Horace. Up to 1500, about ten editions had been published, only those of
1492 and 1498 being Horace entire, and none of them with commentary
except that of 1498, which had a few notes and metrical signs to
indicate the structure of the verse. The first German to translate a
poem of Horace was Johann Fischart, 1550-90, who rendered the second
_Epode_ in 145 rhymed couplets. The famous Silesian, Opitz, "father of
German poetry," and his followers, were to Germany what the Pleiad were
to France. His work on poetry, 1624, was grounded in Horace, and was
long the canon. Bucholz, in 1639, produced the first translation of an
entire book of the _Odes_ in German. 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. Günther, 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.
Goethe praises Horace for lyric charm and for understanding of art and
life, and studies his meters while composing the _Elegies_. Nietzsche's
letters abound in quotation and phrase. Even the Church in Germany shows
the impress of Horace in some of her greatest hymns, which are in