's Wallenstein is an admirable translation-but it is nothing more-it is not an originalit is not so magnificent as the Wallenstein of Schiller. VOL. XIV.

It is, however, by far the best translation of a foreign tragic drama which our English literature possesses; and as such, it is well worthy of being more effectually recalled to the recolTection of the present reading public. Strange certainly, but as certainly true it is, that we have nothing like any adequate version of any one of the masterpieces of Greek-of Spanisheven of French tragedy. And it is not less true, that, besides this one, we have no excellent complete translation of any German tragedy whatever-except, perhaps, Mr Gillies's version of Müllner's GUILT, and Müllner is not yet a master. But Schiller is not only one of the true masters of German tragedy, but he is, we have no hesitation in saying, by far the greatest master of tragedy that has appeared in Europe since the death of Calderon. In many particulars he is the inferior of Goethe-but in the drama, the real living drama of tragic action, he is, we cannot doubt, his illustrious countryman's superior. The FAUST is a thing by itself—it is a thing of a kind by itself-it is a new creation-it places its author in the very first rank of human genius; but it is not a tragic drama in the same sense with Egmont, or any of Goethe's pieces meant for the stage. To all of

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these, Schiller's Wallenstein, Carlos, and Bride of Messina, are decidedly superior. They have more of the real vis dramatica-they have much more of the fire and the life-they come nearer Shakespeare in those particular qualities, wherein, considered merely as a writer for the stage, he is as unrivalled, as, in some other and yet higher things, he is, and, in all probability, will ever be, unapproached. An admirable version, therefore, of one of this great author's most admirable works, is a possession of which we ought to be exceedingly proud; and we very gladly embrace this opportunity of noticing it at some length, for three several reasons.

1st, By doing so, we shall, at very little cost of labour, furnish our readers with a first-rate piece of entertainment and delight.

2dly, We shall probably incite the bookseller (whoever he is) that has the copy-right, to publish a new edition of the whole work; and we shall thereby do a service both to Mr Coleridge and to the public, as well as to the said bookseller. And,

3dly, We shall, we would fain hope, incite if not Mr Coleridge himself men of talent not quite so unjust to themselves as he is and has been to himself, to make further experiments on the fruitful field of genuine German tragedy.-Mr R. P. Gillies and Lord Francis Gower, in particular, have already shewn themselves to be in possession of every accomplishment this labour requires; and we would earnestly hope neither of them will turn a deaf ear to the public voice which bids them proceed. There is "ample room and scope enough" for both; and, unless we be greatly mistaken, anything as good as the English Wallenstein produced now, would be sure to meet with a very different reception from that which was vouchsafed to Coleridge by the reading public of 1800.

That was a strange period in many points of view-and, in a literary point of view, at least as much so as in any other. There had been, we may say, a pause-a total pause in our poetry for a full score of yearsfor although Burns, one of the most genuine of poets, had been astonishing Scotland, Scotland was then mere Scotland, and his genius had not up to that time exerted any commanding

influence upon the great mind of England. It was the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border that first turned attention largely and deeply to the language and the poetry of Scotland; and the works of Burns gradually profited by the same circuinstances, which opened the full career of a still more splendid popularity to the greatest of all his poetical successors. Had Burns lived, what he might have done no one can tell-but he was cut off early in life; and when we reflect how late it was ere his intellectual youth (considering all the disadvantages under which he laboured) could be said to terminate, HE died much younger than any other poet of his years. Even laying this aside, had he lived till now, he would not have been an old man. But what avail such speculations?

At the time when Coleridge published his Wallenstein, then, it may be said, that the English public had got out of the habit of looking for good new poetry. The toleration of such a barren coxcomb as Hayley, is a sufficient proof of the low state to which these matters had been reduced. The fact, that such idiots as Miss Seward and her Litchfield cronies were suffered to have any sort of intellectual existence at all, is, if possible, still more conclusive. Such was the profound languor into which we had fallen, that nothing but a stimulant of the very first-rate power had the least chance of rousing us. It was not the display of juvenile ingenuity

it was not the elegance of imitation it was not even the bloom of true promise, that could disturb such a lethargy. Nay more-it was not even genius, highest genius itself, exerted in any other form than one of equal excellence and novelty, that could be sufficient to work such a wonder. The early poems of Coleridge and Southey were totally ineffectual appeals to the ear of the slumbering giant. Even Wordsworth appealed in vain, for his music was not the trumpet-note to wake the dead. But at last a trumpet-note was heard, and from the appearance of the Lay of the Last Minstrel, there has been neither slumbering nor folding of the hands to sleep.

Mr Coleridge's translation from Schiller appeared just when the apathy had attained that depth, which was, although no one dreamed of it,

the sure prelude to a burst of revivification. Had it been an English original, it might have done wonders; but we were at our darkest too proud to be kindled by a foreign torch; and the WALLENSTEIN had, like the first publication of Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads, the fate to delight the few, and to be totally neglected by the many.

