The Life of Friedrich Schiller Comprehending an Examination of His Works · Thomas Carlyle
[NOTE IN PEOPLE'S EDITION.]
In the end of Autumn last a considerately kind old Friend of mine brought home to me, from his Tour in Germany, a small Book by a Herr Saupe, one of the Head-masters of Gera High-School,--Book entitled 'Schiller and His Father's Household,'[42]--of which, though it has been before the world these twenty years and more, I had not heard till then. The good little Book,--an altogether modest, lucid, exact and amiable, though not very lively performance, offering new little facts about the Schiller world, or elucidations and once or twice a slight correction of the old,--proved really interesting and instructive; awoke, in me especially, multifarious reflections, mournfully beautiful old memories;--and led to farther readings in other Books touching on the same subject, particularly in these three mentioned below,[43]--the first two of them earlier than Saupe's, the third later and slightly corrective of him once or twice;--all which agreeably employed me for some weeks, and continued to be rather a pious recreation than any labour. [Footnote 43: _Schiller's Leben von Gustav Schwab_ (Stuttgart, 1841). _Schiller's Leben, verfasst aus_, &c. By Caroline von Wolzogen, _born_ von Lengefeld (Schiller's Sister-in-law): Stuttgart und Tuebingen, 1845. _Schiller's Beziehungen zu Eltern, Geschwistern und der Familie von Wolzogen, aus den Familien-Papieren._ By Baroness von Gleichen (Schiller's youngest Daughter) and Baron von Wolzogen (her Cousin): Stuttgart, 1859.]
To this accident of Saupe's little Book there was, meanwhile, added another not less unexpected: a message, namely, from Bibliopolic Head-quarters that my own poor old Book on Schiller was to be reprinted, and that in this "_People's Edition_" it would want (on deduction of the German Piece by Goethe, which had gone into the "_Library Edition_," but which had no fitness here) some sixty or seventy pages for the proper size of the volume. _Saupe_, which I was still reading, or idly reading-about, offered the ready expedient:--and here accordingly _Saupe_ is. I have had him faithfully translated, and with some small omissions or abridgments, slight transposals here and there for clearness' sake, and one or two elucidative patches, gathered from the three subsidiary Books already named, all duly distinguished from Saupe's text;--whereby the gap or deficit of pages is well filled up, almost of its own accord. And thus I can now certify that, in all essential respects, the authentic _Saupe_ is here made accessible to English readers as to German; and hope that to many lovers of Schiller among us, who are likely to be lovers also of humbly beautiful Human Worth, and of such an unconsciously noble scene of Poverty made _richer_ than any California, as that of the elder Schiller Household here manifests, it may be a welcome and even profitable bit of reading. Chelsea, Nov. 1872.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.