at that time threatened with gradual extinction by the Spanish and
Hamburg romance and by Viennese wit. Assisted by Neuber, the actress,
he extirpated all that was not strictly French, solemnly burned
Harlequin in effigy at Leipzig, A.D. 1737, and laid down a law for
German poetry, which prescribed obedience to the rules of the stilted
French court-poetry, under pain of the critic's lash. He and his
learned wife guided the literature of Germany for several years.

In the midst of these literary aberrations, during the first part of
the foregoing century, Thomson, the English poet, Brokes of Hamburg,
and the Swiss, Albert von Haller, gave their descriptions of nature to
the world. Brokes, in his "Earthly Pleasures in God," was faithful,
often Homeric, in his descriptions, while Haller depictured his native
Alps with unparalleled sublimity. The latter was succeeded by a Swiss
school, which imitated the witty and liberal-minded criticisms of
Addison and other English writers, and opposed French taste and
Gottsched. At its head stood Bodmer and Breitinger, who recommended
nature as a guide, and instead of the study of French literature, that
of the ancient classics and of English authors. It was also owing to
their exertions that Mueller published an edition of Rudiger Maness's
collection of Swabian Minnelieder, the connecting link between modern
and ancient German poetry. Still, notwithstanding their merit as
critics, they were no poets, and merely opened to others the road to
improvement. Hagedorn, although frivolous in his ideas, was graceful
and easy in his versification; but the most eminent poet of the age
was Gellert of Leipzig, A.D. 1769, whose tales, fables, and essays
brought him into such note as to attract the attention of Frederick
the Great, who, notwithstanding the contempt in which he held the
poets of Germany, honored him with a personal visit.