GKBSNER AND TlIK CULMINATION OF TIllO I'ASTOItAL IIIVL. 47 



paradiesisclie Landschaften vov seiner Seele. Olnie Figuren ist 

 eine Landschaft todt; er schuf sich also Gestalten aus seiner 

 schmachtenden Empfindung und erhohten Phantasie, staftierte 

 sein Genialde damit, und so warden seine Idyllen. Und in diesera 

 Geiste lese man sie! und man wird iiber seine Meisterschaft 

 erstaunen."' 



Gessner's ideal pastoral idyl is the culmination of the pastoral 

 literature which has been introduced into Germany at the begin- 

 ning ofthese\^enteenth century. But this culmination also brought 

 with it a sui'feit and a reaction, by which the unreal elements of 

 this literature were thrown off, just as Goethe overcame his senti- 

 mental Werther-mood by giving expression to it in Wertber's 

 Leiden. After Gessner the notes of the shepherd's pipe, which had 

 been heard on every hillside, were soon to die away in German 

 literature. His strains were not the beginning of a new era. They 

 were the swan's song of one about to end. 



Most of the immediate imitators of Gessner in their desire to 



be original substituted fishermen and gardeners for the shepherds. 



Yet we discern no real advance in the works of these 

 The imitators of 

 Q imitators; their atmosphere and setting is the sa.me 



innocent and perfect Arcadia which we find in Gess- 

 ner; the characters represented are Gessner's shepherds in the garb 

 of fishermen. These idyls are not only narrative and descriptive, 

 but the moral and religious element occupies a most prominent 

 position. The authors who persisted in clmging to this ideal 

 world of innocent Arcadian existence thereby showed that they 

 were untouched by the re-awakening influence which began to 

 dominate German literature, and that they retained the phantom 

 ideal, which others had already cast aside. Hence much of the 

 work of these imitators is of a very low order of merit; in fact, 

 Julian Schmidt places it among the least enjoyable literary pro- 

 ducts of the time. Two of the imitators of Gessner, Kleist and 

 Bronner, rise above the others in ability and mastery of form. 



1 See Frankf. Gel. Anz. 1772. 



