Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843

to the end of the article. Table of contents has been created for the HTML version. Contents FORMS AND BALLADS OF SCHILLER. BY SIR EDWARD LYTTON BULWER. A READING PARTY IN THE LONG VACATION. CHAPTERS OF TURKISH HISTORY. EXHIBITIONS MARSTON, OR, THE MEMOIRS OF A STATESMAN. THE DEVIL'S FRILLS. ADVENTURES IN LOUISIANA. COMMERCIAL POLICY—EUROPE JOLLY FATHER JOE THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN. LETTER TO CHRISTOPHER NORTH, ESQ. THE REPEAL AGITATION. FORMS AND BALLADS OF SCHILLER. BY SIR EDWARD LYTTON BULWER. We here close our attempts to convey to the English reader some notion, however inadequate, of the genius and mind of Schiller. It is in these Poems, rather, perhaps, than in his Dramas and Prose works, that the upright earnestness of the mind, and the rich variety of the genius, are best displayed. Here, certainly, can best be seen that peculiar union of intellect and imagination which Mr Carlyle has so well distinguished as Schiller's characteristic attribute, and in which it would be difficult to name the modern poet by whom he is surpassed; and here the variety of the genius is least restrained and limited by the earnestness of the mind. For Schiller's variety is not that of Shakspeare, a creative and universal spirit, passing with the breath of life into characters the most diverse, and unidentified with the creations its invisible agency invokes. But it is the variety of one in whom the consciousness of his own existence is never laid aside; shown not so much in baring the minds and hearts of others, as in developing the progress and the struggles of his own, in the infinite gradations of joy and of sorrow, of exquisite feeling and solemn thought. Hence, in the drama, arise his faults and deficiencies; in his characters, he himself speaks. They are gigantic images of his own moods at different epochs of his life—impassioned with Moor—philosophizing with Posa—stately, tranquil, and sad, with Wallenstein. But as, in his dramas, this intense perception of self—this earnest, haunting consciousness—this feeling of genius as a burden, and of life as a religion—interferes with true dramatic versatility; so, on the contrary, these qualities give variety in his poems to the expositions of a mind always varying, always growing—always eager to think, and sensitive to feel. And his art loved to luxuriate in all that copious fertility of materials which the