Johann Georg, one of the few Continental writers of the last century whose names are familiar to English ears, was by birth a Swiss, having been born in the canton of Berne in 1728. His father, who was a senator of the canton, brought him up for the medical profession, and sent him to study at the University of Göttingen, which, owing to the talents of the famous Swiss physician, Haller, was then one of the most famous medical schools in Europe. On completing his studies, Zimmermann married a relative of Haller's, and retired to his native town, in which he had been appointed public physician. His duties however were, he found, insufficient to occupy his time, and he wisely devoted his leisure to the cultivation of literature, and published a collection of short pieces in prose and verse, one of which is the first sketch of his famous Essay on Solitude. To this succeeded an Essay on National Pride, which was highly popular, and was translated into several languages, including the English. A work on medicine, which he published in 1763, was so highly admired, that he was offered the post of physician to the King of England in Hanover; and he accordingly left Switzerland and removed to Hanover. Here he published his Essay on Solitude, in its complete form; and it was at once received with every mark of general favour. It was translated into most of the continental languages; and in an English version it acquired, in this country, a popularity which few translations enjoy, but which has somewhat decayed. Zimmermann attended Frederick the Great on his deathbed, and very unnecessarily, if not improperly, published an account of his conversation with him shortly before his death. The breaking out of the French Revolution affected him with a sort of frenzy. He opposed, in the most violent way, the republican principles which were everywhere promulgated on the continent, and lived in constant dread of suffering every outrage which his diseased imagination represented as the inevitable result of democratic rule. When the French invaded Hanover in 1794, his worst fears seemed likely to be realized, and, overwhelmed with consternation and dismay, and wasted to a skeleton with anxiety, Zimmerman died in 1795.