VOSS, JOIIANN HEINRICH, one of the foremost classical writers of Germany, was b. in 1751 at Sommersdorf in Mecklenburg, of poor parents. In 1772 he went to the university of Gottingen, and there joined the "Hainbund," an association of 'young poets, at the head of whom stood Burger and Boje. Voss first intended to devote himself to theology, but soon exclusively turned to Greek and Roman antiquities, under Heyne's. auspices. In 1778 he went from Wandsbcck, whither he had gone for the purpose of editing the Musenalmanach, to Otterndorf, in'Hadeln, where he prepared his translation of the Odyssey. This appeared in 1781, and was received with universal applause. In the next year he became rector of Eutin, whence, in 1789, he issued his German trans lation of Virgil's Georgics. This was followed, in.1793, by a new and revised edition of the German Odyssey and Iliad, which, however, did not meet with as favorable a recep tion as the first. His contests with Heyne (q.v.) gave also rise chiefly to his Mythological Letters, which appeared in 1794. Among his purely German poetical works, Luise, an idyll (1783, revised 1795), takes a foremost place. In 1799 lie issued the whole of Virgil in a German translation. In 1802 he went to Jena, where he wrote the celebrated re view of Heyne's Iliad. In 1805 he was called to Heidelberg, where he wrote anno tated German translations of Horace, Hesiod, Theocrat's, Bion, Mosehus, Tibullus, and Lygclanius. In 1821 he published a translation of Aristophanes, and a new edition
of Horace and Virgil. Among other literary labors must also be mentioned his trans lation (with the aid of his two sons) of Shakespeare's works, which, however, is very inferior to Schlegel's. In opposition to Creuzer's Sifinbolik, he wrote an Antisymbolik (1824), in which he lifted up his voice against exaggerated praises of heathen mysticism; and one of his last papers was a violent denunciation of his former friend Stolberg, who had turned Roman Catholic. He died at Heidelberg in 1820. Among his translations from modern languages may be mentioned that from Galland's Arabian .lights, and that of Shaftesbury's works. A brief mention may also be made of his two sons: (1) HEINRICH, b. 1779, a philologist of merit, who assisted his father in his Shakespeare translation, and who was a great friend of Jean Paul's. He had intended to edit the latter's works, but died before him, in 1822. (2) ABRAHAM, b. in Entin, professor of the gymnasium at Kreuznach, who completed the Shakespeare translation. Ile died in 1847.—See Paulus, Lebensund Todeskunden von J. II. Voss (Freida. 1826).