1 
 
 i
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 RIVERSIDE
 
 I
 
 HENRY N. YERGER 
 BOOKBINDER 
 
 154 N. rah St. Phibdelghia 
 Special Meihod Pat Aorll 2, 1312
 
 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSlrj^x 
 
 HIS LIFE AND HIS WORKS 
 
 BY 
 
 HELEN ZIMMERN 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER HIS LIFE AND HIS PHILOSOPHY 
 
 ..... bee SJfann 
 
 LONDON 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
 1878 
 
 All rights reserved
 
 <^ 
 
 K 
 
 V^ 
 
 7: S3
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 An English ' Life of Lessing ' requires little in the 
 way of preface or apology. It is only astonishing 
 that the task of preparing such a work has not been 
 undertaken long ere this, and that this peculiar good 
 fortune should have been reserved to me. My main 
 purpose has been to exhibit Lessing as the intellec- 
 tual pioneer of our present culture, no less in this 
 country than in his own ; to show how few are the 
 departments into which he did not penetrate, or in 
 which his influence is not felt, I have tried to depict 
 him as a centre of these manifold intellectual in- 
 terests; a pathfinder in aesthetics, religion, and poetry; 
 to paint his revolt against authority as such ; and to 
 exhibit his death-dealing onslaught on the Gallic and 
 pseudo-classical tradition. Furthermore, I have wished 
 to draw attention to his prophetic comprehension of 
 modern liberal theology, expressed in his ' Education 
 of the Human Race,' which, translated by the late 
 Rev. F. W. Robertson, of Brighton, has exercised a 
 great and avowed influence on the Broad Church
 
 vi PREFACE. 
 
 school of this country. Thus, to a large number of 
 English readers, Lessing is familiar only as a theolo- 
 gian ; whilst to others, artists especially, he is, through 
 his ' Laokoon,' known simply as an aesthetic writer. 
 Hence Lessing, the whole man, with his extensive, 
 varied, and catholic interests, is still unfamiliar to the 
 English reader. 
 
 There are several German biographies of Lessing, 
 but none of these would be well adapted to English 
 requirements, and lend themselves to translation. 
 Chief among these is the work of Messrs. Danzel and 
 Guhrauer, which singularly illustrates the justice of the 
 strictures recently passed on German literature by Mr. 
 Mark Pattison. These volumes are a perfect mine of 
 valuable materials, but offered in a cumbrous, undi- 
 gested form, that makes it almost impossible to read 
 them, and renders them available only as a quarry for 
 the special student. Out of this quarry has been con- 
 structed the more popular life of A. Stahr, that finds 
 a favour in Germany which its redundant style and 
 excessive panegyric would scarcely attract to it in 
 this country. Besides this truly encyclopaedic work of 
 Messrs. Danzel and Guhrauer, there exist innumerable 
 smaller works, dealing either with Lessing or with his 
 writings. Indeed, it would take half a lifetime to 
 read the Lessing literature of Germany, and at the 
 end, would it not ha\'e been better to read the man 
 himself.? Should we not resemble the wooers of 
 Penelope who made love to the waiting-women } I 
 would not be understood to imply by this that these
 
 PREFACE. vii 
 
 works are of no value. On the contrary, I have 
 availed myself of many of them with profit and 
 pleasure. But it will be readily conceded that all 
 cannot be of weight and value, when I add, that the 
 catalogue alone of works written upon * Nathan the 
 Wise ' forms a goodly octavo volume. The ingenuity 
 of some of these critics at expounding and elucidating 
 is prodigious. Lessing fares with too many of them 
 as Baron Munchausen's horse fared with the wolf, 
 who began at his tail and ate into him, until finally 
 the Baron drove the wolf home enclosed in the skin 
 of the horse. But Lessing is not the only classical 
 author doomed to illustrate the proverb, ' VVenn i 
 Kbnige bmien, bekomnicn die Kdrrner sii schaffen! 
 Now, my object in this work is not to expound Les- 
 sing, but solely to introduce him to the English 
 reader. I have endeavoured to do this as briefly as 
 was consistent with interest and colour, avoiding pro- 
 lixity, the fault of most modern biographies. The 
 biography of a man of letters should be no more 
 than an ante-room, giving admission into the sanc- 
 tuary of his works. Of these works I have en- 
 deavoured to give an abstract, refraining from over- 
 minute analysis of those which may be assumed to be 
 more familiarly known, such as the 'Nathan' and 
 the ' Laokoon,' and reserving a fuller treatment for 
 the ' Dramaturgic ' and other works, at present ac- 
 cessible only to the German scholar. Since writing 
 my book, however, I have been entrusted with the 
 agreeable task of preparing for ' Bohn's Library ' an
 
 viii PREFACE. 
 
 English version of the chief portion of the ' Drama- 
 turgic.' This valuable work will therefore soon be 
 accessible to the English student. While treating of 
 Lessing's writings, I have kept in memory his own 
 caution, that one must not exhaust one's author ; 
 and while treating of his life, I have endeavoured to 
 remember that I am not writing for a German public, 
 and have consequently omitted or touched lightly 
 upon various minute matters unlikely to interest 
 English readers. 
 
 I have yet another word to add before concluding 
 this preface, for the involuntary egotism of which 
 I must apologize. This is to justify my claim to be 
 Lessing's first English biographer. It so happens, 
 that after my book was entirely completed and out 
 of my hands, a work dealing with the same theme 
 made its appearance unannounced, and thus gained 
 the priority of issue. In the face of this fact, I must 
 still insist on my claim, and in justification refer to 
 the advertisements of my book constantly issued by 
 Messrs. Longmans since July 1876. This other 
 work I have not yet read, and my own book, as I have 
 said, has been out of my hands some time. As, 
 however, its information cannot be derived from 
 other sources than mine, Lessing having been 
 thoroughly exhausted by the industrious writers of 
 Germany, resemblances cannot fail to exist between 
 the two books. At the same time, the wonderful 
 many-sidedness of Lessing's mind would alone be a 
 sufficient justification for putting before the world the
 
 PREFACE. ix 
 
 views of two independent biographers, even if the 
 very great difference of scale between the two works 
 were not such as to bring mine within reach of that 
 larger portion of the reading public for which it is 
 especially intended. 
 
 H. Z. 
 
 London: November 1877.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. Childhood (1729-1741) . . . . i 
 
 II. Boyhood (1741-1746) .... 8 
 
 III. The University (i 746-1 748) . . . 20 
 
 IV. Berlin (1748-1751) .... 36 
 V, Wittenberg (1751-1752) . . . .64 
 
 VI. Second Berlin Residence (1752-1755) . 79 
 
 VII. Leipzig (1755-1758) . . . -95 
 
 VIII. Third Berlin Residence (1758- 1760) . 109 
 
 IX. Breslau (1 760-1765) . . . .136 
 
 X. Berlin again (1765-1767) . . . 160 
 
 '^XI. 'Laokoon' . . . . . .175 
 
 ' \ XII. Hamburg.— The ' Dramaturgie* . . 195 
 
 'hXIII. Hamburg. — Antiquarian 'Letters' . . 234 
 
 ' xiv. wolfenbijttel (177o-i772) . . . 256 
 
 * XV. WOLFENBiJTTEL — COIltimied {l']'J2-lTT$) . . 285 
 
 XVI. Italy (1775-1776) .... 321 
 
 XVIL Married Life (1776-1778) . . -338 
 
 (^^ XVIII. The Wolfenbuttel Fragments' (1778) . 351
 
 xii CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 ♦ XIX. 'Nathan the Wise' .... 400 
 ■^ XX. The 'Education of the Human Race.' — 'Ernst 
 
 AND FALK' ..... 420 
 
 XXI. Jacobi and Spinoza. — The End. (1780-1781) . 432
 
 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 CHILDHOOD. 
 (1729-1741. Aged i-i2.) 
 
 ' What is the use of a child? 
 It may become a man.' — B. Franklin. 
 
 Norse legends tell how Thor, with a mighty flourish 
 of his hammer, cleared the murky sky of clouds and 
 made the daylight shine upon the world. There are 
 men who perform this part for their age, and though 
 we must beware of over- rating the immediate influence 
 of individuals on events, instances arise when it is 
 impossible to emphasize it too strongly. Such an 
 influence was born to Germany in the person of 
 Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Between Luther and 
 Lessing lies a barren tract of centuries ; it was 
 reserved to this powerful mind to bridge the gulf 
 between the mediaeval and the modern spirit. 
 
 Gotthold Ephraim Lessing was born at Camenz 
 in Upper Lusatia, a province of Saxony, on January 
 22, 1729. The Lessings, though of burgher extraction, 
 were able to trace their ancestors back to the six- 
 teenth century, and it is interesting to observe that 
 all Gotthold's forefathers were men of marked power, 
 
 B
 
 2 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESS INC. 
 
 rectitude, and enlightenment. They filled public 
 offices either as Lutheran pastors or magistrates ; the 
 clerical element predominated. Theophilus Lessing, 
 the grandfather of Gotthold, was burgomaster of 
 Camenz, and died there in his eightieth year, shortly 
 before the birth of his distinguished grandson. He 
 was a man of great ability. Born at the end of the 
 terrible Thirty Years' War, as he grew up his im- 
 poverished parents found themselves unable to afibrd 
 him a larger sum than two thalers wherewith to enter 
 the" University of Leipzig. Nothing daunted, he 
 fought a sturdy fight against obstacles and privations, 
 and took his doctor's degree with honours. The 
 theme which he chose for his inaugural dissertation 
 was characteristic of the Lessings : from the earliest 
 known ancestor who signed the Formula Concordice 
 tliat reunited the Protestant Church, left without a 
 helmsman at Luther's death, to the author of 
 ' Nathan ' and the editor of the ' Wolfenbiittel Frag- 
 ments.' De rdigioiium tolcrantia was its theme, its 
 matter an earnest plea for universal toleration, not 
 only of the Christian, but of all religions. 
 
 Johann Gottfried, the son of Theophilus, was 
 educated in this atmosphere of enlightenment, reve- 
 rent in its breadth, and by no means estranged 
 from tlic ancient faith. At the University he chiefly 
 studied philosophy and theology, besides Latin, 
 Greek, French, and English (the latter a rare ac- 
 complishment in those days), and finally turned to 
 oriental studies for a more critical investigation of 
 biblical literature. He was aspiring to a professorial 
 chair, when, at the age of twenty-five, he was invited 
 to fill the post of catechist and afternoon preacher to 
 his native town, and seeing a higher dispensation in
 
 CHILDHOOD. 3 
 
 this call, held it his duty to accept the offer. Hence- 
 forward he was unwearied in the fulfilment of his 
 pastoral duties ; but notwithstanding these claims, and 
 later, those of a rapidly increasing family, he found 
 time to correspond with the most eminent theologians 
 of his time, to keep himself up to their standard of 
 knowledge, to compose numerous polemical pam- 
 phlets and religious works, and to translate sundry of 
 Archbishop Tillotson's writings. Throughout all 
 these labours ran a definite thread of purpose. Gott- 
 fried Lessing was an orthodox Lutheran, but no 
 zealot ; he condemned the narrow strife of'' factions 
 and desired to see the reformed community united on 
 the broad basis of Protestantism as opposed to 
 Papacy. He hated indifference, he condemned the 
 personally abusive form of conducting arguments 
 customary among his countrymen ; moreover he feared 
 excess of zeal, and in this respect he held that English 
 theologians had found the middle way. Even free- 
 thinkers, he contended, should be treated with respect : 
 an opinion foreign to the prevalent ideas, and proving 
 how far he was in advance of his times. It was on 
 this account he translated Tillotson, intending his 
 version as a preface to a collection of similar polemi- 
 cal writings in exposition of Protestantism. His son 
 was justly proud of this. He wrote to a friend in 
 after years : * What praises would I not bestow on 
 him if he were not my father ; he was the first trans- 
 lator of Tillotson.' Theophan, the hero of Lessing's 
 youthful drama, * Der Frcigeist ' (The Freethinker), 
 the worthy pastor whose excellence and worth dis- 
 arm the odium a7iti-theologicum of the freethinker 
 Adrast, the dramatic representative of Bishop Hall's 
 axiom that ' temper is nine-tenths of Christianity,' is 
 
 B 2
 
 4 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESS INC. 
 
 a portrait of his father. Charity, right-mindedness, 
 pride of family, love of earnest study, contempt of 
 money and the luxuries which wealth can buy, 
 hatred of injustice, a hasty temper and a consequent 
 inclination to act upon impulse : all these characterised 
 the father. His irascibility was inherited by his son. 
 Whenever he was annoyed, he found himself involun- 
 tarily biting his under lip, exactly as his father had 
 done. The father saw this inherited trait with sorrow, 
 and often with tears in his eyes lamented his own 
 quickness of temper. ' I entreat of you, Gotthold,' 
 he would say, ' take example by me, and be on your 
 guard. For I fear — I fear — and I should like to think 
 I had improved in you.' His writings were distin- 
 guished by their excellent style, free from all galli- 
 cisms and other adulterations of language too common 
 in the early part of last century. He insisted on 
 historical accuracy and critical research as the touch- 
 stones of true scholarship. All this was impressed on 
 his son, whose early education he conducted ; and 
 beholding "what manner of man the father was, it is 
 not difficult to conclude what was the mental atmo- 
 sphere of the home. 
 
 It was the paternal rather than the maternal 
 influence that told on the child Lcssing, contrary to 
 the popular creed that remarkable men spring from 
 remarkable mothers. Lessing's mother was a good, 
 honest, amiable woman, in no wise above the average, 
 and narrow in her views of life, as was inevitable to 
 the daughter and wife of a country clergyman, who 
 had never been beyond the precincts of Camenz. 
 Justine Salome Feller was the daughter of the chief 
 pastor of the town, whom Gottfried Lessing eventually 
 succeeded. They were married in 1725, a year after
 
 CHILDHOOD. 5 
 
 his appointment as deacon, and in due course their 
 quiver was filled after the manner usual to the poorer 
 clergy. Frau Lessing worshipped her husband as a 
 superior being, and made him an excellent and devoted 
 wife, but she lacked the intellectual gifts tjiat could 
 have influenced her son's development The cares 
 inevitable to a large family with small means also did 
 their part to hinder any mental growth ; her influence 
 on Lessing's development was consequently insignifi- 
 cant. But as she held the reins of government in 
 her hands, she was able at times to put disturbing 
 obstacles in his path, although even these were 
 founded in deep love for the son whose character was 
 one wholly foreign to her comprehension, 
 
 Gotthold was the eldest son of his parents, and 
 though all too quickly the pastoral home was filled by 
 eleven other children, in his early youth means were 
 not so restricted, his father's time not so absorbed, 
 his cares not so deadening as they became afterwards, 
 and he could devote himself to the boy's training. 
 It was from his studious father therefore that Gott- 
 hold imbibed his first knowledge of and love for all 
 humanistic studies, establishing that mutual attach- 
 ment which survived all later divergencies. An 
 earnest religious element was the ground tone of the 
 home. Little Gotthold could hardly babble when he 
 was taught to pray ; he learnt reading out of the 
 Bible and his father's catechism, and at the age ofll 
 five he knew what, why, and how we should believe. ' 
 At morning and evening prayers he learnt many 
 hymns, and as these are among the richest and , 
 pithiest utterances of the German language, he early 
 imbibed a taste for good national poetry. The 
 parents often told their other children how easily and
 
 6 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 gladly Gotthold learnt, and how, even for amusement, 
 he would delight in turning the leaves of a book 
 before he could read them. Here again may no 
 doubt be traced the example set by his diligent father. 
 When he was five years old, the pastor engaged a 
 cousin, Christlieb Mylius, as his private tutor. This 
 circumstance alone proves that money troubles had 
 not begun to burden the family beyond measure. 
 Both father and mother wished their son to repair to 
 the University in due course ; indeed here their views 
 were in accord. As a pastor's wife and daughter, 
 Frau Lessing thought it a moral duty that at least 
 her eldest son should follow in the traditional foot- 
 steps and take orders. The parents held no sacrifice 
 too great that would ensure this result. 
 
 Gotthold's evident capacity and love of learning 
 were a source of real pleasure to them, and when, in 
 1737, Mylius was removed from Camenz, the boy was 
 sent at the tender age of eight to the public grammar- 
 school. Here he continued to distinguish himself, 
 and enlarged his views of life bej'ond the intentions 
 of his father. 
 
 The rector, a certain Heinitz, had been appointed 
 shortly before Lessing's entrance. He was a young 
 man of open mind, taking keen interest in all scientific 
 and literary studies, and was connected with the 
 young Germany of the day, whose head-quarters were 
 at Leipzig. To the horror of Camenz, he defended 
 the abhorred stage as an educator and a school of 
 declamation. The town was scandalized, the magis- 
 trates reprimanded, Pastor Lessing denounced the 
 rector from the pulpit as a dangerous tutor of youth. 
 The consequences were inevitable. Having taken 
 this step, Pastor Lessing was forced to remove his
 
 CHILDHOOD. 
 
 son from the school ; but not before the boy had 
 eagerly imbibed some of his master's extended ideas. 
 
 It seems almost ludicrous that the future champion 
 and reformer of the stage should have been taken 
 from school lest he should contract these very notions, 
 which subsequently bore fruit a hundredfold. 
 
 Meanwhile another event had helped to bend the 
 twig into its destined shape. In 1739 an artist, and 
 by Lessing's testimony no mean one, strayed into the 
 remote town of Camenz, and was commissioned to 
 paint the pastor's eldest sons, Gotthold and Theo- 
 philus. The artist proposed to represent Gotthold with 
 a bird-cage. This proposal roused all his youthful 
 ire. ' You must paint me with a big, big heap of 
 books,' he exclaimed, ' but I would rather not be 
 painted at all.' He was so determined that his wishes 
 were respected, and the future librarian was portrayed 
 holding an open book on his knee, while his right 
 hand points to a pile lying at his feet. Theophilus, 
 the future preacher, is dressed in black, and feeds a 
 lamb. Gotthold, modishly dressed in red, is a child of 
 open countenance, high, wide forehead, honest mouth 
 and broad energetic nose, who cannot be called beau- 
 tiful, but in whose face and bearing there is something 
 vivacious, speaking, firm, and unaffected. The artist 
 was engaged as drawing-master to the boy, and from 
 him Gotthold derived his earliest knowledge of art 
 and its principles. 
 
 Thus, even in the small town of Camenz, with its 
 circumscribed interests and arid mental atmosphere, 
 could be laid the foundation-stones of the future 
 polemical, aesthetic, and dramatic writings, that were 
 destined to work mighty reforms in their several 
 departments of thought.
 
 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESS INC. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 BOYHOOD, 
 
 (1741-46. Aged 12-17.) 
 
 ' Character is nature in the highest form Care is taken that the 
 
 greatly destined shall slip 7ip into life in the shade, with no thousand-eyed 
 Atliens to watch and blazon every new thought, every blushing emotion of 
 voung genius.' — EMERSON. 
 
 On' thus finding himself, as he deemed, under a moral 
 compulsion to withdraw his boy from the grammar 
 school of his native town, Pastor Lessing obtained for 
 him a nomination to the Fiirstcnsdiulc of St. Afra, at 
 Meissen. While waiting admission, Gotthold was sent 
 to study with a relative, Pastor Lindner, of Putzkau, 
 a former scholar of the institution. Lessing matricu- 
 lated as ahivinits on June 21, 1741 : a day which 
 St. Afra celebrated one hundred years after with 
 great honours. 
 
 Meissen is best known for the porcelain factory 
 that produces the valued Dresden ware. A hundred 
 years ago it was also celebrated as the site of one of 
 the three great Saxon schools, founded by the Pro- 
 testant hero. Elector Maurice, with the property of 
 suppressed convents. The institution preserved some 
 monastic characteristics ; its regulations savoured of 
 the cloister, food and clothing were gratuitous, and 
 though some pupils paid small entrance fees, a large
 
 BOYHOOD. 
 
 number were received free of expense on the nomina- 
 tion of patrons. The original design of the founder 
 had been to train efficient champions of the Reforma- 
 tion, and when the EvangeHcal cause had triumphed, 
 and such were no longer needed, the school developed 
 into a nursery for theologians and Lutheran pastors. 
 The curriculum naturally tended to this end, in ac- 
 cordance with the expressed wish of Luther, who 
 desired that language and knowledge should serve as 
 bulwarks of the faith. ' Through orthodox learning, 
 to the glory of God and the spread of His Gospel,' 
 was the motto of the institution. 
 
 In Lessing's case, the mental atmosphere of St. 
 Afra was but a continuation of that of home. It 
 instilled the doctrinal spirit of Pastor Lessing, and 
 would therefore, he hoped, further his intention that 
 Gotthold should be a theologian. The boy himself 
 does not appear to have thought about this ultimate 
 career. In his studies he merely follov/ed his bent, 
 and though these by and by led him to ignore his des- 
 tination, he did so quite unconsciously. This apparent 
 carelessness of and for the future is most charac- 
 teristic of the man. In thought, as in deeds, he 
 suffered matters to take their course and pursue their 
 natural development, unthwarted by the fear of con- 
 sequences. His nature was independent and self 
 reliant ; he held by the good and acted up to it for its 
 own sake. It is this strongly marked individualism 
 that constitutes the nobility of his character v he trusted 
 himself with childlike confidence to the leadings of 
 his inner bias, which prevented any discord between 
 his life and deeds. 
 
 At St. Afra he was removed from all material 
 anxieties, such as were beginning to press in the over-
 
 lo COTTHOI.D EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 filled parsonage : the plan of the institution annulled 
 distinctions between rich and poor, A hundred and 
 twenty boys lived together on terms of perfect 
 equality. It was a small republic in its best form. 
 Opinion was circumscribed by the school walls ; the 
 everyday world and its interests unknown or ignored ; 
 the social conditions of Greece and Rome more eagerly 
 discussed than those of Saxony ; dead languages more 
 cultivated than living; and religious observances placed 
 above all else. Latin was the cherished study ; Greek 
 only so far as it elucidated the New Testament. 
 Modern languages and mathematics were included in 
 the programme, but so much time was absorbed by 
 Latin, chapels, and biblical expositions, that very little 
 was left for other things. The German language and 
 literature were entirely disregarded. 
 
 ' You would not count knowing German as 
 one of your acquirements .'' ' Lessing asks satirically 
 in the ' Junge Gelchrtc', indicating how early he re- 
 cognized the absurdity of discarding the mother 
 tongue. 
 
 But for all this rigid curriculum, it was possible 
 here, as at all public schools, for an industrious lad to 
 strike out a path for himself. The first two years 
 Lessing scrupulously followed the prescribed course, 
 taking high places in his form, and rising with unex- 
 ampled rapidity. ' A good bo}', but somewhat satiri- 
 cal,' was the note appended to his name by a school 
 inspector, and the Conrector remarked to Theophilus 
 on his entry, * Be as industrious as your brother, but 
 not so pert.' Both remarks prove that Lessing exhi- 
 bited all the faults as well as the virtues of cleverness. 
 The growth of mental power is of its very nature 
 aggressive, though in Lessing's case it v/as free from
 
 BOYHOOD. II 
 
 the too common accompaniment of arrogance. The 
 conrector, however, had a petty spite against Lessing. 
 It was the rule that every master should live a week 
 in the house, to superintend in person and to conduct 
 the morning, afternoon and evening prayers. A 
 general meeting of masters was held every Saturday, 
 and was attended by the class monitors. The rector 
 asked one day why during that whole week the 
 pupils had all been late for prayers. No one replied. 
 Lessing, one of the monitors on that occasion, had 
 the indiscretion to whisper to his neighbour, ' I know 
 why.' The rector overheard ; he had perhaps counted 
 on Gotthold's candour, and bade him speak. ' The 
 conrector is not punctual,' was his straightforward 
 reply, ' so everyone thinks that prayers will not begin 
 when the clock strikes.' ' Admirable Lessing ! ' ex- 
 claimed the conrector, who could not deny the 
 charge ; and from that day Lessing retained this name 
 among his comrades, and was put down in the black 
 books of his master, who until then had rather 
 favoured him, because of his diligence in classical 
 studies, the department in which he taught. 
 
 The autumn examinations of 1743 show how far 
 Lessing had advanced beyond his comrades, and it 
 was then that he began to strike out an independent 
 course of studies. 
 
 ' My industry kept me from boyish misdemeanours,' 
 he wrote ; and this industry was indeed prodigious. 
 One of the masters, J. A. Klemm, exercised great in- 
 fluence over him. He was an indifferent pedagogue^ 
 whose shy, awkward manner failed to command 
 respect, but he was an accomplished scholar, kind and 
 generous-hearted, free from pedantry and class preju- 
 dice, and delighted to aid any boy who cared for him
 
 12 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESS INC. 
 
 and his favourite pursuits. It was not long before 
 Lcssing recognized his worth. Midnight often found 
 them together in the master's study, exchanging 
 thoughts about classical authors and the means and 
 ends of learning. This intercourse revealed to Lessing 
 how little real knowledge he possessed, how much he 
 had still to acquire, that Latin, Greek, French, Eng- 
 lish, and Italian were but the tools of learning, not 
 the thing itself ; ideas rankly heterodox at St. Afra, 
 where the letter was held supreme. Klemm often 
 said, ' A scholar who does not know philosophy and 
 '" mathematics is not worth much.' Forthwith Lcssing 
 plunged into Euclid, and with such zeal that he even 
 translated the second, third, and fourth books. Its 
 appeal to reason fascinated him and saved him from 
 stranding on the quicksands of quibbling scholasti- 
 cism towards which he had shown danger of drifting. 
 He also began to write a poem, ' On the Plurality of 
 Worlds.' A few fragments and a criticism by himself 
 have been preserved. 
 
 * The new theories of Whiston and Huygens' " Cos- 
 motheoros " had filled my imagination with concep- 
 tions and pictures that seemed the more enchanting 
 that they were wholly new to me. I saw tliey were 
 more capable of poetical dress than any other philo- 
 sophical matter. But the art of working my material 
 was lacking. I rhymed my thoughts together in a 
 somewhat mathematical manner ; here and there a 
 metaphor, here and there a digression.' Then Fonte- 
 nelle's dialogues on the same theme fell in his way, 
 and he was ashamed of his audacious attempt. The 
 fragment however contains some noble words that do 
 honour to his mental development. The last stanza of
 
 BOYHOOD. 13 
 
 the poem, and especially the last line, is worthy to 
 rank beside his later saying. 
 
 Beherzter ah Coloinb, trat ich den Luftweg an, 
 Wo leichtcr als zur Sec die Kiihnheit scheitern kann, 
 Mag dock die Sinnlichkeit dcs frommejt Frevels fliichen ! 
 Genug, die scheitern schon, die schcitcriid Welten stichen. 
 
 Klemm's intelligent study of the Greek and Latin 
 writers, inciting to an understanding of their hidden 
 soul, taught Lessing to enter into their spirit, besides 
 following their grammatical structure of phrase, and 
 gave him his peculiar insight into the life of the an- 
 cients. He read authors not usually perused at St. 
 Afra. * Theophrastus, Plautus, and Terence were my 
 world, which I studied leisurely within the narrow con- 
 fines of a monastic school .... and I must confess, at J 
 the risk of being ridiculed, that of all forms of litera- / 
 ture, comedy was the one I attempted first. In those j 
 years, when I only knew men from books, I busied 
 myself in picturing foolish beings, whose existence was 
 indifferent to me.' The ' Jiuige GdcJirte (Young 
 Scholar) is the only one of these dramas that has sur- 
 vived, and this was merely sketched at Meissen. 
 
 The scanty German literature of the period was also 
 put into his way by Klemm, and he appears to have 
 read the current journals that recorded the squabbles 
 of the antagonistic literati. The time of Lessing's 
 youth coincided with a blind groping for the literary 
 daylight which was to be shed abroad by the clear- 
 sighted boy now studying the attempts of his elders. 
 To try his hand at the fashionable imitations, he wroteN 
 some clever Anacreontic odes. Neither then nor later J 
 did he produce for production's sake. It was to clear
 
 14 COTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 his own mind of doubts, to put difficulties visibly 
 before himself, that he gives them written shape. He 
 Fhesitatcs, he reproaches himself, makes suggestions 
 and arrives at a result. Of this character was a ' New 
 Year's Address,' written in 1743 to his father; the 
 \ theme, ' That one year resembles another,' was 
 \to prove to his parents the fallacy of their now too 
 'constantly recurring complaints of the increasing 
 hardness of the times. The boy defends his theories 
 in a scholastic manner, adduces biblical proofs, refers 
 i,to Solomon and his vanity of vanities, contends that 
 ' human nature is the same throughout all time, and 
 that therefore neither a golden nor a leaden age is 
 possible. All these remarks might be held mere 
 truisms, only they were in opposition to current ideas 
 which considered happiness in the light of an external 
 gift and not as an often painfully acquired possession. 
 Therefore, for all fts formal precocity, the essay is 
 remarkable as a revelation of the severe inner accord 
 which Lessing had so early attained, not by any means 
 a mere resigned submission, but a contented acquies- 
 cence in the things that be. By thus working out his 
 perplexities he extended his mental vision beyond the 
 confines of the school, and saw that the narrow limits 
 of St. Afra had engendered a bias towards pedantry. 
 To recognize a fault was to amend it ; and to bring 
 about this result he sketched the * Jungc Gcichrte,' 
 a play wherein he relentlessly lashed his own tenden- 
 cies, even to the congratulatory address sent to his 
 father. 
 
 ' I think,' he writes, ' that it was thanks to my 
 choice of subject that I did not quite fail with this 
 play. A young pedant was the only kind of simpleton 
 (" Narr ") that was not at that time utterly unknown
 
 BOYHOOD. 15 
 
 to me. Reared among this vermin, was it astonishing 
 that my first satirical weapons were turned against 
 them ? ' 
 
 A letter to his sister, also of 1743, contains the 
 last trace of a didactic spirit, and is a comical mix- 
 ture of old-fashioned sophistry and healthy gravity. 
 
 * Dearest Sister, 
 
 ' Though I have written to you, you have not 
 answered me. I am therefore obliged to think that 
 either you cannot write or you will not, and I am 
 inclined to believe the former ; however, I will also 
 believe the other — you will not write. Both are cul- 
 pable. Still, I cannot understand how two such things 
 should be compatible : to be a reasonable being, to be 
 able to speak sensibly, and at the same time not to 
 know how to compose a letter. Write as you speak, 
 then you will write well. Yet, even if the contrary' 
 were the case, and it were possible to speak sensibly 
 without being able to write sensibly, the shame would 
 be still greater, that you had not even learnt as much 
 as that. It is true you ran away very early from 
 your schoolmaster, and in your twelfth year you held 
 it a disgrace to learn any more ; but who knows 
 which is the greater disgrace — to learn still in your 
 twelfth year, or to be unable to write a letter in your 
 eighteenth or nineteenth .'' Pray write and rid me of 
 this mistaken opinion about you. I must just allude 
 to the New Year, of which I am reminded. Almost 
 everyone speaks good wishes at this season. But 
 what shall I wish you .'* It must be something 
 special. I wish that your whole mammon may be 
 stolen. It might be a better service to you than if
 
 f 
 
 1 6 GO TT HOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 some one were to add one hundred ducats to your 
 purse at New Year.' 
 
 * Your faithful brother, 
 
 'G. E. Lessing. ■ 
 'Meissen: Dec. 30, 1743.' 
 
 The examinations of 1744 again showed Lessing 
 far advanced beyond the average, so that in 1745 he 
 was already in the first form, where, according to the 
 rules of the institution, he must remain another fifteen 
 months. He felt he had outgrown the school. It 
 fretted him to stay in a sphere which he had exhausted^ 
 and he therefore implored his father to obtain his 
 dismissal. The Rector's report confirmed his judg^ 
 ment : ' He is a horse that needs double rations. 
 The lessons which others find too hard are child's 
 play to him : we can scarcely do with him any more.' 
 Pastor Lessing unwillingly acceded to his son's 
 repeated requests, and craved permission to remove 
 him. The governors refused. Pastor Lessing was 
 not the man to interfere with established rules. 
 Gotthold was told he must bide out his term. 
 I The second Silesian war, conducted by Frederick 
 .' the Great against Maria Theresa, was then agitating 
 Saxony. In December 1745, Meissen was aroused 
 out of its calm existence by thundering cannons, and 
 the lurid light of burning villages. Old Dessauer, as 
 the Prussians fondly named their general, had forced 
 Meissen to surrender, defiling his troops through the 
 town. Hussars and infantry filled its streets ; flying 
 parties scoured backwards and forwards on the Dres- 
 
 ' The sister had ah-eady shown the miserly disposition that dis- 
 tinguished her in after years.
 
 BOYHOOD. 17 
 
 den road. The young king remained in the place, 
 awaiting news with feverish anxiety. Late at night 
 on the 15th, an officer brought tidings that the alhed 
 Saxons and Austrians had been routed on the field of 
 Kesseldorf. Whereupon the disturbers marched to the 
 deserted capital to conclude the Peace of Dresden, 
 by which Silesia was ceded to Frederick. .....^^ 
 
 Lessing took a lively interest in all this military ) 
 hubbub that had suddenly broken into his tranquillity, i 
 It was his first peep into active life, and could not 
 be hidden even from sequestered St. Afra, whose 
 monotonous course the turmoil of war had subverted. 
 Three-fourths of the scholars were sent home and 
 did not return for fear of infection. Provisions had 
 also run scarce. Lessing received a commission from 
 his father to celebrate in verse the bravery of the 
 defeated Saxons, as a compliment to Lieutenant 
 Carlowitz, his nominator at St. Afra. He obeyed, 
 but the poem was not to the pastor's satisfaction, 
 whereupon he was told to write another. He replies 
 to this, February i, 1746 : 
 
 ' Most Honoured Father, 
 
 ' The undeserved praise which you have given 
 me for the poetical missive to the Lieutenant-Colonel 
 von Carlowitz incites me to take the subject in hand 
 again, though against my inclination, to make, as you 
 desire, a shorter and, if I can, a better one ; though, 
 to be frank with you, when I consider the time I have 
 already spent and must now still spend on the poem, 
 I am forced to reproach myself with having frittered 
 it away unprofitably. My best consolation is that it 
 is done at your desire. 
 
 ' You do right to pity poor Meissen, which resembles 
 
 C
 
 1 8 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSIXG. 
 
 a grave more than its former self. Everything is full 
 of stench and filth, and those who need not enter it 
 remain as far away from it as they possibly can. In 
 most of the houses there still lie from thirty to forty 
 wounded men, and no one dare go very near them, 
 because all who are at all seriously hurt have raging 
 fevers. It is providential that these fatal circum- 
 stances have occurred during the winter, because, if it 
 were summer, the plague would certainly rage ; and 
 who knows what may still happen .'* We will trust in 
 God and hope the best. But in all the town I do not 
 think a place looks more miserable than our school, 
 when its former aspect is remembered. Formerly all 
 was life here ; now it is inanimate. Formcrlv it was 
 an unusual thing to see one healthy soldier inside the 
 walls ; now there arc heaps of wounded, who cause no 
 little discomfort. The Coenaculum is transformed into 
 shambles, we are forced to dine in the little Audit- 
 orium. The scholars who are gone away are as little 
 inclined to return for fear of falling ill, as the rector 
 is inclined to reinstate the tables that have been given 
 up. As far as I am concerned, it is the more annoy- 
 ing to me to have to remain here, that you even seem 
 determined to leave me here during the summer, 
 when things will probably be ten times worse. I do 
 think the reasons that urge you could be easily 
 removed. Yet I do not like to waste any more 
 words over a matter I have .so often pressed upon }-ou, 
 and which, in short, you do not wish. I assure myself, 
 meanwhile, that you understand my welfare better 
 than I do. And in this assurance, even if }^ou adhere 
 to your refusal, I shall continue always, as is my duty, 
 to love and honour you as my father. The ear-ache 
 that has distressed me some little time so confuses
 
 BOYHOOD. 19 
 
 my head, that I am unable to write more. I there- 
 fore conclude, once more assuring you that during 
 my whole life I shall always remain 
 
 'Your most obedient son, 
 
 ' G. E. Lessing.' ' 
 
 Not even the dangers to which his son was exposed 
 by remaining at Meissen could shake the pastor's 
 submission to rules. Still, he appears to have made 
 another application, for Lessing's dismissal \^fe4l^ last 
 granted in June ^74^, when he left the school, read^r^ 
 as his farewell dissertation, an essay/ ^/i;- MatJieinatica 
 BaTbaroruni. y 
 
 ' This letter ia the original is more formal, as Lessing employs the 
 deferential ' Sie,' and not the familiar 'Du:' a fine distinction lost in 
 the English ' You.'
 
 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY. 
 
 (1746-48. Aged 17-19.) 
 
 • Sein personliches Wohl opfcrt er don objektivem Zweck ; er kann eben 
 nichi anders, weil dort win Ernst l/egi. Dass crnickt sick und seine Sache 
 SHcht, dies macki ihn, untcr alien Umstdnden, gross.' — SCHOPENHAUER. 
 
 Lessing entered the University of Leipzig (Sep- 
 tember 1746) by the help of one of the hundred 
 stipends annexed to the FiirstcnscJuUe. His parents 
 still expected him to study theology, though he had 
 very decidedly told them, during his short residence at 
 home, that neither his talents nor his inclinations lay 
 in that direction. 
 
 A new world was opened to the youth. Reared 
 in the .seclusion of a monastic school, he was by an 
 abrupt transition plunged into the stirring and many- 
 sided life of a city ; for Leipzig, though small in area, 
 possessed all the characteristics of a capital. Its 
 University took a foremost rank. A medireval cor- 
 poration, the established dogmas only were taught, and 
 new lights were forced to penetrate obliquel}'. But the 
 town had been for a quarter of a century the scene 
 of Gottsched's literary activity. It was also abusy com- 
 mercial centre. Moreover, it was the scene of the 
 annual book fair {Jubilatc-Messc), that patriarchal 
 form of lit«rary intercourse which railroads and tele-
 
 THE UNIVERSITY. 21 
 
 graphs have not superseded in our day, and which in 
 Lessing's made it a unique intellectual centre. 
 
 No wonder it somewhat bewildered Lessing, ac- 
 customed to the jog-trot of Meissen and the Little 
 Pedlingtonianisms of Camenz. At St. Afra there 
 had been no distinctions between rich and poor, 
 neither privation nor luxury were known in its 
 cloisters ; here both presented themselves with their 
 attendant hardships and temptations, and the youth 
 who had only known the world through books, who 
 had left school in the firm conviction that happiness 
 consisted in books alone, found himself plunged into 
 a miniature world. He was young and strong, full of 
 vigorous animal spirits, his powers of enjoyment un- 
 impaired, his receptive capacities enormous ; he had 
 dabbled in many studies, he was possessed with an 
 ardent desire to know everything ; moreover, his filial 
 duties were at conflict with his desires. Is it astonish- 
 ing he had to look about him first and understand his 
 surroundings before he could bring himself to submit 
 to the restriction of a definite Faculty .-' 
 
 Imbued by Klemm with a love for genuine learn- 
 ing, he beheld with scorn the perfunctoriness of 
 University training tolerated at Leipzig. Scholar- 
 ship was degraded to a trade. The subjects treated 
 by the respective professors were not defined ; they 
 lectured first on one theme, then on another, reading 
 up for the purpose, and the inevitable result was 
 superficiality. In those days there was no generally 
 cultured, as opposed to a professional, class. National 
 education had still to develop out of school learning. 
 The resulting narrow and heavy pedantry, united to 
 ludicrously pompous observances, roused all Lessing's 
 innate spirit of sarcasm. Theology was represented
 
 2 2 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESS INC. 
 
 by a humdrum unattractive orthodoxy, and there 
 were few men of real power to give distinction to the 
 University. Foremost among these were J. A. Ernesti 
 and J. F. Christ. Ernesti was the pioneer who 
 brought philological research to bear upon Scripture 
 and paved the way to a sound critical knowledge of 
 the Bible. An elegant Latin and Greek scholar, he 
 enforced the proposition which Lessing had already 
 heard from Klemm, that the ancients must be re- 
 garded from the standpoint of their age : a truism 
 now-a-days, but not then. He changed a study of 
 language into a study of thoughts. Christ was the 
 founder of artistic archaeology, the forerunner of 
 Winckelmann. He possessed all the needful accom- 
 plishments for this study, being himself an artist, a 
 critic, an erudite scholar, and a man of independent 
 thought. The classes of these men alone attracted 
 Lessing, but even they failed to make him a regular 
 attendant at lectures. 
 
 It was not youthful conceit on Lessing's part that 
 made him unable to settle upon any faculty, still less 
 was it indolence. Work was life and nourishment to 
 him. Only he could never work according to rule, or 
 at what he did not himself approve. A youth like 
 Lessing, qualified for independent study and compe- 
 tent to seize rapidly the gist of a subject, finds the 
 small doses of knowledge doled out at lectures highly 
 distasteful. This is often the case with men of un- 
 usual powers. Their minds are singularly antipathetic 
 to a systematic college course, such as must exist in 
 any institution adapted to the average capacity. To 
 such men even an indifferent book is of more use than 
 lectures, because affording exercise for the faculty of 
 selection. Lectures irked Lessing's impatient spirit, so
 
 ^ 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY. 23 
 
 he amassed books and read eagerly. The writings of 
 Wolf specially interested him. This learned scholar 
 was decried for metaphysical heresies ; but Lessing, 
 ever unawed by popular outcries, knew how to value 
 the courageous independent spirit who became a con- 
 necting link between Leibnitz and Kant. Moreover, 
 Wolf wrote German. He was the first professor who 
 ventured to discuss literary and philosophic topics in 
 his mother tongue, an innovation which Leibnitz had 
 
 \ advocated in polished Latin. The masculine national 
 speech was relegated ' to the horses ' quite in accord- 
 ance with the ideas of Charles V. 
 
 Thus, buried in his books, following no definite 
 
 1 study, Lessing lived for a few months in greater 
 retirement than at Meissen. But this isolation did 
 
 ^' not last. The scales fell from his eyes : he perceived 
 that books might make him learned, but would never 
 make him a man. He therefore ventured out of his 
 study among his fellows, and instantly saw his unlike- 
 ness to them. His manners were boorishly timid, his 
 movements uncouth, he even feared that his bashful- 
 ness gave him an air of misanthropy. A feeling of 
 shame hitherto unknown stole over him, and with the 
 perception of his failings, the stern resolve to be rid 
 of them at any cost. To the perplexity of his father, 
 to the horror of his mother, he learnt to dance, ride, 
 fence and leap, and soon distanced his companions 
 in agility. This encouraged him ; no longer awkward, 
 he could now seek society to acquire toiirmire. Books 
 were laid aside for a time, while he plunged into the 
 distractions offered by a city, and all too soon found 
 himself involved in debt, for his slender theological 
 stipend would not permit the amusements of a 
 cavalier. But economy was impossible to Lessing,
 
 24 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESS1^G. 
 
 who regarded money with his father's indifference. 
 He did not let the need of it deter him now, and un- 
 daunted by the price of admission, he soon made the 
 theatre his chief resort. The world he had hitherto 
 found in Plautus and Terence was now presented by 
 the living drama. His love for the stage once 
 awakened, soon acquired such complete possession 
 of him that every idea that came into his head took 
 dramatic shape. 
 
 His study was now real life. He thirsted to 
 enlarge and correct his knowledge by actual experi- 
 ence. He had the gift of extracting the essential out 
 of every new situation. It is a mistake to examine 
 /■ too minutely the educational influences brought to 
 / bear on a great mind, for a great mind contains its 
 own centre of gravity. Such constant oscillation 
 between secluded study and a many-coloured worldly 
 life was a distinctive peculiarity of Lessing's. It was 
 a part of the inner unrest that impelled him to 
 investigate all phases of life. His very studies were 
 alive to him ; he took hold of them for themselves, not 
 for what they could do for him. He felt the craving 
 to impart his reading, to jostle with his fellow men 
 and sharpen his faculties by reciprocal incitement. 
 A student who shared his lodging had been a con- 
 genial comrade so long as Lessing was buried in his 
 books, but drew back from him when he began to 
 haunt the theatre, that resort of vice and depravity. 
 About this time Lessing became acquainted with 
 J. C. Wcisse, who was also stage-struck. Hardly a 
 day passed that they did not meet. In summer they 
 took long walks together, and their evenings were 
 chiefly passed in the theatre. 
 
 Weisse and Lessing at first attended the same
 
 THE UNIVERSITY. 25 
 
 lectures ; but very soon Lessing began to shift from 
 one class into another, dissatisfied with all, and he 
 often persuaded Weisse to play truant with him. 
 Professor Kastner's classes became the only ones he 
 eventually attended with regularity. Kastner's friend- 
 ship and teaching took the place of Klemm's. Like 
 Klemm, he was a man of many-sided culture, and 
 possessed the art of attracting clever youths. For 
 these he arranged a debating club, of which J. K. 
 and J. A. Schlegel, Zacharia, and other men after- 
 wards well known, were members. Lessing w^as the 
 most ardent and constant speaker. The exercise 
 evoked his polemical vigour, aided him to shake off 
 the trammels of tradition, and called his logical 
 faculties into exercise. C hristlob My lius, a brother X 
 of his early tutor, also belonged to this circle. He 
 was seven years Lessing's senior, a man of keen 
 though ill-regulated talents, w^ho w^as held in bad 
 repute at the University on account of his doubtful 
 moral character, his bearish manners, and slovenly 
 person. It was a disdain of all conventional fitness, 
 as well as poverty, that made him constantly appear 
 with shoes trodden down at heel and ragged coats. 
 He had no settled lodging, and, pariah himself, asso- 
 ciated with pariahs in the shape of actors and 
 actresses. Moreover, his want of resources and his 
 facility of pen had led him to start a periodical, 
 ' the Freethinker,' which increased his bad repute by 
 the advanced opinions it expressed. Lessing con- 
 tended that this paper was wholly guiltless of offence 
 towards morality and religion, but he was already 
 beginning to regard the exercise of Christian virtues 
 as antagonistic to, rather than harmonious with, rigor- 
 ous formalism. Such, however, were not the views
 
 26 GOTTHOLD EPHKAIM LESS INC. 
 
 of the period, and it was a bold step for a youth to 
 put himself under the patronage of Mylius, who 
 alread)-, two }-ears before the publication of the 
 ' Freethinker,' had scandalized Leipzig by an ex- 
 planation of the retrogression of the shadow on the 
 dial of Ahaz, deduced from natural causes. But 
 Lessing was indifferent to any prejudices. In his 
 social intercourse, as in all else, he rebelled against 
 conventional trammels. He was not slow to recog- 
 nise the real worth concealed under Mylius' unattrac- 
 tive exterior, and soon found his acquaintance to act 
 like a mental tonic. In his companionship he read 
 the English liberal theologians, studied natural history 
 and physics, and became acquainted with PVau 
 Neuber. 
 
 This woman ' of manly intellect,' as Lessing after- 
 wards called her, was really the founder of the German 
 theatre, which she raised from a state of veritable 
 barbarism. She was the nrst actress who had any 
 idea of poetry and tragic action. As a girl she had 
 joined a company of strolling players, and upon its 
 dissolution reorganized them under her own manage- 
 ment and went to Leipzig, where she conducted a 
 theatre with brilliant success. Gottsched and his 
 school brought out their plays on her boards, and in 
 concert with the dictator she banished the harlequin- 
 ades, which till then had proved the chief attraction 
 of the stage. Lessing was soon a favourite in her 
 green-room, and learnt from the actors the stage 
 business and the stage routine which no books can 
 teach. Yet, though so young and wholly inexperi- 
 enced, he took the players' verdict not as final, but as 
 a starting point for independent investigation, and so 
 intuitively did he recognise the first principles of
 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY. 27 
 
 histrionic art, that very soon actors came to him for 
 instruction and advice. It was quite understood at 
 the theatre that young I.essing should be appealed to 
 in difficult matters, and one of the troupe afterwards 
 acknowledged that he owed much of his success to 
 this assistance. Many a time Lessing would declaim 
 and gesticulate his characters, teaching him to see 
 their varied capacities of treatment. At last these 
 theatrical connections began to tax Lessing's slender 
 purse too heavily ; still he and Weisse would rather 
 eat dry bread than be absent a single evening from 
 the play. But even this did not avail, so to procure 
 themselves a free pass they translated^ several French 
 dramas, and among them Marh^ji^v'c; < Tjg.nnib^aJ,' a j \' 
 pattern of the fashionable Alexandrines and artificial j 
 treatment of the period. Weisse next attempted an" 
 original play founded on Petronius' ' Matron of 
 Ephesus,' and Lessing, who loved contests, and was" 
 stimulated by them, also tried his hand on this sub- 
 ject. This frivolous and licentious drollery evidently 
 possessed a certain attraction for Lessing, for he 
 made three different sketches of the theme, but they 
 none of them approached the original, because they 
 attempted to import a moral lesson into what was 
 avowedly only a libertine 7V// d esprit. 
 
 These sketches, together with a large number of 
 other plays projected by him, are still extant. He_ 
 used to plan the acts and scenes of his dramas withv 
 great care, and only fill in the framework when re- 
 quired for press ; for though he conceived with ease, 
 he elaborated with effort. Of these fragments more 
 than fifty are extant, and many date from this period. 
 He turned to the English playwriters for models, 
 and contemplated a comedy founded on Wycherly's
 
 23 GOTTIIOLD EPHRAIM LESS INC. 
 
 ' Country Life' But these were not the only literary 
 ventures made by Lcssing. He also wrote for two 
 periodicals edited by Mylius. One of these was 
 -devoted to natural history, a department of science 
 I Mylius thoroughly understood. Lcssing's contribu- 
 l tions were Anacreontic Odes, in parody of Mylius' 
 ), essays. He pretended to prove that Anacreon was a 
 great naturalist, and had disguised his discoveries 
 under the names of love and wine. These witty and 
 vivacious verses excited and deserved attention. For 
 the other paper he wrote various lyrical poems ; ver- 
 sified theories of pleasure after the pattern of Catullus 
 • and Martial ; and all these, though imitations, bore an 
 individual stamp which lifted them above the con- 
 temporary dead level. By these poems he appeared 
 j to range himself among the Anacreontic poets of his 
 day, who were opposed to the ecstatic mysteries of 
 ■ Klopstock and his friends. But notwithstanding their 
 innocence, and the very distinctly visible effort of 
 these imitators of Anacreon, who employed his form 
 and lacked his grace and burning passion, their pro- 
 ductions were in bad repute. Gleim's Pastorals had 
 even been publicly burnt in Hamburg in 1740. To 
 declare himself a poet of this school, was therefore to 
 fly in the face of opinion, and young Lessing entered 
 his literary career by a derided road. He was how- 
 ever minded to try his hand at every form of poetical 
 composition, that he might learn its nature. 
 
 It further occurred to him to bring forward his 
 school production, ' Dcr Junge GdeJirte! The slight 
 plot was founded on fact. A young scholar, Damis, 
 sunk in learned trifling, had submitted an essay on 
 Monads, to the Berlin Academy, and confidently 
 expected to receive the prize. But the friend entrusted
 
 THE UNIVERSITY. 29 
 
 with the precious treatise had not even sent it in, 
 finding that Damis had AvhoUy misunderstood the 
 theme. Damis' dismay on learning this news is 
 comically depicted, and a little love intrigue into 
 which he is dragged against his will, enlivens and 
 complicates the action. The piece was necessarily 
 crude. Lessing's experience was narrow, his person- 
 ages were stock comedy characters, his world a 
 comedy world, where chance reigned supreme, his 
 complications were clumsily hewn through, npt cun- 
 ningly unravelled, the servants were the traditional 
 French factotums, the scenes dragged. Though the 
 dialogue was sparkling, there was a marked tendency 
 to caricature. With all these defects the play showed 
 merit. It was written in prose, in place of the stilted 
 Alexandrines introduced by Frau Neuber. Damis, 
 the pedant, is drawn with spirit. Excrescence though 
 he appears to us, he was a typical character, such as 
 walked the streets of Leipzig daily, and such as Les- 
 sing had once feared to become. This stamped the 
 play a mirror of the actual world. The dramas of 
 Gottsched's period were works of the pen, not products 
 of the intellect ; it was impossible to move freely in the 
 fetters imposed by convention. Nevertheless Lessing's 
 play showed marked symptoms of independence. With 
 all diffidence he submitted his attempt to Frau 
 Neuber's criticism. To his surprise, she not only 
 praised the play, but put it into rehearsal, called him 
 a theatrical genius, and encouraged him to proceed. 
 
 Who was happier than Lessing } He never 
 stopped to think what his good parents would say. 
 He had made out a philosophy of his own, according 
 to which theatrical labours might be made just as 
 useful and more entertaining than sermons. But his
 
 30 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESS I KG. 
 
 father knew nothing of this philosophy, and his 
 mother condemned it outright. Lessing may have 
 flattered himself that they heard nothing of his thea- 
 trical life, when he was suddenly made aware of his 
 mistake. There came a letter from the father to 
 whom some kind friend had sent a caricatured account 
 of his son's mode of life in Leipzig. It contained a 
 paternal lecture on the neglect of his academic pur- 
 pose, on the degrading intercourse with comedians, 
 on the godless friendship with the freethinker IMylius, 
 and concluded with an earnest appeal not to sacrifice 
 the die cur hie to his favourite occupations. His father 
 may also have represented to him that the magistrates 
 of Camenz would probably deprive him of his stipend, 
 destined for a student in divinity, if he persisted in his 
 present courses. 
 
 The letter disturbed Lessing greatly. He rushed 
 off to his friend Weisse ; threw the paper down on 
 the table before him and cried, * There, read that 
 — letter which I have just received from my father.' 
 Li the heat of his anger he wanted to send each of 
 the magistracy of Camenz a copy of the playbill just 
 issued, announcing the ' yiingc GclcJirtc' with the full 
 name of its author, G. E. Lessing, from Camenz. 
 Weisse pacified him as well as he could, and urged 
 him strongly not to take such a step, and for once he 
 followed advice. It does not appear how he replied 
 to his father, but the ' Jiinge GcleJirtc' was performed 
 early in January 1748, and met with great applause. 
 This would no doubt have afforded him much com- 
 pensation for the grief it gave him to displease his 
 father, had not another vexatious matter occurred. 
 
 It was the custom in Saxony for parents to give a 
 certain kind of cake called Buttcrstritzcl to their
 
 THE UNIVERSITY. 31 
 
 children at Christmas. Frau Lessing sent such a cake 
 to her son by a friend who was going to Leipzig for 
 the New Year's fair, and begged him to find out ail 
 about Gotthold's doings. This friend was much too 
 pious to have anything to say to actors and authors, 
 who would certainly not have suppressed Lessing's 
 praises. He listened to the town's talk, and learnt 
 that the pastor's son had become a playwriter, and 
 associated only with doubtful characters ; and not 
 only this, but he was able to impart the tragical news 
 that such was Lessing's depravity, he had even shared 
 his Christmas cake over a bottle of wine with a party 
 of actors. On hearing this his mother wept bitterly 
 and gave up her son as lost for time and eternity. 
 Even his more enlightened father considered him to 
 be on the brink of destruction, and held it best to 
 snatch him suddenly from the burning. He at once 
 wrote to the erring youth : ' The moment you receive 
 this, take your place in the coach and come home. 
 Your mother is at the point of death and wishes to 
 see you again before her end.' On receipt of the 
 letter, without an instant's delay, Lessing departed, 
 not even stopping to take a change of clothes with 
 him. The weather had been mild, but suddenly a 
 severe frost set in. This revived his mother's tender- 
 ness, and much as she had urged his recall, she fondly 
 hoped that this time he would not obey ; for now she 
 was anxious about him, she remembered his good kind 
 heart, his filial obedience, and the utter disregard of 
 self with which he would imdertake the journey. She 
 reproached herself, she even thought it might have 
 been better for him to continue his association with 
 freethinkers and comedians, than to be frozen in the 
 coach. She could scarcely await the hour when he
 
 32 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESS INC. 
 
 was expected, and allayed her terrors by exclaim- 
 ing, ' He will not come, disobedience is learnt in bad 
 company.' Ikit at the time expected, he entered the 
 room half frozen. He had come, and the rejoicing 
 over the safety of this beloved son, twice given up as 
 lost, mitigated the anger that had prompted this re- 
 call. The mother even reproached him with his 
 obedience. 'But why did you conic in this terrible 
 weather } ' ' Dearest mother, you desired it,' he 
 replied calmly, while his whole body shook with cold ; 
 ' I suspected at once that )'ou were not ill, and I am 
 heartily glad I was right.' In short, the scoldij^g in 
 store for him gave place to a hearty welcome, and 
 when by and by the parents' cause for disapproval 
 found words, they induced only such friendly alter- 
 cation as was inevitable from the different poyjts of 
 view from which each regarded the theatre. The 
 father looked at the real theatre of the time, the son 
 upheld the possibility of improvement. Pastor Les- 
 sing recognised that Gotthold's mind had ripened to 
 independence, and wisely discussed their differences* 
 in lieu of imposing paternal authority. • Every day 
 the father brought forward all that could be said 
 against poetry and the stage, the son defending his 
 opinions. That they did not jar seriously was owing 
 to the humour with which Lessing often dispelled his 
 father's gravity, who, though he entirely differed from 
 his son's reasoning, had too much good sense to con- 
 demn it as utterly foolish. He also saw with pleasure 
 that Gotthold's moral character was uncorrupted, and 
 that he had made great advances in all branches of 
 learning. It was however not so easy to mollify the 
 mother, whose mind was not so broad as her husband's, 
 and to whom friends expressed, in words and gesture,
 
 THE UNIVERSITY. 
 
 33 
 
 their sincere sympathy with her trial in having such a 
 freethinking son. At last he composed a sermon, to 
 prove to her that he could become a clergyman any 
 day if he only liked. 
 
 Lessing remained at Camenz until Easter, using 
 his enforced leisure to the uttermost. He ransacked 
 the library, which was not inconsiderable for a country 
 parsonage, reading theological authorities and discuss- 
 ing them with his father, who noticed with satisfaction 
 his intelligent interest in all departments of learning ; 
 unlike the poets of the pastor's fancy, who despised 
 study and could only converse on trivial themes. 
 That he had not forgotten his Leipzig interests is 
 evident, for he sketched his ' Old Maid ' during this 
 visit, and wrote some Anacreontics. One day when 
 he was out, his sister saw these poems, read them, and 
 was so scandalized that she threw them into the fire. 
 On Lessing's missing them among his papers, one of 
 the little brothers betrayed the occurrence, and few 
 people would have met it with Lessing's good-nature. 
 The first outburst of his indignation over, he con- 
 tented himself with throwing a handful of snow into 
 Justine's bosom, to cool her pious ardour, as he said, 
 was immediately reconciled, nor did he ever bear her 
 the least ill-will. 
 
