409

have known of its existence, and that he must have been thinking of Luther's own Hymn of the Reformation; that he was also mistaken in ascribing The Morning Star (der Morgenstern) to the Nürnberg poet. Both these devotional poems are contained in his Excellency's Andachtbuch (Hymn and Prayer Book), the first at p. 263, the second at p. 203, with the name of the author, Phil. Nicolai. S. C.

Note G., p. 312.

"Martin Opitz was born at Breslau in 1595, and wrote Latin and German poems; which last are remarkable for a terseness hitherto unknown. Suspected of Socinianism, he was protected by Bethlem Gabor, Prince of Transylvania, who made him rector of a free-school at Weissenburg. His poems were printed at Frankfort, in 1623; and have since frequently been re-edited. He died of a contagious fever in 1629."

The reputation of Opitz, perhaps, surpassed his merits, as it reposed rather on polish of diction than on strength of thought; his style however found many imitators." Historic Survey, I., 172–3.

J. G. Eichhorn's Geschichte der Literatur, after stating that Wekhrlin and Opitz arose, the one in 1618, in the South, the other in 1620, in the North of Germany, that both took very much the same course in attempting to introduce a better taste and style in poetry, both sought to ennoble and dignify the romantic material, by models selected from the ancients and the Italians, but that Wekhrlin with his inferior power and cultivation remained without imitators, proceeds to say: "Opitz on the contrary founded a poetical school in Silesia, which maintained and propagated the good taste he had awakened for more than half a century. Such a model as Opitz deserved success. From how many irregular excrescences has he not cleared the German tongue! with how many new words, expressions, and applications, has he enriched it! For this purpose he availed himself with a very pure taste of the old German poets and later writers of ballads, through whom he obtained as by inheritance, the romantic materials which he improved; along with these German sources he studied the Greeks and Romans, as the fathers of a sound taste, and the works of the genius of our western and southern neighbors, especially the Italians. From the last he borrowed the sonnet and melo-drama; the ancients he imitated in didactic and lyric poetry; successful in the former but far from happy in the latter, when he sought to rise above the light song; for of the loftier ode, either as regards its matter or spirit, he had not the remotest conception." Translation. (Vierster Band. II. Abth., pp. 770–71.)

Note H., p. 312

Interesting accounts of the writers here mentioned are contained in

19

the first volume of Taylor's Historic Survey. Christian Furchtegott Gellert was born July 4, 1715, at Haynichen in Saxony, where his father, who had twelve other children, was Pastor. He died, Dec. 51 1769, longing for his release; for; like our own delightful Cowper, while he produced strains apt to inspire genial feelings in others, mirth and a love of nature, and even in hearts no longer young, and gladsome for a while to renew

Vernal delight and joy able to drive
All sadness but despair,

he was himself saddened by miserable hypochondria, which after shadowing his early life with passing clouds, at length, instead of dispersing itself, gathered round him and darkened his whole sky. In 1758, he became Professor of Moral Philosophy at Leipzig, and was very popular as a Lecturer. In 1746 he collected his Fables in Verse, which had "astonishing success: and form, perhaps, the first native poetic work of the modern Germans, which became decidedly and nationally popular.” The complete edition of his works, in five octavo volumes, appeared but a few months before his deccase.

Friedric Gottlieb Klopstock was born in the Abbey at Quedlinburg July 2, 1724; was the son of the land-steward of the domain, and eldest of ten children. He died in 1803, and was buried with great solemnity on the 22d of March. The Danish Minister Bernstoff, struck with his poetical talents, invited him to Copenhagen, and obtained for him a pension of four hundred dollars for his support, while he completed his great work The Messiah, the first three cantos of which, already published, had made a great sensation in Germany. The Danish capital was his home till 1771. In 1798 he began to superintend a new and complete edition of his works, the first ten volumes of which contain his poetry, consisting of Odes, Epigrams, Dramas, and The Messiah (with which vol. iii. commences), an Epic Poem of twenty books in Hexameter verse. Mr. Coleridge compares it with Paradise Lost in Lecture X. (Lit. Remains, I). According to Mr. Taylor, Klopstock was far from rivalling Milton in the "habitual demeanor " becoming a great sacred poet; set no such example of Christian strictness, even after gaining fame by The Messiah, as that sublimest of Puritans, the author of Paradise Lost. Mr. Coleridge has protested against profaning "the awful name of Milton, by associating it with the epithet Puritan." Yet he would not have wholly dissented from the opinion of a well known writer, now amongst us, who calls "this Puritanism of ours,”—that is, the thing itself, in its pure rather than puritanical form,-" among the noblest Heroisms that ever transacted itself on this earth."

Charles William Ramler was born in 1725 at Colberg in Pomerania, of needy parents, and received his early education at the orphan school of Stettin. He became Professor of Logic and Fine Literature in the Berlin Academy for cadets, which office and his various literary exertions maintained him comfortably till 1787, when he obtained a pension, a seat in the Academy, and a share in the direction of the National Theatre. He died in 1798, of pulmonary consumption, after having withdrawn from his employments for some time before from ill health. His poems, consisting chiefly of odes, in the manner of Horace, obtained great popularity. They were first collected apart in 1772. Taylor observes that, though the lyric works of Ramler might be objected to by a severe critic, as having too much the character of imitations, yet while Lessing passed for an Aristotle, Mendelsohn for a Plato, and Gleim for an Anacreon,— and all of those were friends of his,-to him the epithet of the German Horace was applied with less hyperbole.

