Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 22.djvu/833

 LITERATURE.] SWITZERLAND 797 might happen to reach them from neighbouring countries. At the time of the Reformation there was much intel- lectual activity in Switzerland, but it related chiefly to the controversy of the Protestants with the Church of Rome ; and Zwingli, Bullinger, and the other Reformers of the German cantons were not, like Luther, wise enough to write important treatises in the language of the people. They wrote chiefly in Latin, reserving the use of German for sermons and hymns. One good writer of this period Bonni- whose interest was not confined to theology was Francois vard. Bonnivard, who, although a native of Savoy, had, as prior of the monastery of St Victor, been associated with Geneva before the Reformation. He was one of the most resolute of those who opposed the ambition of Charles III., duke of Savoy ; and it is he whose sufferings in the service of his adopted country have been immortalized by Byron in " The Prisoner of Chillon." After his release from imprisonment he became a Protestant, and wrote in French several important books, the chief of which is his Chron- iqute de Geneve. This work is written in a bright and animated style, and is especially valuable for its account of events with which the author himself was connected. Tsohudi. Another vigorous writer of the 16th century was ^Egidius Tschudi, who remained loyal to the Roman Church. He devoted himself with enthusiasm to the study of history. The only result of his labours given to the world in his lifetime was Die uralt wahrhafftig alpisch Rhdtia, but several other works have since been published, the most important being his Chronicon Helveticum and his Haupt- schliissel zu verschiedenen Alterthumern. After the Reformation a respect for learning was main- tained by the university of Basel, the Carolinum of Zurich, and various other educational institutions in the leading towns of the Confederation ; but for a long time Switzer- land took little part in the literary movement of Europe. Theology was still generally thought to be the only subject worthy of study by serious minds, and theologians continued to write their books in Latin (as, for example, C. Gessner of Zurich). In this respect their example was followed by men of science. In the few instances in which scholars belonging to German cantons wished to appeal to readers who were not specialists, they wrote in French, for Switzerland was so intimately associated in politics with France that the French language was spoken by the edu- cated classes in all parts of the country. French litera- ture was the only modern literature of which they had any real knowledge. Early in the 18th century there were many signs of an intellectual awakening both in the German and in the French districts. The literary activity manifested in the German cantons was indirectly connected with the fact that they had been gradually acquiring a stronger sense of political independence. They had been alienated from France by the arrogance of the French Government, and had been forced to consider whether it might not be possible for Switzerland to defend her own interests with- out foreign patronage. Here and there scholars began to interest themselves in Swiss history, and to take pride in the achievements of the forefathers of the republic ; and, in proportion as patriotic sentiment increased, thoughtful men became less inclined to take all their ideas from the country to which alone they had hitherto looked for intellectual guidance. They studied with greater earnestness the literatures of Greece and Rome, and some of them turned to English literature, with which they had not up to this time had the slightest acquaintance. These influences gave a powerful impetus to the best aspirations of the German population of Switzerland, and it was not in literature only that important results were achieved. Members of the family of Bernoulli at the university of Basel had already been doing great work in mathematics; and now the fame of Switzerland as a country favourable to the development of science was extended by many investigators, the best known of whom were Euler, Haller, Scheuchzer, and Muralt. The writer who first gave expression to the most Bodmei characteristic literary conceptions of his time in Switzer- land was J. J. Bodmer, a native of Zurich. He was a good classical scholar, and in youth had made himself familiar with some of the masterpieces of English, French, and Italian literature. In 1721, in association with his friend Breitinger, a learned Protestant clergyman in Zurich, he began to issue the Discurse der Maler, written in imitation of the style of the English essayists. In this periodical the two friends criticized freely the works of some popular German versifiers, and they wrote with so much force and confidence that they soon exercised con- siderable influence not only in Switzerland but in Germany. When the value of their work was beginning to be recognized, a high place was taken among German men of letters by Gottsched, a professor at Leipsic. He was an ardent admirer of the classic drama of France, and gathered around him a number of enthusiastic disciples, known as the Saxon school. For some time he was on friendly terms with the Swiss critics, with whom he agreed in condemning the wild extravagance of Lohenstein and his imitators. But when Bodmer and Breitinger went on to praise English literature, and to call attention especially to the splendid qualities of Milton, Gottsched denounced their opinions as utterly false and misleading. The result was that a bitter controversy broke out between the Saxon and Swiss schools, Bodmer and Breitinger presenting an elaborate statement of critical doctrine, the former in Vom Wunderbaren in der Poesie (1740), the latter in Kritische Dichikunst (1740). The controversy was followed with great interest by many readers, and, although it was by and by almost forgotten, it helped to prepare the way for the outburst of German literature begun by Klopstock, Wieland, and Lessing. The theories of all the combatants were to some extent crude and even grotesque, but Bodmer and Breitinger did excellent service by the vigour with which they protested against the notion that poetry is merely the work of the understanding acting in subjection to rigid rules, and by their enthusiastic appre- ciation of great English writers. Bodmer also opened fresh sources of inspiration by editing a part of the Nibelungen- lied and some poems of the Minnesinger, undertakings in which he anticipated the labours of the Romantic school. He wrote an epic, the Noachide, and several dramas, but his work as a poet is feeble and unimportant in compari- son with his achievements as an editor and critic. A. von Haller, who made his fame chiefly as a man of Haller. science (see vol. xi. p. 396), ranked in literature also among the foremost men of his day. His poems are too directly didactic to give much pleasure to modern readers, but in some of them especially Die Alpen there are passages of striking force and beauty. Haller knew the Alps not merely from books but by having visited them, and to him belongs the credit of having revealed that they appeal powerfully to the imagination, and of having asso- ciated them with great thoughts and aspirations. He wrote several prose romances, but outside of Switzerland these works, which had many readers at the time of their publication, are now practically forgotten. A Swiss writer of the 18th century who, as a poet, Gessner. became more famous even than Haller was Solomon Gessner. At Berlin and Hamburg he came under the influence of Ramler and Hagedorn, and after his return to his native town Zurich, where he lived as an artist, he published a series of idyllic poems which excited universal