d, that wonderful long wig whom our dear
Goethe has so admirably described in his memoirs.

Lessing was the literary Arminius who delivered our theatre from this
foreign rule. He showed us the nothingness, the laughableness, the flat
and faded folly of those imitations of the French theatre, which were in
turn imitated from the Greek. But he became the founder of modern German
literature, not only by his criticism, but by his own works of art. This
man pursued with enthusiasm and sincerity art, theology, antiquity, and
archaeology, the art of poetry, history--all with the same zeal and to
the same purpose. There lives and breathes in all his works the same
great social idea, the same progressive humanity, the same religion of
reason, whose John he was, and whose Messiah we await. This religion he
always preached, but, alas! too often alone and in the desert. And there
was one art only of which he knew nothing--that of changing stones into
bread, for he consumed the greatest part of his life in poverty and
under hard pressure--a curse which clings to nearly all great German
geniuses, and will last, it may be, till ended by political freedom.
Lessing was more inspired by political feelings than men supposed, a
peculiarity which we do not find among his contemporaries, and we can
now see for the first time what he meant in sketching the duo-despotism
in _Emilia Galotti_. He was regarded then as a champion of freedom of
thought and against clerical intolerance; for his theological writings
were better understood. The fragments _On the Education of the Human
Race_, which Eugene Rodrigue has translated into French, may give an
idea of the vast comprehensiveness of Lessing's mind. The two critical
works which exercised the most influence on art are his _Hamburg
Dramatic Art (Hamburgische Dramaturgie)_, and his _Laokoon, or the
Limits of Painting and Poetry_. His most remarkable theatrical pieces
are _Emilia Galotti, Minna von Barnhelm,_ and _Nathan the Wise_.

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing was born at Camenz in Lausitz, January 22,
1729, and died in Brunswick, February 15, 1781. He was a thorough-going
man who, when he destroyed something old in a battle, at the same time
always created something new and better. "He was," says a German author,
"like those pious Jews, who, during the second building of the Temple,
were often troubled by attacks of the enemy, and so fought with one hand
while with the other they worked at the house o