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    sion of a quick sensibility to beauties of every kind . This Universality of taste was one of his great and characteristic excellences . He enjoyed every thing . Classic and romantic , oriental and Greek

    poetry , were alike dear to him ,. He was well read in the poetry of all the cultivated languages of Europe , ahd had so stitong a sense of the peculiar beauties of each , and always expressed that sense so

    warmly , that he who was acquainted with that peculiar attachment only , might fancy that he loved that exclusively to which he yet assigned only a certain and appropriate rank in his estimation .

    In his numerous critical essays , in his Scattered Leaves ( Zerstreuete Blatter ) and ( Briefe zur Beforderung derHuman it ' at ) Letters to promote Humanity , he has advanced a number of opinions on most of our classical writers . With none would

    the English reader be so much dissatisfied as with his judgment of our lyric poets . tc One ode of Klopstock , * ' he says , ** is worth more than the whole mass of what the English are pleased to call their lyrics /'

    But his admiration of Milton was sincere and fervent ; he has finejy contrasted him with Klopstock . Of Shakespear he thought

    as all men of taste and genius think . He entertained a low opinion of Pope , or vat her he allowed Pope ' s great excellence in his kind , but considered that kind as

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    very subordinate . It would not perhaps be expected t ; hat H 6 fder should have been an enthusiast fef Horace ; yet he even translated , though he never published , the greater part of his odes and epis *

    ties , and called him repeatedly 46 the favourite of every cultivated mind . " The Horatian urbanity was a theme Herder delighted tor expatiate on ; and it was the utter

    want of this ( so essential a quality in an epistolary , satiric , and du dactic poetic ) which he principally censured ih Pope ; for he loved Pope ' s sentences , and often quoted them * .

    These are a few of the observa - tions which have resulted from a short personal acquaintance > and a frequent perusal of the works of

    Herder , who is yet little known ; and even these may be deemed superfluous , for it may seem almost a useless thing to attempt the characteristic of a mind for

    the use of those who are unacquainted with the productions of that mind : yet there will perhaps be found in the characteristic

    features of Herder some general laws of ( characters , certain ana- ' logies of thinking and feeling , vyhich it may be useful to observe . When Herder ' s name shall have *

    acquired the fame abroad whidh already attends it in his own country , his singular and excellent character will merit % o be studied . The remarks here made express but one or t \ vo peculiar ! - '

    * It should be added , that a noble edition of I $ er 4 cr * s works is now publishing for the benefit of his widowi which the late fatal war has unhappily retarded . It will cpnsist of forty-five octavo volumes . l ^ ie great historian ofc Switzerland ? Johannes Muller * inspects the historical , and Heyntr , the philological department . Other perspii $ less distinguished superintend distinct branches of the work . By the ai $ of men , eminent \ n their several line * , those defects may in each class be supplied , which are necessarily found «* the werks of a writer , whose excellent lay more in the combining and connecting spirit'which unite * the screral -part * * than in th « elaborate ^ reatment of chos e par ts * , . v \ a _ : >

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    173 'Remarks on the Genius and Writings of Herder *

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1808, page 178, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2391/page/6/