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    distant eeho of it iti Ihe / Ultime Lettre di Ortis of F ^ scelo . Wg do not believe the stories told of the increase of self-murder in consequence of it * but certainly the effect was by no means salutary on the public mind . On that of the author it effected a cure . * I got rid of whatever sentimentality was in me ; ' and certainly his later works were entirely free from that vice . In that exquisite poem , the Dedication , which stands at the front of his works , and which bears so striking a resemblance to Burns ' ' Vision , ' he alludes to this early popularity ; addressing the muse ^ he exclaims in a melancholy tone- ^—

    ' Ach da ich irrte hatt' ich viel * Grespielen Da ich dich kenne bin ich fast allein . ' 1 Play-fellows crowded round me while I wandered , Now that I know thee I am almost alone , ' And he took an early opportunity to satirize his own imitators and supposed admirers in a fanciful farce * . The of two

    - ^ publication such works , each original , each the expression of sentiments which belonged to the character and spirit of the age , but were asleep , and which they served to awaken , could not fail to attract universal attention to the author . He became from that moment the centre of a circle , at first small , and formed of the turbulent , the gay , and the young ; but which has gradually , as the author himself has grown , widened , and at last comprehended all the intellectual culture oFhis country-. We can here advert only to some of its immediate results . The pious enthusiast Lavater , the Swiss physiognomist , attempted to seduce him by the attraction of his sentimental eloquence and poetical piety . At the same time the precursors of the antisupra-natuTal school , Basedow who attempted to reform and rationalise education ^ and Bahrt the plusquam-Socinmn ' , also

    courted the young poet , who had already , in a good-natured but biting satire , attacked the assailants of revelation . Our poet could join neither party—each , inasmuch as it proceeded from a strong and productive sense of any one kind of truth and excellence , was welcome to him $ —each , as it assumed a negative and merely polemical character , Was the object of his aversion . The impulse to view everything on its positive side , led him to

    . * I > et Triumph der Empfindsamfteit—i . e . Triumph of Sensibility . A prince is travelling for his health , suffering under disease and enchantment . He is an ardent lover of picturesque beauty , but his ill health does not permit him to go into the open aii % so he gratifies his taste by dwelling in a caravan with painted scenery . His cousin , who is in love with him , and to whom he is betrothed , but whom he does not love in return , has her jealousy excited by his being always shut up in a mysterious chamber . She steals the key , and there discovers- in a cabinet her

    successful rival , a huge doll , an image of herself ; then she recollects the words of the oracle , that had spoken mysteriously of disembowelling the mistress , she therefore rips open the doll , and finds the body consists of a bag filled with Werter and other sentimental novels . These she carries off in triumph , and when the prince returns , to his own astonishment , he no longer loves his factitious mistress . A healthy passion instantly fthewe itself towards his cousin , and t > f course he is cured , and they are married .

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    298 GOetfte .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1832, page 298, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1812/page/10/