SCHILLER

After staying some time in Switzerland, and having made a short trip to Paris, he was married to Sophie Haller on the 18th of April, 1790, and soon after quitted Bern with his young wife, to return home. On this journey, they visited and took up their abode with Wieland, and cultivated the friendship of Herder, Hufeland, Bode, Reinhold and Schiller. The first interview with Schiller is very striking. "As we entered Schiller's room, his gentle, amiable and affectionate wife approached us smiling, and led Sophie and Mrs. Reinhold to the sofa; whilst he, high and pale, with his yellow, untrimmed hair, and with a penetrating glance of his almost staring eye, approached us, and bade me welcome. He had toothache and a swelled cheek, and was obliged to hold a handkerchief to his mouth, as it was painful to him to talk. He was extremely friendly, but his assumed liveliness could not conceal the expression of deep care. I begged that he would spare himself, as I saw how much he suffered; and now his wife seated herself at the piano, in order that Sophie, with whom she was very cordial, might hear what she had lately learned. We talked of music, of which Schiller knows nothing whatever, and yet is very fond.

"We took our leave, mutually lamenting to have found him in so sad a condition. Reinhold, on the way, made me acquainted with his circumstances; which are so sorrowful as to make one almost weep over them. He has only about two hundred rix-dollars yearly income that is certain, and he requires twelve hundred, as he will and must live elegantly-that is his weak side; and therefore

he is obliged to work like a slave from morning to night. He has only few attendants of his class, because he does not possess the peculiar talent and the patience to deliver lectures; and is, therefore, dependent on the publishers, who do not allow him sufficient time for his works, and thus he gets deeper and deeper into debt. At the present moment, he is writing 'The History of the Thirty Years' War.'

"Schiller is a volcano, whose top is covered with snow. He appears cold in all his intercourse with his most intimate friends; and especially with his wife this coldness prevails. In company, he is absolutely nothing; not in the least entertaining, not in the least witty, but for the most part silent. Never has any one been able to draw from him a good conceit, never issues there a bon mot from his lips; yet sometimes, but very rarely indeed, he becomes excited, and then he excites every one around him to tears. He never gives to his wife, or to any of his friends, an affectionate word; but is cold, dry and morose. In his writings, on the contrary, he is a totally different man; and in all his letters there are spirit and cordiality. Did not necessity compel him, he would certainly cease, if not to write, to publish. Paupertas impulet audax; otherwise we should not have got one of his latest noble works, not even 'Don Carlos.' The ideal which he has placed before himself, stands so infinitely high, that he never will be able to approach it. Dissatisfied with all that he produces, he would leave it lying in his desk, if the stomach had not different caprices to the head."

Baggesen and his wife pursued their way leisurely homewards through Germany, visiting Dresden and Berlin, and taking Tulleborg, the seat of Count Reventlow, in their way; Hamburg; and Trembüttel, the seat of Count Stolberg.

They next visited Korsöer, Baggesen's native place, and gladdened his mother and brothers and sisters; then they made a call on Professor Wöldike, in Slagelse, who had given Baggesen so cordial a recommendation to the University, and who now rejoiced in his good fortunes: and finally they arrived in Copenhagen on the 19th of October, and were received by all their friends, with one exception, with the heartiest congratulations; his good patrons, the Reventlows, Schimmelmanns, and the Prince of Augustenborg as cordially as ever promoting his interests. They had procured him a fixed appointment as professor, and a pension for his wife in case of his decease. The exception to the general kindness, to which we allude, was poor Baggesen's old flame, Selinè. Baggesen had felt great compunction on falling in love with Sophie Haller, as to his conduct to Selinè, and had written to her, proposing that they should all live in an affectionate friendship; but it is evident, that not only Baggesen, but the lady had felt that things had gone so far that he could not retreat without wounding her pride, if not her sensibility; and when Baggesen presented his wife to her, she received them with a freezing coldness.

With this exception, the life of Baggesen, from the moment of his first successful début in the poetic world, had been a career of romantic triumph and pleasurable excitement. But the sunshine soon began to darken, the health of his wife became very precarions. In two years and a half he was compelled to make a journey to Switzerland with his wife, in order to recruit her strength. This had been, perhaps, the happiest and most prosperous period of his existence. In the enjoyment of a brilliant reputation, of the society of the wife of his heart, who was received as a sister by all the noble and literary friends that he possessed; and varying their existence by the

publication of his poems and of the first part of his "Labyrinthen," with visits to the beautiful seats of his princely patrons, the time had flown like a heavenly dream But serious fears for the health of his wife, who exhibited. no equivocal signs of consumption, began to break in upon his happiness. In 1793, therefore, he again left Copenhagen with his wife and child, and made a journey through Germany to Switzerland, from which they did not return till 1795. On this journey they visited most of the celebrated places, and made or renewed their acquaintance with most of the celebrated men of the time. Once more he returned home, but in March, 1797, he set out for the last time, in the vain hope of saving his wife, towards a warmer climate, but she died at Kiel, on the 5th of May, leaving him with two little boys.

From the first happy journey made by Baggesen, there had been evident a restless tendency in him—a disinclination for a fixed life and solid labour. The charms of travel amid beautiful scenery, and of conversation with the great men of the time in Germany, all of whom he visited, even to good old Father Gleim at Halberstadt in the Harz, had irresistible fascinations for him. He acquired an unfortunate ambition to become rather a German than a Danish writer, lamenting most unadvisedly and unpatriotically, that he did not belong to the wide-spread literature of Germany, but only to that of a country which, as he expressed it, was only read by a few sailors and fishermen. In his despair on the loss of his wife, he once more set out to take his two children to their grandmother Haller, in Switzerland, and on his passing through Freiburgh, we find him paying a visit to Professor Jacobi, the brother of his friend, Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, the philosopher and poet. Professor Jacobi was also a popular poet, and yet in the simple homeliness of the time and

country, Baggesen found his wife sitting out, in the street before the door, and mistook her for the housemaid.

It might have been supposed, that Baggesen, having comfortably placed his children under the care of the excellent Madam Haller, would have been anxious to return home, and devote hinself sedulously to the duties of his office, which the health of his wife had so much interfered with. But, on the contrary, he still loitered in `Switzerland, mixed himself enthusiastically and personally in its politics, as though he had been a denizen of that country instead of Denmark; made another journey to Paris, and astonished all his friends by returning in the summer of 1798, little more than a year from his Sophie's death, with a second wife, a native of Geneva, whom he had met with in Paris. This was Fanny Raybaz, the daughter of an evangelical clergyman of Geneva, then resident in Paris.

He now produced his opera, "Erik Eiegod," which was acted with much approbation, and the same year he was appointed a director of the theatre. Everything now seemed to conspire towards a settled and active life in his fatherland. His patrons and friends had shown the most astonishing patience and kindness. Spite of his everlasting ramblings they had him appointed Vice-Provost of the Regent's College, with a good salary, and a deputy to hold the place for him during his absence. Such extraordinary goodness and forbearance towards a literary man appear to us in this country something fabulous, yet it seemed as if nothing could long keep Baggesen stationary. His circumstances were now easy and free from care; the favour and affection which he had so early won with the public as a poet, was still unweakened; he enjoyed a happy position, domestic peace, and the most brilliant social connections, but all in vain. In less than two years