"Wretches, Speak Evil of Me": Goethe and Schiller's Xenions (1896 Edition)

I'm not familiar with their ouvres, but I am surprised to find myself disagreeing with the Romanticist verse. Am I getting older?

>But we expect better from the writers of the past, especially those of the eighteenth century

They did “better” - as just 100 years before they would have just killed each other with some version of a kabob stick.