' stimulated and saved the genius of Buerger.
This was the movement which, for lack of a better term, has been called
the naturalistic. Literature once more took possession of the whole
range of human life and experience, descending from her artificial
throne to live with peasant and people. These ardent innovators spurned
all ancient rules and conventions, and in the first ecstasy of their
new-found freedom and unchastened strength it is no wonder that they
went too far. Goethe and Schiller learned betimes the salutary lesson of
artistic restraint. Buerger never learned it.

[Illustration: GOTTFRIED A. BUeRGER]

Buerger was wholly a child of his time. At the age of twenty-six he wrote
'Lenore,' and his genius never again attained that height. Much may be
accomplished in the first outburst of youthful energy; but without the
self-control which experience should teach, and without the moral
character which is the condition of great achievement, genius rots ere
it is ripe; and this was the case with Buerger. We are reminded of Burns.
Goethe in his seventy-eighth year said to Eckermann:--"What songs Buerger
and Voss have written! Who would say that they are less valuable or
less redolent of their native soil than the exquisite songs of Burns?"
Like Burns, Buerger was of humble origin; like Burns, he gave passion and
impulse the reins and drove to his own destruction; like Burns, he left
behind him a body of truly national and popular poetry which is still
alive in the mouths of the people.

Buerger was born in the last hour of the year 1747 at Molmerswende. His
father was a country clergyman, and he himself was sent to Halle at the
age of seventeen to study theology. His wild life there led to his
removal to Goettingen, where he took up the study of law. He became a
member and afterwards the leader of the famous "Goettinger Dichterbund,"
and was carried away and for a time rescued from his evil courses by his
enthusiasm for Shakespeare and Percy's 'Reliques.' He contributed to the
newly established Musenalmanach, and from 1779 until his death in 1794
he was its editor. In 1787 the university conferred an honorary degree
upon him, and he was soon afterward made a professor without salary,
lecturing on Kantian philosophy and aesthetics. Three times he was
married; his days were full of financial struggles and self-wrought
misery; there is little in his private life that is creditable to
record: a dissolute youth was follow