a rustling stream, the pleasant awesomeness of night, or of the majesty of innumerable worlds.  Even the commonest and most familiar things in Nature give me endless delight, when I feel them with a heart attuned to joy and admiration....  I lose myself, absorbed in delight, in the consideration of all this general beauty, of which I hold myself to be a not disfigured part.

Klopstock, the torch-bearer of Germany’s greatest poets, owed much of his power of the wing to religion.  He introduced that new epoch in the literature of his country which culminated in Goethe.  As so often happens in mental development, the reaction against prevailing conditions and the advance to higher ones, in the middle of the eighteenth century, led first of all to the opposite extreme—­balance was only reached by degrees.  What chiefly made Klopstock a literary reformer was the glowing enthusiasm and powerful imagination which compelled the stiff poetic forms, clumsy as they were, to new rhythm and melodious cadence.  And although his style degenerated into mannerism in the Messias, for the youthful impetus which had carried his Pegasus over the clouds to the stars could not keep it there without artificial aid, the immense value of his influence remained.  He is one of the most interesting representatives, not only of his own, but of all similar periods of exaggerated feelings and ideals.  Despite his loftiness of thought and speech, and his seraphic raptures, he was not without a full share of sensuous development, and women’s eyes, or a girl’s rosy lips, would draw him away from the finest view in the world.

A mind so intent upon the noble and beautiful was sure to be enthusiastic about Nature; his correspondence is the best witness to this, and at the same time throws side-lights upon the period.

It is difficult to-day to understand the influence which the Messias had upon its readers; even Friedenkende spent happy hours reading it with pious tears of delight, and young and old were of the same opinion.

There is a pretty letter from Gustchen Stolberg[10] to Klopstock, which runs thus: 

    UETERSEN,
    25 April 1776.

In the garden.  Yes, in the garden, dearest Klopstock!  I have just been walking about, it was so beautiful:  the little birds were singing, violets and other flowers wafted their fragrance to me, and I began thinking very warmly of all whom I dearly, dearly love, and so very soon came to my dear Klopstock, who certainly has no truer friend than I am, though perhaps others express it better ...  Thanks, thanks, for your very delightful little letter—­how dear to me I don’t tell you—­can’t tell you.

C. F. Cramer was his enthusiastic panegyrist.  It is not only what he says of the private life and special taste of his adored friend which is noteworthy, but the way in which he does it—­the tone in which, as a cultivated man of the day, he judged