German Life and Literature, Biographical Sketches (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1881 Excerpt: ..."Lessing and Winckelmann to compare: the one is more productive and useful; the other is more laborious and fluent; the one thinks more, and knows how to show us not only what he has thought, but how he thought it; he conducts us into the workshop of his spirit, and teaches us to think; the other draws most of his thought from antiquity, and where he does think, shows us only the product of his spirit-work, not his process of thinking; the one is a learned reasoner of genius and taste, the other is a tasteful antiquarian, of limited but strong judgment. Lessing sits upon Winckelmann's shoulder, and through this elevation sees further and wider: among the Estheticians by profession stands Winckelmann, while Lessing stands among the J. G. von Herder'j Lebensbild. Herausi;egeben von Dr Emile Gottfried von Herder Berlin, 1846. professional Litterateurs Winckelmann's fine constructive genius enables him to find completeness among ruins, and amongst ruins, as in Athens, he most loves to wander." Elsewhere he says of Lessing--in a tribute published on his death: --"He was convinced that every artist and poet could only attain to excellence through clear ideas of his art, and this way to the attainment of clear ideas upon the art of the stage-play he has himself admirably illustrated in his 'Dramaturgie.'.... Where thou did'st err," so he winds up in eloquent apostrophe, "Where thy sharp sense, and thy ever active, most aspiring spirit failed to find what it sought, there thou showedst thyself more and more the man--thou strivedst ever to attain a completer manhood, to be a progressive and expanding spirit in very truth."t "No power of nature," says Herder, "is without organ, but the organ is not the power itself; it is o...