liarising their minds with an ecclesiastical ordering of society, was a contributory cause to the conversion of so many of them to Roman Catholicism. Their interest in national mediaeval literature entitles them to rank as the precursors of that philological study of Germanic antiquity, and in fact of historical study generally, which was destined to become one of the triumphs of the nineteenth century and has furnished us with a fairly definite image of the civilisation of the ancestors of our own race. Herein lies the highest claim of Romanticism to our gratitude.

The prolific speculations on aesthetic and the literary creations of this school did indeed open up a domain of imagination hitherto but little explored in German literature, the fantastic realm with which Shakespeare has familiarised us in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and "The Tempest." The charm of what is undefinable, elusive, evanescent, the feeling of mystery and foreboding in the absence of the clear outlines and colours of daylight, the exquisite interweaving of the fate of human mortals with a fairyland whose denizens tauntingly cross and favour our desires, the stilling of restless passion by the sense of the one-ness of the soul of man with the great soul of the universe, all this which should form an integral part, but not the whole, of literature has been delightfully symbolised by the Romanticists. Yet we are not altogether such stuff as dreams are made of; their neglect of clear logical insight causes their works to leave often much to be desired. Reaction against the extreme severity of classic form impelled many of them to an outspoken cult of formlessness. Reaction against the clear-cut logic of the Aufklärung drove them to accept the opposite extreme tenet that the will of the poet is sovereign and admits no superior authority. Novalis, personally a warm admirer of Schiller, in the "Fragmente über Asthetisches" thus defines the essence of poetic fancy. "We can conceive narratives without connection, yet with associations, just like dreams, poems which are simply harmonious and full of beautiful words, but without meaning or consistency. This true poetry can have at most a vague allegorical sense and exercise an indirect effect on the mind like music A story is a disconnected dream-image." In this way full scope was given to fantastic arbitrariness, in regard

to both form and content; the supreme control of reason was abandoned to the wantonness of bare emotion; the mystical, half inarticulate intuitions of the God-favoured seer were preferred to themes intelligibly developed by conscious activity. When reason has been dethroned on principle and is no longer allowed the final verdict in the clash of warring passions, subjective caprice is bound to be substituted for real moral vigour; each particular emotional experience is detached from its intellectual accompaniment and is attributed with positive value in such isolation The matter becomes aggravated when similar principles govern not merely literary production, but also general conduct of life-and if held with any degree of sincerity they cannot be restricted to aesthetic contemplation but must influence practical activity. It is therefore quite in keeping with their poetry that lack of stability should characterise the lives of a large number of writers of the Romantic school; mere generous impulses, although essential, are not a sufficient guarantee for sustained morality. The exaggerated feminist trait of character, the sickly sentimentalism, the general inaptitude for application, are but the natural expression of the mental tone cultivated by the radical votaries of Romanticism.

The contrast with Schiller is obvious all along the line. His early revolutionary period, during which he confuses liberty and license and places freedom in absolutely negative relation to law, has many of the distinctively Romantic features, but in the period of his mature art he renounced most of these tendencies; even in the Maid of Orleans, the Romantic element that is admitted, viz, the use of the supernatural and a certain glorification of Roman Catholic religious emotionalism, are endowed with a peculiar symbolic value directly opposed to some of the most cherished articles of Romantic faith; the victory of spirit over matter, of idealism over materialism here symbolised elevates it to a higher plane. In contrast with Romanticism, Schiller rigidly adhered to the polished dignity and regularity of both prose and verse; in this respect indeed he is unmatched in German literature, whatever superiority we may accord to Goethe and others in the grace and plastic charm of their poetry. The subject-matter, too, with Schiller is always a theme of supreme

ethical import, never an apotheosis of mere sentiment; in his estimation art had a serious duty to perform, namely to reveal to man the highest capabilities of human nature, to represent and symbolise the spiritual reality that alone imparts worth and meaning to the phenomenal. To mention only one instance; he regarded the essence of Tragedy as consisting in the triumph of man's moral nature over suffering endured by him as a physical being; as a vindication therefore of human freedom. Such a conception of the supremacy of reason is far removed from the subjective waywardness of Romantic "irony." And, to indicate a further contrast, whilst in the conduct of life the Romanticists were prone to drift on the stream of irrational emotion, failing to concentrate their endeavours on the attainment of any definite goal, Schiller fashioned his whole existence in the realisation of a distinctly apprehended ideal; he says "Nothing but activity directed towards a definite aim can make life endurable." order to gain some fixity in their ever-wavering aspirations they took their guidance from external authority in the form of Roman Catholicism, he, on the other hand, was a most sturdy champion of the Protestant assertion of the individual's responsibility to himself and refused to accept the dictates of any authority but conscience. In the face of such far-reaching differences we can understand the bitter polemic waged by the Romanticists against Schiller and the method of expression of this polemic enables us to understand Goethe's indignant remark "Schiller had but to pare his nails. to be greater than any of these gentlemen." Even in the point where they appear to be most in sympathy with him, the advocacy of aesthetic culture, their subjective aloofness prevents their becoming instrumental in the education of a wider community, which was always Schiller's aim.

