Salomon Gessner, a Swiss painter and poet, born in Zurich, April 1,1730, died there, March 2, 1788. His father attempted in vain to engage him in his own business of bookselling, and allowed him to follow his inclination for poetry and landscape painting. He resided successively at Berlin, Hamburg, and Zurich, first becoming known by his poem Die Nacht, which was followed by Daphnis, a pastoral in three cantos, by Idyllen, Der Tod Abels in prose, some moral tales and dramas, and lectures on landscaping. Some of the engravings with which he illustrated his poems are excellent.