anatomy. These poets were, however, merely exceptions to the general
rule. In the poetical societies, the "Order of the Palm" or
"Fructiferous Society," founded A.D. 1617, at Weimar, by Caspar von
Teutleben, the "Upright Pine Society," established by Rempler of
Loewenthal at Strasburg, that of the "Roses," founded A.D. 1643, by
Philip von Zesen, at Hamburg, the "Order of the Pegnitz-shepherds,"
founded A.D. 1644, by Harsdoerfer, at Nuremberg, the spirit of the
Italian and French operas and academies prevailed, and pastoral
poetry, in which the god of Love was represented wearing an immense
allonge peruke, and the coquettish immorality of the courts was
glowingly described in Arcadian scenes of delight, was cultivated. The
fantastical romances of Spain were also imitated, and the invention of
novel terms was deemed the highest triumph of the poet. Every third
word was either Latin, French, Spanish, Italian, or English. Francisci
of Luebeck, who described all the discoveries of the New World in a
colloquial romance contained in a thick folio volume, was the most
extravagant of these scribblers. The romances of Antony Ulric, duke of
Brunswick, who embraced Catholicism on the occasion of the marriage of
his daughter with the emperor Charles VI., are equally bad.
Lauremberg's satires, written A.D. 1564, are excellent. He said with
great truth that the French had deprived the German muse of her nose
and had patched on another quite unsuited to her German ears.
Moscherosch (Philander von Sittewald) wrote an admirable and cutting
satire upon the manners of the age, and Greifenson von Hirschfeld is
worthy of mention as the author of the first historical romance that
gives an accurate and graphic account of the state of Germany during
the thirty years' war.

This first school was succeeded by a second of surpassing
extravagance. Hoffman von Hoffmannswaldau, A.D. 1679, the founder of