There was, indeed, no lack of literature on all subjects; Kant speaks sarcastically of "the deluge of books with which our part of the world is inundated every year." But the fatal defects of the poetry then produced was triviality and the "wateriness" of its style.

Yet it was during the years that Goethe spent in Leipzig that there appeared a succession of works which mark a new departure in German literature.

In 1766 Herder, who was subsequently to exercise such a profound influence over Goethe, published his _Fragments on Modern German Literature_; in the same year appeared Lessing's _Laokoon_, which, in Goethe's own words, transported himself and his contemporaries "out of the region of pitifully contracted views into the domain of emancipated thought"; and in 1767 Lessing's _Minna von Barnhelm_, Germany's "first national drama." Greatly as Goethe was impressed by both of these works of Lessing, however, he was not mature enough to profit by them[40]; and, in point of fact, all the work, poems and plays, which he produced during his Leipzig period, is solely inspired by the French models which had so long dominated German literature.
[Footnote 37: _Werke, Briefe_, Band i.

67.] [Footnote 38: _Ib._ p.

88.] [Footnote 39: Notably in his paper, entitled _Literarischer Sansculottismus_.