breath of life to her, and her taste in poetry had been
trained by the greatest living master. Aside from
Goethe, two other distinguished writers had found a
home in Weimar. The kindly but changeable Wieland,
not really one of the dii majores, but so regarded at the
time, had lived there since 1772; Herder, much more
nobly endowed, but less amiable and less popular,
since 1776.

At the time of Schiller's advent Goethe was still in
Italy, whither he had gone the previous autumn to find
relief from the miseries of duodecimo statesmanship.
Karl August and the reigning Duchess Luise were also
absent, but several minor notables of the court circle
had remained 'in town', and the dowager duchess was
giving æsthetic teas as usual in her easily accessible
'castle' at Tiefurt. Wieland and Herder were like-
wise at home. On his arrival Schiller was taken charge
of by the Baroness von Kalb, who was awaiting her
soul's affinity with feverish eagerness. Her excitement
at seeing him again amounted to a 'paroxysm' which
made her ill for a week. Then she grew better and
her emotions gradually found the level of a friendliness
too passionate to be called Platonic, but not sinful in
the lower sense. As for Schiller, he devotedly let
himself be loved and introduced to Weimar society,
the pair making no concealment of their liking for each
other. At first he felt some compunctions on account
of the absent husband, who might be annoyed by gos-
sip. It pleased him to observe, therefore, that in
Weimar such a friendship was taken as a matter of
course and treated with delicacy. ¹ 'Charlotte,' he

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