y object. His muse is chaste, it has nothing of
the earthly, it is immaterial and holy as his religion; and we are forced
to admit with admiration that if he wanders sometimes on these high
places, it never happened to him to fall from them. But precisely for
this reason, I confess in all ingenuousness, that I am not free from
anxiety for the common sense of those who quite seriously and
unaffectedly make Klopstock the favorite book, the book in which we find
sentiments fitting all situations, or to which we may revert at all
times: perhaps even--and I suspect it--Germany has seen enough results of
his dangerous influence. It is only in certain dispositions of the mind,
and in hours of exaltation, that recourse can be had to Klopstock, and
that he can be felt. It is for this reason that he is the idol of youth,
without, however, being by any means the happiest choice that they could
make. Youth, which always aspires to something beyond real life, which
avoids all stiffness of form, and finds all limits too narrow, lets
itself be carried away with love, with delight, into the infinite spaces
opened up to them by this poet. But wait till the youth has become a
man, and till, from the domain of ideas, he comes back to the world of
experience, then you will see this enthusiastic love of Klopstock
decrease greatly, without, however, a riper age changing at all the
esteem due to this unique phenomenon, to this so extraordinary genius, to
these noble sentiments--the esteem that Germany in particular owes to his
high merit.

I have said that this poet was great specially in the elegiac style, and
it is scarcely necessary to confirm this judgment by entering into
particulars. Capable of exercising all kinds of action on the heart, and
having graduated as master in all that relates to sentimental poetry, he
can sometimes shake the soul by the most sublime pathos, at others cradle
it with sweet and heavenly sensations. Yet his heart prefers to follow
the direction of a lofty spiritual melancholy; and, however sublime be
the tones of his harp and of his lyre, they are always the tender notes
of his lute that resound with most truth and the deepest emotion. I take
as witnesses all those whose nature is pure and sensuous: would they not
be ready to give all the passages where Klopstock is strong, and bold;
all those fictions, all the magnificent descriptions, all the models of
eloquence which abound in the "Messiah," all those dazzlin