Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 14.djvu/501

 L E S S I N G 481 much more intimate knowledge than of sculpture and painting. His exposition of the methods of Homer and Sophocles is especially suggestive, and he may be said to have marked an epoch in the appreciation of these writers, and of Greek literature generally. He invariably starts from the consideration of doctrines set forth by other scholars (chiefly Winkelmann, Caylus, and Spence); but he is never satisfied until he arrives at positive principles, and he leads us towards them gradually by the paths he himself has trodden, glancing at many side issues by the way. He was unable in later years to complete his scheme, but even in its fragmentary form, as Goethe testifies in Wahrheit und Dichtung, Laocoon was welcomed with gratitude by the most active minds of the age. The power of Minna von Barnhelm was also immediately recognized. This is, on the whole, the best of Lessing s purely dramatic writings. The hero, Tellheim, is an admirable study of a manly and sensitive soldier, with somewhat exaggerated ideas of conventional honour ; and Minna, the heroine, is one of the brightest and most attractive figures in the dramatic literature of Germany. The subordinate characters are conceived with the same force and vividness ; and the plot, which reflects precisely the struggles and aspirations of the period that immediately followed the Seven Years War, is simply and naturally unfolded. This beautiful play is valued by the Germans, not only as a work of art, but as one of the earliest and most striking manifestations of the growing spirit of German nationality. In 1767 Lessing settled in Hamburg, where he had been invited to take part in the institution of a national theatre. The scheme promised well, and, as he associated himself with Bode, a literary man whom he respected, in starting a printing establishment, he hoped that he might at last look forward to a peaceful and prosperous career. The theatre, however, being mismanaged, was soon closed, while the printing establishment failed, and left behind it a heavy burden of debt. Many of Lessing s letters from Hamburg breathe almost a spirit of despair, and towards the end of his residence there he determined to quit Germany, believing that in Italy he might find congenial labour that would suffice for his wants. Even in Hamburg he made splendid contributions to enduring literature, the chief being his Hamhurgische Dramaturgic. It consists of criticisms of some of the plays represented in the Hamburg theatre ; but in these criticisms he offers a complete theory of the laws of dramatic art. In the main his theory is that of Aristotle, but it is maintained on independent grounds and applied in new ways. By this powerful work he delivered German dramatists for ever from the yoke of the classic tragedy of France, and directed them to the Greek dramatists and to Shakespeare as the poets who have opened most truly the fountains of tragic feeling. Another result of his labours in Hamburg was the Antiquarische Brief e, a series of masterly letters in answer to Klotz, a pedantic writer who, after flattering Lessing, had attacked him, and sought to establish a kind of intellectual despotism by means of critical journals which he directly or indirectly controlled. In connexion with this controversy, Lessing wrote his brilliant little treatise, Wie die Alten den Tod gelildct, contrasting the mediaeval representation of death as a skeleton with the Greek conception of death as the twin-brother of sleep. Instead of going to Italy as he intended, Lessing accepted, in 1770, the office of librarian at Wolfenbiittel, a post which was offered to him by the hereditary prince of Brunswick. In this position he passed his remaining years. For a time he was not unhappy, but by and by he was rendered miserable by his inability to pay the debts which he had contracted in Hamburg. He missed, too, the society of his friends, and his health, which had hitherto been excellent, gradually gave way. In 1775 he travelled for nine months in Italy with Prince Leopold of Brunswick ; and in the following year he married Eva Konig, the widow of a Hamburg merchant, with whom he had been on terms of intimate friendship. She was in every way worthy of Lessing, and their correspondence during his lonely years in Wolfenbiittel forms one of the most attractive elements of his biography. Their happiness in each other was perfect, but it lasted only for a brief period; in 1778 she died in childbed. After her death Lessing found one of his chief sources of consolation in the love of his four step-children, to whom he was tenderly attached. Meanwhile he had extended his fame by several import ant writings. Soon after settling in Wolfenbitttel he found in the library an ancient manuscript, which proved to be a treatise of Berengarius of Tours on transubstantia- tion in reply to Lanfranc. Lessing was thus induced to write an essay on Berengarius, vindicating his character as a serious and consistent thinker. The essay was mucli admired by the leading theologians of Germany, and it is, on the whole, the ablest and most interesting of his Eettungen. In 1771 he published his Zerstreute Anmerk- itngen iiber das Epigramm, und einige der vornehmsteu Epigrammatisten a work which Herder described as &quot; itself an epigram.&quot; Lessing s theory of the origin of the epigram is somewhat fanciful, but no other critic has offered so many pregnant hints as to the laws of epigram matic verse, or defended with so much force and ingenuity the character of Martial. In 1772 lovers of the drama were delighted by the appearance of Emilia Galotti, a tragedy which he had begun many years before in Leipsic. The subject was suggested by the Roman legend of Virginia, but the scene is laid in an Italian court, and the whole play is conceived in accordance with the modern spirit. Its defect is that its tragic conclusion does not seem to be absolutely inevitable, but there is high imaginative power in the character of the prince of Guastalla and in that of Marinelli, his chamberlain, who weaves the intrigue from which Emilia escapes by death. The diction of Emilia Galotti is at once refined and vigorous, and there are scenes in which some of the deepest passions of human nature are sounded with perfect art. Having completed Emilia Galotti, Lessing occupied him self for some years almost exclusively with the treasures of the Wolfenbiittel library. The results of his researches (some of them of high value) he embodied in a series of volumes, Zur Geschichte und Literatur, the first being issued in 1773, the last in the year of his death. The concluding period of Lessing s life was devoted chiefly to theological controversy. Eeimarus, professor of Oriental languages in Hamburg, who commanded general respect as a scholar and thinker, wrote a book entitled Apologie oder Schutzschrift fur die verniinftigen Yerehrer Gottes. The standpoint of Reimarus was that of the English deists, and he investigated, without hesitation, the evidence for the miracles recorded in the Bible. The manuscript of this work, after the author s death in 1767, was entrusted by his daughter, Elise Eeimarus, to Lessing, who published extracts from it in his Zur Geschichte und Literatur, in 1774-78. These extracts, the authorship of which was not publicly avowed, were known as the &quot; Wolfenbiittel Fragments.&quot; They created profound excite ment among orthodox theologians, and evoked many replies, in which Lessing was bitterly condemned for having issued writings of so dangerous a tendency. Lessing delighted at all times in the stir of combat, and prepared to offer a fulj and vigorous defence. His most formidable assailant was Pastor Goeze, of Hamburg, a sincere and earnest theologian, but utterly unscrupulous in his choice of weapons against XIV. 6 1