Klopstock has the high merit of being the leader of the glorious band, through whose teeming minds the want of a national literature was so suddenly and fully satisfied. Klopstock was the first who by example taught the Germans the lesson they were most apt at learning, that the French rules of taste are not needed for the production of excellence. Therefore is he called by Frederick Schlegel the founder of a new epoch, and the father of the present German literature. Born at Quedlinburg, a small town of North Germany, he was sent to school to the Schulpforte, then and now one of the most famous schools in Germany. As a boy, he was noted for warmth of feeling and patriotic enthusiasm. A youth under age, he conceived the idea of writing a national epic, taking for a subject the exploits of Henry I, Emperor of Germany. This design he however abandoned for that of a religious epic, and at twenty-one planned and commenced, before he knew of Milton's poems, his _Messiah_. In his own deep meditative mind, wrought upon by religious and patriotic zeal, originated and was matured the bold conception. Klopstock was in his twenty-fourth year when the first three books of the _Messiah_ appeared. His countrymen, ever susceptible to religious appeals, and prepared at that period for the literary revolution, or, more properly, creation, of which the _Messiah_ was the first great act, received it with an enthusiasm to which they had long been unused. The people beheld the young poet with veneration, and princes multiplied upon him honors and pensions. The remaining books were published gradually, and in the execution of his lofty work, the German bard felt, as was natural, the influence of the genius and precedent verse of Milton and of Dante. Like Paradise Lost, the _Messiah_ has won for its author a reputation with thousands, even of his countrymen, where it has been read by one. Klopstock also attempted tragedy; but in this department he failed signally. Indeed, he had no clear notion of the essential nature of the drama, as may be inferred from the fact of his choosing as the subject for a tragedy, the death of Adam. But, as a lyrical poet, he is even greater than as an epic, and for the excellence of his odes justly has he been styled the modern Pindar. In these,--distinguished for condensation of thought, vigor of language, and poetic inspiration,--the Germans first learned the full capacity of their language in diction and rhythm.