space topsy-turvy, Schiller with his fine gifts might no doubt
have written a temporary 'epic poem,' of the kind read an
admired by many simple persons. But that would have helped little,
and could not have lasted long. It is not the untrue imaginary
Picture of a man and his life that I want from my Schiller,
but the actual natural Likeness, true as the face itself,
nay TRUER, in a sense. Which the Artist, if there is one,
might help to give, and the Botcher (Pfuscher) italic> never can! Alas, and the Artist does not even try it;
leaves it altogether to the Botcher, being busy otherwise!--

"Men surely will at length discover again, emerging from these
dismal bewilderments in which the modern Ages reel and stagger
this long while, that to them also, as to the most ancient men,
all Pictures that cannot be credited are--Pictures of an idle
nature; to be mostly swept out of doors. Such veritably, were it
never so forgotten, is the law! Mistakes enough, lies enough will
insinuate themselves into our most earnest portrayings of the
True: but that we should, deliberately and of forethought,
rake together what we know to be not true, and introduce that in
the hope of doing good with it? I tell you, such practice was
unknown in the ancient earnest times; and ought again to become
unknown except to the more foolish classes!" That is Sauerteig's
strange notion, not now of yesterday, as readers know:--and he
goes then into "Homer's Iliad," the "Hebrew Bible," "terrible
Hebrew VERACITY of every line of it;" discovers an alarming
"kinship of Fiction to lying;" and asks, If anybody can compute
"the damage we poor moderns have got from our practices of fiction
in Literature itself, not to speak of awfully higher provinces?
Men will either see into all this by and by," continues he;