Had he published Christabel when it was written, and gone on in that strain, Coleridge might have broken the charm-but there is no use in conjecturing and reflecting.

The translation of Wallenstein was published in England very shortly after the original play was first acted in Germany, and indeed before the original had been printed at all—at least we suppose so, for Mr C. tells us in his preface, that he worked upon a MS. copy. In point of fact, the Wallenstein, as it now appears in Schiller's works, is, in many minor matters, very different from what it seems to have been, when it engaged Mr Coleridge's attention. Schiller was never weary of retouching his writings, and he fastened many alterations and many additions on this great performance, subsequent to its first appearance on the stage. But, after all, these are, comparatively speaking, mere trifles; although, if Mr Coleridge were to republish his translation in toto, it would certainly be his duty to give it a careful revision. In some instances, indeed, we suspect the MS. he had before his eyes must have been inaccurate or illegible-for there are blemishes which otherwise we should be at a loss to account for.*

The translation, be all this as it may, was executed in Germany during the first triumphant popularity of the original as an acting play. When we think of this-when we compare the prodigious effect which the German Wallenstein produced in Germany, and the apathy with which this admirable version was received at the very same moment in England, we know nothing that might furnish a more striking proof of the very different circumstances under which the poetical literatures of these two kindred

regions were placed at that period. The Wallenstein produced about as great a sensation in its native country, as any first-rate work of genius ever produced anywhere; and yet it appeared when Wieland and Goethe were both of them in the height of their glory-it appeared at a time when every winter was producing a host of masterpieces in every department of letters in Germany-it appeared at a time when the public of that country might have been supposed to be saturated with the excess of poetical luxuries. The translation, on the other hand, appeared here when we were starving, absolutely starving-and it appeared only to be neglected.

Not such would have been the fate of such a translation appearing in the midst of any of the truly productive periods of English literature. At such periods a craving is created, which no supply of genuine food can ever be in the least danger of satisfying to the brink of surfeit. It was in the midst of the most illustriously productive period our literature has ever known, that Don Quixote was first translated into English, and that work immediately took its place by the side of the most favoured creations of vernacular genius. Gil Blas, in like manner, appeared among us at the very time when we had our own Swifts, Popes, Gays, and Arbuthnots-Voltaire competed boldly and directly with our Fieldings, Smollets, and Goldsmiths. These works had only to appear in order to succeed, because we were in the full enjoyment of that high excitement, that flow of intellectual health, which no stimulus but that of present, living, native genius can originally supply. But the greatest tragedian that the world had seen for two centuries, appealed, and appealed in vain, to the English ear, because that ear had become dull and dead amidst the " Sylvas nil resonantes" of an age of inertness, pomposity, and barren pretension. Had he struck into a concert of competing masters, he would have been received with rapture by them, and therefore by all the rest-but the distant note of genuine power could not be heard amidst the drowsy tinkle

of Jews' harps, with which, at that era of intellectual indolence, we had condescended to be entertained. Schiller, as our readers are probably aware, commenced his poetical career ere he had well passed the threshold of manhood. The severe discipline of the military academy at which he was educated disgusted him; and his juvenile revenge was that singular performance, which, by its too vivid painting of the joys of a life free from all the restraints of human rule, set the young "hot bloods" of Germany into one ferment of madness. "The Robbers" produced, among other things, an interdict upon the pen of its young author, from those most grave and potent Signiors, the Inspectors of the Press for the Dutchy of Wirtemberg. This, however, was the very best thing that could have happened for Schiller, for the excellent Goethe immediately made the cause his own, and ere many months had elapsed, the Juvenile Poet was enabled to prosecute his studies under very different auspices, within the dominions of Goethe's illustrious FRIEND, that universally honoured patron of genius, the Duke of Saxe Weimar. The youthful Schiller describes, in one of his letters, the first meeting he had with the remarkable person, whose generosity had thus befriended him. He saw Goethe with that mixture of cu riosity and awe, without which such a youth could scarcely have been expected to find himself for the first time in the presence of such a man. Goethe relieved his embarrassment by talking in the most free and friendly manner to him throughout the greater part of the evening. "I love him," says Schiller, in the letter which he wrote the same evening ere he went to bed-" I love him-I love this great and good man -but we shall never be friends. I am too much his junior. He has outlived what I am. He has felt all that I feel, but he has passed onwards the things that I am interested with, nay, that I ought to be interested with, are to him the dreams of a youth that has vanished. He may look back and sympathise with me by his imagination, but I cannot leap over the experience of years. I cannot communicate on equal terms with this man, who has lived in the world more than twice as long as I have done who has contemplated the events and the spirits of that long course of time, with the eyes of such

a genius as Goethe's. I may love and admire-but, I feel it, I cannot be the friend."

