Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 22.djvu/834

 798 SWITZERLAND [LITERATUKE. Sails- Seewis. Usteri. Zimmer- maun. Sulzer. Hirzel. Lavater, Pesta- lozzi. admiration. The most popular of his writings was his prose idyl, Der Tod Abel's (1758). This work was trans- lated into many languages, and was received with not less favour in Germany, France, and England than in Switzer- land. There is not much serious thought in Gessner's works, and his sentiment sometimes degenerates into senti- mentalism, but a permanent place is secured for him in literature by his simple, lucid style and by the delicate grace of his sketches of ideal scenery. These qualities were warmly appreciated by Lessing and afterwards by Goethe. Of the German Swiss poets who were born after Gessner had become famous the best were J. G. Salis-Seewis and J. M. Usteri. Salis-Seewis was acquainted with Goethe, Schiller, Herder, and Wieland, but he was not so much influenced by them as by a greatly inferior poet, Matthison, whose ideas and methods closely resembled his own. There is little variety of sentiment in the poems of Salis- Seewis, but their uniformity of tone is prevented from being tiresome by his perfect sincerity and by the vividness of his diction. Usteri wrote at least one song " Freut euch des Lebehs " which became popular among Germans of all classes, but his most important writings were some clever stories in the German dialect of Zurich. Philosophy, in the strict sense of the term, was not profoundly studied in the German cantons in the 18th century, but philosophical problems, especially those relat- ing to ethics, were discussed in a popular style by a good many more or less able writers. Of these writers one of the most renowned was J. G. Zimmermann. His chief writings are Ueber die Einsamlceit (1755) and Vom Nation- alstolze (1758). These works present a strange combina- tion of cynicism and sentimentalism, but they profoundly impressed Zimmermann's contemporaries, and were trans- lated into most European languages. J. G. Sulzer spent the greater part of his life in Berlin, where he was held in much esteem at the time when Lessing was beginning to make a name as a critic and dramatist. His principal work is his Allgemeine Theorie der schonen Kiinste, in which he tried to present a complete exposition of the laws of art, starting with the philosophical principles of Wolf, and combining them with critical doctrines derived from English and French writers. His style is somewhat cold and formal, and to later generations his governing thoughts have seemed meagre and unfruitful. H. K. Hirzel wrote Das Bild eines ivahren Patrioten (1767) and various other works, in which he displayed a considerable power of expounding and illustrating great moral principles. He is remembered chiefly, however, by a charming descrip- tion which he wrote of a day spent by Klopstock and him- self with some friends on the Lake of Zurich, a day celebrated by Klopstock in one of the finest of his early odes. J. K. Lavater made some reputation as a poet, but he owed his fame chiefly to his Physiognomische Fragments (1775-78), in which he sought to develop the idea that the face presents a perfect indication of character, and that physiognomy may therefore be treated as a science. His notions are arbitrary and rather mystical, but he expressed them with so much vigour and enthusiasm that he found many admirers and disciples. J. H. Pestalozzi was a less pretentious but infinitely more useful writer than Lavater. Early in life, mainly through the influence of Rousseau, he became impressed by the necessity of a radical change in the methods of popular education ; and with splendid self- sacrifice he devoted his energies to the task of realizing his ideas and of inspiring others with a sense of their import- ance. His writings of which Lienhard und Gertrud is the best are not distinguished by any remarkable literary qualities, but his theories made his name famous all over the civilized world, and children in every good school may still be said to profit indirectly by his labours. In the, 18th century the German cantons produced many writers on historical subjects. One of the most dis- Iselin. tinguished of them was I. Iselin, who, in his Geschichte der Menschheit (1768), offered suggestions akin to those which were afterwards set forth with wider knowledge and deeper insight by Herder. J. H. Tschudi and J. J. Tschudi, The descendants of ^Egidius Tschudi, also did much good work Tschudis. as historians. Greater than any of these the foremost historical writer of Switzerland was J. von Miiller, whose Miiller. writings marked an era in German literature. His master- piece is his Geschichte der schiveizerischen Eidgenossenschaft (1780). Miiller had not an adequate appreciation of the laws of evidence in historical inquiry, but he was inde- fatigable in research, and no German historian of his time had so great a power of bringing out the significance of facts by his method of grouping them. His style, although sometimes obscure and rhetorical, was often made warm and glowing by his eager love of freedom and justice. The literary movement of the French districts in the 18th century had little direct relation with that of the German cantons. It sprang chiefly from the influence of French refugees, who flocked in great numbers to western Switzerland after the revocation of the edict of Nantes. The most energetic of the French writers of Switzerland in the first half of the 18th century was Bourguet, the son of Bcrarguet a refugee. He travelled in Italy and Holland, and on his return to Geneva founded the Bibliotheque Italique, which appeared from 1729 to 1734. In carrying on this periodical, which extended to eighteen volumes, Bourguet was aided by a good many Swiss writers among others by Abraham Ruchat and Loys de Bochat of Lausanne. Bourguet's colleagues also contributed articles to French periodicals of a similar kind in Holland, three of which the Bibliotheque Universelle et Historique, the Bibliotheque Choisie, and the Bibliotheque Ancienne et Moderne were conducted by Jean le Clerc, a native of Geneva. In 1732 Bourguet started at Neuchatel the Mercure Suisse, which went on until 1784 and did much to stimulate the interest of its readers in science, literature, history, and archaeology. The indefatigable editor and his colleagues did not con- fine themselves to journalistic work. One of his books Traite des Petrifactions was an important contribution to geology ; and Loys de Bochat wrote a careful book entitled Memoir es Critiques sur VHistoire Ancienne de la Suisse. Ruchat was the author of Histoire de la Reformation de la Suisse and of Delices de la Suisse. The writings of J. P. Crousaz. de Crousaz, a friend of Bourguet, display no remark- able qualities, but two of them, his Examen of Pope's Essay on Man and his Commentaire on the same poem, have some interest for English readers. An English translation of the Examen by Mrs Elizabeth Carter was published in 1739, and led to the intervention of War- burton, who considered it necessary to prove that the Essay was not in any way hostile to religion. During the second half of the 18th century all Europe Rousseau was reading the works of a Swiss writer, by far the most illustrious man of letters whom Switzerland has produced J. J. Rousseau. He moved civilized mankind by many a doctrine which no one now holds to be true, but he owed his astonishing influence not so much to his fallacies as to his passionate zeal for the rights of the poor, to his enthusiasm for the free development of individual character, and to the power with which he reflected in his writings the beauty and the splendour of the external world. Of his own happiness he made shipwreck ; but, if we judge his work simply by the practical results which sprang from it, he was perhaps the greatest literary force of modern times. His family was of French origin, but it had been so long settled at Geneva that it had become thoroughly Swiss, and to this fact were due some of the