Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/552

Rh 53-1 dealt severerhlows at literary pretence. G E R M A N Y llis prose has nerve and animation, and few satirists have ' [Li'ri2n.-i'ri'i:E. sects in Germany, delighted in hymns ; and many of those they produced are rem-.irkable for the sensuous, sometimes Halle The Halle school of poets was in some respects different ahnost sensual, forms in which their emotions are SCHOOL both from the Saxon and the Swiss schools. Its original expressed. members were Gleini (1719-1303), Uz (1720-96), and Fables were at this time an -e.‘{tl:ell1el_)'_ popular class of1-‘.«.1,u. Glitz (1721-81). These three writers formed a friendship ' writings, and nearly every imaginative writer sought to (lis-1i~'t-'- iii their student days at Halle, where they came under the tingiiisli himself as a f-ab.ulis_t. The Swiss school, indeed, inﬂuence of the poets, Pastor Laiige, and the tutor of his I in their zeal for a combi_nati_on of the wonderful and the children, Immanuel Pyra, ardent disciples of Bodnier and useful in litci‘atiirc, inaintain-ed that the fable was the Breitiiiger. The young students, while feeling sincere re- highest type of literatuie. As a rule, Lafontaine was spect for the Swiss critics, did not attempt any very serious taken as the model in works of this kind, but we look ﬂight ; they preferred to aiiuise themselves with lively little in vain among his German imitators for his exquisite grace anacreontic verses, which they soon brought; into high and naiveté Gellert stands at the head of the more Gleim. repute. Afterwards Gleiin settled in Halberstadt, where sentimental fabulists; after him may be named Willanow he lived to an extreme age. His didactic poem Ilallmlat, and Lichtwer. The latter (1719-83) has humour as well which he wrote, he himself modestly explained, in order to as sentiment, and some of his fables have an artistic gratify a wish of his youth to produce a book like the finish that indicates a faculty by which he might have won Bible, has no vitality ; but during the Seven Years’ War distinction in inoie important labours. he composed War Songs of (1. G’ronndz'er, which were From about the middle of the 18th century onwards a Popiilar everywhere read, and have not yet lost their popularity. number of prose writers, who in-ay be classed together as pl1i10s'>- They were edited by Gleim’s friend Lessiiig, who, however, popular philosopliers, worked effectively for the eiilighteii- Ph°"“" remarkable insight into the religious life of Catholic Ger- Moses Mendelssohn (1729-86), not a deep or massive Moses many about the middle of the 18th century. thinker, but a man of ﬁne moral sympathies, an enthusiast 1101111015 Religious The religious lyric, which had shared the general decay for freedom—froiii the lack of which he himself, as a Jew, s°l"" lyrics. protested against their patriotic veliemence. Gleim was one of the most kindly of men, and became the patron of young poets, several of whom he always had in his pleasant bachelor’s home. He also kept up an extensive corre- spondence with other writers, which is now an important source of information respecting the movements of coiitein— porary literature. One of his most intimate friends, who resembled him only in geiiiality of disposition, was the iioble-hearted Ewald Christian von Kleist (1715—59), who was fatally wounded on the battle-ﬁeld of Kiinersdorf. He would still deserve to be reineiiibeied as the man whom, of all others, the equally noble Lessing most loved. His descriptive poem F7~i'il2.lz'.ng (“ Spring”) is partly an imi- tation of Thomson ; but it is also the work of an inde- pendent lover of nature, who knew how to give beautiful utterance to true and simple feeling. llamler (1725-98), another friend of Gleim, and the friend, too, of Kleist and Lessing, wrote spirited odes in Horatian metres, which, like the War I '0ngs of a 6'rmadie7', gave pleasure because of their strongly patriotic toiie,—the direct result in both cases of Frederick's inﬂuence. Anna Louisa Karsch (1722-91), a poetess who owed much to Gleim’s goodness, was a favourite among the literary men of the day, but} her verses are ruder than they ought to have been at so late a date. Idyllic poetry, which Kleist and }i3tz to some extent cultivated, was taken up in ear- nest by Solomon Gessner (1730-87), whose prose idylls, The Death of Abel, The First Sailor, and others, were trans- lated into French and English, and were better received in their foreign dress than in their original form. They are written in an easy style, and express much harmless although somewhat tedious sentiment. He was imitated by Xaver Bronncr, a Catholic priest, whose idylls have not half the merit of his autobiography, which affords during the latter half of the 17th century, displayed more vitality during part of this period. It owed its fresh life mainly to the pietists, who reopened fountains of spiritual feeling that had been apparently dried up by theologians. Among the best of this younger generation of hymn writers were Freylingliauscn, Neumeister, and Tersteegeii. Their fame was, however, less extensive than that of Count von Zinzcndorf (1700-60), the founder of the sect of Herrnhiiter or Moiavian Brethren. Besides hymns he wrote religious works in prose, and made himself one of the most prominent ﬁgures of his time by ardent missionary zeal. His followers, like all deeply religious ineiit of ordinary readers. They attached themselves to some extent to Wolf ; they also came under the inﬂuence, although not in any great degree, of the French Encyclo- pedists ; and they were adiniring students of the English (lCl.‘tS, and of Locke, Shaftesbury, and Hutcheson. They aie often condemned for the sliallowiiess of their thought ; and if we coinpaie them with the great thinkers who followed them, the condemnation is just. They (lid not grasp the significance of the problems which had been ha.nded down by Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibnitz, with which Hume was now grappling, and which were soon to enter upon a new phase in the critical philosophy of Kant. In regard to religion they had a very iinpei-feet appreciation of every‘element that could not be expressed in clear logi- cal statements ; feeling and imagination were rigidly siibor— dinated to the understanding. And they had not even a remote suspicion of what is now familiar as the historical spirit, so that they displayed amazing iiarrowiiess of vision in their treatment of past spiritual developments, and of contemporary creeds with which they did not happen to agree. But if we are to do justice to these popular philosophers, they must be conipaied rather with their pie- decessors than with their successors. An important place belongs to them in the movement by which vital human interests have been raised above theological disputes, by which morality has received a basis independent of dog- iiiatic religion, and by which toleratioii has been secured for men of every faith. They were penetrated by a truly humane sentiment,' and it must be counted a high merit that in a country which had been more or less dominated by pedaiits, and whose great writers of a later age have not always attempted to be both profound and clear, they sought to express themselves in uiipretcnding and straiglitforward Gerinan. The chief of the popular philosophers was keenly suffered—and an incisive psychological analyst. Ilis friend, Frederick Nicolai (1733-1811), the Berlin hook- Nicolai. seller, had the misfortune to outlive his epoch. He had only words of contempt for Goethe and Schiller ; and Kant, whom he did not profess to understaiid, seemed to him a sort of cross between a buiigler and an impostor. These terrible mistakes have made poor Nicolai, notwith- standing his lifelong warfare against bigotry, the type of a iiarrow—niinded bigot. Yet in his earlier days he was re- cognized by such a judge as Lessiiig, with whose friendship he was honoured, as a writer of talent. And his I)’z'bl2'ot7z.ek (“ Library ”), the most important literary periodical of his