The Great Duumvirate

Nun kann ich aber hoffen, dasz wir, so viel von dem Wege noch Übrig sein mag, in Gemeinschaft durchwandeln werden, und mit um so grÖszerem Gewinn, da die letzten GefÄhrten auf einer langen Reise sich immer am meisten zu sagen haben. Letter of 1794.

The coupled names of Goethe and Schiller denote a literary epoch as well as a peculiarly inspiring personal friendship. What a vista opens before the mind's eye when one thinks of all the influence that went out from them into the wide world during the nineteenth century! The visitor to Weimar who goes to look at Rietschel's famous statue in front of the theater has a sensation like that of standing at the source of a mighty river. Of course the men and their time have been greatly idealized; like the sculptor, the imagination of posterity has lifted them above the level of the earth, joined their hands and given them the pose of far-seeing literary heroes. We think of each as increased by the whole strength of the other. As Herman Grimm puts it algebraically, the formula is not G + S, but G(+ S) + S(+ G).[98]

And all this hits an essential truth, albeit the student of the documents—the letters and journals of the duumvirs, and of their friends and enemies—has great difficulty at times to imagine himself in an atmosphere of heroism. No nation, no public life of any account; a complete lack of interest, apparently, in many matters that now bulk very large in the minds of men; a small theater, equal to none but very modest demands; a few engravings and plaster-casts and paintings—many of them very poor—to serve as a basis for theories of art; a little optical apparatus, a few minerals and plants and bones, to aid in the advancement of science; everything material on a small scale,—this was Weimar a hundred years ago. Truly a restricted outlook upon this spacious world as it appears to us to-day!

And then the duumvirs had their struggle with the infinitely little, and they fussed over this and that. This is especially true of Goethe. His journals produce upon the reader now and then not so much an impression of glorious many-sidedness as of precious time wasted in futile puttering. But who shall dare to say that it was so in reality? The genius of life tells every great man what he can do, and it is for posterity to accept him and understand him as he was, without complaint and without sophistication. What Goethe and Schiller did in the midst of all their other doings, was to set their stamp upon the culture of their time; to create a new ideal of letters and of life, and to enrich their country's literature with a number of masterpieces which have since furnished food and inspiration to countless myriads. This is quite enough to justify a perennial curiosity concerning the details of their alliance.

For six years the two men, though living as neighbors with many friends and many interests in common, had steadily held each other aloof. That they did so was Goethe's fault, at least in the beginning. We may be very sure that a friendly advance from him would have melted Schiller's animosity as the sun melts April snow. But he did not say the word. He looked upon Schiller as the spokesman of a new and perverse generation that knew not Joseph; and so he went his own way, serenely indifferent to the personality of the man whose talent he had recognized by helping him to a Jena professorship. He paid some attention, it is true, to Schiller's philosophic writings, but what he read did not altogether please him. When the essay upon 'Winsomeness and Dignity' came out, it seemed to him that Schiller, in his enthusiasm for freedom and self-determination, was inclined to lord it all too proudly over mother Nature. Goethe was no less interested in 'ideas' than Schiller, but he had not the same fondness for abstract reasoning from mental premises. His starting-point was always the external fact, and he regarded ideas as possessing a sort of objective reality. His homage was paid to nature and the five senses; Schiller's to the deductive reason.

Nevertheless, the whole trend of Schiller's aesthetic speculations brought him steadily nearer to Goethe's way of thinking. His intense Hellenism; his insistence upon the immense importance of art as an element of culture; his fervid championship of art for art's sake; his practical identification of the ideal with the typical; his doctrine of genius in its relation to abstract dogma, and above all his great earnestness, as of one striving with all his powers towards the better light,—this and much more could not fail to meet Goethe's approval. And then came the great project of the Horen, which was to unite all the best writers of Germany in a common effort for the advancement of letters and the elevation of the public taste. This was an opportunity not to be despised, for Goethe was at last beginning to be weary of his isolation at Weimar. Although at heart very desirous of exerting a large influence, he had well-nigh lost touch with the literary public. For four years he had done nothing worthy of his great name. People took little interest in his scientific studies, his 'Grosz-Cophta', and his 'Citizen-General'. He felt the need of rehabilitating himself. So when he received Schiller's polite invitation anent the Horen, he accepted with alacrity; declaring himself ready not only to contribute, but to serve on the editorial committee. And a few days later,—it was on June 28, 1794, before he had seen Schiller or exchanged further letters with him,—he wrote to Charlotte von Kalb that 'since the new epoch Schiller too was becoming more friendly and trustful towards us Weimarians'; whereat he rejoiced, 'hoping for much good from intercourse with him'. So we see that, as the matter then lay in Goethe's mind, it was Schiller who was the distant and distrustful party.

