180 ACCOUNT of the GERMJN THEJTRE. 



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

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

 " lity, neither fpeak nor ad like King Lear, nor his clerk like 

 " J a £°> nor n * s daughter's maid like the confidante of Queen 

 " Cleopatra. But thefe old fafhioned obfervations would pro- 

 " bably not fave my poor comedy from condemnation." 



There is one little piece in the collection of Friedel, which 

 every reader mufl applaud, even if hrs 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^//<?- 

 lagc de Pojic, by Colonel Em dor 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 characters 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 impreflive 

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

 the collection 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 Militaire of Wir- 

 temberg, he had little opportunity of informing his mind by 

 letters, or of knowing mankind by obfervation. But am id ft 

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

 its own native warmth and vigour, produced this wonderful 

 drama, which ihews indeed, as might be expected, 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 defects, has drawn from the 

 fources of an ardent and creative imagination, characters and 

 fituations of the moft interefting and impreflive kind, and has 

 endowed thofe characters with a language in the higheft de- 

 gree 



