If 



I 60 ] 



may have concurred, with other caufes, to produce an inattention 

 to the native language of the country. We fee, that it is of late 

 years only, that Germans of genius and talent have thought of pay- 

 ing their addreffes to the graces and muja aman'iores in ihe verna- 

 cular tongue. We cannot, therefore, be furprifed, that the at- 

 tempts of fuch new beginners, in the walks of fancy and amufe- 

 ment, (hould have many of the marks of rudenefs and inartificial 

 compofition, which ufually charaderife firft eflays. And yet it 

 muft be obferved, that the firft produdions of the Germans in their 

 own language are the beft. The Idyls and Death of Abel cl Gefner^ 

 and the Mejfta of Klopjlock are corredt clafllcal and beautiful 

 produftions. The works of W'teland abound in natural and touch- 

 ing beauties, in amiable fimplicity, and delicacy of fentiment. 

 They are the hands, the impure hands, of the prefent horde of 

 "writers, that have polluted the German Mufes, and converted them 

 into camp trulls, and drunken viragos* 



It is not furprifing, that the German Literati and Beaux Efprits 

 fhould have been firft led, to try their ftrength in the dead lan- 

 guages, or in the more fevere purfuits of fcience. The harfli and 

 untuneable nature of their language, embarraflld, as it is, wiih 

 guttural confonants, feemed very unfavourable to the exertions 

 of poetry and eloquence, prefented confiderable difficulties to the 



firft 



• That the Germans were not naturally deficient in poetical talent, appears from 

 the large colleftion of Latin poems, entitled — Delicise Poetarum Germanorum, 



