Germany from the Earliest Period, vol 4 | Page 5

the rules of the stilted
French court-poetry, under pain of the critic's lash. He and his learned
wife guided the literature of Germany for several years.
In the midst of these literary aberrations, during the first part of the
foregoing century, Thomson, the English poet, Brokes of Hamburg,
and the Swiss, Albert von Haller, gave their descriptions of nature to
the world. Brokes, in his "Earthly Pleasures in God," was faithful, often
Homeric, in his descriptions, while Haller depictured his native Alps
with unparalleled sublimity. The latter was succeeded by a Swiss
school, which imitated the witty and liberal-minded criticisms of
Addison and other English writers, and opposed French taste and
Gottsched. At its head stood Bodmer and Breitinger, who
recommended nature as a guide, and instead of the study of French
literature, that of the ancient classics and of English authors. It was also
owing to their exertions that Müller published an edition of Rudiger
Maness's collection of Swabian Minnelieder, the connecting link
between modern and ancient German poetry. Still, notwithstanding
their merit as critics, they were no poets, and merely opened to others
the road to improvement. Hagedorn, although frivolous in his ideas,
was graceful and easy in his versification; but the most eminent poet of
the age was Gellert of Leipzig, A.D. 1769, whose tales, fables, and

essays brought him into such note as to attract the attention of
Frederick the Great, who, notwithstanding the contempt in which he
held the poets of Germany, honored him with a personal visit.
Poets and critics now rose in every quarter and pitilessly assailed
Gottsched, the champion of Gallomania. They were themselves divided
into two opposite parties, into Anglomanists and Græcomanists,
according to their predilection for modern English literature or for that
of ancient Greece and Rome. England, grounded, as upon a rock, on
her self-gained constitution, produced men of the rarest genius in all the
higher walks of science and literature, and her philosophers, naturalists,
historians, and poets exercised the happiest influence over their
Teutonic brethren, who sought to regain from them the vigor of which
they had been deprived by France. The power and national learning of
Germany break forth in Klopstock, whose genius vainly sought a
natural garb and was compelled to assume a borrowed form. He
consecrated his muse to the service of religion, but, in so doing,
imitated the Homeric hexameters of Milton; he sought to arouse the
national pride of his countrymen by recalling the deeds of Hermann
(Armin) and termed himself a bard, but, in the Horatian metre of his
songs, imitated Ossian, the old Scottish bard, and was consequently
labored and affected in his style. Others took the lesser English poets
for their model, as, for instance, Kleist, who fell at Kunersdorf, copied
Thomson in his "Spring"; Zachariä, Pope, in his satirical pieces;
Hermes, in "The Travels of Sophia," the humorous romances of
Richardson; Müller von Itzehoe, in his "Siegfried von Lindenberg," the
comic descriptions of Smollett. The influence of the celebrated English
poets, Shakespeare, Swift, and Sterne, on the tone of German humor
and satire, was still greater. Swift's first imitator, Liscow, displayed
considerable talent, and Rabener, a great part of whose manuscripts
was burned during the siege of Dresden in the seven years' war, wrote
witty, and at the same time instructive, satires on the manners of his
age. Both were surpassed by Lichtenberg, the little hump-backed
philosopher of Göttingen, whose compositions are replete with grace.
The witty and amiable Thümmmel was also formed on an English
model, and Archenholz solely occupied himself with transporting the
customs and literature of England into Germany. If Shakespeare has not
been without influence upon Goethe and Schiller, Sterne, in his

"Sentimental Journey," touched an echoing chord in the German's heart
by blending pathos with his jests. Hippel was the first who, like him,
united wit with pathos, mockery with tears.
In Klopstock, Anglo and Graecomania were combined. The latter had,
however, also its particular school, in which each of the Greek and
Roman poets found his imitator. Voss, for instance, took Homer for his
model, Ramler, Horace, Gleim, Anacreon, Gessner, Theocritus, Cramer,
Pindar, Lichtwer, Æsop, etc. The Germans, in the ridiculous attempt to
set themselves up as Greeks, were, in truth, barbarians. But all was
forced, unnatural, and perverted in this aping age. Wieland alone was
deeply sensible of this want of nature, and hence arose his predilection
for the best poets of Greece and France. The German muse, led by his
genius, lost her ancient stiffness and acquired a pliant grace, to which
the sternest critic of his too lax morality is not insensible. Some lyric
poets, connected with the Graecomanists by the _Göttingen Hainbund_,
preserved a noble simplicity, more particularly Salis and Hòlty, and
also Count Stolberg, wherever he has not been led