CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH, a German author, was the son of a bookseller, and was born at Berlin in March 1733. The intense ardour for learning which characterized his life was early shown. Though engaged so soon as his sixteenth year in the bookselling trade, he made himself a proficient in general literature, and in the Greek, Latin, and English languages. His increasing devotion to letters led him in 1757 to resign his partnership in the family firm; and though he was recalled to business in the following year by the death of his brother, yet the projects that he had planned during his retirement were actively carried out. By this time he had formed, in conjunction with Lessing and Moses Mendelssohn, a literary triumvirate, for the purpose of founding a new school of German criticism. They had begun their scheme in 1757, by publishing the Bibliothek der Schönen Wissenschaften. They now continued it in 1759 by giving to the world the first of their famous Letters on Criticism. It was with a similar end in view that in 1765 Nicolai became the projector and editor of the influential periodical styled Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek. The severe and prosaic tone of criticism which characterized this work soon involved him in many disputes with some of the greatest writers in Germany. His facile and ever-active pen was especially employed in writing pamphlets and satirical romances against the philosophy of Kant. Fichte and A. W. Schlegel attacked him in turn. Yet the Nicolaits irascible Nicolas continued to wrangle with his numerous enemies, and at the same time to dabble in all sorts of subjects, till his death in 1811. His Life was published by Göckingk in 8vo, Berlin, 1820.