to judge of which by an accidental conversation, and this
with strangers, and those two foreigners, would be not only
unreasonable, but calumnious. Secondly, I attribute little other
interest to the remarks than what is derived from the celebrity of the
person who made them. Lastly, if you ask me, whether I have read THE
MESSIAH, and what I think of it? I answer--as yet the first four books
only: and as to my opinion--(the reasons of which hereafter)--you may
guess it from what I could not help muttering to myself, when the good
pastor this morning told me, that Klopstock was the German Milton----'a
very _German_ Milton indeed!!!'----Heaven preserve you,
and S.T. COLERIDGE.

[235] These _disenchanters_ put one in mind of the ratcatchers, who are
said and supposed to rid houses of rats, and yet the rats, somehow or
other, continue to swarm. The Kantean rats were not aware, I believe,
when Klopstock spoke thus, of the extermination that had befallen them:
and even to this day those acute animals infest the old house, and steal
away the daily bread of the children,--if the old notions of Space and
Time, and the old proofs of religious verities by way of the
_understanding_ and _speculative reason,_ must be called such. Whether
or no these are their true spiritual sustenance, or the necessary guard
and vehicle of it, is perhaps a question.

But who were Nicolai and Engel, and what did they against the famous
enchanter? The former was born in 1733, at Berlin, where he carried on
his father's business of book-selling, pursued literature with marked
success, and attained to old age, full of literary honours. By means of
three critical journals (the _Literatur-Briefe,_ the _Bibliothek der
Schoenen Wissenschaftern,_ and the _Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek,_)
which he conducted with the powerful cooperation of Lessing, and of his
intimate friend Mendelssohn, and to which he contributed largely
himself, he became very considerable in the German world of letters, and
so continued for the space of twenty years. Joerdens, in his Lexicon,
speaks highly of the effect of Nicolai's writings in promoting freedom
of thought, enlightened views in theology and philosophy, and a sound
taste in fine literature--describes him as a brave battler with
intolerance, hypocrisy, and confused conceptions in religion; with empty
subtleties, obscurities, and terminologies, that can but issue in vain
fantasies, in his contr