of his common sense, he quite won the hearts of a
generation which held everywhere in Zürich as in Leipzig
--that the final purpose of poetry is to improve morals.
His Fables and Tales ( 1746-48) were reprinted in number-
less editions, mead their publisher rich, and remained for
several decades the popular ideal of edifying literature.
Aside from these, Gellert wrote several light comedies of
very thin substance, and led the procession of the
imitators of Richardson, of whom he had a very high
opinion. In a netrical eulogy he extolled "the Briton
Richardson" as the "creative spririt who had taught us to
feel the charm of virtue " : whose works were at once
"nature, taste, and religion," who was :more immortal
than Homer." Gellert's Swedish Countess ( 1747-48) is an
attempt at moral family fiction in the vein of Richardson.
The heroine, with her obtrusive virtuousness and reli-
giosity, her moralising and sentimentalizing, is a person
of very much the same sort as Pamela and Clarissa.
On the other hand, the story and the technique have
little suggestion of Richardson. ^* The German tale is a
complicated tissue of strange adventures and incredible
happenings-illicit connections, double marriages, incest
and other crimes-which show that Gellert was quite
under the spell of the older romances, and very far from
supposing that reality could be made interesting.

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