Even Lessing at one time looked up to Hagedorn as the
German Horace. If Hagedorn were pleased, what mattered it to Horace?
Worse almost than this was the universal pedantry. The solemn bray of one
pedagogue was taken up and prolonged in a thousand echoes. There was not
only no originality, but no desire for it,--perhaps even a dread of it,
as something that would break the _entente cordiale_ of placid mutual
assurance. No great writer had given that tone of good-breeding to the
language which would gain it entrance to the society of European
literature. No man of genius had made it a necessity of polite culture.
It was still as rudely provincial as the Scotch of Allan Ramsay.
Frederick the Great was to be forgiven if, with his practical turn, he
gave himself wholly to French, which had replaced Latin as a cosmopolitan
tongue. It had lightness, ease, fluency, elegance,--in short, all the
good qualities that German lacked. The study of French models was perhaps
the best thing for German literature before it got out of long-clothes.
It was bad only when it became a tradition and a tyranny. Lessing did
more than any other man to overthrow this foreign usurpation when it had
done its work.
The same battle had to be fought on English soil also, and indeed is
hardly over yet.
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