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

[Born in Suabia, 1733. Died 1813. Aged 80.] An exquisite artist in words, herein resembling though more enchanting than, Lessing, whose contemporary he was. He might seem to be a transitionist; softening the passage from the imitative French school in Germany, to the pure German. Or you may suspect that the foreign element is not French, but Italian, if modern,--or Attic, if ancient. For he was a student of classic antiquity, and a lightness of grace, and a mobile sensibility to the beautiful, which are not German, reign over his numerous writings in prose and verse. Some of his works are direct imitations from the Greek--as his Dialogues after Lucian. His elaborate philosophical romance, “Agathon,” lays the scene in old Greece. But his gift is an unrivalled ease in the flow of his narrative verse--lively or serious--made alluring by perpetual representation to the eye; and roving with predilection amidst romantic scenes and adventures. His poem of “Oberon” is a masterpiece in this kind. He seems to have prepared for it in studying Ariosto, but engrafting upon the Italian style the more picturesque of his own northern and later poetry. The qualities missed in this rich, enticing, and luxurious word-painter, are profound passion, intellectual might, and the more solemn contemplation of the universe, natural and spiritual. Wieland was a scholar: you feel the influence of his reading at every step; but the springs in his own bosom well freely. [The original marble, by Schadow, is the property of Henry Crabbe Robinson, Esq. of London. Flaxman declared it “a perfect work, never surpassed by any artist, living or dead.” When Mr. Robinson visited Goethe at Weimar, and informed him that he possessed this bust, Goethe related the circumstances under which it had been lost to Germany, and added: “You have made me as happy as though I had recovered a lost child.” Mr. Robinson promised Goethe to bequeath the bust to the Public Library at Weimar, where Wieland had lived for many years. One cast has been allowed to be taken for the Crystal Palace; and the mould has been destroyed.]