GESSNER, Salomon (1730-1788), Swiss painter and poet, and once a very favourite and widely-read author, was born at Zürich 1st April 1730. With the exception of some time spent in Berlin, and a visit to Hamburg undertaken in order to see Hagedorn, he passed the whole of his life in his native town, where he carried on the business of a bookseller. He died 2d March 1788. The first of his writings that attracted attention was his Lied eines Schweizers an sein bewaffnetes Mädchen (1751). Then followed Daphnis (1754), Idyllen (f756), Iηkel and Yariko (1756), a version of a story already worked out by Gellert and Bodmer, and Der Tod Abels (1758), “a sort of idyllic prose pastoral.” It is somewhat difficult for us now to understand the reason of Gessner’s universal popularity, unless it was the taste of the period for the conventional pastoral. His writings are marked, it is true, by sweetness and melody, but the sweetness soon becomes insipidity, and the melody monotony. He represents in most of his works the existence of shepherds in a golden or rather tinsel age, and nothing more unreal could possibly be imagined. His men and women are inane and lifeless representations. They are all alike, and all equally uninteresting. They never give utterance to any powerful, genuine, human sentiments. Their talk is but meaningless platitude. As a painter Gessner represented “still country scenes, rocks, springs, and waterfalls, shepherds and shepherdesses ”—in short, the conventional classical landscape. His son, Konrad Gessner (1764- 1826), was also a painter of some reputation....