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Opinion is something wherein I go about to give reason why all the world should think as I think. Affection is a thing wherein I look after the pleasing of myself." How little his friends were capable of appreciating this view of the matter is plain from a letter of Ramler to Gleim, cited by Herr Stahr. Horrible to think of at best, thrice horrible when the friend's name was Ramler!
Such men as Gleim and Ramler were mere dilettanti, and could have no notion how sacred his convictions are to a militant thinker like Lessing. His creed as to the rights of friendship in criticism might be put in the words of Selden, the firm tread of whose mind was like his own: "Opinion and affection extremely differ.
Ramler is properly more a critic than a poet. He begins to collect what the Germans have accomplished in lyric poetry. He now finds, that scarcely one poem fully satisfies him: he must leave out, arrange, and alter, that the things may have some shape or other.
"They are verses from a celebrated ode of Horace. The poet Ramler, of Berlin, made a fine translation of them a while ago. It is in most beautiful rhythm. How splendid is even this one passage: " And he, who never more Will from his shoulders lay aside the bow, Who in the pure dew of Castalia's fountain Laves loosened hair; who holds the Lycian thicket And his own native wood Apollo!
In the style which had hitherto prevailed, one could not distinguish the commonplace from what was better; since all were brought down to a level with each other. Authors had already tried to escape from this wide- spread disease, with more or less success. Haller and Ramler were inclined to compression by nature: Lessing and Wieland were led to it by reflection.
In Berlin, Lessing made friendships, especially with Mendelssohn, Von Kleist, Nicolai, Gleim, and Ramler. For Mendelssohn and Von Kleist he seems to have felt a real love; for the others at most a liking, as the best material that could be had. It certainly was not of the juiciest. He seems to have worked hard and played hard, equally at home in his study and Baumann's wine-cellar.
The former plan was adopted by the plebeian authors, the latter by those of quality; just as in the time of Frederick the Great an aristocratic literature in the French language subsisted side by side with the native German authorship of pastors and professors, and, while men like Gleim and Ramler wrote war-songs in German, kings and generals wrote military histories in French.
The former plan was adopted by the plebeian authors, the latter by those of quality; just as in the time of Frederick the Great an aristocratic literature in the French language subsisted side by side with the native German authorship of pastors and professors, and, while men like Gleim and Ramler wrote war-songs in German, kings and generals wrote military histories in French.
Ramler and the rest had contrived a nice little society for mutual admiration, much like that described by Goldsmith, if, indeed, he did not convey it from the French, as was not uncommon with him.
A stranger has no vote on such a question; but after repeated perusal of the works of Opitz my feelings justified the verdict, and I seemed to have acquired from them a sort of tact for what is genuine in the style of later writers. Of the splendid aera, which commenced with Gellert, Klopstock, Ramler, Lessing, and their compeers, I need not speak.
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