Barthold Heinrich Brockes

He studied jurisprudence at Halle, and after extensive travels in Italy, France and the Netherlands, settled in Hamburg in 1704.

Brockes' poetic works were published in a series of nine volumes under the fantastic title Irdisches Vergnügen in Gott (1721–1748); he also translated Giambattista Marino's La Strage degli innocenti (1715), Alexander Pope's Essay on Man (1740) and James Thomson's The Seasons (1745).

His poetry has small intrinsic value, but it is symptomatic of the change which came over German literature at the beginning of the 18th century.

He was one of the first German poets to substitute for the bombastic imitations of Marini, to which he himself had begun by contributing, a clear and simple diction.

He was also a pioneer in directing the attention of his countrymen to the new poetry of nature which originated in England.