Nations lately become Literary. 325 



most celebrated fictions of that country/ In no 

 part of Europe, it may be safely affirmed, are so 

 many novels continually produced as in Germany. 

 Several hundreds annually issue from the press, 

 and are circulated with growing zeal in every part 

 of the empire. It must be granted, however, that 

 some of the most popular German novels are 

 highly mischievous in their moral tendency; and 

 that no small number of their mercenary writers 

 are constantly engaged in diffusing, through the 

 medium of fictitious history, the most corrupt and 

 poisonous principles, both in religion and morals. 

 No less remarkable has been the progress of the 

 German literati in Poetry, within the last Mty 

 years. The history of literature in that country 

 presents us with no specimens of poetry to which 

 any high degree of excellence can be ascribed, 

 before those of Hagedorn and Haller, who 

 were both born in 1708, and who are justly con- 

 sidered as the founders of the modern poetical 

 school in Germany. Between 1740 and 1750, an 

 association was formed by a set of young poets, 

 possessed of eminent talents; many of whose com- 

 positions were published in the Belastigiingen des 

 Vertandes und Witzes, and in the Neuen Beytrd- 

 gen Znm Vergnugen des Verstandes and Witzes. 

 The most eminent members of this society were 

 Cramer, Gellert, Gleim, Klopstock and Rab- 

 ner. Among these, the works of Gellert and 

 Klopstock had the most extensive and the most 

 happy influence on the poetic taste of their coun- 

 trymen. The Messiah of the latter/ introduced 

 a great and most useful reform both in the diction 



x The author is too little acquainted with the works of these and other 

 German novelists, to say any thing about the comparative moral tendency 

 of their works. He only means to speak of them as celebrated in a lite- 

 rary view. 



y Klopstock published the first Canto of his Mssjiab in 1 748; but it 

 wag not completed till the year T773. 