 Before returning to Leipzig, Lessing once more 
 decidedly expressed his disinclination towards theo- 
 logy, but promised to devote himself more assiduously 
 to school studies, so that he might at least become a 
 professor. With this the father had to rest satisfied. 
 He paid his son's debts, and sent him back to the 
 University armed with good advice. 
 
 Lessing did indeed attend lectures more regularly, 
 but he did not give up his literary and dramatic 
 
 D
 
 34 COTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 interests. He had wholly refused to give the promise, 
 his parents had tried to exact, that he should break 
 off all connection with the theatre, and his long 
 absence had only intensified his love for the drama. 
 Morning found him at rehearsal, evening at the per- 
 formances. He studied the dramatic art with eager 
 assiduity, as if a chair of histrionics were to be founded 
 for him at Leipzig. The fragments the ' Woman Hater,' 
 suggested by acomedy of Menander, and * Jehanghir,' 
 1 his first attempt at tragedy,were commenced, and would 
 I have been completed had not a change occurred at 
 Ehe theatre. Frau Neuber lost some of her best actors, 
 her prestige began to wane, and shortly after, she saw 
 herself obliged to disband her company. This was a 
 serious blow to Lessing in more ways than one. He 
 had stood security for several of the actors, who left 
 Leipzig with their debts unpaid. The creditors 
 applied to Lessing, who was unable to meet their 
 demands. The remittances promised by the actors 
 did not arrive, and Lessing had no alternative but to 
 leave Leipzig in secret. Mylius had quitted the 
 University a short time previously for Berlin, and had 
 already urged Lessing to join him in time to see an 
 eclipse of the sun in July. These two circumstances, 
 combined with a tender interest he had felt in the 
 actress, Friiulein Lorenz, made Leipzig distasteful to 
 him. lie did not impart his intentions to anyone. 
 One day, when Weisse called on him, he was told that 
 Lessing had gone away for a few days. He had left 
 Leipzig for Wittenberg with a cousin who had been 
 visiting him. 
 
 It was Lessing's intention to stay only a few days 
 at Wittenberg, and to be at Berlin in time for the 
 eclipse. But anxiety and vexation brought on illness :
 
 THE UNIVERSITY. 35 
 
 an untoward event which complicated his difficulties, 
 and made life a burden to him. Fortunately he found 
 a home with his cousin and designed to prosecute his 
 studies in Wittenberg. He soon saw that he could 
 not afford to remain. His illness and his debts had 
 drained his resources, and determined him to carry 
 out his former project of going to Berlin. 
 
 With Lessing's departure from Wittenberg his 
 student life may be regarded as virtually ended. He 
 was firmly resolved henceforward to fight his own 
 way in the world, and trust to his own exertions for 
 support. 
 
 r>2
 
 36 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 BERLIN. 
 (1748-1751. Aged 19 22.) 
 
 ' He hated to excess. 
 With an unquiet and intolerant scorn, 
 The hollow puppets of a hollow age.' 
 
 Berlin was in many respects distinguished from 
 other German cities. After the Revocation of the 
 Edict of Nantes, the Great Elector had offered to the 
 Huguenot refugees special inducements to settle in 
 his territories. His discerning eye had recognized 
 their worth as industrial colonists, and he hoped their 
 sober intelligence would prove of educational value to 
 his somewhat barbarian subjects. Though Frederick 
 William of Prussia (his grandson), by his true German 
 feeling, differed honourably from his brother sove- 
 reigns with their admiration of French usages, he was 
 unable to grapple with these exaggerated notions of 
 foreign superiority, induced by the meteoric splendour 
 of the 'siecle de Louis XIV.,' that developed the 
 Gallomania, even now a fatal obstacle to a genuine 
 Teutonic spirit. How much more so then ! In vain 
 did the bigoted national feeling of Frederick Wil- 
 liam I. contend against the tyranny of French fashions 
 and language. It manifested itself strongly in his 
 own son, Frederick the Great, who, for all his father's 
 imocrative demands that his children should be Ger-
 
 BERLIN. 37 
 
 mans, not Frenchmen, that they should drive these 
 intruding foreigners out of the land, proved himself 
 the aptest pupil of the French philosophic school of 
 the period, and not only encouraged, but invited the 
 visits of its foremost disciples to his capital. The 
 prestige given to Frederick by the treaty of Aix-la- 
 Chapelle, and the eight years of peace that followed, 
 gave him an opportunity of indulging his literary 
 fancies. He instituted an academy of sciences con- 
 sisting entirely of foreigners, and chiefly of French- 
 men, who enjoyed his special favours. By permitting 
 unbounded freedom of discussion, he imparted to 
 Berlin a character hitherto unknown. ' Let my people 
 write, talk, think and speculate as much as they please,' 
 he would say, ' what care I, provided they obey } ' 
 * Let everyone go to heaven in his own way,' was 
 another of his favourite dicta. 
 
 The capital of such a ruler promised a congenial 
 mental atmosphere ; and this, united to Mylius' invi- 
 tations, decided Lessing to try his fortunes there. He 
 arrived in December 1748, a youth barely twenty, 
 with no friend save the decried Mylius, and no 
 resources but his undiminished stock of hope and 
 youthful powers of endurance. When his parents 
 learned his whereabout, they were even more horror- 
 struck than they had been on hearing that he wrote 
 comedies and associated with actors. What could he 
 want in this hotbed of irreligion, where he would be 
 subjected to every godless distraction and temptation, 
 while a veritable Mephistopheles was his friend and 
 guardian } They made various underhand inquiries 
 as to his conduct, and the answers received seemed 
 to them far from reassuring. Then they demanded 
 his return home.
 
 38 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 Lessing replied (January 1749) to this summons 
 by a long letter addressed to his mother, in whom he 
 rightly recognised the prime instigator of these 
 reproaches. He reviews his University career, and 
 explains his reasons for his removal to Berlin. His 
 long silence he excuses on the ground that he had 
 nothing pleasant to impart, and did not like to appear 
 constantly before his parents with petitions and com- 
 plaints, which they no doubt were as tired of reading, 
 as he was of writing them. * I could have been pro- 
 vided for long ago, if I could have presented a better 
 appearance in the matter of dress. This is so very 
 needful in a town where a man is almost entirely 
 judged by his appearance. Now it is almost a year 
 ago that you were good enough to promise me a new 
 suit of clothes : you can judge from this whether my 
 last demand was too presumptuous. You refuse it 
 me.' This refusal he is convinced is based on her 
 unjust dislike to Mylius. Will she never abandon her 
 prejudice against this man .-* He endeavours to con- 
 vince her again that he is not bound to him in any 
 way ; not entirely under his influence, as she supposes. 
 At the present moment, it is true, he owes him gratitude 
 for providing food and lodging in his bitter poverty, 
 and it is a pleasure to him to find that this unjustly 
 depreciated friend has warm adherents in, Berlin, 
 among respected and aristocratic personages. He 
 repeats his readiness to leave the city as an assurance 
 of his filial obedience, if his parents continue to desire 
 it, and will send him some money. ' Return home, 
 however, I will not,' he adds ; ' neither will I go any 
 more to universities, because my stipends would not 
 suffice to cover my debts, and because I will not ask 
 you to meet this expense. I shall certainly go to
 
 BERLIN. 39 
 
 Vienna, Hamburg, or Hanover, In all three places I 
 shall find good friends and acquaintances. .Even if I 
 do not learn anything in my wanderings, I shall learn 
 how to behave in the world. Gain enough. I shall 
 no doubt come to a place where they can use such a 
 bungler (' Flickstein ') as I am.' 
 
 The worthy parents must not be judged severely. 
 It was impossible for them to take a comprehensive 
 view of things outside the narrow range of Camenz ; 
 nor could they know that the ugly duckling who 
 caused them so much trouble was in truth a swan. 
 He awaited their reply, and busied himself with Mylius' 
 help in gaining a livelihood. 
 
 RUdiger, the proprietor of the ' Berlin Gazette,' of 
 which Mylius was the editor, commissioned Lessing 
 to arrange his library, offering him, in return, free 
 board and moderate remuneration. The library was 
 valuable and enriched Lessing's book knowledge con- 
 siderably. He further translated the 4th, 5th, and 
 6th volumes of Rollin's * History of Rome,' and 
 learnt Spanish and Italian for the same end. He 
 put the finishing touches to his poems, and began 
 several plays. He also sketched a critical essay, ' On 
 the employment of pantomime in the ancient drama,' 
 incited by the appearance of a ballet company, whose 
 performances were erroneously criticized as identical 
 with the classical pantomimes. 
 
 Meanwhile his proposal to visit Catholic Vienna 
 had redoubled his parents' uneasiness. They feared 
 it would prove but the first step to a change of re- 
 ligion. Once more he was desired to come home, 
 until a post as tutor should be found for him in the 
 University of Gottingen, where Mosheim, a friend 
 of Pastor Lessing's, was rector. This letter was
 
 40 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 accompanied b>- nine thalers. Lcssing replies under 
 date April ii, 1749 : 
 
 * Ilonoured Father, 
 
 * You still insist I should return home. You 
 are afraid that I might go to Vienna with the intent 
 of becoming a writer of comedies. You profess to 
 know that I drudge for Hcrr Riidiger and suffer 
 hunger and want. You even write to me quite openly 
 that I have written you a collection of lies about 
 opportunities of work. I beg of you for one moment 
 to put yourself in my place, and to consider how you 
 would be pained by such unfounded reproaches, 
 whose falsehood, if you only knew me a little, would 
 at once become apparent. But I am most surprised 
 that you could revive the old reproach about the 
 comedies. I have never promised that I would 
 neither write nor read any more, and you have always 
 acted much too sensibly towards me, seriously to 
 make such a demand. How can you write that I 
 bought nothing but plays in Wittenberg, since among 
 the books there probably only two could be found } 
 
 ' My correspondence with actors is quite different 
 from what you imagine. I have written to Baron 
 Seiller at Vienna, who directs all the Austrian theatres, 
 a man whose acquaintance does me no discredit, and 
 who may yet be of use to me. I have written to 
 similar persons at Danzig and Hanover, and I do not 
 think it is an)- reproach to me to be known else- 
 where than in Camenz. Do not reply to this that I 
 am only known by comedians. If these know^ me, 
 of necessity all must who see my work rendered by 
 them. I could also show you letters, for instance 
 from Copenhagen, not written by comedians, as a
 
 BERLIN. 41 
 
 proof that my correspondence does not deal merely 
 with the drama. And it is a pleasure to me to 
 extend this correspondence daily. I shall shortly 
 write to M. Crebillon at Paris, as soon as I have com- 
 pleted the translation of his " Catilina." You say my 
 manuscripts prove to you I have begun much and 
 completed little. Is that so great a wonder } 
 
 Musae secessum scribentis et otia quaerant ; 
 
 but " Nondwn Dens nobis hcBc otia fecit." And yet 
 if I were to name all that is scattered here and there 
 (I will not count my plays, since most people imagine 
 they cost as little effort as they bring honour) it would 
 still amount to something. I shall take good care 
 not to name the least of them, since they might 
 please you even less than my plays. I wish for my 
 part I had only written plays ; I should be in different 
 circumstances now. I have been well paid for those 
 that have reached Vienna and Hanover. But if you 
 will have the goodness to be patient a few months, 
 you shall see I am not idle in Berlin, nor work for 
 others. Do you fancy I do not know from whom 
 you receive such intelligence .'' that I do not know to 
 whom and how often you write about me to persons 
 who must necessarily derive a very bad opinion of me 
 from your letters .^ But I will believe that you have 
 done it for my good, and not blame you for the 
 inconvenience and vexation it has caused me. With 
 regard to the post in the Seminarium Philologicum at 
 Gottingen, I pray you to take all possible pains in 
 the matter. I promise you solemnly that as soon as 
 it is certain, I will at once come home, or go thither 
 from here. But if you know of nothing certain for 
 me, it is better I should stay here, in a place where I
 
 A2 GOTTiIOLD EPHRAIM LESSIXG. 
 
 can make my fortune, even if I should have to wait. 
 What should I do at home ? I have therefore used 
 the money you were good enough to send, together 
 with some I earned myself, in purchasing a new suit of 
 clothes, and I am now in condition to show myself, 
 and to apply personally to those whose services I 
 seek. This was more needful than for me to trouble 
 you with my useless presence at home. At present I 
 have everything I want except linen and my books. 
 I have written a list of them and expect them eagerly. 
 You may well imagine how troublesome it is to make 
 use of borrowed books ; I therefore beg this one 
 favour of you. Good clothes without sufficient linen 
 are as good as none. I beg of you, give me time till 
 Midsummer, and if by then nothing has been settled 
 in my affairs here, I will do all you desire. Permit 
 me to quote the speech Plautus puts into the mouth 
 of a father who was also somewhat dissatisfied with 
 his son : 
 
 Non optuma haec sunt neque ego ut aeqiium censeo, 
 
 Verum meliora sunt, quani quae detenima. 
 
 Seel hoc unum consolatur me atque animum meum 
 
 Quia, (jui nihil aliud, nisi quod sibi soli placet 
 
 Consulit advcrsnm Jiliii/ii, niigas agit : 
 
 Miser ex animo fit : secius nihilo facit. 
 
 Suae senectuti in acriorem hyemem parat, &c. 
 
 The ideas are so sensible, that you must agree to 
 them. Wliy should my mother make herself so 
 unhappy over me.'' It must be the same to her 
 whether I make my fortune here or there, if she 
 really wishes me well, as I certainly think. And 
 how could you imagine that even if I had gone to 
 Vienna I should change my religion .-' From this I 
 infer how prejudiced you are against me. But God
 
 BERLIN. 43 
 
 will yet, I trust, give me an opportunity of evincing my 
 love for my religion as well as for my parents. 
 
 * I remain your most obedient son, 
 
 'L.' 
 
 Notwithstanding the upright tone that pervades 
 this letter, the parents continued to attach more 
 credence to their secret informants than to their son's 
 avowals. Pastor Lessing wrote an instant reply full 
 of reproaches, intimating his doubts as to Gotthold's 
 orthodoxy and morality, and ending with the ironical 
 taunt that no doubt he desired to become a German 
 Moliere ; evidently the non plus 7iltra of reproach 
 with the worthy pastor. 
 
 Lessing replied, April 28, 1749 : 
 
 ' Honoured Father, 
 
 . * ... I await my trunk impatiently, and I once 
 more entreat you to put in the books I mentioned in 
 a former letter. I also request the bulk of my manu- 
 scripts ; also the sheets " Wine and Love." They are 
 free imitations of Anacreon, some of which were 
 made already at Meissen. I do not think the severest 
 moralist would censure them. 
 
 Vita verecunda est, Musa jocosa mihi. 
 
 Thus Martial excuses himself in a similar case, and 
 anyone who knows me at all, knows that my feelings 
 do not at all harmonize with them. Nor do they 
 deserve the epithet you bestow on them in your 
 character of stern theologian. Else the odes and songs 
 of the greatest of our poets, Hagedorn, would deserve 
 a much worse designation. In point of fact, only my 
 fancy to try my hand at all forms of poetry, has given
 
 44 GO TT HOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 them being. If we do not try wh^ph is our real sphere, 
 we may often venture into a false one, where we can 
 scarcely rise above mediocrity, while in another we 
 might have soared to a wondrous height. Perhaps 
 you may have observed that I broke off the work, 
 and grew tired of practising such trifles. 
 
 ' If I could be called a German Molicre with truth, 
 I should be assured of an eternal name. Truth to 
 speak, I have the greatest desire to earn it, but its vast- 
 ness and my impotence are two matters that would 
 stifle the greatest desires. Seneca counsels : " Omnem 
 operam impende, ut te aliqua dote notabilem facias." 
 But it is difficult to become notable in a branch in 
 which but too many have excelled. Have I done so 
 very ill if I have chosen for my juvenile works a 
 branch Avherein so few of my countrymen have tried 
 their powers } And would it not be foolish to desist 
 before I have produced masterpieces .■' I cannot 
 understand your demonstration that a playwriter 
 cannot be a good Christian. A playwriter is a man 
 who depicts vice from its comic side. Is a Christian 
 not allowed to laugh at vice ? Does vice deserve so 
 much reverence .-^ And if I were to promise to write 
 a comedy which the theologians would not only read, 
 but even praise .'* Do you hold my promise impossible .-* 
 How if I were t"o write one about the freethinkers and 
 the scoffers at your cloth } I know for certain you 
 would relax much of your severity. 
 
 ' With respects to my mother, 
 m ' Your most obedi'cnt son, 
 
 % ' Lessing.' 
 
 Still Lessing has to defend himself He writes, 
 May 30, 1749:
 
 BERLIN. 45 
 
 * Honoured Father, 
 
 * The trunk with the specified contents has come 
 safely to hand. I thank you for this great proof of 
 your goodness, and I should be more profuse in my 
 thanks if I did not unfortunately see too plainly from 
 all your letters that you have for some time been in 
 the habit of thinking meanly of me. Therefore of 
 necessity the thanks of a person whom you regard so 
 unfavourably can only be suspicious to you. What 
 am I to do .'* Shall I excuse myself elaborately } 
 Shall I abuse my calumniators, and expose their 
 weaknesses in revenge .'' Shall I call God and my 
 conscience to witness .'' If I were to demean myself 
 so far I should be employing less principle in my 
 actions than I in fact do. Time shall decide. Time 
 shall teach whether I have reverence for my parents, 
 religious convictions and virtue in my morals. Time 
 shall teach which is the better Christian, he who holds 
 the doctrines of Christianity in his memory, has them 
 oTten on his lips without comprehending them, who 
 goes to church and conforms to all usages because 
 they are customary ; or he who has once wisely 
 doubted and attained conviction by the path of in- 
 quiry, or who at least still strives to attain it. Chris- 
 tianity is not a matter to be accepted in faith from 
 one's parents. It is true most persons inherit it as 
 they do their fortune, but they show by their actions 
 what manner of Christians they are. So long as I 
 do not see one of the foremost commands of the 
 Christian religion, to love our enemies, better ob- 
 served, so long I shall doubt whether those are Chris- 
 tians who profess themselves such ^ 
 
 ' Shall I never be rid of the reproaches you make
 
 46 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 me concerning Mylius : " Sed facile ex tuis querclis 
 querelas matris agnosco, quae, licet alias pia et integra, 
 in hunc nimio flagrat odio. Nostra amicitia nihil 
 unquam aliud fuit, adhuc est et in omne tempus erit 
 quam communicatio studiorum. Illane culpari 
 potest ? Rarus imo nullus mihi cum ipso sermo inter- 
 cedit, de parentibus mcis, de officiis quae ipsis vel 
 pracstanda vel deneganda sint, de cultu Dei, de pie- 
 tate, de fortuna hac vel ilia via amplificanda, ut habeas 
 quern in illo scductorem et ad minus justa instigatorem 
 meum timeas. Cave, ne de mulicbri odio nimium par- 
 ticipes. Sed virum te sapientem scio, justum aequum- 
 que : et satis mihi constat te illud, quod scripsisti, 
 amori in uxorem amore tuo dignissimam, dedisse. 
 Veniam dabis me haec paucula latino sermone literis 
 mandasse, sunt enim quae matrem ad suspicionem 
 nimis proclivem offendere possint. Deum tamen 
 obtestor me illam maxumi facere, amare et omni 
 pietate colere." ' ' 
 
 The want of a theatre in Berlin discouraged Les- 
 sing's dramatic productiveness, and his accurate per- 
 
 ' ' But in your complaints I can easily recognise those of my mother, 
 who, though kind and just in all other matters, is unreasonably preju- 
 diced here. Our friendship never was, is, or will be other than an 
 intellectual intercourse. Is this blameworthy? Rarely, I may say 
 never, do we exchange a word about my parents, about the duties 
 which are owing or which may be refused to them, about the worship 
 of God, or piety, or this or that way of making our fortune, as you 
 seem to think when you fear that he is my seducer and my tempter to 
 unrighteous actions. Take care lest you participate too much in your 
 wife's prejudices. But I know you are a wise, just, and equitable man, and 
 I am quite sure that you wrote what you did out of love for a wife most 
 worthy of your aflection. You will forgive me for writing these few 
 things in Latin, but they might offend my mother with her too ready 
 suspicion. But I call God to witness that I most exceedingly regard, 
 love, and honour her.'
 
 BERLIN. 47 
 
 ception of the requirements of his environment showed 
 him that Berlin was not the soil for poetry. Learned 
 and critical productions were more in harmony with 
 its spirit. What if he brought these to bear upon the 
 despised drama, and by historical analysis awakened 
 a public interest in the living stage ? Nothing, he 
 contended, was more characteristic of the genius of a 
 nation than its drama. Now whoever would judge 
 the German genius by its stage, would find it displayed 
 a special facility in appropriating the productions of 
 other nations. ' We have,' he said, ' few pieces really 
 our own, and even in these a foreign element is nearly 
 always present' His own plays had been praised by 
 Frau Neuber. He had confessed that it was only 
 needful to praise him on any point to ensure his pur- 
 suing the subject with increased ardour. He pondered 
 day and night how he could manifest power in a 
 department in which as yet no German had distin- 
 guished himself. He aspired to endow Germany with 
 an original drama, but he saw it would be needful 
 first to initiate the people and instruct them to under- 
 stand the nature of the drama in its highest form. 
 
 In concert with Mylius, he commenced a quarterly 
 journal {Beitrdge sicr Historie und AiifnaJmu des 
 Theaters), to be devoted to reviews, historical sketches, 
 treatises on the arts of the poet and player ; in short, 
 every ramification of the drama was to be treated and 
 elucidated by translations of the best foreign drama- 
 tists. The Greek and Roman, and after them the 
 English and Spanish, were to be principally con- 
 sidered. 'Shakespeare, Dryden, Wycherly, Van- 
 brugh, Gibber, Congreve, are poets known to us almost 
 only by name, and yet they deserve our admiration 
 quite as much as the vaunted French poets.' A
 
 48 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 remark thrown out, that if the Germans followed their 
 natural bent in dramatic poetry, their stage would 
 resemble the English more than the French, is the 
 first indication of Lessing's defection from the law of 
 the three unities, hitherto deemed inviolable. 
 
 The first number appeared in October 1749, and 
 w^as provided with a preface setting forth its purpose. 
 The audacity of this juvenile enterprise reveals the 
 penetrating instmct with which Lessing worked, ap- 
 parently at random, and time alone taught him as 
 well as others the full significance of his energetic 
 gladiatorship. This encyclopsedic plan bore in itself 
 the seeds of destruction, but this was hastened by a 
 disagreement between Mylius and Lessing. The 
 former had declared that there was no good Italian 
 drama. Lessing considered their whole undertaking 
 disgraced by this ignorant assertion. Would not 
 everyone who knew anything of Italian literature ex- 
 claim : ' If you know the dramas of other countries no 
 better than you do the Italian stage, we may look for 
 nice things from you.' He therefore withdrew from 
 the journal after its fourth issue, and his secession 
 proved fatal to the undertaking of which he had been 
 life and soul ; but its purpose remained in his mind, 
 and he continued to prosecute researches in this direc- 
 tion. 
 
 His contributions had however gained him a cer- 
 tain notoriety, on account of the independent spirit 
 which they displayed. This tentative efibrt was 
 prompted by a positive aim. Lessing found art adrift, 
 without social or aesthetic purpose, idly copying lifeless 
 works, and sublimely ignorant of the possibility of a 
 nobler goal. The German theatre had been consider- 
 ably influenced by the English drama of the seven-
 
 BERLIN. 49 
 
 teenth century, introduced by bands of strolling 
 players. But the German genius took to itself only 
 the lawlessness and grossness of the contemporary 
 comedy, and this degenerated into the harlequinades 
 and Shrove-tide plays that disgraced the boards and 
 justified the animosity of theologians. This animosity 
 had been retained by clerical zealots after Gottsched had 
 removed the cause. For if he had purified the stage 
 till it presented nothing but the conventional character 
 borne by the masks of antiquity and the Italian comedy, 
 he had at least made it harmless. Lessing, who had per- 
 sonal experience of such opposition, ardently advocated 
 the cause of the theatre, and put forth the bold declara- 
 tion that the highest philosophical and religious truths 
 were capable of impressive representation ; nay, more, 
 that the vocation of comedy was to become a school 
 of culture for the people. On this account he insisted 
 on a healthy conception of real life in place of the 
 empty abstractions of the later dramatists, and there- 
 fore refers to the Roman playwriters as deriving their 
 materials from familiar surroundings. 
 
 Whether from having imbibed the French atmo-^ 
 sphere about him, or merely as a linguistic exercise, 
 Lessing began to write two cornedies in that language, 
 ' Jadis ' and ' Palaion,' and he projected various others 
 in German. ' But,' as he himself wrote later, ' I no 
 longer know what I intended with these scribbles • I 
 always wrote very briefly, relying on my memory, by 
 which I now see myself betrayed.' Throughout the 
 year 1750 Lessing held a temporary engagement 
 under a certain Baron Golz ; indeed he seemed to 
 take such root in Berlin that his father reproached 
 him with losing sight of the Gottingen plan. 
 
 ' You wrong me,' he replies, ' if you think I have 
 
 E
 
 50 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 changed my mind about Gottingen. I assure you 
 once more that I would go there to-morrow if it were 
 possible, not because I am now badly ofif in Berlin, 
 but because I have promised you to do so. For 
 indeed I have good hopes my fortunes will soon 
 change. The acquaintance of Baron von dcr Golz 
 has been of no little use to me in helping me to gain 
 a firmer footing, for not only have I earned about 
 thirty thalers, but he has also introduced me to several 
 of his friends, who at any rate have given me a heap 
 of promises. These are not to be despised, provided 
 they do not always remain promises. I do not count 
 upon them, and have arranged my affairs so that I 
 can live comfortably in Berlin this winter without their 
 help. What I call comfortable, another might call 
 miserable ; but what care I whether I live in plenty or 
 no, provided I live .-'... .Whoever wrote to you that I 
 was badly off because I no longer board at Herr 
 Riidiger's, wrote you a great untruth. I never wanted to 
 have anything more to do with this old man after I had 
 made myself fully acquainted with his large library. 
 This I have done, and so we parted. My living troubles 
 me least of all here in Berlin : I can get a good meal 
 for one groschen, six pfennige (i^d.). La Mettrie, 
 whom I have several times named in my letters to 
 you, is physician in ordinary to the King. His work, 
 'Vhojmnc machine,' has created a great sensation here. 
 I have read one of his writings, ^ Ant i-S Unique, on le 
 souverain bicn' which has been printed not less than 
 twelve times, but you may judge its immorality by 
 the fact that the King himself threw ten copies of it 
 into the fire.' 
 
 This same year (1750) brought Lessing into per- 
 sonal contact with Voltaire, then at the height of royal
 
 BERLIN. 51 
 
 favour. He had made the acquaintance of Richier 
 de Louvain, Voltaire's secretary, an amiable young 
 man of his own age, with whom he often disputed on 
 the respective merits of German and French litera- 
 ture. Voltaire was then involved in his notorious law- 
 suit with Abraham Hirsch,^ brought about by his 
 attempt to speculate in illegal stock-jobbing, on which 
 occasion the famous advocate of enlightenment and 
 truth was guilty of perjury and falsification. His 
 opponent was a notorious rogue : the whole matter 
 turned on the question which rogue would outwit the 
 other. Voltaire, who did not care to have his cards 
 exposed, pleaded his own cause, and for this purpose 
 he employed Lessing, at Richier's recommendation, 
 as translator. This necessitated much personal inter- 
 course between Voltaire and Lessing, and laid the 
 foundation for Lessing's low opinion of this philoso- 
 pher. The suit was decided, or rather compromised, 
 in February 175 1. 'Voltaire picks the pockets of the 
 Jews,' Frederick wrote to his sister, * but will get 
 out of it by some summersault ; ' and this truly ex- 
 pressed the case. The King was seriously annoyed, 
 however ; and while congratulating Voltaire satirically 
 on the conclusion of this ' scurvy affair,' enjoins him to 
 have no further quarrels either with the Old or New 
 Testament, as unworthy the finest genius in France. 
 Berlin scoffed at the man whom the King delighted 
 to honour. Lessing held his peace at the time, but 
 one of his later epigrams, and a paper found after 
 his death, reveal his opinion. Apropos of one of 
 Phsedrus' fables, he remarks : ' The moral is, it is a 
 difficult matter to decide a quarrel when both parties 
 
 ' For detailed account of this discreditable affair see Carlyle : 
 ' Life of Frederick the Great,' vol. vi. ; and D. Strauss: 'Voltaire.' 
 
 E 2
 
 7 
 
 52 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESS INC. 
 
 are rogues For instance, on occasion of the lawsuit 
 between Voltaire and the Jew Hirsch, people might 
 have said to the Jew : 
 
 Tu noil videris perdidisse quod petis ! 
 
 and to Voltaire : 
 
 Te credo surripuisse, quod pulchre negas ! 
 
 Lessing is significantly reticent of his personal esti- 
 mate of the little-great man, with whom during this 
 time he dined almost daily. 
 
 Various projects were now crowding upon him. 
 His journalistic attempts had obtained him a certain 
 standing. Mylius having quarrelled with the ' Berlin 
 Gazette,' its editorship was offered to Lessing. He 
 refused, on the plea that he did not care to waste his 
 time on political trifles ; for the news of those days 
 was submitted to severe censorship, and amounted to 
 the trivial gossip-mongering familiar in French news- 
 papers under the head of ' faits divers! Rudiger died 
 shortly after, and the paper passed into the hands of 
 his son-in-law, who called it the ' VossiscJic Zeiiiing,' 
 after his own name. The journal lives to this day, 
 and is the organ of the party of progress. Lessing 
 undertook the conduct of its literary department, and 
 thus found himself called upon to give an opinion on 
 all the questions that agitated Germany. These 
 critiques, being little more than short announcements, 
 had no chance of distinguishing themselves from the 
 ordinary run, but the same procedure evinced itself as 
 in his poetical attempts. He infused his own spirit 
 into extant forms, and created something really 
 original. 
 
 tHis minor poems, published anonymously in a 
 )llected form (Easter 175 1) as 'Klcinigkeitcn' (Trifles),
 
 BERLIN. 53 
 
 passed under his own review. He treats of themi 
 without false modesty, and with a conscious know- j 
 ledge of their merits and faults. ' Is the author to H?^ 
 blamed,' he asks, 'if his taste was less pure three 
 years ago than it perhaps is at present .■' ' But these 
 meagre announcements hardly sufficed for the needs 
 of the reading public, who began to feel the impulse 
 of new life communicated to the habitual stagnation 
 by the famous quarrel between the Swiss and Leipzig 
 schools, begun in 1740 and still raging in all its 
 intensity ; as well as the forced intellectual life which 
 Frederick endeavoured to graft upon his capital. 
 Frederick the Great indirectly aided the growth of a 
 national literature by infusing his own energy into 
 the character of his people, and giving them some- 
 thing of which they could be proud. The result was 
 a general quickening, which gave birth in this instance 
 to a monthly supplement of the * Voss Gazette,' 
 entitled : ' The newest out of the Kingdom of Wit.' 
 It was edited and almost entirely written by Lessing. 
 Here he had free scope, and first exhibited the full 
 powers of a genius which Avon for him afterwards the 
 proud title bestowed by Macaulay, of being ' beyond 
 all dispute the first critic in Europe.' 
 
 The essays are remarkable on various accounts. 
 They first showed Lessing's symmetrical intellect, his 
 miscellaneous acquirements, the pregnant concise- 
 ness of style and breadth of treatment that sprang 
 from his penetrative sympathy. They are more re- 
 markable than his later productions in so far that 
 they are not the expressions of ripened manhood, but 
 of an enthusiastic youth, whose affluence of juvenile 
 thought was given forth with a sobriety most com- 
 mendable in an age of rhetoric. By one bold stroke
 
 54 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 he raised himself above the strife of parties, asserting 
 his independence of either coterie, and displaying 
 himself, in Homeric phrase, a head and shoulders 
 higher than his contemporaries. Even these early 
 efforts testify that Lessing's sole fixed literary prin- 
 ciple was to have none. He was free from prejudice, 
 from la morgue littcraire ; he neither followed nor led 
 any literary clique. He abhorred the spirit of cama- 
 raderie, and taught that real genius must find and 
 follow its own path. 
 
 ' When a bold intellect, confident in its own 
 strength, penetrates into the temple of taste by a new 
 entrance, a hundred imitators follow it, hoping to 
 steal in through this opening. But in vain. The 
 same strength that has forced the door flings it back 
 in their faces. The astonished followers see them- 
 selves shut out, and the eternity of which they dreamt 
 is suddenly changed into mocking laughter,' 
 
 On t..e strength of this, the Swiss thought they 
 might claim Lessing as one of themselves, but they 
 were soon to see that he looked at matters from a 
 broader platform. 
 
 ' Alas, poor poetry ! ' he exclaims ; ' to-day, 
 instead of enthusiasm and gods in the heart, rules 
 suffice you. One Bodmer more, and the young 
 poet's brain will be filled with fine fooleries, instead 
 of inspiration and poetic fire.' 
 
 And he proceeds to define genius in pregnant 
 verse : 
 
 Ein Geisty den die Natur zitm Mttstcrgeist beschloss, 
 1st, ivas er i>t, durch sich, "wird ohne Rcgel gross ; 
 Er gcht, so kiihn er geht, aiich ohne IVciscr sicker ; 
 Er schopfet aiis sich selbst. Er ist sick Scktilund Biicker. 
 Was ihn beivegt, be^uegt ; was iJim gcfdllt, gefdllt : 
 Sei)i gliicklicher Gesckmack ist dcr Geschmack der Welt.
 
 BERLIN. 
 
 55 
 
 To understand Lessing's position then and later, a 
 rapid review of German literature is requisite. 
 
 German literature is one of the youngest of the 
 European family. After the political anarchy of the 
 fourteenth century, when poetry fell from the lyrical 
 elegances of the Minne-, into the burgher hands of the 
 Meister-singers, Pegasus was first put to harness and 
 his flights reduced to the paces of the riding-school. 
 But these worthy burghers kept guard of the despised 
 mother tongue, for the learned could condescend only 
 to Latin, and even national poems had to be trans- 
 lated into a dead language before German professors, 
 who Latinized their very names, could condescend to 
 read them. Then came Luther and gave to it a national 
 glory, and it is small wonder that in his all-cleansing 
 fury he should for a time have swept away good and 
 bad together and stifled the Renaissance spirit which, 
 with its love of beauty and humanity for their own 
 sakes, was beginning to influence and civili?^ anew the 
 higher minds. Luther was not only the founder of a 
 new Church, but the consolidator of a true German 
 language. He 'overturned the tables of the money- 
 changers and the seats of them that sold doves.' He 
 reinstated a higher tone of thought, freed from scho- 
 lasticism and rhapsody. He left to his people in his 
 Table Talk and his hymns, veritable models of nervous 
 language ; and well might Heine name his magnificent 
 psalm, ' Eiii fcste Burg ist wiser Gott,' the Marseillaise 
 of the Reformation. It subverted more, it exalted 
 more, than ever did that vindictive strain. Nor is it 
 grand old brother Martin, but the times that came 
 after him that must be blamed, if on his death litera- 
 ture grew barren, stale, and unprofitable. 
 
 The seventeenth century displayed a sad picture
 
 56 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 of literary degradation. It is strange that at a time 
 when England was already highly civilized, Germany 
 was still half barbaric, torn and shattered by internal 
 wars, over or under educated, bearing a French polish 
 on its native boorishness, with no folk-life or national 
 integrity to give it dignity. The Thirty Years' War 
 and the subsequent ambitious conquests of Louis 
 XIV. had ravaged and impoverished the country, 
 forcing the people to consider only material interests, 
 while the Courts, sunk in servile imitation of the 
 French, relegated the German language to the lower 
 orders, who soon learned to ape the Gallicisms of their 
 betters and spoke a barbarous jargon. The condition 
 of Germany at the close of the Thirty Years' War 
 needs to be constantly kept in view, in order rightly 
 to estimate the difficulties with which the Germans 
 have had to contend in their national development, 
 though at the same time they are too prone to lay 
 their political nonage wholly to its account. It is the 
 fault of a people, as it is that of an individual, if it 
 remain eternally a minor. But in those days, lacerated, 
 trampled down by the foreigner, degraded to be the 
 battle-field of Europe, its provinces annexed or split 
 into petty states, the naturally weak national spirit 
 was lost in apathetic phlegm. Its slender popular 
 liberties disappeared ; and whatever did not from sheer 
 exhaustion resolve itself into atoms, the people helped 
 to kill, suicidally destroying all that could make it a 
 nation, by their obsequiousness to the fashions of other 
 countries. Excepting in the department of hymn- 
 writing, all feeling was overlaid by far-fetched conceits, 
 and the spurious classicism of the French was regarded 
 as the touchstone of excellence. 
 
 At length a few princes and scholars rebelled
 
 BERLIN. 57 
 
 against this foreign bondage, and formed themselves 
 into an academy after the Delia Crusca type, with the 
 object of cultivating the vernacular. This society, 
 ' the Palm-tree,' of necessity engendered affectation 
 and literary trifling ; its purisms bordered on the 
 absurd, but it broke the ice and produced a Martin 
 Opitz, rightly held as the precursor of a new epoch. 
 He was the founder of the first Silesian school, whose 
 works, lacking pith and purpose, flourished and de- 
 cayed like weeds, but at least instilled the sentiment 
 of form and correctness of diction. They were super- 
 seded by the second Silesian school, or ' Shepherds of 
 the Pegnitz,' as they preferred to be called : an affected 
 title, characteristic of their triviality and mannerism. 
 When the eighteenth century dawned, it found 
 Germany very sick, politically and intellectually. 
 Kant tells us that the importance of this century can- 
 not be overrated, since it witnessed man's issue from 
 the intellectual nonage which he had brought upon 
 himself In literature it saw its blooming period, and 
 culminated like the aloe in one grand effort, pro- 
 ducing the great artistic trio, Lessing, Schiller, and 
 Goethe. In philosophy it saw the rise of faith in 
 humanity, and preached the gospel of progress that 
 had been crushed by the misery entailed by the reli- 
 gious wars, and the disconsolate fatalism thus inevit- 
 ably engendered. But many quagmires had to be 
 traversed first. The early years of the century saw 
 the Silesian schools trebly divided : one faction up- 
 held natural style and natural sentiment ; another 
 defended the artificial elegances of Boileau and Horace 
 as the highest types of style ; while the third lauded 
 descriptive verse, and pointed to the English authors, 
 and especially to Thomson's ' Seasons,' as their ex-
 
 58 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 amplcs. For all their lofty talk, the results were mere 
 fustian. Then uprose Gottschcd, a vain pedant of 
 mediocre ability, who assumed to himself a literary 
 dictatorship which his bnjther authors were too feeble 
 to dispute. His criticism was hard and cold, his pro- 
 ductions and those of his friends jejune imitations of 
 the French, lacking every spark of inspiration. He 
 denied the rights of imagination ; his narrow reason 
 condemned Milton, Shakespeare, and Tasso ; he advo- 
 cated laws of rhyme that presupposed poetical genius 
 on the one hand and clipped the poet's wings on the 
 other. 
 
 This imperious sway aroused Breitinger and Bod- 
 mer, two Zurich professors. They incited an Anglo- 
 mania in antagonism to Gottsched's Gallomania, 
 asserted the independence of genius, and reduced 
 poetry to expressions of the marvellous or picturesque. 
 Journals after the fashion of the Spectator were the 
 organs of this warfare of naturalism in polarity to 
 mannerism, of an exaggerated regard and absurd dis- 
 regard of established rules. This strife was at its 
 height when young Lessing came to Berlin and wrote 
 independently of either party. A mind whose moral 
 and intellectual faculties were less finely balanced 
 might have been lost for a while in this conflicting sea, 
 and have asked itself in hopeless despair whether a 
 standard of good taste could really exist. Lessing 
 was undisturbed by this perplexity. In his uncon- 
 sciousness that his lines were cast in a reaction, his 
 loyalty to aesthetic truth and his simple force of con- 
 viction helped him over all swamps which his ardour 
 prevented him from even perceiving. He petrified 
 Berlin by the audacity with which he denounced the 
 dictators of taste, so that even the vain Gottsched
 
 BERLIN. 59 
 
 trembled. He attacked him with all the acerbity ex- 
 cited in his nature by Gottsched's meretricious poetical 
 attempts, acknowledging his merits in other depart- 
 ments of literature, and wishing he would remain 
 within the limits of what he could achieve. Review- 
 ing a volume of his cold versifications, Lessing writes : 
 
 * The exterior is so excellent, that we hope it will 
 do the bookseller's shop great credit, and we wish it 
 may long do so. To give an adequate idea of the 
 interior exceeds our powers. These poems cost 2 
 thalers, 4 groschen. Two thalers pay for the absurd, 
 and four groschen about cover the useful.' 
 
 He laughs at the passion for the new at all costs, 
 which the Swiss faction displayed, at their love of the 
 mystic and obscure ; but he laughs equally at the 
 platitudes, the poor pretentiousness, the servile imita- 
 tions of Gottsched's followers. He upholds the claims 
 of reason and lucidity against the one, the claims of 
 free imagination against the other coterie ; defends 
 the future against the Leipzigers who hold by 
 nothing that is not of the past ; and the past against 
 the Zurichers who esteem nothing but the future. 
 Thus he judged, calm and firm between the two 
 parties blinded by passion, with the alert intelligence 
 that made him regard the struggle as though he were 
 removed from it by half a century, instead of being 
 its contemporary. 
 
 These fcuilleton essays, though apparently frag- 
 mentary, are strung upon a definite thread of con- 
 necting thought. After referring to the title, and 
 remarking that many readers will scarcely find this 
 kingdom in their atlases, he proceeds to speak of J. J. 
 Rousseau, who would erase it thence. Rousseau had 
 just startled the world by his brilliant paradox of the
 
 6o GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 immoral tendency of the arts and sciences. Lessing 
 confessed that he could not resist a secret reverence 
 for the man who defended virtue against all established 
 prejudices, even if he went too far. ' Happy would 
 France be if she had many such preachers ! ' he 
 exclaims, and then i)roceeds to give an abstract of 
 Rousseau's view that the arts and sciences bring 
 about the destruction of states. Then with true 
 insight he destroys the whole paradoxical house of 
 cards, by showing that the rise of the sciences and 
 the decay of morals and states are two separate 
 matters, which may co-exist without being related as 
 cause and effect. Everything tends to a culminating 
 point ; a state will grow till this is attained, and so 
 long as it grows the arts and sciences will grow beside 
 it ; but its decline is not owing to its having been 
 undermined by art and science, but because nothing 
 in the world is capable of indefinite and perpetual 
 grov/tl'. ' True, brilliant Athens lies in the dust ; but 
 did virtuous Sparta flourish longer .■* Art is what we 
 choose to make it ; it is our fault if it becomes hurtful. 
 In one word, Rousseau is in the wrong, but I know 
 of no one who is in the wrong wath more show of 
 right' 
 
 He then proceeds to speak of Klopstock's 
 ' Messiah,' that had just taken the literary world by 
 storm. The Swiss hailed him as their spokesman, 
 the offspring of their doctrines, and claimed a place 
 for his crude juvenile effort beside the ripe product of 
 Milton's maturity. The Leipzigers saw all their rules 
 violated in this epic, and were as violent in their abuse 
 as the Swiss in their admiration. Lessing went to 
 the heart of the matter with a certainty bordering on 
 genius. He rejoices that Germany has at last pro-
 
 BERLIN. 6 1 
 
 duced a creative genius whose work is the result of 
 pure enthusiasm kindled by a worthy theme. He 
 sees that here at last is a true national poet with faith 
 in his native tongue. But he sees also that the genius 
 of this writer is lyrical rather than epic, that the 
 * Messiah ' wants artistic form. Its glaring faults : 
 mysticism, inflated inanity, high-flown language and 
 commonplace thoughts, called forth his ceris.ure. He 
 predicted that the ' Messiah ' would be more vaunted 
 than read by future ages, while insisting on its value as 
 a contemporary production, and contrasting it favour- 
 ably with French efforts in the same direction. Here 
 was a real German poet, and Lessing alone perceived 
 the national shame that Klopstock must be indebted 
 to a Danish King for the pension that gave him leisure 
 to finish his work. To the tedious imitators of Klop- 
 stock who instantly arose, Lessing rightly showed no 
 mercy. They well deserved the derisive epithet of 
 ' Seraphic school.' 
 
 Lessing is as impartial to the faults of the French 
 as to the Germans ; the latter he might hear dis- 
 paraged any day in Berlin, but only to the glorifica- 
 tion of the former. This did not daunt the buoyant 
 vigour of his criticism. He pronounces Fenelon's 
 rules of government the maxims of a schoolmaster. 
 His classical standpoint led him to insist that politics 
 should only be treated by politicians and the arts of 
 government only by practical statesmen and rulers. 
 He condemns Diderot on the occasion of his letter to 
 Batteux on the deaf and dumb, calling him ' a short- 
 sighted theorist, and one of those philosophers who 
 are at more pains to collect clouds than to dissipate 
 them.' 
 
 In this wise, by outwardly disconnected, inwardly 
 
 ^//
 
 62 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 harmonious reviews, Lessing surveyed the entire field 
 of current cTsthctic interests. He then perceived that 
 for the j<ist year he had been expending ideas without 
 absorbing fresh ones in their place. The scholar in 
 his nature once more asserted his rights and demanded 
 a spell of sequestered study. Berlin was a somewhat 
 distracting residence, owing to the various connexions 
 into which his position as a helpless youth, living by 
 his wits, had forced him on his arrival. He wished 
 to shake these off and retreat awhile into seclusion. 
 
 Before his departure, a vexatious matter took 
 place that gained him more notoriety than his writings 
 had done. Voltaire, quit of his lawsuit, had retired 
 to Potsdam to complete his 'Age of Louis XIV.' 
 Lessing happened to be with his friend Richier when 
 he was selecting the first complete copies intended 
 for the King, before the work should become public. 
 He began to read, and was so enthralled that he 
 implored permission to take home the sheets he had 
 not finished, promising solemnly to return them in 
 three days and show them to no one. Richier con- 
 sented without Voltaire's knowledge. A friend of 
 Lessing's saw the sheets in his lodgings and wished to 
 borrow them. Lessing, loth to refuse what had been 
 granted to himself, unwarrantably consented. This 
 friend was a tutor at Count Schulenbourg's, and a 
 Countess Bentinx, Voltaire's intimate friend, espied 
 the book when visiting at the house. Full of wrath 
 that Voltaire should have accorded to a stranger what 
 he had refused to herself, she hurried off to the philo- 
 sopher and demanded an explanation. Voltaire was 
 furious, and sent for Richier, who confessed the whole 
 business, and hurried to fetch the sheets from Lessing. 
 To his dismay, he found Lessing had suddenly de-
 
 BERLIN. 63 
 
 parted for Wittenberg, taking the sheets with him. 
 Voltaire, beside himself, dictated a letter which Richier 
 was to send in his own name, accusing Lessing of 
 fraudulent designs upon the work, such as reprinting 
 or translating it without leave. Lessing's answer not 
 arriving at the very moment when Voltaire had 
 expected it, he wrote an autograph letter, so injurious 
 in its implications, under a polite disguise, that it 
 aroused all Lessing's irascibility, and he replied by a 
 letter which, as he said later, Voltaire no doubt did 
 not exhibit. The sheets had accompanied his answer 
 to Richier, in whose strange missive Lessing had 
 plainly recognised the hand of Voltaire. 
 
 All sorts of versions of this story were circulated 
 in Berlin, and it was for some time the theme of the 
 town's talk. Lessing meantime, quite unconscious, 
 had settled himself anew in Wittenberg (December 
 175 1) after an absence of two years, exceedingly 
 momentous for his mental growth.
 
 64 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESS INC. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 WITTENBERG. 
 (1751-1752. Aged 22^23.) 
 
 ' Say then that he was wise as brave; 
 As wise in thought, as bold in deed ; 
 For in the principles of things 
 He sought their moral creed! — WORDSWORTH. 
 
 Two men were always at war in Lessing : the eru- 
 dite scholar who seeks seclusion for undisturbed study, 
 and the man of the world who seeks active experiences 
 and human contact. The strife between these two 
 natures often came to an abrupt crisis, and induced 
 a sudden flight, such as his departure from gay Berlin 
 to peaceful Wittenberg. His brother Theophilus was 
 studying theology at the University. Lessing joined 
 him, and the two boarded and often fasted together ; 
 for if the younger brother had little to spend, the 
 elder had still less. lie resumed a life of study 
 without attending classes, and spent his days in his 
 own modest apartment, or in the University Hbrary, 
 opened to him by his friend F. J. Schwarz, a young 
 theologian who held the post of under-librarian. This 
 privilege was of inestimable value to Lessing, and he 
 studied there with such zeal that he could boast with 
 truth that there was no book on the shelves which he 
 had not held in his hands.
 
 WITTENBERG. 65 
 
 After the mentally exhausting process of literary 
 journalism, he enjoyed yet more keenly the luxury of 
 scholarly research, carried on in his own peculiar spirit, 
 equally remote from the narrow interests of the book- 
 worm and the abstruse speculations of specialist pro- 
 fessors. His busy restless brain would never permit 
 him to spend his life wholly on one pursuit, while his 
 idiosyncrasy led him always to connect his studies 
 with the place or the circumstances in which he found 
 himself. It followed naturally that in an exclusively 
 theological University, and the cradle of the Reforma- 
 tion, his universal curiosity penetrated into the ' sanc- 
 tuary of bookworm scholarship,' whence this movement 
 had taken birth. The contrast between the general 
 tone of thought in Wittenberg and Berlin would alone 
 have aiTorded Lessing food for reflexion. Here he 
 found the sectarian spirit of Lutheranism rampant to 
 intolerance, a dogmatic system of ecclesiastical belief 
 ignoring the very existence of pure moral religion 
 apart from creeds and formulas. At Berlin philo- 
 sophical scepticism reigned under royal patronage. 
 The character of scoffing levity imparted to it by 
 Voltaire, embodying questions of moment to humanity 
 in persiflage, was revolting ~ito the innate seriousness 
 of the Teutonic mind, which cannot dismiss with con- 
 temptuous raillery the sacred objects of yesterday's 
 reverence. Granting the whole edifice of the Chris- 
 tian faith is founded on superstition, it has too long 
 formed the bulwark of many peoples, and must not 
 and cannot be rudely sneered away. Lessing, whose 
 independent views of theology were yet in process of 
 formation, stood rooted himself in Christianity, and 
 was therefore able to understand and aid the process 
 of mental evolution out of an old faith into a newer 
 
 F
 
 66 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESS INC. 
 
 and larger one, unconsciously craved by his times. He 
 was a freethinker in the true sense of that much- 
 abused term, — one who refuses to think as a slave ; and 
 his views, like those of every true thinker, changed 
 and enlarged with time. But it was at Wittenberg 
 that he first gave a critical shape to what had already 
 begun to form in his mind. The general tendency 
 of the age was to effect a compromise between reve- 
 lation and reason, presenting, by its ingenious theo- 
 logical sophisms, some curious analogies with the 
 England of our own time. But Lessing loved truth 
 for its own sake with passionate ardour ; and, loving 
 it, he could not sink into a state of contented cre- 
 dulity. He must investigate, 
 
 ' Not error,' he said, ' makes the misfortune of men, 
 but sectarian error, or sectarian truth, could truth be 
 sectarian.' 
 
 His enemies were dogmatism and intolerance, 
 whether under the disguise of rationalism or ortho- 
 doxy. He regarded every sect that would not listen 
 to tolerance as a popery, and in the Wittenberg of his 
 day he found the Lutheran popery of intolerance 
 strongly represented. He wished to see not only 
 Lutheranism, but Christianity, subjected to an im- 
 partial examination. 
 
 ' What is more needful than to obtain conviction 
 concerning our faith, and what more impossible than 
 conviction without previous examination .'' We should 
 not say that the examination of our faith is sufficient, 
 and that it is needless, when we have once found in 
 it the divine impression, to seek for this in others also. 
 Nor should we use the simile, that when we once 
 know a right way we need not concern ourselves 
 about by-paths. We do not learn to know the one 
 by the other, but rather the former by the latter.'
 
 WITTENBERG. 67 
 
 With a certain filial piety towards the faith in which 
 he had been nurtured, and with a naturally reverent 
 religious spirit, he brought his youthful vigour and 
 precocious penetration to the task of theological in- 
 quiry. In critical analysis he did not despise the day 
 of small things. 
 
 ' To pronounce a matter trivial,' he explained, ' is 
 more often a confession of one's own weakness of 
 vision, than a just estimate of its worth. Nay, it 
 often happens that the scholar who is rude enough to 
 tax another with trifling, is himself a wretched trifler 
 in his own particular department. Everything out- 
 side of this is small to him, not because it really looks 
 small to him, but that he does not see it at all, be- 
 cause it lies entirely outside his vision. His eyes may 
 be as sharp as they please ; one quality is wanting to 
 make them really good eyes. They are as immovable 
 in his head, as his head is immovably fixed on his 
 body. Therefore he can only see those objects before 
 which his whole body is planted. He knows nothing 
 of the rapid side-glances so necessary to the survey of 
 a great whole. It would need a machine to turn the 
 ponderous man in another direction ; and, when he has 
 at length been turned, the other point of view has 
 passed from his memory.' 
 
 Out of stagnation nothing results. At the same 
 time Lessing never allowed minute examination to 
 blind him to the larger meaning of the whole. While 
 thus instructing himself, he produced ; for to write and 
 think, to conceive and undertake, to acquire knowledge 
 and engage in a polemic, were with him processes 
 almost identical. Hence he has left more fragment 
 than complete works ; his thoughts moved faster than 
 his pen could follow ; sometimes in the act of thinking
 
 68 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 out a subject by aid of the pen he outstripped his 
 own preliminary views, or changed them entirely. 
 But wherever he touched he woke ideas, sowed truths, 
 redressed wrongs, destroyed usurped reputations ; into 
 whatever domain he entered, he infused life. His 
 purpose was not satirical and destructive ; he built 
 anew while he pulled down ; while denouncing slavish 
 imitation, he demanded a profound respect for the 
 great works of antiquity. He found theology a petri- 
 faction. Now it was one of his marked characteristics 
 that his theological and cxsthetic interests always ran 
 parallel. It was therefore inevitable that in this crisis 
 he should turn to Pierre Bayle as his master. 
 
 The influence of Bayle upon the eighteenth cen- 
 tury was immense ; indeed its distinctive character, as 
 the epoch of protest against the traditional, may 
 be said to have been impressed on it by him The 
 ' Critical Dictionary,' designed ' not to inculcate scepti- 
 cism, but to suggest doubts,' this ample and tolerant 
 monument of erudite acumen, thoroughly commended 
 itself to Lessing's temper. He determined to work 
 on this model, and, as Bayle had taken his starting 
 point from the dictionary of Moreri, ' to compile the 
 largest possible collection of mistakes found in dic- 
 tionaries, and also to make digressions concerning 
 all manner of authors,' so Lessing took up a 
 similar, and with all its shortcomings a very useful, 
 work by Dr. Jocher. He criticised its faults and 
 began to supply its numerous omissions, publishing 
 three sheets. The matter reached the ears of Jocher, 
 who applied to the rector of the University for in- 
 formation regarding this presumptuous young man 
 who had publicly undertaken to rectify his mis- 
 takes. The rector's statement must have been satis-
 
 WITTENBERG. 69 
 
 factory, for Jocher wrote a polite letter to Lessing, 
 regretting he had not communicated with him, with a 
 view to the production of a supplementary volume, 
 and hinted his willingness to buy up Lessing's 
 materials. At the same time, he remarks, Lessing 
 might have been a little less biting in his criticisms. 
 The result was that Lessing desisted from the project, 
 but not before a scandalous rumour had spread of his 
 having tried to extort a large sum from Jocher under 
 a threat of making him ridiculous in the eyes of the 
 whole learned world. Coming so soon after the 
 Voltaire matter, and a second time impugning his 
 probity, this mischievous gossip greatly annoyed 
 Lessing. 
 
 Nevertheless he continued to work in the manner 
 of Bayle, writing brief erudite articles in which, like 
 Bayle, he only occasionally assumed the tone of 
 philosopher, while it gave him play to ventilate ^is 
 opinions. Like Bayle and Voltaire he would put 
 himself in the position of an antagonist, and could 
 make a true analysis of a contrary opinion serve as a 
 development of his own. His criticism, though bolder 
 than Voltaire's, was less subversive, for, as with Bayle, 
 his scepticism was rather a suspension of belief and 
 a desire, if possible, to find a common ground of re- 
 conciliation. Ecraser rinfdme by the weapons of 
 ridicule was in his eyes a confession of weakness. 
 He desired to see bold discussion, free from flippant 
 irreligion. He held with Bayle that philosophy could 
 render no aid to religion, but differed in his inferences. 
 The aims of philosophy and religion are diverse. 
 Truth is the object of reason ; conduct, of religion. 
 Bayle held that philosophy has no concern with the 
 demonstration of religious truths, becaus'S if the
 
 70 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 historical foundations of Christianity are once estab- 
 lished, all the rest is matter of faith beyond the 
 cognisance of philosophy. Not so Lessing, who, 
 while admitting that the intrusion of metaphysics 
 into the domain of Christianity had corrupted its 
 primitive simplicity, still contended that, even if it 
 were deprived of its supernatural character, its con- 
 tinued existence would be justified through its teach- 
 ing and practice of universal charity, in which lies its 
 true essence. 
 
 Lessing's own opinions were so entirely at variance 
 with those of any of the schools, that no party quite 
 knew where to place him, nor can they classify him to 
 this day. His pure reverent spirit transcended the 
 limitation of creeds : he was opposed to the Apolo- 
 gists who desired to prove the truth of the Christian 
 faith against the freethinkers ; to the freethinkers 
 who thought they could substitute their own reason 
 in place of a creed ; to the Wolffian school who 
 wished to demonstrate dogma by mathematics ; to 
 the Lutheran theologians who knew no higher source 
 of religion than the letter of the Bible ; and finally 
 to the Neologians and Semi-naturalists. Of all this, 
 however, Lessing was wholly unconscious. He 
 worked and thought in his characteristic manner, 
 heedless of the goal. 
 
