While by speech and deed, writing, preaching, and acting, he fomented and directed the mighty struggle for liberty, whereto his bold words—called by his countryman Jean Paul "half-battles"—had roused the civilized world, Luther took time to labor at the task whose accomplishment was to forward so immensely his triumph, and which, executed as it was by him, is an unparalleled literary achievement. At the end of thirteen years, he finished his translation. "Alone he did it;" and alone it stands, pre-eminent in the world among cotemporaneous performances for its spiritual agency, and in Germany for its influence upon literature. Before him, there scarcely existed a written German prose. He presented to his country a complete language. With such a compelling and genial power did he mould into a compact, fully equipt whole, the crude and fluctuating elements of the German language of the 15th century, that it may be said, his mother tongue came from him suddenly perfected. And not only did he, in vigor, flexibility, precision, and copiousness, vastly excel all who had written before him, but not even could those who came after him follow in his footsteps in command over the new language, for a century. The time when the pliant, well-proportioned body he created was to indue the spirit of the German people, was postponed to a distant period: and of this very postponement, was he too the cause; for the religious and civil wars, the disputes and jealousies, consequent upon the great schism he produced, so engrossed during a long period the German mind, that literature languished. In the latter half of the 16th century, it was poor. In the 17th, through the impulse given to thought by the Reformation, it would have revived, but for the outbreaking of the terrible thirty years' war, which, remotely caused by the division between Catholics and Protestants, commenced in 1618 and lasted till 1648, and which not only during its continuance desolated and brutalized Germany, but left it impoverished, disorganized, and, by the protracted internal strife and foreign participation therein, in spirit to a great degree denationalized.

Here in our rapid survey of German literature, it will be well for a moment to pause, and before entering upon the period in which it attained its full multiform development, cast a look back upon the stages through which we have traced its progress.

We have seen, that in the 12th and 13th centuries, the mind of the German people manifested its native depth and beauty in the fresh rich bloom of a poetry, characterised in a rude age by tenderness and grandeur. Before this, it had evinced its ready capability, in the production of chronicles and translations in verse from the Bible, the moment opportunity was given it in the monasteries early founded by the enlightened spirit of Charlemagne. Afterwards, in the 14th and 15th centuries, in the wars and contests incident to the political development of Germany, the nobles—to whom, and the clergy, the knowledge of letters was at first confined—were drawn off by grosser excitements from the culture and encouragement of poetry. With the fine instinct that knows, and the aspiring spirit that strives after the highest, which denote a people of the noblest endowments, poetry—thrown aside as the plaything of idle hours by warrior knights—was cherished by peaceful artizans, whose zealous devotion vindicated their worthiness of the great gift about to be bestowed; by whose wondrous potency, not only were the hitherto barred portals of all pre-existing literature thrown down, but a highway was opened to all who should seek access by letters to the temples of wisdom or fame.

The invention of printing preceded the birth of Luther about half a century. This great event—infinitely the greatest of a most eventful age—facilitated vastly his labors and made effective his efforts. It showered over Germany the new language and the new ideas embodied in his translation of the Bible and his other writings. Thus, through its means chiefly, the German mind was progressive, notwithstanding the long period, extending through a century, of internal convulsion, ending in physical exhaustion, which followed Luther's death. The language, nervous, copious, homogeneous, as it came from Luther, was fixedly established,—a standard by which the corruptions and ungerman words, introduced through the long and intimate intercourse with foreigners during the thirty years' war, could be cast out.

In the beginning of the 17th century, in the midst of the civil war, an attempt was made to revive literature by Martin Opitz, a Silesian. Silesia was then not included in the German empire. The language of the peasantry was bad Polish; but German had been introduced into the towns. Silesia suffered little from the thirty years' war. Here, therefore, was made the beginning of the endeavors which, after various fluctuations, resulted in the rich literary produce of the 18th century. Opitz was a scholar, versed in ancient literature as well as in that of France and of Holland, which latter had in the age of Hugo Grotius higher literary pretensions than at present. He endeavored to introduce a classical spirit into German poetry, and to create a new poetical language; but he was not a man of high genius, and therefore, though entitled to praise for his zeal and for having given to the German mind an impulse towards the path, so long deserted, neither he nor his feebler followers are now read but by the literary antiquarian or historian. Through the 17th and first part of the 18th centuries, writers were not wanting; but their productions were without force or originality. Though heartily devoted to letters, they were powerless to revive literature. Their efforts betoken a craving for that which they could not supply. Vile imitations of French taste, extravagant romances, exaggerated sentiment, are the characteristics of the works wherewith it was attempted to supply the national want of a literature. The authors of these were, however, the precursors of a class, who, themselves shining luminaries compared to those who preceded them, were made pale by the brilliant light of the mighty spirits in whom and through whom the literature of Germany now stands the object of admiration and of study to the most cultivated scholars of all nations, and, by general acknowledgment, unsurpassed by that of any other people for richness, for depth and truth of thought and sentiment, for beauty in its forms and solidity of substance, for, in short, multifarious excellence.

Gottsched, Bodmer, Haller, Gellert, Rabener, Gleim, Kleist, Gessner, Hagedorn, are names worthy of honor, though their volumes are now seldom disturbed in their repose on the shelves of public libraries. They broke the long darkness with a promising streak of light, which expanded into day in the works of Klopstock, Winkelman, Lessing, Herder, Wieland, Goethe, Schiller, Richter.

The two first named of the first class, Gottsched and Bodmer, are noted in German literature as the chiefs of two rival schools, in the merging of which into more enlarged views,—whereto their lively conflict greatly contributed,—appeared the second class. Gottsched aimed to create a German literature by imitating French models and introducing the French spirit. Bodmer warmly opposed Gottsched, and by translations from English authors,—far more congenial to the German people than French,—endeavored to produce good by English influence. This was in the first half of the 18th century. They both did service. Their keen rivalry excited the German mind. The fertile soil was stirred, and from its depths burst forth in thronging profusion a mighty progeny, as though the land of Herman and of Luther had been slow in bringing forth the children that were to make her illustrious, because they were a brood of giants, whose first cries startled even the mother that bore them. In one grand symphony ascended their matured voices, lifting up the minds of their countrymen to loftiest aspirations, and sounding in the uttermost parts of the earth, wherever there were ears that could embrace their artful music.

Accustomed to spiritless imitations, the souls of the deep-minded Germans were moved with unwonted agitation by the Messiah of Klopstock, of which the first books were published in the middle of the 18th century. A voice, free and vigorous, such as since Luther none had been heard, was eagerly heeded, and with warm acclaim all over Germany responded to. To literature a new impulse was given, to swell the which rose other voices, similar in strength and originality—especially those of Kant in philosophy, and Lessing in criticism. 'Mid this heaving and healthy excitement, came with maddening power the first wild outpourings of the master-spirit, not of Germany only, but of the age. Twenty years after the Messiah, appeared the first works of the then youthful Goethe, whom in our day, but four years back, we have seen at the age of four score descend gently to the tomb, having reached the natural end of a life that was only less productive than that of Shakspeare. Ten years later, another mighty genius announced himself, the only one who has been honored with the title of Goethe's rival, and Schiller burst upon Germany and the world in the Robbers. Poets, philosophers, critics, historians—of highest endowment, genial, profound, of many-sided culture, world-famous, illustrate this brilliant epoch.

A brief description of the career and best productions of the most noted among them, will enable you to understand why, in the latter half of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th centuries, German literature suddenly reached so high a stage of perfection.

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.