124 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 
birth to, and held fast, great talents, but knew how to attract for¬ 
eign talents, something that scarcely any republic has been capable 
of at one and the same time; which was prominent in commerce 
and industry, in mechanics and inventions, the center and citadel 
of mastersong; which through more than a hundred years, from 
Rosenblut and Folz down to Hans Sachs, remained the cradle of 
the German drama; and which sheltered in its walls the greatest 
men in all branches, Regiomontanus, Celtes, Yischer, Diirer, Pirk- 
heimer, Hans Sachs; which showed such a fecundity in artists and 
scholars that no other German city, and indeed not many German 
states, can display such a line of artists and scholars, which is sur¬ 
passed in part only by the great Italian republics. In this refuge, 
full of incitement and without excitement, it was easier for him 
to observe, easy to rise above and master what he had observed; 
he surveyed from a distance and did not get confused by prox¬ 
imity. 
(Page 413). As his poetic share in the pamphlet (Eyn wunder- 
liche W eyssagwpig von dem babstumb, 1527) was very harmless, so 
also his further writings for Protestantism were indeed forceful 
and definite, but always moderate and calm and entirely devoid of 
all excesses in form and content. . . . He combatted the coarse 
tone of life and art, not by imitating this rudeness, like Murner, 
but by trying to elevate his language and presentation, and to keep 
above common reality. 
How he did this shows what an innate poetic talent was his. And 
that attracted Goethe so much to him (who himself knew how diffi¬ 
cult it is to remain superior to irruptive epochal events), to see 
with what playful ease the honorable master treated the world 
and life, how securely and placidly he roamed about, how the really 
creative power of the poet wrought in him, not passion (414) and 
personal interest and excitement; how his poetry is not a stupid 
copy of life, but a free reproduction of it. It is true, we can in 
his case speak only of a rough draft, not of perfect execution; 
only of vigor and expressiveness, and of the great humorous power 
of his language, which under Goethe ’s finishing touches ingratiated 
itself so much with us, while in his own case the monotony and 
heedlessness with which he throws off his rhymes annoys and de¬ 
ters us. It is true again that there is in his works a good deal of 
idle chatter, of awkwardness in treatment, of unconcerned seizing 
upon the first theme that offers, and later of soulless versified 
