SCHILLER 11*7 future education was discussed in family council. His mother wished him to be placed in a private school at Tubingen, and his father was not averse ; but the question was decided by the despotic Duke Carl, who insisted that the lad should be educated in the military academy he had established upon his estate, a few miles from Ludwigsburg, and which, two or three years afterward, was transferred to Stuttgart. Thither, therefore, Schiller was sent to study and prepare himself for the battle of life, and it was there he imbibed that contempt for servile obedi- ence to military authority which, in " The Robbers," gave so extraordinary an impetus to revolutionary ideas in his native country, especially in the minds of the young. Slavish discipline was the law in the academy ; the scholars wore a military uniform ; they were soldiers, and were taught to obey the word of command ; the sword and the drum were the symbols of authority ; there were stated minutes and hours not only for important duties, but for the smallest ob- servances and pleasures. The drum heralded the pupils to church, summoned them to their meals, announced when they were to begin to play and when to leave off, dismissed them to bed, commanded them to rise. Schiller writhed under this discipline, which, to those who yielded patiently and uncomplainingly, might have been a death-blow to personal independence. In one of his letters to a young friend he wrote, " Do not imagine that I shall bow to the yoke of this absurd and revolting routine. So long as my spirit can assert its freedom it will not submit to fetters. To the free man the sight of slavery is abhorrent ; to calmly survey the chains by which he is bound is not possible. My soul often revolts at the anticipation of punishment in cases where I am satisfied that my actions are reasonable." The masters of the academy had a difficult task to subdue the spirit of such a youth, and it was fortunate for liter- ature that they did not succeed. The poet's wings would not be clipped, and in spite of the restrictions by which he was surrounded, Schiller pursued his imagi- native course, and found time to feed upon the poetry he adored. To Klopstock's works he was specially indebted ; that poet's " Messiah " and Virgil's "yEneid " may be said to have been the first solid stones in the foundation upon which his fame was to rest. There were, it is true, but slight traces of originality in a poem he wrote at this period, the hero of which was the prophet Moses, and it was due to the religious sentiment by which he was powerfully affected through Klop- stock's works, that he chose such a subject. It had been decided that the church was to be his career, but he soon abandoned the idea, and transferred his affec- tions to medicine, which he studied assiduously, without neglecting the groove to which his genius was leading him by slow but sure steps. Gerstenberg's great tragedy, " Ugolino," fell by chance into his hands, and gave him a new impetus ; "Goetz von Berlichingen " fascinated him; and then came a revelation from a greater poet than all, Shakespeare, whose works he loved and revered with pas- sionate ardor, and to emulate whom was perhaps the greatest ambition of his life. He was seventeen when he first saw himself in print. He wrote a poem called " Evening," which he sent to Haug's " Swabian Magazine ;" it possessed no par- ticular merit, and was chiefly remarkable for its resemblance to the works he had
