to collect what the Germans have accomplished in lyric poetry.  He now finds, that scarcely one poem fully satisfies him:  he must leave out, arrange, and alter, that the things may have some shape or other.  By this means he makes himself almost as many enemies as there are poets and amateurs; since every one, properly speaking, recognizes himself only in his defects:  and the public interests itself sooner for a faulty individuality than for that which is produced or amended according to a universal law of taste.  Rhythm lay yet in the cradle, and no one knew of a method to shorten its childhood.  Poetical prose came into the ascendant.  Gessner and Klopstock excited many imitators:  others, again, still demanded an intelligible metre, and translated this prose into rhythm.  But even these gave nobody satisfaction, for they were obliged to omit and add; and the prose original always passed for the better of the two.  But the more, with all this, conciseness is aimed at, the more does a judgment become possible; since that which is important, being more closely compressed, allows a certain comparison at last.  It happened, also, at the same time, that many kinds of truly poetical forms arose; for, as they tried to represent only what was necessary in the objects they wished to imitate, they were forced to do justice to every one of these:  and in this manner, though no one did it consciously, the modes of representation multiplied themselves, among which, indeed, were some which were really caricatures, while many an attempt proved unsuccessful.

Without question, Wieland possessed the finest natural gifts of all.  He had early cultivated himself thoroughly in those ideal regions where youth so readily lingers; but when, by what is called experience, by the events of the world, and women, these were rendered distasteful to him, he threw himself on the side of the actual, and pleased himself and others with the contest of the two worlds, where, in light skirmishing between jest and earnest, his talent displayed itself most beautifully.  How many of his brilliant productions fall into the time of my academic years!  “Musarion” had the most effect upon me; and I can yet remember the place and the very spot where I got sight of the first proof-sheet, which Oeser gave me.  Here it was that I believed I saw antiquity again living and fresh.  Every thing that is plastic in Wieland’s genius here showed itself in its highest perfection; and when that Phanias-Timon, condemned to an unhappy insipidity, finally reconciles himself to his mistress and to the world, one can well, with him, live through the misanthropical epoch.  For the rest, we readily conceded to these works a cheerful aversion from those exalted sentiments, which, by reason of their easy misapplication to life, are often open to the suspicion of dreaminess.  We pardoned the author for prosecuting with ridicule what we held as true and reverend, the more readily as he thereby gave us to understand that it caused him continual trouble.