After two years the Discourses were discontinued; but Bodmer had gained great influence over the young writers of the time.  He increased his reputation by translating Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost,’ which he considered “a masterpiece of poetic genius, and the leading work of modern times.”  He deplores, however, the low standard of public taste, which, delighting in inferior poets, cannot at once rise to the greatest works.  Already there existed in Leipzig a sort of literary centre, where Gottsched was regarded as a dictator in matters of taste.  This literary autocrat praised Bodmer’s translation of ‘Paradise Lost’ more than the original poem, in which he condemned the rhymeless metre.  A sharp controversy soon divided the literary world into two hostile parties, known in German literature as the “conflict between Leipzig and Zuerich.”  Gottsched followed Voltaire in considering the English style rude and barbarous; whereas Bodmer, with keener artistic perception and deeper insight, defended Milton and Shakespeare.  The quarrel, in which Zuerich prevailed, called the attention of Germany to the English literature, so closely affiliated to the German mind and taste, and hastened its liberation from the French yoke.  Besides these services, Bodmer showed untiring zeal in rescuing from oblivion the beautiful poems and epics of the Middle Ages.  In his essay ’The Excellent Conditions for Poetic Production under the Rule of the Swabian Emperors,’ he directs public attention to the exquisite lyrics of the Minnesaenger.  It was he who revealed that hidden treasure of German literature, the Nibelungenlied.  By his studies and translations of Middle High German, he opened the vast and important field of Germanic philology.  To the end of his eighty-five years he was occupied with preparing selections from the Minnesaenger, and his joy was unbounded when his half-century of work was crowned with success, and the first volume of these poems was placed in his hands.

Notwithstanding his true appreciation of poetry, he could not write it.  He placed the religious above all other poetic productions, and valued the fable highly.

His hospitable roof in Zuerich had an ever cordial welcome for all writers, and many were the poets who sojourned in the “Dichterherberge” (poets’ inn); among them Klopstock, Wieland, and Goethe.  He held the esteem of the nation long after his own writings had been crowded into forgetfulness by the new men whose way he had prepared,—­for the genius of Herder and Lessing may be said to have completed the work that was so courageously begun by Bodmer.

THE KINSHIP OF THE ARTS

From ‘Rubens’