Thus the way was all prepared for the 'Happy Event', as Goethe called it in an oft-quoted bit of reminiscence published many years later. It chanced that he and Schiller were both present at a meeting of naturalists in Jena. As they left the room together Schiller let fall a remark to the effect that such piecemeal treatment of nature as they had been listening to was dull business for the layman. Goethe replied that there were experts who could not approve it either. Then he proceeded to explain his own views. They reached Schiller's house in earnest conversation, and Goethe went in to continue his demonstration with the aid of a drawing—probably of a typical plant. Schiller listened with seeming comprehension and then shook his head, saying: 'But that is not an experience; that is an idea.' Goethe was disappointed, perplexed. All his labor had gone for naught, and the awful chasm was still yawning. He replied that he was glad if he had ideas without knowing it and could actually see them with his eyes, Schiller defended himself suavely as a good Kantian, and the men separated, each in a docile mood with respect to the other.

Herman Grimm will have it that Schiller now entered upon a crafty campaign for the conquest of Goethe; and really the facts give some color to such a view, albeit, as we have seen, the battle was more than half won before a shot was fired. Schiller had his magazine very much at heart, and besides that he had always been a very sincere and ungrudging admirer of Goethe's poetic genius. Very likely he looked upon him as a weakling in philosophy. To talk of seeing ideas with the bodily eye! Evidently there was no profit in bombarding such a man with syllogisms. But it might be useful to show that one understood him. So Schiller sat him down and wrote out, in the form of a letter, a little essay upon Goethe's individuality, attributing to him a wonderful intuition whereby he saw in advance all that philosophy could prove:

Minds of your sort seldom know how far they have advanced, and how little reason they have to borrow from philosophy, which can only learn from them…. For a long time, though at a considerable distance, I have been watching the course of your mind and noticing with ever-renewed admiration the way that you have marked out for yourself. You seek the necessary in nature, but by the very hardest path,—a path which weaker minds would take good care not to attempt. You take all nature together, in order to get light upon the particular. In the totality of her manifestations you hope to find the rationale of the individual…. Had you been born a Greek or even an Italian, and thus surrounded from infancy with exquisite scenery and idealizing art, your way would have been infinitely shortened, perhaps rendered unnecessary…. As it was, having been born a German, you had to refashion the old inferior nature that was thrust upon your imagination, after the better pattern which your imagination had created; and this could only be done by means of leading principles. But this logical direction which the reflecting mind is compelled to take does not tally well with the aesthetic direction of the creating mind. So you had another task; just as you passed previously from intuition to abstraction, you had now to convert concepts back into intuitions, and thoughts into feelings; for only through these can genius create.

For Goethe, whose nature really craved friendship hardly less than Schiller's, there was something very grateful in this frank homage combined with rare perspicacity. He saw that Schiller understood him or was at least concerned to understand him. With all their differences they were spiritual congeners, and much might be hoped for from this new connection. So he sent a very cordial reply to the man who had thus 'with friendly hand struck the balance of his existence'; averring that he too dated a new epoch from their meeting in Jena; expressing the hope that they might soon find opportunity for a further interchange of views and that, having mutually cleared up their past course of thinking, they might proceed on their way together. A few weeks later Schiller spent two weeks as Goethe's guest in Weimar, where long discussions, spun out on one occasion from noon to midnight, begot a perfect understanding and laid the foundation of a lifelong friendship. It was a friendship based upon mutual respect and mutual need, full of high advantage on both sides and cherished loyally to the end.