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing was born at Kamenz in Pomerania, in January, 1729; was the son of a clergyman (himself a voluminous writer) and the eldest of twelve children. He died at Hamburg, Feb. 15, 1781, after a life of many changes, and various literary employments, having received the appointment of Librarian at Wolfenbüttel, in 1769, from the Hereditary Prince of Brunswick. His poetry consists of Epigrams, Minor poems, Fables, and Plays, of which Nathan the Wise, an argumentative drama, has been most celebrated, and, as curtailed by Schiller, became a favorite acting play throughout Germany. He appears, however, to have been far greater as a critic and polemic than as a poet, and wrote in an admirably clear style, and with considerable power of thought and erudition, on religion, philosophy, literature, and art. A writer in the Gent.'s Mag. of May, 1846, contrasting him with Voltaire, after speaking of his close rigid logic, and eminently philosophical mind, affirms that "the love of truth, not the love of fame, was the active spring, the vital principle, of his intellectual activity."

Lessing is an author admired and extolled by men who have evidently no taste for German literature in its peculiar character, although it has lately been said, in an able article on Lessing, in the Edinburgh Review (No. 166), that he "first gave to German literature its national tendencies and physiognomy;" that while Klopstock made it English, Wieland French, Lessing made it German. This remark rests, I think, upon no very solid grounds, at least as to Lessing's priority; for was not Klopstock, in all his attempts at rivalling the great English Epic,—with his cumulated ornaments and multitudinous imagery-" festoons of angels singing at every soar of the interminable ascension"-thoroughly Teutonic-and Wieland's Muse, even according to his own account, Ger

manized Italian rather than French? That some French poets endea vored, like him, to turn their strains on Classic and on Italian models, is but a limited ground of resemblance. The Wallenstein of Schiller, and the finest parts of Goethe's Faust, are perhaps more like English poetry of the first order, and have less unlikeness to it, than any other products of the German Muse; and for this reason that they are the best German poetry; and that, as the most beautiful forms and faces of all nations are alike in their predominant characteristics, so the finest and purest poetry of every nation has more in it which is common to all nations, and less of mere national feature than the inferior kinds. But perhaps a national cast of thought is more to be discerned in prose writers than in poets. The style of Lessing is too good and pure to be eminently national.

The "compeers" of the four writers above-mentioned were Hagedorn, Schlegel, Ebert, Kramer, Gleim, Kleit, and others. Wieland, Herder, and Bürger, more celebrated than those last named, came upon the field before they had all retired from it. S. C.

Note I., p. 312.

The characteristics of German intellect Mr. Coleridge has given in The Friend (vol. iii., pp. 69–73. Essay I. 4th edit.). "If I take the three great countries of Europe," he says, "in respect of intellectual character, I should characterize them in the following way-premising only that in the first line of the first two tables I mean to imply that genius, rare in all countries, is equal in both of these, the instances equally numerous; not, therefore, contra-distinguishing either from the other, but both from the third country:

So again with regard to the forms and effects, in which the qualities manifest themselves intellectually :

Of "idea or law anticipated" he remarks, that "this, as co-ordinate with genius, applies likewise to the few only, and, conjoined with the

two following qualities, includes or supposes, as its consequences and accompaniments, speculations, system, method, &c." He represents the mind of the three countries as bearing the following relations to time:

GERMANY.

Past and Future.

ENGLAND.

Past and Present.

FRANCE.
The Present.

“The parent vice of German Literature," says the article on Lessing referred to in the last note, "is want of distinct purpose; and, as consequences of this, want of masculine character and chastened style." Hence, according to the reviewer, its "manifest inferiority" to our own. Others, on the contrary, consider it a special merit in German literature that it does not attempt, or at least hold it necessary, to comprehend its whole purpose beforehand; that it has for its object to enlarge the domain of revealed truth and knowledge, the entire fruits of the discovery in these particulars being left for time to disclose. It is a besetting evil of English literature that scarcely anything is produced here, the want of which is not felt and declared before it makes its appearance. The vice of the English mind, in the present age, as many feel, is its pseudopracticality: everything treated of must issue in something to be done forthwith and outwardly, to be enjoyed sensuously or sentimentally. The Germans write on a different principle, or from a different impulse ; they are not such slaves to the comforts of life as we are, and consequently care more for pure intellectual activity; can better afford to say with Bacon opera ipsa pluris facienda sunt, quatenus sunt veritatis pignora, quam propter vitæ commoda. They write far more than we do, in a free spirit of enterprise, that takes no bond beforehand, but carries on the adventurer with hopes the larger because undefined, and very slight fears of censure or contempt. They go exploring in all directions; and though doubtless in many directions nothing is to be found but barrenness, though many of the travellers are not furnished with the powers and means necessary for drawing any advantage from such expeditions, though most of them are too little restrained by spiritual habits of awe and reverence; yet, can it be doubted that, acting in this spirit, they have made discoveries in fruitful regions, while the English have been making none? have been marching with a pompous measured gait along beaten tracks, and, what is more to be contemned, maintaining that by the old roads men may reach new places, the need of arriving at which they cannot but feel, even while they declaim against the presumption of travelling otherwise than as our fathers travelled before us; for instance, that by the old doctrine of Inspiration (the verbal doctrine) we can harmonize the new views of Holy Writ which present themselves to advancing thought and a development of mind as necessary and