Sect. III.] Moral and Devotional Poetry. 19 



may be added baron Haller's poem on Reason, 

 Supersiitiony and Infidelity, before mentioned, and 

 which is worthy of its iUustrious author ; Die 

 Natur, the Anti-Ovid, and the Musarion, of AVie- 

 land, which have been much commended; and 

 the various didactic poems of Hagedorn, Gieseke, 

 Kastner, Vz, and Dusch, also Germans, waiich 

 have bfeen spoken of b}^ the critics of their own 

 country with high respect. 



SECTION III. 



MORAL AND DEVOTIONAL POETRY. 



The moral poetry of .the eighteenth century 

 may without hesitation be pronounced superior, 

 in the union of correctness, purity, and elegance, 

 to that of any preceding age. This superiority 

 is so remarkable, that it must arrest the attention 

 of the most careless observer, and give pleasure 

 to every friend of human happiness^ The age, 



alluded to by the abbe Delille, in the preliminary discourse pre- 

 fixed to his translation of the Georgics. ' A translation/ says he, 

 * of this poem, if it had been undertaken by an author. of genius, 

 would have been better calculated than any other work for add- 

 ing to the riches of our language. A version of the JEneid it- 

 self, however well executed, would, in this respect, be of less 

 utility; inasmuch as the genius of our tongue accommodates it- 

 self more easily to the description of heroic achievements, than 

 to the details of natural phenomena, and of the operations of 

 husbandry. To force it to express these with suitable dignity, 

 would have been a real conquest over that false delicacy which it 

 has contracted from our unfortunate prejudices." — Ste\\ art's Ele- 

 ments qf the Fhilowplij/ of JSIind, Part II, chap, v, § 2, second edit. 



Ct.' 