Between then and now many and many a writer has compared Goethe with Schiller and undertaken to reckon up the balance of their respective merit. The task is not easy, even though the world is now well agreed that Goethe's was the rarer genius. No doubt he, much more than Schiller, was destined to be a bringer of light to the coming century; but the immense prestige of his name is due partly to the happy fate that gave him a long life and invested his old age with the glamour of literary kingship. If we compare the actual production of the two men during the eleven years of their association, it is not at all clear that the palm should be given to Goethe. The five plays of Schiller, with the 'Song of the Bell', and the best of his shorter poems, will bear comparison very well, in the aggregate, with 'Wilhelm Meister', 'Hermann and Dorothea', the 'Natural Daughter' and those portions of 'Faust' which were written at this time. Unquestionably Goethe at his best was a far greater poet than Schiller; but he was less steadily at his best, and his artistic conscience was more lax than Schiller's. He envisaged life more largely and more truly, and he wrote with his eye upon the object. His nature inclined to placid contemplation; he was no orator, though something of a preacher. He did not care so much to stir the depths of feeling as to inform and liberalize. In his imaginative work he let himself go mit holdem Irren and preferred to avoid artificial surprises and stagy contrasts. Wherefore his work is the more illuminative, the more suggestive,—he is the poet of the literary class. Schiller, on the other hand, was an orator who never lost sight of the effect he wished to produce. He worked more intensely, more methodically, and was less dependent upon mood. He is thus the poet of those who care less for delicacy of workmanship than for sonorous diction, elevated sentiment and telling effects. There is room in the world for both kinds of endowment.

It is quite probable that Goethe and Schiller would sooner or later have come together in a friendly relation even if the Horen had never been thought of; and in that case their friendship would have lacked the militant tinge that it presently took on. It was the magazine that leagued them together as allies against the forces of Philistia and made Thuringia the storm-center of a new literary movement. But for this it would probably never have occurred to any one to dub them 'the Dioscuri'.

Prior to the appearance of the first number, in January, 1795, the new journal had been well advertised. Cotta was prepared to spend money on it freely; the contributors were to be handsomely paid, and twenty-five of the best known writers in Germany had promised their cooperation. There was every reason to hope for a dashing success; and to make assurance doubly sure Schiller arranged for 'cooked' reviews of the Horen to be paid for by its publisher. But when the time came to launch his enterprise the hopeful editor found himself left very much in the lurch. 'Lord help me, or I perish' he wrote ruefully to KÖrner, on December 29; 'Goethe does not wish to print his 'Elegies' in the first number, Herder also prefers to wait, Fichte is busy with his lectures, Garve is sick, Engel lazy and the others do not answer.'

And so it came about that the first number of the Horen was largely made up of rather abstruse reading. Schiller did not fully realize that the philosophy on which he had been feeding with satisfaction for three years was not a palatable diet for the general literary public. He regarded his own 'Letters on Aesthetic Education' as a model of lucid popular exposition,—as indeed they are in comparison with Kant. But the number was further freighted with a deep-diving article by Fichte, while Goethe's poetic 'Epistle' in hexameters, and the beginning of his 'Conversations of German EmigrÉs ', though in a lighter vein, were not of thrilling interest to seekers after entertainment. The public, which had expected something different, was disappointed; and when succeeding numbers brought further brain-racking profundities, there was a large ebullition of disgust. Cotta began to write of complaints and cancelled subscriptions; and ere long it looked as if the Horen would prove a big fiasco.

Schiller, who should have been inured by this time to the consequences of editorial misjudgment, was disgruntled, vexed. He began to feel that the German public was an indolent, long-eared beast that needed the education of the scourge rather than of aesthetic letters. He made some effort, it is true, to enliven his columns with more entertaining matter, but the abstruse, in prose and verse, continued to preponderate. By autumn he was minded to give up the whole undertaking, but was persuaded by Cotta to go on. Meanwhile he had begun to grow weary of theorizing and to feel the homesickness of the poet. 'Wilhelm Meister', as it began to issue from the press, excited his unbounded enthusiasm. 'I cannot tell you', he wrote to his new friend,

I cannot tell you how painful it is to me oftentimes to turn from a work of this character to philosophy. There everything is so bright, so living, so harmonious and humanly true; here everything is so strict, so rigid, so very unnatural…. This much is certain: the poet is the only true human being, and the best philosopher is only a caricature beside him.

So, in the summer of 1795, he began once more to poetize,—'not venturing out upon the high sea of invention', as he expressed it, 'but keeping close to the shore of philosophy'. In other words he wrote a number of philosophic poems, partly for the Horen and partly for the new poetic 'Almanac' that he had undertaken to edit, in addition to the Horen. This return to poetry was a joy to him, notwithstanding the ill health which confined him to the house and cut him off from the exhilarations of the external world. It must never be forgotten that those philosophic poems are the effusions of a lonely thinker who was compelled to draw his inspiration from within, and was not entirely unaware of the fetters he had forged for himself by his long addiction to philosophy.

