BARTHOLD HEINRICH

BROCKES (1680-1747)  , German poet, was born at Hamburg on the 22nd of September 1680 . He studied jurisprudence at Halle, and after extensive travels in Italy, France and Holland, settled in his native town in 1704 . In 1720 he was appointed a member of the Hamburg senate, and entrusted with several important offices . Six years (from 1735 to 1741) he spent as Amtmann (magistrate) at Ritzebuttel . He died in Hamburg on the 16th of January 1747 . Brockes' poetic works were published in a series of nine volumes under the fantastic title Irdisches Vergniigen in Gott (1721-1748); he also translated Marini's La Strage degli innocenti (1715), Pope's Essay on Man (1740) and Thomson's Seasons (1745) . His poetry has small intrinsic value, but it is symptomatic of the change which came over German literature at the beginning of the 18th century . He was one of the first German poets to substitute for the bombastic imitations of Marini, to which he himself had begun by contributing, a clear and simple diction . He was also a pioneer in directing the attention of his countrymen to the new poetry of nature which originated in England . His verses, artificial and crude as they often are, express a reverential attitude towards nature and a religious interpretation of natural phenomena which was new to German poetry and prepared the way for Klopstock . Brockes' autobiography was published by J . M .

Lappenberg in the Zeitschrift des Vereins fur Hamburger Geschichte, ii. pp . 167 if . (1847) . See also A . Brand!, B . H . Brockes (1878), and D . F . Strauss, Brockes and H . S . Reimarus (Gesammelte Schriften, ii.) . A short selection of his poetry will be found in vol .

39 (1883) of Kurschner's Deutsche Nationalliteratur .