205
from the rude, yet interesting strains of Hans Sachs the cobler of Nuremberg. Of this man's genius five folio volumes with double columns are extant in print, and nearly an equal number in manuscript; yet the indefatigable bard takes care to inform his readers, that he never made a shoe the less, but had virtuously reared a large family by the labor of his hands.
In Pindar, Chaucer, Dante, Milton, &c. &c. we have instances of the close connection of poetic genius with the love of liberty and of genuine reformation. The moral sense at least will not be outraged, if I add to the list the name of this honest shoemaker (a trade by the bye remarkable for the production of philosophers and poets). His poem intitled the Morning Star, was the very first publication that appeared in praise and support of Luther; and an excellent hymn of Hans Sachs, which has been deservedly translated into almost all the European languages, was commonly sung in the Protestant churches, whenever the heroic reformer visited them.
In Luther's own German writings, and eminently in his translation of the bible, the German language commenced. I mean the language as it is at present written; that which is called the High German, as contra-distinguished from the Platt-Teustch, the dialect of the flat or northern countries, and from the Ober-teutsch,