There was, however, one more subject, of literary as well as philosophic interest, which he was minded to treat before turning his back finally upon the arid wastes of theory;—the subject of realism versus idealism, or, as he decided to phrase it, of naÏve and sentimental poetry. This essay, published in 1796, was briefly analyzed in the last chapter. It marks the end of Schiller's one-sided glorification of the Greeks. In more than one passage he comes to the rescue of the modern poet—the sentimentalist—as the poet of the infinite, of the ideal. His contention is that while the realist may be the more admirable in a limited sphere, the idealist has a larger sphere, and his perfection is a higher thing. This attempt of Schiller's to describe, in a scientific spirit, the different kinds of artistic endowment, and to do full justice to all, grew naturally out of his intercourse with Goethe. He admired Goethe more and more. The fifth book of 'Meister' produced in him a 'veritable intoxication'; yet its quality was strikingly unlike that of 'Werther' or 'Iphigenie', and totally different from anything that he himself had done or could possibly do. Perhaps he may have been further influenced by A.W. Schlegel's sympathetic papers upon Dante, which had been published in the Horen and which revealed to him a new poetic genius of the highest order, yet not at all Homeric. So he wrote his famous disquisition,—next to Lessing's 'LaokoÖn' the most thoughtful and the most influential piece of criticism produced anywhere in the eighteenth century,—and endeavored to make it as readable as possible. Goethe, who read the manuscript in November, 1795, wrote of it thus:

Since this theory treats me so well, nothing is more natural than that I should approve its principles and that its conclusions should seem to me correct. I should be more distrustful, however, if I had not at first found myself in an attitude of opposition to your views; for it is not unknown to you that, from an excessive predilection for the ancient poets, I have often been unjust to the modern. According to your doctrine I can now be at one with myself, since I no longer need to contemn that which, under certain conditions, an irresistible impulse compelled me to produce; and it is a very pleasant feeling to be not altogether dissatisfied with one's self and one's contemporaries.

Thus the two men were drawn closer together in mutual sympathy and appreciation, and found in each other more and more a bulwark against the whips and scorns of hostile criticism. Of such criticism there was no lack. The Horen was making enemies rapidly and had become, as Schiller put it, a veritable ecclesia militans. One Jakob in Halle made an assault upon Schiller's aesthetic writings. Dull old Nicolai in Berlin complained of the ravages of Kantism in German literature. Pious souls like Stolberg were scandalized by the lubricity of Goethe's 'Elegies' and 'Wilhelm Meister'. The famous philologist, Wolf, pounced violently upon one of Herder's Homeric essays. Schiller had now fallen out with his old friend GÖschen, who was a center of contemptuous opposition at Leipzig. And Goethe, too, had his quarrel with the world: he felt absurdly sore over the neglect by scientific men of his optical theories in opposition to Newton. Friendly voices were scarcely heard anywhere. There was little opportunity for indulging that pleasant emotion of 'being satisfied with one's contemporaries'.

And so it came to pass that the two friends waxed wroth and determined to strike back. At first they thought of a withering review in the Horen, but this idea was given up in favor of another. Goethe had taken a great fancy to the ancient elegiac meter and for some time past it had been his favorite form of poetic expression. Schiller, originally a hater of the hexameter, had caught the fever from Goethe, and used the elegiac form in a number of poems. In December, 1795, Goethe suggested that they amuse themselves by making epigrams, in the style of Martial's 'Xenia', upon the various journals against which they had a grudge, devoting a distich to each. His plan was that each should make a large number; then they would compare, select the best and publish them in the second volume of the 'Almanac'. Schiller was captivated by the idea, and 'Xenia' now became the order of the day. It was soon decided not to restrict them to the offensive journals, but to take a shot wherever there was a mark. Both conspirators took great delight in the proposed Teufelei,—it would be such sport to stir up the vermin and hear them buzz. They gave the milder 'Xenia' pet names such as 'jovial brethren', 'little fellows', 'teasing youngsters', while the harsher ones were likened to stinging insects, or to the foxes of Samson:

You with the blazing tails, away to Philistia, foxes!
Spoil the flourishing crops, crops of paper and ink.