In

There were many points common to Romanticism and Pessimism which latter, owing to the popularity of Schopenhauer in particular, exercised great influence over literature from the middle of the century onwards; even to-day its influence is not extinct, although as a creed, pessimism is now confined to the lower strata of intelligence. We may say indeed that those phenomena which when distorted into caricature become the foundation of pessimism, are never absent

from any serious mind; it is now regarded as a stigma of craven cynicism to ignore the squalor and sordidness of the lives led by myriads of our fellows, the baseness of their ordinary motives, the barrenness of their intellect and the consequent hopelessness of their outlook. Also it is unquestionable that pessimistic moods were not unknown to Schiller; it is doubtful whether any sincere writer of Tragedy could be unacquainted with them, since Tragedy, even if the dénouement indicate a higher sphere of reality in which the immediately presented discords are resolved into harmony, only attains this end by portraying a world rent assunder by vice, a world in which what we deem of highest worth succumbs to what we despise, or perhaps to some malignant fate. Our first impression of the tragic world is bewilderment at the piteousness and wretchedness of human life, where eminence seems cursed to fall a prey to baseness and treachery. Yet there is a deep gulf separating Schiller from ultimate pessimism, an impassable gulf, because it is fixed not merely empirically but by conviction of principle. Pessimistic doctrines assert the subordination of human activity to a purely irrational agency; the subconscious predominates over the conscious; no rational purpose regulates and unifies man's endeavors, what prompts him is almost exclusively blind, aimless conation. The pessimist finishes by picturing to himself the whole universe as a turbulent ocean of undefined and undefinable feeling which intellectual activity is impotent to calm, and on whose waves man is incessantly hurled to and fro. In such a universe no contentment can be found, because no goal is fixed, in reaching which one might gain satisfaction. The ideal of existence Nirvana,

becomes therefore the extermination of existence, the final annihilation of Will; in this consummation alone can rest, the summon bonum, be found.

Here we have practically a complete reversal of Schiller's position. No one asserted with greater vigour than he the principle of conscious self-determination. Where the pessimists see unreason, he sees reason. Of course passion is for him, the poet of tragedy, an important factor in human nature; he goes even so far as to ascribe positive worth to it, provided it has been refined by aesthetic education, thus mitigating its purely negative relation to and facilitating its be

ing taken up into the imperative of duty; also Schiller sees as clearly as Schopenhauer the devastation wrought by demonic passion when it asserts itself in unrestrained brutality. The difference between them lies in the pessimist's assertion of an alogical power shaping, or rather misshaping things, whilst in Schiller's view reason is able to take up the alogical more and more into itself by an ever-widening application of its own forms. It is only passion thus indued with the form of reason that constitutes specifically human motive, any other motive we share in common with the lower animals; such activity of reason alone constitutes our worth as human beings, our freedom. If Schopenhauer's personality, warped by mental insanity, is reflected in his morbid emphasis of the impossibility of escaping life's misery while he was leading a life of ease and luxury, we see no less clearly the man Schiller in this optimistic assertion of human freedom, although his whole life was a struggle against physical infirmities and the tyranny of men who derived their authority solely from an accident of birth.

Pessimism, like Romanticism, enjoins cowardly retreat from life's battle, Schiller teaches us to keep a steady gaze on a more perfect ideal than the present reveals and to purge away the dross of selfishness in an untiring effort to realise it. A single quotation from Schopenhauer, which may be regarded as typical of his most optimistic expressions generally as to man's purpose in life, placed side by side with another typical of Schiller, will make palpable the diversity of their views. "When incentives to pleasure and enjoyment do not shake him (man), when the threats and ragings of embittered foes do not move him, when the prayers of erring friends do not cause his resolve to waver, when the idle forms which concerted intrigues place in ambush for him leave him unconcerned, when the scorn of fools and of the mob do not disconcert him nor shake his faith in his own worth; then he seems to stand under the influence of a world of spirits, visible to him alone, before which that present which stands revealed to all, fades like a phantom." Thus aesthetic contemplation of the eternal and unchanging ideal is valuable because it reduces the actual and surrounding world to a phantom; we must strive, not to ennoble passion, but to annihilate