Page:Grierson Herbert - First Half of the Seventeenth Century.djvu/375

Rh his precepts from Du Bellay, Scaliger, and Heinsius, Opitz sketched the plan of his reforms in his Buch von der Deutschen Poeterey (1624). With some just and fruitful remarks on purity of language, and on versification (some of which he had anticipated in his earlier Aristarchus sive de contemptu linguæ Teutonicæ (1617)), he combines the usual discussion of the "kinds"—epic, tragedy and comedy, eclogues, sylvæ, lyrics, &c.—and singles out for commendation Petrarch, Sannazaro, Ronsard, Sidney (whose Arcadia he translated), Heinsius, and the tragedies and comedies of those Dutchmen, Hooft, Brederoo, and Coster, who had established Coster's Academy, a few years before, with the same reforming intention as Opitz.

Opitz's own contributions to the carrying out of his ambitious programme—epics, tragedies, pastorals, and odes—have proved of no enduring value. All that lives of his poetry are some of the more graceful and simple of his songs—lyrics like

"Sei Wohlgemuth, lass Trauern sein,                  Auf Regen folget Sonnenschein,                   Es giebet endlich doch das Glück                   Nach Toben einen guten Blick," and "Ich empfinde fast ein Grauen                  Das ich, Plato, für and für                    Bin gesessen über dir;                   Es ist Zeit hinaus zu schauen,                   Und sich bei den frischen Quellen                   In dem Grünen zu ergehn,                   Wo die schönen Blumen stehen                   Und die Fischer Netze stellen."