Riemer spoke of Schiller’s personal appearance.  “The build of his limbs, his gait in the street, all his motions,” said he, “were proud; his eyes only were soft.”

“Yes,” said Goethe, “everything else about him was proud and majestic, only the eyes were soft.  And his talent was like his outward form.  He seized boldly on a great subject, and turned it this way and that, and handled it this way and that.  But he saw his object, as it were, only in the outside; a quiet development from its interior was not within his province.  His talent was desultory.  Thus he was never decided—­could never have done.  He often changed a part just before a rehearsal.

“And, as he went so boldly to work, he did not take sufficient pains about motives.  I recollect what trouble I had with him, when he wanted to make Gessler, in Tell, abruptly break an apple from the tree, and have it shot from the boy’s head.  This was quite against my nature, and I urged him to give at least some motive to this barbarity, by making the boy boast to Gessler of his father’s dexterity, and say that he could shoot an apple from a tree at a hundred paces.  Schiller, at first, would have nothing of the sort:  but at last he yielded to my arguments and intentions, and did as I advised him.  I, on the other hand, by too great attention to motives, kept my pieces from the theatre.  My Eugenie[16] is nothing but a chain of motives, and this cannot succeed on the stage.

“Schiller’s genius was really made for the theatre.  With every piece he progressed, and became more finished; but, strange to say, a certain love for the horrible adhered to him from the time of The Robbers, which never quite left him even in his prime.  I still recollect perfectly well, that in the prison scene in my ‘Egmont,’ where the sentence is read to him, Schiller would have made Alva appear in the background, masked and muffled in a cloak, enjoying the effect which the sentence would produce on Egmont.  Thus Alva was to show himself insatiable in revenge and malice.  I, however, protested, and prevented the apparition.  He was a great, odd man.

“Every week he became different and more finished; each time that I saw him, he seemed to me to have advanced in learning and judgment.  His letters are the fairest memorials of him which I possess, and they are also among the most excellent of his writings.  His last letter I preserve as a sacred relic, among my treasures.”  He rose and fetched it.  “See and read it,” said he; giving it to me.

It was a very fine letter, written in a bold hand.  It contained an opinion of Goethe’s notes to “Rameau’s Nephew,” which exhibit French literature at that time, and which he had given Schiller to look over.  I read the letter aloud to Riemer.

“You see,” said Goethe, “how apt and consistent is his judgment, and that the handwriting nowhere betrays any trace of weakness.  He was a splendid man, and went from us in all the fulness of his strength.  This letter is dated the 24th of April, 1805.  Schiller died on the 9th of May.”