Friend, wouldst know why as a rule Bookish learning marks the fool? 'Tis because, though once befriended, Learning's pact with wisdom's ended. No philosophy e'er throve In a nightcap by the stove. Who the world would understand In the world must bear a hand. If you're not to wisdom wed, Like the camel you're bested, Which has treasures rich, to bear Through the desert everywhere, But the use must ever lack Of the goods upon his back. JOHANN JAKOB BODMER (1698-1783) In the beginning of the eighteenth century, the political and intellectual life of Germany showed no signs of its imminent awakening. French supremacy was undisputed. French was spoken by polite society, and only the middle and lower classes consented to use their mother tongue. French literature was alone fashionable, and the few scientific works that appeared were published in Latin. Life was hard and sordid. Thought and imagination languished. Such writings as existed were empty, pompous, and pedantic. Yet from this dreary waste-land was to spring that rich harvest of literature which, in a brief half-century, made the German nation famous. [Illustration: Johann Jakob Bodmer] Klopstock, Wieland, Lessing, Herder, Goethe, and Schiller--those were the great names that were soon to shine like stars in the literary firmament. But the lesser men who broke the ground and opened paths for their brilliant followers are almost forgotten. Toward the middle of the century, there lived in Zürich a modest professor of history, Johann Jakob Bodmer by name (born July 19th, 1698), who spoke the first word for a national literature, and who was the first writer to attempt a scientific criticism of contemporary authors. His efforts were rude beginnings of a style that culminated in the polished essays of Lessing. It was Bodmer whose independence of thought and feeling first revolted from the slavish imitation of French culture that enchained the German mind. In his youth he had been sent to Italy to study commerce. This visit aroused his poetic and artistic nature. He forgot his business in listening to street singers, in imitation of whom he wrote Italian lyrics. He read French works on art, and wrote artificial French verses according to French models. With equal versatility he composed German poetry, copying Opitz, whom he esteemed a great poet. Nor did he hesitate to try his skill at Latin hexameters.