LXV. ALBRECHT HALLER

A Swiss writer (1708-1777) who in his youth won fame as a poet, afterwards much greater fame as a man of science. In 1732, after he had taken his degree in medicine at Leyden, and had visited England and France, he published a small collection of poems entitled Versuch Schweizerischer Gedichten. They are characterized by moral fervor, trenchant thought, and sententious pregnancy of expression—a new combination up to that time. Haller is at his best in The Alps, which, notwithstanding its abundant description, is not so much a landscape poem as a philosophic eulogy of the simple life. The text below follows Bibliothek älterer Schriftwerke der deutschen Schweiz, III. 20.