176 Nations lately become Literary. [Ch, XXVI. 



imitations, which attract attention at present only 

 as monuments of bad taste. About the year 

 1746, Gellert made the first attempt to introduce 

 a different and more correct model of fictitious 

 history. The appearance of his Scliwedische Grd" 

 Jin, publislicd in that J^ear, forms a new era in this 

 department of German literature. The novels 

 published in German}', from 1746 to 17'54, were, 

 for the most part, translations from the English 

 and French languages. In 1754 Gesner's pastoral 

 romance, entitled Daphnis, appeared ; excited 

 much attention, and formed a second epocha in 

 the progress of this kind of composition. A few 

 years afterward the Teutschen Grandison of Mu- 

 Stisus, and the Agatlion of Wieland, gave another 

 and a still more correct turn to the German taste 

 in novel writing. Beside these, the various works 

 of Goethe, Schiller, Nicholai, Klinger, Herder, 

 Richter, and many others, deserve to be enume- 

 rated among the most celebrated fiction? 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 tlic 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 constantl}^ engaged 

 in diffusing, through the medium of fictitious his- 



* The author is too liltle acquainted with the works of these 

 and other German novelists, to say any tiling about their com- 

 parative moral tendency. He only nioans to speak of them as 

 celebrated in a literary view. 



