GOTTFRIED AUGUSTUS, a celebrated German poet, born January 1, 1748, at Wolmerswende, a village in the principality of Halberstadt, where his father was Lutheran minister. In his childhood he discovered little inclination to study; the Bible and the Canticles alone had any attraction for him; and his first attempts in versification were imitations of the Psalms. It is to this first direction of his studies that we are to attribute the biblical phrases, and the allusions to Christianity, which we find even in his amatory poetry. He was fond of solitude, and indulged in all the romantic sentiments which deserts and the gloom of forests inspire. From the school of Aschersleben, where his maternal grandfather resided, and which he quitted in consequence of receiving a severe chastisement for composing an epigram, he was sent to the institution at Halle. But at neither of these places did he make much progress, having a taste only for the lessons in prosody and versification. In 1764 Bürger, who was intended for the clerical office, began to attend the course of lectures given by the professors of the university. Klotz, a learned classical scholar, admitted him into the select number of the young men whose talents he took a pleasure in cultivating; but this society appears not to have produced the same favourable effect on the moral character of Bürger as on his genius. His conduct prejudiced his grandfather Bauer against him; and it was with difficulty that he obtained from him some further assistance, with permission, in the year 1768, to repair to Göttingen to prosecute the study of the law. This change did not make him more regular in his studies; his morals became corrupted; and his grandfather withdrew his protection. Bürger contracted debts; and his situation would have become altogether desperate had not some friends interfered to assist him. An association, memorable in the annals of German literature, and into which Bürger was now admitted, had just been formed at Göttingen; it reckoned among its members Boje, Biester, Sprengel, Holtz, Miller, Voss, the two Counts Stolberg, C. F. Cramer, and Leise-witz. All of these were persons versed in Greek and Roman literature, and, at the same time, they all idolized Shakspeare. Bürger, in a great measure, owed his style to the enthusiasm which he showed, in common with his literary friends, for our great dramatist. The Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, published about this time by Dr Percy, gave an additional impulse to the direction which his mind had taken, and suggested to him some of his most admired productions. Of all his friends, Boje was the one who exercised the greatest influence over him in the choice and treatment of his subjects; and it is to his severe observations that the poetical stanza of Bürger owes a great part of that elegance and roundness which characterize it. To the same friend he was indebted also for some improvement in his circumstances. On the recommendation of Boje he was appointed to the collectorship of Altvigleichen, in the principality of Calenberg. The following winter, some fragments of a ghost story, which he heard a peasant girl singing by moonlight, caught his imagination, and suggested his celebrated ballad of Leonora. This remarkable production at once established his reputation as a poet. About this time he married a Hanoverian lady, named Leonhart; but this union proved only a source of bitterness, as an unhappy attachment to her younger sister soon after sprung up in his heart. The loss of a sum of money, of which his grandfather had made him a present, was the first commencement of his embarrassments; the taking of a large farm, which he did not know how to manage, increased them. The dismissal from his place, in 1784, in consequence of suspicions (probably ill-founded) raised against the fidelity of his accounts, gave the finishing stroke to his misfortunes. He had a little before lost his wife, whose death was hastened by the culpable passion which Bürger cherished in his heart. Left with two children, and reduced to the inconsiderable emoluments of The Almanack of the Muses, which he had edited since 1779, he removed to Göttingen, with a view to giving private lessons there, and in the hope of obtaining a professor's chair in the department of belles-lettres. Five years later the title was conferred on him, but without a salary; and this was the only public recompense obtained during his whole life by a man who was one of the favourite authors of his nation, and who, while yet young, had achieved the highest reputation. Scarcely were the ashes of his wife cold when he espoused her sister, whose name his poems have made but too famous. She died soon after in childbirth in the beginning of 1786. From that moment his own life only lingered on; and the fire of his genius seemed extinguished with the passion which had so long nourished it. He had scarcely strength enough, in the intervals of his dejection, to finish his Song of Songs, a sort of dithyrambic or nuptial hymn, intended to celebrate his second marriage, and which is a strange mixture of frantic passion, religious devotion, and the most bombastic expression. It was the last production of Bürger. Having studied the philosophy of Kant, he had an idea of deriving some advantage from it at Göttingen, where it had not yet been taught. He undertook to explain it in a course of lectures, which were attended by a great number of students. The satisfaction which the university expressed to him for two cantatas which he composed in 1787, on the occasion of the fifty years' jubilee of this illustrious institution, and his appointment to the situation of professor extraordinary, reanimated his spirits. Fortune appearing to smile on him once more, he formed the design of marrying again. During one of the moments when he was most occupied with this idea, he received a letter from Stuttgart, in which a young woman, whose style indicated a cultivated mind, and her sentiments an elevated and feeling heart, after describing to him with enthusiasm the impression which his poetry had made upon her, offered him her hand and heart. The information which he received respecting the character, the fortune, and personal accomplishments of his correspondent having excited his curiosity, he took a journey to Stuttgart, and brought back with him a wife who embittered and dishonoured the rest of his days. In less than three years he saw himself under the necessity of obtaining a divorce from her; and the ruin of his health aggravated the absolute disorder of his finances. Confined to a small chamber, the favourite poet of Germany wasted the remainder of his strength in translations for foreign booksellers; but sickness and grief soon deprived him even of this resource, and he must have died in a state of the most abject poverty, if the government of Hanover had not relieved his necessities. He died on the 8th of June 1794.

