, and ballads that were made by
Scott, Coleridge, Taylor, Lewis, and others, English literature was
merely taking back with usury what it had lent its younger sister.
Mention has already been made of Buerger's and Herder's renderings from
Percy's "Reliques,"[3] an edition of which was published at Goettingen in
1767; as well as of the strong excitement aroused in Germany by
MacPherson's "Ossian."[4] This last found--besides the Viennese
Denis--another translator in Fritz Stolberg, who carried his medievalism
so far as to join the Roman Catholic Church in 1800. Klopstock's
"Kriegslied," written as early as 1749, was in the meter of "Chevy
Chase," which Klopstock knew through Addison's _Spectator_ papers.
Through Mallet, the Eddaic literature made an impression in Germany as in
England; and Gerstenberg's "Gedicht eines Skalden" (1766), one of the
first-fruits of the German translation of the "Historire de Dannemarc,"
preceded by two years the publication--though not the composition--of
Gray's poems from the Norse.

But the spirit which wrought most mightily upon the new German literature
was Shakspere's. During the period of French culture there had been
practically no knowledge of Shakspere in Germany. In 1741 Christian von
Borck, Prussian ambassador to London, had translated "Julius Caesar."
This was followed, a few years later, by a version of "Romeo and Juliet."
In 1762-66 Wieland translated, in whole or in part, twenty-two
Shakspere's plays. His translation was in prose and has been long
superseded by the Tieck-Schlegel translation (1797-1801-1810). Goethe
first made acquaintance with Shakspere, when a student at Leipsic,
through the detached passages given in "Dodd's Beauties of Shakspere."[5]
He afterward got hold of Wieland's translation, and when he went to
Strassburg he fell under the influence of Herder, who inspired him with
his own enthusiasm for "Ossian," and the _Volkslieder_, and led him to
study Shakspere in the original.

Young Germany fastened upon and appropriated the great English dramatist
with passionate conviction. He became an object of worship, an article
of faith. The Shakspere _cultus_ dominated the whole _Sturm- und
Drangperoide_. The stage domesticated him: the poets imitated him: the
critics exalted him into the type and representative (_Urbild_) of
Germanic art, as opposed to and distinguished from the art of the Latin
races, founded upon a false reproduction of the antique.[6] I