annswaldau. Among these independent poets we have to mention
Friedrich von Logau, Andreas Gryphius, and Moscherosch. Beside these,
there were some prose writers whose works are not exactly works of art,
but works of original thought, and of great importance to us in tracing
the progress of science and literature during the dreariest period of
German history. We can only mention the "Simplicissimus," a novel full of
clever miniature drawing, and giving a truthful picture of German life
during the Thirty Years' War; the patriotic writings of Professor Schupp;
the historical works of Professor Pufendorf (1631-94); the pietistic
sermons of Spener, and of Professor Franke (1663-1727), the founder of the
Orphan School at Halle; Professor Arnold's (1666-1714) Ecclesiastical
History; the first political pamphlets by Professor Thomasius (1655-1728);
and among philosophers, Jacob Boehme at the beginning, and Leibnitz at the
end of the seventeenth century.

The second Silesian school was defeated by Gottsched, professor at
Leipzig. He exercised, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, the
same dictatorship as a poet and a critic which Opitz had exercised at the
beginning of the seventeenth. Gottsched was the advocate of French models
in art and poetry, and he used his wide-spread influence in recommending
the correct and so-called classical style of the poets of the time. After
having rendered good service in putting down the senseless extravagance of
the school of Lohenstein, he became himself a pedantic and arrogant
critic; and it was through the opposition which he roused by his
"Gallomania" that German poetry was delivered at last from the trammels of
that foreign school. Then followed a long literary warfare; Gottsched and
his followers at Leipzig defended the French, Bodmer and his friends in
Switzerland the English style of literature. The former insisted on
classical form and traditional rules; the latter on natural sentiment and
spontaneous expression. The question was, whether poets should imitate the
works of the classics, or imitate the classics who had become classics by
imitating nobody. A German professor wields an immense power by means of
his journals. He is the editor; he writes in them himself, and allows
others to write; he praises his friends, who are to laud him in turn; he
patronizes his pupils, who are to call him master; he abuses his
adversaries, and asks his allies to do the same. It was in this that