182].] The German Student 
Louisa. Csprings up and retains him.) 
Hold, hold, my father, the rage of tyranny 
is feeble to the barbarous force of tender¬ 
ness—What shall I do—I cannot—What 
must I do ? 
Miller. If a lover’s kisses burn hotter 
than the tears of a father—die. 
Louisa. (after a torturing struggle , 
with some firmness.) Father, here is my 
hand. I will. O God, what is it I do, 
what is it I will. Father, I swear,—alas! 
alas! wretch that I am ! Ferdinand, to what 
is the traitoress yielding-—father, be it so, 
and God look down and help me to pluck 
out the fond remembrance, (tears the let¬ 
ter.J 
Miller. (throws himself on her neck in 
transport.) There spoke once more my 
daughter. Look up, Louisa, thou hast 
lost a lover, but thou hast made a father 
happy. My child, how little do I deserve 
this day. (embraces her between smiles and 
tears.) Sinful man that I am, how this an¬ 
gel became mine, God knows. My Louisa! 
my heaven ! little do I know of love, but 
that its cessation pains, I can conceive. 
Louisa. Let us away, my father, from 
this place j where my companions mock at 
me, and my good name is gone; let us 
away from a spot, where every object re¬ 
minds of my blasted happiness. 
Miller. Whithersoever thou wilt, Louisa. 
The bread of God rains every where from 
heaven; he will not let ears be wanting to 
my music. Let the worst come, I will set 
to notes the story of thy sorrow, and sing 
a ballad of the daughter, who, to honour a 
father, rent her heart in twain. We will 
beg from door to door, and sweet will be 
the alms moistened with the tear of sym¬ 
pathy. 
This scene is deeply pathetic, but it 
is not adequately prepared. The mass 
of characters in the play have a comic 
cast,and ignoble purposes; now a tra¬ 
gic catastrophe is in such circumstances 
always unwelcome, as is felt in Mas¬ 
singer’s Sir Giles Overreach. This 
arises from the nature of things ; for as 
those who have mean ends to gain, 
never stake life and all upon them, be¬ 
cause the profit would not be worth the 
risk ; so it is improbable that their in¬ 
trigues should terminate in any more 
grievous sorrow than ridicule, disap¬ 
pointment and disgrace. Shakspeare 
is instinctively careful to confine comic 
traits to those personages who are not 
involved in the tragic action of the 
piece. 
Schiller had stationed himself at 
Manheim in a medical capacity, and 
had become member of a literary so¬ 
ciety there, which conferred on him 
the acquaintance and patronage of the 
, No. XXL—Schiller. SOS 
coadjutor Dalberg: but as he persisted 
in writing tor the stage, it was deemed 
wiser to patronize his inclinational than 
his professional exertions, and a place 
of theatre-poet was devised for him, 
accompanied with a salary from the 
government. 
Schiller translated some foreign plays, 
and next produced his 44 Fiesgo.” The 
history of this conspirator has been well 
narrated by Robertson in the eighth 
book of his Charles V. Schiller has 
dramatized the fact with a careful re¬ 
gard to the real circumstances: only 
that he attributes the death of Fiesco 
to the republican jealousy of Verrina, 
and not to accident. Some female per¬ 
sonages, unknown to record, are intro¬ 
duced, as Bertha and Julia; but these 
variations do not detract from its gene¬ 
ral character of an historic tragedy. 
This is the highest walk of dramatic art. 
The modern or gothic drama, chiefly 
excels the antient or Greek drama, by 
the magnitude of action which it can 
embrace, in consequence of relinquish¬ 
ing the unities of time and place. The 
usurpation and punishment of Macbeth, 
or the Conspiracy of Venice, w’ould 
have appeared to the artist of antiquity 
subjects of too enlarged and compre¬ 
hensive a class to be drawn wfithin the 
limits of a single representation. It 
is most difficult, and consequently most 
meritorious, to excel in this more spa¬ 
cious walk of tragedy; to seize the 
spirit and bearing of such gigantic 
events; to delineate them in few and 
well adapted scenes; and to bring be¬ 
fore the spectator, without the aid of 
narrative, the causes and consequences 
ol such intricate and complex enter- 
prizes. The hero of a Greek drama, 
however important from birth or sta¬ 
tion, is never known to the audience 
but as a member of a distressed family : 
while the hero of a gothic drama, an 
Egmont or a Fiesco, may be introduced 
as superintending that higher order of 
interests, which involve tiie fortunes of 
his country or his kind. The varieties 
ol ethic peculiarity proportion them¬ 
selves to the complication of the busi¬ 
ness ol the scene; and a whole volume of 
iEschylus or Euripides may be perused, 
without noticing so many well-dis- 
criminated characters, or so many truly 
tragic situations, as are sometimes com¬ 
pressed within a single poem of Shak¬ 
speare or. Otway, of Goethe or Schiller. 
Of all the extant tragedies of the 
class just described, perhaps no one em¬ 
braces greater compass of event, no one 
exhibits 
