HAGEDORN, Friedrich von (170S-1755), one of the most distinguished German poets in the earlier half of last century, was born April 23, 1708, at Hamburg, where his father was Danish minister at the court of Lower Saxony. The father, a man of scientific and literary tastes, possessed a valuable library of French literature, and dabbled also in the science of alchemy. Having by this and other means lost a great part of his fortune, he died in 1722, leaving in poor circumstances a widow and two sons, of whom the poet was the elder. He was educated at the gymnasium of Hamburg, and went later (1726) to study jurisprudence at Jena. Shortly after his return to Hamburg in 1729, he obtained the appointment of private secretary without salary to the Danish ambassador in London, where he lived till 1731, and published two small works in English. His return to Hamburg was followed by a period of great poverty and hardship, a scanty income being derived from the posts which he held in the Hamburg cathedral and among the mining population in Klausthal. In 1733 Hagedorn became secretary to the so-called “English court” in Hamburg, a trading company founded in the 13th century, and formerly known as “Die Societät der Aventurier Kaufleute.” He shortly afterwards married, and from this time, with a settled income and sufficient leisure to pursue his literary occupations, led a pleasant and congenial existence, surrounded by friends and admirers, till his death, at the early age of forty-seven, October 28, 1755....