JUESBECkVtRAVJELS THROUGH GERMANY . l6j

Doubtlefs, he is by this time convinced of the injury he has done German literature.Several young perfons, encouraged to it by his example, imagined that nothing morewas requifite to become a genius, than to be bold, impudent, and carelefs about lan-guage and Ryle, and to entertain contempt for every thing that is called order or re-gularity. They conceived that all ftudy and attention to rule was needlefs, that everything that was natural mull of courfe be good, that a true genius required no education,but had all powers of creation in himfelf, and that when he became a genius, he wasentitled to produce himfelf in his.fliirt, or in puris naturalibus, on the market-place, orin the courts of princes; that real judgment only made affes of men, and that unre-ftrained imagination railed them to the rank of divinities; that dreams and enthufiakicraptures in his own greatnefs, and the littlenefs of the world about him, was the properRate of man ; that all the occupations by which his daily bread was to be-earned, de-graded him, and that in the bell of all pofiible worlds he mult go on all-fours and eatacorns. You mult not think that I am exaggerating when I fay this, for I'can giveyou proofs of every thing I have afferted. Gothe has this in common with Roulfeau ;that his philofopy (whether true or falfe) overturns foundations, and gratifies difiblute-nefs and idlenefs ; for which reafon it has been adopted by thofe who have no founda-tion, but feek only to be happy through an implicit belief in their mailer. As GotheWas his own mailer, his excrefcences were the more eafily forgiven, becaufe of their con-fiftency with his principles and with each other, of a certain moderation he obferved inthem, and of his affability towards all he converfed with; but his fchool is the moll ridi-culous that can be conceived. I quellion whether many of thefe gentlemen are them-felves able to give explanations of the obfeure parts of their writings. The flatterednonfenfe was cried up by the critics of the feet, as the quinteflence of human wit andhuman imagination. As to the underftanding, as I told you above, they declared openwar againft that. To have a true idea of the take of the public, one fhould read theproductions of thefe gentlemen, which Hill pafs for wonders with many. This herd ofCalmucks gained recruits from every order of men, even out of the phyfical tribe, whoformed fyllems of the fame kind in their profeflion. They taught, that to roll in fnow,to bathe in cold water, to leap like bucks about the lleepell precipices, to eat nothingwarm, but to live entirely on the fruits of the earth, not to give the leak interruption tothe operations of nature, but even to drop the excrement kanding, at any time and inany place, was all that could be done by man, either for the prefervation or recovery ofhis health.

A well-known phyfician, who has laid many a patient in the duk, by the purfuit ofthis new mode of cure, grounded all the reafonings made ufe of in his publications, onthe example of the firk wit in Germany . If he ordered a man a cold bath, and the pa-tient expreflfed a fear, lek it might poffibly occafion a fever, or a flux, the doClor wouldafliire him, that he need not be afraid of any thing of the fort, for that the great Gothewent into the cold bath in frok and fnow. The young painters, too, would for fometime paint nothing but korms, lightning, tops of Appennines, or Alps ;„ elephants, lions,and tygers; Didos on the funeral pile; Lucretias andMedeas murdering their children.All the fofter landfcapes, all the common animals, and all the ordinary fituations of com-m on life, they entirely excluded from their canvafs. Truth and keeping are nothingwith them ; fuch littleneffes, they fay, a genius leaves to your day-labourers for bread,and men of ordinary underkandings. Art, according to their definition, confiks in whatis out of the common courfe. The more unnaturally a Dido flings her arms about, themore portentoufly flie rolls her favage eyes, and the greater diforder there appears inher hair and drapery, the more beautiful the is. In this manner artiks of all denomina-

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