122 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 
(Page 251). The mastersinger tablatures do to be sure repre¬ 
sent most defective poesy, the weakness of which as compared with 
ancient classical poetry was at once recognized, and the reason why 
the mastersingers affected so much secrecy as to their rules was 
that they suspected that every one versed in the new poetry and 
music who inquired about their rules did so only to ridicule them, 
and because the new learned versifiers really did view the master- 
singers’ art as far beneath them. 
Chapter VII. Reception of Popular Poetry. 7. Hans Sachs. 
(Page 409). Hans Sachs (of Nuremberg, 1494-1576) was the 
first one to feel vaguely that all poetry had sunk to a low level in 
which it could not possibly persist. As of everything truly na¬ 
tional that we possess in medieval poetry, so also of this man, as 
a purely German phenomenon, we must say: we must appreciate 
him historically to establish his merit and determine his worth 
accordingly. He occupies as it were a middle ground between the 
old and the new art, and his works both point to older creations 
of the nation and also lay the foundation for later ones yet to 
come; he embraces the poetic past of the people, and treats in many 
ways all the forms and subjects that had become popular since the 
rise of middle-class poetry; he seizes on all the actualities of his 
time, and participates in the whole course of its religio-politieal 
poetry; then he is the first one to withdraw from this, removes 
poetry from its trend toward actual life and devotes himself to 
the dramatic form, which since his time has remained the chief 
form of all modern poetry. He draws all history and the full ex¬ 
tent of all knowledge and action into poetry, tears down the bound¬ 
aries of nationality, and thus gives warning of what was to be 
henceforth the most characteristic feature of German literature. 
He is in a certain sense a reformer of poetry as Luther is of re¬ 
ligion, as Hutten in politics; more fortunate than Hutten, less 
fortunate than Luther, of far more unconscious talent than both 
of them, like them indefatigably at work, little recognized in his 
true value, indeed for a long time reviled as the representative of 
mastersong, from which he strove to break away, for which he 
composed only in private, in which he esteemed only morally what 
from the viewpoint of poetry he considered unworthy of printing. 
Only in recent times did Goethe, uncovering the poetic germs in 
his forms and language, bring him again to notice and recognition, 
