Thus, also, he tried his skill in a species of poetry which was then very much the order of the day--the comic heroical poem. Pope's _Rape of the Lock_ had called forth many imitations; Zachariä cultivated this branch of poetry on German soil, and it pleased every one, because the ordinary subject of it was some awkward fellow, of whom the genii made game, while they favoured the better one.
It is not wonderful, but yet it excites wonder, when, in contemplating a literature, especially the German, one observes how a whole nation cannot get free from a subject which has been once given, and happily treated in a certain form, but will have it repeated in every manner, until, at last, the original itself is covered up, and stifled by the heaps of imitations.
The heroic poem of my friend was a voucher for this remark. At a great sledging party, an awkward man has assigned to him a lady who does not like him; comically enough there befalls him, one after another, every accident that can happen on such an occasion, until at last, as he is entreating for the sledge-driver's right (a kiss), he falls from the back seat; for just then, as was natural, the fates tripped him up. The fair one seizes the reins, and drives home alone, where a favoured friend receives her, and triumphs over his presumptuous rival. As to the rest, it was very prettily contrived that the four different kinds of spirits should worry him in turn, till at the end the gnomes hoist him completely out of the saddle. The poem, written in Alexandrines, and founded on a true story, highly delighted our little public, and we were convinced that it could well be compared with the _Walpurgisnight_ of Löwen, or the _Renommist_ of Zachariä.[1]
While, now, our social pleasures required but an evening, and the preparations for them only a few hours, I had enough time to read, and, as I thought, to study. To please my father, I diligently repeated the smaller work of Hopp, and could stand an examination in it forwards and backwards, by which means I made myself complete master of the chief contents of the Institutes. But a restless eagerness for knowledge urged me further; I lit upon the history of ancient literature, and from that fell into an encyclopedism, in which I read through Gessner's _Isagoge_ and Morhov's _Polyhistor_, and thus gained a general notion of how many strange things might have happened in learning and life. By this persevering and rapid industry, continued day and night, I more confused than instructed myself; but I lost myself in a still greater labyrinth when I found Bayle in my father's library, and plunged deep into him.