Schiller, one finds a good deal that is interesting in its
own way, for one reason or another, but not very much
that is highly valuable for illuminative criticism of
Schiller. The best of the biographies are those of
Palleske and Scherr; of the minor tributes the famous
address of Jacob Grimm in the Berlin Academy. The
spirit of the time was not favorable to a calm, objective
view, but it is in itself a fact of immense significance
that a great and critical, doctrine-ridden and passion-
distracted people should have united in honoring a poet
as Schiller was honored by the Germans in the year
1859.

A new epoch may be dated from about 1871,--the
epoch of the historical critics and philologers. With
the realization of national unity the vista of the past
rapidly cleared up and new points of view were gained.
It was as if a height had been won from which it was
possible to see over the dust and smoke of the past
three decades. The pride of the new-born nation now
looked back with quickened interest to the great writers
of the eighteenth century, but with the feeling that
they had done enough for the glory of the fatherland
in simply being great writers. It was time to see them
as they were, without writing them up or down,
according to their supposed attitude toward questions
which were not their questions. It was in 1874 that
Herman Grimm remarked, in a lecture at Berlin, that
henceforth there was to be a science called Goethe.
All the world knows how the prediction has been ful-
filled. During the last two decades the science called
Goethe has marched bravely on, enlisting a small army
of workers, creating a vast jungle of literature,--selva

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