A NEW LIFE OF SCHILLER.
The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller. By Calvin Thomas. (G. Bell and Sons. 15s.)—It can hardly be said that there is at present any very special interest in Schiller ; there is no "revival" of him—as there is, or is said to be, of Byron—in this country. But American Professors—probably the most eager. of "academic spirits" to be found in the world at the present time—are always discovering new points of view, and Mr. Calvin Thomas, of Columbia, who has produced the latest work on the subject, is entitled to his. "My great concern has been with the works of Schiller—to interpret them as the expres- sion of an interesting individuality and an interesting epoch. It is now some twenty years since I came under the Weimariau spell, and during that time ray feeling for Schiller has undergone
vicissitudes not unlike those described by Brehm There was a time when it seemed to me that he was very much over- estimated by his countrymen ; when my mind was very hospitable to demonstrations of his artistic shortcomings. Time has brought a different temper, and this book is the child of what I deem the wiser disposition." His aim has been, "even in the difficult thirteenth chapter, to disentangle and bring out clearly the dis- tinctive character of Schiller's work ; and when I have had to fear either that the professional scholar would frown at my sine of omission or that the mere lover of literature would yawn at my sins of commission, I have boldly accepted the first-named horn of the dilemma." In other words, Mr. Thomas has aimed, above all things, at producing a popular, readable book, and he has succeeded. His judgments of Schiller's works, and, especially of the plays—the thrasonical element in which, notably in " William , Tell," he admits to the full—are very sound. He allows finalj_y that "unquestionably Schiller lacked the supreme qualities that go to the making of a great world-poet. With all his cosmopoli- tanism, he was a German of the Germane." Mr. Thomas tells no less effectually the story of Schiller's simple though strenuous literary life, and his persistent search after the ideal. ,
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