The Palace and Park by Phillips, Forbes, Latham, Owen, Scharf, and Shenton

[Born at Camentz, in Saxony, 1729. Died at Brunswick, 1781. Aged 52.] A philosopher and a poet, but more of an investigator than of a creator. Nevertheless, a strong renovator. He is named by Germany of to-day with gratitude, amongst those who loosened the old chains of imitation from her literature, and summoned her to think and to write, self-conscious, from her own deep and powerful spirit. Powerlessly enough, her drama, till his time, was borrowed from that of a people, geographically divided from her by a river--intellectually, her antipodes. Lessing showed her, in place of Corneille and Racine, a foreigner, in whose kindred veins her own blood ran; and called her to Nature and to herself, in calling her to SHAKSPEARE. Lessing was a critic in plastic art; witness his “Laocoon.” He was a fabulist of great invention, fancy, and humour: witness his “Fables,” which may take rank with those of Æsop. He was a dramatist of skill, power, and pathos: witness his “Nathan the Wise,” and his “Emilia Galotti.” Above all, he was an independent thinker; and a style clear, precise, and masterly, runs through all his writings. He is one of those now elder classics through whom the language of the country has risen into literary rank and service. [By Ernst Rietschel. Bronze. 1849. Erected by subscription at Brunswick. For further account of this statue, see Handbook to Modern Sculpture. No. 200.]