Bürger is only remarkable as a lyric poet; for after having tried all the different species of this class of compositions, he has succeeded eminently only in the song and the ballad. We shall perhaps characterize his genius sufficiently by saying that his imagination is more fresh than rich,—that he has more sensibility than elevation, more naïveté and good nature than delicacy or taste. His style is striking from its clearness and its energy, and an elegance which is rather the result of labour than of natural grace; he possesses, in short, all the qualities which please the multitude. Allowing the title of poet only to those whose writings were calculated to become popular, he early habituated himself to reject whatever appeared to him not sufficiently intelligible and interesting to all classes of readers. He is always clear and forcible; and if at certain times there appears a want of selection and care in the details, yet the sentiments are uniformly noble, and the moral purpose of the majority of his pieces is irreproachable. Some breathe the loftiest piety and the purest love of virtue. Wieland said of him (German Mercury, 1778), that in composing his poem entitled Männereinsucht (on Chastity), Bürger had deserved better of the present and future generations than if he had written the finest treatise of morality. This little piece has been inserted in most of the collections of hymns for the use of the Lutheran church.

Three editions of Bürger's works have been published at Göttingen. The first two appeared in 1778 and 1789, in 3 vols. 8vo; and the third, after his death, was published by his friend Ch. Reinhard, in 4 vols. 1796. We must confine ourselves to a short notice of those for which their merit or singularity has procured the greatest degree of celebrity. 1. A translation, or rather an imitation, of the Vision of Yeats (Gesellschaft der Verehrer). 2. Leonora, a romance which belongs to the class which Bürger himself called the epic lyric. Leonora was translated into Danish in 1783, six times into English, by Stanley, Pye, Spencer, Taylor, &c., and from English into French by De la Madelaine in 1811. The translation by Mr. Spencer is accompanied with engravings after designs by Lady Diana Beauclerc. Two German composers have set it to music. 3. The Minster's Daughter of Turkuenden is the story of the seduction and tragical end of a young girl. 4. The Indianer Hunterman. 5. The Song of the Brave; in which the heroism of a peasant, who saves a family from the fury of the waves, is related with admirable feeling. 6. The Song of Songs, conceived at the feet of the altar. This is a hymn or ode in praise of his second wife. 7. A Translation of the Fables of Jupiter by Bürger. 8. A translation in comic metre of some books of the Iliad. 9. An excellent Translation of Shakespear's Macbeth. 10. Pieces of Poetry and Historical Prose. He had begun to write critical observations on his own works; but he has only left some fragments of this work. 11. He was editor of the Göttingen Almanack of the Muses, from 1779 to 1794. Vetterlein, Politz, and Engel, have published a selection of the poetry of Bürger, with notes; and celebrated composers, such as Schatz and Reichardt, have set a great number of his songs to music. Bürger's third wife, whose name German biography has thought worthy to be associated with her husband's, on account of her taste for literature and particularly poetry, is author of several pieces in verse inserted in the collection. The one having for its title The Raillery of a Mother, is sufficient to prove her poetical talent.