Poets and critics now rose in every quarter and pitilessly assailed Gottsched, the champion of Gallomania. They were themselves divided into two opposite parties, into Anglomanists and Græcomanists, according to their predilection for modern English literature or for that of ancient Greece and Rome. England, grounded, as upon a rock, on her self-gained constitution, produced men of the rarest genius in all the higher walks of science and literature, and her philosophers, naturalists, historians, and poets exercised the happiest influence over their Teutonic brethren, who sought to regain from them the vigor of which they had been deprived by France. The power and national learning of Germany break forth in Klopstock, whose genius vainly sought a natural garb and was compelled to assume a borrowed form. He consecrated his muse to the service of religion, but, in so doing, imitated the Homeric hexameters of Milton; he sought to arouse the national pride of his countrymen by recalling the deeds of Hermann (Armin) and termed himself a bard, but, in the Horatian metre of his songs, imitated Ossian, the old Scottish bard, and was consequently labored and affected in his style. Others took the lesser English poets for their model, as, for instance, Kleist, who fell at Kunersdorf, copied Thomson in his "Spring"; Zachariä, Pope, in his satirical pieces; Hermes, in "The Travels of Sophia," the humorous romances of Richardson; Müller von Itzehoe, in his "Siegfried von Lindenberg," the comic descriptions of Smollett. The influence of the celebrated English poets, Shakespeare, Swift, and Sterne, on the tone of German humor and satire, was still greater. Swift's first imitator, Liscow, displayed considerable talent, and Rabener, a great part of whose manuscripts was burned during the siege of Dresden in the seven years' war, wrote witty, and at the same time instructive, satires on the manners of his age. Both were surpassed by Lichtenberg, the little hump-backed philosopher of Göttingen, whose compositions are replete with grace. The witty and amiable Thümmmel was also formed on an English model, and Archenholz solely occupied himself with transporting the customs and literature of England into Germany. If Shakespeare has not been without influence upon Goethe and Schiller, Sterne, in his "Sentimental Journey," touched an echoing chord in the German's heart by blending pathos with his jests. Hippel was the first who, like him, united wit with pathos, mockery with tears.