 An interesting fragment dealing with the newly 
 founded sect of Moravian brethren dates from this 
 time. In Lessing's eyes the grand merit of its 
 founder. Count Zinzendorf, was to have separated 
 religion from theology. ' Man wms created for action 
 rather than speculation,' and religion's place is to 
 aid him herein. Rapidly surveying the histories of 
 philosophy and faiths, he shows how Christianity,
 
 WITTENBERG. 71 
 
 when no longer oppressed, busied herself in embellish- 
 ing her creed and supporting divine truths with human 
 reasons. The Reformation had amended this condi- 
 tion, but not radically ; and the present times show so 
 strange a mixture of worldly and theological wisdom, 
 that it is as difficult to discover a true Christian as 
 in the dark ages. Count Zinzendorf merits praise 
 because he has gone farther than the reformers 
 towards rendering religion simple and inward ; to 
 preach love and charity is to aid the cause of 
 progress, for creeds and dogmas are but the forms of 
 religion. Lessing had already attained to the clearer 
 perception that all faiths are equally good, because 
 they are merely the national and general expressions 
 of the one true religion. 
 
 The influence of Bayle is more immediately to be 
 traced in some short essays written, though not 
 published, at Wittenberg. Lessing calls them ' Re- 
 habilitations ' {Rettungen), for in each case he has a 
 reputation to defend. The one dealing with Jerome 
 Cardan is the most remarkable. This eccentric 
 thinker had been popularly branded as an Atheist on 
 account of a passage in his * De Stibtilitatcl which 
 had on its publication drawn down upon him the 
 wrath of a J. C. Scaliger. The obnoxious matter 
 was a comparison which Cardan had instituted 
 between the Heathen, Jewish, Mahommedan, and 
 Christian faiths, without pronouncing in favour of 
 any. This was considered equivalent to a declara- 
 tion of indifference. Lessing, on the contrary, held 
 that Cardan had decidedly leant towards Christianity, 
 and that he had not given Islamism its due. After 
 therefore vindicating Cardan from the stigma of 
 Atheism, he enters into an apology of Islam.
 
 72 GOTTIIOLD EPHRAIM LESS INC. 
 
 Cochlaeus, the Romish divine who pubhshed a 
 blustering pamphlet against the marriage of Henry 
 VIII., was in Lessing's eyes another unfairly abused 
 personage. He was generally credited with having 
 spread the defamatory remark that Luther's work 
 had sprung from no higher motive than the mutual 
 jealousy of the Augustinian and Dominican monks. 
 
 Why quarrel about this } asks Lessing. Granted 
 it be true, which he doubts, the work done by 
 the Reformation does not on that account lose in 
 value, as even Catholics w^ould admit. 
 
 Simon Lemnius and the anonymous author known 
 as Ineptus religiosiis next engaged his attention. He 
 thought that they had been handled with undue 
 severity by the fanatic adherents of the Reforma- 
 tion, in Lemnius' case by Luther himself. Lemnius 
 was a writer of coarse Latin epigrams, in which he 
 attacked all the chiefs of the new movement. Luther 
 and he were vehemently opposed. Lessing saw in 
 Lemnius the victim of Luther's violent temper, and 
 held that historians had perverted the facts in order 
 to preserve Luther's glory unblemished. Reason 
 enough for Lessing to take Lemnius under his pro- 
 tection, asserting that it was Luther's unjust persecu- 
 tion that drove Lemnius to his most outspoken w^ork. 
 Lessing's purpose is rather to take from Luther the 
 character of infallibility claimed by Protestant zeal, 
 than to absolve Lemnius. Even if Luther did not 
 act worthily in this particular, what matter ? Does 
 he not remain, for all that, one of the greatest men 
 the world has seen .'' ' I reverence Luther so highly, 
 that on consideration I am heartily glad to have dis- 
 covered a few little failings in him, inasmuch as I 
 should otherwise have actually been in danger of
 
 WITTENBERG. 73 
 
 deifying him. The traces of humanity I find in him 
 are as precious to me as his most dazzHng perfections ; 
 they are even more instructive than all these taken 
 together. God ! What a terrible lesson for our pride ! 
 How deeply anger and revenge may degrade the 
 holiest ! But would a less vehement spirit have been 
 capable of Luther's achievements } Certainly not ! 
 Let us therefore admire the wise Providence that can 
 use even imperfections for its instruments. ... In 
 fact, what does it matter what instruments God has 
 employed .'' He does not always choose the most 
 blameless, but rather the most convenient. If envy 
 was the source of the Reformation, would to God 
 that all envy might have such fortunate consequences ! 
 The Exodus of the children of Israel was brought 
 about by a murder, and, say what one will, by a 
 culpable murder ; but was it any the less God's work 
 and a miracle ? ' He then treats of the scoffers who 
 wish lightly to laugh away the earnestness of history. 
 * A modern writer lately hit on a v/itty conceit : he 
 said the Reformation was in Germany a work of 
 selfishness ; in England the work of love ; and in 
 singing France the work of a street ballad. Much 
 pains have been taken to refute this conceit, as though 
 a conceit could be refuted. The only way to refute 
 it is to take away its sting ; and where that is im- 
 possible, it remains witty whether it is true or false. 
 But to deprive it of its sting, if it has one, it might be 
 expressed thus : Eternal Wisdom, which knows how 
 to use all things to its ends, has brought about the 
 Reformation in Germany by selfishness, in England 
 by love, and in France by a song. Thus the censure 
 of man would be changed into the praise of the 
 Highest.' And he concludes with the significant
 
 74 COTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 remark that, since' Luther was but a man, there is no 
 reason why Protestantism should remain for ever at 
 the point of enlightenment where he had left it. 
 
 Another fragment dates from this time. Although 
 it is but a fragment, and although Lessing soon after 
 pronounced the attempt a fancy which he had far out- 
 stripped, yet the fact that he should have undertaken 
 it at all proves how he was at the time engrossed with 
 theological interests. Indeed, he writes himself: 
 * The best part of my life — happily or unhappily } — 
 fell in a time when writings in defence of Christian 
 truths were, so to speak, the fashion. What wonder, 
 then, that my reading was also directed to them, and 
 that I soon could not rest until I had got hold of and 
 devoured every new production in this department ! ' 
 This essay, the'Christianity of Reason' {'Das Chris tcn- 
 iJiuvi del' Vcvmtnft '), attempts to prove the Trinitarian 
 doctrine philosophically, after the manner of the specu- 
 lative theologians whose paths had been prepared by 
 Leibnitz in his attempts to justify belief by raising it 
 to a science. The fragment was never published — a 
 circumstance which shows that Lessing attached no 
 value to it ; but it deserves mention on account of the 
 attempt that has been made upon the strength of it, 
 to prove him an orthodox thinker. Far more likely 
 does it appear that the paper was written as a 
 polemical exercise, such as Lessing loved, and that he 
 tried to rehabilitate Christianity as he had rehabilitated 
 Cardan, &c. Throughout life he regarded himself as 
 the defender of the persecuted, and Christianity was 
 then suffering much from friends and foes ; and that he 
 abandoned the attempt is equally in keeping with his 
 intellectual character, for his theological reading soon 
 showed him the weakness of the defenders of the faith,
 
 WITTENBERG. 75 
 
 and how such defences betray the cause they would 
 serve. He saw that rehgion was a matter of feeHng, 
 not of reason, and this gave him an isolated position 
 with respect to his contemporaries. He continued to 
 consider himself a Christian, but his Christianity was so 
 large that it could include Deism, if Deism were only 
 tolerant. Fearless investigation, historical and logical 
 criticism without limit and without end, was his theo- 
 logical faith. When, having explored the most abstruse 
 corners of theology, he found that they only stored 
 mildew and dust, he turned away to more living fields 
 of interest, until late in life, with matured judgment 
 and increased erudition, he once more resumed the 
 study, and proved himself the most ardent polemic 
 that ever raised the standard of enlightenment. 
 
 These religious studies did not, however, absorb 
 all his time at Wittenberg. His favourite Roman 
 poets again engaged his attention, and more particu- 
 larly Martial, whose epigrams incited him to indepen- 
 dent endeavours in this field. The faculty of expressing 
 ideas with condensed brilliancy and unexpected turns 
 of phrase was natural to Lessing, and shows that his 
 mind was most un-German ; for this concise form of 
 expression is almost foreign to his countrymen. 
 Lessing loved it and cultivated it with great care. 
 His prose as well as his verse bears this stamp. He 
 was singularly happy in his steely brevity, and the 
 vistas of ideas which he could open out in a few 
 words. His brother relates that at Wittenberg his 
 thoughts were so occupied with this graceful structure 
 of speech, that he would express himself in epigrams. 
 He made a thorough study of the subject and read all 
 the ancient and modern epigrammatists, besides trans- 
 lating, adapting, and originating. His epigrams are
 
 76 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 of various merit ; they handle the unexpected with 
 vivacity, vigour, and deHcacy, but their aim is rarely 
 loftier than persiflage, and their salt not always Attic. 
 Horace was another writer whom he studied with care, 
 in concert with Theophilus, whose interests lay in this 
 direction, and who afterwards became known as a re- 
 spectable Latin poet. Together they began a Latin 
 rendering of Klopstock's ' Messiah,' intended as a 
 vindication of Klopstock, who had been severely 
 attacked by some critics for obscurity of thought. 
 Lessing wished to show by a Latin version that this 
 was not so absolutely the case. The ungrateful task 
 was fortunately abandoned before they had advanced 
 far, on hearing that it had already been undertaken 
 by a Dane. 
 
 Lessing's study of Horace, on the other hand, in- 
 volved him in a quarrel that extended over two years, 
 gave birth to one of his bitterest polemics, and made 
 his name feared far and wide. This refined, graceful 
 lyrist, with his loose loves, his liking for quiet country 
 life, is, says Goethe, as modern as any modern. Les- 
 sing recognised this quality and was attracted by it. 
 When, therefore, while at Wittenberg, he saw a long 
 promised translation of the Odes announced as pub- 
 lished, he devoured it eagerly, having been led to 
 expect much from the translator, a clergyman of the 
 name of Lange, who was cried up as the German 
 Horace, and to whose poems Lessing had given some 
 attention at Leipzig. Knowing that the author had 
 laboured nine years at his translation, Lessing was 
 justified in expecting good work, and great was his 
 amazement to find his anticipations of pleasure changed 
 to intense astonishment at the incredible schoolboy 
 faults which disfigured it.
 
 WITTENBERG. 77 
 
 Lessing mentioned this in a letter to Professor 
 Nicolai, of Halle, whose acquaintance he had made 
 that March, and added that he was not ill-disposed to 
 warn the public against this translation, Nicolai, who 
 was a friend of Lange's, and who was sufficiently ac- 
 quainted with Lessing's critical prowess, was alarmed 
 for the pastor's reputation, and wrote to Lessing warn- 
 ing him to desist from his project on the score that 
 Lange had court interest. He advised him to write 
 privately to Lange, offering to point out the faults in 
 consideration of payment. Lessing wrote an ironical 
 acquiescence in this proposal, which he never regarded 
 as serious ; Nicolai took it in earnest, and it resulted 
 in a mischievous report, credited and published by 
 Lange, that Lessing was willing to suppress his 
 criticisms for a pecuniary consideration. This exas- 
 perated him beyond measure. His good name had 
 now been twice attacked. It was high time he should 
 free himself from the unenviable character of a literary 
 freebooter who only lived on quarrels and defamations. 
 After a protest in the ' Voss Gazette ' against the coarse 
 personal attack of Lange, he published (1754) his 
 ' Vademecuui for Pastor S. G. Lange,' in which he 
 bestowed on his adversary a certainly well-deserved 
 but somewhat rude lesson in Latinity, annihilating 
 him in an insulting manner which the provocation 
 alone can excuse. He concludes with an account of his 
 correspondence with Professor Nicolai, expressing his 
 disgust at having been thought capable of levying 
 black mail. Sorely though he needed money, the 
 manner of gaining it, he said, was not indifferent to 
 him. As an example of the personal manner in 
 which literary differences were, and occasionally still 
 are, conducted in Germany, the ' Vademecum^ is curious,
 
 78 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 and also as a proof of Lcssing's philological attain- 
 ments. His panegyrists see in it a masterpiece of 
 negative criticism ; his friends regret that he should 
 have degraded himself to use the most vulgar wea- 
 pons of satire ; and it is just to his memory to add that 
 if he employed the heavy artillery of abuse against his 
 adversary, he himself desired that his criticism should 
 only live as long as the translation that had evoked it, 
 for he acknowledged that it did him no great honour. 
 It was his ' English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," and 
 it is to be regretted in each case that both amber and 
 fly have survived. 
 
 But matters had not yet reached this point when 
 Lessing quitted Wittenberg, in December 1752, hav- 
 ing taken his degree as Doctor in Philosophy. He 
 had worked all this year in industrious seclusion ; his 
 natural liveliness and liking for a wider sphere made 
 him again crave for his Berlin life. He therefore 
 returned thither, once more without the consent or 
 knowledge of his parents.
 
 SECOND BERLIN RESIDENCE. 79 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 SECOND BERLIN RESIDENCE. 
 (1752-1755. Aged 23-26.) 
 
 'E|i€( 8' Sxrtrep Ku/SepcciTas avi]p"l(mov avefiSev. 
 * Loose free ; like a mariner, thy sail unto the wind.' — PiNDAR. 
 
 On Lessing's return to Berlin, he at once resumed 
 his position on the ' Voss Gazette,' to the dismay of 
 his father, who as usual laid the blame on Mylius. 
 Lessing vainly protested that, as he would have re- 
 turned to Berlin in any case, his literary endeavours 
 and those of Mylius should in no way be confounded. 
 It took some time to convince Pastor Lessing, who 
 held journalists, playwriters, and comedians in the 
 same abhorrence, though personally he liked above 
 all things to read the newspapers. But gradually 
 and imperceptibly Lessing's reputation increased ; his 
 quarrel with Pastor Lange drew upon him the atten- 
 tion of learned Germany ; truth and talent were de- 
 clared on his side, and the accomplished Michaelis of 
 Gottingen publicly complimented the young contro- 
 versialist. Lessing was much gratified by praise from 
 such a quarter. His letter in reply to Michaelis' per- 
 sonal inquiries regarding him is highly characteristic. 
 After briefly narrating the main incidents of his life, 
 he adds : 
 
 ' I have studied in the Filrsfenschnle at Meissen 
 and afterwards at Leipzig and Wittenberg. I should
 
 So GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESS INC. 
 
 be greatly perplexed if I were asked what. I have 
 been in Berlin since 1748, during which time I only for 
 half a year resided elsewhere. I seek no promotion 
 here ; I only live here because I cannot live in any 
 other large place. If I add my age, which amounts 
 to twenty-five years, my biography is ended. What 
 will come yet, I leave to Providence. I scarcely think 
 anyone could be more indifferent to the future than 
 I am.' 
 
 It is natural that his father should not share this 
 indifference, and could not see whither his son's erratic 
 plans of life were to lead ; but he grew mollified w^hen 
 he read the praises of erudite professors, and heard 
 that his poems were found on the tables of ladies ; 
 and his satisfaction increased when, shortly after Gott- 
 hold's return to Berlin, he received the first volume 
 of the Wittenberg writings, and a republication of his 
 ' Trifles.' 
 
 ' Thus are authors,' says Lessing in the preface. 
 * The public gives them an inch and they take an ell.' 
 His first efforts having met with success, he again 
 submits to the final and most decisive test of print, 
 and concludes with the remark that if these volumes 
 meet with encouragement, he reserves other and more 
 important matters for publication. 
 
 The volumes contained the .fragment, ' Samuel 
 Henzi,' a bold attempt to treat dramatically a con- 
 temporary historical incident. Its worth was hailed 
 by the critics. The execution by thb Bernese oli- 
 garchy of the patriot Henzi, the hero of the Berne 
 insurrection in 1749, had aw^akened I^essing's deep 
 interest, and revealed to him the discrepancies that 
 exist between burgher freedom and privileged des- 
 potism. He admits that he might have retained the
 
 SECOND BE'RLIN RESIDENCE. 8i 
 
 incidents and changed the names and times ; the fact 
 that he did not, shows that he was beginning to 
 assert his independence. The fragment, modelled on 
 Otway's ' Venice Preserved,' also betrays the influence 
 of Shakespeare's 'Julius Caesar;' and though the 
 cumbersome Alexandrines and the almost violent 
 preservation of tjie Unities show him still held in 
 traditional bondage, the audacity of the theme, and 
 the significant preface that though great spirits may 
 disregard established rules, it is not well for beginners 
 to be too hasty in subverting them, affords an augury 
 of speedy enfranchisement. 
 
 These three years at Berlin are among the hap- 
 piest in Lessing's life. Plunging with joyous ardour 
 into the most varied branches of literary creation, he 
 had the satisfaction of obtaining not only the recog- 
 nition, but in most cases the friendship, of the best 
 minds of his' country. True, his resources were of the 
 meagrest, and he was compelled to have recourse to 
 much literary ha-gk-work to eke out his means and to 
 give himself due leisure for original production ; but 
 he always endeavoured that these labours should 
 enlarge his knowledge, or in some indirect manner 
 touch his deepest interests. Among them are a trans- 
 lation of the Spaniard Huarte's striking but wildly 
 ■ hypothetical work, the ' Trial of Wits.' Its flashes 
 of penetration, that anticipate some of Gall's dis- 
 coveries, its striking and suggestive paradoxes, fas- 
 cinated Lessing, and he issued it with critical notes. 
 His ever living interest in all champions of mental 
 freedom made him continue his studies of Cardan, 
 and project works on Giordano Bruno and Campa- 
 nella, and the translation from the Dutchman Bekker's 
 * De Betooverde Weereld,' — the famous work that 
 
 G
 
 82 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESS INC. 
 
 drew odium on its author for daring to combat the 
 prevalent notions respecting the influence of e\al 
 spirits, and the unjust theological and juridical perse- 
 cution of witches and magicians. For this work Les- 
 sing had amassed a number of additional materials. 
 
 Indeed the list of all these hack labours, projected, 
 executed, or commenced, speak of his stupendous 
 industry. He was beginning to feel himself easier 
 both in a pecuniary and social position, and could 
 offer to relieve his parents by taking charge of a 
 younger brother. The consent accorded proves that 
 Pastor Lcssing had at last regained confidence in 
 Gotthold. That the arrangement had speedily to be 
 abandoned because the little brother, fresh from 
 Camenz, would never have done gaping with wonder 
 at the sights of Berlin, was not Lessing's fault. He 
 had hoped time would blunt the edge of novelty ; 
 but the boy was too well off in his brother's company, 
 and had to be consigned to stricter hands. 
 
 Three months after Lessing's return to Berlin, 
 Mylius had been entrusted with a scientific mission to 
 America, which was frustrated by his death in Lon- 
 don. Lessing was asked to edit his fugitive writings. 
 His criticisms of Mylius' literary worth, wherein 
 he assigned a low place to productions that had 
 sprung from no higher principle or motive than that 
 of securing daily bread, occasioned some surprise 
 among those who had known him as Mylius' friend, 
 and provoked Schonaich's epigram, that such treat- 
 ment from friends he wished to his enemies. Professor 
 Kastner taunted Lessing with the remark that such a 
 memoir from anyone else would have brought him 
 into the field with a rehabilitation. Lessing felt the 
 justice of the criticism ; but he esteemed exact truth,
 
 SECOND BERLIN RESIDENCE. 83 
 
 even if not palatable, above all else ; he should feel it 
 against his conscience, he explains, to flatter in death 
 one who had always heard the truth from him. He 
 replied to Kastner, October 16, 1754 : 
 
 ' Etrange monument, disez-vous, peut-etre, et j'en 
 conviens. Pourquoi me I'a-t-on extorque ? On voulut 
 absolument un recueil de ses pieces fugitives et sur- 
 tout de ses poesies, et le voila done. Sans ma preface 
 il ne manquerait pasde charmer M. Gottsched. Mais 
 jug^z vous-meme, si je n'ai pas bien fait de sauver les 
 manes de Mylius de la honte d'etre loue par cet op- 
 probre des gens d'esprit' 
 
 Lessing had now a congenial circle of acquaint- 
 ances about him, and he formed some of the firmest 
 friendships of his life. With all his industry he found 
 ample time for the social and human intercourse which 
 his restless spirit needed. In his very small lodging, 
 hard by St. Nicholas' churchyard, would be found 
 assembled many a merry little party, persons of the 
 most varied occupations as well as all manner of 
 opinions, which they freely ventilated. There was Pro- 
 fessor Kies, the astronomer, a lively witty little man ; 
 Bruckner, an apprentice at the ' Voss Gazette ' office, 
 who evinced marked histrionic talent ; Kirnberger, the 
 erudite musical theorist and violin player to the King ; 
 Meil, the engraver ; Sulzer, the eclectic philosopher and 
 professor of mathematics, the first critical writer on 
 art who aimed at popularity ; Ramler, the correct 
 lyrist, then professor of belles-lettres ; Premontval, 
 the French thinker, an opponent to the Wolffian philo- 
 sophy generally professed in this society. A truly 
 eclectic gathering and after Lessing's own heart. 
 
 But these were only acquaintances ; there were also 
 closer ties. In Nicolai and Moses Mendelssohn he 
 
 G 2
 
 84 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESS IN G. 
 
 found two growing minds which he might have 
 moulded into disciples had he desired, and one of 
 whom, Mendelssohn, unquestionably owed his public 
 distinction to Lessing. The acquaintanceship deep- 
 ened into a life-long intimacy ; and though in the 
 course of years their mental paths diverged somewhat, 
 this remained practically unbroken until the death of 
 Lessing, whom ^Mendelssohn speedily followed, dying 
 of over excitement in excess of zeal for his friend's 
 memory. 
 
 After Frederick the Great's accession the Berlin 
 Jews began to evince the capacity and zeal for culture 
 that made them a little later the focus of the city's in- 
 tellectual life ; but even this most tolerant of monarchs 
 could not learn to regard them as equal to his other 
 subjects. The laws were no less hostile to them than 
 were the conventional traditions. Among the few who 
 had emancipated themselves was Dr. Gumpertz, a 
 physician, and successively secretary to d'Argens and 
 Maupertius. He knew Lessing, they often played 
 chess together, and he one day introduced to him a 
 little nervous deformed Jew as an excellent player. 
 It is doubtful whether there was much chess-playing 
 after that : Lessing at once recognised the spirit that 
 was here struggling for liberation ; each found in the 
 other complementary qualities ; Lessing's strong clear 
 nature, sanguine temperament and inquisitiveness, 
 imparted self-reliant strength to the timid, meditative 
 Oriental dreamer, while the latter's just sense and 
 modest wisdom often moderated Lessing's propensity 
 to paradox. His life-history was further calculated 
 to rouse the interest of one who loved the outcast and 
 persecuted. 
 
 Moses Mendelssohn was the son of a Plebrew
 
 SECOND BERLIN RESIDENCE. 85 
 
 schoolmaster, who, notwithstanding his poverty, gave 
 his boy a good elementary training, especially in Rab- 
 binical and Hebrew lore. A treatise of Maimonides 
 first awoke independent thoughts in the boy, and led 
 him to study so strenuously, that it induced the ner- 
 vous spinal disease, the consequences of which he never 
 overcame. The extreme indigence of his parents 
 forced him to wander away from Dessau at the tender 
 age of thirteen, a homeless beggar, heavily weighted by 
 the Jewish stigma in the struggle for existence. Not- 
 withstanding all disadvantages he fought a brave fight 
 with the world, educated himself in Latin, mathe- 
 matics, and German (a study forbidden by the Hebrew 
 congregation), and pondered the systems of Wolfi" and 
 Leibnitz. He earned a trifle by copying for Rabbis ; 
 but when they found him one day carrying a German 
 book across the street, they expelled him from the 
 community. He nevertheless continued to learn 
 German, and remained a scrupulously ceremonious 
 Jew. A Jewish family engaged him as tutor, and he 
 afterwards became a clerk, and later a partner in their 
 silk manufactory. 
 
 When Lessing first knew him he was just twenty- 
 four years old, and still a busy clerk, only able to 
 devote his early mornings or late evenings to study. 
 Lessing initiated him into Greek, lent him books, and 
 soon it was an established thing that Mendelssohn 
 should come to Lessing's lodging every morning 
 between seven and nine, when they discussed all 
 manner of philosophical and literary subjects. Their 
 very differences were matters of delight to Lessing's dis- 
 putatious spirit, that always learnt most from friendly 
 opposition. Mendelssohn became in after years the 
 emancipator of his people from prejudiced opprobrium ;
 
 85 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSIXG. 
 
 they prize him so greatly that it is a current s.iying 
 amonfj them that ' from Moses to Moses there was 
 none hke Moses ;' and, even allowing for the pardonable 
 partiality of race, his mental development and achieve- 
 ments are sufficiently remarkable. Lessing's clear 
 insight foresaw his worth. He wrote at this time : 
 
 ' I regard him in advance as an honour to his nation. 
 His probity and his philosophical spirit make me con- 
 sider him in advance as a second Spinoza, who wants 
 nothing save his errors for perfect equality.' 
 
 Lessing's faith in his powers gave Mendelssohn 
 the confidence he had hitherto lacked, and spurred 
 him to independent action. Upon Lessing's lending 
 him an essay of Shaftesbury's, and asking him how he 
 liked it, Mendelssohn ventured to reply, * Well enough, 
 but I could do such a thing too.' ' Indeed,' said 
 Lessing, * then do write something of the kind.' In 
 due course Mendelssohn brought his MS., but never 
 dared ask Lessing's opinion, which was not vouch- 
 safed, until a few weeks later Lessing gave it him back 
 in print : the most practical answer conceivable. 
 
 Shortly after the formation of this friendship, the 
 Academy of Berlin propounded as its prize essay the 
 theme 'Whether Pope's maxim, "Whatever is, is right," 
 was designed to convey the same philosophical mean- 
 ing as Leibnitz's "Best of all possible worlds.'" Lessing 
 perceived the absurdity of such a proposition ; was 
 this projected comparison to prove Pope's saying the 
 more philosophical, or Leibnitz's the more poetical ^ 
 He persuaded Mendelssohn to help him to write a re- 
 futation ; the essay, with its ironical title, ' Pope a 
 Metaphysician ! ' was the result. The main idea was 
 the establishment of a fundamental difference between 
 philosopliy and poetry. Lucretius was a versifier, not
 
 SECOND BERLIN RESIDENCE. 8; 
 
 a poet ; no doubt a philosophy can be rhymed, but 
 such rhymes will not be a poem. Pope himself could 
 not have claimed to be a philosopher on the strength 
 of the ' Essay on Man ;' he only versified borrowed 
 ideas, as he expresses in his letter to Swift, who had not 
 recognised his hand in the work : ' I have only one 
 piece of mercy to beg of you : do not laugh at my 
 gravity, but permit me to wear the beard of a philo- 
 sopher, till I pull it off and make a jest of it myself 
 ' What,' ask the essayists, ' would Pope have said 
 when he found that a learned Academy mistook his 
 false beard for a real one ? ' 
 
 The condemnation of didactic poetry, the accurate 
 erudition displayed, are clearly Lessing's, while the phi- 
 losophical dress must be ascribed to Mendelssohn. This 
 satirical production, that made the Academy ridicu- 
 lous, could not be submitted for a prize ; but it is re- 
 corded that its publication called forth some Academi- 
 cal blushes. Lessing was far from undervaluing Pope. 
 He saw that he must be judged as an artificial poet 
 living in an artificial period, which it was his great merit 
 to reproduce ; and though this is not the highest form 
 of genius, still it is one of its manifestations. Poetry 
 is speech appealing to the senses ; therefore to claim 
 from a poet a metaphysical system is absurd. 
 
 ' His great, I will not say greatest, merit lay in what 
 we call the mechanism of poetry.' Consequently, when 
 he found a subject like the ' Rape of the Lock ' level 
 with his genius he could make of it one of the most 
 perfect poems of his language. 
 
 The interest which both Mendelssohn and Lessing 
 showed in English literature was shared by Christian 
 F. Nicolai. He was the son of a Berlin bookseller, 
 and trained for the trade ; but his refined tastes and
 
 88 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESS INC. 
 
 extensive reading made him aspire to authorship. 
 He was brother to Professor Nicolai, from whom he had 
 received some classical teaching, and his father's shop 
 enabled him to muster all the products of contempo- 
 rary literature. Lessing's daily contributions to the 
 ' Voss Gazette ' were eagerly perused by him, and in- 
 spired his first attempt, a review of current belles- 
 lettres, a creditable work for a youth of twenty. 
 Lessing saw the proof sheets and desired to make his 
 personal acquaintance. Nicolai was at that time the 
 only man in Germany with whom Lessing could har- 
 monise with regard to German literature. Both of 
 them owed their cultured basis to English influences. 
 
 English literature had been the support round 
 which German ideas had twined for the last half 
 century ; the fresh breezy instincts of individuality per- 
 vaded it ; every Englishman, according to Goethe, 
 dared to have a heart of his own in his breast. The 
 Germans were anxious to be on the right side, but 
 hampered by self-consciousness and over-sensitive- 
 ness of opinion. This made them pull up their pro 
 ductions by the roots to see if they were growing, and 
 produced a code of rules collected from masterpieces, 
 with which rules they demanded masterpieces should 
 be made. It was the cart put before the horse. 
 
 Lessing had always protested against the reigning 
 French taste, but until now he had been influenced by 
 it in spite of himself ; he had always pointed to Eng- 
 lish models, but he had not yet shown wherein they 
 excelled. His intercourse with Nicolai gave his views 
 greater precision, and conjointly they gave them 
 written expression as far as the drama was concerned 
 in the ' TJicatraliscJic BibliotJiekl a kind of combination 
 of the earlier undertaking with Mylius.
 
 SECOND BERLIN RESIDENCE. 89 
 
 The Horatian-Lange dispute was waging in full 
 fury in 1754, and aroused Lessing to write a more 
 direct vindication of his favourite poet than the ' Vade- 
 ineaini! ' The Rehabilitation of Horace ' resulted, a 
 short essay that contains, Diore siio, far more food for 
 reflexion than appears at first sight. 
 
 ' For the credit of the ancient writers I am a veri- 
 table knight-errant ; my gaU'rises instantly when I see 
 them so miserably ill-used.' What he principally 
 attempted was the moral justification of Horace, who 
 had been accused of immorality, cowardice, and irre- 
 ligion. Lessing refutes these accusations with philo- 
 logical penetration and acute criticism, without wield- 
 ing the heavy controversial weapons of his earlier 
 work. The chief point of his argument is, that we 
 should not accept everything that the poet says as 
 plain, blunt truth. ' The greater the poet, the farther 
 removed from strict veracity will be the casual men- 
 tion he makes of himself .... The true poet knows 
 that he must adorn everything in its own fashion, and 
 accordinglv himself also, and sometimes he does this 
 so cunningly that dull eyes see a confession of his 
 faults where the connoisseur discerns a touch of his 
 flattering pencil' Thus Horace's self-accusation of 
 irreligion and immorality is no more to be taken 
 literally than the ' miserable sinners ' of the theolo- 
 gians. 
 
 A farce that appeared in Leipzig about this time, 
 called ' Gnissel^ Lessing's name spelt backwards, shows 
 how universally he was known and feared. The play 
 is the miserable revenge of a Gottschedian on one of 
 Lessing's reviews, and Lessing thought it sufficient to 
 reprint it and distribute it gratis in Berlin. 
 
 In 1754 Lessing issued his seven juvenile dramas
 
 go GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESS INC. 
 
 in a reprint. Of these only the ' Jews ' and the ' Free- 
 thinker ' can now attract attention ; and this more for 
 their tendency than as works of art. The ' Jews ' has 
 too much the character of a thesis put into action ; as 
 a play it is weak, but its composition was a great 
 moral achievement. The hero has accidentally 
 benefited a family, who are anxious to show him 
 some marks of gratitude. He repels all their ad- 
 vances and desires to quit their domains, while they 
 attempt to retain him. He will not give his name, 
 the real fact being that he is a Jew, a fact Lessing 
 cleverly manages to hold back until the hero's 
 generous character has won public sympathy. The 
 culminating point is the terrible avowal of his religion : 
 he is a social outcast whom no Christian will receive, ' 
 though he be their benefactor. ' The Jews would be 
 estimable if they all resembled you ! ' exclaims the 
 Baron, abashed at the lesson he has received. The 
 critics justly objected to this play on its appearance, 
 that its hero was the Jew of a poet's phantasy ; the 
 picture would have been truer, the lesson more instruc- 
 tive, if, instead of making his Jew a perfect character, 
 Lessing had shown how the treatment of Christians 
 tends to embitter and vitiate the Jewish character, and 
 that the Christians are thus really answerable for the 
 vices they condemn. 
 
 The ' Freethinker' (' Dcr Freigcist ') was no doubt 
 the play which should redeem Lessing's promise to his 
 father that he would write a comedy which ' the theo- 
 logians would not only read, but even praise.' The 
 hero is a shallow young man who refuses to believe 
 that any good can exist in the ancient theological 
 forms, because he has himself recently stripped ofif 
 their bondage. This prejudice is overcome by a worthy
 
 SECOND BERLIN RESIDENCE. 91 
 
 pastor, whose disinterested kindness and personal 
 rectitude convince the bigoted freethinker, much 
 against his will, that a clergyman is not necessarily 
 a Pharisee. 
 
 The studies of English drama Lessing conducted 
 together with Nicolai, and the republication of his early 
 plays again stimulated the theatrical interests that had 
 lain dormant awhile. But the social and literary dis- 
 tractions of Berlin did not allow him sufficient concen- 
 tration for creation. He therefore retreated to Potsdam 
 for eight weeks in the early winter of 1755, and brought 
 back with him the finished play, ' Miss Sara Samp- 
 son,' a work that marks a period, not only in his writ- 
 ings, but in the development of the national litera- 
 ture. The title, the names of the personages, as well 
 as the place of action, suSciently announce its source 
 of inspiration. It was in truth a domestic drama 
 after the English pattern. The immediate materials 
 were clearly derived from ' Clarissa Harlowe ' and 
 Lillo's ' London Merchant' 
 
 Lillo's dramas consist of a peculiar species of what 
 may be called tragedies of domestic life, an innova- 
 tion admitted by Lillo when he wrote that the aim 
 and object of tragedy is 'the exciting of the passions 
 in order to the correcting of such of them as are 
 criminal, either in their nature, or through their excess. 
 If princes, &c., v/ere alone liable to misfortunes aris- 
 ing from vice or weakness in themselves or others, 
 there would be good reason for confining the charac- 
 ters in tragedy to those of superior rank ' Lillo's 
 plays, like the imitations which they evoked, excited 
 much admiration on the Continent, where class dis- 
 tinctions were more sharply defined. They prompted 
 Lessing- to consider whether Aristotle's definition of
 
 92 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESS INC. 
 
 the design of tragedy, that it is intended to purge our 
 passions by means of pity and terror, was of inherent 
 necessity confined to royalty — whether our interests 
 can only be roused on behalf of those who stand above 
 the laws. The conditions of ancient life had limited 
 tragedy to heroes, as figures who were existent to do 
 and suffer great things. Tragedy /^r se is dependent 
 on the exhibition of violent passions producing deep 
 disasters. Now those actions which move us when 
 applied to kings, if applied to those who are subject 
 to the law, are in danger of becoming criminal ; judi- 
 cial punishment takes the place of grand remorse and 
 gigantic struggles with inexorable fate ; the mental 
 conflicts become actual conflicts with the police, and 
 therefore such burgher tragedies dangerously approach 
 the verge of bathos. To avoid this, a domestic 
 tragedy must be based on purely human passions, 
 and treat conditions peculiar to the class with which 
 it deals and amid which scope for destructive action 
 can also be found. Even though these conditions of 
 force do not produce the very finest tragic cata- 
 strophes, they as adequately fulfil Aristotle's demand 
 that tragedy should stimulate pity and fear, while they 
 are at the same time more natural, and bring home 
 their effects to the hearths of each spectator. 
 
 ' The names of princes and heroes may give a piece 
 pomp and majesty ; but they contribute nothing to 
 its pathos. The misery of those nearest to us must 
 naturally affect us most powerfully ; and if we feel 
 compassion for kings, we feel for them as men and 
 not as kings. If their rank often makes their mis- 
 fortunes more important, it does not make them more 
 interesting. Whole peoples may possibly be involved 
 in the disaster, and yet our sympathy demands a
 
 SECOND BERLIN RESIDENCE. 93 
 
 single object, and a State is far too abstruse an idea 
 for our feelings.' 
 
 The story of ' George Barnwell ' is that of a Lon- 
 don apprentice who is lured by the artifices of an 
 abandoned woman, and the force of his own passion, 
 into embezzlement, and then into murder, crimes 
 which he expiates on the gallows, that actually 
 appear on the stage. Lessing improved upon his 
 model in avoiding this Newgate element, and treating 
 of the tragedies of domestic life that do hot fall within 
 the province of criminal jurisprudence. His hero is 
 an irresolute and dissolute man, Mellefont, whose name 
 is derived from Congreve's 'Double-dealer.' Like his 
 prototype Lovelace, he feels a great aversion to the 
 binding tie of matrimony, but has nevertheless 
 conceived a real affection for the heroine, Sara Samp- 
 son, a hyper-romantic and self-torturing Clarissa. She 
 quits home with her lover, believing his protestations 
 that he merely defers his marriage on account of an 
 inheritance. His whereabout is discovered by his old 
 ' mistress, Marwood, the copy of Lillo's feminine demon, 
 who, after endeavouring to regain her empire over 
 him, and only partially succeeding while in his pre- 
 sence, revenges herself by poisoning her rival at the 
 moment when Sara's father arrives on the scene, 
 intending to forgive his daughter and her lover and 
 bring about a happy solution. Mellefont kills him- 
 self over the corpse of Sara, who dying, forgives 
 Marwood for her treachery. The play, which is only 
 read now-a-days for its literary interest, sins by exces- 
 sive length and tedium, as well as by weak construc- 
 tion. Its catastrophe is not just, in that the- imper- 
 sonation of evil is made to execute the poetic justice, 
 and herself escapes punishment. Nevertheless, it
 
 94 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 electrified Lessing's contemporaries, and, besides the 
 revolution which its general purpose induced, the fact 
 that it was written in prose opened a new and 
 more natural dramatic vehicle than the long French 
 Alexandrines. 
 
 The value which Lessing himself attached to 
 ' Miss Sara Sampson ' may be judged by the fact that 
 he undertook what was then a considerable and costly 
 journey to Frankfort-on-the-Oder, to conduct its first 
 scenic representation, which took place in July 1755. 
 Ramler writes to Glcim : ' Lessing's tragedy has been 
 played in Frankfort, and the spectators listened for 
 three and a half hours, sat still like statues and wept.' 
 A young Englishman who heard it, made a bet of 50/. 
 that the play was only a translation, and that he 
 would prove it by sending to England for the original. 
 Its democratic tendency did not escape Goethe, who 
 reckoned it among those dramas that increase the 
 moral self-respect of the third estate. He held that its 
 literary revolt against the princes of the stage heralded 
 the political revolution that soon after subverted the ^ 
 thrones of monarchs, and made liberty and equality 
 no longer empty words. 
 
 The success of his play, the renewed immediate 
 contact it had afforded him with actors, the circum- 
 .stance that Bruckner had joined a company in 
 Leipzig, combined with his desire to associate again 
 with friends who loved the real stage, led Lessing 
 once again abruptly to quit Berlin. He disappeared 
 suddenly, without a word of farewell, and in October 
 (1755) the ' Voss Gazette' announces that he has 
 removed to Leipzig.
 
 LEIPZIG. 95 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 LEIPZIG. 
 
 (1755-1758. Aged 26-29.) 
 
 ' To push on is the law of Nature ; and you can no more say to men and 
 to nations, than to children, " Sit still, and don't wear out your shoes.' " 
 
 BULWER, The Caxtons. 
 
 Leipzig was at that period the only town that boasted 
 an established theatre, and a public capable of an 
 intelligent interest in a national drama. Lessing at 
 once fraternized with the comedians, some of whom 
 were old acquaintances, and lived and moved in their 
 sphere as in his student years. Mendelssohn, with 
 whom he kept up a brisk correspondence, twitted him 
 with the partiality for actors into which he himself 
 could not enter, though he would theorize with Lessing 
 on the emotions excited by the drama. He consoled 
 himself with the reflexion that this fancy would not 
 last long. Mendelssohn's letters are touchingly tender 
 and affectionate. He missed his robust friend sorely. 
 Never, he tells him, has he made so many acquaint- 
 ances as since Lessing left Berlin, and yet never be- 
 fore has he felt such difficulty in occupying his leisure 
 hours. Lessing recommends him to visit Nicolai. 
 
 ' Do you often see him .-' ' he asks. ' When I hear 
 that two such dear friends whom I have left in Berlin, 
 are friends also, and intimate friends, I shall hear that 
 which I desire for the good of both.'
 
 96 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESS INC. 
 
 Sometimes he writes them letters in common, but 
 to their entreaties that he should return to Berlin he 
 turns a deaf ear. Contact with the stage was once 
 more a necessity. He resumed his friendly relations 
 with Weisse, who had just brought out a new play, 
 also derived from English sources, and who adapted 
 ' Miss Sara Sampson ' for the Leipzig stage. 
 
 Lessing had not been long in this dramatic circle 
 before Goldoni's comedies fell into his hands, and 
 interested him deeply, from the fact that their pictures 
 of manners were drawn from the range of everyday 
 life. He studied them exhaustively for treatment in 
 his ' Theatrical Library,' proposed to rewrite ' U Ercde 
 Fortuiiata^ and produce five new plays by next Easter, 
 promising Mendelssohn that these should for a time 
 be the last. This became yet another of his aban- 
 doned projects ; he acknowledges that he must use the 
 first white heat of inspiration, or fresh ideas efface 
 older ones. 
 
 An impatient longing for a wider sphere had been 
 gaining ground in Lessing's mind. It was discouraged 
 by Mendelssohn, whose tranquil' nature did not need 
 the immediate contact with life. But his remon- 
 strances could not appease Lessing's craving to travel, 
 a craving that must be felt to be understood in all its 
 imperiousness. Lessing held no position to restrain 
 him. He was free, young, strong, and when he 
 heard that a rich merchant of Leipzig had been 
 inquiring of Weisse for a travelling companion, he 
 accepted the post without hesitation. Informing 
 Mendelssohn, he writes, December 8, 1/55 : 
 
 ' I must have left Berlin in a lucky hour. I .shall 
 travel, not as a tutor with the burden of a boy 
 entrusted to my care, not according to the directions
 
 LEIPZIG. 97 
 
 of an opinionated family, but as the mere companion 
 of one person, who is wanting neither in will nor in 
 means to make the journey as useful and pleasant to 
 me as I could wish to make it for myself. His name 
 is Winkler, his age about the same as mine, his cha- 
 racter very good ; and he has neither relations nor 
 friends whose fancies he must consult. He is inclined 
 to leave all arrangements to me ; and thus, really, he 
 will rather travel with me than I with him.' 
 
 He was not blind to the fact that his companion 
 was only making the conventional grand tour, and 
 would probably care more to go over much ground 
 and make acquaintance with the kitchens and cellars 
 of foreign countries than with their inhabitants and 
 remarkable objects. But Lessing felt assured that he 
 himself could extract real value out of these wander- 
 ings, beside the advantage of a compulsory cessation 
 from his assiduous literary labours. The journey was 
 to commence Easter 1756; and Lessing agreed so 
 eagerly that, but for the circumspect care of a friend, 
 he would not even have made a written contract 
 Winkler was to pay Lessing three hundred thalers a 
 year and all his expenses. 
 
 Pending their departure. Lessing prepared himself 
 for his journey by a visit to the art treasures of 
 Dresden, where he unexpectedly met his parents, after 
 a separation of eight years. Their mutual pleasure 
 was so great that they carried him home to Camenz, 
 that brothers and sisters might share the joy of be- 
 holding what a stately polished gentleman Gotthold 
 had grown. He remained with them a few weeks, and 
 then resumed his preparatory studies at Dresden. 
 Here he became acquainted with C. G. Heyne, his 
 contemporary in age ; also a pupil of Professors Christ 
 
 H
 
 98 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 and Ernesti, then amanuensis to Count Briihl, in whose 
 library he had become acquainted with Winckelmann, 
 Heyne was already favourably known to the learned 
 world by his editions of TibuUus and Epictetus, and 
 his comprehensive knowledge of antiquity must have 
 been of scarcely less value to Lessing than the artistic 
 advice he received from his old master, Christ. 
 
 On May lO, 1756, Lessing and Winkler started 
 on their journey. Their first goal was Holland, re- 
 garded at that time as a wonderland of culture and 
 wealth, that must not be left unvisited in a European 
 tour. It took the travellers two months to reach 
 Amsterdam, for travelling was then more deliberate 
 and thorough than now-a-days. Unfortunately Les- 
 sing's journal has been lost. His brother records 
 that he diligently visited all the art galleries he could, 
 and even induced his companion to buy a rich col- 
 lection of engravings. Neither did he lose sight of 
 his dramatic interests. He tells Nicolai that he has 
 made some notes on the domestic drama, which he 
 purposes to send him, and at Hamburg he learned 
 to know and admire the greatest living German actor, 
 Conrad Eckhof Lessing writes to his father that 
 after they have exhausted the Netherlands they will 
 cross to England, probably early in October. This 
 plan was frustrated, because, says Lessing, the King 
 of Prussia was too great a warrior. 
 
 The peace of 1748 had been little better than an 
 armistice. In August 1756 the Seven Years' War 
 broke out, and in an instant Saxony was overrun by 
 the well-exercised Prussians. Troops were levied 
 and contributions exacted. Leipzig was garrisoned 
 by Brandenburgers, and the commander billeted on 
 Winkler. The news filled him with dismay, and they 
 posted back to Leipzig. Still the idea of the journey
 
 LEIPZIG. 
 
 99 
 
 was not at once abandoned. Lessing therefore re- 
 mained in Winkler's house, waiting for a resumption 
 of the interrupted project : an interruption that 
 grieved him the more, as, from the turn which poli- 
 tical affairs were taking, he greatly feared that the 
 hopes he had built on a long absence would be even- 
 tually defeated. 
 
 The winter passed in an uncertainty peculiarly 
 trying to Lessing. He complains to Mendels- 
 sohn that if it did not cost him money, it cost 
 him time, his only and most precious possession. 
 Intercourse with Winkler, which had sustained some 
 rude shocks during their travels, grew more and more 
 precarious as the rich merchant saw the disturbed 
 state of the country ; and when Lessing demanded 
 his salary, or the sum stipulated if the journey were 
 abandoned, Winkler affirmed that war had dissolved 
 their contract, that his unbidden guests cost him 
 enough already, and bade Lessing be satisfied with 
 the free board and lodging enjoyed in his house. 
 An opportunity for an open rupture soon after oc- 
 curred. The tavern where they dined was frequented 
 by merchants, who freely ventilated their complaints 
 of the Prussian extortions in a tone of bitterness most 
 natural to innocent sufferers. Lessing, who had no 
 contributions to pay, could afford to be unbiassed. 
 He took the part of the King, when he was too un- 
 justly abused, and even lauded some of his acts 
 that could scarcely find favour in Saxon eyes. The 
 ironical wit with which he defended Frederick, and 
 with which the stolid burghers could not cope, en- 
 hanced the annoyance which he caused them, and to 
 this he heedlessly put the crowning touch by inviting 
 Major Kleist and some other Prussian officers to join 
 
 H 2
 
 loo GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESS INC. 
 
 the common dinner-table. The merchants, who regarded 
 the presence of these officers as a restraint on their 
 freedom of conversation, stayed away, and the hostess 
 complained to Winkler that through his fault she 
 was deprived of her best customers. Winkler, in- 
 stead of pointing out to Lessing that this want of 
 tact had placed him in a dilemma, wrote a note 
 saying that they must part company, and that Lessing 
 must quit the house that day. This forced Lessing 
 to insist on the fulfilment of their contract. Winkler 
 refused to comply with its terms. The matter gave 
 rise to a lawsuit, decided seven years later in Les- 
 sing's favour ; but meanwhile he found himself sud- 
 denly houseless and penniless, chased from his em- 
 ployment as a partisan of the King of Prussia, and 
 doubly suspected as the author of pamphlets on the 
 Prussian and the Saxon sides: 'An absurd accusa- 
 tion, which either proves me the most unbiassed man 
 in the world, or the most abominable sophist.' The 
 name of patriot was the last he affected : of the patriot, 
 that is to say, who forgets that he is a citizen of the 
 whole world as well as of his native land. 
 
 But such imputations increased his difficulties. 
 Whither should he turn for resources .'' The theatre 
 had succumbed under the ills of war ; there only re- 
 mained his untiring pen and invincible courage, for 
 he was completely thrown back into his former posi- 
 tion. Mendelssohn implored him to cease his rest- 
 less cravings for variety of scene, and settle down 
 contentedly in his garden-house, where he could work 
 undisturbed amid loving friends. In vain ; Lessing 
 could not tamely settle down. 
 
 The year that ensued (from May 1757 to May 
 1 75 8) was one of dire need, and a hand-to-hand
 
 LEIPZIG. 
 
 loi 
 
 struggle with poverty, little removed from his first 
 Berlin experiences, and, for all Lessing's brave heart, 
 there were times when dejection mastered him. Re- 
 course was yet again had to literary hack work. 
 ' What would you } ' he replies to remonstrances on 
 this point. ' They are the productions of a man who 
 is an author partly by inclination, partly by force. 
 What can I do .^ I cannot study at my own expense, 
 so I try to do so at the expense of the public' He 
 translated Richardson's ' Familiar Letters for the Use 
 of Young People.' To please his sister, who was a 
 sworn enemy of all worldly levities, and who had 
 often begged him to do * some really serious work,' 
 he also began a translation of William Law's * Serious 
 Call to a Devout Life,' but his leaving Weisse to 
 finish it looks as if it had not exercised over him 
 the charm it had for Dr. Johnson, who held this book 
 'the first occasion of his thinking in earnest of religion 
 after he became capable of rational inquiry.' More 
 to Lessing's taste was Hutcheson's ' System of Moral 
 Philosophy.' While rejecting its fundamental doc- 
 trines as undefined and vacillating, he and Mendels- 
 sohn both admired some detached portions. Lessing 
 still inclined with his friend to the emotional theories 
 of the English, but his practical common sense ap- 
 plied them to everyday use. 
 
 Nicolai had started a literary journal, whose pub- 
 lication was removed from Berlin to Leipzig, owing 
 to the war disturbances. It was edited by Nicolai ; 
 Lessing attended to press details. The opening paper 
 was an essay on Tragedy. This became a starting- 
 point for an important correspondence between the 
 three friends, Lessing, Mendelssohn, and Nicolai on 
 dramatic poetry. Lessing based his inquiries on the
 
 I02 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 emotional theory ; and as his thoughts, as he himself 
 tells, ripened under his pen, this correspondence, which 
 contains the germ of his ' Z^r^'w^' /'//;;'''/>,' first made 
 clear to himself the essence and purpose of the 
 drama. 
 
 He considers that Nicolai has rather strained Aris- 
 totle's axiom that the moral end of tragedy is to 
 excite the pity of the spectators. Not only their pity, 
 contends Lessing, but their s}-mpathy. He blames 
 the indiscriminate rendering of the Aristotelian (f)6/3os 
 now by terror, now by fear. No one who has not 
 read the second book of the Rhetoric and the Nico- 
 machean Ethics can understand Aristotle's Poetics. 
 According to Aristotle's interpretation (f)6l3os is sim- 
 ply fear, and he says that those things cause fear in 
 us, which, if we saw them in others, would awaken 
 sympathy, and those things awaken sympathy, which, 
 if they were impending over ourselves, would provoke 
 fear. Therefore, Aristotle's fear is not an immediate 
 effect of tragedy, but a reflected idea, inasmuch as a 
 tragedy does not represent evils impending over our- 
 selves. 
 
 ' Aristotle would only have said, tragedy is to 
 purify our passions by sympathy, if he had not in- 
 tended at the same time to point out the means 
 which make this purification by sympathy possible, and 
 he therefore adds fear, which he regards as this means. 
 The former proposition is correct, the latter false. 
 Sympathy undoubtedly purifies our passions, but not 
 by means of fear.' It does so by enlarging man's 
 narrow individuality into the wider self of all man- 
 kind. Lessing adduces an example from physics. 
 
 ' It is well known that if two strings have an equal 
 tension, and the one is sounded by touch, the other
 
 LEIPZIG. 
 
 sounds also without being touched. Let us imagine 
 the strings to have feeling, and assume that every 
 vibration would be agreeable to them, but not every 
 touch. Thus the first string which vibrates at the 
 touch may have a painful sensation, while the other, 
 in spite of similar vibration, may experience a plea- 
 sant sensation, because it is not touched, at least not so 
 immediately. Thus also in tragedy. The personage 
 represented experiences an unpleasant emotion, and I 
 with him. But why is the emotion in me a pleasant 
 one } Because I am not the immediate sufferer ot 
 the unpleasant emotion ; I experience the emotion 
 merely as emotion, without at the same time thinking 
 of any particular unpleasant matter. Such secondary 
 emotions caused by seeing these emotions in others, 
 hardly deserve the name of emotions, therefore I have 
 already said in one of my first letters that tragedy 
 does not really call forth any emotion but sympathy.' 
 
 ' The representation of unpleasant emotions pleases 
 for the reason that they awaken in us similar emotions, 
 not directed to any definite object. The musician 
 makes me sad ; and this sadness is agreeable to me, 
 because I experience it merely as an emotion, and 
 every emotion is agreeable.' 
 
 Referring to the stilted plays founded on super- 
 lative perfections, he says : ' A rope-dancer is ad- 
 mired but not pitied. In proportion as our aston- 
 ishment increases, our sympathy diminishes. . . . 
 If the whole art of the poet tends to the deeper ex 
 citement and duration of individual sympathy, I say 
 the object of tragedy is this : to enlarge our capa- 
 bility of sympathizing. The sympathetic man is the 
 best man, the most inclined to all forms of generosity 
 and to all social virtues.'
 
 104 GOTTIIOLD EPHRAIM LESS INC. 
 
 Of Comedy he writes : ' It is to help us to a 
 readiness in "perceiving the ridiculous in all its mani- 
 festations. Whoever possesses this readiness will 
 seek to avoid the ridiculous in his behaviour, and thus 
 he will acquire polish and refinement. Thus we may 
 establish the use of comedy.' 
 
 Nicolai, who could afford to play Maecenas, an 
 attitude of which- he grew dangerously enamoured, 
 announced a competitive prize for the best modern 
 tragedy. Lcssing was chosen arbiter. A tragedy by 
 von Cronegh obtained the first prize, and one by von 
 Brawe the second. Lessing had taken great interest 
 in both productions, and had indeed given substan- 
 tial assistance to von Brawe. When, by a singular 
 coincidence, both these young poets died, the one 
 before, the other shortly after the adjudication, Les- 
 sing begged Nicolai to repeat his offer, intending to 
 enter the list himself, but secretly. 
 
 ' A young man is working here at a tragedy,' he 
 writes to Nicolai, 'which might perhaps prove the best 
 of all if he could devote a {e\v months' time to it. 
 Its theme is burgher tragedy, and its title " Emilia 
 Galotti." ' 
 
 But this play, then first contemplated, was not 
 finished till fifteen years later. Lessing's Leipzig 
 life was too distracting for original production. For 
 with all its hardships, it had some pleasant social 
 compensations. Among the Prussian officers whom 
 Lessing had indiscreetly introduced as bombshells 
 among the Saxon merchants, was Ewald Christian 
 \on Kleist, whose enthusiastic admiration for Frede- 
 rick the Great had induced him to abandon poetry, 
 in which he had acquitted himself respectably, and 
 ado])t a profession otherwise uncongenial to him.
 
 LEIPZIG. 
 
 105 
 
 Shortly after his arrival at Leipzig he was taken ill. 
 His indisposition was chiefly mental. He was hypo- 
 chondriacal, and his having been placed at Leipzig in 
 charge of the hospital, instead of going into active 
 service, preyed on his mind. Lessing, who knew him 
 to be a friend of Nicolai's, visited him. Very soon 
 the tenderest friendship sprang up between them. 
 Kleist wrote to Gleim that he owed his recovery to 
 Lessing's cheerful intercourse. He would comfort 
 him with a quotation from the ' Cyropaedia,' that the 
 bravest men are also the most compassionate ; and 
 certainly if his axioms did not reconcile Kleist to 
 Leipzig, his society did. After Kleist's recovery, the 
 two rode out together. Then Weisse was also intro- 
 duced, and von Brawe, and soon a merry little party 
 was assembled every evening in Kleist's rooms, who 
 talked of German literary interests in midst of the 
 din of a war that first created a German national 
 spirit. 
 
 Kleist, who was fourteen years Lessing's senior, 
 was anxious to help him to a secured means of sup- 
 port ; for he not only saw the straits to which his friend 
 was reduced, but gave him actual assistance. Indeed, 
 but for his help and Mendelssohn's, Lessing would 
 have had a yet harder struggle during this disturbed 
 time, when literary interests naturally paled before 
 political. Kleist tried to obtain for Lessing some 
 state appointment, some librarianship ; he thought the 
 King of Prussia ought to have shown himself grateful 
 to such a zealous ally. But Frederick, though he 
 made war on the King of France, was not the less 
 French in spirit, and it was no passport to his favour 
 for a young man to have attacked his favourite lite- 
 rature. Nor did he believe in German literature.
 
 io6 GOTTHCLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 He judged the German genius by Gottsched, whom 
 he had, when at Leipzig, admitted to an interview, 
 wherein he challenged him to defend the roughness 
 of German speech, and vindicate it by translating a 
 French stanza into moderately soft language. The 
 result was that the royal poet shrugged his shoulders 
 disdainfully. But by presenting Gottsched with a 
 golden snufif-box the King so gratified his inordinate 
 vanity, that he did not perceive his ill success. This 
 snuff-box provoked a poem from Lessing. ' WHiat 
 can it mean } ' he asks in Gottsched's person, ' that 
 the golden box King Frederick gave me is full of 
 hellebore instead of ducats .' ' It was therefore 
 vain to expect aid from such a King, even had Les- 
 sing not offended both Voltaire and the Berlin Aca- 
 demy. 
 
 ' You see what harm this war has done me,' writes 
 Lessing to Ramler. ' I and the King of Prussia will 
 have a big account to settle. I am only waiting for 
 peace. Since he, and he alone, is to blame that I have 
 not seen the world, would it not be fair for him to give 
 me a pension to help me forget the world .'* You 
 think he will take care not to do so. I think so too ; 
 but, in return, my wish for him shall be that none but 
 bad verses may be made on his victories.' 
 
