i8o ACCOUNT of the GERMJN THEATRE. 



" It is true, I might obferve to thefe gentlemen, that an 

 " honefl banker, who has not loft his wits, will, in all probabi- 

 " lity, neither fpeak nor a<fl like King Lear, nor his clerk like 

 " J^'S^^ "°^ ^^^ daughter's maid like the confidante of Queen 

 " Cleopatra. But thefe old fafhioned obfcrvations would pro- 

 " bably not fave my poor comedy from condemnation." 



There is one little piece in the colle<ftion of Friedel, which 

 every reader muft applaud, even if hi^ applaufe had not been anti- 

 cipated by the judgment of the late King of Pruffia, who pro- 

 nounces it the only very good German comedy. This is the Alle- 

 /^j'f fl'if Po/^^?, by Colonel Em D OR FF, an officer in the Imperial fervice. 

 The plot is founded on the violent love for horfes of a Ger- 

 man Count, who barters his miftrefs with his rival for a fet of 

 carriage-horfes. The charad\ers are truly comic, the incidents 

 highly amufing, the dialogue infinitely eafy, lively and natural, 

 and fo perfectly appropriated to the fpeakers, that one might 

 afcertain the perfons, though their names were not affixed to the 

 fpeeches. 



But the moft remarkable, and the moft ftrongly imprefllvt 

 of all the pieces contained in thefe volumes, is that by which 

 the colledtion of Mr Friedel is clofed, Les Voleurs, a tragedy 

 by Mr Schiller, a young man, who, at the time of writing 

 it, was only twenty-three. Bred in the Ecole Mil'itaire of Wlr- 

 tembcrg, he had little opportunity of informing his mind by 

 letters, or of knowing mankind by obfervation. But amidft 

 the cloiftered ignorance incident to his fituation, his genius, by 

 its own native warmth and vigour, produced this wonderful 

 drama, which fhews indeed, as might be expedled, a certain 

 want of acquaintance with the manners, as well as a total dif- 

 regard of dramatic regularity, but in which the author, for- 

 tunate, if we dare fay fo, in thefe defe<5ls, has drawn from the 

 fources of an ardent and creative imagination, charaders and 

 Ctuations of the moft interefting and impreffive kind, and has 

 endowed thofe charaders with a language in the higheft de- 

 gree 



