Prof. von Jagemann's Lecture.

Assistant Professor von Jagemann delivered, yesterday afternoon, in Sever 11. the fourth lecture in the introductory course on German literature. The subject was "Lessing."

The lecturer said that the consideration of Lessing's works came appropriately after the consideration of the works of Luther, as both men were reformers not only of the substance of German literature, but also of its form. Luther freed the German language from its bondage to the Latin, Lessing freed it from its dependence on foreign imitation.

Lessing's life had neither the romance of Schiller's, nor the charm of Goethe's. It was one long struggle against poverty, in an age when people had not come to understand that literature was a profession worthy of the highest type of man. Manliness and a love of truth without regard to established authority were the salient points in Lessing's character. He was primarily a critic, but he supplemented his precepts by example, and accomplished as much by his character as by his intellect.

Lessing was perhaps the greatest critic that ever lived. His superiority was demonstrated in his judgment of Shakespeare, whom he understood far better than his English contemporary, Johnson. His literary reviews were fearless, and even his personal friends were not spared. He freed the German drama from its slavery to the French school, and showed how the French drama failed to conform not only to the German character, but to the fundamental principles of art. In the Laocoon he drew the distinction between painting and poetry, and made evident the great harm that had been done by the confusion of the two arts. Nathan the Wise, though written in five months, was in one sense Lessing's life work, for it embodied his views on religion and preached that universal brotherhood in which he so firmly believed. Each of his great dramatic works had its own moral to teach. The characters were well sustained, and true to nature. Inestimable, however, as was the value of Lessing's work to the development of German literature, it is for the man's character that we must most admire him.