Note 71 — Chapter II · THE RALLY OF GERMANY—LESSING.

Not that he did not pay some attention to Old German: but it had little effect on him, and he was evidently fonder of the fifteenth century than of the thirteenth. Nor is what has been said above to be taken as meaning that Gottsched himself neglected mediæval writers. On the contrary, he studied them very carefully as a part of his general patriotic “Germanism.” Only he did not in the least feel their drift. Opinions on Lessing’s own attitude to mediæval literature differ remarkably, but I cannot see much real appreciation in it.