So far, the French influence was one of unmixed good, for it rescued
us from pedantry. It must have done something for Germany in the same
direction. For its effect on poetry we cannot say as much; and its
traditions had themselves become pedantry in another shape when Lessing
made an end of it. He himself certainly learned to write prose of
Diderot; and whatever Herr Stahr may think of it, his share in the
"Letters on German Literature" got its chief inspiration from France.
It is in the _Dramaturgie_ that Lessing first properly enters as an
influence into European literature. He may be said to have begun the
revolt from pseudo-classicism in poetry, and to have been thus
unconsciously the founder of romanticism. Wieland's translation of
Shakespeare had, it is true, appeared in 1762; but Lessing was the first
critic whose profound knowledge of the Greek drama and apprehension of
its principles gave weight to his judgment, who recognized in what the
true greatness of the poet consisted, and found him to be really nearer
the Greeks than any other modern. This was because Lessing looked always
more to the life than the form,--because he knew the classics, and did
not merely cant about them. But if the authority of Lessing, by making
people feel easy in their admiration for Shakespeare, perhaps increased
the influence of his works, and if his discussions of Aristotle have
given a new starting-point to modern criticism, it may be doubted whether
the immediate effect on literature of his own critical essays was so
great as Herr Stahr supposes.
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