As Goethe was still preoccupied with 'Wilhelm Meister', it happened at first that Schiller was the more active in the production of these 'kitchen presents', especially such as had pepper in them. With the lapse of time Goethe's share increased. The two were frequently together, for days or weeks at a time, and the mass of Xenia grew rapidly. They determined to swell the number to a thousand and to give the collection a sort of artistic completeness; to make it, that is, a sort of general confession of faith. They agreed furthermore that they would publish the epigrams as a joint production and treat their separate authorship as an inviolable secret. As a matter of fact, some of them really were joint productions. One would suggest the idea or the title, and the other write the verses; or one write the hexameter and the other the pentameter.

During the first half of 1796 Schiller wrote little else than Xenia. By the arrival of summer the joint output amounted to nearly a thousand, but less than half that number found their way into the famous 'Xenia Almanac' of 1797. Of these the targets were legion and the merit various. Some few of them were very good, others little short of atrocious, particularly in the matter of form. As for the general mass, their piquancy is not so great as to superinduce in the reader of to-day a dangerously violent cachinnation. Neither Goethe nor Schiller can be credited with a large vein of sparkling wit. Some of the Xenia are far-fetched and operose, while others sound rather vacuous. The form of the monodistich was in itself a safeguard against diffuseness, but not against the equal peril of inanity.

It would be impossible here to do more than glance at the personalities involved in this rather inglorious squabble. Many of the Xenia were personal pin-pricks. Thus several were directed against the musician Reichardt, who, as editor of two journals, had shown strong sympathy with the Revolution. Goethe, the courtier, and Schiller, who had no democratic proclivities, came to the defense of the gentry thus;

Aristocratical dogs will growl at beggars, but mark you
How little democrat Spitz soaps at the stockings of silk.

And again:

Gentlemen, keep your seats! for the curs but covet your places,
Elegant places to hear all the other dogs bark.

A whole broadside was aimed at the garrulous Nicolai, who deserved a better fate. As the champion of lucidity and reasonableness he stood in reality for a very good cause,—no preachment more necessary in Germany then or since. But in his old age he had fallen a prey to the cacoethes scribendi; he insisted upon having his say about everything, yet his stock of ideas had long since run out. So he became the bogey of the Weimar-Jena people. The Xenia assailed him with frank brutality, thus:

What is beyond your reach is bad, you think in your blindness,
Yet whatever you touch, that you cover with dirt.

Other objects of attack were the brothers Stolberg, for their narrow religiosity; Friedrich Schlegel, for his bumptious self-conceit; and various small fry for this and that peccadillo.[99]

A large part of the epigrams, however, were of the 'tame' variety, that is, stingless outgivings of a jocund humor, or grave pronunciamentos upon religion, philosophy, art and so forth. The authors did not wish to appear before the world as mere executioners, but as men with a positive creed, comprising things to be loved as well as things to be hated. They pleaded for sanity, clearness and moderation, and frowned upon the fanatics, hypocrites, vulgarians and cranks. The well-known distich entitled 'My Creed' is representative of many which were directed against the spirit of blind partisanship:

Which religion is mine? Not one of the many you mention.
'Why', do you venture to ask? Too much religion, I say.

Even virtue was to be cherished temperately,—without too much talk about it:

Nothing so hateful as Vice, and all the more to be hated,
Since because of it, now, Virtue is really a need.

And so on in endless variety, on all sorts of subjects. Further illustration shall be dispensed with, seeing that the ancient distich is a poetic form for which the English language has, at the best, but little sympathy. In German it goes much better; and for Schiller in particular, with his natural love of antithesis, it proved a convenient setting for his opinions.

The effect of the Xenia was to set literary Germany agog with curiosity. Two editions of the 'Almanac' were quickly bought up and a third became necessary. There was infinite guessing, speculating, interpreting, and among those who had been hit there was wailing and gnashing of teeth, A very few friends of Goethe and Schiller, such as KÖrner, Humboldt and Zelter, watched the commotion with solemn glee. Others were shocked or grieved at such a mode of warfare. Wieland mildly regretted that he had come off well in the Xenia, seeing that many other honest people had fared so badly. Herder was much more outspoken and declared that he hated the whole accursed species. The replies, protests and counter-attacks were legion, some in brutal belligerent prose, others in more or less clever Anti-xenia. Some of the latter were grossly abusive, and even indecent; a few contained very pretty home-thrusts, as when in allusion to a well-known poem of Schiller's he was advised to trouble himself less about the 'Dignity of Women' and more about his own;[100] or where his 'Realm of Shades' was declared to be so very shadowy that one could not see the shades for the shadow.[101] But the best of all perhaps was the oft-quoted gem:

