nation took but a passive
part. It was excluded from all real share in the great questions of the
day; and, if it showed any sympathies, they were confined to the simple
admiration of a great general, such as Prince Eugene.

While the policy of Louis XIV. was undermining the political independence
of Germany, the literature of his court exercised an influence hardly less
detrimental on the literature of Germany. No doubt, the literature of
France stood far higher at that time than that of Germany. "Poet" was
amongst us a term of abuse, while in France the Great Monarch himself did
homage to his great poets. But the professorial poets who had failed to
learn the lessons of good taste from the Greek and Roman classics, were
not likely to profit by an imitation of the spurious classicality of
French literature. They heard the great stars of the court of Louis XIV.
praised by their royal and princely patrons, as they returned from their
travels in France and Italy, full of admiration for everything that was
not German. They were delighted to hear that in France, in Holland, and in
Italy, it was respectable to write poetry in the modern vernacular, and
set to work in good earnest. After the model of the literary academies in
Italy, academies were founded at the small courts of Germany. Men like
Opitz would hardly have thought it dignified to write verses in their
native tongue had it not been for the moral support which they received
from these academies and their princely patrons. His first poems were
written in Latin, but he afterwards devoted himself completely to German
poetry. He became a member of the "Order of the Palm-tree," and the
founder of what is called the _First Silesian School_. Opitz is the true
representative of the classical poetry of the seventeenth century. He was
a scholar and a gentleman; most correct in his language and versification;
never venturing on ground that had not been trodden before by some
classical poet, whether of Greece, Rome, France, Holland, or Italy. In him
we also see the first traces of that baneful alliance between princes and
poets which has deprived the German nation of so many of her best sons.
But the charge of mean motives has been unjustly brought against Opitz by
many historians. Poets require an audience, and at his time there was no
class of people willing to listen to poetry, except the inmates of the
small German courts. After the Thirty Years' War the power of these
pri