 Lessing was better than his wishes. He was the 
 first to give publicity to the only really good verses 
 which this war had inspired. On his own responsi- 
 bility he inserted in Nicolai's Journal the 'War 
 Songs of a Prussian Grenadier.' Lessing suspected 
 that Gleim was their author, though tlje poems had 
 not come to him direct. Gleim, as secretary to the 
 Chapter of Ilalberstadt, was able to devote much time 
 to poetry. His generous hospitality, together with his
 
 LEIPZIG. 107 
 
 patronage of young literary aspirants, earned him 
 the surname of Father Gleim. He and Lessing had 
 already met at Berlin, but their acquaintanceship had 
 improved during some flying visits which Gleim had 
 paid to Kleist, and was strengthened by their com- 
 mon admiration for the King. Gleim had many 
 sympathies which Lessing could not share, and he 
 had not up to that time admired his somewhat lachry- 
 mose writings, but the war had roused his muse to a 
 manlier tone, which Lessing instantly appreciated. He 
 saw that these lyrics possessed the essential attributes 
 for war songs, that the very march of the numbers 
 suggested their martial origin. Without actually 
 saying so, he lets Gleim infer that he has penetrated 
 his incognito. 
 
 'Just imagine the impudence of your King's 
 soldiers ; they will soon want to write the best verses 
 because they know best how to conquer. What un- 
 bounded ambition ! A few days ago I received from 
 Berlin a war song, with the comment that it was com- 
 posed by a common soldier, who was going to make 
 one for every regiment. To think that a man, a com- 
 mon soldier, who doubtless never learnt poetry as a 
 trade, nor has served his time to it, should dare to 
 make such excellent verses ! ' 
 
 These poems made a great impression on Lessing. 
 A year after he published them in a collected form, 
 and prefaced them with an essay on the nature of 
 war songs in general, for which purpose he had read 
 up much early lore. The poems had indubitably 
 made clear to him that lyrics, and indeed all poetry, 
 must be inspired by real life, must deal with feelings 
 as manifested in actions, and have individual and 
 national truth ; and he recognized a modern Tyrtaeus
 
 ir-S GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 in Gleim, whom he compared favourably with the 
 Norse skalds and the true Germanic bards. 
 
 Meanwhile Lessing's political leanings, and the 
 vicinity of Leipzig to the scene of action, made the 
 city more and more intolerable to him. He began to 
 long for Berlin, ' where I .shall no longer need to 
 whisper to my acquaintances that, for all that and all 
 that, the King of Prussia is a great King.' To this 
 w^as added the dissolution of the pleasant coterie. 
 Brawe died, Weisse could not in the long run compen- 
 sate for his two Berlin friends, and when at length 
 Kleist was called into the field, the last link that held 
 him to Leipzig snapped. Both deeply felt the part- 
 ing vv'hich was to prove eternal. 
 
 ' I have grown so used to Lessing,' writes Kleist, 
 ' and love him so, that I feel as if he were dead, or 
 rather as if I were half dead without him.' 
 
 The Berlin friends, on their part, as warmly wel- 
 comed him back, when in May 1758 he again took up 
 his abode among them.
 
 THIRD BERLIN RESIDENCE. 109 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THIRD BERLIN RESIDENCE. 
 
 (1758-1760. Aged 29-31.) 
 
 • Weite Welt und breites Leben, 
 
 Langer yahre redlich Streben, 
 
 Stets geforscht und stets gegriindet, 
 
 Nie gesch lossen , n ie geriin det, 
 
 Aeltcstes bewahrt mit Treue, 
 
 Freundlich atifgefasstes Neue, 
 
 Heitern Sinn tind reine Zwecke, 
 
 Nun ! man kommt wohl eine Strecke.' — Goethe. 
 
 Though Lessing hated war, and his development 
 was to all appearance independent of the political 
 conditions of his time, this state of military ferment 
 was destined to become an active agent in his history. 
 He found a very different Berlin from the one he had 
 quitted. ' The upstart of Brandenburg,' as his enemies 
 called him, by his military exploits was raising his 
 sandy kingdom to the dignity of a European power. 
 The Prussian capital felt itself the focus of a novel 
 movement. The glory of its army was reflected upon 
 it, and demanded that the people should do honour to 
 the prestige which it was earning for Prussia. Lessing 
 had imbibed some of this elevated atmosphere in the 
 society of the enthusiastic soldier-poet, Kleist. At 
 Berlin he found his friends ardent adherents of the 
 King, and, with his ever living sympathy, he also was
 
 no GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESS INC. 
 
 infected by this universal agitation. But more 
 guardedly, and with a different end in view. He saw 
 that this awakening to the sense of collective national 
 life might beget an understanding for national litera- 
 ture, but he recognised that such demands at such a 
 time should be as concrete, terse, and emphatic as the 
 military energy that had kindled them. Journals like 
 Nicolai's, filled with long-winded philosophical dis- 
 quisitions, might suit 'tlie piping times of peace,' but 
 this rapid, anxious, bellicose season needed something 
 bolder and more resolute. 
 
 The result was the ' Letters concerning Contempo- 
 rary Literature' {Bricfc die neiieste Litcralur bctrcjfeiid) 
 that became a literary war manifesto, and brought 
 about nothing less than a revolution in criticism. 
 Lessing wished to strengthen the nascent self-reliance 
 of his nation, to clear out the Augean stable of Ger- 
 man literature, and he felt in himself the Herculean 
 strength necessary to the task. The Letters staggered 
 liis contemporaries, but they finally compelled their 
 respectful, then their admiring attention. They were 
 written for ordinary readers, not for a narrow, learned 
 coterie, nor did they claim to be regular reviews. 
 They were simply excursions into the literary realm, 
 and their pre-eminent merit was, that they were pro- 
 ductive, not destructive, criticism. 
 
 The very name of these Literary Letters has become 
 so identified with that of Lessing, that it must be 
 enforced that not until after his death was his real con- 
 nexion with them ascertained, though people soon 
 began to suspect that in such incisive reviews the critic 
 militant Lessing must have a hand. But the full ex- 
 tent of his share in them, and the certain knowledge 
 what letters really issued from his pen, or from his co-
 
 THIRD BERLIN RESIDENCE. in 
 
 labourers Nicolai and Mendelssohn, has only been 
 recently established. Anonymity was then in great 
 favour, and Lessing in this instance had an additional 
 motive for adopting it, in his unwillingness that the 
 influence of his periodical should be impaired by even 
 the suspicion of party spirit. He had for some time 
 desired an organ wherein he could express his own 
 views. The actual opportunity came from Nicolai, 
 who, by the death of his father and brother, had be- 
 come the head of his firm, and could therefore publish 
 at his own discretion. Abandoning the Leipzig paper 
 to Weisse's editorship, he desired to found another in 
 Berlin. 
 
 One day in November (1758) he was in Lessing's 
 room, discussing contemporary journalism and con- 
 demning it for its partisanship and insipidity. ' We 
 have so often said we should write as we speak,' said 
 Nicolai. The idea pleased Lessing. He pursued it 
 farther, and finally the plan was started of founding a 
 periodical that should abandon all abstract theoretical 
 criticisms, examine new works with all the frankness 
 of conversation, and only demand from the works 
 what they would express or had actually accom- 
 plished. To make this the easier, the epistolary form 
 was chosen. , The letters were to appear irregularly, 
 according to the needs of the subject ; and, in order to 
 connect them with the war that was exciting all minds, 
 they were to be written for the diversion of a fictitious 
 wounded officer, who desired to be kept an fait of 
 current literature. Kleist was in Lessingr-'s thoughts 
 All the first letters are from his pen. It was only 
 later, when his ardour cooled and other circumstances 
 interposed, that Mendelssohn and Nicolai took up the 
 thread, but it was Lessing who gave the publication
 
 112 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 the prestige it maintained long after his connexion 
 with it had ceased. 
 
 ' You will not have much to retrieve with regard to 
 literature since the opening of the campaign,' he tells 
 his officer. ' I seek in vain for a single new genius 
 evoked by this war, else so rich in marvels, to counter- 
 poise the hundred hero names that are making it 
 illustrious. What are the new books that come into 
 my way } Translations, nothing but translations : and 
 what sort of translations } Linguistic exercises that 
 should be banished into the domain of private study 
 to which they belong, but for which these men manage 
 to get pay into the bargain. Ignorant of their authors' 
 language, they venture to translate writers whose chief 
 merit perhaps is their style.' He then proceeds 
 to give examples. One miserable scribbler has ren- 
 dered Pope into prose, another has entirely overlooked 
 the fine satire of Gay. Oh ! very likely these men 
 had good intentions, but they have not hindered them 
 from spoiling two English poets. And he uses. the 
 word 'spoiling' advisedly. Unsparing severity must 
 be dealt out to such mutilators. Here is another who 
 has attacked Bolingbroke,and so many words so many 
 faults. 
 
 Such intrepid remarks fell into the literary world 
 like thunderbolts. Writers had hitherto beew used to 
 abuse from certain papers, to praise from others, be- 
 cause they happened to represent or oppose their 
 especial faction. But criticism such as this — an objec- 
 tive analysis of merit or demerit, an application of the 
 only true critical solvents, expressed in dignified tones 
 of assured superiority, free from arrogance .and en- 
 livened by Jiah'c wit, extensive reading, and apt quo- 
 tation — was a wholly new phenomenon. Demurs made
 
 THIRD BERLIN RESIDENCE. 113 
 
 themselves heard, but these only provoked yet sharper 
 attacks. Lessing is willing to admit, for instance, that 
 the neighbourhood of war scares the Muses ; but had 
 there been any to scare ? However, he will not dwell 
 on this sad theme, but try and search for the faintest 
 trace yet lingering of their divine footsteps. For 
 surely the Muses have not all departed .? Civilized 
 war is the bloody lawsuit carried on by absolute rulers 
 only, leaving the republic of letters unruffled, save to 
 arouse another Xenophon or Polybius. 
 
 ^ You are right,' he says in Letter 7, in reply to a 
 pretended objection from his correspondent ; * such 
 miserable translators as those to whom I have intro- 
 duced you are beneath criticism. But it is well that 
 criticism should now and then descend to them, for the 
 mischief they do is incredible. Suppose that through 
 some great and wonderful catastrophe, all books, 
 except those written in German, should perish ; what 
 a miserable figure our Virgils and Horaces, Shaftes- 
 burys and Bolingbrokes, would cut before posterity ! ' 
 
 Ah, but, he continues ironically, he had forgotten 
 that Germany did not lack men who could take the 
 place of the great foreigners, and the yet greater 
 ancients. Klopstock would become Homer ; Cramer, 
 Pindar ; Gleiin, Anacreon ; Wieland, Lucretius. This 
 name checks him, and he speaks at length concerning 
 Wieland, whom he calls beyond question one of the 
 finest living spirits ; for his quick eye had penetrated 
 the great natural gifts of this eclectic genius, even at 
 a time when he was lost in some of his strangest aber- 
 rations. In seven consecutive letters, Lessing takes 
 this young idealist through an educational process, in 
 a tone of righteous acerbity. Wieland, then twenty- 
 three, was passing through his pietistic stage. The guest 
 
 I
 
 114 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 and disciple of Bodmer, he wrote under his eye an epic 
 on the ' Temptation of Abraham ; ' piously denounced 
 Utz, the lighthearted writer of erotic odes, as un- 
 christian and immoral ; and tried to forget the fact that 
 while in his teens he had himself penned a didactic 
 poem ' On the Nature of Things,' that had earned him, 
 in those days of classic comparisons, the surname of 
 the German Lucretius. But Lessinghad not forgotten. 
 He demonstrates that it by no means becomes Wieland 
 to play the defender of Christianity, for he has not 
 always been such a specifically Christian writer. 
 
 He will not dwell on some doubtful anecdotes of 
 his school-life, for what docs the private life of an 
 author concern us } but he wishes to recall what Wie- 
 land forgets, that epithet Lucretius, and contrast it 
 \\ith the ' Moral Letters,' neither of which contain 
 Christian matter. 
 
 'The Christian religion,' he goes on to say, ' is 
 always Wieland's third word. We often boast of 
 that which we have not, that we may at least appear 
 to have it' 
 
 With his power of reducing to simple proportions 
 whatever came within his vision, where puerilities 
 died a natural death, Lessing further demonstrates 
 that Wieland's religion is really nothing but an 
 aesthetic dallying with religious emotions, and that 
 his austerity is but affectation. 
 
 Wieland throughout life remained in terror of 
 Lessing. Nevertheless he pondered his remarks, and, 
 mirabile dictu, they influenced him. How adequately 
 Lessing had gauged this volatile author, Wieland's after 
 career proved. After his removal from the evangel- 
 ical influence of Bodmer, his highly receptive and 
 purely imitative nature, swayed by the popular philo-
 
 THIRD BERLIN RESIDENCE. 115 
 
 sophy of enjoyment rampant under Louis XV., as- 
 sumed a Gallo-Hellenic dress made by a German tailor. 
 He became the favourite author of the Frenchified 
 portion of society, to whom his uncouth levity was 
 more acceptable than the more gracefully polished 
 productions of the French. He had the merit, at 
 Lessing's instigation, to be the first to translate 
 Shakespeare into German, for which he earned the 
 redoubtable critic's praise, but at the time of the 
 ' Literary Letters ' Wieland was still cutting his teeth 
 on the English drama. 
 
 Lessing bids his officer (in the 36th Letter) ' rejoice 
 with him, for Wieland had quitted the ethereal spheres 
 and again wanders among mortal men ; he has written 
 a drama, " Lady Jane Grey." But, alas ! stern truth 
 obliges the writer to proclaim that this first sign of 
 mortality in the Seraphim is a plagiarism from 
 Nicholas Rowe's tragedy of that name, and an awk- 
 ward plagiarism, in which he has inadvertently left a 
 personage belonging to an episode which he has 
 omitted. He has torn down the stately temple of his 
 author, to build a tiny hut out of the materials, and 
 passes over this obligation in dead silence. But no 
 doubt Wieland has wandered too long among Che- 
 rubim and Seraphim to get quickly used to the ways 
 of common men.' 
 
 Amid all these humorous sallies, Lessing does not 
 lose sight of his serious aims. This historical tragedy 
 affords him an opportunity to speak of the poetic 
 treatment of such themes. 
 
 ' The poet,' he says, ' is master over history ; ' and 
 he makes his first bold reference to Shakespeare, who, 
 though he had not written semndimi artem, and was 
 
 ignorant of Aristotle and the classical drama, had better 
 
 I 2
 
 ii6 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESS INC. 
 
 observed the rules and approached more nearly to the 
 ancients than the rigidly correct Corneille. This 
 affords him an opportunity, which he never neglects, 
 for springing into the arena and breaking a lance with 
 Gottsched. It had been writ-ten, ' Nobody will deny 
 that the German stage owes a large portion of its im- 
 provements to Professor Gottsched.' 
 
 ' I am that Nobody,' says Lessing, ' I deny it 
 entirely.' 
 
 He then gives his reasons for this statement, which 
 he finds in the French taste foisted by Gottsched on 
 the nation, while he (Lessing) insists, very properly, 
 that the German mode of thought is more in harmony 
 with the English. Lessing overlooks that a somewhat 
 artificial atmosphere was needed at first to take the 
 place of the gross excesses that had held possession 
 of the stage, and thus rouse the national taste to a 
 spirit of opposition that would prepare it to receive 
 the more congenial English drama. That Lessing could 
 overlook this patent truth, explains his fierce attacks 
 on Gottsched, and shows how even the most clear- 
 sighted intellect is yet so far immeshed in the tram- 
 mels of his age, as to be unable to render full justice 
 to the endeavours of his immediate predecessors. 
 
 ' That our old dramas had much of the English 
 element I could prove to you at length with little 
 trouble. Only to mention the best known. Dr. Faust 
 has a number of scenes that only a Shakespearean 
 genius could have thought out. And how enamoured 
 Germany was and still is of its Dr. Faust ! ' 
 
 * One of his friends,' he goes on, ' has lying by 
 him an old draft of this tragedy ; he will insert a speci- 
 men act.' Then follows an act of his own projected 
 play ; for Lessing, like Goethe, from the commence-
 
 THIRD BERLIN RESIDENCE. 117 
 
 ment of his career, was occupied with this theme. 
 The Faust legend has always attracted the Germans, 
 and in Lessing's time a perfect Faust epidemic raged, 
 that found its final apotheosis in Goethe's splendid 
 poem. Was it for the reason given by Heine, that 
 the German nation suspects that it is itself this learned 
 Dr. Faust, this spiritualist who, having at last under- 
 stood with the spirit the insufficiency of mere spirit, 
 desires material enjoyments and restores its rights to 
 the flesh ? 
 
 However this be, the theme attracted Lessing also, 
 and he twice composed a drama on the subject. The 
 sketch of the one is preserved, that of the other lost ; 
 and though recently its recovery has been asserted, 
 internal evidence, in the opinion of those best capable 
 of judging, is adverse to its authenticity. 
 
 In his Letters, Lessing continues his patronage to 
 the Grenadier's muse : he praises the poems of his friend 
 Kleist ; he announces the publication of a poor tra- 
 gedy by Weisse ; and as he skimmed each field, he 
 scattered important truths. 
 
 ' Tragedy should be the work of matured manhood, 
 not of youth.' 
 
 ' The merit of a work does not depend on indi- 
 vidual beauties ; these mustconstitute a beautiful whole, 
 or the connoisseur cannot read it without displeasure. 
 Only when the whole is found irreproachable, the 
 judge must desist from a censorious dissection, and 
 regard the work as a philosopher does the world.' 
 
 Because he had found in the early cantos of Klop- 
 stock's ' Messiah ' the true national ring that proved 
 its inspiration to have sprung from the innermost life 
 of the nation, he had welcomed it and dealt gently 
 with its failings ; but the Odes which Kiopstock was
 
 iiS GO TT HOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 now giving to the world, with their perverted reh'gious 
 transcendentalism, their false pathos, their painted 
 fire, aroused his disdain. Their inspiration was rather 
 theological than poetical. He demands the rigid de- 
 marcation of the domains of poetry and religion. 
 
 ' What do you say to Klopstock's Sacred Odes } ' 
 he writes to Gleim, ' If you condemn them, I shall 
 doubt your orthodoxy ; if you acquit them, your 
 taste.' 
 
 He explains himself more fully to his officer, to 
 the effect that Klopstock's gorgeous tirades are so full 
 of the poet's emotions, that the reader has nothing 
 left to feel. An admirer of Klopstock had called 
 these songs rich in thought. If this be so, Lessing 
 only wonders that this wealthy poet has not long since 
 become the favourite of all old women. He is quite 
 willing to believe that Klopstock may have been in a 
 state of lively emotion when he composed these 
 lyrics, ' but because he sought merely to express these 
 emotions, and concealed the depth of clear thoughts 
 and conceptions by means of which he has kindled 
 in himself the pious flame, it is impossible for his 
 readers to raise themselves to his level.' 
 
 There was no department of current literature into 
 which Lessing did not make an inroad. His censure 
 of commonplace superficiality and verbiage reveals to 
 what a degree mediocrity had pervaded German litera- 
 ture, while some of his criticisms remain pertinent to 
 this day, as when he shows why Germany boasts no 
 good historians. 
 
 ' Our w^its are seldom scholars, or our scholars 
 wits. The former are wholly unwilling to read, inves- 
 tigate, collect, in short, to work ; the latter are un- 
 willing to do anything else. The former lack
 
 THIRD BERLIN RESIDENCE. 119 
 
 material, and the latter lack skill to give form to their 
 material' 
 
 At the same time he is indignant at Leibnitz, who 
 had said that the French were superior to the Germans 
 in intellect, the only national pre-eminence of the 
 Germans being their industry. 
 
 ' Now let no one wonder again how it is that 
 Frenchmen are apt to depreciate German scholars, 
 when the best German intellects abase their country- 
 men below the French, merely to gain a reputation for 
 politeness and good breeding.' 
 
 Lessing regards the French as too truly polite to be 
 gratified by compliments paid at the expense of their 
 neighbours. He admits that German literature was 
 only in course of development, that it would be long 
 ere it could boast of really good works, especially in 
 the higher branches ; but for this very reason it must 
 be encouraged. He therefore hails talent wherever it 
 shows itself, and strives to aid its progress, but at the 
 same time to correct its aberrations. 
 
 But Lessing's sharpest feud was waged against the 
 distorted supersensuous piety and spiritual pride of 
 Klopstock and his followers, and more especially 
 against the journal edited under their supervision, in 
 which they constituted themselves the moral censors 
 of the nation. 
 
 ' You shall be satisfied,' he writes to his officer. 
 ' The praises bestowed by so many papers on the 
 " Northern Guardian " have excited my curiosity also. 
 I have read it, although I generally make it almost a 
 rule to leave our weekly moralists unread.' This 
 ' Northern Guardian ' tries to be something quite above 
 the average, and is something below it. Its intention 
 was to infuse a specifically Christian sentiment into
 
 120 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 the people, and it was pervaded by a devout zealotry 
 that knew no bounds. It pretended to be a literary 
 journal, but all criticism was made subservient to reli- 
 gion. Poetry, in the eyes of its pious conductors, 
 must needs be the handmaid of the flesh, and they 
 therefore turned criticism into inquisition. They 
 laid down as an incontrovertible proposition, that 
 morality without religion is a contradiction in terms, 
 and proved it by — nothing more — than their positive 
 tone. 
 
 This is too much for Lessing. He exposes the 
 confusion of ideas and the sophistry underlying this 
 dictum, and holds that the poetical religious extra- 
 vagance of this set has made them sin against sense 
 and humanity. Even from a theological point of 
 view, their arguments will not bear examination ; they 
 are endeavouring to combine orthodoxy and hetero- 
 doxy into a mild tertiiuii quid, and the results are 
 insipid metaphysics. This pretentious new-fangled 
 theology deviates from the old dogmas, while retain- 
 ing the old dogmatism. 
 
 No wonder the Northern Guardians ascribed the 
 Literary Letters to a Freethinker and a Jew, and they 
 again asserted that integrity is impossible without 
 religion. 
 
 Presumptuous assertion, Lessing tells them, for by 
 religion they mean only their own way of thinking. 
 
 The rage with which the assailed turned against 
 Lessing only increased the vigour of his attack. Po- 
 lemics were his very life-blood. Opposition stirred 
 him into action. An almost joyous atmosphere per- 
 vades the Letters. Their strong consciousness is ex- 
 hilarating, and they are masterpieces of unexpected 
 dramatic thrusts and caustic wit. The defence of the
 
 THIRD BERLIN RESIDENCE. 121 
 
 adversaries was lamentably weak. They complained 
 that the accusations made by the Literary Letters 
 were ' strange,' ' cruel.' Lessing gives his officer a 
 few extracts : 
 
 ' My criticism is hard, bitter, loveless, heedless ; 
 indeed, so loveless and heedless that it is impossible 
 to reflect on its existence in these days without sad- 
 ness. It is a phenomenon whose reality will not be 
 believed by mere hearsay : I possess a shameless 
 audacity. I calumniate. I have an unfortunate cha- 
 racter. I deserve the abhorrence of the world,' and so 
 on ; and he ends with the quiet remark, ' Well now, 
 such is your friend.' 
 
 Though most of the writers with whom the Lite- 
 rary Letters deal are long forgotten, or merely re- 
 membered through these pages, the Letters them- 
 selves are enjoyable for their inherent youth and 
 freshness, and w^ill be always perused for their own 
 sake. But they have a yet prouder claim ; they be- 
 came the founders of modern criticism. Criticism up 
 to this time had been the application of general rules 
 derived from ancient standards ; Lessing raised it 
 to a science. He had studied literature in all its 
 branches, not only theoretically but productively, and 
 could bring practice to bear on precept. He aimed 
 at the presentation of the peculiar laws and processes 
 of production, as manifested through the medium of 
 consciousness. Moreover, in these Letters he first 
 evinced himself a consummate master of German 
 prose, raising it to a height that has rarely been ap- 
 proached, never surpassed. He not only used fewer 
 foreign words than his contemporaries, he coined new 
 ones to take their place, or revived old German 
 words that had fallen into disuse. Lessing's language
 
 122 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSIAG. 
 
 differed from that of his contemporaries in its trans- 
 parency, vigour, and compactness. His sentences 
 were short ; he avoided, as far as he could, the auxi- 
 liary verbs that render the German language so cum- 
 bersome ; he preferred the present tense to the future ; 
 the active voice to the passive ; and made use of many 
 of the pregnant Lutheran phrases. Some of his in- 
 flexions are now out of date, but they strike us as 
 idiosyncratic rather than antiquated. He employed 
 metaphors freely ; these are always correct and to the 
 point, and often of startling originality, enthralling 
 attention. Every sentence, says a German writer, is 
 like a phalanx in which no word is superfluous or out 
 of place." 
 
 These Letters, however, did not fill up the whole 
 of Lessing's time at Eerlin. According to Ramlcr, 
 he had ten different matters on hand at once, and he 
 himself writes to Gleim : ' Ramler and I make plan 
 upon plan. Wait another quarter of a century, and 
 you will marvel at all wc have written, especially L 
 I write day and night, and it is the least part of my 
 ambition to write three times as many plays as Lope 
 de Vega.' The studies incidental to Gleim's war- 
 songs had referred Lessing back to genuine national 
 poetry. The fruit of these studies was an interest in 
 a Silesian poet of the seventeenth century, Frederick 
 von Logau, whose epigrams he edited in concert with 
 Ramler, who modernised their language, while Les- 
 sing compiled a glossary. The epigrams lost much 
 of their quaint originality, through Ramler's correct 
 transformation. The glossary it was hoped would 
 incite others to catalogue the words used by old 
 German writers. This was a creditable innovation, 
 and the first systematic attempt of its kind.
 
 THIRD BERLIN RESIDENCE. 123 
 
 Never losing sight of his dramatic interests, Les- 
 sing translated Diderot's domestic dramas, ' Le pere 
 de faniille^ and ' Le fils naticrci,' and his essay on 
 this new genus. Diderot and Lessing had independ- 
 ently arrived at the same conclusions concerning 
 the subjects and the social classes that may be 
 treated dramatically ; they both insisted that in all 
 civilized countries the middle class best represent the 
 world, because, while their duties are sharply de- 
 fined, they escape the harshest strokes as well as the 
 over-pampering of fortune. Lessing prized Diderot 
 as the most philosophical mind that had occupied 
 itself with the theatre since the days of Aristotle. 
 It is a satisfaction to him to think that perhaps 
 Diderot will earn more favour in Germany than in 
 France, and that for once the Germans will escape 
 from the ridicule of only appreciating French authors 
 when they are already passing out of fashion in their 
 own country. 
 
 Pastor Lessing once more urged his son to seek a 
 settled subsistence. The latter again protested his un- 
 willingness to be an official slave, adding, at the same 
 time, that should any permanent appointment be offered 
 to him he will not refuse it, but to make any efforts 
 in this direction he is either too conscientious or too 
 lazy. Socially, Berlin was pleasanter to him than ever. 
 The Monday Club, to which all the literary men of 
 the time belonged, counted him a member ; then there 
 was the Friday Club, a more select gathering, that 
 consisted of his closest friends. The most cultured 
 society opened its doors to him, not to mention the 
 renewed daily intercourse which he enjoyed with 
 Nicolai and his dear Mendelssohn. Healthy delight 
 in his work and the success which it brought told on
 
 124 COTTHOLD EPHRAnt LESSING. 
 
 his spirits. Mendelssohn always recalled these years 
 with tender regret, when Lessing was the life and soul 
 of a happy circle, and his ' flashes of merriment were 
 wont to set the table in a roar.' 
 
 Lessing now considered himself called upon tho- 
 roughly to revise his earlier writings, and began upon 
 his fables, rejecting those written in verse, or changing 
 them into prose. This led him to write an essay on 
 this mode of composition in general. Fables had 
 enjoyed great popularity in Germany during the 
 eighteenth century, owing to the national taste for 
 symbolism and allegory. The Swiss contended that 
 fable united both the essential conditions of poetry, the 
 moral and the marvellous. Fables in their eyes were 
 epics in miniature. Not so in Lessing's. He beheld 
 in this definition one of those confusions of aesthetic 
 boundaries which he felt called upon everywhere to 
 rectify. A true poem is complete in itself, and there- 
 fore didactics should be limited to the sphere of fable. 
 Utility is their raisoii (fctre. He then proceeds to 
 show that action in fable and action in epics and 
 drama are essentially different. Action is not merely 
 a movement of body and change in space ; every 
 inner conflict of passion is an action. Action in 
 drama, besides the poet's design, must have a purpose 
 pertaining to itself ; action in fable does not need 
 this inner aim, it is sufficient if it enforces its moral. 
 He carefully distinguishes between an allegorical ac- 
 tion and a fable. De la Motte's definitionj that ' la 
 fable est une instruction deguisce sous Fallegorie 
 d'une action,' he rejects. When Tarquinius Superbus 
 cut off the poppy-heads, he instructed his son by an 
 allegorical action ; but this was no fable. Nor is a 
 fable necessarily an allegory at all. It only becomes
 
 THIRD BERLIN RESIDEISCE. 125 
 
 an allegory when to the fictitious individual case a 
 similar real one is added. The fable is not in itself 
 an allegory, since the moral precept contained in it is 
 a general one. A fable must deal with an individual 
 case, and deal wuth it in such a manner that its appli- 
 cation shall be obvious. The more determinate the 
 individual case, the more forcible the intuitive applica- 
 tion. The merely possible case is a species of general 
 one, for everything which is possible is possible in 
 several ways. An individual case, considered as 
 merely possible, is still in some degree general, and 
 therefore weakens the effect of the intuitive applica- 
 tion. The fable requires the assumption of a positive 
 fact, because a positive fact suggests more motives 
 than a merely possible one, and carries a much 
 stronger conviction. 
 
 After confuting the definitions of fable given by 
 Richier, Batteux, le Bossu, and Breitinger, Lessing 
 passes on to his own theory. When we deduce a general 
 moral principle from a particular case, give reality to 
 this particular case, and invent a story from it in which 
 the general moral principle is intuitively perceptible, 
 such invention is called a fable. The advantaee of 
 introducing animals he holds to be our knowledge of 
 their salient characteristics. There is no objection to 
 the introduction of human actors if their peculiar cha- 
 racteristics are sufficiently defined. Thus, it would be 
 a great loss in the fable of the sour grapes if, in place 
 of a fox, a man were substituted, for we should not 
 know what kind of man might be meant, while the 
 fox naturally suggests the idea of shrewdness and 
 vanity. But if, instead of fox, the word Gascon were 
 substituted, the fable would lose less, because these 
 qualities are the recognized characteristics of a Gascon.
 
 126 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESS INC. 
 
 Again, the object of fable is the clear and graphic 
 perception of a moral truth ; and as nothing obscures 
 our perceptions more than our passions and sympa- 
 thies, the fabulist must avoid their interference as 
 much as possible, and this cannot be done when the 
 actors are human beings. 
 
 Lessing then passes in review the various manners 
 of ^sop, Ph.nedrus, and La Fontaine. He praises 
 the clearness and brevity of /Esop's Fables, and the 
 finished precision of his narrative. Phasdrus, who 
 aspired to improve Esop's invention by the adoption 
 of verse, paid the strictest attention to his model's 
 concise treatment ; but, where he deviated for the sake 
 of metre, he sometimes fell into absurdities. La 
 Fontaine, though recognising the inappropriateness of 
 ornament in fable, felt the difficulty of imitating the 
 terse precision of ^sop and Pha^drus ; he therefore 
 attempted to atone for this defect by some attempts 
 at ornament. Lessing greatly admires La Fontaine, 
 but censures his imitators, who carried his innovations 
 to excess. La Fontaine turned fable into a pleasant 
 poetical pastime, and attracted a great number of 
 followers. Lessing's own juvenile attempts had in- 
 cluded many rhymed fables ; his more mature judg- 
 ment condemns such embellishment of /Esop. La 
 Fontaine's treatment of the Phrygian fabulist suggests 
 to Lessing one of his own fables. 
 
 ' A man had a beautiful ebony bow, with which 
 he shot very far and sure, and which he valued highly. 
 Once, while inspecting it carefully, he said, " You are 
 really a little too uncouth, you have no ornament save 
 your polish ; that is a pity." But that can be 
 remedied, he thought. " I will go to the best artist 
 and get him to carve devices on my bow." He went,
 
 THIRD BERLIN RESIDENCE. 127 
 
 and the artist carved a whole hunt on the bow, and 
 what could be more appropriate to a bow than a 
 hunt ! The man was delighted. " You deserve these 
 ornaments, my good bow." 
 
 ' He wishes to try it, bends it, and the bow snaps 
 asunder.' 
 
 Plato, who banished all poets from his common- 
 wealth but allowed ^sop to remain, would now 
 bid him depart too, since he is ornamented by La 
 Fontaine. 
 
 Finally, as examples of his proposed reforms, 
 Lessing appends his own fables, which he modestly 
 says are no masterpieces, for criticism, not genius, is 
 their source of inspiration. Nevertheless they are 
 models of graceful brevity, distinguished by fine 
 observation and pregnant truths, though at times 
 perhaps they are a little too subtle and too paradox- 
 ical, and a too conscious effort after novelty at all 
 hazards is visible, which detracts from the simplicity 
 requisite in .fable. 
 
 If the object of his essay was to quench the rage 
 for this form of writing, which was really assuming 
 giant proportions, one single Leipzig fair having given 
 more fables to Germany than all that France had ever 
 produced, it certainly accomplished his purpose. 
 Fable fell down from the high place which it had 
 usurped, and, losing its poetic adornment, lost its 
 importance. A few fabulists who had fancy enough 
 to clothe an ethical axiom in action, while lacking- 
 phantasy to create a poem, continued to cultivate it 
 for a while ; but even these soon abandoned the 
 attempt. Bodmer attacked Lessing in the coarsest 
 manner for his fable theory, and Lessing details all 
 these insults in his ' Literary Letters ; ' but he makes
 
 128 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 no attempt to defend the theory he had estabh'shcd, 
 as indeed it was a characteristic of Lessing's willingly 
 to let his adversary have the last word. 
 
 The philological studies necessitated by the essay 
 on fable revived his interest in the Greek poets, and 
 he writes to his father that he is busy with a large 
 work on the subject. Of this the only direct result 
 was an unfinished life of Sophocles, intended as a 
 supplement to Bayle, who had passed over Sophocles 
 in his dictionary. Why Lessing abandoned this work 
 is not recorded. It is of strictly erudite character, 
 ascertained facts are recorded in short sentences, 
 followed by the reasons for receiving these and 
 accompanied by notes. Though superseded by more 
 copious works grounded on modern extended know- 
 ledge, scholars can still turn to Lessing's*' Sophocles ' 
 with advantage. 
 
 These Sophoclean studies, however, were not a 
 mere philological pastime ; they were in Lessing's 
 eyes a proper accompaniment to the study of Shake- 
 speare. He aimed at effectually exposing the pre- 
 tensions of French tragedy to be an imitation and 
 continuation of the ancients. He wished to oppose 
 the caricature with the prototype, to place Sophocles 
 in lieu of Corneille, genuine in place of spurious 
 nature. And since critical perception and practical 
 creation ever went hand in hand with Lessing, he 
 wrote his drama ' Philotas,' intimately connected with 
 these Sophoclean studies and with the definition of 
 action which he had given in his essay on fable. He 
 was jtist now enamoured of brevity, which may be 
 accounted for^partly by the quicker life struck into 
 the universal lethargy by the war, and partly by his 
 close association with Kleist, whose manly earnestness,
 
 THIRD BERLIN RESIDENCE. 129 
 
 antique rectitude and reserve, afforded a sharp con- 
 trast to the current effeminate tone. If * Spring ' 
 betrayed a weak imitation of Thomsonian sentiment- 
 ahsm, not so his ' Seneca,' written at Lessing's insti- 
 gation, and praised by him as approaching Sophocles 
 in colouring and pithy conciseness. Kleist exercised 
 more influence over Lessing than any of his other 
 friends, by his noble disinterested nature. It was 
 finally in emulation of his tragedy, that Lessing 
 wrote ' Philotas,' a one-act play, devoid of episode, 
 love or adventure, whose action wholly turns on the 
 headstrong obstinacy of the hero. The motive of 
 the play is the same as that of Plautus' ' Captives,' 
 only that here the issue is tragic. Prince Philotas has 
 been permitted at his earnest desire to go into active 
 service, notwithstanding his extreme youth. To his 
 despair he is taken prisoner in his first engagement. 
 Tormented by fear lest his father should sacrifice 
 throne, country, and the advantages gained in the 
 war, to the" temptation to rescue his only son, he 
 determines to prevent this by a voluntary death. He 
 obtains a sword by stratagem and kills himself upon 
 it. Military honour is the dramatic mainspring of 
 ' Philotas,' which embodied the heroic sentiments of the 
 period. Frederick himself was known to carry poison 
 about him to use in the event of captivity. The play 
 in its tragic simplicity is strictly in accordance with 
 antique art, and so is the circumstance that the tragic 
 action is not evolved in the course of the drama, but 
 is primarily existent in the conditions, and necessitated 
 from the very beginning. The unbending defiance 
 of the youthful hero recalls * Ajax,' while the admix- 
 ture of humorous tones, that disturb the majestic 
 tragic style, shows Lessing's familiarity with Shake- 
 
 K
 
 J 30 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 speare. Every sentence is an epigram ; a protest 
 against the declamatory verbosity of French tragedy. 
 At the same time Lessing knew that mere imitation 
 would never rejuvenate German poetry, if the poets 
 lacked power to find their subjects in national history 
 and tradition, as the Greeks had done ; and this was 
 another reason why he held Shakespeare as the model 
 to be followed, because of his thoroughly modern and 
 patriotic character, while on the other hand he also 
 knew, as Goethe says, ' that the first step to rescue the 
 Germans out of this watery, verbose, arid epoch could 
 only be attained by firmness, precision, and brevity.' 
 
 ' Philotas ' was issued anonymously. Lessing sent 
 a copy to Gleim as the work of an unknown author. 
 Gleim praised its bearing, but disapproving its prose 
 dress, had the ludicrous arrogance to put it into 
 iambics, and naively sent it back to Le^ing as 
 ' improved.' Lessing's comments, full of satirical 
 persiflage, caused Gleim to suspect the true author- 
 ship of the drama. In dismay at this, he knew no 
 better way out of his dilemma than in true old 
 bachelor fashion to send Lessing a cask of the best 
 Rhine wine out of the canonical cellar. Lessing was 
 good-humoured enough not to enter into further 
 details about the matter. He caused this enlarged 
 ' Philotas ' to be printed, and his only piece of malice 
 was that he substituted the word ' verified ' instead of 
 ' versified,' by the Prussian Grenadier, on the copy 
 intended for Gleim. Meantime he enjoyed the good 
 wine in a summer lodging he had rented outside 
 Berlin. While returning thanks for it, he begs his 
 generous friend not to imagine he is working. No, 
 he is buried among books, and his desire for study 
 increases in the same ratio as his desire to write
 
 THIRD BERLIN RESIDENCE. 131 
 
 declines. He had never been lazier than in this 
 hermitage. If he did much, he made projects for 
 tragedies and comedies ; but they were only acted in 
 his head, and he laughed and wept over them himself, 
 or imagined that the friends whose approval he most 
 coveted did so with him. He had nominally come 
 here to J-evise the new edition of his writings ; but he 
 could not quell his keen anxiety concerning Kleist, 
 whom he knew to be in the field. 
 
 Early in August (1759) successive couriers brought 
 conflicting news to Berlin, throwing the town into 
 alternate paroxysms of joy and sadness, until the 
 crushing news of the defeat of Kunersdorf was un- 
 deniably attested. The rumour also spread that the 
 valiant soldier-poet Kleist was wounded, and a 
 prisoner. The news stabbed Lessing to the heart, as 
 a realization of his worst fears, and the details, as 
 they slowly reached him, were calculated only to in- 
 flame his anxiety. Kleist, regardless of two wounds 
 and several contusions, seeing his Colonel fall, had 
 taken his place, and boldly led the regiment forward. 
 A case-shot threw him from his horse and shattered 
 his leg ; falling, he exclaimed, ' Children, don't forsake 
 your King ; ' then fainted, and was carried from the 
 field. His bearers were shot away from his side, the 
 ground on which he lay passed over to the Russians, 
 and late at night Cossacks found and stript him, 
 throwing him naked into a swamp. Rescued and 
 covered by some humane Russians, he again fell into 
 Cossack hands, and it was not till the next day that 
 some Russian cavalry officers mercifully moved hihi 
 to Frankfurt on the Oder, and into the house of Pro- 
 fessor Nicolai. Lessing instantly took measures that 
 the friend who had so generously aided him should be 
 
 K 2
 
 132 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 supplied with the money he now needed himself ; he 
 wrote to his Frankfurt acquaintances, imploring them 
 to look after the wounded man. He then heard of his 
 whereabout, and that there was still hope ; the next 
 news was that Kleist had died of his wounds. Lessing 
 could not, would not believe this. There must be an 
 error of persons ; he knows there is another Major 
 Kleist, who has also been wounded and is captive, 
 and it must be he that is dead, and not ' our Kleist,' he 
 writes to Gleim. ' Our Kleist is not dead, it cannot 
 be, he still lives. I will not grieve beforehand, nor 
 will I grieve you.' He proposes to venture among 
 the enemy to seek his friend. ' If he still lives, I will 
 seek him out. That I should not see him again, never 
 sec him again in all my life, speak to him, embrace 
 him.' He cannot pursue the thought ; and yet the 
 terrible news is but too true : Kleist has died from his 
 neglected wounds. 
 
 * Alas, dear friend !' he writes to Gleim a few days 
 later, ' it is too true. He is dead. We have lost him. He 
 died in the arms of Professor Nicolai, and in his house. 
 He remained calm and cheerful under the greatest 
 suffering. He desired to see his friends once again. 
 If it had but been possible ! My grief at this loss is a 
 wild grief I do not demand that the balls should 
 take another direction because an honest man stands 
 
 in their way. But I demand that the honest man 
 
 There you see, sometimes my sorrow leads me astray 
 to be angry with the man whom it concerns. He had 
 three, four wounds already ; why did he not retire .-• 
 Generals with fewer and slighter wounds have retired 
 honourably. He wanted to die. Forgive mc if I am 
 hard on him. He would not have died, even of the 
 last wound, it is said, if he had not been neglected.
 
 THIRD BERLIN RESIDENCE. 133 
 
 Been neglected ! I do not know against whom to 
 rave. The miserable wretches who could neglect him ! 
 I must break off. No doubt the Professor has written 
 to you. He made a funeral oration over him. Some 
 one else, I do not know who, has written an elegy on 
 him. They cannot have lost much in Kleist, who are 
 able to do this just now. The Professor means to 
 print his speech, and it is so poor. I know for certain 
 Kleist would rather have borne yet another wound 
 into his grave, than that such stuff should be chattered 
 after him. But has a Professor a heart .'' He demands 
 verses from me and from Ramler, to append to his 
 speech. If he should also demand them from you, 
 
 and you yield to his wish Dear Gleim, you must 
 
 not do that ! You will not do that ! You feel more 
 just now than you could express. It is not the same 
 to you as it is to a Professor, what you say and how 
 you say it. 
 
 * Farewell. I will write more when I am calmer. 
 
 ' Yours faithfully, 
 
 ' LESSING.' 
 
 The wild grief was calmed, but a void had entered 
 into Lessing's life which no other friend could fill. 
 He strove to drown his sorrow in work, and bring the 
 revision of his ' Trifles ' to a conclusion. Through- 
 out the winter he toiled hard ; then he was taken 
 ill. Berlin was growing distasteful to him. The 
 exaggerated patriotism that was rampant was too 
 contrary to his nature not to provoke his opposition. 
 He was ready enough to hail the aggrandizement of 
 Prussia as an awakening to German national life, but 
 he could not echo the narrow and extravagant senti- 
 ments that pervaded the air. He was put down as
 
 134 COTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESS INC. 
 
 ' too Saxon,' while at Leipzig he had been condemned 
 as ' too Prussian.' He tells Gleim that in the Grena- 
 dier's latest war songs the patriot outvoices the poet. 
 If these poems are to have permanent value, they 
 must raise themselves above the level of over-excited 
 momentary feelings. Slowly the conviction was 
 forced upon Lessing that a mental gulf had opened 
 between his friends and himself. He was weary of 
 Berlin, and believed his friends were also weary of 
 him. He stood alone in their midst ; they had not 
 grown with his mental growth, while he had risen out 
 of their standpoint into a higher one. He saw that 
 his friends felt uneasy at working with him. His 
 superiority weighed on them, an unspoken estrange- 
 ment made itself felt ; they could not reconcile the gay 
 boon comrade Lessing, who in social intercourse lived 
 and let live, with the ardent writer who in the mental 
 domain would concede no hairsbreadth to defaulters 
 from the cause of truth. Moreover, he was one of 
 those natures that quickly exhaust the medium in 
 which they move, who make time more comprehensive, 
 and realize George Sand's saying : ' II y a des gens 
 qui vivcnt beaucoup a la fois, ct dont les ans comptent 
 double.' He could save himself from lassitude only 
 by variety. Then, too, for the past years he had 
 again led a purely literary life, confined to books and 
 writing. He felt the need to pause, that it was 
 time to look about him among men. He wanted 
 money to purchase a library, and to live and work in 
 peace. What if he attained this end by the sacrifice 
 of a few years of life ? He fully understood how 
 Plautus gave up writing for some years, and followed 
 a trade. Here he was, over thirty years of age, and 
 still nothing more than ' the old bird on the roof.' For
 
 THIRD BERLIN RESIDENCE. 135 
 
 all his love of independence, he began to crave for an 
 office. Even if he worked day and night and produced 
 incessantly, he still foresaw that he could not shake off 
 the yoke of poverty, aggravated by the exorbitant 
 claims of his family. 
 
 In August his brother Gottlob paid him a visit. 
 Lessing tells his father he is glad the visit did not last 
 longer, for events might easily have occurred that 
 would agitate Berlin and force him to leave it. His 
 anticipations were not groundless. In October 
 General Tottleben, with a vanguard of three thousand 
 men, encircled, bombarded, and finally entered Berlin, 
 and Lessing witnessed the public flogging of two 
 journalists, one his successor on the ' Voss Gazette,' 
 on account of some expressions in their papers deemed 
 offensive to the enemy. This finally overcame 
 Lessing's hesitation ; a deep melancholy mastered 
 him, he looked around him for a settled post that might 
 assure his existence amid these military vicissitudes. 
 Chance came to his aid. General Tauentzien, the 
 heroic defender of Breslau, had just been appointed 
 governor of that city and director-general of the 
 Silesian mint. He needed a secretary to aid him in 
 his intricate labours, and remembering Kleist's friend, 
 Lessing, whom he had known at Leipzig, offered him 
 the post under the most advantageous certain condi- 
 tions, and the additional prospect that he would be 
 able to enrich himself in a very short time. This bait 
 mastered Lessing, weary of 
 
 the toil 
 Of dropping buckets into empty wells, 
 And growing old in drawing nothing up. 
 
 Without giving warning to his housekeeper, without a 
 word of farewell to his friends, he stole away from 
 Berlin (Nov. 1760). 
 
 \
 
 136 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 BRESLAU. 
 
 (1760-1765. Aged 31-36.) 
 
 ' Die eigentliche Epoche der Bestimmung ttnd Befestigung seines Geistes 
 scheint in seinen Avfenthalt in Breslau zu fallen, ludhrend dessen diiser 
 Geist, ohne literarische Richtung fiack aiissen, untcr durchaus heterogenen 
 Amisgeschdften, die bei ihm nur auf der Oberjldche hiyigleiteten, sich auf 
 sick selbst besann und in sich selbst Wurzcl schlug. Von da an wurde ein 
 rast loses Hinstreben nach derTiefe utiddem Bleibenden in allem menschlichen 
 Wissen an ihm sichtbar.' — FiCHTE. 
 
 Lessing had not long left Berlin ere the Academy 
 elected him an honorary member. Mendelssohn 
 wrote to inform him, adding reproaches for his abrupt 
 departure. He entirely disapproved of Lessing's step, 
 though as a rule he was far from considering that 
 scholars should live merely by their learning. But he 
 feared that Lessing's easy goodnature and ignorance 
 of business details might involve him in unlooked-for 
 complications, and moreover, Moses understood, what 
 Lessing had as yet failed to comprehend, that the 
 minting business in which he would be engaged was 
 of a more than questionable character. 
 
 Certainly, Lessing had not considered these 
 details. He ardently desired to live for a while 
 independent of pecuniary care, and seeing a chance 
 open had eagerly seized it. When he was brought 
 face to face with the conditions of fortune, his upright-
 
 BRESLAU. 137 
 
 ness revolted. The finances of the King had been 
 utterly exhausted by the war ; he needed money at 
 any price, and had recourse to a continuous debase- 
 ment of the currency, that was, in truth, but a form of 
 progressive bankruptcy. Lessing was given to under- 
 stand that, as the right hand of Tauentzien, the first 
 knowledge of new minting operations would reach 
 him, and it would therefore be an easy matter to gain 
 thousands by speculation exempt from all manner of 
 risk. He had only to imitate his chief, who, according 
 to Frederick's own testimony, acquired 1 50,000 thalers 
 in this manner. This way of getting rich was not 
 regarded as by any means reprehensible. Tauentzien 
 was a really honourable man, whose sincere disposi- 
 tion won Lessing's regard. He was an ardent lover 
 of his King, and would have held even more am- 
 biguous actions as not only justifiable, but praise- 
 worthy, if commanded by his beloved sovereign. ' If 
 the King's misfortunes had reduced him to assemble 
 his whole army under one tree, General Tauentzien 
 would have stood among them,' was Lessing's charac- 
 terization of his loyalty. Lessing, fully alive to 
 Frederick's claims to admiration, did not carry them 
 to the extent of deadening his own conscience. At 
 first he really did not understand the nature of the offers 
 made to him from various quarters, especially from 
 the Jews, who hoped to win his protection by holding 
 out baits of fortune for Mendelssohn as well as him- 
 self. Lessing laid these proposals before his friend, 
 who speedily enlightened him as to their real nature, 
 and sternly warned him against the snares laid for 
 him. Thus he saw his hopes of opulence vanish. 
 
 He had maintained in his Letters that after thirty 
 a man must fill his purse as well as his head, and
 
 138 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 as soon as that was done he should return to Ber- 
 lin and resume his studies. ' Oh, if this " as soon " 
 were but to-morrow ! ' At first his good spirits kept 
 up, the ever welcome change of scene diverted him, 
 but gradually disappointment at the failure of this 
 step mastered him, and found vent in his Letters. 
 
 ' Dearest friend,' he writes to Moses Mendelssohn, 
 two months after his departure, in answer to re 
 proaches, ' I dclibenitcly quitted Berlin without bid- 
 ding you farewell, because I did not wish to expose 
 myself to the risk of suddenly seeing the folly of my 
 resolve put in full light before me. Remorse will 
 nevertheless not be absent at having undertaken so 
 radical a change in my method of life for the mere 
 purpose of making my so-called fortune. How near 
 I am to this remorse, I hardly know, for as yet I have 
 not come to myself in Breslau. Your news out of the 
 Berlin paper (his election) is real news to me. I need 
 not stop to assure you that this honour leaves me per- 
 fectly indifferent, particularly in my present circum- 
 stances.' He then begs Mendelssohn to write to him 
 often and in detail about all his occupations ; it will 
 be the only way to save him from sinking into 
 frivolity. He further promises to send copy without 
 fail for the ' Literary Letters.' 
 
 Lessing's friends knew better than to reckon on 
 such promises. His 'copy' was at all times an ex- 
 tremely uncertain ware. His restless activity caused 
 him always to have more matter on hand than he 
 could possibly compass, and, removed from the in- 
 fluences of any interest, his assistance could not be 
 depended on. Indeed he had already begun to flag 
 with his contributions before leaving Berlin, and Nicolai, 
 who recognized that the success of the Letters mainly
 
 BRESLAU. 139 
 
 depended on Lessing, had contemplated winding up 
 the periodical. This was not however done till some 
 years later, and Lessing sent a few contributions from 
 Breslau. 
 
 The fatiguing routine of business duties weighed 
 like lead on Lessing's intellect, and the remorse which 
 he had foreseen too soon set in. But since he held 
 remorse to be 'the most useless of all unpleasant 
 emotions,' he determined to avoid it, and threw him- 
 self heart and soul into such distractions as Breslau 
 afforded. He had always found pleasure in the 
 society of officers. Here he became intimately ac- 
 quainted with the chiefs of the Prussian army, and 
 was able to observe garrison life, and military and 
 financial administration. The man of action was 
 once more uppermost, and Lessing threw himself into 
 the tumult that surged about him, learnt to know the 
 various and bizarre life of war, and could satisfy to the 
 full his craving for acquaintance with the most varied 
 conditions of society. He had feared to grow too ex- 
 clusively literary at Berlin ; here he could gaze as in a 
 peepshow upon a whole moving and diversified pano- 
 rama. He had never been choice or exclusive in his 
 associates ; he was not so here. He knew that a stu- 
 dent of life must regard it in all its aspects. 
 
 Lessing's official capacity demanded his presence 
 with his general until after dinner, which was usually at 
 four ; after this he went to a bookshop or auction. The 
 purchase of books was his one extravagance at Bres- 
 lau. Books were to be bought more cheaply with 
 bad money than with good ; besides Lessing knew that 
 he could keep books more securely than cash, which 
 the first applicant could draw from his purse. Giving 
 was his delight. He was enjoying what was for him
 
 140 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESS INC. 
 
 opulence, and with his natural carelessness he threw 
 his money away recklessly, not to name the perpetual 
 claims made upon him by his family, so that he often 
 saw himself forced to be generous before he was just, 
 and had to borrow in order to satisfy his parents, who 
 vastly over-estimated his income. If there were no 
 books to be bought, he went home and attended to per- 
 sonal concerns, applicants for aid, or business details. 
 Or the few literary students of Brcslau would step in, 
 and Lessing would interchange thoughts with them 
 concerninir art and science. Rector Arletius and Rector 
 Klose were chief among these, both profoundly learned 
 men ; the former indeed was in Frederick the Great's 
 estimation the typical German scholar, i.e. a straight- 
 forward, unpolished worthy, who could account for 
 every Greek and Latin word, and was the more ignorant 
 of the concerns of every day. Klose was rather more 
 a man of the world. In company with him, Lessing 
 diligently searched the monasteries and libraries 
 around Breslau, for rare editions and obsolete books. 
 His Berlin friends warned him against his reckless 
 expenditure on books ; indeed his heedlessness often 
 involved him and them in expensive and vexatious 
 difficulties, as when, for instance, he commissioned two 
 friends to buy the same book, and they dutifully bid 
 against each other. But he drew upon himself yet 
 graver remonstrances by his love of play, that first 
 showed itself in Breslau. He played so high that it 
 reached the ears of his chief, who reproached him in 
 a friendly manner. Lessing replied that it was of no 
 consequence whether he played high or low, for in the 
 average he lost little or nothing, but that high stakes 
 fixed his attention, and complete distraction from 
 thought was all he sought in cards. Faro was his
 
 BRESLAU. 141 
 
 favourite game. A friend relates that he often observed 
 him at the gaming-table so intensely interested that 
 the perspiration would run down his face with excite- 
 ment, nor was this by any means the case only when 
 he lost. His friend reproached him, saying he would 
 not only ruin his purse, but, what was worse, his health. 
 ' On the contrary,' replied Lessing. ' If I played in cold 
 blood I could not play at all.' And he proceeded to 
 explain that hygienic reasons were hidden under this 
 strange disguise, that he regarded the excitement as a 
 healthy counteraction to his sedentary life. 
 
 The early part of his evenings was spent in the 
 theatre. A harlequinade company was playing popu- 
 lar burlesques ; notwithstanding his raid against this 
 species, he gave the countenance of his presence to their 
 performances. At least these outrageous farces were, 
 in spite of all their grossness, national, which was 
 more than could be said of the tame Gottschedian 
 tragedies. Here he could laugh, the others made him 
 yawn. He saw that the people were diverted, and 
 confessed that * even the severest connoisseur is not so 
 severe in a crowd as he is when alone. For when he 
 sees that this or that makes an impression, he forgets 
 that it- ought not to do so. And if the piece does 
 not please him, it pleases him to see that so many 
 can be pleased so easily.' He at once made ac- 
 quaintance with the actors, and took great pains to 
 educate one of them to be a competent player. It 
 did not disturb him that some of them were of 
 the very lowest class of comedians. Irreproachable 
 everyday folk were never to Lessing's mind ; he de- 
 manded that a man should be something besides an 
 eating, drinking, and sleeping animal. He esteemed 
 such people as useful burghers, but he did not love
 
 142 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESS INC. 
 
 their society. It was after the theatre that he went to 
 the gaming-table, and early morning saw him home, 
 so that nine and even ten o'clock found him still in 
 bed. His late hours angered his landlord, a ginger- 
 bread maker by trade. To revenge himself upon his 
 dissipated lodger he sold gingerbread caricatures of 
 Lessing disguised as a night watchman, with his full 
 name, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, embossed under- 
 neath. The stamp became traditional, and long 
 after Lessing's death he was eaten in gingerbread at 
 Breslau. 
 
 But there were periods when Lessing bitterly 
 cursed this distracting life. He did not write to his 
 friends, he was too much out of humour to do so. 
 Moses wrote repeatedly and urged him to reply. 
 Why did he not answer } Was he serving a Pytha- 
 gorean apprenticeship .'' If so he hoped it would soon 
 be over. Then he again writes to tell Lessing that he 
 has heard from a Jew, Joel, that Lessing is well con- 
 tent and working hard. Is this so } 
 
 At last Lessing breaks silence : 
 
 'Breslau : March 30, 1761. 
 
 ' Ah ! dearest friend, Joel is a liar. To you least of 
 all do I like to confess that I have hitherto been 
 nothing less than content. But confess it to you I 
 must, since it is the only reason why I have not 
 written to you for so long. I have only written to you 
 once from here, is it not so .'' You may therefore safely 
 infer that I have only once been truly myself. 
 
 ' No ! I could never have imagined this ! this is the 
 tone in which all fools complain. I could and should 
 have imagined that trifling occupation must fatigue 
 more than the severest study ; that in the circle into
 
 BRESLA U. 143 
 
 which I have allowed myself to be conjured, false plea- 
 sures and distractions upon distractions would ruin a 
 blunted soul, that 
 
 * Ah ! my best friend, your Lessing is lost ! In a 
 year and a day you will not know him again. Nor 
 will he know himself. Oh, my time, my time, my 
 all that I have — to sacrifice it thus to I know not what 
 objects ! A hundred times I have already thought of 
 forcibly tearing myself away from this connexion. 
 Yet can one thoughtless act be repaired by another .-• 
 
 ' But perhaps this is only a dark day on which I see 
 nothing in its true light. To-morrow I may write you 
 a more cheerful letter. Oh, do write to me very often ; 
 but more than mere reproaches for my silence ! Your 
 letters are true alms to me. And would you give alms 
 merely for the sake of the requital '*. 
 
 ' Farewell, my dearest friend. The first good hour 
 that my discontent allows me shall certainly be yours. 
 I am looking forward to it with all the restless long- 
 ing of a fanatic awaiting heavenly visions. 
 
