Other troubles followed. Lessing gave his heart to a widow, Eva König, and was betrothed to her. But the involvements of her worldly affairs, and of his, delayed the marriage for six years. To secure fixed income he took a poor office as Librarian at Wolfenbüttel. In his first year at Wolfenbüttel, he wrote his play of “Emilia Galotti.” Then came a long-desired journey to Italy; but it came in inconvenient form, for it had to be made with Prince Leopold, of Brunswick, hurriedly, for the sake of money, at the time when Lessing was at last able to marry. The wife, long waited for, and deeply loved, died at the birth of her first child. This was in January, 1778, when Lessing’s age was 49. Very soon afterwards he was attacked by a Pastor Goeze, in Hamburg, and other narrow theologians, for having edited papers that contained an attack on Christianity, which Lessing himself had said that he wished to see answered before he died. The uncharitable bitterness of these attacks, felt by a mind that had been touched to the quick by the deepest of sorrows, helped to the shaping of Lessing’s calm, beautiful lesson of charity, this noblest of his plays—“Nathan the Wise.” But Lessing’s health was shattered, and he survived his wife only three years. He died in 1781, leaving imperishable influence for good upon the minds of men, but so poor in what the world calls wealth, that his funeral had to be paid for by a Duke of Brunswick. William Taylor, the translator of Lessing’s “Nathan the Wise;” was born in 1765, the son of a rich merchant at Norwich, from whose business he was drawn away by his strong bent towards literature. His father yielded to his wishes, after long visits to France and to Germany, in days astir with the new movements of thought, that preceded and followed the French Revolution. He formed a close friendship with Southey, edited for a little time a “Norwich Iris,” and in his later years became known especially for his Historic Survey of German Poetry, which included his translations, and among them this of “Nathan the Wise.” It was published in 1830, Taylor died in 1836. Thomas Carlyle, in reviewing William Taylor’s Survey of German Poetry, said of the author’s own translations in it “compared with the average of British translations, they may be pronounced of almost ideal excellence; compared with the best translations extant, for example, the German Shakespeare, Homer, Calderon, they may still be called better than indifferent. One great merit Mr. Taylor has: rigorous adherence to his original; he endeavours at least to copy with all possible fidelity the term of praise, the tone, the very metre, whatever stands written for him.” H. M. NATHAN THE WISE. “Introite nam et heic Dii sunt!”—APUD GELLIUM. DRAMATIS PERSONÆ. SALADIN, _the Sultan_. SITTAH, _his Sister_. NATHAN, _a rich Jew_. RECHA, _his adopted Daughter_.