d the
university lectures were all delivered in the same tongue. The
seventeenth century saw the Thirty Years' War, during which all
literary activity was completely paralyzed, and in the course of these
thirty years a whole generation, especially among the lower classes,
had grown up unable either to read or write. But after the Treaty of
Westphalia matters began to improve, and a desire to cultivate the
native language awoke. In 1688 German superseded Latin in the
universities. Novels were published; and about this time appeared a
German translation of Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe" that became very
popular. Poets wrote plays in the style of Terence, or copied English
models; and even in the present day the Germans recall with pride the
fact that the Shakespearean plays were appreciated by them during and
after the Elizabethan age much more than they were by the English
Nation.

Science under Leibnitz also began to take shape in this century, while
Opitz wrote operas in imitation of the Italian style; and translations
from the Italian Marini came into vogue. In the eighteenth century
arose the Saxonic and Swiss schools of literature, neither of which was
devoted to national works. Gottsched, the founder and imitator of
French standards in art and poetry, is known as the leader in the
Saxonic school at Leipsic, and an advocate of classical poetry.

Bodmer cultivated the English style, and retired to Switzerland with
his friends, where they founded the Swiss school. The English lyric and
elegiac poets had a wonderful influence in Germany. The followers of
this school who were, or pretended to be, poets, began to write
"Seasons" in imitation of Thomson; and the novels of the time were full
of shepherds and shepherdesses. The craze spread to France, where the
French Court took up the fad of living in rustic lodges, and Marie
Antoinette posed as a shepherdess tending sheep. Each of these poets
had numerous followers, of whom Rambler is known as the German Horace.

Frederick the Great preferred French works, and no one seems to have
thought of starting a German school except Klopstock, who stands almost
alone in the literature of his time and country. A man of lofty ideals,
he believed that Christianity on the one hand and Gothic mythology on
the other, should be the chief elements in all new European poetry and
inspiration. Had he been encouraged by the German Court he would have
been as powerful for good in German literatur