 ' Lessing.' 
 
 Yet in spite of all this worldly and military tumult 
 Lessing found time for serious study, and results show 
 that he must have been right when he affirmed that, 
 for all appearances to the contrary, he surpassed him- 
 self in industry during the four-and-a-half years of 
 his Breslau sojourn. Relieved from the anxiety of 
 daily bread and the consequent obligation to make 
 the results of his studies immediately marketable, 
 Lessing saw himself, almost for the first time in his 
 life, able to study purely for study's sake. Critical, 
 antiquarian, dramatic interests all had full play. He 
 immersed himself in the Fathers to obtain a better un-
 
 144 COTTHOLl) EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 derstanding of the early history of the Christian faith, 
 and planned an essay on heathen persecutions and 
 on the heterodoxy he discovered in Justin Martyr. 
 Instigated by Mendclssolin, he took up Spinoza and 
 read him exhaustively. He planned various plays and 
 wrote rhymed facetiae for the amusement of his officer 
 comrades. The letters to his friends grew rarer, they 
 only looked at his outer life, and could not follow 
 that he was observing keenly, and laying up stores 
 for future use. He wearied of their counsels not to 
 waste so much money over books ; of their grave dis- 
 approval of his gaming. He wrote oftenest to Men- 
 delssohn, but rather to keep himself in his memory 
 than to carry on a critical correspondence. Practical 
 active life was claiming his attention. Mendelssohn 
 grieved greatly over what he held a total relapse. 
 To a volume of his philosophical writings he pre- 
 fixed a preface only printed in the copy intended 
 for Lessing, and a few intimate friends. It was 
 headed : 
 
 ' Dedication to a singular Mortal. 
 
 * The authors who worship the public, complain 
 that their deity is deaf They may adore it, pray to 
 it, call on it from morn to noon, without voice or 
 answer. I lay my pages at the feet of an idol who 
 is obstinate enough to be equally hard of hearing. I 
 have called and he does not answer. I now accuse 
 him before the deaf judge, the public, who often pro- 
 nounces just sentence without hearing. 
 
 'Mockers say: Call aloud. He is rhyming, is 
 busy, has gone into the fields, or peradventure he 
 slccpeth ; call louder, that he may wake. Oh no, 
 rhyme he can, but alas ! he will not : roam he would
 
 BRESLA U. 145 
 
 gladly, but he cannot. His spirit is too lively for 
 sleep, too idle for business. Formerly his seriousness 
 was the oracle of the wise, and his irony a rod on the 
 back of the fool, but now the oracle is dumb, and 
 the fools exult with impunity. He has resigned his 
 scourge to others, but they smite too gently, for they 
 fear to draw blood. And he — 
 
 If he neither hears, nor speaks, nor feels, 
 Nor sees, what does he then .? He plays ! ' 
 
 In his official capacity Lessing seems to have 
 given complete satisfaction. During the summer of 
 1762- Tauentzien was named Siege Captain of 
 Schweidnitz, and Lessing accompanied him into the 
 field. For two weary months they lay before the 
 fortress until it capitulated. Lessing wrote a merry 
 letter to Nicolai from a little village outside, enjoining 
 him to buy some English books at a Berlin auction. 
 ' I will send you the money at once ; you can count 
 dh it more securely than if I promised you contribu- 
 tions to your periodical. Do you know where this 
 place (Peile) is } Wish I didn't.' Five months 
 later the Peace of Hubertsburg brought the Seven 
 Years' War to a close, and it was Lessing's duty 
 to proclaim it solemnly to the good citizens of 
 Breslau. The peace was no sooner signed than 
 Frederick's restless energy set about the repair of his 
 ruined finances. The debased currency came first 
 under consideration. Tauentzien was summoned to 
 Potsdam, and Lessing accompanied him, obtaining 
 a few days' leave of absence to visit his Berlin 
 friends. Frederick named Tauentzien Governor of 
 the whole province of Silesia, but the work proved 
 lighter for Lessing and he found more time for study. 
 
 L
 
 146 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 It Avas in this summer (1763) that one bright 
 morning-, while enjoying the sunshine in a pubHc 
 garden of Breslau, he sketched and partly wrote 
 ' Minna von Barnhelm.' The play, though not finished 
 for press until a couple of years later, entirely belongs 
 to this period of his life. 
 
 The inexorable pressure of exhausted finances 
 had obliged Frederick ruthlessly to disband a con- 
 siderable portion of the motley army that had served 
 under his banners. Though these free corps had 
 been largely recruited by adventurers, some gentle- 
 men had joined from enthusiasm for the cause, and 
 now saw themselves cashiered without even a partial 
 repayment for the money they had spent in enlist- 
 ments ; destitute, and forced to earn their living by 
 menial labour. Frederick was certainly placed in a 
 most difficult position. His lands lay waste for lack 
 of labour, his cofTcrs were empty. His impetuous 
 nature wished to put all straight in a twinkling by 
 arbitrary expedients. Let these men till the fields, he 
 would provide corn, flour, and cattle. Besides, plenty 
 of them had stolen like ravens during the campaign ; 
 they must now shift for themselves. And wheat and 
 tares were remorselessly uprooted together. The 
 strangest stories were afloat concerning such dismissed 
 soldiers. Thus, that one, a miller by trade, returned 
 to the King his order /t^?/r Ic ))icrite, lest it should get 
 dusty in the mill to which he, a late major, saw him- 
 self forced to return. The fate of these worthies 
 aroused Lessing's interest. He saw in their unmerited 
 ill fortune material for an original drama, in which 
 he could embody the observations he had made on 
 military life. The play based upon it became an 
 appeal to public sympathy on their behalf ; and, con-
 
 BRESLAU. 147 
 
 veying thus an indirect censure upon the Govern- 
 ment, it is scarcely astonishing that, for all the liberty 
 of the press accorded in Prussia, its performance 
 was at first forbidden. * It is permitted to argue 
 about God, but not about government and the police,' 
 was the sententious verdict of the authorities. No 
 doubt their characterization in the play as a body who 
 ' want to pry into everything and above all to get 
 at secrets,' must have offended the august police. 
 Whether their scruples were overcome by a direct 
 appeal to the King is not recorded, but overcome 
 they were in due course, after four weeks' deliberation. 
 The military as a class had, even in Latin plays 
 where the profession was highly honoured, been always 
 brought upon the boards in caricature. They were 
 used by the Spaniards, French, English, and Italians, 
 as the grotesque element. Lessing desired to paint 
 their best side, in a totally modern spirit, far removed 
 from the chivalrous dramas with their artificial seii- 
 timentalism. The fable of 'Minna von Barnhelm,' 
 is briefly that of Lovelace's touching ballad : 
 
 I could not love thee, Dear, so much, 
 Loved I not honour more. 
 
 The hero, Major Tellheim, a man of indubitable 
 honesty, unflinching sense of honour, and almost im- 
 practicable virtue ; indeed, a modern embodiment of 
 the best form of knighthood, sees himself at the con- 
 clusion of peace among the cashiered officers. This 
 does not offend him ; he acknowledges the King can- 
 not be expected to know all the worthy men who 
 have served under him. Besides, the peace has ren- 
 dered many such as he superfluous. Indeed, no one 
 is indispensable to the great. But that the motives 
 
 L 2
 
 148 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESS INC. 
 
 of an action of his during the campaign should be 
 misconstrued, this hurts him beyond measure ; he 
 sees himself disgraced, degraded, his honour wounded, 
 his good name blasted. Sent by the King to levy a 
 heavy war contribution on the Saxon States, he found 
 the oppressed people unable to meet his demands. 
 His generous nature revolted against employing coer- 
 cion, and prompted him to advance them the needful 
 sum for eventual repayment. But at the conclusion 
 of peace, the Prussian Government disputed the vali- 
 dity of his loan, and accused him of low motives in 
 making this advance. The matter was under inves- 
 tigation, and meanwhile he was on parole not to quit 
 the city. During his sojourn in Saxony he had be- 
 come acquainted with and engaged to Minna von 
 Barnhelm, an heiress who had attached herself to 
 him, ere ever she saw him, for his generous conduct 
 towards her States, for she is a Saxon. Finding on 
 the conclusion of peace that he does not seek her, 
 and suspecting some Quixotic scruples on his part, she 
 goes in search of him, and chances to light on the very 
 hotel from which the landlord has just expelled him on 
 account of impccuniosity,which has even forced him to 
 pawn his betrothal ring. Chance throws this into 
 Minna's hands. They meet, and Tellheim at once 
 releases her from her engagement on account of the 
 stigma that rests on his name. In vain she protests, 
 and proves to him with clear-sighted logic that he 
 overstrains the duties which honour demands, that it 
 does not require of him to make one who loves him 
 unhappy, and blight his own life because the Govern- 
 ment has failed to recognize his claims. It is fruitless : 
 her happy thrusts of sound sense fail to confound 
 his stilted views of honour. Women cannot compre-
 
 BRESLAU. 149 
 
 hend such things. * Honour is not the voice of our 
 conscience, nor the testimony of some righteous ' 
 
 'No, no ; I know well,' she interrupts him ; ' Honour 
 is just — honour.' 
 
 He further affirms that that man is a villain who 
 can consent to owe his good fortune to the tender 
 love of a woman. Minna sees that only stratagem 
 will avail her. She instructs her maid to represent 
 her as disinherited because of her persistent deter- 
 mination to be the wife of a Prussian soldier, and 
 now that she seeks out her protector he too forsakes 
 her, while she has only kept silent on this point not 
 to add more sorrows to his own. In an instant Tell- 
 heim's decision is revoked. Minna penniless, unhappy, 
 shall soon see that he is no traitor. He permits his 
 old sergeant to lend him the money, which he had 
 till then persistently refused. He makes all arrange- 
 ments for their union, but now his entreaties are 
 refused. 
 
 At this juncture a letter from Frederick arrives, 
 fully exonerating the Major, showing that the investi- 
 gation had proved the justice of his claims, which the 
 Treasury has instructions to honour, and further 
 adding that the King hopes his health will permit 
 him again to take service, as he can ill spare such 
 brave and highminded men from his army. 
 
 'What justice! what clemency!' exclaims Tell- 
 heim joyfully, and claims IMinna's hand, which she 
 again refuses him, on the plea that she is now unfortu- 
 nate, and cannot drag him into her misery. For 
 surely, she adds, turning his own words against him, 
 the woman is contemptible who is not ashamed to 
 owe her good fortune to the tender love of a man. 
 
 Some further complications arise, owing to an
 
 150 GO TT HOLD EPHRAIM LESSIXG. 
 
 exchange of rings, Tellheim not having perceived 
 that Minna had returned to him not the one he had 
 given her, but the one he had pawned. At last, seeing 
 she has carried her stratagem ahnost too far, and that 
 she is in danger of seriously wounding his pride, sne 
 confesses all, and the piece concludes to the fore- 
 shadowing tunc of marriage bells. 
 
 This play is in every respect the best written by 
 Lessing, and its claim to be not only a national 
 comedy, but the only German one, has not yet been 
 disputed. The circumstances of its inspiration were 
 singularly happy. Interest in the characters had not 
 to be artificially evoked in the course of the play, but 
 were pre-existent and inherent in its conditions ; it 
 did not speak to the sympathies of only one class, but 
 to the community at large. The self-respect of the 
 Germans had just been awakened by their victories, 
 here was a play derived from their national life and 
 contemporary conditions, German in names and 
 thoughts, no imitation of French or English models. 
 They felt proud to see in Tellheim such a represent- 
 ative of their uprightness. 
 
 But 'Minna von Barnhelm ' has higher claims to 
 admiration than the narrow^ limits of nationality. It 
 is a really noteworthy production, and justly de- 
 serves esteem. It is a genuine character comedy, a 
 healthy delineation of real life, not a one-sided im- 
 personation of human vices or foibles. The actions 
 arise gradually out of the situation, hence the solution 
 is natural and easy, while its purpose is at bottom a 
 serious one. ' Genuine humour and true wit,' says 
 Landor, ' require a sound and capacious mind, which 
 is always a grave one.' ' Minna von Barnhelm ' is the 
 reflexion of Lessing's healthy and unaffected intellect.
 
 BRESLAU. 151 
 
 It was the first play of his that did not attempt to 
 translate theory into practice, in which the author 
 gather than the critic is ascendant ; hence it is endowed 
 \\<ith the lifelike reality his plays too often lacked, and 
 tTOLisfh the form in which it was cast showed the in- 
 fluence of Diderot, nature in this instance entirely 
 subjugated art. And since a good comedy is of all 
 times, so these characters will always interest for their 
 native poetic truth ; and that its denouement results 
 from justice pleases equally. The principal personages 
 are ably drawn, and form a proper contrast. Minna 
 is a really lovable heroine, unsophisticated, ingenuous, 
 sincerely affectionate, but free from-, even a suspicion 
 of sentimentaHsm, determined amid her impulsiveness, 
 outspoken and just, a trifle obstinate, of a merry dis- 
 position that can treat even serious questions cheer- 
 fully. And why not } 
 
 ' Is it not possible to be very serious while 
 lauL. ing .? What objections have you to mirth .? ' she 
 asks Tellheim. ' Dear Major, laughter keeps us more 
 reasonable than vexation.' 
 
 She knows life is not all laughter, but a strangely 
 mixed affair, yet to look at life in a happy spirit surely 
 cannot offend the Creator, who must prefer to behold 
 cheerful mortals. Tellheim's melancholy tone is in- 
 fectious, she tells him, she prefers her own. 
 
 Tellheim is devoid of all sense of humour, he can 
 only see misfortunes of the deepest dye in his destiny ; 
 his immaculate honour slurred, it is difficult to con- 
 vince him that the world is wide, that his griefs are not 
 the cynosure of all eyes, that injustice does not de- 
 serve to be met by the wreck of a life. His noble 
 generosity, hard indifference to his own fate, sincere 
 desire to make others happy, by main force, if need
 
 152 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 be, fail to comprehend that Minna's happiness is too 
 entwined with his for the forcible separation which he 
 would compel. 
 
 The minor figures are as ably depicted : the pry- 
 ing rapacious landlord, the devoted and the indifferent 
 domestics, the soldiers of various types. Tellheim's 
 sergeant is a military man from love of the profession, 
 and will serve under any leader, provided war is his 
 watchword ; mere errant butcher-boys, as Tellheim 
 contemptuously calls such soldiers ; one must be a 
 soldier for sake of cause or country. All Lessing 
 speaks out of the explanation which Tellheim gives 
 why he himself wears a uniform. 
 
 ' I became a soldier from the fancy that it is good 
 for every honest man to look about him for a time in 
 this profession, to become intimate with all forms of 
 danger, and to learn coolness and resolution.' 
 
 'Minna von Barnhelm,' with its racy point of 
 dialogue, hits the mean of good style, in that, though 
 polished, it is natural, and in accordance with the 
 individualities of the characters, while it avoids 
 Lessing's over elaborated epigrammatic manner, terse 
 to a fault. The joyous vitality which breathes through 
 the play may be accounted for by the prosperous 
 circumstances under which it was composed. 
 
 This easy leisure, however, soon made Lessing rest- 
 less. With the peace all the varied excitement of 
 military life had gradually subsided into the mono- 
 tonous routine of military discipline, and Lessing ex- 
 perienced the insipidity of this profession. He wearied 
 of following his general from one review to another. 
 He further declined a call to a Professorship at 
 Konigsberg, because one of the conditions attached to 
 the post required that a yearly panegyric should be
 
 BRESLAU. 153 
 
 pronounced on the reigning sovereign, a condition 
 against which Lessing's independence revolted : for 
 though we have a good King now, he says in a letter, 
 who will answer for his successor ? Moreover, mere 
 outer ease never held Lessing in bonds. He began to 
 think it was high time he should return into his own 
 grooves, and informs his parents to this effect, in reply 
 to one of their numerous demands for money. 
 
 ' Breslau : Nov. y:i, 1763. 
 
 ' My dear parents look on me as though I were 
 already established here at Breslau, while this is really 
 so little the case that it is quite possible that the 
 larger half of my stay here is already over. I am 
 only awaiting one more event, and if this does not 
 turn out as I wish, I shall return to my former mode 
 of life. I hope that you do not in any case believe 
 that I have abandoned my studies, and mean only to 
 devote myself to wretched occupations de pane 
 lucrando. I have already wasted more than three 
 years over these trivialities. It is time I returned to 
 my groove. I have already attained all that I intended 
 from my present mode of life ; my health is pretty 
 well re-established. I have rested, and with the little 
 that I have been able to save I have bought an excel- 
 lent library, which I do not mean to have bought for 
 nothing. Whether some few hundred thalers will re- 
 main to me, I do not know myself. At any rate, they 
 and the money accruing to me from my lawsuit (with 
 Winkler) will be of very good service to permit me to 
 study for a few years in comfort. However, this shall 
 not prevent me from doing my utmost for my brothers.* 
 
 This was a subtle intimation that Lessing would
 
 154 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 like to keep a little of his hardly earned money for 
 his own use : an intimation that was most unwelcome 
 to the Camcnz family, who had grown more and more 
 used to apply to him in all financial needs, and had 
 hoped Gotthold was at last well provided. They 
 remonstrated with him on the idea of throwing up so 
 lucrative a post ; and he was forced to explain in all 
 good nature that, after all, he saw a higher object in 
 life than grubbing like a day labourer in order that 
 all his brothers might study and become pastors, and 
 that he was of age, and able to dispose of his life 
 according to his own ideas. He even hinted that the 
 brothers might also do something for themselves, 
 neither must they be always appealing to him for 
 advice. He hates giving advice, and those that ask it 
 can have no established character, they only want to 
 gain time. He would rather give his last penny than 
 advice. Everyone must know best what he can or 
 cannot do, if he be fit for anything. 
 
 ' Breslau : June 13, 1764. 
 
 ' I should be sorry if my dear parents have formed 
 a false idea of my present circumstances from incor- 
 rectly retailed intelligence. For my part, I have cer- 
 tainly given no occasion for it. Indeed I have more 
 than once stated that my present engagement could 
 be of no duration ; that I have not renounced my old 
 plan of life ; and that I am more than ever resolved to 
 avoid all permanent employment that is not entirely to 
 my inclination. I am more than half through my life, 
 and I do not know what should oblige me to make my- 
 self a slave for the shorter part that remains to me. I 
 write this to you, dearest father, and must write it to 
 }'Ou, so that you may not be surprised if you should
 
 BRESLAU. 
 
 155 
 
 shortly see me far removed from hopes and desires of 
 what is termed a settled position. I only need a 
 little more time to extricate myself from all the debts 
 and complications in which I am involved, and then 
 I shall certainly leave Breslau. What will happen to 
 me then is the smallest of my anxieties. Whoever is 
 healthy and willing to work, need fear nothing in this 
 world. To anticipate long illnesses, or I know not 
 what events, that may incapacitate from work, shows 
 but a poor trust in Providence. I have a better, and 
 I have friends.' 
 
 The latter remark about Providence is a delicate 
 irony, that can scarcely have escaped the Pastor's 
 notice. 
 
 While thus revolving his future plans, Lessing 
 employed the leisure which peace had brought into 
 his official duties in such strenuous study, that the 
 close application, united to his wild tavern life and 
 over-excitement at cards, brought on a fever in the 
 summer of 1764. For some time his life was in 
 danger. On the day of the crisis his doctor found 
 him lying quite quietly, with so strange an expression 
 that he could not resist asking him of what he was 
 thinking. ' I was anxious to watch what was going 
 on in my soul while dying,' replied Lessing. The 
 doctor tried to represent to him that this was im- 
 possible. ' You annoy me,' said Lessing curtly, and 
 turned away. The trait is curious, as proving that, 
 even face to face with death, his passion for investiga- 
 tion of psychological processes was not quelled. By 
 a comical irony of fate, this doctor was an admirer of 
 Gottsched's, and persisted in entertaining Lessing's 
 convalescence with laudations of his literary merits ;
 
 156 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSIXG. 
 
 discourses that tea/ccd Lessing more than tlie fever. 
 The recovery left his nerves in a state of unwonted 
 tension and irritabiHty. Till then his strong frame 
 had endured unharmed rdl fatigues and excesses ; he 
 perceived that with this illness had come a turning 
 point in his life. 
 
 During his convalescence he wrote to Ramlcr : 
 
 ' Breslau : August 5, 1764. 
 * My dear Friend, 
 
 'A thousand thanks for your anxious friend- 
 ship. I may be ill once, but for all that I do not 
 mean to die. I am pretty well recovered, except that 
 I am still troubled by frequent giddiness. I hope that 
 I may soon lose that also, and then I shall be as though 
 new-born. For I believe that all our changes of tem- 
 perament are connected with the action of our animal 
 economy. The serious epoch of my life is approach- 
 ing ; I am beginning to be a man, and I flatter myself 
 that in this hot fever I have raved away the last re- 
 mainder of my youthful follies. Fortunate illness ! 
 Your love may wish me to be well, but ought poets to 
 wish for the health of athletes .'' Does not a certain 
 amount of indisposition seem far more conducive to 
 phantasy and feeling .-' Horaces and Ramlers live in 
 weakly bodies. The healthy Theophiluses ' and 
 Lessings become tipplers and gamblers. Therefore, 
 wish me health, dear friend, but with a little token of 
 remembrance, a little thorn in the flesh, that from time 
 to time will cause the poet to remember his perishable 
 humanity, and call to mind that not all tragedians live 
 to ninety, like Sophocles ; or even if they did, that 
 
 ' Lessing refers to Theopliilus Docbbelin, a broad-shouldered actor.
 
 B RE SLAV. 157 
 
 Sophocles also composed about ninety tragedies, and 
 I have as yet only made one. Ninety tragedies ! I am 
 suddenly seized with giddiness ! Oh let me leave the 
 subject, dear friend ! 
 
 Farewell, dear friend, farewell. I am yours ever, 
 
 LESSING.' 
 
 Though physically exhausted, his brain soon began 
 to regain power, and curiously enough took a totally 
 new direction. He began to write comic verses, and 
 take an interest in fiction, particularly in long for- 
 gotten romances. The ' Gesta Romanorum' were 
 eagerly perused, and he often wished that some 
 scholar would critically examine their origin and diffu- 
 sion. He looked over a number of learned and anti- 
 quarian essays that had accumulated in his desk, and 
 doubting whether he could combine them into an 
 harmonious whole, proposed to issue them under the 
 title ' Hermaea,' whereby the Greeks define things 
 accidentally found by the wayside. The publication 
 of Winckelmann's ' History of Art,' inciting him to 
 make further researches in this department, checked 
 him awhile, and he began to bestow especial attention 
 on the Laokoon group, and the limits of painting and 
 poetry generally. He expressed his fears to Rector 
 Klose lest he should be unequal to the composition of 
 a good connected work, after pausing for so many 
 years ; he was more particularly tineasy lest his style 
 should have suffered. 
 
 This semi-invalid state was a painful trial to Les- 
 sing's activity. 
 
 ' Do not become ailing,' he writes to Ramler. ' I 
 say ailing, because for some time past I have come to 
 regard ailing as worse than illness. It is a vexatious
 
 158 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESS INC. 
 
 life to be up and vegetating, and to be regarded as 
 well, without being so really. Before my illness I was 
 in such a mood for work as I have seldom known. 
 Now, try as I may, I am unable to find it again. I 
 burn with desire to put the last touches to my ' Minna 
 von Barnhclm,' and )'et I should not like to work at 
 it with half a head. I have not been able to tell you 
 anything about this comedy, because it is really one of 
 my latest projects. If it is not better than all my pre- 
 vious dramatic pieces, I am firmly resolved to have 
 nothing more to do with the theatre. It is possible 
 that I may have paused too long. You shall be the 
 first whose opinion I shall ask.' 
 
 Lessing's accurate self-criticism told him that he 
 was far removed from having as yet produced dra- 
 matic masterpieces, although contemporary critics 
 counted his among the best German originals. He 
 also knew where lay their main fault ; that they smelt 
 too much of the lamp. 
 
 Once more he fell to making projects ; one among 
 these was to translate and annotate Burke ' On the 
 Sublime and Beautiful.' He again thought of Vienna 
 as a residence, for he wished to use the Imperial Li- 
 brary. Then arose the wish to visit the classic ground 
 of Greece, and become better acquainted with its 
 monuments and peoi)le. These daydreams enlivened 
 many a weary hour in his sick room. One thing he 
 was determined upon, and that was not to remain in his 
 present situation. It was not discontent with his post 
 or his chief, that caused him to demand his leave, but 
 that he rated learned labours too highly to exchange 
 them permanently for administrative ones. Besides, 
 though he was no hater of work, he hated prescribed 
 work, and chose rather to be dependent on inexorable
 
 BRESLAU. 159 
 
 necessity than on the arbitrary will of men. He 
 announces his resolve to leave Breslau in a letter to 
 his father (January, 1765), begging that his brother 
 Karl may not count on him to pay his University fees 
 and debts, though he will do what he can to help him, 
 and is willing to sell part of his library when he is 
 again in Berlin. The Winkler lawsuit is at length 
 decided, but the costs have left him a scanty residue, 
 and he has some little claims of his own that require 
 settlement. Still he again protests that his parents 
 shall find him willing to help as far as he can. 
 
 A few months after, and Lessing was once more ' the 
 old bird on the roof,' without fixed home or occupation. 
 Whither should he wing his flight ? His art studies 
 attracted him powerfully to the South ; he longed to 
 see the Apollo Belvedere and the Laokoon group, with 
 his own eyes. The news that his Berlin friends fancied 
 they at last saw an opening for him there quite to his 
 taste, and the desire to see them once again, deter- 
 mined him to return thither ; but his resolution was 
 only to do so provisionally, if the prospective induce- 
 ments seemed unlikely to be realized. Taking Ca- 
 menz and Leipzig on his way, he once again returned 
 to Berlin in May 1765, no richer, thanks to the inces- 
 sant claims of his family, than he had left it five years 
 ago, except for a splendid library of over six thousand 
 volumes.
 
 i6o GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESS INC. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 BERLIN AGAIN. 
 (1765-1767. Aged 36-38.) 
 ' Quod non dant procercs, dabit histrio,' JUVENAL, 
 
 The post which Lessing's friends had in prospect for 
 him, was that of Royal Librarian and Custos of the 
 Gem Collection ; but on the appointment being pro- 
 posed to Frederick, he at once rejected it. The King's 
 memory was better than his acquaintance with German 
 literature. He was ignorant of Lessing's solid claims, 
 while he remembered the Voltaire matter, and asso- 
 ciated the name with that of a doubtful character. 
 
 Winckelmann was next suggested, and to this the 
 King assented. To be set aside for Winckelmann could 
 be no discredit. Lessing felt this, and abandoning all 
 idea of the post, began to resume his plan-making. 
 
 Again his family begged for money, and he was 
 forced to ask them to have some patience. He had 
 a few necessary expenses of his own, and his slender 
 capital had long ago gone to Camenz. He had, more- 
 over, been robbed to a serious extent by a man-servant, 
 whom he had sent direct to Berlin from Breslau with 
 his books and clothes, and who, pretending to landlord 
 and friends that he was Lessing's brother, had obtained 
 money and credit, and, in short, had acted so very
 
 BERLIN AGAIN. i6i 
 
 much too ' brotherly,' that Lessing was forced to dis- 
 miss him on his return, but not before his stock of 
 clothes was considerably diminished and his debts 
 increased. Impecuniosity made travelling out of all 
 question for a time. 
 
 To aid his parents, Lessing therefore undertook 
 the charge of his younger brother Karl, and resumed 
 his former life of literary drudgery. 
 
 His first labour was to write the closing Letters of 
 the ^ Literatur Brief e^ that had dragged on a miserable 
 life without his co-operation, and were now about to be 
 supplanted by a new periodical of Nicolai's, 'Allge- 
 ineine dcutsche Bibliothek,' which, set up as a critical 
 tribunal, exercised a monstrous intellectual tyranny, 
 that gradually made the name 'Nicolaite' a by-word 
 of narrow-mindedness and arrogance. From the be- 
 ginning Lessing declined all participation in this 
 journal, foreseeing it was intended as the organ of a 
 coterie. But he had started the Letters, and was 
 willing to fulfil the obligations of paternity. This 
 contribution also closed an epoch in his literary life. 
 He never again wrote for a periodical. 
 
 The subject which he chose was a review of 
 Meinhard's Essays ' On the Character and the Works of 
 the best Italian Poets.' Lessing, so sparing in praise, 
 calls these Essays excellent. They give him occasion 
 to speak at some leftgth concerning the peculiarities 
 and charms of Italian poets ; nor does he neglect the 
 opportunity of holding up a mirror to his compatriots, 
 who * give but a dubious reflexion.' 
 
 A remark of Meinhard's on the paucity of good 
 poets produced by the cultured Maecenasship of the 
 Medici, and explained by the fact that Maecenases 
 
 M
 
 1 62 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 cannot make geniuses, but can spoil them by injudi- 
 cious patronage, was spoken out of Lessing's very 
 soul. ' A remark as acute as it is true,' says Lessing, 
 'very applicable to the external condition of contem- 
 porary German literature, one that should silence for 
 ever those scribblers who are loud in their complaints 
 of want of patronage, and overrate the influence of 
 the great in tones of fawning flattery.' These words 
 sharply defined Lessing's own position in the world 
 of literature, and were probably written not without 
 design at this moment. 
 
 Finding the expenses for two persons press inconve- 
 niently, Lessing was forced to be yet more industrious, 
 and especially to direct his industry to the completion 
 of some of his Breslau projects. It then became clear 
 to him that he had despised unduly the benefits that 
 accrued to him from his monotonous occupation at 
 Breslau. He also found it difficult to accustom him- 
 self again to an unhealthy sedentary life, though at 
 Breslau he had looked back upon it as pleasant and 
 easy. It was evident to his friends and to himself that 
 it did not suit him mentally or physically. If he 
 had not been his own master at Breslau, the occupation 
 had generally been mechanical and did not so strain 
 his mental powers as to incapacitate him for his own 
 work. Now he was working for himself, but it was as 
 great a slavery, for he could not work for his own 
 ideas and those of humanity, but he had to work for 
 mere subsistence. Less inclined to such toil than 
 before, he was more sensitive to interruptions, and 
 these came to him not from outside but within his 
 own study. 
 
 As he walked up and down thinking out his work, 
 the title of a book would catch his eye ; he would
 
 BERLIN AGAIN. ' 163 
 
 look into it, and there perhaps find an idea that had 
 no bearing whatever on his present subject of medi- 
 tation, and yet started so excellent a train of thought 
 that he must at least note it down, lest it should 
 escape him for ever. This would lead to another 
 thought, thatagain must be examined, and thus an hour 
 would pass, he knew not how. The printer's boy would 
 knock and ask for copy. Copy, oh yes, that was ready, 
 only it must be revised once more, and that was why 
 he had set to work early to-day, but walking across 
 the room had distracted him. The boy was to come 
 again, which he duly did, only to find Lessing started 
 off on another track, and the required copy for the 
 half-printed work not forthcoming. He himself 
 recognized the difficulty of all this, and would 
 determine not to set foot out of his room until the 
 MS. was complete. But the day would wane ; he felt 
 all his senses oppressed by the close air ; he told Karl 
 he must breathe some fresh air, or he could not 
 think at all. So he would start forth, and generally 
 his way led him to a friend's door. What more 
 natural than to go in } The friend and he would chat 
 on some interesting theme ; they would get hot in 
 discussion; Lessing made a point of breaking off early, 
 but when he got home the MS. was forgotten. He 
 had to pursue his friend's train of thought, analyze or 
 adopt it. He went to bed with good resolves for the 
 coming day; he got up feeling dull, and saying he 
 would rather do anything than sit and read through 
 his own writings, which did not please him at all. 
 
 ' Brother,' he would say at last, ' authorship is the 
 dreariest and most disagreeable of occupations. Take 
 warning by me.' 
 
 Sometimes he did get into a good vein, but if he 
 
 M 2
 
 1 64 COTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESS INC. 
 
 looked up at his books it was fatal. Those books 
 were always playing him some new trick, said Karl ; 
 if only he had had no books ! 
 
 But inner unrest and discontent liad as much to 
 answer for as the books. Meanwhile all chance of the 
 librarianship was not over. Frederick was haggling 
 with Winckelmann about 500 thalers, and Lessing's 
 friends urged him to write some complete work that 
 should worthily represent him in the eyes of the King. 
 It was now five years since he had printed anything. 
 Thus urged, Lessing applied himself to the completion 
 of his antiquarian essays. He submitted the frag- 
 ments to Mendelssohn, and they verbally discussed 
 the philosophical portion, besides which Moses anno- 
 tated the MS. and Lessing made use of many of his 
 suggestions. On purely artistic questions he consulted 
 Nicolai, who, besides a fine feeling for art, had studied 
 it critically. 
 
 Rumour spread abroad that Lessing was writing 
 against Winckelmann, and a book of ordinary polemics 
 was anticipated, written with perhaps extraordinary 
 erudition, but still a book that merely borrows its 
 glory from the work which it endeavours to contro- 
 vert. Early in 1766 the first volume of the ' Laokoon ' 
 was issued, ' carelessly flung upon the world,* as Lewes 
 well remarks ; for so doubtful was Lessing of its suc- 
 cess, that he begged the publisher only to print a small 
 edition, as no one would read it. The world was sur- 
 prised to receive an independent work that only made 
 Winckelmann a starting point, and was complete in 
 itself Lessing modestly defined his book as a series 
 of remarks which had casually grown to their present 
 dimensions rather in consequence of the course of his 
 reading, than through any methodical development of
 
 BERLIN AGAIN. 165 
 
 general principles. His notes were rather unarranged 
 memoranda for a book, than a book. ' Yet I flatter 
 myself that, even as such, they will not be wholly 
 despised. We Germans have no lack of systematic 
 treatises. We know, in spite of one nation in the 
 world, how to deduce what we desire out of some 
 established definitions.' 
 
 The ' Laokoon ' was a pioneer. It had to create 
 itself a public ; but critical voices soon made them- 
 selves heard, and its fame reached the Vill^ Albani.- 
 The rumour that had preceded the work had also 
 reached Winckelmann. He had lived so long in Rome, 
 that he was ignorant of Lessing's very name, and it 
 angered him to think that some pedant, devoid of any 
 understanding for aesthetics, should attack him. But 
 when the work appeared, with its respectful admira- 
 tion for his ability, its courteous and profoundly 
 learned criticism of his faults, he changed his opinion 
 and honourably retracted the remarks which he had 
 written on mere hearsay. He regrets that he had never 
 yet seen any of Lessing's writings, or even heard of 
 him, and adds, ' Lessing writes as oneself would wish 
 to have written.' He proposes to address him direct, 
 ' for he deserves a dignified reply to the points wherein 
 I can defend myself. As it is glorious to be praised 
 by competent persons, so also it may be glorious to be 
 held worthy of their criticism.' 
 
 Meanwhile Winckelmann had sent a definite refusal 
 to King Frederick's proposals. He was disgusted by 
 the petty meanness of the Prussian monarch, and pre- 
 ferred the patronage of a cardinal and the delights of 
 Roman life to immurement m bureaucratic Berlin; 
 Lessing was again proposed to Frederick. The King 
 was seriously annoyed at the persistency with which
 
 i66 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 this name was thrust upon him, and passionately ex- 
 claimed that he would not have any German pedants. 
 When told that Lessin^ was one of the most learned 
 men in Europe, and that if he did not take a German he 
 would have no really learned librarian, he forbade all 
 further mention of the subject, and said he would 
 write to Paris and obtain a learned librarian for him- 
 self without help of the Germans. His failure in this, 
 and the manner in which he was duped into appointing 
 an ignorant superstitious monk, is matter of history. 
 Frederick's want of appreciation for his greatest con- 
 temporary must be sought in his entirely French edu- 
 cation and in the fact that his prejudice against German 
 scholars was not wholly without ground, for, excepting 
 Lessing, who was a polished man of the world both in 
 bearing and culture, the representatives of literature 
 were apt to be slovenly dreamers or pedantic book- 
 worms. That he was not blind to the abilities of his 
 own people, and that he even occasionally despised 
 French literature, is notorious, and he had the keen 
 insight to write that ' the German nation is not 
 wanting in genius and intellect {Geist), but it has been 
 retarded by circumstances which prev^ented it from 
 soaring aloft at the same time as its neighbours. Some 
 day we shall have our classical writers ; everyone 
 will read them to aid them in their culture ; our neigh- 
 bours will learn German ; it will be spoken with 
 appreciation at courts, and it may happen that when 
 our language is perfected it will extend from one end 
 of Europe to the other.' 
 
 On learning the King's final decision, Lessing's 
 one desire was to get away from Berlin, no matter 
 whither ; the city and the Prussians had grown hateful. 
 A young nobleman begged for his company in an
 
 BERLIN AGAIN. 167 
 
 excursion to Pyrmont. They left Berlin in June, 
 taking Halberstadt on their way, to visit Gleim, who 
 supplied Lessing with money and books, and could not 
 believe but that his adored King would yet alter his 
 decision and not let go the services of the most com- 
 petent man in his dominions. On the return journey 
 Lessing stopped at Gottingen to visit his old master, 
 Kastner, and his first patron. Professor Michaelis, 
 whom on this occasion he instigated to one of his 
 most important labours, the addition of critical notes 
 for lay readers to his translation of the Bible. Lessing 
 had remarked sarcastically, ' that Christians heard so 
 little and could use so little of that which bookworms 
 invented in their studies, delivered in their lecture- 
 rooms, or published in their learned and usually 
 Latin works.' 
 
 After Lessing's return in August, plans and coun- 
 terplans and annoyances of various kinds pressed upon 
 him. In October he wrote a despondent letter to 
 Gleim, returning the money he had borrowed, and 
 begging indulgence for his negligence and ill-humour. 
 One evening, in company with Ramler and other 
 intimate friends, conversation turned on the themes 
 best suited to comedy. Lessing, in one of his way- 
 ward moods, chose to maintain that all subjects could 
 be adopted for comedies and tragedies, for the essen- 
 tial was the elaboration of the subject, not the subject 
 itself: a proposition exactly opposed to the spirit of 
 the ' Laokoon ' and the letter of Lessing's theatrical 
 writings. His friends exclaimed, ' Prove it by example.' 
 
 ' Why not } ' said Lessing. 
 
 ' Well then, write a comedy of which a sleeping 
 draught is the catastrophe.' 
 
 Lessing assented, and set to work at once. The
 
 1 68 GO TT HOLD EPHRAIM LESS INC. 
 
 play was sketched, and, to judge from the draft, would 
 have been no important contribution to the drama. 
 As in ' Minna,' the scene is laid in the upper middle 
 class, but the tone is lower, and the sketch exhibits no 
 sigrks that it would have approached that play. An 
 unexpected application from Hamburg hindered its 
 completion and changed all Lessing's plans and ideas. 
 A miserable stage cabal, occasioned by the jealousy 
 and vanity of a prima donna, had caused the break-up 
 of the theatrical troupe then playing in that city. An 
 association of wealthy merchants, actors and writers, 
 had started the project of founding a permanent 
 theatre which should aspire to the dignity of a national 
 stage, and should be a school for the cultivation of 
 healthiei; taste and a higher style of drama. It was 
 proposed that Lessing should aid the undertaking as 
 dramaturgist (dramatic critic), with a salary of 800 
 thalers. The committee requested Nicolai to sound 
 Lessing on the subject. The plan of the enterprise 
 was after Lessing's own heart, even if he had not been 
 ' standing idle at the market-place waiting for hire.' 
 He determined to go to Hamburg and see after 
 matters with his own eyes. His love for the theatre 
 was in danger of extinction, but this proposal instantly 
 rekindled it into "flame. A national permanent 
 theatre, that was indeed a sweet dream. His dramatic 
 zeal had been wrecked so often from this need. With 
 no established stage, no organized troupe, all had hither- 
 to been tentative. Progress could not be hoped for, 
 and it was no wonder that both actors and public were 
 mistrustful and indifferent. Here was a real chance for 
 amelioration, and the source whence it was offered 
 was peculiarly favourable to the hope of success. 
 Hamburg, an independent Hanseatic city, opulent,
 
 BERLIN AGAIN, 169 
 
 commercial, could not be narrow and pedantic in ideas 
 like Leipzig, or repressed with servile court adulation 
 like Berlin. Moreover the republican burghers were 
 too independent to be infected with the national taint 
 of French imitation. Eckhof had been drawing good 
 audiences when Lessing passed through the city with 
 Winkler, and consequently he retained pleasant 
 memories of its theatrical taste. The design of the 
 new undertaking could not but gain Lessing's ap- 
 proval ; his optimistic temperament made him 
 sanguine as to its success, while his ingenuous trusting 
 nature made him neglect to look behind the scenes 
 and discover the mines and countermines that were at 
 work. 
 
 On its surface the project was briefly this. In 
 order that Art need not abase itself to pecuniary needs 
 and thus pander to the low taste of the vulgar, a 
 certain capital had been advanced by the rich mer- 
 chants, and over this capital, from which the promoters 
 were not hopeless of ultimate dividends, a financial 
 committee was appointed. The dramatic management 
 was to be quite apart from the pecuniary, and it was 
 anticipated that thus relieved of any money anxiety, 
 it would apply itself solely to high artistic ends. They 
 were to found a histrionic academy, producing first- 
 class artists, and a man of letters and aesthetic taste 
 was to assist in the formation of a repertoire and in 
 the choice of plays. No other than Lessing could 
 fill such a post, and the directors showed their penetra- 
 tion in enlisting his services. 
 
 ' All goes well in the matter concerning which I 
 have come to Hamburg,' Lessing writes to Karl in 
 December 1766; 'it only rests with me to conclude 
 the most advantageous terms. But you know me, and
 
 I70 GO TT HOLD EPHRAIM LESS INC. 
 
 that chinking advantages are not the chief things in 
 my eyes, and accordingly some considerations have 
 arisen concerning which I must be satisfied before I 
 quite decide.' 
 
 These considerations referred to tlie demands of 
 the directors that he should engage to produce a pre- 
 scribed number of original pieces for the new stage. 
 This he declined decisively ; production was no easy 
 process with him. 
 
 ' What Goldoni did for the Italian theatre, when he 
 enriched it with thirteen new plays in one year, that I 
 must leave undone for the German stage. Nay, I 
 would not attempt it even if I could. I do not feel 
 in me that living spring which works its way upwards' 
 by its own power, and by its own power bursts forth 
 into rich, fresh, pure streams. I must work every- 
 thing out of myself by high pressure. I should be 
 poor, cold, and shortsighted, had I not in some degree 
 learnt how modestly to borrow foreign treasures, how 
 to warm myself at alien fires, and to strengthen my 
 sight by the glasses of Art.' 
 
 In any case, however, he tells his brother to give 
 notice to his landlord, because, come what may, he 
 will not stay in Berlin after Easter. The directors, 
 who desired at all costs to have Lessing's name asso- 
 ciated with their scheme, acceded to his proposal and 
 appointed him theatrical critic only. 
 
 Lessing could not wholly blind himself to the fact 
 that this appointment did not rest on an absolutely 
 sure basis. He cast about him for other means of 
 revenue, and concluded an arrangement with a jour- 
 nalist of the name of Bode, who had just made a rich 
 marriage and desired to found a printing press with 
 his wife's money. The press was to be connected
 
 BERLIN AGAIN. 171 
 
 with the new theatre and print all its requirements, 
 and the plan was to start a publishing business in 
 combination. Of this Lessing was to have the 
 management ; his own works and those of his friends 
 were to form a starting point. Another project after 
 his own heart. 
 
 Lessing returned to Berlin full of sanguine joy at 
 the unexpected future that had opened before him. 
 His first step was to reissue his plays and put the 
 finishing touches to ' Minna von Barnhelm,' that it 
 might be published among them. As he had promised, 
 he showed it first to Ramler, bringing it to him act 
 by act. Ramler read them, and appended to each a 
 criticism or a suggestion ; these were all accepted with 
 two or three exceptions. The pecuniary profits being 
 microscopical, Lessing saw himself forced to part 
 with his library, only reserving such books as he needed 
 in his new enterprise. He hoped to pay his Berlin 
 debts with the result, and to have a good surplus left 
 for investment in Bode's scheme. It grieved him sorely 
 to part with these books, and especially to have to 
 part with them in Berlin, where their rare value was 
 not in the least appreciated. The proceeds fell short 
 of his expectations ; moreover he had at the same 
 time the mortification of being robbed by another 
 servant, who had not only helped himself to money 
 and clothes, but to what Lessing valued far more, 
 some of his rarest books. At this very moment a 
 professorship of archaeology was offered to him at 
 Cassel. He refused it. He was bound, and moreover 
 he preferred the Hamburg post, free from bureau- 
 cratic slavery. Inclined to illusions, he thought it 
 promised him a freer and more independent position ; 
 and though a cynic would have predicted that this
 
 172 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 project would go to wreck on national indifference, 
 that it would do so with extraordinary speed was 
 not to be foreseen. 
 
 ' Berlin : February I, 1767. 
 
 ' Dear Friend, 
 
 ' Your letter of the 6th ult. was searching for 
 me at Hamburg when I had already left. I did 
 not receive it back again till yesterday, and there- 
 fore hope forgiveness for my tardy reply. 
 
 ' I do not know where to begin, I have so much 
 to tell you. Yes, I have been to Hamburg, and in 
 9 — lo weeks I think of going there again, probably 
 to remain there for ever. I hope I shall not find it 
 difficult to forget Berlin. My friends there will al- 
 ways remain dear to me ; but all else, from the 
 
 greatest to the least but I remember, you 
 
 do not like to hear disapprobation expressed of this 
 queen of cities. And que diablc allais-je faire dans 
 cette galbre ? 
 
 ' Do not ask on what I am going to Hamburg. 
 Really on nothing. So long as they do not take 
 anything from me at Hamburg, they will give me just 
 as much as they have given me here. But I need 
 not hide anything from you. I have certainly made 
 a sort of arrangement with the new theatre there and 
 with its entrepreneurs, which promises me a calm, 
 pleasant life for some years. As I concluded with 
 them, these words of Juvenal occurred to me : 
 
 Quod non dant proceres, dabit histrio. 
 
 ' I intend finishing my theatrical works, which 
 have long waited for the last touches, and represent- 
 ing them there. Such events were needed to rekindle 
 my almost extinct love for the theatre, I was just
 
 BERLIN AGAIN. 173 
 
 beginning to lose myself in other studies, which 
 would soon have made me quite incapable of any 
 work of imagination. My " Laokoon " is now again 
 a secondary interest. It appears to me that I shall 
 be early enough with its continuation for the great 
 mass of readers. The few who do read me at 
 present understand as much of the matter as I do, 
 
 and more Yet one word. When your 
 
 pastoral is finished, Schuckis not to have it, but I will 
 have it, and get it represented in Hamburg. Send 
 it me ; the sooner the better. 
 
 ' I am always your sincere friend, 
 
 • Lessing.' 
 
 Early in April Lessing left Berlin, as usual with- 
 out warning. Taking leave of friends gave him a 
 keen pain which he gladly spared himself Chance 
 even brought about that he did not bid good-bye to 
 his brother. He disliked all sentimentality in feeling 
 and words, and it was characteristic of him to write 
 to Karl on his arrival at Hamburg : ' You will have 
 heard from Herr Ramler how it came that I had to 
 go away without speaking to you again. All that 
 brothers have to say to each other at parting is a 
 matter of course between us both.' 
 
 ' I have quitted Berlin,' he writes to his father, 
 ' because the only thing I hoped for, and which was 
 so long held out to me, has come to nothing.' 
 
 He was bitter on this score, and yet he had pro- 
 claimed in his closing Literary Letter that princely 
 protection is more hurtful than useful ; that royal 
 patrons of literature substitute their personal taste 
 for good taste ; that genius left to itself forces its 
 way like to a torrent that makes its own bed, not-
 
 174 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 withstanding obstacles. Conformably to his theory, 
 he was about to force obstacles like the torrent, but, 
 unlike the torrent, he was not to find a peaceful bed. 
 But happily for man, the future is hidden from his 
 gaze, and Lessing arrived at Hamburg full of youthful 
 faith and enthusiasm, believing that he had at last 
 secured a permanent resting-place.
 
 laokoon: 175 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 ' LAOKOON.' 
 
 ' J'icrirai ici mes pensies sartj ordrc, et non pas peut-etre dans une con- 
 fusion sans desseln : cest le vdritable ordre, et qui marquera toujours mon objet 
 par le disordre metne.' — Pascal. 
 
 While at Breslau Lessing had occupied himself 
 greatly with archaeological studies, and had come to 
 take a keen interest in the fine arts, though he had 
 seen few classical works, and his knowledge was 
 principally derived from engravings and from the 
 writings of Spence, Webb, Richardson, Hogarth, and 
 Caylus. The publication of Winckelmann's early 
 Essays * On the Imitation of the Ancients in Painting 
 and Statuary ' had led him to go more deeply into 
 the subject. In this first work Winckelmann had 
 declared war against the aberrations of the Rococo 
 taste, and proclaimed that the only way to become 
 great was to follow the road trodden by Michael 
 Angelo, Rafael, and Poussin ; but here he stopped 
 short. He had spoken against the unnatural, against 
 outrageous passion, and referred to the noble sim- 
 plicity and placidity of Greek art ; but he had not 
 objected to the current rage for allegory : nay, indeed 
 he had spoken warmly in its favour. He thought it 
 possible for the painter to follow the poet. This 
 afforded another instance to Lessing how prone were
 
 176 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESS INC. 
 
 even the best minds of the day to confuse two sister 
 but distinctive arts. 
 
 These Essays were followed by the publication of 
 Winckclmann's more important work, the ' History 
 of Art.' Lessing read it at once. He found that its 
 i antiquarian, portion rested on an unstable foundation, 
 and that whatever advantage Winckelmann might 
 possess in actual acquaintance with the works 
 of art, he compensated by more accurate scholar- 
 ship, the want of which had betrayed Winckelmann 
 into .some errors. It was with the purpose of rectify- 
 ing these errors, still more of assigning to poetry and 
 painting their respective boundaries, that Lessing 
 1 jl wrote his ' Laokoon.' His motive was no spirit of 
 = I critical asperity, but a sincere desire to amend a valu- 
 1 able work. He had also a deeper motive. He feared 
 I that Winckclmann's authority would contribute yet 
 / further to confound the provinces of the arts. It was 
 ( his aim to establish their boundaries once and for 
 \ ever, and his success is attested by the unanimous 
 I verdict of criticism, that Lessing has effected for Art 
 I and Criticism what Adam Smith did for Political 
 \ Economy. 
 
 In order to understand this marvellous effect, it is 
 needful to carry back memory to the days before the 
 ' Laokoon ' was written ; for the principles which it 
 inculcates have now become such common property, 
 are so merely the alphabet of culture, that we might 
 be tempted occasionally to rebel at this minute 
 analysis of the obvious. But such matters were by 
 no means the obvious a hundred years ago, when the 
 greatest confusion of ideas existed concerning the 
 capabilities of the various arts. The endeavour to 
 fix general principles for the regulation of opinion
 
 'laokoon: \Ti 
 
 was the characteristic of the eighteenth century. 
 Everything was to be defined by and subject to laws. 
 That this love of classification should lead to errors, 
 and restrict ideas within too narrow principles, was 
 an inevitable result, but one that sprang from a noble 
 wish for enlightenment at all risks, and is therefore 
 entitled to respect. Taste, as a matter of positive 
 law and not of individual fancy, was unknown. The 
 first who tried to formulate a theory of the Fine Arts 
 was A. G. Baumgarten, a follower of Wolff, who 
 hazarded the term Aesthetics to denote the theory of 
 emotional perception. His labours, however, extended 
 no further than to trace broad outlines, the contrast 
 between the hideous and the beautiful. Learned 
 men took up the work and dogmatized with painful 
 pedantry. They failed to see that the Fine Arts, 
 rooted in psychology and sensuous perception, could 
 only furnish axiomata media and could not be formu- 
 lated too sharply, and they ran themselves hopelessly 
 aground in their acceptance as an indisputable dictum 
 of the antithesis of Simonides, that ' Painting is silent 
 poetry, and poetry eloquent painting.' 
 
 It was this problem which had given birth to 
 Baumgarten's Aesthetics, and whose solution was 
 reserved for the * Laokoon.' This axiom had been 
 propounded and accepted by the first writers who 
 had attempted to define art. It was enunciated by 
 Dryden in his ' Parallel of Poetry and Painting,' 
 insisted on by Du Fresnoy, who cites Horace's 
 ' Ut pictitra pocsis ' and interprets it abusively in its 
 support, by Fenelon, the Abbe du Bos, and others. 
 More especially was it held by the English. Spence 
 and Addison could see no independent virtue in 
 works of art except in so far as they illustrated pas- 
 
 N
 
 178 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 sages in the Roman poets. The similarity and har- 
 mony of Poetry and Painting were held as incontro- 
 vertibly fixed. It was the great idea of the period that 
 the painters should poetize, the poets paint. Thom- 
 son's ' Seasons,' with their imitation of pictorial effects, 
 had led the way as far as poetry was concerned, and 
 Lessing himself in his youth had acknowledged 
 Thomson as the greatest descriptive poet. While 
 everyone exaggerated the resemblance of the pic- 
 torial and poetic genuses, they determined their 
 relative claims according to their own respective 
 idiosyncrasies and inclinations ; the one faction de- 
 manding that the painters should imitate the poets, 
 the other that the poets should imitate the painters. 
 The seventeenth century had loved mythology in 
 its poetry and arts ; the eighteenth substituted 
 allegory. This allegory, a cold and conventional 
 masquerading of contemporary ideas and personages, 
 appealed to an age enamoured of the spirit of abstrac- 
 tion. Everything was to rest on a philosophical 
 basis. Hence poetry was reduced to express ideas 
 rather than emotions, and the arts of design were to 
 reason with the brush. In Italy the confusion of 
 styles may be traced to the revival of Platonic studies ; 
 in England, to Bacon's division of man's understand- 
 ing into three parts : Memory, Imagination, and 
 Reason ; whereby Fancy was made a common factor of 
 poetry and painting, and hence the true principle of 
 ancient art, objective imitation, became confounded 
 with the subjective principle of fiction, and false 
 idealism took the place of nature and truth. 
 
 Certain critics had already endeavoured to esta- 
 blish some distinctions essential to the two genres. 
 Thus Winckelmann in his early Essays had remarked
 
 laokoon: 179 
 
 that the essential condition of Greek sculpture was sim- 
 plicity and quiet grandeur, while Hagedorn defined 
 the distinguishing feature of representative art as the 
 elimination of the uncomely. This was the state of 
 the question when Lessing attempted to solve it in a 
 definite manner. He perceived that a great number 
 of ingenious observations and just ideas had been 
 expressed by these various critics, but no actual prin- 
 ciple had been demonstratively established. A 
 variety of circumstances had given him the needful 
 preparation for entering the lists. To begin, he was 
 ignorant of nothing that had been written on the 
 subject. Already at Leipzig he had learnt from 
 Christ the use that could be made of ancient texts in 
 the study of the arts, and scarcely had he been 
 appointed critic on the ' Voss Gazette ' than it devolved 
 on him to review his friend Mylius' translation of 
 Hogarth's ' Analysis of Beauty.' He hailed a work 
 that endeavoured to fix the fluctuating ideas of taste, 
 and, free from metaphysics, reduced beauty to the 
 firm and sure conception of form : form reduced to 
 its elements the curved line, the source of beauty ; the 
 sinuous, the line of grace. Here at last was a book 
 that opposed something definite to the vague sensa- 
 tions of those who satisfied themselves with the adage, 
 ' De giistibiis non est dispiitandiim^ 
 
 ' Here is a book,' writes the youthful Lessing, 
 ' which we must thank if in future, when we apply the 
 word " beautiful " to a thousand things, we shall think 
 as much as until now we have felt.' 
 
 The practical bearing of any mental department, 
 never left out of regard by the thinker Lessing, for all 
 his purely theoretical interests, speaks out of this 
 passage. To give to each department its due, to 
 
 N 2
 
 i8o GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 introduce order into the reitjning confusion, was the 
 mission wliich Lessing had unconsciously taken upon 
 himself. In ' Pope a Metaphysician ' he had demon- 
 strated the distinction between a poet and a philo- 
 sopher ; in his Essay on Fables he had enfranchised 
 poetry from the yoke of ethics ; in his correspondence 
 with Nicolai and Mendelssohn concerning Tragedy, he 
 had had the same end in view, the separation of 
 different departments ; and now in the ' Laokoon ' 
 he proposed to divorce the arts of design and poetry 
 from the union in which they had hitherto been 
 held, to the detriment of both. He felt convinced 
 that every gejire contained an expression of beauty 
 proper to itself alone, that the effort to engraft it with 
 alien qualities is to mar its very raison d'etre. The 
 ' Laokoon ' was to establish this, to clear the ground 
 that others might follow in the wake. It was a pecu- 
 liarity of Lessing's thus to put forth problems ; his 
 modesty never let him venture beyond La Fontaine's 
 ' Oft lepeut,je Vessaie, un phis savant le fasse.' 
 
 It would have been out of keeping with Lessing's 
 mental peculiarity if he had set out to write a philo- 
 sophical treatise inodo. et forntd on Art. All theory 
 was to him a polemic ; he needed an adversary and he 
 found him in Winckelmann. The fable of the Lao- 
 koon was merely to furnish him with an occasion to 
 express certain principles ; yet in choosing it he by no 
 means pretended to limit himself to the study of this 
 plastic group. But his spirit was pre-eminently syn- 
 thetical. He loved to argue from the particular to 
 the general ; he had therefore to choose an example 
 and the Laokoon was peculiarly happy. Sculpture 
 and poetry had both worked masterpieces from this 
 theme. It would thus be easier to judge the differ-
 
 'LAOKOON: i8r 
 
 ences and resemblances of these arts. Winckelmann 
 had already instituted a comparison between the work 
 of the painter and the sculptor, giving the preference 
 to the latter in virtue of his aesthetic dogma that the 
 expression of noble grandeur of soul is more beautiful 
 than the expression of passion. He had then pro- 
 ceeded to compare Virgil and the sculptor. This com- 
 parison furnishes a starting point for Lessing, who 
 undertakes to prove by the same examples that the 
 two artists were obliged to seek totally divergent 
 beauties by reason of the difference of their art. He 
 applied himself to elucidate this. 
 
