to give the departed poet exquisite material for another comic epic, they alleged, that by “Arcadia,” was meant, as they had learned, a country with good pasture, especially for donkeys; and since they solemnly protested against being considered donkeys, etc., etc. From this incident followed the so-called Arcadian lawsuit (“_arkádiai pör_”). CHAPTER XV. 1772-1825. In the literature of all civilized nations we meet with certain writers, whose great effect on their contemporaries was owing less to the absolute excellency of single works of theirs, than to the general tone and power of suggestion inherent in all their individuality. Such are, in England, Dr. Johnson and Thomas Carlyle; in France, Diderot and Renan; in Germany, Hamann and Herder. Without being creative geniuses, they influence their time as if they were such. One does so by the brilliancy of his talk, like Johnson; the other by pamphlets or essays _de omni re scibili_, like Herder; a third by boldly attempting to rear a new intellectual world in the place of the fabric of old literature and knowledge, like Diderot. The merit of such men is immense, yet relative. They deserve more highly of literary men, than of literature. They spread interest in or taste for good literature. They are critical, not constructive; and so decidedly preparatory and temporary is their work, that in the whole range of the world’s literature there has so far been one man, and one alone, whose genius shone equally in this preparatory or critical work, and in the still more precious work of positive creativeness too. That man was Lessing. In him the critical faculty did not seriously impair the creative; and he rendered immense services to German literature both by what he destroyed, by what he suggested and by what he created.