The dithyrambic style of the Letter manifestly exercised a powerful influence on the prose of Herder and Goethe--prose charged with perfervid feeling, and hitherto unknown in German literature.

Young's main contention is that in literature genius must make rules for itself, and that imitation is suicidal.

"Genius," he says, "can set us right in composition, without the rules of the learned; as conscience sets us right in life, without the laws of the land." He lays it down as a maxim that "the less we copy the renowned ancients, we shall resemble them the more." The two golden rules in composition as in ethics are: know thyself and reverence thyself.

Such were the "conjectures on original composition," expounded to him by Herder which led Goethe to regard poetry in "another sense" from that in which he had hitherto understood it.

And in confirmation of his views Herder directed him to the exemplars where he would find their illustration--to the Bible, to Homer and Pindar, to Shakespeare and Ossian, and, above all, to the primitive poetry of all peoples.
As we shall see, Goethe laid these counsels even too faithfully to heart; the first composition[79] in which he attempted to realise them drew upon him Herder's characteristic censure.