This modesty augured well, and in after years, it need not be said, Schiller and Goethe did live together as equals and as friends. The near contemplation of Goethe's matured and triumphant genius appears, however, to have checked for a season Schiller's poetical ambition. This, perhaps, was not the worst thing that could have happened for his upshot of fame. Schiller turned himself to the study of history, above all of German history, with all the vigour of his intellect. By Goethe's interest he was appointed ere long to a historical professorship at Jena, and there he remained for several years, cultivating his mind with the most persevering diligence, and living in society admirably calculated to improve and refine both his genius and his manners. The distance between Jena and Weimar is so inconsiderable, that he could easily spend the morning in his university, and the evening amidst the quiet elegancies of that charming little capital; and, besides, there was a favourite garden and small inn, situated about half-way between the two towns, where he, Goethe, Wieland, and other literary friends, used to meet occasionally. Indeed, that circle of worthies was at all times a jovial one; and the club, which, at a subsequent period, united them all thrice-a-week at Weimar, was the parent of half the chansons-a-boire that are now popular over Germany.

It was after a pause of more than ten years that Schiller re-appeared as a tragedian. He had published in the interim a few minor poems and various Historical Essays-most of these in a Magazine, which at that time flourished at Weimar under Wieland's auspices-and more lately he had produced the best of all his prose writings, "The History of the Thirty Years' War." The poetical spark, however, had not been extinguished-and when he once more made his appearance as a dramatist, the choice of bis subjects sufficiently shewed, that while he had been collecting the materials for historical composition, he had halfunconsciously been concentrating upon these very materials all the fire and splendour of a genius, whose true destination could not long be gainsaid. His labours on "The Revolt of the

Netherlands," produced his Don Carlos; and his great historical work, "The Thirty Years' War," was follow ed by that magnificent drama, or rather cycle of dramas, in which he turns his history into poetry, or rather draws out, and embodies in one exquisite whole, the hidden poetry inherent in a period of great historical interestin which, he paints the age which before he had chronicled, and luxuriates in the privilege of following to the inmost recesses of their bosoms, those high-fated specimens of the daring and the crafty, the generous and the sordid, the prominent exterior of whose deeds and fortunes had already been recorded by him in a shape, which, (to translate the fine expression of, if we be not mistaken, one of his own minor poems,) "Smother'd indignant Inspiration's flame, And bound the Fever which it could not tame."

This preface is extending itself to a length of which we had no anticipa tions; but, since we have been seduced into talking of Schiller's life, we must say one word about his death, or rather its proximate cause. We had a little book lately laid on our table, in which the affair is gone into at great length-And will our readers believe it? this worthy German biographer gravely ascribes the death of Schiller at the age of forty-to what?-why to the habits of writing after supper, and lying in bed until nine o'clock in the morning!

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If these were mortal circumstances, a pretty bill of deaths we should have. The occurrence of such a passage, in a book published so near us only last year, is, of itself, enough to shew how far the ideas and manners of the good people of Weimar, are in Schiller's modest phrase, our juniors."-In fairness, however, we must admit that Schiller really seems to have had a very inadequate measure of respect for a constitution, which could never have been a very robust one. During the latter years of his life, (i. e. from thirty to forty,) while he was engaged in writing his chief dramatic works, his mode of life was as follows:-He rose, as we have seen, at the unchristian hour of nine, and ate a tolerable breakfast-smoked and read, (but never

wrote,) till one o'clock, when he dined -Walked out for an hour or two by himself, in the Duke of Weimar's pleasure-grounds, (by the way he always plunged into the nearest thicket if he saw anybody coming)-went to the play between four and five every afternoon-supped in company afterwards and then shut himself in his room to write. He continued at his writing-table for several hours. And we are in possession, (thanks to Meinherr Doering, above mentioned,) of a graphic enough account of his method of demeaning himself, while thus occupied. "The neighbours who lived opposite," says this writer, "have often described to me the midnight of Schiller. He had close to him on his table a bottle of old Rhine-wine, which sometimes had need to be replenished ere his labours were completed. When he had finished a small portion of writing, he invariably rose_and_declaimed to himself, in a loud and sonorous voice, striding vehemently up and down his chamber; but if it was a fine night, he would throw up the window, and pour out his verses to the open air. Occasionally he wrote with his pipe in his mouth. It was often two or even half-past two ere he retired to his bed-chamber."

We hope this passage may be of use to some friends of ours who shall be nameless; but, in the meantime, let us return to the Wallenstein, from which we have most improperly been wandering-and that the more inexcusably, because, after turning over the leaves of the volume, as we have just done, it is sufficiently evident that no one article of ours can be sufficient to give to our readers anything like an adequate notion of this performance. One thing we shall cut short. Madame de Stael's "Germany" is in every hand; and Professor Schlegel's Lectures on Dramatic Literature are at least in many. From either of these works a tolerable enough idea of the general structure of WALLENSTEIN may be derived; and anxious as we are to keep all the room we can for extracts from Mr Coleridge's version, we shall trust almost entirely to this aid; and, indeed, speak henceforth in some sort upon the supposition, that those who listen are not altogether in