The Life of Friedrich Schiller | Page 3

to his military employment; but Caspar
had shown himself an intelligent, unassuming and useful man, and the
Duke of Würtemberg was willing to retain him in his service. The
laying-out of various nurseries and plantations in the pleasure-grounds
of Ludwigsburg and Solitude was intrusted to the retired soldier, now
advanced to the rank of captain: he removed from one establishment to
another, from time to time; and continued in the Duke's pay till death.
In his latter years he resided chiefly at Ludwigsburg.
This mode of life was not the most propitious for educating such a boy
as Friedrich; but the native worth of his parents did more than
compensate for the disadvantages of their worldly condition and their
limited acquirements in knowledge. The benevolence, the modest and
prudent integrity, the true devoutness of these good people shone forth
at an after period, expanded and beautified in the character of their son;
his heart was nourished by a constant exposure to such influences, and
thus the better part of his education prospered well. The mother was a
woman of many household virtues; to a warm affection for her children
and husband, she joined a degree of taste and intelligence which is of
much rarer occurrence. She is said to have been a lover of poetry; in
particular an admiring reader of Utz and Gellert, writers whom it is
creditable for one in her situation to have relished.[1] Her kindness and

tenderness of heart peculiarly endeared her to Friedrich. Her husband
appears to have been a person of great probity and meekness of temper,
sincerely desirous to approve himself a useful member of society, and
to do his duty conscientiously to all men. The seeds of many valuable
qualities had been sown in him by nature; and though his early life had
been unfavourable for their cultivation, he at a late period laboured, not
without success, to remedy this disadvantage. Such branches of science
and philosophy as lay within his reach, he studied with diligence,
whenever his professional employments left him leisure; on a subject
connected with the latter he became an author.[2] But what chiefly
distinguished him was the practice of a sincere piety, which seems to
have diffused itself over all his feelings, and given to his clear and
honest character that calm elevation which, in such a case, is its natural
result. As his religion mingled itself with every motive and action of
his life, the wish which in all his wanderings lay nearest his heart, the
wish for the education of his son, was likely to be deeply tinctured with
it. There is yet preserved, in his handwriting, a prayer composed in
advanced age, wherein he mentions how, at the child's birth, he had
entreated the great Father of all, "to supply in strength of spirit what
must needs be wanting in outward instruction." The gray-haired man,
who had lived to see the maturity of his boy, could now express his
solemn thankfulness, that "God had heard the prayer of a mortal."
[Footnote 1: She was of humble descent and little education, the
daughter of a baker in Kodweis.]
[Footnote 2: His book is entitled Die Baumzucht im Grossen (the
Cultivation of Trees on the Grand Scale): it came to a second edition in
1806.]
Friedrich followed the movements of his parents for some time; and
had to gather the elements of learning from various masters. Perhaps it
was in part owing to this circumstance, that his progress, though
respectable, or more, was so little commensurate with what he
afterwards became, or with the capacities of which even his earliest
years gave symptoms. Thoughtless and gay, as a boy is wont to be, he
would now and then dissipate his time in childish sports, forgetful that

the stolen charms of ball and leapfrog must be dearly bought by
reproaches: but occasionally he was overtaken with feelings of deeper
import, and used to express the agitations of his little mind in words
and actions, which were first rightly interpreted when they were called
to mind long afterwards. His schoolfellows can now recollect that even
his freaks had sometimes a poetic character; that a certain earnestness
of temper, a frank integrity, an appetite for things grand or moving, was
discernible across all the caprices of his boyhood. Once, it is said,
during a tremendous thunderstorm, his father missed him in the young
group within doors; none of the sisters could tell what was become of
Fritz, and the old man grew at length so anxious that he was forced to
go out in quest of him. Fritz was scarcely past the age of infancy, and
knew not the dangers of a scene so awful. His father found him at last,
in a solitary place of the neighbourhood, perched on the branch