 The similarity of Poetry and Painting had been 
 amply discussed. It seemed to him worth while to 
 reverse the medal, and investigate their inherent dis- 
 similarity, to ascertain whether such divergence did 
 not follow from some law, peculiar to each, which often 
 compelled the one to tread a different path from her 
 sister. The second title he bestowed on the treatise, 
 ' Laokoon, or the Boundaries of Poetry and Painting,' 
 marked his starting point and the object of the book, 
 as well as the motto prefixed, "T\r) koX rpoiroLs 
 ljbLfii]crsa}s (as well in the object as in the manner 
 of their imitations). He begs the reader to note that 
 under the name of Painting he includes the Plastic 
 Arts generally ; nor will he deny that under the name 
 of Poetry he has also some regard to the other arts 
 that possess the characteristic of progressive imita- 
 tion. This is a reference to the drama, regarded by 
 Lessing, like his master Aristotle, as the acme of all art. 
 
 Lessing held that the first person who compared 
 Painting and Poetry was a man of fine feeling, who 
 perceived that both these arts produced a like 
 effect, by placing absent things before him as pre-
 
 1 82 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 sent. The second person sought to penetrate into 
 the nature of this pleasure, and discovered that it 
 flowed from the same source, the love of the beautiful ; 
 the third reflected upon the value and distribution of 
 these general rules. The first was an amateur, the 
 second a philosopher, the third an art-critic. The 
 first two could not easily make a w^rong use of their 
 feeling or their reasoning. Not so the critic. The 
 principal force of his remarks depend on their correct 
 application to the particular case ; and since few 
 critics are really acute, the application has not always 
 been made with the caution requisite to hold the 
 scales equal. We may feel assured that in the lost 
 writings on Painting of Apelles and Protogenes, 
 the same moderation and accuracy prevailed that 
 is illustrated in the works of Aristotle, Cicero and 
 Horace, when they apply the principles and expe- 
 riences of Painting to Eloquence and Poetry. The 
 dazzling antithesis of the Greek Voltaire, that 
 Painting is dumb poetry, Poetry eloquent painting, 
 was a smart saying, like many another spoken by 
 Simonides. Its brilliancy had dazzled the moderns 
 and caused them to overlook its want of precision. 
 The ancients did not overlook this, and the author 
 of the dictum w as well aware that it would receive 
 due modification in practice from the right feeling ol 
 the artist, since it is the privilege of the ancients in 
 no one thing to do too much or too little. Not so 
 with the moderns, who believe that in many things 
 they have surpassed them. The ancients perfectly 
 understood that for all their similarity of effect, the 
 arts differed, while the moderns have promulgated the 
 crudest notions concerning their harmony. At one 
 time they compress poetry within the narrow limits of
 
 ' laokoon: 
 
 painting, at another painting is desired to fill the wide 
 sphere of poetry. And why ? Because they choose 
 to hold that whatever is right in the one must be per- 
 mitted to the other. This false taste has infected the 
 creators themselves, generating a mania for description 
 in poetry, and allegory in painting, until they no 
 longer know what ideas can or ought to be painted, 
 what expressed in writing. The deductions to be 
 drawn from these trenchant comparisons determine 
 the degree of pictorial imitation permissible to a poet. 
 He must not enumerate details as though the listener 
 had an actual picture before his eyes, he must present 
 the visible with a few bold traits capable of stimulating 
 phantasy. The mission of poetry is through outward 
 forms to represent the inner life of action, hence this 
 art must only represent forms suggestively through 
 the medium of actions. 
 
 Lessing then proceeds to give an elaborate defi- 
 nition of the principles of formative art, side by side 
 with a definition of the principles of poetry, not for the 
 sake of contrast, but because the imperfect apprehen- 
 sion of this contrast had led critics and artists into 
 error, and even so consummate a judge as Winckelmann 
 had gone astray. Winckelmann censures Virgil for 
 the horrible shriek he makes his Laokoon utter, and 
 praises the sculptor for having expressed the sufi"erer's 
 agony in his body alone, without displaying anguish 
 in his face, that remains great and calm for all his 
 intense suffering. The reason Winckelmann finds in 
 the fact that Laokoon's greatness of soul had over- 
 come all expression of pain. The marble Laokoon 
 suffers, but he suffers like the Philoctetes of Sophocles ; 
 he does not shriek like the Roman's hero. Such an 
 observation put Lessing on his mettle. Nourished on
 
 i84 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 Homer and Sophocles, he is able to confute Winckel- 
 mann with chapter and verse. If the unfavourable 
 side-glance at Virgil had startled him, how much more 
 the comparison with the Philoctetes of Sophocles. 
 Does not Philoctetes exclaim piteously throughout the 
 whole third act .-• how could he lament more audibly 
 than by his long-sustained at, al irdTrat, Trdirat ? A 
 scream is the natural expression of bodily pain. 
 Homer's wounded heroes scream, so does Aphrodite ; 
 not that she may thus appear soft and womanish, but 
 to prove her nature capable of suffering. Even the 
 brazen Ares, when struck by the lance of Diomedes, 
 shrieks so dreadfully that he terrifies both armies. 
 However Homer may exalt his heroes, they are true 
 to human nature whenever there is a question of 
 anguish. In their deeds they are higher creatures, in 
 their feelings true men. We refined Europeans of a 
 wiser posterity, it is true, know better how to com- 
 mand our voices ; high breeding forbids screams. Not 
 so with the Greek, he had no false shame for his 
 mortal weakness ; with him the scream of bodily pain 
 was quite compatible with greatness of soul. Homer 
 hides a deep meaning when he relates how the Greeks 
 wept hot tears while burning their dead, but Priam 
 forbids his Trojans to weep. The cause is this. The 
 civilized Greek can at the same time weep and be 
 bold, not so the uncivilized Trojan. And hence, the 
 conclusion established that a cry of suffering may 
 according to Greek thought consist with greatness of 
 soul, Winckelmann must be Avrong when he adduces 
 this as the reason why the artist has not imitated the 
 cry in marble. There must be another cause why in 
 this respect he differs from his rival the poet, who lays 
 especial stress on this cry.
 
 'LAOKOON.' 185 
 
 Lessing then pronounces beauty to be the essence 
 and soul of Greek art. Legend tells how the daughter 
 of Dibutades, a potter of Corinth, outlined the shadow 
 of her lover on the wall the day before his departure, 
 and how her father, to assuage her longing for the 
 one, copied the outline in clay. 
 
 It is to this fable that Lessing refers, when, pre- 
 suming his readers to be as well versed as himself in 
 Hellenic lore, he proceeds to say : • Be it fable or 
 history that Love caused the first attempt in plastic 
 art, so much is certain, it was never weary in guiding 
 the hand of the great old masters.' The wise Greek 
 confined himself to the imitation of beautiful bodies : 
 the perfection of the object itself was the thing that 
 enraptured him. Nothing was dearer to him in his 
 art, nothing nobler, than the aim and end of Art itself. 
 After some digressions on Caricature and realistic 
 Art, he returns to his primary proposition, that with 
 the ancients beauty was the highest law of the imita- 
 tive Arts, and this principle established, it follows that 
 everything that did not harmonize with beauty must 
 give way to it, and therefore such passions as distort 
 the countenance were either avoided altogether or used 
 in a subordinate degree, in which they were susceptible 
 of some measure of beauty. Hence the reason why 
 the sculptor would not permit his Laokoon to utter a 
 cry of anguish. The master strove to attain the 
 highest beauty under the given circumstances of bodily 
 agony. He could not combine the disfiguring vehe- 
 mence of the latter with the former, he must therefore 
 diminish it, soften shrieks to sighs, not because the 
 shriek degrades, but because it disfigures. An instant's 
 thought will show how the wide open mouth, a blot in 
 painting, a cavity in sculpture, would change a creation
 
 1 86 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 that inspired sympathy by its union of beauty and 
 suffering, into a hideous figure from which we should 
 instinctively turn away. 
 
 A counterpart from the best period of Greek Art 
 occurs to him in Timanthe's picture of the Sacrifice of 
 Iphigenia, in which the artist distributed to all the by- 
 standers their proper share of grief, but veiled the 
 countenance of the father. This veiling is a sacrifice 
 which the artist has made to beauty : he knew that 
 Agamemnon's grief was of the deepest kind that can 
 only find expression in distortion. This is another 
 example of the need of subjecting expression to the 
 first law of art, the law of beauty. From this con- 
 sideration Lessing deduces an important rule, namely, 
 that as the painter can onl\' represent a single 
 moment of an event, that moment must be chosen 
 which is most fruitful of effect. For since a work of 
 art is intended to be considered long and repeatedl}', 
 that point of view is most fruitful of effect which leaves 
 most scope to the imagination. Therefore the ex- 
 tremcst point of passion must not be chosen, because 
 that binds the wings of Fancy and compels her, since 
 she cannot go beyond the impression made on the 
 senses, to bus}' herself with feeble and subordinate 
 images. When Laokoon sighs the imagination may 
 hear him scream, but if he screamed imagination could 
 go no further, but must descend to behold him in a 
 more tolerable and therefore less interesting condition. 
 The observer must not see but surmise the crisis. The 
 eternal Now of the painter and sculptor, that freezes 
 a transitory moment into motionless immortality, must 
 express no phenomena that are essentially evanescent, 
 such as a smile, a cry. The grievous pain that extorts 
 the cry must cease or destroy the sufferer. The most
 
 laokoon: 187 
 
 enduring man may cry out, but not incessantly, and 
 this apparent perpetuity in the material imitation of 
 art must be borne in view. This the artist of the 
 Laokoon must hav^e regarded, even if the outcry had 
 been compatible with beauty. 
 
 Having thus established the reasons why the 
 artist must observe moderation in the expression of 
 bodily emotions, i.e. that they are altogether derived 
 from and necessary to the peculiar nature, limits and 
 requirements of his art, Lessing proceeds to examine 
 whether these same reasons apply to poetry. By no 
 means ; nothing constrains the poet to concentrate his 
 picture upon a single moment. He can pursue the 
 train of thoughts and actions that would cost the 
 painter a multiplicity of works, and therefore he may 
 touch on such traits, as, considered by themselves, 
 would jar on the imagination, because immediate 
 reparation is made by what follows after. Virgil's 
 Laokoon shrieks, and shrieking is repulsive ; but this 
 screaming Laokoon is the same whom we have already 
 learnt to know and love as a wise patriot and kind 
 father. We attribute his outcry to his intolerable 
 suffering, not to his character ; and it is not by 
 it alone that the poet can make us sensible of his 
 sufferings. Hence the great divergence between paint- 
 ing and poetry. The painter, limited to a single 
 moment in which to tell his tale, not able like the poet 
 to prepare his audience for an effect by previous 
 recital, unable to soften immediate impressions by 
 subsequent narration, must choose the most pregnant 
 moment, i.e. that in which the mind of the spectator 
 best perceives the preceding and what is to come. 
 
 Aristotle had defined both poetry and painting as 
 imitations of Nature. Lessing does not discuss this
 
 iS8 GOTTHOLD EFHRAIM LESS INC. 
 
 point, which he holds incontestable. He only wishes 
 to show how these arts ought to differ in the means 
 w^hich they employ. Painting employs figures and 
 colours in space : the artist articulates sounds in time ; 
 and this eminently philosophical distinction of time 
 and space constitutes the great originality of Lessing's 
 theory. The objects of painting are bodies, bodies 
 with their \'isible qualities. The objects of poetry are 
 actions. Painting also imitates actions, but she 
 imitates them in representing the disposition of the 
 body in which they take place. Poetry' on the other 
 hand may also be said to imitate bodies, but she 
 imitates them in elucidating by successive traits the 
 actions that take place. The law regarding time does 
 not apply to the poet : hence his scope of representa- 
 tion is wider, and this brings Lessing to his culminating 
 point, the supremacy of the poetical over the plastic 
 arts. Homer creates two classes of beings and of 
 actions, visible and invisible. Painting is incompetent 
 to represent this difference. With it everything is 
 visible, and visible after one fashion only. It was the 
 folly of the age to believe it possible to reproduce in 
 painting or sculpture every striking scene in a poet. 
 Caylus advocated the illustration of Homer, and it 
 was just Homer, on whom Caylus built his theory, 
 who was its most striking negation. What idea should 
 we have of Homer, asks Lessing, if, nothing remained 
 of the ' Iliad ' or ' Odyssey ' but such pictures, though 
 they be from the hand of the most perfect master, and 
 though Homer is the most picturesque of poets .-' 
 But a poetical picture is not necessarily capable of 
 transmutation into a material picture, while on the 
 other hand some circumstances are picturesque and 
 others not. The historian, the prose writer, can
 
 laokoon: 189 
 
 larrate in a very unpicturesque manner those that are 
 nost picturesque, while the poet by virtue of his 
 imagination can clothe in a picturesque manner those 
 that are most unpicturesque. When Homer paints, 
 he paints nothing but progressive actions, and hence 
 produces no picture which the painter can imitate 
 with his pencil. He places his single object in a 
 successive series of movements, for the last of which the 
 painter is obliged to wait in order that he may show 
 us that object completely formed, whose gradual for- 
 mation we have followed with the poet. Thus when 
 Homer shows us the chariot of Here, Hebe puts it 
 together before our eyes, and the picture is made up 
 of movement. Poetry must be sparing in the descrip- 
 tion of bodily objects, and .should confine itself to one 
 trait in the use of picturesque epithets. Homer does 
 not even describe the shield of Achilles when made, 
 but paints the action of the divine maker. Lessing 
 wishes it to be distinctly understood that he does not 
 deny to language the power of painting a corporeal 
 whole in its parts, he only denies that such a use of 
 language should be regarded as poetry. He thus 
 closes to poetry the domain of pure description. 
 
 He distinguishes between the poet and the pro- 
 saist. The prose writer may be content with per- 
 spicuity, but the poet must awaken in us ideas, illusions, 
 and we must be unconscious of the means, i.e. of the 
 words, he employs for his purpose. Virgil in his 
 ' Georgics ' may describe a cow which is a good breeder 
 but he is only dogmatizing on her good points, and in 
 so far as he dogmatizes he is no poet. No description 
 of a flower, however detailed, can approach the vivid- 
 ness of a flower painted by Van Huysum. Descriptive 
 poetry is thus entirely condemned, on the high ground
 
 I90 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 that, vying with an alien art, Poetry compromises her 
 power. Let her renounce a useless and unequal 
 struggle, and throw her whole energy into the far 
 wider field which lies outside painting, for to her it is 
 given to attain the sublime beyond the reach of 
 painting. He makes an exception in the case of 
 didactic poetry, because, as he hastens to add, it is not 
 poetry at all, Every attempt of a poet to describe 
 corporeal beauty, be he even an Ariosto, seems to 
 Lessing as if he saw stones rolled up a mountain out 
 of which, on the top, a superb building is meant to be 
 erected, but all of which of their own accord roll down 
 again upon the other side. When Anacreon analyzes 
 the beauty of his maiden, he treats of it in a manner that 
 exempts him from this error, for he imagines he has 
 a painter before him, and causes him to work under 
 his eyes. 
 
 ' But,' objects Lessing, ' does not Poetry suffer too 
 great a loss if we take away from her all images of 
 corporeal beauty .-• Who wishes to take them away } ' 
 he replies. If we seek to prevent her pursuing a 
 particular path, following in the footsteps of a sister 
 art without ever reaching the same goal, is every other 
 path therefore closed to her ? By no means. Poets 
 can work by effect, they must paint for us the pleasure, 
 inclination, love, rapture, that beauty causes, and by so 
 doing they paint beauty itself And since movement 
 is at the root of all poetic pleasure, it follows that the 
 drama is its highest expression, while the epic takes 
 the second place, because it is a dramatic poem. 
 
 It was this idea of the high calling of the drama, 
 an idea conformable to Lessing's views from boyhood, 
 that was to have been worked out in the concluding 
 portion of the ' Laokoon.' But the fine work remained
 
 laokoon: 191 
 
 a Torso. After his death there were found among 
 his papers notes for a second and third part, and 
 though these are in a rough state, they are full of 
 pregnant suggestions. From them we see that Lessing 
 intended to treat of music in its union with poetry. 
 In speaking of opera, he observes that poetry is 
 always the auxiliary art, the union n which music is the 
 auxiliary art has yet to be invented : a remark that 
 goes to prove how cordially he would have welcomed 
 the reforms inaugurated by Gluck very shortly after. 
 
 Still, fragment as the ' Laokoon ' is, its influence 
 was enormous, both for its luminous discrimination of 
 distinct styles of art as for its occasional discussion of 
 side issues, such as the nature of the ugly and the ridi- 
 culous. The mass of combative criticism that has 
 arisen regarding the work, all the modification and 
 correction which it has undergone, have left its funda- 
 mental axioms untouched. The condition of archae- 
 ology as a science in Lessing's day made it impossible 
 for him always to penetrate to the truth ; but he has 
 often skirted it where he has not defined it. He cer- 
 tainly contributed largely to the advancement of this 
 science, if only by clearing the ground from the mass 
 of obstacles that had hitherto impeded its progress. 
 The ' Laokoon ' has sometimes been censured as 
 having only a negative tendency ; but, as Kant well 
 observes, ' merely to ascertain the boundaries of the 
 different species, which might seem a negative science, 
 is of the greatest positive use for the development of 
 each species in its whole individuality.' Together 
 with Winckelmann, Lessing evoked beauty as the 
 watchword of the new movement ; he differed from 
 him in that Winckelmann was content with a vague 
 fantastic expression of beauty only, as the grand
 
 192 COTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 purpose of art, while Lessing insisted on beauty of 
 form. But while his ideal of beauty consisted in 
 beauty of lines, he would never have contemplated 
 the exaggerated materialistic conception of art into 
 which this view has of late degenerated. A volup- 
 tuous school of art, that rates sensuous perception, 
 colours and accessories, above true artistic thought 
 and feeling, would never have been in accordance with 
 Lessing's views. With all his fine feeling for artistic 
 beaut}-, he was above all the philosophic critic, resting 
 his conclusions on a sound learned basis. How could 
 such a one have applauded an art void of intellect and 
 mind .' 
 
 Winckclmann, on the other hand, was an enthu- 
 siastic votary of art, who, brought face to face with 
 the glorious results, deduced from them his theories, 
 that were calculated dangerously to shackle the artist, 
 tempt him to substitute the means for the end, and to 
 lose, in a hopeless chase after beauty in the abstract, 
 all that can alone make beauty interesting — expression 
 and mind. Lessing's standpoint was as narrow in its 
 wa}', but its results were calculated to be healthier. 
 He was before all else a thinker ; therefore, in treating 
 of a work of art, he started from the thoughts and 
 concrete perceptions which it awoke in him, and thus 
 abstracted his conclusions logically from sensation. 
 Thence he deduced beauty of form, and such beauty 
 of form is attained artistically by idealization. This 
 is but faintly possible with regard to animals, not at 
 all with inanimate nature. Hence his sli<jht esteem 
 for landscape painting, since landscape has no settled 
 beauty of form, and owes its attractiveness to colour 
 and transitory effects. With this same principle of 
 idealization, it naturally follows that he condemns the
 
 laokoon: 193 
 
 Dutch painters of vulgar interiors, common-place, and 
 still-life, as well as portraiture, since the end of this is 
 likeness, and likeness is not compatible with idealiza- 
 tion. His want of appreciation of landscape painting 
 must be partially sought in his own indifference to 
 scenery. Neither in his Diary nor Letters does any 
 reference to scenery occur. It is indeed recorded of 
 him that once when a friend was expatiating enthusi- 
 astically about the approaching spring, Lessing said 
 ' Oh, it has been green so often, I wish it would be red 
 for a change.' But here some allowance must be 
 made for his love of paradox and hatred of the tedious 
 sentimentality rampant in his day. He was free from 
 any trace of German ' ScJiwdnnercil a state of feeling 
 for which the healthier English mind has not even a 
 corresponding word. Pressed hard, he once owned he 
 preferred a landscape in the Harz to a flat waste, but 
 he added that he would rather live in view of the 
 latter than in a crooked room. In this he showed 
 once more how pre-eminently Hellenic was his tone 
 of mind. 
 
 Lessing did not recognize sufficiently the effect 
 which the modern Christian spirit exercised over the 
 plastic arts. This is the more remarkable, as with 
 respect to poetry, he was fully aware of the merits 
 of romanticism in contrast to classicism, as evinced 
 by Shakespeare and Milton. He overlooked the fact 
 that there is no abrupt line of severance between the 
 old world and the new, and to this is traceable a cer- 
 tain hardness of tone in his aesthetics, as though the 
 standard of ancient art were the only standard; a hard- 
 ness that was overcome by later writers, notably by 
 Schiller, Herder, and Kant. Thus ignoring the period 
 of the Middle Ages, he omitted to remark that 
 
 O
 
 194 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESS INC. 
 
 pictures were for a long time the books of the people, 
 and that the mediaeval painter, with this knowledge in 
 view, strove to clothe expression of sentiment in his 
 figures, and hence leant to allegorical representation. 
 
 Wherever Lcssing's theory is narrow, it is so from 
 the excessive rigour of his deductions. It is difficult to 
 bend the works of the intellect to the details of rigor- 
 ous classification. But this fault, which is a fault to- 
 day, was a virtue at the time when some clear division 
 was absolutely needful, and by the influence which 
 the ' Laokoon ' exerted on the young' minds of the 
 generation, the fermentation for action which it called 
 forth, a fermentation that culminated in the ' St2irm 
 uiid Drang'' period of German literature, the decisive 
 sway which it exerted can best be judged. Goethe at 
 eighty cannot speak of it without enthusiasm. Its 
 perusal must ever be a pleasure, for its charm of style, 
 its easy sequence of ideas, that seem visibly thought 
 out before us like the successive stages of the-shield of 
 Achilles, its close reasoning and the terseness of its 
 precepts. The fault is with the reader, if he does not 
 after perusal find his mind strengthened and enlarged, 
 if every subsequent perusal does not open new path- 
 ways of thought. It is a pre-eminently suggestive, 
 rather than an exhaustive work, and will ever remain 
 the finest monument of a compact and cultivated 
 intellect.
 
 HAMBURG.— ' THE DRAMATURGIE: 195 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 HAMBURG. — ' THE DRAMATURGIE.' 
 
 ' Let me think 
 Of forms less and the external. Tritst the spirit, 
 As sovran nature does, to make the forrn, 
 For otherwise we only imprison spirit 
 And not embody. Inward evermore 
 To outivard, — so in life, and so in art 
 Which still is life. 
 
 Exact 
 The literal unities of time and place, 
 When 'tis the essence of passion to ignore 
 Both time and place? 
 
 ' ' Tis that, honouring to its worth 
 The drama, / would fear to keep it down 
 To the level of the footlights.' — MRS. BROWNING. 
 
 Lessing entered upon his Hamburg appointment 
 full of joyful expectation, which found expression in 
 the Prologue he issued on the opening of the theatre. 
 After having accorded a sincere compliment to the 
 town of Hamburg on the good service done in found- 
 ing a national theatre, Lessing rapidly sketched the 
 plan of the enterprise. He candidly proclaimed that 
 the German stage was still in its infancy, and that it 
 was a question of educating public, actors, and authors 
 at one and the same time. He therefore begs 
 patience and indulgence. 
 
 ' For it is not possible to do all at once. Still, 
 what we do not see grow, is, found to have grown 
 
 o 2
 
 / 
 
 196 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 after a while. The slowest, who does not lose sight 
 of his goal, will always outstrip him who wanders 
 aimlessly. This ' Dramaturgie ' is to be a critical index 
 of all the pla)'s performed, and is to accompany every 
 step made by the art, both of the poet and the actor. 
 The choice of the plays is no trifle ; but choice pre- 
 supposes quantity, and if masterpieces cannot always 
 be performed, it will be seen where the fault lies. 
 At the same time it is well that the mediocre should 
 not pretend to be more than it is, so that the dissatis- 
 fied spectator may at least learn to judge from it. 
 To a person of good sense, whose taste we desire to 
 form, it is only needful to explain why such and such 
 a piece has failed to please him, if one desires to teach 
 him good taste. Besides, some mediocre pieces must 
 be retained, if only because they contain certain 
 excellent parts in which this or that actor can show 
 his whole power. A dramatic critic's most delicate 
 perception is evinced in distinguishing infallibl)- in 
 every case of pleasure or displeasure, what and how 
 much is to be charged to the poet and to the actor. 
 For to blame the one for the fault of the other, is to 
 injure both. The former is discouraged, the latter 
 made too confident. The actor especially may insist 
 on the observance of the utmost strictness and im- 
 partiality. The justification of the poet can always 
 be effected, his work remains and can always be 
 brought before our eyes. But the art of the actor is 
 transitory in its effects. His good and bad pass by 
 rapidly, and the liveliness of the impression too often 
 depends more on the passing mood of the spectator 
 than on the actor himself. Visible gifts of nature are 
 very needful to his profession, but by no means suffice. 
 The actor must everywhere think with the poet, and
 
 I' 
 
 HAMBURG.—' THE DRAMATURGIE: 197 
 
 must even think for him when the poet has proved ) 
 himself mortal' ^ 
 
 His opening criticism, he adds, will not appear 
 until some ten days later, in order that the first burst 
 of public opinion may have blown over. 
 
 But before that date Lessing was already aware 
 that there was * something rotten ' in the state of 
 affairs. He writes to Karl : 
 
 ' Dearest Brother, 
 
 ' I hardly know myself what to relate about my 
 circumstances. I must tell you in confidence, that a 
 number of things are going on in our theatre that do 
 not please me. There is discord among the entrepre- 
 neurs. No one knows who is to do what. Mean- 
 while I have made a beginning with my weekly paper, 
 of which I here send you the first numbers. They 
 are printed at my own press.' 
 
 These very first numbers gave offence both to the 
 public and to the ever-wakeful vanity of the per- 
 formers. The principal actress of the troupe had 
 stipulated beforehand that she should not be men- 
 tioned in the ' Dramaturgic.' The second lady, whom 
 Lessing had praised highly, while delicately hinting 
 that her performance might be even better than it 
 was, resented this hint from the paid critic of the 
 :heatre. She complained to one of the directors, her 
 'special protector ; Lessing was forbidden to mention 
 ner name also. Others then became aggrieved, and 
 the result was that a few weeks after the opening of 
 the theatre Lessing abandoned all criticism of the 
 actors, and confined himself to the pieces. The loss 
 to histrionic science is serious, the scanty remarks on 
 the dramatic art contained in the ' Dramaturgic ' are 
 masterly, full of keen insight and truth. Lessing was
 
 198 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 certainly in a false position. He was known to the 
 public to be connected with the management, and con- 
 sequently his criticisms were held to have an official 
 stamp, and misunderstandings with the actors were 
 inevitable. 
 
 And yet Lessing's demands on these had by no 
 means been excessive. His general canon for the 
 performance was : ' We must be satisfied with the 
 representation of a piece, if among four or five persons 
 some have acted excellently and the others well.' It 
 is truly graceful and modest when he adds : 'I only 
 know one way of flattering an artist, whether of my 
 own or the other sex, and this consists in presup- 
 posing that he is above all petty sensibility, that art 
 is everything in his eyes, and that he wishes to be 
 criticized, even preferring to be judged amiss than 
 not judged at all.' 
 
 But as there is no accounting for the vanity of 
 artists, so there is no combating it, and Lessing was 
 soon weary of the vain attempt. At the conclusion 
 of the ' Dramaturgic,' in a tone of bitter irony, he 
 appears to excuse this ultra-susceptibility of the 
 actors. 'We have histrionics but no histrionic art. 
 If such an art existed formerly it is lost to us. It 
 must be rediscovered.' There are no clear and precise 
 rules as to its conduct, hence 'all arguing on this 
 matter appears capricious and ambiguous, and it is 
 little wonder that the actor whose sole guide is 
 traditional routine feels himself ofTcnded at all points. 
 Praise will never appear to him sufficient, censure will 
 always appear excessive — nay, often he will not even 
 know whether praise or blame was intended.' 
 
 Lessing's former high opinion of Eckhof was con- 
 firmed. He regarded him as the soul of the new
 
 HAMBURG.— 'THE DRAMATURGIE: 199 
 
 theatre, and openly stated that he himself had to learn 
 from him the true basis of the histrionic art, 
 
 ' This man may perform any part he likes, even the 
 most insignificant, he still proves himself the first-rate 
 actor.' He further adds that the various rules laid 
 down by him with regard to the utterance of moral 
 maxims, the movements of the hands, gestures of 
 warning, fear, &c., are merely an abstract of what he 
 has observed in Eckhof ' How easy, how pleasant it 
 is to follow an artist who not only succeeds in the 
 admirable, but creates it ! ' 
 
 Critics are not legislators, but judges and police. 
 
 Lessing did not pretend to make laws, but 
 to interpret and enforce them, and therefore pro- 
 ceeded throughout on a system of critical induction. 
 Taking Hamlet's instruction to the players as a text, 
 he shows how it is possible for the actor to be too 
 vehement in his enunciation, and points out the 
 painful effect produced by an excessive strain on the 
 voice. He warns against too much realism in panto- 
 mime, and against over reliance on the phantasy of 
 the spectator. It is not always the actor of most 
 feeling who produces the most effect, but sometimes 
 the one who experiences none of the sensations he 
 presents, and merely imitates a good model. For 
 according to the law that the modifications of the 
 soul which produce certain changes on the body 
 may in their turn be brought about by these bodily 
 changes, feeling may exist where we do not discern 
 it, and we may fancy we discern it where it does not 
 exist. 
 
 Lessing insists on the necessity for rapid acting, 
 especially in the lighter kinds of comedy. In 
 treating of the subject of a play, he remarks that even
 
 200 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSIXG. 
 
 the weakest and most confused have had a kind of 
 success, if only the author has been fortunate in his 
 choice of subject. Indeed it often happens that just 
 in such pieces good actors appear to the best 
 advantage. 
 
 ' It is very rarely that a masterpiece is represented 
 in as masterly a manner as it is written. Mediocrity 
 generally succeeds much better. Perhaps because the 
 actors can put more of themselves into it ; perhaps 
 because mediocrity leaves us more time and repose to 
 regard their acting, or perhaps because everything 
 depends on one or two prominent personages ; while 
 in a superior play every person ought to be more or 
 less a principal actor, and if he is not, by spoiling his 
 own part he helps to spoil all the rest.' 
 
 The dramatic artist differs from other artists in 
 that the man transforms his own body into art and 
 impersonates before an audience what he has never 
 seen. Lessing was therefore led to inquire into the 
 precise relation held by this to the other arts. He 
 had said in the ' Laokoon ' that the drama is destined 
 to be a living painting through the representation of 
 the actor, and ought perhaps on that very account to 
 adhere the closer to the laws of material painting. 
 He was far from regarding dramatic art as mere 
 mechanism or naturalism. The same idealism that 
 breathed through the ' Laokoon ' is enforced here. 
 
 ' The art of the actor stands midway between 
 poetry and painting. As a visible painting beauty 
 must be its highest law, and yet as transient painting 
 its posture need not always have that repose which 
 renders antique works of art so impressive. It may 
 and must allow itself the wlldncss of a Tempesta, the 
 audacity of a Bernini. Such effects retain in this art
 
 HAMBURG.— 'THE DRAMATURCIE: 2or 
 
 all the expression peculiar to them, without the offen- 
 siveness which they would have in pictorial art 
 through the permanence of the impression. Only it 
 must not linger too long among these effects, it must 
 gradually prepare us for them by the preceding move- 
 ments, and by the succeeding ones must resolve them 
 back again into the ruling tone of the seemly, and it 
 must never seek to give these effects all the intensity 
 that the poet's treatment is capable of attaining.' 
 
 In the 26th and 27th critiques Lessing discusses 
 the subject of orchestral accompaniment, or the rela- 
 tion of dramatic music to the various kinds of passion 
 represented. In reference to the question whether 
 the entr'acte should form by means of two contrasted 
 moments a vehicle of transition from the sentiment 
 of the preceding to that of the succeeding act, he 
 points out the necessary difficulty. Suppose that the 
 dominant passions in two successive acts were directly 
 contrasted, the two distinct musical movements must 
 necessarily be of the same contrasted character. Now 
 arises the difficulty of passing from one to the other 
 in such a manner that the transition may not be too 
 startling. The poet may effect the transition by a 
 gradual rise and fall of intensity, but the musician 
 cannot do this in two sharply divided passages ; and 
 the sudden leap from the restful to the stormy, from 
 the tender to the raging, must be too noticeable and 
 painful. Suddenly we become melancholy, then 
 furious, without knowing how or why : we feel, with- 
 out perceiving a direct sequence in our feelings. 
 Poetry, on the other hand, never allows us to lose the 
 thread of our emotions. Here we know not only 
 what we are to feel, but why we are to feel it, and 
 this knowledge renders these sudden transitions not
 
 202 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESS TNG. 
 
 only tolerable but even agreeable ; in fact, this power 
 of making sudden transitions intelligible is one of the 
 chief advantages derived by music from its union 
 with poetry. 
 
 This analysis of music was but another attempt 
 to elicit from the art itself the peculiar ends to which 
 it is fitted. Lessing's knowledge of musical form and 
 the intellectual penetration he displays in treating it 
 are remarkable ; but it must be regarded somewhat 
 in the light of an individual utterance. Lessing's 
 objections to music are those of a critic who judges 
 by abstract reason, while music is so eminently an 
 emotional condition, that it is almost an axiom that 
 the predominance of the intellect subdues the emo- 
 tional sensations, and that consequently the severely 
 intellectual mind is rarely highly musical. It may 
 enjoy music, but it does so in the manner of Lessing, 
 who required a distinct objective explanation for the 
 feeling aroused in him by this medium. 
 
 But long before Lessing had advanced so far in 
 his critiques, the theatre was showing signs of ap- 
 proaching dissolution. The larger mass of the public, 
 on whom the pecuniary success of an undertaking 
 is dependent, were extremely indifferent to all such 
 considerations of high art. Envious and ignorant 
 cabals injured the slender popularity of the under- 
 taking. The financial committee had administered 
 badly, money ran short, and already in September 
 the inevitable end was foreseen. It advanced with 
 giant strides. In October the directors, deserted by 
 the better-class public, were compelled to resort to 
 harlequinades to fill the house. In November Lessing 
 had to behold acrobats perform their tricks after a 
 representation of his 'Minna von Barnhelm.' The
 
 HAMBURG.— 'THE DRAMATURGIES 203 
 
 appeal to the patriotism of the Hamburgers was use- 
 less. ' Minna von Barnhelm ' had even been for- 
 bidden by the magistrates. The Prussian consul 
 dared not accord permission without a direct authori- 
 zation from Berlin. What marvel that Lessin"- con- 
 trasted the attitude of his nation with that of the 
 French } Du Belloy's ' Siege of Calais ' gave him 
 occasion to vent his indignation. The piece had been 
 received in France with patriotic acclamation, and 
 was therefore of course duly lauded in Germany. 
 
 ' If this piece did not merit all the fuss that the 
 French made over it, this fuss in itself is honourable 
 to the French. It shows them as a people jealous of 
 their fame, on whom the great deeds of their ancestors 
 have not lost their impression. It shows them con- 
 vinced of the value of the poet and the influence of 
 the stage on virtue and morals, and that it does not 
 number the former among its useless members, nor 
 reckon the latter among the matters that concern 
 only busy idlers. How far behind the French are 
 we Germans in this particular ! To speak plainly, 
 as compared with them we are still true barbarians ! 
 I may look about me in Germany where I will, the 
 town has yet to be built from which it might be ex- 
 pected that it would show to a German poet the 
 thousandth part of the regard and recognition which 
 Calais has shown to Du Belloy. It may be called 
 French vanity. How far removed are we as yet from 
 being capable of such vanity .-^ And what marvel .-* Our 
 learned men themselves are mean enough to 
 strengthen the nation in their depreciation of all that 
 does not actually fill the purse. It is true, nothing 
 is lucrative among us which has the least connexion 
 with the fine arts.'
 
 204 GO TT HOLD EPHRAIM LESSIXG. 
 
 When towards the end of the year a troupe of 
 French comedians arrived at Hamburg, the national 
 theatre saw itself forced to close its doors. Early in 
 December the troupe repaired to Hanover with the 
 intention of returning to Hamburg in the spring. In 
 their farewell address they begged their compatriots 
 not to forget the German actors ! Lessing remained 
 in Hamburg, tied by his connexion with Bode's 
 printing press. He continued writing at his ' Drama- 
 turgic,' with which he was considerably in arrears. 
 His object now was to spin it out until the return of 
 the company, in the hope that by means of his journal 
 he might keep alive such interest as existed. His 
 own pecuniary condition was a sorry one. The 
 shattered finances of the theatre had deprived him of 
 his promised salary, and the printing press had not 
 only absorbed the slender capital obtained from the 
 sale of his library, but he had been further forced to 
 borrow money for it, while besides all this the family 
 at Camenz were clamorous for funds. 
 
 Hamburg: December 2i, 1767. 
 
 ' Honoured Father, 
 
 ' If it were possible to describe to you the com- 
 plications, troubles, and labours in which I have been 
 involved during the last years, how dissatisfied I have 
 almost always been, how exhausted in the powers of 
 body and mind, I am certain you would not only for- 
 give my former silence, you would even regard it as 
 the only proof of my filial regard and love that I am 
 at present able to give you. When I do write it is 
 impossible for me to write otherwise than as I think 
 and feel at the moment. You would have had a 
 most unpleasant letter to read, and I should have 
 become even more dissatisfied with my circumstances, 
 if I had been imagining the sorrow I must be causing
 
 HAMBURG.—' THE DRAMATURGIE.' 205 
 
 my parents. Therefore it was best to let them know 
 nothing of it, but this could only be done by not 
 writing at all.' 
 
 Lessing does not speak plainly about the theatrical 
 undertaking, perhaps because even now he could look 
 for no approval from his old father. 
 
 'Certain proposals drew me hither to Hamburg, 
 but these have also not come to much, and I have at 
 length resolved to let my maintenance and my fortune 
 depend on myself alone.' 
 
 Referring to the printing press set up with Bode, 
 he says : 
 
 ' When the work is once under weigh, I hope to be 
 able to live on my share as an honest man ; and this 
 prospect is the more flattering to me, that I look 
 for^vard to sharing my better circumstances with my 
 brothers and sisters.' 
 
 Yet this prospect was so far distant, that in the 
 following spring (1768) Lessing saw himself forced 
 to refuse a hundred thalers asked of him by his 
 father. 
 
 ' I am almost crushed by work and cares, and it is 
 not the smallest of the latter that I know my parents 
 to be in such pressing need and am not able to help 
 them as quickly as I could wish. ... I am more a 
 stranger here than at any place where I have ever 
 been, and can scarcely rely on one or two whose 
 assistance I have already abused and whose powers 
 are not extensive.' 
 
 His letters to the Berlin friends grew more and 
 more infrequent. He tells Nicolai that it is a sin and 
 a shame that he does not write to him, and promises 
 to write to Moses soon if he ever again finds a quiet 
 happy hour, and meanwhile he trusts IMoses docs not 
 interpret his silence amiss.
 
 2o6 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 In May 1768 the German comedians 'returned to 
 Hamburg, where they were greeted by hosts of credi- 
 tors. They had brought back with them the able 
 actor Schroder, and renewed hopes of success were 
 entertained only to be yet more speedily dashed. To 
 the indifference of the public was united a new 
 element of discord. Hamburg's ecclesiastical welfare 
 was at that time guarded by Pastor Melchior Goeze, 
 a boil vivant, sufficiently learned, but of narrow and 
 intolerant spirit. He and Lessingwere on the best of 
 terms. Lessing had a fancy for all types of his fellow 
 creatures, and ne visited him often, discoursing theo- 
 logy in which Goeze was well read, and turning oyer 
 his valuable library of Bibles. This intercourse 
 astonished his friends, and mocking tongues suggested 
 that either Lessing was converting Goeze, or Goeze 
 him. Goeze had a fanatical hatred of the stage, yet 
 made an exception in favour of the plays of Lessing, 
 Weisse, and Gellert. But he was scandalized beyond 
 measure when he discovered that the Church itself 
 harboured a playwriter. Another Hamburg pastor, 
 Schlosser, in his youth had written a comedy which 
 had actually been performed and printed. Goeze 
 seized the occasion to denounce the theatre and its 
 authors from the pulpit and in writing. His attacks 
 provoked replies, to which he again responded. A 
 perfect war of libels and epigrams resulted, until at 
 last the Senate had to put an end to the matter by 
 edict. But while its pastors fought for and against 
 the theatre, their timid flocks deemed it wiser to hold 
 aloof from the place denounced by the clergy as the 
 school of Satan, though lauded by their opponents 
 as a school of morals. 
 
 Contrary to the expectation of his friends, Lessing
 
 HAMBURG,— 'THE DRAMATURGIE: 207 
 
 did not engage in the quarrel. Probably his recent 
 experiences with regard to the theatre had been too 
 painful. But from the first, long before the dispute 
 broke out, he had protested against any overt or dis- 
 guised attacks on the clergy as a class. The theatre 
 had been opened with a play of von Cronegk's in 
 which occurs a sentence : 
 
 Heaven can pardon, but a priest never, 
 
 that had elicited a murmur of applause. Lessing 
 blamed this entirely. He calls such phrases coloured 
 glass instead of precious stones, witty antithesis 
 instead of common sense. 
 
 'Iflsmenor is a cruel priest, does it follow that 
 all priests are Ismenors .'' It is useless to reply that 
 the allusion refers to priests of a false religion. No 
 religion in the world was ever so false that its teachers 
 must necessarily be monsters. Priests have worked 
 mischief in false religions as well as in true ; but not 
 because they were priests, but because they were 
 villains who would have abused the privileges of any 
 other class in the service of their evil propensities.' 
 
 The better-class audience being again withdrawn, 
 the managers saw themselves forced to appeal once 
 more to the lower orders. The list of the repertoire 
 was found among Lessing's papers, no doubt as 
 material for a projected continuation of his ' Drama- 
 turgie.' It still includes plays, but ballets, harlequin- 
 ades and intermezzos take a larger share. By June it 
 was scarcely possible for an audience to reach the box 
 office, besieged as it was by noisy creditors. After this 
 the house was often kept closed for days, so poor were 
 the receipts. In September Lessing bids Nicolai come 
 to Hamburg at once, if he wishes to see the theatre.
 
 2o8 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESS INC. 
 
 ' It will expire at Easter. So that has come to 
 an end also,' he adds sorrowfully. 
 
 The end came already in November. The project 
 begun with such high hopes had resulted in a miser- 
 able fiasco. 
 
 ' Transcat cum caeteris erroribits^ is Lessing's short 
 funeral comment in a letter to Ramler. To the 
 nation at large he is more explicit. 
 
 ' When the public asks, Well, what has been 
 achieved .'' and answers itself with a sarcastic " No- 
 thing," I ask in return, what has the public done in 
 order that something might be achieved .-' Nothing 
 again ; nay, even worse than nothing. Not enough 
 that it not only does not help the work, it has not even 
 allowed it to take its natural course. Alas for the 
 goodnaturcd notion of procuring a national theatre 
 for the Germans, when we Germans are not even yet 
 a nation. I do not speak of the political constitution, 
 but only of the moral character. One might almost 
 say its moral character was an unwillingness to 
 possess individuality. We are still the pledged imi- 
 tators of all that is foreign, especially the servile 
 admirers of the never sufficiently admired French. 
 Everything that comes to us from the other side of 
 the Rhine is beautiful, charming, lovely, divine. We 
 had rather contradict our eyes and ears than think it 
 otherwise. We had rather be persuaded that uncouth- 
 ness isunconstraint ; boldness, grace; grimace, expres-* 
 sion ; a jingling of rhymes, poetry ; howling, music ; 
 than doubt in the slightest degree the superiority 
 which this amiable nation, this first nation in the 
 world, as it is accustomed modestly to style itself, has 
 received from just fate as its share of all that is good, 
 and beautiful, and noble, and seemly. This pleasant
 
 HAMBURG.-^ THE DRAMATURGIE: 
 
 209 
 
 dream of founding a national theatre here in Hamburg 
 has vanished, and as far as I know the place, it is 
 hkely to be the one where such a dream could least of 
 all be fulfilled.' 
 
 The sole enduring result of this 'sweet dream ' is 
 Lessing's ' Dramaturgie,' and this too is a fragment 
 and anything rather than a systematic book It 
 accompanies the theatre no further than the first fifty- 
 two performances, and the last portion, published as a 
 volume mstead of a paper, was not issued until Easter 
 1769, after the enterprise had been long dead. There 
 Avere various reasons for this. From the beginning, 
 Lessmg was in arrears, first advisedly, then because' 
 as he saw the failure of the scheme, other interests 
 grew more absorbing. Added to this the piratical 
 system of reprint permitted in Germany, had fastened 
 on the work. Lessing appealed to the national honour 
 remarkmg that although he could not forbid the pub- 
 lic to favour the cheaper reprint, he must give it to 
 understand that by so doing it must lose the work 
 Itself. For if the number of copies needful to cover 
 expenses could not be sold, it must remain un- 
 published. The public notwithstanding continued to 
 admire the work and save its pockets. Lessing an- 
 nounces with bitter resignation that he by no means 
 regrets his inability to elaborate the rest of his 
 material, 
 
 ' I withdraw my hand from this plough as willingly 
 as I put it there. The world loses nothing because 
 instead of five or six volumes of ' Dramaturgie ' only 
 two will see the light. But it might lose if some day 
 a more useful work, by a better writer, should be thus 
 repressed.' 
 
 It is largely owing to this disgust that the
 
 210 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 ' Dramaturgic ' is by no means a homogeneous work. 
 Written at various times and in various moods, it 
 even happens to Lessing to contradict on one page 
 what he had said on the preceding. He acknow- 
 ledges this. He had not written systematically, his 
 ideas were to be set forth day by day, apropos of this 
 or that performance, and he continually digresses 
 from his path into polemical discussions or philoso- 
 phical reflexions. The treatment is unequal, the 
 language now colloquial, now erudite, passing from 
 the one to the other, quite regardless of the taste of 
 his readers. Questions propounded incidentally are 
 resolved from the most immediate point of view, and 
 the provisional solution does not oblige the author 
 to solve all the collateral points. He did not care to 
 do so. 
 
 ' My thoughts may appear to be more and more 
 disconnected or even contradictory. What matter so 
 long as they are thoughts which give my readers 
 material for thinking "i I do not seek to do more 
 than scsXtcr fennenta cognitionis' 
 
 His original plan of following the actors step by 
 step had been frustrated. ' What these papers were 
 to have been I explained in my preface, what they 
 have really become my readers will discover. Not 
 wholly what I promised to make them, something 
 different, but yet I think nothing worse.* 
 
 ' Truly I am sorry for those of my readers who 
 have looked for a theatrical newspaper in this journal, 
 as varied and coloured, as amusing and droll, as a 
 theatrical paper may be. Instead of forming the con- 
 tents of the current paper into little amusing or 
 touching novelettes, instead of incidental biographies 
 of ludicrous, peculiar, comical creatures, as those who
 
 HAMBURG.— ' THE DRAMATURGIE: 21 r 
 
 occupy themselves with writing comedy must be, 
 instead of diverting and slightly scandalous anecdotes 
 about actors and especially actresses, instead of all 
 such trifles as they expected, they receive long serious 
 dry criticisms about old and well known plays, 
 heavy disquisitions about what ought or ought not to 
 be in a tragedy, sometimes even expositions of 
 Aristotle. And they are to read this ? As I have 
 already said, I pity them ; they have been shamefully 
 deceived. But between ourselves, it is better you 
 should be deceived than I. And I should be much 
 deceived if I had to make your expectations my law. 
 Not that your expectations would be very difficult to 
 fulfil. Really not. I should rather find them very 
 easy if only they would accord better with my inten- 
 tions.' 
 
 The continuation was growing a burden to 
 Lessing's restless activity. ' I must still finish my 
 " Dramaturgic," ' he writes to Nicolai (September 
 1768), 'and I fancy the end will reveal that I have 
 written it with my head full of antiquarian fancies.' 
 
 The want of symmetry and congruity in this work 
 renders it a difficult task to seize its dominant idea. 
 If any division can be made, it is twofold. As is 
 usual with Lessing, he desires to overthrow and build. 
 The object to be destroyed is the predilection of the 
 Germans for the French theatre. This was the pur- 
 port of the negative criticism, while to substitute other 
 opinions in place of the commonly accredited was the 
 purpose of the dogmatic portion. The first thing to 
 do was to demonstrate the wretched poverty of the 
 contemporary German drama. The theatre had been 
 opened with a play by von Cronegk. Lessing does 
 not hesitate to point out that the drama of this much 
 
 p 2
 
 212 GO TT HOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 lauded poet is a miserable concern. This first speci- 
 men of his scathing criticism raised some discontent. 
 
 ' I was much taken aback,' writes Lessing, ' at 
 being assured I had annoyed some of my readers by 
 my candid criticism. If modest frankness without 
 any hidden intentions, displeases them, I am in 
 danger of often thus incurring their displeasure.' 
 
 Cronegk's tragedy had been crowned a few years 
 previously by Lessing's friends, it was placed in the 
 same category with his own, Brawe's and Weisse's. 
 That does not deter him. ' If the lame run a race 
 the winner still remains lame,' he quietly remarks. 
 
 The German comedies had no genuine colour or 
 ring, and dealt with provincial trivialities or impossible 
 personages, while their tragedies were miserable imi- 
 tations of the French, fettered by the false and arbi- 
 trary rules enjoined by Gallic tradition. Weisse's 
 Tragedy of Richard III.' gave him an opportunity of 
 exposing the emptiness and untruth to nature of this 
 much praised masterpiece of correct imitation, and so 
 effectually that though Lessing's opponents continued 
 to laud Weisse as a great tragedian, he himself had 
 the good sense to abandon playwriting and turn to 
 juvenile literature, in which he achieved a creditable 
 success. 
 
 This exposure of French theories and fallacies 
 occupies the greater part of the ' Dramaturgic,' and 
 small wonder, for of the fifty-two plays performed, all 
 but eighteen were translations from the French. 
 Lessing could theoretically point out the goal towards 
 which the German drama should strive, but how to 
 attain it, so long as German life was in a condition of 
 immaturity .-' Wanting all domestic models, having no 
 stimulus from the events of the age, the German
 
 HAMBURG.—' THE DRAMATURGIE: 213 
 
 drama had been sunk into a state of torpor. 
 Gottsched and his followers had converted it into a 
 travesty of French levity, whence all French charm 
 and esprit had evaporated, to be replaced by an infu- 
 sion of German coarseness. 
 
 * Most of the performances of us Germans in 
 belles-lettres have been the attempts of young men. 
 The prejudice is almost universal among us that it is 
 only befitting to young men to work in this depart- 
 ment. Men should have more serious studies or more 
 important business imposed on them by church or 
 state. Verses and plays are toys, by no means useless 
 preparations with which to occupy the years up to 
 twenty-five at most, but as soon as we approach man- 
 hood, we should dedicate all our faculties to a useful 
 profession, and if this profession should leave us time 
 to write something, we must only write what is con- 
 sistent with gravity and our civic dignity ; a legal 
 compendium ; a good chronicle of our dear native 
 town ; an edifying sermon, and such like. Therefore 
 our belles-lettres possess so few works that a man 
 accustomed to think would take up with pleasure 
 when he wishes to think for once outside the uniform 
 tiresome circle of his daily routine, for the purpose of 
 recreation and refreshment. What nourishment can 
 such a man find in our trivial comedies .'' ' 
 
 Is such an instance conceivable among the 
 Germans as that of the French dramatist Du Belloy, 
 who threw up the law for love of the stage, became 
 an actor, composed plays, and was as happy and 
 celebrated as ever the law could have made him .'' 
 ' Woe to the young German genius who should try to 
 follow in his footsteps. Contempt and beggary would 
 be his certain lot.'
 
 214 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 While thus remorselessly demonstrating to his 
 countrymen that they possessed no dramatic literature, 
 it is a satisfaction to Lessing to prove to them that 
 the models till now venerated are as far removed from 
 the ideal of perfection as their own imitations of them. 
 Starting from the assumption which he held in 
 common with Aristotle, that tragedy is the highest 
 form of drama, he therefore required it to furnish the 
 criterion of excellence, and, from this standpoint he 
 is prepared to prove that the French have misap- 
 prehended the rules of ancient drama more than any 
 nation. His reasons for this are far removed from 
 contemptible national prejudice. His protests are 
 those of an accurate scholar who sees that the French 
 have misread and misapplied the laws laid down by 
 Aristotle. 
 
 ' Do I mean by this to say that no Frenchman is 
 capable of composing a really touching tragic work .-* 
 That the volatile spirit of the nation is incapable of 
 such an undertaking } I should be ashamed if such 
 an idea had occurred to me. I am quite convinced 
 that no nation in the world has received any mental 
 endowment beyond all other nations.' 
 
 He only wished to show that the French do not 
 possess a real tragedy and that the reason is their 
 belief that they possess it exclusively. The French 
 under the outside mimicry of the antique concealed 
 the deadliest hostility to its vital purpose, while the 
 English virtually coincided with its supreme principle, 
 the imitation of nature, though pursuing this common 
 end under a different law of art. The Greek and 
 English theatre differ as one species in nature differs 
 from another, the Greek and French, as the natural 
 differs from the monstrous. The hostility of the
 
 HAMBURG.—' THE DRAMA TURGIE: 2 1 5 
 
 French theatre to the Enghsh and Spanish is obvious, 
 Lessing was the first to detect its virtual hostihty to 
 the Greek. 
 
 The ancients once more form the broad im- 
 movable basis on which Lessing rests in his ' Drama- 
 turgic' as in his * Laokoon.' But while in the 
 ' Laokoon ' the laws that guided the fine arts had 
 to be discovered by inspection and meditation 
 on the writings of Homer and the works of the 
 ancients, here the code was extant in the * Poetics ' of 
 Aristotle. And did not the French incessantly in- 
 voke the principles of the ' Poetics ' >. True, but Lessing 
 is prepared to demonstrate to them, out of Aristotle 
 himself, how utterly they have misread the Stagyrite, 
 and that no nation has more misconstrued the precepts 
 of ancient drama. Some casual remarks which they 
 found in Aristotle, about the most fitting external 
 arrangements, were accepted by them as the essential, 
 while they enfeebled the essential so much by all 
 manner of restrictions and glosses as to be of necessity 
 disabled from approaching the sublime effect con- 
 templated by the philosopher. Lessing's reverence 
 for Aristotle is very great, but not on account of his 
 traditional authority. 
 
 ' I would soon set aside Aristotle's authority, if 
 only I could set aside his reasons also. I have my 
 own ideas about the origin and basis of this philoso- 
 pher's " Poetics," which I could not give here without 
 running to too great length, yet I do not hesitate to 
 declare (even though I should incur the risk of being 
 laughed at in these enlightened times) that I consider 
 them as infallible as the Elements of Euclid. Their 
 fundamental principles are just as true and certain, 
 only not so definite, and therefore more exposed to
 
 2i6 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSJNG. 
 
 misconstruction. I trust to pro\e incontrovertibly of 
 tragedy in particular that it cannot depart a step 
 from the rules of Aristotle without departing just as 
 far from perfection.' 
 
 Lessing never doubts the genuineness or integrity 
 of Aristotle's work, and wherever the text offers 
 difficulties or contradictions he employs all his 
 acumen to remove any appearance of incongruity. 
 Aristotle must be throughout explained out of himself 
 he says ; and whoever wants to learn his dramatic 
 canons must not seek them only in the ' Poetics,' but 
 in the ' Rhetoric ' and the ' Ethics.' The closest imita- 
 tions of the ancient models was the watchword of the 
 day, and hence arose the errors combated by Lessing. 
 Imitation of the ancients, well and good, but intelli- 
 gent not servile imitation. Was it adherence to rule 
 that affected the audience of Sophocles } By no means, 
 it was because the plays riveted their attention, 
 stirred their emotions and exalted their souls. 
 
 ' It is not enough that the tragic poet's work has 
 an effect on us, it must also have that effect that 
 belongs to its species. To what end the tiresome 
 labour of dramatic forms, why build a theatre, invite 
 the whole town to one spot, if I wish to effect no 
 more by my work and its representation than to rouse 
 some of the emotions which may be produced by a 
 good story that anyone may read at home by his 
 own fireside } 
 
 ' The public will put up with what it gets. That is 
 well and again not well, for we do not care greatly 
 for the board where there is always something to put 
 up with. It is well known how intent the Greek and 
 Roman people were upon plays, especially the former 
 upon tragedy, how indifferent, how cold are our
 
 HAMBURG.— 'THE DRAMATURGIE: 217 
 
 people towards the theatre ! Whence this difference, 
 if not from this cause ? While the Greeks felt them- 
 selves animated by the stage with such strong, such 
 unusual sensations, that they could hardly await the 
 moment when they should have them again and again, 
 we on the other hand experience from our stage such 
 feeble impressions that we seldom think it worth time 
 or money to obtain them. Most of us go to the 
 theatre from curiosity, fashion, ennui, for society, from 
 2i desire to stare and be stared at, and only a few, 
 and these few but seldom, from any other motive.' 
 
 How far do masterpieces of Corneille, Racine and 
 Voltaire approach the Greek standard .'' Les biense- 
 ances, le style noble, les beanx vers, have never yet 
 stirred up the deepest emotions of man's soul. 
 
 * Given twenty Addisons,' says Lessing, ' and this 
 correctness will never be to the taste of the English.' 
 
 It is from Voltaire, the idol of the French public,- 
 the protege of Frederick and the model of good taste 
 that Lessing first proposes to prove the essential 
 falsehood of the French theories. Aristotle had said 
 that tragedy purifies our passions by the ideal excita- 
 tion of our feelings of fear and pity. While the first 
 aim of dramatic art is to interest and amuse, its 
 second and higher function is through amusement to 
 elevate our souls and bring our higher faculties into 
 play, by appealing to our sympathies. ' Tested by this 
 standard what do Voltaire's tragedies effect .'' They 
 leave the audience cold and unmoved, and why ? 
 because Voltaire has not descended into the depth of 
 the human heart, and hence has not found the lan- 
 guage that goes direct to the heart. His work is 
 beneath himself.' 
 
 ' I am always glad to quote from M. de Voltaire.
 
 2i8 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 Something may be learned from his most trifling 
 observations, though not ahvays what he says in them, 
 yet at least what he should have said. Primus 
 sapicntiae gradus est falsa intdligere, and I know no 
 author in the world who aids us so successfully to find 
 out whether we have reached this first step of wisdom, 
 as M. de Voltaire, but I know none Avho helps us less 
 to attain the second, seciindtis vera eognoscere. It 
 seems to me that a critic cannot do better than pro- 
 ceed according to this maxim. Let him first seek_ 
 some one from whom he can differ, then he will 
 gradually approach the subject and the rest will 
 follow. I openly avow that in this work I have 
 especially chosen the French wTiters for this end, and 
 particularly M. de Voltaire. If anyone should think 
 this method to be more audacious than profound, I 
 could tell him that even the profound Aristotle almost 
 always employed it.' 
 
