HUGO VON TRIMBERG is said to have been the rector of a school near Bamberg, 1260-1309. He wrote several books of a didactic and satirical type, including _The Runner_ and _The Gatherer_, the latter of which he tells us was lost during his lifetime. He severely denounces everything and everybody pertaining to the younger generation, and chants the praises of the “good old times.” His writings are somewhat desultory, and their chief interest lies in the inserted fables which serve him to spin out a moral. HANS SACHS was born at Nuremberg, on 5th November 1494. In his fifteenth year he was apprenticed to a shoemaker, and was instructed in the elements of “master-singing” by the linen-draper Nunnenbeck. As a travelling journeyman in his trade he visited the schools of all the celebrated master-singers of Germany. Returning after five years to his native town, he devoted himself to his calling of shoemaker and to the art of song. His first poetic production was a hymn which he composed in Munich in 1514. The Reformation inspired him to an allegorical ode in honour of Luther, entitled “Die Wittembergisch Nachtigal,” which was followed by a great number of short religious poems. He died at Nuremberg in 1576, his last years having been clouded by insanity. He was an extraordinarily prolific writer of songs, plays, and farces. CHRISTOFFEL VON GRIMMELSHAUSEN (1620-1676) was born at Gelnhausen. During his youth he served in the army, and his experiences of life as a soldier in the Thirty Years’ War are related in the romance of _Simplicius Simplicissimus_. During his later years he was mayor of the small town of Renchen, in the Black Forest. In his various writings he made use of a whimsical collection of _noms-de-plume_, thereby somewhat complicating the task of literary research. LUDWIG TIECK (1773-1853) was the son of a rope-maker in Berlin. In his studies at the universities of Halle, Göttingen, and Erlangen, he devoted special attention to the Romanic languages, and later, at Berlin, to the history of art, Old German poetry, and modern literature. He soon found himself in opposition to the views of poetry then popular. After his marriage, he lived for a while in Jena on intimate terms with the two Schlegels, removing with them to Dresden, and later publishing an “Almanac of the Muses” in company with A. W. Schlegel. After 1840 he received a pension from Frederick William IV. of Prussia; he took up his residence at Berlin, where he died. He contributed a great deal to the Shakespeare literature of Germany, with the aid of historical and literary studies on this subject made during a visit to London in 1818, and wrote many dramas, lyrics, and novels, as well as works of severe literary criticism.