C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock (1724–1803)
Klopstock, Friedrich Gottlieb (klop’stok). A celebrated German poet; born at Quedlinburg, 1724; died at Hamburg, 1803. In freeing German poetry from the exclusive reign of the Alexandrine verse, he was the founder of a new era in German literature. His great epic ‘Messiah’ (1748–73), at first partly written in prose and changed afterward to hexameters, made him famous. His most finished work was his ‘Odes.’ Even Schiller and Goethe were artistically indebted to him. His dramas were of less worth. ‘Works,’ 1879. (See Critical and Biographical Introduction).