In Weimar and in Jena they make hexameters like this,
But the pentameters are even more excellent.[102]

Historians of German literature are probably right in believing that the Xenia fusillade produced on the whole a salutary effect, although many of the objects of attack seem, at this date, to have been hardly worth the ammunition. But the explosion cleared the muggy air like a thunder-storm and denned many an issue that it was well to have defined. Writers of every ilk were shaken out of their somnolence and compelled to look in the direction of Weimar; and when it was a question of taking sides, where was the force that could hope to make headway against the combined strength of Goethe and Schiller? The odds were too great; there was nothing to do but to grumble a little and then—acquiesce in the new leadership. As for the Dioscuri, they had the wisdom to see that one sharp campaign was enough; that for the rest they could further the good cause much more effectively by admirable creation than by peppery epigrams. Prod a man for his bad taste or his foolish opinions, and you harden his heart and provoke him to retaliate; give him something to admire, and you make him a friend in spite of himself.

In the autumn of 1796 Schiller addressed himself to 'Wallenstein', and from that time on dramatic poetry continued to be his chief concern. He led a quiet, laborious life, battling often with disease and depression, but sustained by high resolution and finding joy enough in domestic affection and the friendship of Goethe. The Horen lasted three years and then died an easy death by the mutual consent of editor and publisher. Of the 'Almanac' five numbers appeared, beginning with 1796. In these small annual volumes a large part of Schiller's best poems were originally published. His work upon the 'Almanac' was usually done in the summer, other activities being then temporarily laid aside. From, the time of his connection with Cotta, who took over the 'Almanac' after the first number had appeared, Schiller usually had money enough for his needs. But his needs were very modest, the demands of social life in Jena—or even in Weimar under the fiercer but still not very fierce light of the court—being extremely simple. He had not to reckon with the Persian apparatus that disturbed the soul of Horace.

The further relations of Goethe and Schiller, so far as they have any important bearing upon the works of the latter, will be touched on in subsequent chapters. Here let it be remarked in passing that their friendship was not, as it has sometimes been represented, a mere relation of master and disciple. It was rather a spiritual copartnership of equals, each recognizing the other's strength, respecting the other's individuality and eager to profit by discussion. In the beginning, it is true, Schiller looked up to Goethe as to a great and wise teacher who was to give everything and receive little or nothing in return. Every one will recall his saying that he was a mere poetic scalawag in comparison with Goethe. But it is worth remembering that this remark was made after the reading of 'Wilhelm Meister',—a work which, notwithstanding his admiration, he criticised very sharply. And the justice of his criticism was admitted by Goethe; whereupon Schiller drily observed in a letter to KÖrner that Goethe was a man who could be told a great deal of truth. As time passed, Schiller dropped the tone of humble docility and became more and more independent. If he deferred to the superior wisdom of Goethe in dealing with the plastic arts and natural science, there were other matters,—philosophy, poetic theory and the dramatic art,—upon which he felt that he could speak as one having authority. And his authority was respected by Goethe, especially after the completion of 'Wallenstein'. Goethe saw that Schiller, along with his poetic gift, possessed a practical dramatic talent,—an eye for effect and a power of appealing to the general heart,—such as he, Goethe, could by no means claim for himself. And so the nominal director of the Weimar theater leaned heavily upon his friend and looked to him as the best hope of the German drama.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 98: "Goethe", einundzwanzigste Vorlesung.]

[Footnote 99: All the extant Xenia, nine hundred and twenty-six in number,—many of them previously unknown,—were published in 1893 by Erich Schmidt and Bernhard Suphan, with copious introduction and notes, as Volume 8 of the "Schriften der Goethe-Gesellschaft" in Weimar.]

[Footnote 100:

Lasz doch die Frauen in Ruhe mit ihrer WÜrde, und sorge
FÜr die deine, mein Freund. Ihre bewahren sie schon.]

[Footnote 101:

Nun, was denkt ihr vom Reiche der Schatten? Es schattet und schattet
Dasz man vor Schatten umher nichts von den Schatten erkennt.]

[Footnote 102:

In Weimar und in Jena macht man Hexameter wie der;
Aber die Pentameter sind doch noch excellenter.]