His work of next importance to the Messiah is a drama, above alluded to, entitled Ilermann^s Schlacht (the Battle of Arminius), the subject of which is the defeat of the Koman general Varus by the ancient Ger- mans. It is scarcely so much a drama as a lyric poem in a dramatic form. It was composed in 17(J4. His otlier dramas are of a similar character, and were writ- ten evidently witli intent to arouse German patriotism from its lethargy, and to breathe into the German heart the air of freedom. But the Messiah alone is of special interest to oia readers, and we therefore give a particu- lar description of it.
Klopstock's Messiah is a poem in twenty cantos, written in hexameters, except where certain choral songs occur in unrhymed lyrical measure. " The action opens after the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, when the Messiah withdra\vs from the people, and, alone on the Jlount of Olives, renews his solemn vow to the Al- mighty Father to undertake the work of redemption ; it closes when that work is completed, and he sits down at the riglit hand of God. Around the central figiure of the God-man are grouped an infinite variety of specta- tors and actors : angels and seraphs, among whom Elva and Gabriel are especially appointed to attend on the divine sufferer; evil spirits who conspire against him, but one of whom, Abljadonna, repents and at last ob- tains mercy ; Adam and Eve, and the patriarchs, who watch with profound interest and gratitude the repara- tion of the fall ; and the inhabitants of another world, like in nature to man, but unfallen, who are ]iermitted to know what is taking place among their sinful kin-
dred. Even the Father himself is introduced as speak- ing, and the scene is sometimes laid in the highest heaven. The earthly actors are the mother and disci- ples of .Jesus, the Jews, and the Komans, who lead him to death, and a number of those who have come in con- tact with him in his ministrations, among whom the most clearly drawn are two female figures, both named Cidli : one, the wife of Gedor, is a reminiscence of ^Meta, and her death is an exact transcript of jNIeta's death-bed ; the other is the daughter of Jairus, between whom and Semida, the youth of Nain, there exists a pure but ar- dent attachment, which at last finds satisfaction in heaven. The immense number of personages thus in- troduced produces a confused impression ; everything is described by one or another of them, and talked over at length ; scarcely anything actually takes place before the reader ; there is an absence of local coloring and of character, and very few of the actors have any distinct individuality at all ; while the effort to keep the whole tone of the poem at the highest possible pitch of inten- sity and awe gives rise to an overstrained inflation of both thought and style, which becomes in the long nni inexpressibly fatiguing. Yet Klopstock's poem has made for itself and for him a place in the literature of his country which does not depend on the number of read- ers it now attracts. Its subject is linked bj' a thousand invisible fibres to the whole Christian thought of centu- ries past, while its spirit of mercy, forgiveness, and tol- erance— in a word, of redemption — is essentially char- acteristic of the later developments of Christianity. To treat such a theme worthily at all — to embody it in a form which, however fuU of defects, j'et possesses a cer- tain dignity and real genius — marks its author as a great poet, if not one of the greatest, and gives him a place historically even higher, perhaps, than he has a right to command as an artist." The poem certainly abounds in passages of the most bcautifid and sjilendid poetry. An exuberant imagination everywhere scat- ters its wealth, and Klopstock has been said by one critic to be " as superior to Pindar in richness and deep feeling as the spiritual world he paints transcends in in- trinsic magnificence the scenes celebrated by the Gre- cian bard ;" and by another critic, " now to rival the tenderness of David, now to soar in the loftiest fiights like Isaiah. The purity and pathos of its religious sen- timents arc equal to the excellence of its poetry. But all good and candid judges will allow that, though ex- hibiting a sublimity and beauty of no common order, it has failed to accomplish the confident expectations of the Germans, that it woultl eclipse the Paradise Lost of Jlilton." For, notwithstanding its grandeur, it is ex- ceedingly tedious to read ; and even at the time of Klop- stock's greatest popularity this seems to have been felt, for Lessing observes, in an epigram, that everybody praises Klopstock, but few read him. His odes are val- ued by his own countrymen more than his epic, and some are truly sublime; but the construction of the lan- guage is so singular, and the connection of the thoughts so often non-apparent, that these odes are reckoned among the most difficult in the language. Both in his Messiah and his odes he is dignified and sublime, but his rhapsodical manner contrasts strangely with the pedantry which is always apparent. Goethe, in his conversations with Eckermann, expressed his opinion that German literature was greatly indebted to Klop- stock, who was in advance of his times, but that the times had since advanced beyond Klopstock. The young Hardenberg (who wrote under the name of "Novalis") has happily said that Klopstock's works always resemble translations from some unknown poet, done by a clever but unpoetical philologist. As for the theological as- pect of his poem of the jlfessi.ah, Klopstock fell into the almost inevitable fault, in treating this subject poetical- ly, of dividing the kingdom of heaven between the Fa- ther and the Son (ditheism), and even opposing them to each other, as when he makes Christ say to God, " I, who am God as well as thou, swear to thee by myself.