Dryden's Relation to Germany 5 



Hamburg. Thus Dryden, like Pope/'' his pupil and follower, 

 entered Germany by way of Hamburg, but unlike Pope, who 

 came indirectly through the medium of France, Dryden was at 

 first directly introduced from England. Hamburg, replacing 

 Silesia, the home of Opitz, which had formerly been a literary 

 center in a small way, at this time held the foremost place in the 

 commercial, literary, and musical activities of Germany, although 

 it would not be considered a great literary center like London or 

 Paris. 



The opera supported by well-to-do commercial patrons, had 

 flourished there two decades under the leadership of composers 

 like Keyser. The opera texts were written by poets and pseudo- 

 poets who chose this as a remunerative profession. Likewise the 

 blood-and-thunder novel and drama were in vogue, written in the 

 figurative, bombastic style of Lohenstein and Hofifmannswaldau. 



Among the contemporary writers. Christian Heinrich Postel 

 ( 1 658-1 705), the author of many operas and of several epics pro- 

 vided with numerous learned commentaries, was the most worthy 

 poet. Postel endeavored to defend Lohenstein, his patron saint 

 in poetry, in a sonnet which appeared immediately after the publi- 

 cation of Wernicke's epigrams in 1701,^^ and this occasioned the 

 first literary feud at Hamburg. ^^ It was the spirit which prompted 

 the sonnet, more than the sonnet itself, that induced Wernicke 

 to take up the cudgel. He was striving for a principle, the root- 

 ing out of the " falscher Witz," while Postel, under the pretense 

 of defending the renowned Silesian, Lohenstein, was in reality 

 defending his own poetry patterned after him. 



" Schau . . . 

 Wie jetzt dein Lohenstein, das Wunder aller Erden, 

 Der Teutschlands Sonne muss mit recht genennet werden, 

 So frech gelastert wird durch Stolz und Unverstand."^^ 



Neither Postel's defense of Lohenstein, nor the charging of 



1^ J. H. Heinzelmann, " Pope in Germany in the Eighteenth Century," 

 Modern Philology, X, pp. 317-364 (Chicago, 1913). 



1'^ Elias, Christian Wernicke, Dissertation, Miinchen, 1888, p. 216. 

 18 Rudolf Pechel, Prolegomina su Wernickes Epigramme, p. 30. 

 i» Ibid., p. 31. 



293 



