Weckherlin, 1548-1653, translated
three _Odes_, Gottsched of Leipzig, 1700-66, and Breitinge of Zurich,
confess Horace as master of the art of poetry, and their cities become
the centers of many translations. Guenther, 1695-1728, the most gifted
lyric poet of his race before Klopstock, made Horace his companion and
confidant of leisure hours. Hagedorn, 1708-54, forms his philosophy from
Horace,--"my friend, my teacher, my companion." Of Ramler, for
thirty-five years dictator of the Berlin literary world, who translated
and published some of the _Odes_ in 1769 and was called the German
Horace, Lessing said that no sovereign had ever been so beautifully
addressed as was Frederick the Great in his imitation of the Maecenas
ode. The epoch-making Klopstock, 1724-1803, quotes, translates, and
imitates Horace, and uses Horatian subjects. Heinse reads him and writes
of him enthusiastically, and Platen, 1796-1835, is so full of Homer and
Horace that he can do nothing of his own. Lessing and Herder are devoted
Horatians, though Herder thinks that Lessing and Winckelmann are too
unreserved in their enthusiasm for the imitation of classical letters.
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