AUGUSTUS GOTTLIEB, a popular German writer, was born at Bauzen in Upper Silesia in 1753. After studying three years at Wittenberg, he went to study law at Leipzig; and afterwards held the offices of chancery-clerk and keeper of the archives at Dresden. In 1785 he was appointed professor of aesthetics and classical literature at the university of Prague; and in 1805 became director of the High School at Fulda, where he remained till his death in 1807. In addition to some translations from the dramas of Molière and Destouches, Meissner wrote the operas of Das Grab des Mufti, Der Alchymist, Die Schöne Arsene, which enjoyed a fair degree of popularity; but the work which rendered him a general favourite with the public was his "Sketches" (Skizzen, Leipzig, 1778-96), extending to fourteen series, and made up of essays, tales, and dialogues, &c., written with much lively vigour and quaint pleasantry, and displaying subtle powers of observation and clear-sighted sagacity. These pieces, besides charming the readers of light literature in Germany, attracted the notice of foreign readers also, and were translated, in whole or in part, into French, Danish, and Dutch, and into English in Thompson's German Miscellany. Meissner followed up the plan of these sketches in his Tales and Dialogues (Erzählungen u. Dialogen, 1781-89), which afford very agreeable and often highly instructive reading. Besides being an extensive contributor to a great number of literary journals, Meissner produced a series of romances of a historical and biographical nature, the principal of which are, —Bianca Capello, 1785; Massimiliano, 1785; Spartacus, 1792; Epaminondas, 1798; Das Leben des Julius Cäsar, 1799.