these writers, and it was among the most memorable of their achievements. That it was only a part of their work-and, in one sense, the smallest part of it-needs hardly to be said. Individuality is, after all, an abstract term; its meaning varies with each individual to whom it is applied. Thus, in putting forth what lay in their own nature, these writers may at first sight seem to have done nothing more than is done by all writers in all ages of the world. Each of them, however, was in fact, and it would not be difficult to show that each of them was consciously, fighting for a like right in all the rest. And, what is more, each of them was fighting for the individuality of the German race as against the slavish worship of French thought and the slavish imitation of French forms and French conventions. Thus behind the claim, which every poet may be said implicitly to make, for the free development of his own genius, there lay a further claim for the free development >of individuality in general; and behind this again lay the assertion of German nationality against the foreigner.

This, in itself, gives to the history of German literature at this period a significance which is wanting in other countries. In France, which had given the law to other lands, it was necessarily absent; while England, deeply as she had been influenced by France, had yet always retained her own individuality. In Germany alone it was a struggle not only against rules, but against foreign rules; not only for individual, but also for national, freedom.

the task.

And it was a struggle waged against tremendous odds. In any other country, the leaders of such a movement Difficulties of could have appealed to a national sentiment already in existence. In Germany there was no nation to appeal to. The very idea of the Fatherland had to be created. The Seven Years' War may have prepared men's minds for its acceptance. But it was the tyranny of Napoleon and the war of Liberation which alone made it a reality. This, in itself, isolated the great writers of the period and multiplied the obstacles in their path. Nor to any great extent could they draw upon those sentiments, whether political or religious, which may exist quite independently of the national ideal. They did not, like Voltaire and Rousseau, appeal to an unspoken dissatisfaction with the established system of Church and State. They did not work hand in hand with a religious revival, such as that of the Methodists and Evangelicals. It is true that the Pietists and Moravians had done something to give shape to the floating mass of sentiment without which no intellectual, no spiritual, movement is likely to have wide or enduring results. It is true that we meet traces of their influence in many writers between 1740 and 1790-even in one so little liable to such promptings as Goethe. But it is also true that the prevalent feeling of such men towards them was one of hostility; and that, as time went on, that hostility became more marked.

The result of all this was that the great writers

of Germany might almost be called aliens in their own land; that, for good or for evil, they stood strangely aloof from the general life and interests of their time. At the height of the movement, they still remained something of a caste, the caste of intellect, striving to guide their countrymen from above, little heeding the forces which worked around them or beneath. The course of Goethe's activity is a striking illustration of this in one direction. So is the character of Lessing's work and genius, in another.

It is significant that the first great writer of modern Germany should, above all things, have been a critic. Creative power was LessLessing. ing's in abundance. But never has creative power been so completely under the control of critical genius; never has poet worked with so clear a consciousness of the goal towards which he was striving, as the author of Emilia Galotti and Nathan der Weise. His very dramas were prompted by the deliberate design of reforming the German stage; his greatest poem sprang out of his lifelong warfare with theological bigotry. This gives an unity of design to his whole work, such as belongs to that of no other writer. But at the same time it has served not a little to conceal his creative genius.

The literary life of Lessing (1729-1781) naturally falls into three parts: the first (1746-1760), the period of the early dramas, of Miss Sara Sampson, of the Prose Fables and the Litteraturbriefe; the second (1760 to 1770), the period of Minna von

Barnhelm, of Laokoon, of the Hamburgische Dramaturgie; the third (1770 to 1781), the period of Emilia Galotti, of the Anti-Goeze, of Nathan der Weise.

The first period is the period of apprenticeship. To it belongs most, if not all, of the poetry, other than dramatic, written by Lessing. But it is just here that his powers are seen

Early work in poetry

and drama.

at their slightest. Yet even here the prevailing tendency of his work is already to be discerned. He turns with something of contempt from both the schools which then divided Germany: (from the sublimities of Klopstock no less than from (2) the "mechanic art" of Gottsched and the French. He confines himself to the themes which, slight though they may be, most readily lend themselves to spontaneous, and therefore poetic, treatment; the loves and hates and revelries, which came to him sanctioned by the traditions of Greece and Rome, and from which, at the close of the period, he naturally passed to a generous welcome of the warsongs written by his friend Gleim-formerly, like himself, the poet of love and wine-in praise of Frederick and the other heroes of Rossbach and Künersdorf. The most notable of these poems are probably the Epigrams; and, of the Epigrams, those directed against his literary enemies, against Gottsched, Bodmer, Schönaich, Klopstock, and Voltaire.

Of far other importance are the dramas which fall within these earlier years. With the exception of Miss Sara Sampson, they can hardly be said to break absolutely new ground. They still betray the

overruling influence, and retain many of the typical figures, of the Comedy of France. But the most successful of them, Der Junge Gelehrte (1747-48) and Der Freigeist (1749), already show that mastery of dialogue which Lessing was to perfect in Minna and Emilia Galotti; they already show that rigid economy, that iron grip, of style which distinguishes him from all the writers of his country; and, above all, they are drawn straight from the personal experience, the most intimate convictions, of the author. The young pedant of the former comedy, the free-thinker of the latter, are both satiric studies of Lessing himself; or rather of what Lessing himself might readily have become, if his clear sight and strong will would have allowed him. It was by painting his own heart that he learned to paint that of his age and country. Der Junge Gelehrte and Der Freigeist are the first steps on the road which was to lead to Minna von Barnhelm and Emilia Galotti.

Miss Sara

A more decided step on the same road is marked by Miss Sara Sampson (1755). In itself, this play is doubtless far inferior to those already Sampson. mentioned. Of all his works it is the one in which the true Lessing is most difficult to recognise. The construction is poor, the characters coarsely drawn, the sentiment grossly overcharged. But it breaks fresh ground; it proclaims the final breach of Lessing with the classical traditions of the French. The very description of it, a "tragedy of common life," was a challenge to the classical convention which had decreed that, if the counting-house