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It was to be a quarterly, and bore the ominous legend: 'at the expense of the editors'. To this journal Schiller contributed various essays and reviews which show that as a critic he had been influenced by Lessing, but had not acquired the knack of Lessing's luminous and straightforward style.
Lessing from the first was something far better than a wit. Force was always much more characteristic of him than cleverness. Sometimes Herr Stahr's hero-worship leads him into positive misstatement. For example, speaking of Lessing's Preface to the "Contributions to the History and Reform of the Theatre," he tells us that "his eye was directed chiefly to the English theatre and Shakespeare."
Similar considerations apply to the version of Lessing's 'Nathan', which was made in 1801. Strangely enough, as it seems to us now, Lessing's masterpiece had up to that time met with no favor on the German stage. It was not so much that people objected to its philosophic drift as that something seemed to be lacking in its dramatic quality.
In order to understand the true character of this great poem, and of Lessing's religious opinions as embodied in it, it will be necessary first to consider the memorable theological controversy which preceded it.
The only privilege of the original man is, that, like other sovereign princes, he has the right to call in the current coin and reissue it stamped with his own image, as was the practice of Lessing. Herr Stahr's over-intensity of phrase is less offensive than amusing when applied to Lessing's early efforts in criticism.
This was the more welcome, as he soon after was betrothed with Eva Koenig, widow of a rich manufacturer. Her husband's affairs, however, had been left in confusion, and this, with Lessing's own embarrassments, prevented their being married till October, 1776. Eva Koenig was every way worthy of him.
For does it not contain the best possible answer to the rude speech of Schopenhauer, respecting the ill-advised God who had nothing better to do than to transform Himself into this miserable world? if, for example, the Creator Himself had shared Lessing's conviction of the superiority of struggle to tranquil possession?"
To banish these unprofitable productions from the German soil, it is not necessary to call in the aid of Lessing's Dramaturgie; Goethe's own masterly parody on French Tragedy in some scenes of Esther, will do this much more amusingly and effectually. At a much earlier period Goethe had, in some of his merry tales and carnival plays, completely appropriated the manner of our honest Hans Sachs.
That he suffered at Wolfenbuettel is true; but was it nothing to be in love and in debt at the same time, and to feel that his fruition of the one must be postponed for uncertain years by his own folly in incurring the other? If the sparrow-life must end, surely a wee bush is better than nae beild. One cause of Lessing's occasional restlessness and discontent Herr Stahr has failed to notice.
This change would doubtless have come about under any circumstances, through the natural ripening of his mind and art, but it was hastened by the influence of Klein and Wieland, and by the example of Lessing's 'Nathan'. Anton von Klein, a Jesuit bel esprit living at Mannheim, was a steadfast champion of the regular heroic tragedy.
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