Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 15, 2025
At last he went up-stairs to the very room in which he now was, and sat down upon the floor, just as he was sitting now. He had not even brought his Pilgrim's Progress with him from his grandmother's room. But, searching about in all holes and corners, he at length found Klopstock's Messiah translated into English, and took refuge there till Betty came home.
He even seemed particularly desirous of removing, in his agreeable manner, all prejudice on this score; and it was really touching to hear him speak of his boyhood, and declare that he was perhaps the only German who had read Klopstock's Messiah all through.
We talked over Klopstock's Messiah and his Odes, touching on their merits and their defects. We agreed that he had no faculty for observing and apprehending the visible world, or for drawing characters; and that he therefore wanted the qualities most essential to the epic and dramatic poet, or, perhaps it might be said, to the poet generally.
But there was another which deserves particular notice, inasmuch as it did far more than merely interest or amuse him, raising a deep question in his mind, and one worthy to be asked. This book was the translation of Klopstock's Messiah, to which I have already referred. It was not one of his grandmother's books, but had probably belonged to his father: he had found it in his little garret-room.
And now he wished even more than ever that Sylvia had cared for learning; if she had he could have taken her many a pretty ballad, or story-book, such as were then in vogue. He did try her with the translation of the Sorrows of Werther, so popular at the time that it had a place in all pedlars' baskets, with Law's Serious Call, the Pilgrim's Progress, Klopstock's Messiah, and Paradise Lost.
He was not without a religious bent, which led to the reading of such books as Klopstock's works, but he neither cared for God's word, nor had he any compunction for trampling upon God's law. In his library, now numbering about three hundred books, no Bible was found.
Especially telling is his demolition of Klopstock's violent "Northernism," to which he opposes a far wider philosophy of grammar and style. The universality of poetry, as contrasted with a narrow "German" clumsiness, is blandly defended, and a joyous abandon is urged as something better than the meticulous anxiety of chauvinistic partisanism.
On the tablet of the recess lay Voltaire's, Shakspeare's, Boileau's, and Rousseau's works complete; Volney's Ruins of Empires; Zimmerman, in the German language; Klopstock's Messiah; Kotzebue's novels; Schiller's play of the Robbers; Milton's Paradise Lost, an Italian edition, printed at Parma in 1810; several small pamphlets from the Greek press at Constantinople, much torn, but no English book of any description.
I have actually seen the eighteenth edition of it; and if the English preface is to be regarded, it was written by a lady. "Klopstock's Messiah," as is well known, has been here but ill received; to be sure, they say it is but indifferently translated. I have not yet been able to obtain a sight of it. The Rev. Mr.
On these I shall make but one remark at present, and that will appear a presumptuous one, namely, that Klopstock's remarks on the venerable sage of Koenigsburg are to my own knowledge injurious and mistaken; and so far is it from being true, that his system is now given up, that throughout the Universities of Germany there is not a single professor who is not either a Kantean or a disciple of Fichte, whose system is built on the Kantean, and presupposes its truth; or lastly who, though an antagonist of Kant, as to his theoretical work, has not embraced wholly or in part his moral system, and adopted part of his nomenclature.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking