Fragments in Prose And Verse

taken entire possession of his heart, and he could not listen with patience to the cavils of infidels, or the cold reasonings of metaphysicians; and after a tedious half year, the ardent youth, whose mind was accustomed to better nourishment, removed with his relation JSchmidt to the university of Leipsic. During the few months spent at Jena, he had however, in the stillness of his closet, been realizing some part of his intended plan by tracing our the three first cantos of the Messiah. He composed these three cantos in prose, but his performance greatly displeased him. He was fired with a laudable indignation at feeling himself so inferior in harmony to his great models Homer and Virgil. Lost in his own reflections, he would frequently wander up and down the country round Jena, and in one of these solitary walks he came to a determination to imitate the great poets ofantiquity in the structure of their verse. In a few hours he completed a page of Hexameters, and from that time decided on composing his poem in this measure. Thus he was the first who introduced into German poetry a metre which was Supposed to be unattainable in that language, and he afterwards triumphantly defended this mode of versification, both by example and argument. In the spring of the year 1746, he carried with him to Leipsic the three first books of the Messiah, which astonished and delighted a few ingenious friends to whom he shewed them. Amongst these early friends of Klopstock were, C...