326 Readings i?i European History 363. Fred- erick the Great de- clares that Germany has no great writers (1780). VII. Frederick the Great's Estimate of German Literature Frederick always cultivated the society of French men of letters, and his own voluminous works are written in French. He had little respect for the achievements of his own countrymen in literature, although when he wrote the following contemptuous estimate Lessing had finished his work and Goethe was thirty-one years old and had published, beside Goetz von Berlichingen, The Sorrows of Werther, the first book of Wilhelm Meister, and many of his lyrics. Schiller, who was but twenty- one, published his first tragedy the following year. You are surprised, sir, that I do not add my voice to yours in applauding the progress which, according to you, German literature is making from day to day. I love our common country as well as you, and for that very reason I abstain from praising it until it has deserved praise. . . . Let us look for a moment at our country ; I hear a jargon spoken which is devoid of every grace, and which each one manipulates according to his own fancy, with no discrimina- tion in the choice of terms, — indeed, the most appropri- ate and expressive words are wholly neglected, and the real meaning is drowned in a flood of verbiage. I have been trying to unearth our Homers, our Virgils, our Anacreons, our Horaces, our Demosthenes, our Ciceros, our Thucydides, our Livys ; but I find nothing ; I might have spared my pains. Let us be sincere and admit frankly that up to this time literature has not flourished on our soil. Germany has had its philosophers who can bear compari- son with the ancients, — who have even surpassed them in some respects, — but as to belles-lettres, let us confess our poverty. . . . In order to convince yourself of the bad taste that reigns in Germany, you have only to frequent the theater. There
