When one considers closely what was wanting in the German poetry, it was a material, and that, too, a national one:  there was never a lack of talent.  Here we make mention only of Guenther, who may be called a poet in the full sense of the word.  A decided talent, endowed with sensuousness, imagination, memory, the gifts of conception and representation, productive in the highest degree, ready at rhythm, ingenious, witty, and of varied information besides,—­he possessed, in short, all the requisites for creating, by means of poetry, a second life within life, even within common real life.  We admire the great facility with which, in his occasional poems, he elevates all circumstances by the feelings, and embellishes them with suitable sentiments, images, and historical and fabulous traditions.  Their roughness and wildness belong to his time, his mode of life, and especially to his character, or, if one would have it so, his want of fixed character.  He did not know how to curb himself; and so his life, like his poetry, melted away from him.

By his vacillating conduct, Guenther had trifled away the good fortune of being appointed at the court of Augustus the Second, where, in addition to every other species of ostentation, they were also looking about for a court-poet, who could give elevation and grace to their festivities, and immortalize a transitory pomp.  Von Koenig was more mannerly and more fortunate:  he filled this post with dignity and applause.

In all sovereign states the material for poetry comes downwards from above; and “The Review-camp at Muehlberg” ("Das Lustlager bei Muehlberg”) was, perhaps, the first worthy object, provincial, if not national, which presented itself to a poet.  Two kings saluting one another in the presence of a great host, their whole courts and military state around them, well-appointed troops, a mock-fight, fetes of all kinds,—­ this is business enough for the outward sense, and overflowing material for delineating and descriptive poetry.

This subject had, indeed, the internal defect, that it was only pomp and show, from which no real action could result.  None except the very first distinguished themselves; and, even if they had done so, the poet could not render any one conspicuous lest he should offend the others.  He had to consult the “Court and State Calendar;” and the delineation of the persons therefore went off pretty dryly,—­nay, even his contemporaries very strongly reproached him with having described the horses better than the men.  But should not this redound to his credit, that he showed his art just where an object for it presented itself?  The main difficulty, too, seems soon to have manifested itself to him,—­since the poem never advanced beyond the first canto.