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Now, this man was to represent Shakespeare, who without predecessors or followers, without concerning himself about models, went to meet immortality in his own way. This work was executed on the great floor over the new theatre. "We often assembled round him there, and in that place I read aloud to him the proof-sheets of "Musarion." As to myself, I by no means advanced in the practice of the art.
How many of his brilliant productions fall into the time of my academic years! "Musarion" had the most effect upon me; and I can yet remember the place and the very spot where I got sight of the first proof-sheet, which Oeser gave me. Here it was that I believed I saw antiquity again living and fresh.
They mark, and in a great measure produced, the important change in the tone of German literature, from the national and Christian character of Klopstock to the cosmopolitan character which prevails in the writings of Goethe and Schiller. Among his tales are "Agathon," "Musarion," and "Aristippus," which last is considered his best work.
At the same time, he takes delight in presenting problematical characters, and he finds pleasure, for example, in emphasizing the lovable qualities of a Musarion, a Lais, and a Phryne without regard to womanly chastity, and in exalting their practical wisdom above the scholastic wisdom of the philosophers.
"Wieland, who had been occasionally prolix in "Agathon," "Don Sylvio," and the "Comic Tales," becomes condensed and precise to a wonderful degree, as well as exceedingly graceful in "Musarion" and "Idris." Klopstock, in the first cantos of "The Messiah," is not without diffuseness: in his "Odes" and other minor poems he appears compressed, as also in his tragedies.
Meanwhile, less improvident than the grasshopper, let her make provision of glory for the time when there will be a famine of pleasure. The mother of Musarion was wont to repeat to her child: "Thou wilt not always be sixteen; will Choereas always remember his oath, his tears and his caresses?"
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