Page:Grierson Herbert - First Half of the Seventeenth Century.djvu/373

Rh Germany, where its advent had been delayed by the more national and vivifying influence of the Reformation. The endeavour, unfortunately, came at a time when social conditions made almost impossible any leisurely and fruitful culture of art and letters.

The way for new experiments had been prepared by the Humanists, who did so much for German culture, and had made the school Latin drama so living and interesting a product. But, as elsewhere, a new literature came, not from the direct imitations of the classics, but from the living influence of Italy, and, more directly, from countries which had already transplanted and naturalised the Italian flower, such as France and Holland. Pioneers in the movement to introduce new forms, and give poetry a new grace and elegance, were Paul Schede or Paulus Melissus (1539-1602), who translated Marot's Psalms; Julius Wilhelm Zincgref (1591-1635), author of some stirring war-songs modelled expressly on the poems of Tyrtæus, and a collection of Scharpfsinnige Kluge Sprüch or Apothegmata containing anecdotes and proverbs; and Georg Rodolf Weckherlin (1584-1653), who spent a considerable portion of his life in England, and whose Horatian Oden und Gesänge (1618-19) have the courtly grace and musical rhythm which are the most unmistakable features of Renaissance poetry.