 Lessing opens his attack with ' Semiramis.' 
 Voltaire had written in its preface : ' From us French 
 the Greeks might have learned a more skilful exposi- 
 tion and the great art of so arranging the scenes that 
 the stage should never remain empty and there should 
 neither be exits nor entrances without reason. From 
 us they might have learned how rivals answer each 
 other by witty antitheses, how the poet by a number 
 of lofty brilliant thoughts should dazzle and astonish. 
 From us they might have learnt — Oh ! of course,' 
 adds Lessing, ' what is not to be learnt from the 
 French ! Now and then a foreigner who has also read 
 the classics a little might humbly beg permission to 
 hold a different opinion. He might object that all 
 these advantages of the French have no great influence 
 upon the essential of tragedy, that they are beauties
 
 HAMBURG.—' THE DRAMATURGIE: 219 
 
 such as the simple greatness of the ancients despised. 
 But what avails it to cavil at M. de Voltaire ? He 
 speaks and the world believes.' 
 
 In ' Semiramis ' English influences are distinctly 
 visible. Voltaire had not visited England in vain, he 
 had become acquainted with Shakespeare and deigned 
 to borrow some spectacular effects from him. The 
 ghost in ' Hamlet ' was the prototype of that of Ninus. 
 Voltaire had congratulated himself particularly on his 
 boldness in daring to exhibit a ghost on the French 
 stage. Lessing did not think much of this object of self 
 laudation. Comparing the spectre of Ninus with that 
 in ' Hamlet ' he shows that Voltaire has not understood 
 the laws of the wonderful so happily obeyed by 
 Shakespeare. Shakespeare's ghost only appears at 
 night, mysteriously ; Ninus shows himself in broad day- 
 Hght, and before a numerous assembly. This is to lose 
 sight of the truly tragic and poetical effect psycholo- 
 gically produced on our emotion and to substitute a 
 clumsy mechanical incident that excites our ridicule. 
 
 ' Where could Voltaire ever have heard that ghosts 
 are so bold } What old woman could not have told 
 him that they shun the sunlight and have no love for 
 large assemblies .'' The ghost that takes liberties that 
 are against all tradition and against all spectral hien- 
 seajtce, does not appear to me a right sort of ghost, and 
 everything here that does not help the illusion, hinders 
 it. Voltaire's ghost is nothing but a poetical machine, 
 it is only there to complicate the action, and it does 
 not interest us in the least for itself. Shakespeare's 
 on the contrary is a real personage, who acts, whose 
 fate interests us, who awakes fear but also pity.' 
 
 Voltaire had apologized for his ghost by an appeal 
 to the historic truth of a belief in apparitions, and in-
 
 220 GO TT HOLD EPHRAIM LESS INC. 
 
 sistcd on the moral lesson deducible from this prodigy, 
 that the Highest Power will make exception from its 
 eternal laws for the sake of bringing a hidden crime to 
 light. This moral does not seem to Lessing the 
 most edifying imaginable, since it would be a more 
 becoming conception of the Highest Being not to 
 deem him obliged to make exceptions to his laws in 
 order to punish crime, but that this punishment should 
 naturally result from the actions themselves. Thus 
 Voltaire in the moral purpose of his work has proved 
 himself too little of a philosopher, and for its poetical 
 conception too much. 
 
 Treating of the historical truth of a drama, Lessing 
 follows Aristotle in defining historical truth as not an 
 end but a means. To expect historical accuracy from 
 a dramatist is absurd. If tragedy usually seeks its 
 subjects in history it is because the situation is ready 
 given. We do not come to the theatre to learn what 
 such or such a person did, but rather what any person 
 of a given character would do under certain conditions. 
 The purpose of tragedy is far more philosophical than 
 the purpose of history, and it is degrading it from its 
 true dignity to make it a mere panegyric of celebrated 
 men, or to misuse it as an incentive to nourishing 
 national pride. The characters must remain intact, 
 the incidents may be varied as dramatic exigencies 
 require. 
 
 In ' Zaire ' Voltaire has shown his incapability of 
 rendering true feeling. ' Love itself,' said a French 
 critic, ' had dictated "Zaire" to Voltaire.' ' Rather say, 
 gallantry,' remarks Lessing, ' I only know one tragedy 
 at which Love itself wrought, and that is Shakespeare's 
 "Romeo and Juliet." Voltaire understands the official 
 tone of love, but he does not know its secret wiles, its
 
 HAMBURG.— ' THE DRAMATURGIE.' 221 
 
 slightest living expression. How can anyone com- 
 pare the cold man of letters to the poet full of passion 
 and fire ? ' Voltaire is therefore shown to be no fit 
 model for the Germanic spirit. It is Shakespeare 
 who is far more in harmony with their mode of 
 thought, as Lessing proclaimed years ago ; and he is 
 glad to be able to add that a translation of this great 
 genius exists, ' a work from whose beauties we may 
 long learn before the defects of Wieland's rendering 
 offend us so much as to make another translation 
 needful.' With a significant glance at Voltaire he 
 remarks: 'Shakespeare requires to.be studied, not 
 plundered.' For he holds Voltaire's ' Orosmane ' to be 
 only a m.echanical copy of Shakespeare's ' Othello.' 
 
 And in like manner as ' Semiramis ' and * Zaire ' 
 have served Lessing as a text to extol Shakespeare at 
 the expense of Voltaire, so ' Merope ' gives him occa- 
 sion to exalt Euripides at the expense of French 
 tragedy. He shows how the conceited poet ranks not 
 only below Euripides, whom he and his fellow tragedians 
 think they have far surpassed, but even below the 
 Italian Maffei, whose ' Merope ' was really the basis 
 of Voltaire's, although he had tried by all manner of 
 falsehoods to detract from Mafiei's merits. Lessing 
 demonstrates from Voltaire's ov/n play how utterly he 
 has misconceived the purport of the unities, how he has 
 violated psychological truth for the sake of apparent 
 conformity, and sacrificed truth to nature to love of 
 rule. He further mockingly exposes his pretensions 
 to classical scholarship, derides his childish vanity, 
 his sophistic and unjust treatment of other dramatists, 
 his perfidy, his inaccuracies. ' There are only two 
 untruths in this passage,' he once writes, ' that is not 
 much for M. de- Voltaire,' and he defends Thomas
 
 223 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 Corneille, whom Voltaire had attacked as ignorant of 
 chronology. Voltaire's own historical knowledge was 
 not so very profound ; this moreover signifies little in 
 a play, where moral accuracy is the one thing needed. 
 As to the rules, no one is such an adept as Voltaire in 
 evading them, however clumsily, when it suits his 
 purpose. His dramas walk on high stilts, and are 
 devoid of any spontaneous emotion, his characters 
 express admirable sentiments but ar: as cold as 
 stones, and meanwhile M. de Voltaire preaches the 
 rules and talks of the passions. Yet throughout 
 Lessing does not deny due recognition to Voltaire's 
 poetical and critical faculties, but he desires to put an 
 end once and for ever to his aesthetic dictatorship. 
 
 This leads Lessing to investigate the subject of 
 the boasted regularity of the French, their observ- 
 ance of the three unities, their connexion of scenes, 
 the motives alleged for entrances and exits, and the 
 surprises practised on the audience. ' It is one thing 
 to be at home with the rules, another really to observe 
 them. The French understood the former, the latter 
 only the ancients appear to have understood. Unity 
 of action was their first dramatic law, unity of time 
 and place were its natural consequences, which they 
 would scarcely have observed more closely than was 
 needful for the unity of action, had it not been for the 
 union of the whole action with the chorus. Since the 
 events had to be witnessed by a number of people, 
 and this number remained always the same, and 
 would neither go further from theirdwellings norremain 
 longer from them than mere curiosity could generally 
 prompt,it was hardlypossible to do otherwise than con- 
 fine the place to one and the same individual spot 
 and the time to one and the same day.
 
 HAMBURG.— ' THE DRAMATURGIE: 223 
 
 As for the element of surprise Lessing considers 
 this a poor pleasure. Why should the poet surprise 
 us ? Let him surprise his characters as much as he 
 will, our interest can but be enhanced by having long 
 foreseen what comes so unexpectedly to them. This 
 again leads Lessing to pronounce on the merit of 
 intrigues that consist in mysteries. He blames them 
 in general as artifices far inferior to the development 
 of a situation openly established. So convinced 
 indeed is he of the inutility of these stratagems to a 
 true tragedian, that he seizes the opportunity of 
 justifying the prologues of Euripides. To hold the 
 spectator breathless by riddles is a second hand merit, 
 and such charms are destroyed by a repeated repre- 
 sentation. Lessing asserts with regard to Euripides, 
 that ' Alcestis ' was not really a tragedy, as had hitherto 
 been supposed, but a satyric drama. The correctness 
 of this surmise was not proved till some time after his 
 death, when the discovery of a notice by a Scholiast 
 revealed that such was really the intention of the 
 play. 
 
 It was however reserved to Corneille to bear the 
 final attacks of Lessing's criticism. It was he who, at 
 once the creator and pattern of French drama, had 
 stood in the way of all amelioration because he had 
 nominally built his theories on those of Aristotle, 
 whom he had critically interpreted. He has enervated, 
 mutilated and destroyed Aristotle's precepts. And 
 why all this .-^ To justify his own plays. He had 
 construed the Greek (^o^os {pJiobos) now as terror, 
 now as fear, just as it suited his purpose. He loved 
 the horrible, and pretended that it was a factor in 
 Aristotle's scheme. He makes us shudder but not 
 weep. He moves us, but with morbid disgust ; and
 
 224 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 when he desires to be pathetic he is maudlin. There- 
 fore he should not be called the Great Corneillc but the 
 Monstrous, ' for nothing is great that is not true,' and 
 abstract vice is the untruest thing of all, and therefore 
 the most untragical. Evil must be repulsive, but not 
 unnatural, or it fails to produce any impression ; we 
 cannot identify ourselves with monsters, so we are 
 supremely indifferent to their fate. Macbeth, Richard 
 III. remain men for all their perversions, Corneillc's 
 Cleopatra makes a bravado of her crimes. Shake- 
 speare's villains excuse their crimes by constraint or 
 necessity ; those of Corneille find an absolute delight 
 in the commission of evil deeds. But Lessing does 
 not pretend to the full honour of these discoveries. In 
 the last century an honest man called Huron was 
 imprisoned in the Bastille and finding time hang 
 heavily on his hands, in spite of his being in Paris, 
 from sheer ennui studied the French poets and found 
 that he could not admire ' Rodogune.' Even Voltaire 
 could not admire it, though out of goodness of heart 
 he had protected the grand daughter of the poet. 
 From one of these men the present Dramaturgist 
 must have learnt his objections, for it must be a 
 Frenchman who opens the eyes of a foreigner to the 
 faults of the French. ' For that a German should 
 think by himself, should of himself have the audacity 
 to doubt the excellence of a Frenchman, is positively 
 unimaginable.' 
 
 Racine is as little to his taste. His tragedies are 
 the fruits of a superfine court routine, from which 
 passion is banished, and stale maxims and oratorical 
 fencing play the chief parts. For him the essence of 
 poetry lay in diction and versification. 
 
 It must be borne in mind that the French had
 
 HAMBURG.— 'THE DRAMATURGIES 225 
 
 themselves upheld their claim to classical perfection 
 and that it was therefore quite permissible to Lessing 
 to judge them from this standpoint. He was fully 
 aware that the faults of the French drama are those 
 of the French, and to be sought for in their nationality, 
 while the artificiality of tone as a standard of taste 
 argued ad nauseam between the English and French 
 writers was equally founded on national distinctions. 
 In England and Germany, the drama was a popular 
 amusement, in France it had originated at court. The 
 former appealed to the national taste at large, the latter 
 to a lettered audience familiar with the rules. The 
 former had been engrafted on the nation, the latter had 
 sprung from its life. The lively French form the 
 most patient and pedantic audience — ' la nation la plus 
 sensee dans ses plaisirs, la plus foUe dans ses affaires,' 
 says Gautier. Nature was therefore not only not 
 understood but avoided by them, for nature is not 
 compatible with rule ; genius is nature in its highest 
 expression, and genius is always simple. It may 
 have caprices, but it seldom closely follows rules ; they 
 may prune its exuberance, but must not impede its 
 growth. ' Nothing is more chaste and more seemly 
 than simple nature. Coarseness and vulgarity are as 
 far removed from it as bombast and verbosity from 
 the sublime.' 
 
 The perception of the inherent co-relation of fear 
 and pity as evinced by sympathy, is the distinctive 
 merit of Lessing's exposition of Aristotle. The ex- 
 planation of this is his dominant idea under all his 
 digressions, and tested by this Aristotelian standard 
 Lessing justifies his preliminary remark that the 
 French tragedies are not true tragedies, because the 
 
 Q
 
 226 GOTTHOTD EPHRALM LESSING. 
 
 effects they produce are other than those that belong 
 to the essence of tragedy. 
 
 Lessing also finally resolved the question of perfect 
 characters. They are removed from human sym- 
 pathies by means of their chilly supernatural virtues, 
 and on this same ground he, without, it is to be feared, 
 remembering Calderon, rejects the Christian martyr 
 tragedies. They depict suffering without corre- 
 sponding guilt, and are thus excluded from the range 
 of feelings called forth by retribution, while here the 
 relation between cause and effect is not obvious. 
 ' For is not the character of a true Christian quite 
 untheatrical .-' Are not the quiet suffering, the invari- 
 able meekness that are his essential characteristics, 
 at variance with the whole business of tragedy, which 
 strives to purify the passions .'' Does not his expectation 
 of a compensatory happiness after this life contradict 
 the unselfishness with which on the stage we desire to 
 see all great and good actions undertaken and com- 
 pleted } ' 
 
 From an equally positive cause the element of the 
 terrible must be banished from the stage. The French 
 had bestowed the surname ' The Terrible ' on Cre- 
 billon as an honour, and had referred to Aristotle's 
 incontrovertible authority in its defence ; Lessing 
 proves to them that it was precisely Aristotle who 
 had rejected such themes as absolutely unsuitable for 
 tragedy. Terror is so far from the purpose of tragedy 
 that the ancients, if one of their characters had com- 
 mitted a great crime, would rather strive to excuse 
 it by attributing the fault to Fate, or to the decree of 
 an avenging Deity, than allow their audience to receive 
 the impression that a man could be capable of such 
 degradation. For this would prevent their expe-
 
 HAMBURG.— 'THE DRAMATURGIE: 227 
 
 riencing that real tragic emotion which is a kind of 
 pleasant torment. On the other hand, neither are the 
 sufferings of absolutely perfect characters permissible, 
 since the thought that innocent persons should be 
 made to suffer so much is horrible. We require the 
 element of undeserved calamity, and yet there must 
 be some justice, too, in the course of events, so that 
 while we feel sorrow for what occurs, we may also feel 
 that it was inevitable. While condemning the intro- 
 duction of such unjust suffering, because it arouses 
 murmurs against Providence, Lessing says : 
 
 ' Let no one say that history awakens them, that 
 these feelings are evoked by something that has really 
 occurred. That really occurred .-* Granted, then it 
 has some good reason in the eternal endless harmony 
 of all things, and that which in those few fragments 
 presented by the poet appears as blind fate and 
 cruelty is in reality wisdom and truth. Out of the 
 poet's few fragments he ought to be able to make a 
 symmetrical whole, where one thing is explained by 
 another, and where no difficulty occurs, whose solution 
 we cannot find in the poet's plan, but are forced to 
 search outside of it in the general harmony of things. 
 The work of the earthly creator ought to be a reflex- 
 ion of the work of the eternal Creator, ought to ac- 
 custom us to the thought how, as all is resolved in 
 Him for the best, so it will also be here. Does the 
 author forget this, his noblest end, so entirely that he 
 interweaves the incomprehensible ways of Providence 
 into his little circle, and purposely awakens our 
 horror ? Oh, spare, us, ye who have our hearts in 
 your power ! To what end these sad sensations } To 
 teach us resignation } It is only cold reason that can 
 t-ach us that, and if we are to retain trust and a 
 
 Q 2
 
 228 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 cheerful spirit in our resignation, it is most needful 
 that we should be reminded as little as possible of the 
 perplexing examples of such unmerited dreadful fate. 
 Away with them from the stage ! Away with them, 
 if it could be, from all books.' 
 
 In this wise, while alive to the absurdity of trying 
 to establish an arbitrary standard, Lessing shows that 
 there are eternal principles of truth in art, and that the 
 French have throughout offended against them. They 
 have mistaken the horrible for the tragic, external for 
 internal unity. It is interesting to observe how full 
 light only dawns on Lessing while writing. At first 
 he treats the French plays respectfully, and accords 
 them serious analysis, then gradually as he sees through 
 their hollow pretensions he slily, then openly ridicules 
 them, and proves by play after play how their pre- 
 tended obedience to Aristotle has resulted in watery 
 rhetoric. He does not get at his verification by the 
 facile literary method of assuming facts, his results 
 are scientifically proved and developed before our 
 eyes. Having at length demonstrated that the ele- 
 vated sentiment of true tragedy is too far removed 
 from the comprehension of the volatile French, 
 Lessing justly grants them the palm in comedy, and 
 for the very reason that makes them fail in tragedy. 
 Since true comedy is the picture of society, where 
 could material be found more readily than among the 
 most sociable people of Europe, the people endowed 
 with most grace, pliancy, and lightness .-* Comedy is 
 as elevating as tragedy in its particular department. 
 It arouses our sense of the ludicrous, and laughter, if 
 it does not convert a confirmedly vicious man, may con- 
 firm the morally healthy in their health. And he draws 
 a fine contrast between laughter and derision {Lac/ien
 
 HAMBURG.-' THE DRAMATURGIE: 229 
 
 iind VerlacJicn). It is from a want of understanding 
 of this difference, that Rousseau had vehemently- 
 attacked the use of comedy. Lessing speaks with 
 due appreciation of MoHere, whom he names together 
 with Shakespeare ; he praises Destouches, Marivaux, 
 Ouinault, Regnard. He justifies the latter against 
 his own countrymen, who had censured his character 
 of the ' Distrait' as more suited to tragedy than comedy, 
 because such a defect should awaken compassion, not 
 ridicule. By no means, says Lessing ; absence of mind 
 is not a moral defect. It is a bad habit, for are we 
 not masters over our attention, and what else is absence 
 of mind but a misplaced concentration of attention .-* 
 He deals more gently with mixed comedy than in his 
 younger days. He finds that the transition from the 
 comic to the pathetic is most natural, since human 
 life is nothing but a chain of such transitions, and the 
 drama is to be a mirror of life. 
 
 At the same time he has emancipated himself 
 from his unbounded admiration for Diderot. While 
 acknowledging the obligations he owes to him, he 
 thinks Diderot is in danger of confounding nature 
 with realism, and in his revolt against Racine's insipid 
 bienseances he outrages dignity of style, Lessing 
 knew the ancients better than Diderot. He had 
 besides a more refined taste, and while rejecting the 
 conventional as much as Diderot his revolts always 
 retained a conservative colour, for he knew that art in 
 its very nature must retain a touch of the unnatural, 
 since it is an artificial product. Idealism in the limits 
 of the natural was the watchword of Lessing. From 
 this point he treats the Spanish drama, hitherto an 
 unknown land to his countrvmen, in which he had 
 become well versed in the rich library of a Hamburg
 
 230 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 merchant. He drew attention to its mixed character, 
 its singular beauty, originality, and wealth, united to 
 grotesque, romanesque, adventurous absurdities. To 
 them the Greek maxim that the half is greater than 
 the whole, was indeed applicable. Lope de Vega had 
 referred to nature in explanation of these excesses. 
 
 ' It is said that tragi-comedy of Gothic invention, 
 faithfully imitates nature. This is true, and not true. 
 It only imitates one half faithfully, and entirely neg- 
 lects the other. It imitates the nature of appearances, 
 without in the least regarding the nature of our feel- 
 ings and emotional faculties. In nature all things are 
 connected together, all things intersect, interchange, 
 are modified one by another. But in this infinite 
 variety it can only be a drama to an infinite intellect. 
 To give finite spirits a share of its enjoyment, they 
 must receive the power of setting it the limits which 
 it lacks, power of abstraction to guide their attention 
 at will. The destination of Art is to lift us above this 
 abstraction into the domain of the beautiful, to facilitate 
 a concentration of our attention. If in daily life we seek, 
 as far as possible, to avoid and evade distractions by 
 contrary sensations, it must necessarily disgust us to 
 find again in Art what we would gladly abolish from 
 nature.' 
 
 But Lessing's sagacious spirit at once perceived 
 that this proposition must be modified, or it might be 
 applied to the exclusion of Shakespeare from legiti- 
 mate drama. ' Only when one and the same event in 
 its course assumes all shades of interest, and one does 
 not merely follow the other, but necessarily springs from 
 it, when seriousness produces laughter, sadness joy, or 
 vice vcrsA so immediately that the abstraction of one 
 or the other is impossible, it is then only that we do
 
 HAMBURG.— ' THE DRAMATURGIES 231 
 
 not demand it in Art, and Art knows how to draw 
 advantage from the impossibility.' 
 
 This justification of Sliakespeare and the romantic 
 school, and its reconciliation with the classical con- 
 ceptions of the beautiful, may be deemed the key-note 
 of the ' Dramaturgic.' Yet the two natures always at 
 war in Lessing, are observable throughout ; the one 
 attaches itself to the text of Aristotle, establishes 
 definitions, deduces rules ; the other willingly leaves 
 genius free, and desires no other judge for the works 
 of the poet than the spontaneous feelings of the 
 auditor. Yet throughout a conciliation is observable, 
 more readily felt than described. 
 
 This work designed for the end of emancipating 
 the German spirit from a servile adherence to verbal 
 rule, ends nevertheless in a bitter complaint of the 
 liberties taken by young geniuses, who had chosen to 
 construe Lessing's attacks on the French into a justi- 
 fication of lawless license. The German spirit, when 
 it ceased to copy the French, fell into an opposite 
 error and attained a state of chaos in which a ' Goetz 
 von Berlichingen ' could be produced that held a 
 natural succession of historic facts to be dramatic, 
 without a logical chain of ideas. Lessing had sought 
 for a medium course. He did not fight against rules, 
 but against their irrational application, and before he 
 broke off his ' Dramaturgic ' he found himself alone. 
 The young writers of the day had far outstripped 
 him in their wild war-cry for ' the liberty of genius 
 unfettered by rules.' In the closing pages he gives 
 them a significant warning. Idealistic in art, he was 
 so in a thoroughly realistic spirit. His clear intellect 
 revolted against the sentimental lawlessness that was 
 rapidly springing up. The license taken by these
 
 232 COTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 young writers was calculated to make them carelessly 
 fling away the achievements of all time. They 
 demanded from the poets that each one should dis- 
 cover the art afresh. It is impossible to repress 
 genius ; ' not every critic is a genius, but every genius 
 is a born critic' Having demonstrated to his nation 
 that they have no national drama, Lcssing forestalls 
 any reflexion that might be made regarding his own 
 productions in that department. The closing remarks 
 in which he disclaims for himself all pretensions to 
 eenius have been fruitful of endless discussion in 
 Germany. He knew that he was a calm thinker, that 
 criticism took the first rank in his intellect, that he 
 was wanting in that enthusiasm, that divine madness 
 he named a/c^Lt?;, which is its crown and blossom. His 
 incisive perception was never more clearly shown than 
 in this self-estimate. Goethe justly remarks that 
 though Lessing denied to himself the name of genius, 
 his enduring works testify against him, yet for all 
 that his poetry is rather a monument of what may 
 be produced by a refined taste, than a spontaneous 
 utterance. 
 
 ' I am neither actor nor poet,' so runs this remark- 
 able confession. ' It is true I have sometimes had the 
 honour of being regarded as the latter, but only be- 
 cause I have been misunderstood. It is not right to 
 draw such liberal inferences from the few dramatic 
 attempts I have ventured. Not everyone who takes 
 up a brush and lays on colours is a painter: The 
 earliest of my attempts were made at that time of life 
 when we are but too apt to regard inclination and 
 facility as genius. What is tolerable in my later 
 attempts, is due, as I am well aware, solely and alone 
 to criticism. I have always felt ashamed or annoyed
 
 HAMBURG.— 'THE DRAMATURGIES 233 
 
 when I have read or heard anything in disparagement 
 of criticism. It is said to suppress genius, and I 
 flatter myself that I have gained from it something 
 very nearly approaching genius. I am a lame man 
 who cannot possibly be edified by abuse of his crutch.'
 
 ;34 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 HAMBURG. — ' ANTIQUARIAN LETTERS.' 
 
 (1767-1770. Aged 38 41.) 
 
 ' Erxoar cin selbstdenkender Kopf, und selbstdenkcnden Kopfcn ist es nun 
 cinmal gcqcbcn, dass sic das ga7ize Gefildc dcr Gehhrsamkeit iibctsehoi, und 
 jedcn Pfad dcssclben zii finden wissen, so bald es dcr Miihc verlo/ini, ihn zu 
 betretai.' — Li;ssing : Anti-Goeze, ix. 
 
 Lkssing'S dejection was naturally great at finding 
 that the interest of the public in the national theatrewas 
 hopelessly defunct, that his ' Dramaturgie ' had fallen 
 into the hands of the reprinters, whom Luther had al- 
 ready called a more perniciousbrood than highwaymen. 
 This discouragement is visible at the close of the' Dra- 
 maturgie, 'which he finally employed for his own purpose 
 as a preliminary study for, and a commentary to, the 
 * Poetics ' of Aristotle. His interest in classical studies 
 had revived, and he was indift"erent whether the public 
 cared to follow him or no. He began to contemplate 
 the completion of his ' Laokoon,' when chance gave his 
 occupations a polemical instead of a didactic charac- 
 ter. Publishing business had taken Lessing to Leip- 
 zig ' for the Easter fair of 1768, and while there his 
 
 ' This is the visit to whicli Goethe refers in ' Wahrheit und Dich- 
 tung,' book viii., when, in a wayward, capricious mood, he allowed 
 Lessing to pass through Leipzig without making an attempt to see the 
 man he so much admired— a circumstance he never ceased to regret.
 
 HAMBURG.— ' ANTIQUARIAN LETTERS.' 235 
 
 attention was directed to attacks on his ' Laokoon,' 
 which had been appearing for some time past in the 
 journal of the Halle Professor, Klotz. This Klotz was 
 a young man of facile talent, insinuating character, 
 and unbounded ambition, who, repelled by the dry 
 tone of pedantry generally affected by German pro- 
 fessors, had conceived the by no means despicable 
 aspiration of introducing a graceful treatment of 
 aesthetic subjects, so as to open to the general public 
 what had been till then confined to schoolmen. 
 Frederick the Great, who hated pedants, had given 
 Klotz an appointment at Halle, whereby'he was placed, 
 like few scholars of his time, in a position of pecuniary 
 ease, so that, still young himself, he was able to pro- 
 tect other young authors, and this, united to a goodly 
 share of vanity and a love of publicity, had tempted 
 him to constitute himself the head of a literary coterie, 
 which content at first merely to popularise aesthetics 
 gradually began to cavil at the most erudite scholars. 
 Such an accusation against Lessing had been repro- 
 duced by the editor of an Altona newspaper. The word 
 ' an unpardonable fault ' exasperated Lessing beyond 
 measure. His mental state was unquestionably over- 
 strung, and it only needed some such impulse from 
 without to cause his suppressed indignation to 
 find vent. He forgot that he had in the ' LaokooiT''^-, 
 spoken of K lotz as a scholar of refined and correct 
 taste. He did not stop to consider that some of 
 Klotz's objections, made on philological and anti- 
 quarian grounds, w^ere not without foundation, such as 
 his remarks on the highest pathos attained by 
 the Greeks, the contrast between the Roman and 
 Greek national character, and so forth. The man's 
 malice, his childish susceptibility to praise and blame
 
 236 COTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSIXG. 
 
 disgusted Lessing, who was a veritable Don Quixote 
 in the reahiis of the learned world. Only true wisdom 
 and erudition were to be held of account, all shallow- 
 ness must be proscribed. He could not admit as a 
 fact that occasionally such men contribute more to 
 the popularisation of a subject than the truly learned. 
 True, Lessing himself was not such a one ; he com- 
 bined the thoroughness of the scholar with the attrac- 
 tions of the elegant writer, a combination so rare in 
 Germany that Klotz's popularity is thus alone suf- 
 ficiently explained. Lessing further despised his 
 spirit of cliqueism, but his anger exceeded bounds 
 when he found that Klotz carried this so far as to cir- 
 culate scurrilous reports against antagonists. Anti- 
 quarian interests had been reawakening in Lessing 
 for some time ; the adversary he loved to combat in 
 his writings was once more to hand ; he had a measure 
 of wrath to vent, and the result was a second ' Vadc 
 Mecum.' 
 
 ' I must see if I can still make a literary lettcret,* 
 he writes to Nicolai, announcing his intention to quell 
 this factious coterie and show no mercy. ' The man 
 brags too much and would like to be held an oracle 
 in these matters. All the same, I am convinced that 
 no more poor ignorant fellow has ever sought to pos- 
 sess himself of the critical tripod. His thing about en- 
 graved gems is the most wretched and impertinent 
 compilation from Wmckelmann and Lippert, whom 
 he has often misunderstood, and everything he has 
 added of his own is miserable.' 
 
 It was in this very essay, much praised by Klotz's 
 friends, -^Bhat he had ventured his first direct attacks 
 against Leayng. ' He has done me the honour of 
 mentioning me three times in this little book, in order
 
 HAMBURG.-' ANTIQUARIAN LETTERS^ 237 
 
 three times to correct me. But all three times he has 
 either not understood me out of shortsightedness, or 
 not cared to understand me out of spite.' 
 
 Lessing replied to the article in the Altona paper 
 by one in the Hamburg journal. He described it to 
 Nicolai as his declaration of the war asrainst Klotz 
 which he felt himself called upon to wage, since the 
 only other man who could worthily have conducted 
 it, Winckelmann, was dead. ' The second author 
 within a short space,' writes Lessing, ' for whose life 
 I would gladly have sacrificed a few years of my 
 own.' ' Later, when Lessing was censured for his 
 conduct towards Klotz, he plainly expresses his 
 opinion of the professional espi'it de corps, upheld at 
 all costs to learning. ' I have only waited to see 
 whether anyone would attack the awkward Goliath 
 of the learned Philistines. At last I could not put up] 
 with his stupid sneers any longer without casting a few / 
 stones out of my scrip at his head. I well know thalJ 
 he has been always despised by really learned men, 
 but I do not know whether their silent contempt is 
 sufficient to avenge the publ'c whom he misleads. 
 Some one ought at length to lift up his voice. And 
 truly, if there are none, or at any rate so few, who 
 testify openly to being on my side, I fear that by the 
 help of his accomplices, scattered all over Germany, 
 he will soon manage to outvoice me again.' 
 
 The war once opened, the attacks followed one 
 another with amazing rapidity, considering the pro- 
 foundly learned nature of their contents, and prove 
 how completely at home Lessing was in the subject. 
 His letters to Nicolai show that he had not even the 
 most needful books of reference at hand. [Within the 
 
 ' The first was Sterne.
 
 238 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 
 
 space of four weeks he had written twenty-five of his 
 Antiquarian Letters.M Michaehnas that year (1768), 
 the first part appearecTas a book. At the same time he 
 wrote an essay ' On the Ancestral Portraits of the Old 
 Romans' {Ucbcr die AJinenbilder dcr Alien Ronier), 
 also directed against Klotz. Nicolai declined its publi- 
 cation, and it remained a fragment to be published 
 among Lessing's remains, breaking off at the most inte- 
 resting point. Its purpose was to refute a pretended dis- 
 covery made by Klotz, really, as it afterwards appeared, 
 a plagiarism from Christ, that these portraits had been 
 works of encaustic painting, while Lessing contends 
 and demonstrates by proofs from authors and internal 
 evidence, that the ancestral portraits preserved in the 
 atrium were nothing but painted wax masks. 
 
 Mendelssohn disapproved of this controversy, he 
 held it unworthy of his friend. Lessing defends him- 
 self, it was needful once and for ever to demolish 
 these bunglers. He does not mean to bury himself in 
 antiquarian studies. Archaeology alone is a poor sort 
 of study ; he only values it so far as it is an additional 
 hobby-horse wherewith to shorten the journey of life. 
 Nicolai blamed the want of courtesy displayed in 
 his treatment of Klotz. Lessing replies that he 
 will justify himself on this account in his preface, that 
 such things must be said with some heat or not at all. 
 In the preface he quotes Cicero's answer to the 
 lukewarm Atticus, ' Vide quam sim antiquorum 
 hominum ! ' contending that the ancients did not 
 know the thing we call politeness, that their urbanity 
 was as far removed from it as our rudeness. Lessing's 
 polemics resemble those of a wise man who has 
 patiently looked on at a scene of confusion until he 
 can bear it no longer, and, suddenly roused to action,
 
 HAMBURG.— ' ANTIQUARIAN LETTERS: 239 
 
 overturns good and bad alike. The 'Antiquarian 
 Letters,' like the ' Vade Mecum,' will be always read 
 for their wonderfully caustic sallies, their drastic 
 vigour, the astonishing vivacity with which purely 
 erudite subjects are treated, carrying on the reader 
 over heavy passages by dint of unlooked-for humorous 
 turns. Digressions there are none. Never did""'^ 
 Lessing keep more closely to the matter in hand. He 
 follows his opponent step by step : if he attempts to 
 digress he follows him into the domain of his digres- 
 sions. He is secure of his vantage ground, and he 
 evinces this security by a confidence of tone that is 
 authoritative but never arrogant. The peculiar charm 
 of his style, its dialectical character, is pre-eminent 
 in these Letters, which seem an easy conversation 
 naturally developing out of itself No sign of 
 effort or labour is apparent ; the reader assists at" 
 questions and replies as though they were enacted 
 before him. What does he care for the shallow errors 
 committed by a Halle Professor named Klotz who has 
 been long dead and forgotten } and yet the charming 
 manner carries him along, and he reads with interest 
 to the end. 
 
 Klotz had fastened upon a passage of the ' Lao- 
 koon,' wherein Lessing averred that the ancients did 
 not attempt to paint subjects drawn from their poets, 
 and pointed in reply to the Homeric subjects treated by 
 the ancients in the pictures found at Herculaneum 
 and elsewhere ; a correction based on a misinterpre- 
 tation of the text of Lessing, who had censured Caylus' 
 endeavour to paint an epic in pictures, but never 
 denied that the ancients may have painted the 
 subjects sung by their poets, only asserting that in so 
 doing each artist kept within the limits of his art, and
 
 240 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSIXG. 
 
 did not attempt to follow the other line by line. The 
 first eight Letters that dealt with this subject created 
 a sensation ; the ninth, treating of ancient perspective, 
 met with the respectful approval of competent judges 
 as a veritable masterpiece on a little-kilown theme. 
 The remaining Letters were all occupied with the sub- 
 ject of gems, and here nothing is easier than to expose 
 Klotz's trite and flashy knowledge. He examines 
 the authorities quoted by Klotz ; they are either 
 second-rate, or he has misconstrued their meaning, or 
 he has espied their quotations inaccurately, or at 
 second-hand. As regards Klotz's own opinions on 
 this subject, they are worth nothing, and what wonder, 
 the Professor knows nothing. 
 
 Throughout these 'Antiquarian Letters' the aesthetic 
 interests placed foremost in the 'Laokoon' take second 
 rank. Here the purely archaeological comes first, 
 Lessing puts forward his most learned side ; technical, 
 optical, etymological, literary and scientific arguments, 
 various readings of classical authors, are the weapons 
 brought to bear on Klotz, whose weak side, a want of 
 thoroughness, they effectually exposed. Klotz had not 
 calculated on such an investigation of his work. He 
 tried to conciliate Lessing, then finding that in vain, 
 he refused to reply, pretending that the quarrels 
 of the learned did not interest the public at large. 
 Finally he had recourse to acting the part of the 
 generous enemy, but even this manoeuvre Lessing 
 frustrated, exposing its deceitfulness. For while 
 affecting a modest demeanour towards Lessing him- 
 self, Klotz had caused his satellites to attack him in all 
 the journals, had endeavoured to exasperate Nicolai 
 agaifist him, and, what enraged Lessing more than 
 aught else, some of these libels had reached the
 
 HAMBURG.— ' ANTIQUARIAN LETTERS: 241 
 
 pastoral home at Camenz, and had caused sorrow 
 to the beloved old father, then already bowed down 
 with anxieties and enfeebled health. 
 
 The second volume of ' Antiquarian Letters,' de- 
 layed for a year by the need of engraved examples 
 of intaglios, shows a more bitter tone on Lessing's 
 part, and also betrays disgust with the subject, whose 
 pettiness was not long to his taste. Nicolai, who 
 published the first volume with success, is obliged to 
 announce to him that the second hangs fire. With 
 the. fifty-first Letter Lessing breaks off these personal 
 controversies, but before doing so, he once more 
 justifies the sharpness of his invective against Klotz. 
 'The man is a mere dealer in antiquities {Alter- 
 thuinskrdnicr), not an 2in\.\(\udix\2in{Altcrthuinsfo7'sc/ie}'). 
 The former has inherited the fragments, tlie latter the 
 spirit of antiquity. The one scarcely thinks with his 
 eyes, the other actually sees with his thoughts. Be- 
 fore the one can say : thus it was ! the latter already 
 knows whether it could have been thus.' 
 
 This, he says, is the scale by which a critic should 
 measure his procedure. ' Indulgent and flattering to- 
 wards the tyro, doubting amid admiration, admiring 
 amid doubt towards the master, discouraging and 
 incisive towards the bungler, contemptuous towards 
 the boaster, and as bitter as possible towards the mis- 
 chief maker.' 
 
 He is not angered. It is not anger that has 
 guided his pen, but calm deliberate reasoning, and 
 wherever a word is bitter, hard, sneering, satirical, it 
 is put there advisedly. Till now he has had to deal 
 with the author merely, but Klotz has forced him also 
 to deal with the man and the Professor ; for the one has 
 attacked his personal character, the other has vaunted 
 
 R
 
 242 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSLYG. 
 
 his professorial dignity to the disparagement of the 
 untitled Lessing. Klotz had spread the report that 
 Lessingwas the real though disguised chief of the party 
 that was exercising a literary despotism at Berlin, 
 Nicolai was at the head of the Allgcmcinc BihliotJick, 
 not Lessing, who had still to write his first contribu- 
 tion to that paper. Klotz and his crew have dis- 
 covered a faction where none exists, co-operation 
 where there is only individual effort. It is nothing 
 but a vision seen by Klotz and his friends. 
 
 ' Good luck to their visions and to all the knightly 
 deeds they may give rise to ! But would that a kind 
 fairy would open the eyes of these heroes, if only in so 
 far as I am concerned. I am indeed only a windmill 
 and not a giant. Here I stand on my place quite 
 outside the village, alone on a sand-hill. I come to 
 no one, I help no one, and am helped by none. When 
 I have something to put on my grindstones, I grind 
 it with whatever wind may blow. All thirty-two 
 winds are my friends. I do not ask a finger's breadth 
 more of the whole wide atmosphere than my sails 
 require to revolve in ; only I wish them to be left free 
 sailing room. Gnats may swarm among them, but 
 mischievous boys must not be constantly wanting to 
 chase one another in and out between them, still less 
 must any hand attempt to check them that is not 
 stronger than the wind that turns me. If my sails 
 fling anyone into the air he must regard it his own 
 fault, nor can I set him down more gently than he 
 happens to fall.' 
 
 * Klotz threw a pea at Lessing, and Lessing 
 returned an avalanche of rocks upon him,' was said by 
 a contemporary. All, not excepting Goethe, blamed 
 the violence and acerbity of his attack on Klotz, who,
 
 HAMB URG.—' A NTIQ UA RIA N LE TTERS.' 243 
 
 no doubt, deserved a lesson, but was too trifling an 
 adversary to merit such exhaustive notice. Klotz 
 was certainly silenced, but he gave out everywhere 
 that he was only collecting materials for his defence. 
 Even in after years Lessing vindicated his character 
 in this matter. ' If the scale goes down too far on the 
 side where the wrong lies, one must throw oneself with 
 all one's force on to the other, in order, if possible, to 
 restore the equilibrium.' His irritation and discon- 
 tent were on the increase. Already in September 
 (1768) he was busy with plans for quitting Hamburg, 
 intentions which, contrary to his wont, he communi- 
 cated, perhaps to enforce a moral restraint upon 
 himself. To his brother he writes : 
 
 ' Next February I am going by the first ship from 
 hence to Leghorn, and from there direct to Rome. I 
 am selling all my books and belongings, the catalogue 
 is already printed, and the auction fixed for January 
 i6th.' And to Nicolai : 
 
 * Next February I am going to leave Hamburg ; 
 and where am I going .-* Direct to Rome. You 
 laugh, but you may be quite certain that it will 
 happen. . . . What I want at Rome I shall write to 
 you from Rome. From here I can only tell you that 
 I have at any rate as much to seek and expect in 
 Rome as at any place in Germany. Here I cannot 
 live on 800 thalers a-year, but in Rome I can live on 
 300. I shall be able to take about enough with me 
 to live for a year ; when that is gone, well, it would be 
 gone here too, and I am quite sure it must be more 
 amusing and entertaining to hunger and beg in Rome 
 than in Germany. I have already dissolved my 
 connexion with Bode, and nothing in the world can 
 hold me here any longer. All circumstances seem to 
 
 K 2
 
 244 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 tend to make my history the history of Solomon's 
 cat, who every day ventured a Httle further from its 
 home, until at last it never returned.' 
 
 The dissolution of the connexion with Bode had 
 been perfectly amicable, the undertaking simply did 
 not pay. Not only that the piratical reprints de- 
 tracted from their receipts, but both Bode and Lessing 
 had all manner of expensive fancies regarding print 
 and paper. The latter they imported direct from 
 Italy, the former was varied in inks and forms, elegant 
 vignettes and tail-pieces were employed, and so forth, 
 refinements to which the public was indifferent, and 
 which necessarily enhanced the price of their books. 
 Nicolai had warned Lessing that publishing must be 
 learnt like any other trade. Lessing turned a deaf 
 ear to his remonstrances, he considered that what he 
 might lack in practice would be more than supplied 
 by his refined and thorough literary knowledge. Per- 
 haps these qualities might have sufficed, had they 
 been united to steady business faculties, punctuality, 
 and promptitude. But these were totally absent. 
 For instance, Lessing complained of the reprint of 
 his ' Bramaturgie,' and that the public bought the 
 pirated edition, but more than once Nicolai had to tell 
 him that the public was not wholly to blame, since the 
 market was better supplied with the spurious than the 
 original paper. This failure made him ponder over a 
 project that should not alienate authors and publishers, 
 but should enable the former to make the offspring of 
 their brains as profitable as other merchandise. His 
 views were embodied in a pamphlet, ' Live and Let 
 Live,' advocating a scheme already broached b)- 
 Leibnitz, of publication by subscription, this to be 
 raised by the publisher, who would receive commis- 
 sion on the sales, the net profit going to the author.
 
 HAMBURG.— ' ANTIQUARIAN LETTERS: 245 
 
 In November Lessing writes to Ramler: 'You 
 have been ill, dearest friend. But how can one be well 
 in Berlin ? Everything one sees there must stir up 
 one's gall. Come quickly to Hamburg, we will put 
 to sea and roam into the world a few thousand miles. 
 I give you my word, we shall come back healthier 
 than we went, or perhaps we may not come back at 
 all, which comes to the same thing. I do not suppose 
 that Rome will please me for a longer time than any 
 other place in the world has hitherto done. If, there- 
 fore, the ' Collegium de Propaganda Fide ' wants to 
 send some one to a place where not even a Jesuit will 
 go, I will go. Then, when we meet again after twenty 
 years, what shall I not have to tell you ? ' 
 
 The news of Lessing's intended journey to Rome 
 spread and was reported in the papers with various 
 conjectural addenda. One was enabled to state that 
 he was about to turn Catholic ; another, that he was 
 going to Rome to play Protestant, as he had played 
 Saxon in Prussia ; another, that he was about to 
 become Papal librarian; yet another, that he was 
 going to teach archaeology. These rumours annoyed 
 Lessing, especially as they were credited ^y some of 
 his acquaintances. ' How can they be so spiteful 
 towards me as to repeat all this } ' he writes. ' For this 
 is assuredly spite. I want to go to Italy to learn, 
 and malicious fools proclaim me as one going to 
 teach ! ' Winckelmann's friend, Muzell-Stosch, heard 
 the rumours and offered Lessing an introduction 
 to Cardinal Albani, hinting that he might fill the 
 post rendered vacant by Winckelmann's murder. He 
 gracefully declined the offer and wrote to Nicolai 
 concerning it : 
 
 ' I claim to make no acquaintances in Rome ex- 
 cept chance acquaintances. Had Winckelmann not
 
 246 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 been such a particular friend and client of Albani's, I 
 think his Moiuincnti would have turned out differ- 
 ently. A great deal of rubbish has been admitted 
 into it just because it stands in the Villa Albani. 
 From an artistic point of view these things are worth- 
 less ; from an archaeological there is also not so much 
 as Winckelmann has purposely seen in them. What- 
 ever I may see, and however I may live, I can do it 
 without Cardinals.' 
 
 The spring of 1769 however came, and found 
 Lessing still in Hamburg. He was engaged upon 
 the second volume of his ' Antiquarian Letters,' and 
 contemplated a third part. The voyage to Leghorn 
 was abandoned ; he now meant to go overland in 
 May and visit Cassel, Nuremberg, and Gottingen, in 
 one of which towns he would stay a month to complete 
 his ' Laokoon.' So many fools were busy chattering 
 about it, he wanted to finish it and show them what 
 was the positive goal he had aimed at in the essay ; 
 and he briefly sketched the outline to Nicolai. Mean- 
 time, offers of an appointment as dramaturgist at 
 Vienna had reached him. He refused this, because he 
 did not wish again to be connected with the theatre. 
 But he continued to defer his departure week by 
 week, and though want of funds had much to do with 
 this, he did not entirely lose Vienna out of sight. The 
 Emperor Joseph W. was holding out to literary men a 
 magnificent project for the revival of arts and sciences 
 that was to inaugurate a new age of gold. Klop- 
 stock corresponded with the young Emperor on the 
 subject, and painted glorious visions of all that might 
 be achieved. Lessing shared the illusions of Klop- 
 stock, and would not listen to the sagacious remon- 
 strances of Nicolai, who warned him against Austrian
 
 HAMBURG.— ' ANTIQUARIAN LETTERS: 247 
 
 despotism, and pointed proudly to the more real 
 liberty he would find in Berlin. How could Lessing 
 expect to find liberty of speech in a place where 
 Mendelssohn's ' Phaedon ' was confiscated ? The whole 
 thing was a financial project, started in the hope that 
 the famous authors would publish their works in 
 Austria and so bring money into the country. What 
 high-flown ideas of literary revival could be expected 
 from a plan approved by Kaunitz, hatched in a 
 country that favoured reprints on the same mercantile 
 principles that it forbade the importation of herrings, 
 viz. to keep money at home } 
 
 Lessing would not hear of this, ' Let Vienna be 
 as it may, I promise better luck to German literature 
 there than in your Frenchified Berlin. If the" Phaedon" 
 was ever confiscated at Vienna, it can only have been 
 because it was printed at Berlin, and it was not pos- 
 sible to imagine that anything could be written at 
 Berlin in favour of the immortality of the soul. You 
 don't tell me anything else about your Berlin freedom 
 of thought and speech. It reduces itself wholly and 
 solely to the freedom of bringing to market any 
 number of sottises against religion. An honest man 
 must soon blush to make use of this freedom. . . . 
 Let some one at Berlin speak up for the rights of sub- 
 jects and against extortion and despotism, as is done 
 now even in France and Denmark, and you will soon 
 discover which is the most slavish country in Europe.' 
 
 Nicolai was right, however, and Lessing was not 
 long the dupe of the false liberalism of Joseph II. 
 with whom this scheme had been the mere fantasy of 
 a fickle spirit. The Italian plan again occupied his 
 thoughts, but want of funds delayed its execution. 
 Lessing writes to Karl :
 
 248 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 ' I must turn all I have left into money, and even 
 then I shall scarcely be able to pay my journey. My 
 heart bleeds when I think of our parents, but God is my 
 witness that I am not wanting in will to help them ; 
 but at this moment I am certainly poorer than any one 
 of the family. For the poorest is at any rate not in 
 debt, and I, while lacking the most needful, am up to 
 my ears in debt. May God help us ! ' 
 
 He compares his condition to a bog into which 
 one sinks the deeper the more efforts one makes to 
 extricate oneself He worked and worked, and yet he 
 seemed to get no better off; he formed project after 
 project, but none would answer to his hopes ; and then 
 the heavy demands from Camenz. He was nearing 
 his fortieth year, he was less robust than formerly, 
 disappointments and anxieties had told on his iron 
 constitution, and he was still ' the old bird on the roof 
 ' When the bad forties come,' he said, * it is all over 
 with a man.' His impaired health, an unwonted sen- 
 sation, depressed him. *I must think it is all the fault 
 of those wretched forty years. If that is so, I decline 
 with thanks the forty yet remaining to me.' 
 
 In this state of indecision he took up his ' ScJdaf- 
 triuik ' with the intention of completing it, but a 
 trifling interruption made him abandon the idea ; he 
 was, besides, weary of the theatre. Antiquarian 
 interests were the strongest just now, but he was 
 equally weary of attacking Klotz. He would write a 
 more abiding work, starting from the theme of his 
 disputes. The result is the charming little essay, 
 ' Wic die Alten den Tod gebildct' (How the Ancients 
 represented Death). Its object was to confute the 
 notion that the ancients represented Death as a 
 skeleton. Lessing had already touched upon this in
 
 HAMBURG.— ' ANTIQUARIAN LETTERS.' 249 
 
 his ' Laokoon,' and Klotz had endeavoured to refute 
 him by referring to figures of skeletons discovered on 
 antique gems and urns. 
 
 In this essay Lessing answers Klotz's objections, 
 but he prefaces it by saying : ' I should be sorry if 
 this disquisition were to be estimated according to the 
 circumstance that prompted it, for this is so con- 
 temptible, that only the manner in which I have used 
 it can excuse me for having been willing to use it 
 at all' After quoting the passage in which Klotz 
 attacks him, Lessing says that he has no wish to deny 
 the existence of skeletons in ancient art, but that he 
 desires to show that they are not intended to sym- 
 bolise death. He divides his essay into two parts and 
 proceeds to prove : 
 
 Firstly. That the ancient artists really repre- 
 sented the God of Death under an entirely different 
 image from that of a skeleton. 
 
 Secondly. That the ancient artists when they 
 represented a skeleton, meant by this skeleton some- 
 thing entirely different from Death, as God of Death. 
 
 The form under which the ancients represented 
 Death was that of a boy, twin brother of Sleep. 
 
 This was the Homeric idea as attested by a pas- 
 sage from Pausanias, who describes a figure of Night 
 in the temple of Juno, in Elis, holding in her arms two 
 boys, exactly alike, except that one is white, the other 
 black, one sleeps, the other seems to sleep. These 
 are Sleep and Death, One reason why this fact had 
 been so little recognised was that all figures of winged 
 boys had been supposed to represent Cupids. Lessing 
 shows that many of these figures hitherto regarded as 
 Cupids were in reality figures of Death, who was 
 represented by the ancients as a winged boy holding
 
 250 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSIXG. 
 
 a reversed torch. He quotes passages from ancient 
 writers, and refers to many representations of Sleep 
 together with his twin brother. Undoubtedly his 
 twin brother must be Death, as Homer tells us. 
 Then if such was the representation of death, the 
 skeleton must have some other meaning. Why 
 should the ancients, who regarded beauty before all 
 things, choose so horrible a figure to represent any- 
 thing so calm and beautiful as the state or abstract 
 notion of death } There is no horror in the thought 
 of being dead, nor in the act of dying, as the 
 transition to this repose, but some forms of death are 
 horrible, and there are some circumstances under 
 which it is terrible to die. This is the idea embodied 
 in the Greek divinity Kt;^, who presided over violent 
 deaths and dreadful fates, and was entirely distinct 
 from ©ai/aroy. Since then these two divinities were 
 distinct, it might be suggested that the skeleton was 
 to represent K?;^ ; yet this could not well be. Why 
 should the act of dying be represented by that which 
 follows after death } Besides, Pausanias has left an 
 account of the real form in which this divinity was 
 represented. What, then, are these skeletons ? They 
 are, says Lcssing, larvae, the departed souls of evil 
 men ; and since the word actually means a skeleton, 
 there can be no doubt as to the correctness of this 
 suggestion. That we now represent Death under the 
 form of a skeleton is no sufficient reason for supposing 
 the ancients to have done so. It had been said that 
 their ideas of death must necessarily be horrible, since 
 they had far sadder and drearier notions of it than 
 ourselves. But must not that religion that first taught 
 that death was the natural fruit and wages of sin, 
 have immeasurably increased the terrors of dissolution .-'
 
 HAMBURG.— ' ANTIQUARIAN LETTERS: 231 
 
 It is then our religion that has banished the beautiful 
 image of death and introduced in its stead the horrible 
 skeleton. 
 
 ' Yet since this religion has not revealed this 
 terrible truth to us in order that we might despair, 
 and since it also assures us that death cannot be 
 otherwise than easy and beneficial for the righteous, 
 I cannot see what should prevent our artists from 
 banishing the terrible skeletons, and again taking 
 possession of that other better image. Even Scripture 
 speaks of an angel of death, and what artist would 
 not rather form an angel than a skeleton t It is only 
 misunderstood religion that can remove us from the 
 beautiful, and it is a proof that religion is true, and 
 rightly understood, if it everywhere leads us back to 
 the beautiful.' 
 
 When the essay was completed and the library 
 sold, Lessing found he had still not enough funds with 
 which to live a year at Rome. At this crisis appeared 
 a Dens ex viachind in the person of J. A. Ebert, a 
 Hamburger by birth, and one of the circle of literary 
 men whom the Duke Charles of Brunswick, and his 
 intelligent heir-apparent, Duke Ferdinand, the luck- 
 less general of Jena, had attracted to their court. 
 Ebert had spoken of Lessing to the hereditary Prince, 
 had read him some of the 'Antiquarian Letters ' and 
 extracts from Lessing's private letters, with all of 
 which the Prince was delighted, his fine intelligence 
 recognising the worth of the man. When Ebert 
 further added that Lessing intended to go to Italy, 
 probably not without an after-thought that he would 
 thus frustrate the plan, the Prince expressed a wish 
 to see him first, and begged Ebert to request Lessing 
 to make it convenient to pass through Brunswick en
 
 252 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 route. Lessing wrote to Ebert saying he held it in 
 every wise his duty to meet the Prince's desires, and 
 enclosed a copy of his essay, ' How the Ancients 
 represented Death,' requesting Ebert to show it to 
 the Prince if he deemed it advisable, but adding that 
 he could not allow it to be expressly handed to him 
 in his name, as that was more than a polemic against 
 Klotz deserved. Lessing further learnt that during a 
 late visit at Berlin the Prince had sought out Moses 
 Mendelssohn. Whereupon he wrote to Ebert : 
 
 ' I know nothing in the world which would have 
 better secured to the Prince my entire respect and 
 admiration than his seeking the acquaintance, at Ber- 
 lin, of my oldest and dearest friend. There could be 
 no doubt that they would like each other, and what 
 would I not give if it were possible for the Prince to 
 draw him from that place which is, as I know, quite 
 against his inclinations.' 
 
 Lessing's visit was deferred from a desire not to 
 have to return to Hamburg if possible. He did not 
 find it so easy as heretofore to tear himself away. 
 
 * Unfortunately I am so firmly rooted here that I 
 must tear myself away gently, or a piece of flesh will 
 remain hanging here and there.' 
 
 Early in December however he appeared at Bruns- 
 wick, where he made a favourable impression on the 
 court. It was his peculiarity not to do himself full 
 justice before strangers, but Ebert had prepared the 
 vi^ay. The post of Ducal Librarian at Wolfenbiittel, 
 with a salary of 600 thalers, was offered him. Lessing 
 accepted the post on the express condition that the 
 appointment should not interfere with his Italian 
 journey, and only be delayed the needful time for 
 him to get into working order. Notwithstanding his
 
 HAMBURG.— ' ANTIQUARIAN LETTERS: 253 
 
 resolve he returned to Hamburg-, partly because he 
 was immersed in debt and did not see his way to quit 
 it with honour, partly because there were tenderer 
 feelings involved. 
 
 As elsewhere, so also in Hamburg, Lessing had 
 associated freely with the inhabitants. At Hamburg 
 his acquaintances lay chiefly among a mixed circle, 
 consisting of Jews, Christians, merchants, actors, and 
 journalists ; only the purse-proud Hamburg patri- 
 cians had never been to his taste, though he left no 
 side of Hamburg life unexplored. He used to de- 
 clare that he had never known the full scope of his 
 mother-tongue till he came to Hamburg, where he 
 learnt to speak the peculiar broad {Piatt) German of 
 the people. Life in a republic was also singularly 
 agreeable to his views of liberty and independence. 
 Among the families whom he visited chiefly were the 
 Reimarus, Dr. Johann, a physician of Lessing's age, 
 and his clever sister Elise. This house was the 
 common meeting-place of all the intellectual society 
 of the town, but the father who first gave it that 
 character, Hamburg's greatest contemporary cele- 
 brity Hermann Samuel Reimarus, whose theological 
 writings Lessing afterwards edited in part as the 
 * Wolfenbiittel Fragments,' had died shortly before his 
 arrival. 
 
 But the house to which he was most attracted was 
 that of the silk manufacturer, Konig. The worthy 
 man, his clever and original wife, as well as their 
 large family of little children, of whom Lessing was 
 passionately fond, all exerted great attractions over 
 him. He speaks of Konig in a letter to Gleim as his 
 especial friend, and that Konig returned the compli- 
 ment is proved by the circumstance that, in 1769,
 
 254 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 when setting out for a journey to Italy, he entrusted 
 his family to Lessing's care should anything occur to 
 him. He did indeed die very suddenly at Venice, 
 leaving his affairs in a most involved condition. 
 Lessing loyally stood by his widow, aiding her to the 
 best of his power, though the capable woman of 
 large masculine intellect was quite competent to cope 
 with business details. But the constant intercourse 
 that Konig's injunction necessitated gave birth to a 
 warmer feeling on both sides. Frau Konig would not 
 listen to any solicitations on Lessing's part. Her first 
 duty was to extricate her affairs out of the embroil- 
 ment that threatened to engulf her children's all, 
 but each mutually felt the other a dear and valued 
 friend, and it is certain that Lessing's irresolution 
 about leaving Hamburg, and his sudden wish to find 
 an assured subsistence, were influenced by this feeling. 
 He continued to linger, unable to tear himself away. 
 
