BROCKES, BARTHOLD HEINRICH (1680-1747)

This article appears in Volume V04, Page 624 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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BROCKES, BARTHOLD HEINRICH (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

MAGISTRATE (Lat. magistratus, from magister, master, properly a public office, hence the person holding such an office)

) at Ritzebuttel. He died in Hamburg on the 16th of January 1747.

Brockes

BROCKES, BARTHOLD HEINRICH (1680-1747)

' poetic works were published in a

series

SERIES (a Latin word from serere, to join)

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

CHANGE (derived through the Fr. from the Late Lat. cambium, cambiare, to barter; the ultimate derivation is probably from the root which appears in the Gr. «a urmu', to bend)

which came over German literature at the beginning of the 18th

century

CENTURY (from Lat. centuria, a division of a hundred men)

. 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

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

BROCKES, BARTHOLD HEINRICH (1680-1747)

' autobiography was published by J. M.

Lappenberg

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.

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