 Ebert warns him that the Prince is getting impa- 
 tient ; Lessing puts forth pretext after pretext, and begs 
 Ebert to keep his memory green at Brunswick. Still 
 he does not come ; he announces his arrival for 
 a certain day, but no sign of him when the day 
 dawned. Ebert felt this Avas getting serious ; he knew 
 the temper of princes, and that delays are not to their 
 mind. In vain he urged ; Lessing is fertile in excuses, 
 real and imaginary. Now the snow has blocked the 
 roads, now he has not all the books he wants, now he 
 wishes to stay and meet Herder, who is passing 
 through Hamburg. The leave of absence accorded 
 by the Duke had expired, and still Lessing did not 
 come. Ebert ventured to hint that a post had duties. 
 
 ' God knows that I am longing to be at rest,' he 
 writes to him in March, ' since I am to be put at rest.
 
 HAMBURG.— ' ANTIQUARIAX LETTERS.' 255 
 
 The sparrow's life on the roof is all very well when it 
 is not necessary to look forward to an end. If it can- 
 not last, every day it lasts is too long.' 
 
 Ebert jestingly remarks that Lessing's reluctance 
 to leave and come to his affianced bride, the library, 
 looks as though a more corporeal one detained him 
 in Hamburg ; but adds, * from that suspicion you are 
 too well secured.' This time, however, he was not. It 
 was his heart that held him to Hamburg, and right 
 sore it was when he at last tore himself awa}'-, travel- 
 ling direct to Brunswick, wliere he arrived in April 
 1770.
 
 !56 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 WOLFENBUTTEL. 
 
 (1770-1772. Aged 41-43.) 
 
 ' Unabhdngig von dem Schmuck 
 Pmnkender Erscheinuug — 
 Unabhdngig von dem Druck 
 Hcrgebrachter Meinung.' 
 
 Nearly everything that German Hterature has to 
 show of princely patronage during the last century 
 emanated from the little Duchy of Brunswick. Charles, 
 the reigning Duke in- Lessing's time, had transferred 
 the seat of government from Wolfenbiittel to Bruns- 
 wick, and, instigated by the Abbot Jerusalem, had 
 there founded the celebrated Collegium Carolinum. 
 To supply it with able professors the Duke had 
 invited men like Gartner, Zacharia, Ebert, Eschenburg, 
 and Schmid to settle in his dominions, and literature 
 was encouraged and fostered. His eldest son and 
 heir, Prince Ferdinand, had been carefully educated. 
 Jerusalem had been his early preceptor, in Rome he 
 had enjoyed daily intercourse with Winckelmann, and 
 he corresponded with the most eminent men of his 
 day, Voltaire, d'Alembert, Marmontel, and Mendels- 
 sohn. Like his uncle Frederick the Great, he affected 
 to be a poet and musician. His marriage with 
 Augusta, Princess of Wales, awoke at the court an
 
 WOLFENBUTTEL. 257 
 
 interest in the English language and literature. The 
 Duchess Amalie, of Weimar, Goethe's friend and 
 patron, was also a daughter of this house. It was 
 therefore no empty compliment when the Hereditary 
 Prince invited Lessing to his dominions, and let him 
 know through Ebert that he had not only justified 
 his expectations, but surpassed them. The old Duke, 
 whose reign was now but nominal, gave his assent to 
 his son's wish that Lessing should fill the p6st of 
 ducal librarian. 
 
 Early in May 1770, Lessing was formally installed. 
 He was to have 600 thalers salary, free lodging, and 
 firing : a sum not mean according to contemporary 
 German requirements, and on which Lessing might 
 have subsisted, had he not arrived hampered with 
 debts. The lodging assigned was in the large dilapi- 
 dated palace, situated just opposite the library. 
 
 The post of librarian was really not vacant, the 
 Prince had created a vacancy for Lessing. Lessing 
 writes to his father that not only the reigning Duke, 
 but the whole house had received him with condescen- 
 sion and kindness. 
 
 ' However, I am not the man to force myself upon 
 them, rather I seek to keep as distant as possible from 
 anything connected with the court, and entirely to 
 confine myself within the circle of my library. The 
 post itself is just as though it had been made for me, and 
 I need the less regret that I have hitherto refused all 
 other offers. It is also sufficiently lucrative to enable 
 me to live comfortably ; but the best part of it is the 
 library, which must be known to you by fame, but 
 which I have found far more excellent than I had ever 
 imagined it. Now I may well forget my books that 
 want forced me to sell. I wish I might yet have the 
 
 S
 
 258 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 pleasure in my life to take you about here, for I know 
 what a lover and connoisseur you are of all manner of 
 books. 
 
 ' I have really no other official duties than those 
 that I make for myself I may boast that the Prince 
 was more anxious that I should use the library than 
 that it should use me. However, I shall try to com- 
 bine both, or really the one follows from the other.' 
 
 In his letters to his friends there breathes a spirit 
 rather of resignation than of content. To one who 
 had been so long ' the old sparrow on the roof,' there 
 was something oppressive in a settled post. He 
 writes to Ebert, May 7, 1770 : 
 
 * I slipped away from you. But is it worth while 
 to bid farewell when one dies — or travels from Bruns- 
 wick to Wolfenbuttel ! Do not suppose, because I place 
 these two together, that I consider myself to be dead. 
 It is not possible to live more quietly and contentedly 
 than I have done these three days. Such a life must 
 certainly seem death to you court revellers who 
 banquet and feast every day. Well you may exclaim 
 with the French lacquey, "Vive la vie!" I say, 
 " Vive la mort," if only that I may have nothing in 
 common with a Frenchman.' 
 
 Wolfenbuttel, then distant a five hours' drive 
 from Brunswick, certainly looks a dead alive place 
 even now that the railway to the Harz traverses it ; 
 how much more so then ! A whilom capital, with the 
 wide streets and palatial buildings destined for the 
 abode of a court, presents a more dreary and forsaken 
 aspect than any other forgotten place. There was 
 no society, the best people had followed the court. 
 Lessing could not but soon miss the stirring life of 
 Hamburg, with its world-wide commerce and mari-
 
 WOLFENBUTTEL. 259 
 
 time variety. He missed, too, the houses at which he 
 had been an intimate and welcome guest ; he missed 
 one above all. Indeed one of the first letters written 
 from his hermitage at Wolfenbiittel was addressed to 
 Eva Konig. He apologises for not writing sooner : 
 
 ' You least of all, dear friend, will reproach me 
 with that which I can only properly explain to you if 
 you make a merit of it. I am unsettled all day long 
 when I have written to Hamburg, and three days pass 
 before everything here pleases me again as it should. 
 Yet you must not suppose I am not content here. Only 
 when one remembers that one has often been very 
 happy elsewhere, it is difficult to persuade oneself 
 that one is so still. How is Amalie .'' how is my god- 
 child .'' Everything is so empty and large around me 
 that I would often give a great deal if I could at 
 least have one of my little companions in Hamburg 
 about me. In thought I have been walking out with 
 you all the evening. If only I were doing so in reality, 
 what should I not have to ask you ! . . . . Shall you 
 still travel this summer.'' I would go fifty miles after 
 you if you were to pass through here, and I should 
 be so unfortunate as to miss you.' 
 
 In her reply Eva Konig tells him she is going to 
 take the waters at Pyrmont. Will he not come too } 
 That his tiresome old Wolfenbiittel and accursed 
 castle should lie so out of the way!. If she had 
 faith sufficient to move mountains she would soon 
 place it elsewhere. Lessing did not accept the invi- 
 tation to Pyrmont, but in June had the pleasure of 
 entertaining Frau Konig and her brother on their way 
 thither. Frau Konig thanks him in August for his 
 hospitality, and announces that she will pass through 
 
 Wolfenbiittel again shortly, as she must go to Vienna 
 
 s 2
 
 26o COTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 to look personally after her factory affairs, that grow 
 more and more involved. This time she came alone ; 
 but no definite engagement seems to have taken place, 
 though no doubt there was an understanding. She 
 writes him several letters en route, thanks him for all 
 his kindness, and relates the adventures of her journey 
 with much verve and humour : how the postilion was 
 drunk, how the lights had gone out, and, stranded 
 in a desolate place in the Thuringian forest, miles 
 away from help, she had come to the rescue with 
 lighted fircones. Lessing thanked her for her news, 
 and begs her to continue to look at misadventures 
 from the ludicrous side : 
 
 ' The ludicrous is often the only pleasure that 
 travelling affords. Take this with you everywhere, 
 for laughter keeps the body in health.' 
 
 A brisk correspondence was now set on foot be- 
 tween the two. The letters have in great part been 
 preserved, and arc a most valuable contribution to 
 our knowledge of Lessing's character, for he was sin- 
 gularly free from the subjective tendency of the 
 period, and rarely spoke of himself and his feelings. 
 These love-letters were not filled with the lone- 
 winded out-pourings of sentiment then so common. 
 They write about politics, literature, the stage ; she 
 tells him about the performances in Vienna and retails 
 the latest news received from Hamburg friends. He 
 tells her of his work and prospects, and she enters 
 into all with ready comprehension and s}'mpathy. At 
 Brunswick Lessing had to abandon the charms of the 
 faro-table, but his love for play and speculation made 
 him buy lottery tickets. A great part of the letters 
 are occupied with the choice of numbers, and so forth. 
 She is ill, and he recommends her medicines, and
 
 WOLFENBUTTEL. 261 
 
 sends her powders. He is merry, and she enters into 
 his jokes. 
 
 Meanwhile conjectures were rife among Lessing's 
 friends as to what form his next Hterary labours 
 would take. Their guesses fell on every theme but 
 the right one. If Lessing's post did not compel him 
 to any official duties, he held it right nevertheless not 
 to be a librarian in vain. His first proceeding was 
 necessarily to make himself acquainted with the con- 
 tents of the library. The Bibliotheca Augusta was, 
 as Lessing said, one of the few libraries that had 
 really been collected with intelligence, not accumu- 
 lated by chance. Leibnitz had once been its 
 librarian ; he too had commended its riches. These 
 consisted more especially in over six thousand vo- 
 lumes of MSS., and to these Lessing naturally first 
 devoted his attention. Chance came to his aid. It 
 happened that within the first weeks of his appoint- 
 ment he discovered among these MSS. one of great 
 theological importance. No less a treasure, he tells 
 his father with genuine delight, secure for once of 
 sympathy — no less a discovery than a work by Beren- 
 garius of Tours (Berengarius Turonensis),the existence 
 of which was not only not established but was actually 
 denied by Catholics. Berengarius was Archdeacon of 
 Angers in the eleventh century, that era of general 
 disruption of existent conditions, and the awakening 
 of a new spiritual life in the Church. As Canon of 
 Tours and director of the Cathedral school, Beren- 
 garius exerted a great influence, which he used for 
 the spread of enlightened thought. It was a sort of 
 middle term between speculative and positive belief. 
 Berengarius denied the doctrine of the real presence. 
 Lanfranc, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, at
 
 262 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESS INC. 
 
 that time head of the convent of St. Stephen at 
 Caen, accused him of heresy and contempt of autho- 
 rity, Bcrengarius had rephed to these accusations. 
 Meanwhile he was denounced as a heretic, and cited 
 to a council at Vercelli, condemned, deprived of his 
 temporalities, and he and his adherents threat- 
 ened with imprisonment and death if they did not 
 recant, Berengarius thrice renounced his alleged 
 error, and then again avowed it, retiring from all 
 worldly concerns, and spending the rest of his days in 
 the unostentatious practice of piety, A considerable 
 sect that followed him were reckoned by Catholics 
 among the most dangerous heretics, and all Beren- 
 garius' writings on which they could lay hands were 
 destroyed. And it was a copy of the treatise in which 
 Berengarius refuted Lanfranc of Canterbury that had 
 fallen into Lessing's hands. Here was an opportunity 
 for another rehabilitation, for how had not the memory 
 of this good man been perverted ! 
 
 Ye Avho, secure 'mid trophies not your owTi, 
 Judge him who won them when he stood alone, 
 And proudly talk of recreant Berengare — 
 O first the age and then the man compare.' 
 
 Even Luther had commended the papal excommuni- 
 cation that had befallen him, while this treatise proved 
 beyond dispute that Bcrengarius had held essentially 
 the same doctrines with regard to the Eucharist as 
 Luther, and had moreover contended that this teaching 
 alone was the true doctrine of the Church. It was 
 an ecclesiastical treasure, and an important addition 
 to the Vindiciae Lutherianae of the German clergy. 
 Even Mosheim had purposely or inadvertently omitted 
 
 ' Coleridge : ' Lines, suggested by the last words of Berengarius, 
 ob. Anno Dom. 1088.'
 
 WOLFENBUTTEL. 263 
 
 to render justice to Berengarius, who had been branded 
 as a heretic by all parties. 
 
 ' The thing we call heretic,' says Lessing, ' has one 
 very good side. It means a person who has at least 
 wished to see with his own eyes. The question is 
 only whether the eyes were good. In certain cen- 
 turies the name heretic was even the greatest recom- 
 mendation a learned man could present to posterity, 
 greater even than the names magus, magician, exor- 
 ciser ; for among these there was many an impostor. 
 How had Berengarius merited this suspicion .'' Does 
 it mean to imply that he was weak enough to deny 
 recognised truths } Let that be far from us. I do 
 not know whether it is a duty to sacrifice happiness 
 and life to truth ; at any rate the courage and deter- 
 mination it requires are not gifts which we can give to 
 ourselves. But this I know to be a duty, that if we 
 desire to teach truth we must teach it wholly or not 
 at all ; clear, round, without riddle, without reserve, 
 without doubt as to its power and utility ; and the 
 gifts that this requires lie in our own control. Who- 
 ever will not attain these, or when he has attained 
 them will not use them, serves human reason badly 
 if he takes from us gross errors while reserving from 
 us the whole truth, and trying to satisfy us with a 
 middle course of truth and lies. For the more gross 
 the error, the shorter and more direct the road to 
 truth ; while on the other hand subtle errors may 
 keep us eternally removed from truth, seeing it is 
 more difficult to recognise that they are errors. 
 
 'Because Berengarius was weak, must he of neces- 
 sity have been purposely false .'' Because I am forced 
 to pity him, must I therefore despise him .'' The man 
 who amid threatening dangers is faithless to Truth
 
 264 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 may yet love her dearly, and Truth will forgive his 
 infidelity for the sake of his love. But whosoever only 
 considers how he may bring her to men under the dis- 
 guise of paint and masks, would like to be her pander, 
 but he can never have been her lover.' 
 
 A man like Berengarius who has consecrated his 
 life to the .search after truth, and who in the maturity 
 of age has continued to sustain what he thought true 
 against all dangers, such a man does not submit to 
 authority like an infant or relapse into the early 
 superstitions of childhood. It is an idea as false as 
 the notion that he had not replied to his accusers, for 
 here is the reply. 
 
 ' Whosoever would never be timid or weary in the 
 combating of prejudices, must first overcome this 
 prejudice, that the impressions of childhood are not 
 to be destroyed. The ideas of truth and falsehood 
 imparted to us in childhood are the most superficial 
 of all, are those that can the most easily be for ever 
 obliterated by self-acquired ideas, and those in whom 
 they reappear when advanced in years bear testimony 
 against themselves that the ideas under which they 
 tried to bury the others are even more superficial 
 and shallow, and still less their own than those of 
 their childhood. It is only of such men that we can 
 possibly believe the horrid tales of sudden relapses 
 into long abandoned errors on their deathbeds, which 
 would serve to bring every fainthearted friend of truth 
 to despair. Of these only can the stories be true, not 
 of a Berengarius. A Berengarius will certainly die 
 as he taught, and thus do all die who teach as 
 sincerely and seriously as he.' 
 
 Lessing tells Frau Konig that in the next catE' 
 logue of forbidden books in Vienna she will find his 
 ' Berengarius.'
 
 WOLFENBUTTEL. 265 
 
 ' You cannot imagine in what an odour of sanctity 
 I have put myself with our Lutheran theologians. 
 Prepare yourself to hear me proclaimed as nothing 
 less than a pillar of our Church. But whether this 
 will exactly suit me, and whether I shall not soon lose 
 this good character, time will show.' 
 
 His father did not liv^e to witness the publication 
 of this essay. He was struck down with apoplexy in 
 August. The blow was a great grief to Lessing. He 
 at once constituted himself head of the family and 
 promised his mother he would pay all debts, only re- 
 questing time. 
 
 In reply to Karl, who had spoken somewhat dis- 
 paragingly of his ' Berengarius,' he says : 
 
 ' God onlv knows, that I never more needed to 
 write for money than now, and this necessity has 
 actually influenced the materials about which I have 
 written. Whatever requires a particular cheerfulness 
 of spirit, an especial exertion, whatever I must extract 
 out of myself rather than out of books, I can have 
 nothing to do with at present. I tell you this that 
 you may not be surprised if, in spite of your disap- 
 proval, I should write a second part to " Berengarius." 
 I must bore the board where it is thinnest; when I am 
 less troubled from without, I will take up the thick 
 end again.' 
 
 In October, Mendelssohn paid him a visit. He 
 congratulated him on his discovery, adding he did not 
 envy it. Lessing took this remark in the sense 
 that his friend despised such occupations. Indeed, 
 Moses would often ask him when he took up some 
 new branch : Will this serve to amend or augment 
 the knowledge of mankind 1 Will their powers of 
 reflexion be strengthened } the paths to happiness be 
 smoothed .'' for every work must serve some end.
 
 266 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 Besides these theological labours, and various pro- 
 jects and money-producing exertions, that occupied the 
 whole summer of 1770, Lessing was employed in 
 preparing for the press a new edition of his writings. 
 This labour was undertaken sorely against the grain, 
 and entirely to please his friend and publisher, Voss, 
 who hoped thereby to check the hateful system of 
 piracy. Lessing excuses himself for this step in the 
 preface. He had long condemned the greater part of 
 these writings, and deemed them forgotten by the 
 public : 
 
 ' The public grows daily in discernment of taste, 
 but many authors remain behind, and woe to him who 
 does not always feel that he has remained behind, 
 and is vain enough to continue to reckon upon the 
 applause he thinks he received twenty years ago. 
 Only the piratical reprint with which these writings 
 are threatened has extorted from the author the 
 wish to frustrate the malicious intention to bring 
 him forward again in all his feeble immaturity.' 
 He begs for indulgence, remarking ' it would be 
 folly to waste on the repairs of a tottering hut, mate- 
 rials that would suffice to construct an entirely new 
 edifice.' 
 
 Lessing found the labour greater than he had 
 anticipated ; he tells his brother that it costs him more 
 exertion than the whole rubbish is worth. Ramler 
 undertook to see the poems through the press, and to 
 revise and amend them. Lessing begs him to strike 
 out whatever is 'too mediocre.' It is a work of 
 charity that Ramler is doing for him. 
 
 He himself revised his epigrams and wrote some 
 new ones, a circumstance he regarded as a sign of 
 advancing age. He also prefixed an essay on this
 
 WOLFENBUTTEL. 267 
 
 form of writing. As was his custom, he began by- 
 combating former definitions. ScaHger had assumed 
 every httle poem to be an epigram ; Boileau called 
 it 'un bon mot de deux rimes ornc.' Batteux's 
 definition was, ' an interesting thought, happily set 
 forth in a few words.' Lessing declares them all to 
 be wrong. If any of these suggestions were correct, 
 we must suppose the name epigram to be given to 
 these productions because they were short enough to 
 find room on monuments : which is scarcely a suffi- 
 cient explanation ; nor can it be the subject of an 
 epigram to which it owes its name, since subjects are so 
 widely varied that it is impossible to suppose them 
 confined merely to such as would be suitable for a 
 monument. The reason for the appellation must then 
 lie in the form of the epigram. We cannot imagine 
 an inscription separate from that on which it is 
 inscribed. If we see in the distance an important 
 monument, it naturally excites our curiosity, which 
 remains aroused until we are near enough to read the 
 inscription explaining the monument. This process 
 is repeated in the epigram, which must therefore 
 consist of two parts : the first exciting our curiosity, 
 the second satisfying it. He then proceeds to criticise 
 the principal epigrammatists at some length, and esti- 
 mates Martial at the same high rate as he had done 
 in his boyhood, only that his ripened analytic under- 
 standing can now give adequate reasons. Many 
 Greek and Roman poets have made epigrams, but for 
 him there has only been one true epigrammatist, 
 Martial ; for he alone formed in his own mind a 
 distinct conception of the essential nature of an 
 epigram and adhered to it. 
 
 Lessing further continued his researches amid the
 
 268 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 treasures of the ducal library. These consisted of 
 archaeology, theology, and poetry, and gave full scope 
 to his multifarious knowledge. He was also thus able 
 to make the library useful to other scholars who 
 applied to him for advice and aid. With a view to 
 reveal the treasures possessed by German poetry, in 
 rivalry with the Percy ' Reliques,' then exciting great 
 attention, he published some remarkable pieces by a 
 Silesian poet, Andreas Scultetus, a contemporary of 
 Opitz, and some of the productions of the Minne- 
 singers. 
 
 The dreary desolation of Wolfenbiittel weighed on 
 his spirits. He felt impelled to make occasional 
 excursions to Brunswick to come in contact with his 
 fellows. Eva Konig twits him with these frequent 
 visits and his Brunswick dissipations. Why, he re- 
 plies, he lives almost as retired a life in lirunswick 
 as in Wolfenbiittel, and his whole dissipation con- 
 sists in drinking an occasional glass of punch with 
 Zacharia. He had even given up drinking wine. 
 Poverty would have kept him from leading a gay life, 
 even if his will had not. She then rebukes him for 
 taking life so dismally, tells him he is growing hypo- 
 chondriacal, and urges him to visit Brunswick more 
 frequently. She herself often feels melancholy, she 
 tells him, for her affairs go badly and life seems hard. 
 This rouses him to comfort her. 
 
 ' I must tell you that I consider melancholy a most 
 wilful disease, which is not shaken off because one 
 does not want to shake it off' 
 
 He then hears of P'rau Konig's illness at Vienna : 
 this puts him into a fever of anxiety. She tries to 
 cheer him and keeps up her courage for his sake. He 
 will not be behindhand with her, and assures her
 
 WOLFENB^^'EL. 269 
 __^_ 
 
 he will rather hope the best than- torture himself in 
 advance. 
 
 ' And in this manner I will also write to you ; a 
 healthy man to a healthy woman, a happy man to a 
 happy woman. For truly, if one is the former one 
 must needs be the latter also, and can be if one onrr 
 will. Therefore do not be uneasy for me ; I have 
 made it a rule always to be happy, however little 
 occasion I may see for it, and as I live here there are 
 more people surprised that I do not perish from eu/iut 
 and disgust, than would be surprised if I really did 
 perish. It certainly requires art to persuade oneself 
 that one is happy, but then in what else does happi- 
 ness consist than in such self persuasion }' 
 
 In April 1771, Eva Konig had again passed 
 through Brunswick on her return from Vienna, and 
 from this time forward there is a change in their mode 
 of address. ' Dearest Friend ' takes the place of 
 ' Dearest Madam,' ' Dear Sir.' It was on this occasion 
 that Lessing half seriously, half in joke, begged Frau 
 Konig to write him no more letters save the one in 
 which she can announce to him that nothing further 
 bars the way to their mutual happiness. She took 
 the remark «?/ ^zed de la lettre ; this led to a 
 passing misunderstanding, which only served to 
 strengthen their intimacy. 
 
 During the summer Lessing was taken ill. His 
 Avork did not fill and satisfy his spirit, and the 
 sedentary habits it involved told on his health. His 
 letters of the period reflect his mental state. 
 
 ' I am no longer ill,' he tells Karl in July 1771, 
 ' but if I said I was as I should wish to be, I should 
 not speak the truth. Among all unfortunates I think 
 the most unfortunate is he who has to work with his
 
 ijo COTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 brain, even if he is not conscious of having one. But 
 what is the use of complaining !' 
 
 'The dust of books falls more and more upon my 
 nerves,' he writes to Gleim (June 1771). ' Soon they 
 will be entirely incapable of certain delicate emotions. 
 But what I no longer feel I shall not forget having 
 felt formerly. I shall never, because I have grown 
 blunt, be unjust towards those who are not yet 
 blunted. I shall never despise any sense because I 
 am unfortunate enough to have lost it.' And, refer- 
 ring to the nature of his literary occupations, he adds: 
 'But I will rather confess that I have, alas ! fallen so 
 low as to find pleasure and nourishment in things 
 that a healthy stomach regards as dry and indigest- 
 ible.' 
 
 Mendelssohn had sent him Ferguson's 'Moral 
 Philosophy.' He expresses his thanks for it, and says 
 it is just such a book as he has needed for some time. 
 ' Most of the books I have here are such as must at 
 length kill reason and time. If we cease to think for 
 a long while, we at last lose the power of thinking. 
 And yet is it well to think the truth "l to occupy one- 
 self seriously with truths in whose constant contra- 
 dictions we live, and, for the sake of our peace, must 
 go on living .-* And of such truths I foresee I shall 
 find several in this Englishman.' 
 
 ' Since I wrote to you last,' he tells Karl, ' I have 
 not even been able to occupy myself with theological 
 nonsense, let alone attending to anything more 
 sensible.' 
 
 He is writing this letter half in a dream, he cannot 
 long fix his attention on anything, and mental exer- 
 tion is out of the question. Sometimes he cannot 
 write more than two or three lines a day, and that
 
 WOLFENBUTTEL. 27 [ 
 
 only with the greatest exertion. His doctor has re- 
 commended taking the Pyrmont waters, and a change 
 of air, and he intends to go to Hamburg. This idea 
 alone sustains him, or he would lose all patience. 
 
 On August 30 he sent Karl the last sheets of his 
 first volume. ' To-morrow I go to Hamburg, and if 
 I there regain my good humour in other society, and 
 other air, a letter to Ramler shall be the first thing I 
 take in hand,' For up to this time he had never 
 thanked Ramler for the trouble of revision, because, 
 as he said afterwards in his letter of excuse, he had 
 been suffering from a veritable hydrophobia of all 
 that concerned writing. 
 
 Lessing lodged in the house of Frau Konig, and 
 during this visit their formal betrothal took place pri- 
 vately, in the presence of a few intimate friends. 
 There was, however, to be no question of marriage 
 until Frau Konig's affairs were in order. This she 
 held a stern duty she owed to her children, and Les- 
 sing acquiesced in her high-minded resolve to save for 
 them out of their patrimony whatever she could. 
 Their happy reunion was saddened by the death of 
 Frau Konig's mother. Lessing had gone to Berlin 
 for a few days, and writes from thence : 
 
 ' My heart bleeds when I consider the sorrow you 
 feel, but ought not to feel, on account of your mother's 
 death. This blow was so expected, is so entirely in 
 the necessary course of things — yet I am not wise to 
 seek to comfort you with cold reflexions. Would to 
 Heaven that the assurance that there is one person in 
 the world who loves you above everything, might 
 prove some comfort to you. This person expects all 
 the happiness that is still destined him from you 
 alone, and implores you for the sake of this happiness
 
 272 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESS INC. 
 
 to cast off all sorrow for the past, and fix your eyes 
 only upon a future when it shall be my sole endea- 
 vour to procure you new repose, and new and daily 
 increasing pleasures. I embrace you a thousand 
 times, my best and dearest friend.' 
 
 It was on the occasion of this visit that Lessing 
 endeavoured to publish a posthumous work by S. H. 
 Reimarus, ' An Apology for the Rational Worship- 
 pers of God.' Reimarus had for many years filled the 
 post of Professor of Oriental Literature in Hamburg. 
 He was held a model of learning and piety ; Paley 
 was indebted to him for materials, and his ' Principal 
 Truths of Natural Religion ' was held a text-book. 
 He had been the first in Germany to recommend 
 Franklin's lightning conductors, and to recognise the 
 value of inoculation. And this same man had se- 
 cretly written a heterodox work, in which he had 
 criticised every point of Church doctrine wherever it 
 departed from reason. His daughter Elise had con- 
 fided to Lessing an insight into this, the darling work 
 of her father's life, which he had entrusted to her care 
 with the desire that it should not be published until 
 the times were ripe. Lessing begged the loan of it, 
 had already shown it to Mendelssohn at Wolfcnbuttel, 
 and discussed the advisability of publication. With 
 his almost romantic love of truth, and disbelief in the 
 expediency of esoteric doctrine, he was eager to make 
 the MS. the common property of the world. Nicolai 
 and Mendelssohn both advised against his putting his 
 head into the hornet's nest of theology ; but Lessing 
 was not easily diverted from any purpose that had 
 taken firm root in his mind. He never would believe 
 that truth in any shape could obstruct or hinder the 
 cause of truth ; the honest thoughts of any human
 
 WOLFENBUTTEL. 273 
 
 mind were an acquisition to the world, and as such 
 should not be withheld from it. Voss announced his 
 willingness to issue the work, provided the theological 
 censor's consent were obtained. When this was re- 
 fused, the project had to be abandoned, but Lessing 
 did not lose sight of his resolve. 
 
 After his return from Hamburg he spent some 
 more happy quiet weeks in the house of Frau Konig. 
 During this time he became a freemason. He had 
 long felt a curiosity regarding this secret society, and 
 was pleased when invited to join the brotherhood. 
 He rapidly passed the three degrees of St. John and 
 became a master-mason. On the day of his recep- 
 tion, when asked by the Worshipful Master of his 
 Lodge whether he had not told him the truth, and 
 that there was nothing contrary to morality, law, or 
 religion in their society, Lessing replied with some 
 warmth, ' No. Would to Heaven I had found something 
 of the kind, I should at least have found something.' 
 
 At the end of October he returned to Brunswick, 
 refreshed and strengthened in body and mind. ' I 
 shall remain here in Brunswick till to-morrow,' he 
 writes to Frau Konig, ' and then welcome my little 
 solitary Wolfenbiittel, where my third thought will 
 always be, you know who. Be sure and let me know 
 everything about you, important and unimportant, 
 yet nothing that concerns you can be unimportant to 
 me. Above all, never let me hear that you are ill or 
 sad. If only I could share my health and my light- 
 heartedness with you ! ' A few days later he writes 
 to her again from Wolfenbiittel : * I should certainly be 
 infinitely happier if my solitude were enlivened by 
 intercourse with the only person for whose constant 
 society I have ever sighed. But the mere hope 
 
 T
 
 274 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 that this happiness is in store for me makes me happy. 
 And ought we to be unhappy because we are not 
 quite so happy as we could wish to be? ' 
 j I In this cheerful frame of mind Lessing once more 
 
 ^ ' turned to composition, and to oblige his publisher 
 resumed his Leipzig idea of writing a tragedy that 
 should treat the story of ' Virginia ' in a modern way. 
 'J'he brutal figure of Appius Claudius is converted 
 into the youthful sentimental libertine, Hettore 
 Gonzaga, whose miniature principality of Guastalla 
 reflects the licentiousness of Louis XIV. 's Versailles. 
 He is already furnished with a niaitresse en titre, the 
 Countess Orsina, of whom however he is weary when 
 the play opens, having been smitten by the charms of 
 Emilia Galotti, the daughter of one of his officers. The 
 Galottis, who lived quietly on their country estates, 
 have always avoided court society, but latterly the 
 mother has insisted, against the wishes of the father, 
 that her daughter should benefit by a city training, 
 and they have spent some time in the capital ; and 
 here, at a Vcgghia in the house of the Chancellor 
 Grimaldi, the Prince has met Emilia and become 
 enamoured of her beauty. The obstacles that stand 
 in the way of his desires, obstacles with which he is 
 unfatniliar, only serve to exasperate his passion. His 
 feeble vacillating spirit is unhinged and stormtost. A 
 petition laid before him is granted because the petitioner 
 bears the name Emilia. A painter who accidentally 
 shows him a portrait of Emilia Galotti is told he may 
 ask the treasurer for ' as much as he likes ' in pay- 
 ment. The court favourite and purveyor of the 
 princely pleasures comes on the scene, and after inform- 
 ing the Prince that the Countess Orsina demands an 
 interview, whic his refused, incidentally relates as
 
 WOLF EN BUTT EL. 275 
 
 town gossip that one Count Appiani is that day going 
 to be married to Emilia Galotti, and to remove her 
 from the principahty to his Piedmontese estates, to 
 live a hfe of rural quiet. This news cumulates the 
 Prince's despair, and he would abandon all hope, but 
 that unfortunately he has at his elbow one of those 
 friends, fatal to autocrats, who scruple at no infamous 
 actions that may secure royal favour. Marinelli 
 invents a stratagem by which Count Appiani is to be 
 charged with a mission of honour that will brook no 
 delay. Should he refuse this, a contingency Marinelli 
 holds barely possible, he has still a resource left. The 
 marriage is to be solemnised at the Galottis' estate of 
 Sabionetta, not in town ; the bride, bridegroom, and 
 mother drive out there this afternoon to join the 
 Count Galotti. The road passes the Prince's sum- 
 mer-house, Dosala ; how easily might an accident be 
 made to occur in this spot ! Only before he takes 
 any further steps, Marinelli desires the Prince to 
 give him carte-blanche, and to sanction anything he 
 may do. 
 
 * Everything, Marinelli,' cries the delighted Prince, 
 * everything that will avert this blow.* 
 
 The Prince is left full of restless longing, irresolute 
 what he should do, until at last the thought strikes 
 him, not to let all depend on Marinelli. Why not 
 also act himself .'' He knows that at this hour it is 
 Emilia's custom to hear Mass at the Dominican 
 church : if he could speak to her there ! It is worth 
 the trial. At that moment a councillor presents 
 himself with business papers. 
 
 ' Anything to be signed } ' asks the Prince, in his 
 
 impatience to be rid of this troublesome disturbance. 
 
 ' A death warrant,' says the minister. 
 
 T 2
 
 276 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING . 
 
 ' With pleasure,' exclaims the absent Prince. * Give 
 it me ; quick.' 
 
 Meanwhile Count Appiani has declined the honour 
 destined for him, and the bridal party start for 
 Sabionetta. But before the royal villa their carriage 
 is attacked, the Count is shot, and Emilia carried out 
 of the fray and into the house by servants, who appear 
 under the guise of rescuers. The Countess Galotti is 
 purposely retained behind ; but at last brought to the 
 villa and told by Marinelli that her daughter is cared 
 for ' as though in the realms of bliss,' she suddenly 
 wakes to suspicion ; she recalls the Prince's marked 
 attentions at the Vegghia, attentions that at the time 
 had merely flattered her maternal vanity. She 
 remembers that Emilia had told her of the infamous 
 whispers that had reached her ears this very morning, 
 while in the presence of the most Holy. Appiani had 
 resigned his breath cursing the name of Marinelli, 
 There is treachery here — treachery, and how is she, a 
 poor defenceless woman, to rescue her daughter out 
 of the wiles of these villains .-' She forces her way at 
 last to Emilia, who, deaf to all the Prince's blandish- 
 ments, falls fainting into her arms. Meanwhile their 
 natural defender arrives. A servant has galloped to 
 Sabionetta and brought the terrible tidings of the 
 Count's death and the family danger to Colonel 
 Galotti. He enters Dosala hurriedly, and demands 
 his wife and daughter ; he knows only too well the repu- 
 tation this summer-house enjoys. Chance makes him 
 arrive together with the Countess Orsina, whom a mis- 
 understood arrangement with the Prince brings to the 
 villa. In her jealous anger, that is not unmingied with 
 noble motives of compassion, she confirms Galotti's 
 worst fears as to the Prince's designs, demonstrates to
 
 WOLFENBUTTEL. 277 
 
 him that this is no accident, but a deep-laid plot, an 
 abduction, and an assassination. She animates him 
 to vengeance, and seeing he is without weapons, she 
 lends him the dagger with which she has herself 
 intended to stab the faithless Gonzaga. Galotti hides 
 the weapon and conceals his emotion, firmly but, 
 quietly claiming his daughter. Marinelli tells him m 
 the name of the Prince that Emilia cannot join her 
 father : a crime has been committed, justice must be 
 vindicated, and pending judicial inquiry, the Galotti 
 family must be separated, not allowed to speak with 
 one another ; the form of the trial absolutely demands 
 this precaution. Emilia, by the special favour of her 
 sovereign, shall be kept under the guard of the most 
 estimable of women, the wife of the Chancellor Gri- 
 maldi. There can be no further doubt as to the 
 Prince's designs now, for Count Galotti knows Gri- 
 maldi's house to be the scene of the Prince's pleasures. 
 However, he pretends to submit, and only begs to be 
 allowed once more to see his daughter. He wishes to 
 assure himself of the sentiments of the girl before he 
 resolves on any form of action ; perhaps she is the 
 accomplice of the Prince, and all this an everyday 
 farce. But he finds her calm ; at once, as her mother 
 had described, the most timid and most determined 
 of her sex, unable to master her first emotions, but 
 after reflexion prepared to meet her fate. When she 
 hears her father's purpose to plunge his dagger into 
 the hearts of the two miscreants, she pleads for them: 
 * No, for Heaven's sake, father ! This life is all the u 
 wicked have ; ' she begs it for herself, for she fears lest 
 she should succumb to the seductions of the Grimaldi 
 house, where, in the one short hour she spent there, 
 she felt a tumult arise in her breast which it took the 
 
 ^^A^
 
 278 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESS INC. 
 
 sternest discipline of religion weeks to lull. She 
 pleads that in olden times there was a father who, to 
 save his daughter from dishonour, plunged the first 
 knife that came to hand into her heart, and thus gave 
 her life a second time. But such deeds are of the 
 past ; there are no such fathers now. 
 
 ' There are — there are, my daughter,' cries Galotti, 
 plunging the dagger into her heart. Then, ' O God, 
 what have I done .-' ' he exclaims. 
 
 ' Broken a rose before the storm had blasted it,' 
 sighs I'^milia, dying. ' Let me kiss this fatherly hand.' 
 The sounds have attracted the Prince. 
 ' What is it .'' Is Emilia not well } ' 
 ' Very well, very well,' replies the father, throwing 
 the dagger at the feet of the Prince. ' You are per- 
 haps waiting till I turn the dagger against myself, to 
 close my deed like a shallow tragedy. You are mis- 
 taken. I go to deliver myself up to justice. I go to 
 await you as my judge. But aft-^^rwards — there — I 
 shall await you before the great Judge of us all.' 
 
 ' Marinelli,' moans the weak prostrate Prince, 
 ' miserable wretch, go hide yourself for ever. Go, 
 I say. God, O God, is it not enough that Princes 
 should be men : must their friends be devils in dis- 
 guise ! ' 
 
 This tragedy, with its concentrated action and 
 nervous laconic diction, is a model of artistic ex- 
 position of plot. Its singleness of purpose, lack of 
 episodes, and paucity of personages are antique in 
 their stern rigour, and stamp it a masterpiece for all 
 time. Yet, with these unquestionable merits, the play 
 leaves reader and spectator cold with an undefined 
 sense of something inharmonious. While reading or 
 seeing, the necessity for close attention to the con-
 
 WOLFENBUTTEL. 279 
 
 densed vigour of the play captivates the mind, it is 
 not until released from this tension that criticism steps 
 in. Criticism has fiercely contested the merits of 
 * Emilia Galotti.' Overlauded by some, it has been 
 underrated by others, but this sharp diversity of 
 opinion evinces that there is something to be censured 
 and excused. What is this something } Lessing him- 
 self in his ' Dramaturgic ' has laid down the rules to 
 be applied to dramatic criticism, and foll<5wing him we 
 at once turn to the pages of Livy, and seek for the 
 analogy between Emilia Galotti and her prototype. 
 Indeed, perhaps but for his own rules he would not 
 have been judged so severely. In Appius Claudius 
 we find a gross barbarian who claims the daughter of 
 Virginius as his slave, and consequently his victim if 
 he chooses, and since such deeds were of everyday 
 occurrence in Rome, it would hardly have roused 
 public attention but for the popularity of Virginia 
 and the deed that frustrated the Decemvir's design. 
 The limits of Rome are to Virginius the limits of the 
 world, and death the only escape. Virginia, young, 
 innocent, ignorant of the traps laid for her, is stabbed 
 without knowing wherefore. It is her inevitable fate, 
 and the story is tragically correct from the antique 
 standpoint of thought. Not so Emilia Galotti. There 
 arises a confusion between modern and ancient mode 
 of thought — the two do not and cannot blend. In 
 the Roman story we have the element of undeserved 
 calamity ; our sympathies are fully roused ; we feel 
 things could not have been otherwise and the proper 
 justice is dealt to the villains in the due course of events. 
 It is otherwise in * Emilia Galotti.' She is not ignorant 
 of the Prince's design, she fears for her virtue, and her 
 murder is closely allied to suicide. A strong sense of
 
 28o GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 revolt at this sudden tragedy seizes us : was it inevit- 
 able, we ask ? Docs not the action pass in civilised 
 times ? Cannot Galotti legally claim his daughter from 
 the Prince's hands ? Let the Prince of a tiny state 
 be never so great an autocrat, his sway is limited by 
 square miles, and he himself may lose severely by his 
 tyranny. He is not above the law, else why are legal 
 inquiries twice named in the play ? If Emilia loved 
 the Prince then she did wrong, and there is poetic jus- 
 tice in the drama, though her punishment in that case 
 would still be disproportionate to her guilt. But 
 Lessing disclaimed this intention, and consequently 
 Emilia's actions are devoid of adequate motive and 
 singularly repellent to sympathy. In lieu of innocent 
 Virginia, 'the sweetest girl in Rome,' we have a cold 
 young woman who is perfectly aware what is meant 
 by the Prince's advances, who never shows the smallest 
 concern on hearing of the murder of a man who in a 
 few hours was to be her husband, and for whom she is 
 said to feel affection, and who begs her father to de- 
 prive her of life on a plea that shocks good taste. 
 
 ' I have young warm blood, my father,like any other. 
 My senses too are senses. I will answer for nothing. 
 I will warrant nothing.' So well-informed a young lady 
 repels our sympathy. Every actress who has undertaken 
 this role instinctively felt this; they foisted in a nascent 
 love for the Prince on Emilia's part, and this pre- 
 supposed, the shocking element is at least eliminated. 
 The play throughout is marked by close cool 
 observation, and terse characterisation, rather than 
 by eloquence. Rarely does one of the person- 
 ages rise to an impassioned utterance ; we can see 
 that Lessing felt himself as he sketched them, but he 
 fails to have us under his control and to convey to us
 
 WOLFENBUTTEL. 281 
 
 the precise impression of what he feels. And no- 
 where is this defect more evident than in the person 
 of Emilia, the heroine to whom all our heart should 
 go out as it goes out to blithe Virginia ; we see his 
 intention, but we do not feel satisfied. Were the play- 
 less closely realistic and accurate, we should not 
 measure it by so accurate a standard. As it is 
 Schlegel's objection, which at first offends as puerile 
 and hypercritical, that the territory is too petty, and 
 hence extrication from it too easy, to justify the 
 necessity of the catastrophe, assumes on consideration 
 some show of justice. 
 
 Judged therefore as a tragedy proper, ' Emilia 
 Galotti' does not meet all requirements. Poetic justice 
 is grossly violated, for it is virtue that is punished and 
 vice goes free. Judged on the other hand as an intrigue 
 play of the eighteenth century the ground of objection 
 is shifted. Tragedy of intrigue is of its essence transient, 
 dependent on external social conditions, laws, and 
 customs, not on the eternally fixed immutable rules 
 of right and wrong : such a play may become worn out, 
 grow impossible and perverted, because no longer 
 adapted to the conditions of politics and society. 
 ' Emilia Galotti ' is such a play, and if it was Lessing's 
 design to expose the corruption of the petty courts, 
 the false and maudlin sentiments of the eighteenth 
 century, with its affectation of classic virtues grafted 
 on the romantic feelings, he has once again shown his 
 master power of grasping the current tendency of his 
 age. But its main idea was too subtle for dramatic 
 exhibition ; psychological analysis is not in place in 
 rapid presentation. Nevertheless, ' Emilia Galotti ' is 
 remarkable, if only as the first open manifestation of 
 social and moral opposition to the current frivolity
 
 282 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 and licentiousness of the courts, the first warning 
 signal given by liberalism to the throne. 
 
 Gossip had spread abroad in Brunswick that 
 Lessing was busy writing a drama that exposed the 
 libertinism of his ducal master. Meanwhile, Dobbelin 
 had begged the play from Lessing for performance on 
 the birthday of the Dowager Duchess. To allay these 
 rumours, which were baseless so far as the first con- 
 ception of the play was concerned, and also because 
 he did not consider a tragedy, and this tragedy in 
 particular, well suited for a gala representation, Lessing 
 submitted the first acts to the ducal approval. The 
 Duke consented to the performance, but even so the 
 play might not have been finished in time, Lessing's 
 usual dilatoriness having intervened, but for Dobbelin's 
 threatening to furnish it with a catastrophe out of his 
 own head. The piece was therefore performed in 
 March 1772, and was applauded on the whole, though 
 the ducal mistresses objected to the Countess Orsina, 
 and the courtiers to Marinclli. The Prince had attended 
 the performance incognito, and had followed the 
 whole attentively, but Lessing could not be induced 
 to be present either at rehearsal or representation. 
 
 ' For what should I have been at the performance } ' 
 he wrote to Karl, ' to hear shallow criticisms, or reap 
 yet shallower praise ? ' 
 
 This marked absence, however, gave some show 
 of countenance to the whispers that he had intended a 
 satire on the court whose servant he was : a rumour 
 whose untruth was palpable to anyone who at all 
 knew Lessing's fearless rectitude, which would never 
 have allowed him to withdraw in a cowardly fashion 
 from the consequences of his deliberate acts. The 
 real fact was that he was out of heart with the play^
 
 WOLFENBUTTEL. 283 
 
 and that illness was again making itself felt. He was 
 not in a fit mental condition to judge of it. He begs 
 Karl to send him his opinion on his tragedy, for he 
 had been unable to consult with any soul about it. 
 
 ' Yet one must speak to some one about one's work 
 if one does not want to go to sleep over it. The mere 
 assurance that we are on the right road, that is given 
 by our own criticism, however convincing it may be, 
 is yet so cold and fruitless that it can exert no influ- 
 ence on our work.' 
 
 In answer to a rapturous letter from Ebert the day 
 after the performance, Lessing replied : ' If I did not 
 know how much too warm a friend you are, your letter 
 might persuade me that I have done something extra- 
 ordinary ; but to-day, when it is to be hoped you are 
 cooler, you would write in a different tone ; and how 
 much will you not retract when once you read the 
 play in print.' Lessing encloses two printed copies, 
 one for Ebert and one which he begs him give the 
 Prince, and say that the slightest approval of his 
 Highness would be agreeable to the author, but that 
 his reason for not accompanying the work by a letter 
 is the notion that he should have to apologise to the 
 Prince for this piece of authorship out of his regular 
 course of employment, ' and I so much dislike apolo- 
 gising. By and by you can perhaps tell the Prince 
 that it is really a work the greater part of which was 
 completed some years ago, and to which I have only 
 given the finishing touch.' 
 
 He did not pay much attention to criticism, 
 adverse or otherwise, only he was annoyed when his 
 brother inquires whether it is true that he intends to 
 alter the catastrophe. 
 
 * Whoever has told you that I have altered the
 
 284 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 conclusion of my tragedy has told an untruth. What 
 do they want me to alter in it ? In short, do not 
 believe anyone who tells you anything else about me 
 and the new piece, except that I am taking all pf^ins 
 to forget it.'
 
 WOLFENBUTTEL. 285 
 
 CHAPTER XV. ^ 
 
 WOLFENBUTTEL — {cOTltiimed). 
 
 (1772-1775. Aged 43-46.) 
 
 ' Nur wer die Sehnnicht kennt 
 
 Weiss was ich hide, 
 Allein und abgetrennt 
 Von jeder Freude. ' 
 
 Perhaps Lessing had never attached so little value 
 to any of his works as to ' Emilia Galotti.' His head 
 was full of other matters. He had been more or less in- 
 disposed all the winter, his eyesight had been failing. 
 His mother, and especially his miserly sister, pestered 
 him for money, so that he had to draw a year's salary 
 in advance. He was anxious on account of Frau 
 Konig, whose affairs grew more instead of less in- 
 volved ; and he was himself unsettled by repeated 
 underhand inquiries whether he would accept a post 
 at Vienna. He replied, as he had replied before, 
 that if these invitations concerned the theatre, he 
 would have nothing to say to them. At the same 
 time he did not utterly repel all advances, for a reason 
 which he did not mention to his brother, but of which 
 he made no secret to Frau Konig, namely, the proba- 
 bility that she might have to settle in Vienna on 
 account of her factories, and that he would thus not 
 only be near her, but that such an appointment might 
 hasten their union. All Frau Konig's letters that
 
 286 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 winter were full of details of unfortunate business 
 affairs, complicated by illiberal restrictions imposed by 
 the Austrian Government. 
 
 ' I would gladly eat bread and water in the most 
 miserable corner of the world, if only I were out of 
 this labyrinth,' she writes. 
 
 He answers : ' Remember your own words, that 
 you are not to blame for all this misery. Only re- 
 main cheerful, that you may remain in health. Lose 
 whatever you must lose, keep as much for your 
 children as you can keep, and calmly leave all else to 
 Providence. If you have nothing further to seek in 
 Vienna, if nothing obliges you to live there rather than 
 at any other place, then Vienna is for me also a most 
 indifferent spot, for which I would not exchange my 
 present situation under the most advantageous terms 
 in the world. I shall then certainly refuse all ad- 
 vances from thence, and make no further use of them 
 except as a means to enforce some improvement 
 in my condition here. And then, my love, you 
 can have no further excuse not to keep your word 
 to me. If you would rather live in the most miser- 
 able corner on bread and water than continue in 
 your present confusion, Wolfenbiittel is enough of a 
 hole, and we shall not want for bread and water and 
 even something more.' 
 
 But as Frau Konig's prospects grew darker, so 
 that she was threatened by the total loss of her for- 
 tune, her high-minded generous soul made her re- 
 pent that she should ever have allowed Lessing 
 to be drawn into her troubles. ' I can look back 
 calmly upon the whole of my past life,' she writes, 
 ' up to the moment when I was weak enough to 
 confess an affection that I had firmly resolved to
 
 WOLFENBUTTEL. 23; 
 
 conceal, at least until my circumstances should take a 
 favourable turn. I am convinced you would no 
 less have taken a friendly interest in everything that 
 befell me, but you would not have made my concerns 
 your own, as you now do, although you ought not to 
 do so. For my determination is not to be shaken. 
 If I am unhappy I shall remain so alone, and your 
 fate shall not be interwoven with mine. You know 
 my reasons for this : nay more, your candour would 
 not permit you to disapprove them. Do not therefore 
 call them excuses. The word excuse wounded me. 
 Ask your heart whether in a similar case it would not 
 act in the same manner ; and if it answer No, then 
 believe that you do not love me half as much as I 
 love you. The only thing I beg is thatyou will not allow 
 your plans to be influenced by me, but will act just 
 as you would have acted if you had not known me.' 
 
 Lessing replies that he would on no account 
 counsel her to any actions contrary to rectitude, but 
 he thinks she strains her obligations to her husband's 
 creditors too far, and advises her to go again to 
 Vienna and look after matters in person, instead of 
 trusting to others : ' I think you will do more than 
 any man.' Meanwhile he will keep his Viennese offers 
 open, since he finds they do not concern the theatre, 
 but the Academy of Sciences that had once before 
 been mooted ; and when Frau Konig is on the spot, 
 perhaps she will make personal inquiries as to the 
 feasibility of the scheme. After all, his Wolfenbiittel 
 post is a mere pis-aller, only he is haunted by a 
 shrewd suspicion that the Viennese appointment would 
 require him to make some personal advances, parti- 
 cularly at court, since his Protestant faith would 
 weigh against him in the eyes of Maria Theresa. * But
 
 288 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. ■ 
 
 to offer myself is a very hard nut for me to crack, and 
 it would be difficult to move me thereto except for 
 the sake of a person whom I love more than myself 
 In March 1772 Frau Konig followed Lcssing's 
 advice, and went in person to Vienna. While await- 
 ing her reports from thence, Lessing wrote in answer 
 to a letter from Ramler regarding ' Emilia Galotti ' : 
 
 ' Dearest Friend, 
 
 * How much I am indebted to you for your 
 praise, and your friendly endeavours to procure a 
 good reception for my " Emilia," you can judge for 
 yourself But now for a better kind of praise 
 that we can give among oui^selves, your criticism. 
 You have promised it me, and I expect it confi- 
 dently and soon. I will confide to you that criticism 
 is the only means to spur me on to more, and to 
 refresh me. For, since I am not in a position to 
 apply the criticism to the criticised piece, since I am 
 altogether spoilt for improving, and moreover hold it 
 to be almost impossible to improve a drama when it 
 has once been brought to a certain stage of comple- 
 tion — for improvement should concern more than 
 trifles — I should certainly use the criticism on some- 
 thing new. Therefore, dear friend, if you too wish 
 that I should do something new of this kind, you see 
 it is requisite, to provoke me by censure, not to make 
 this particular thing better, but in general to make 
 something better. And, since this better must neces- 
 sarily have its faults, so this alone is the ring through 
 the nose whereby I can be kept incessantly dancing.' 
 
 ' Emilia Galotti ' completed, Lessing felt his 
 mental faculties unduly exhausted, and tells Karl he 
 purposes never to try them so again. Tiie general
 
 WOLFENBUTTEL. 289 
 
 inalaise and dejection felt before his Hamburg visit 
 attacked him with redoubled force. ' I have almost 
 got back to the point where I was a year ago, and if 
 I have to exert myself it may become worse. This 
 my condition of general discomfort (for I cannot call 
 it illness) is to blame for my not having yet seen my 
 new play acted, although it has been already repre- 
 sented three times.' He resolved to be once more a 
 true librarian in his sense of the term ; examining the 
 treasures of the library, and setting apart those which 
 might seem suitable for publication. He commenced 
 by a general rearrangement of the contents, in antici- 
 pation of his possible retirement from his post. In 
 consequence he laid aside the revision of his works 
 for Voss. 'The contributions from the library must 
 needs be made, for I will not be called librarian for 
 nothing ; and in the end it might be held to my dis- 
 credit if I occupied myself only with extraneous 
 work.' He will not hear of any theatrical work. ' No 
 one,' he writes, ' likes to submit to labour from which 
 he receives no profit whatever, either in money, 
 honour, or pleasure. In the time that a piece of ten 
 sheets takes me I could easily and well write a hun- 
 dred sheets of something else. It is true that I have 
 lately reckoned that I have at least twelve comedies 
 and tragedies by me, each of which I could complete 
 within six weeks. But why stretch myself upon the 
 rack for nothing at all .'' They have lately, from 
 Vienna, offered me a hundred ducats for a play, but 
 I want a hundred louis d'or. You will say this is 
 very grasping on my part, assuming even that my 
 pieces are worth as much. I reply : Every artist tries 
 to live as comfortably as he can by his works, why 
 not also an author } If my plays are not worth one 
 
 u
 
 290 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 hundred louis d'or, then I would rather hear nothing 
 more about them, for then they are worth nothing. 
 For the honour of my dear Fatherland I will not put 
 pen to paper, even if in this respect she depended 
 solely and alone on my pen. For my own honour it 
 is enough if the world sees that I could be capable of 
 doing something in this line. Therefore money for 
 my fish. . . . Money is just what I need, and I 
 need it now more than ever. I wish in a year and a 
 day to owe no man anything, and tQ that end I must 
 use my time better than for the theatre.' 
 
 He had owned to his brother that only while at 
 work could he forget the annoyances of his position. 
 Karl therefore again urged him to dramatic work, 
 remarking that it was surely indifferent at what he 
 worked, so long as he worked. 
 
 ' You are wrong,' he replies, ' if you believe that 
 under present circumstances it is indifferent to me at 
 what I work. Nothing less, either in regard to the 
 work, or in regard to the prime object for which I work. 
 I have often in my life been in very miserable circum- 
 stances, but never yet in such as compelled me in the , 
 strictest sense to write for bread. I hav^e begun my 
 contributions solely on that account because this work ■ 
 pays, since I need only send one scribble after the 
 other into the printing-office, to receive from time to 
 time a few louis d'er to live from one day to 
 another.' 
 
 To Frau Konig Lessing does not so openly speak 
 out his depression. He still tries to cheer her under 
 her trials ; he tells how hard he is working at the re- 
 arrangement of the library, as though he were going 
 to live and die there. And who knows whether this 
 may not be the case } Matters at Vienna seem in-
 
 WOLFENBUTTEL. 291 
 
 dined to spin themselves out. No matter ; he will 
 live here, as we should always live, ready at any 
 moment to go away, and yet willing to stay on. 
 He then laughs at himself for falling into a moral- 
 ising tone, and says in his excuse that he possesses 
 a special gift of finding some good thing even iji 
 the worst circumstances : a gift of which he is prouder 
 than of anything he knows or can do. He had had 
 some thoughts of continuing his ' Antiquarian Letters,' 
 when Klotz's sudden death put an end to this pur- 
 pose. He had been afraid lest Klotz should stand 
 in the way of his Vienna appointment, * but the man 
 has been wiser than I calculated,' he writes to Frau 
 Konig, to whom he imparts all his plans, literary and 
 otherwise. ' He has died. I should like to laugh at 
 this chance, but it makes me graver than I could have 
 believed.' 
 
 Rheumatic pains, toothache, vertigo, and failure of 
 sight, that prevented him from reading and writing, 
 embittered the spring (1772), so that Lessing let two 
 months elapse before writing to Frau Konig. Then, 
 under date June 27 (1772) : 'Which of us both now 
 most needs cheering ">. that is the great question. You 
 at least have nothing but cares whose end you can 
 foresee by one means or the other, while I am not 
 rarely disgusted with the whole of life. I dream away 
 rather than liv^ away my days. A continuous labour 
 that exhausts me without giving me pleasure (this 
 refers to the rearrangement of the library) ; a resi- 
 dence that is une«durable to me, owing to the entire 
 absence of society (such society as I could have I do 
 not like), with no prospect but that of eternal mono- 
 tony : all these things have so bad an influence on my 
 mind, and so react on my body, that I do not know 
 
 u 2
 
 292 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESS I KG. 
 
 whether I am ill or well. Whoever sees me compli- 
 ments me on my healthy looks ; while I should like 
 to answer these compliments in each case by a box 
 .on the ears. For what is the use of my looking suffi- 
 ciently well if I can do nothing proper to a man in 
 health .'' I can scarcely guide my pen, as you will see 
 from this illegible letter, which I have had to break 
 off four or five times. My comfort is that this state 
 cannot possibly last.' 
 
 In this eternal monotony he was more and more 
 consumed with longing for his beloved Eva, while the 
 prospect of their union seemed to grow more and 
 more indefinite. Her portrait, he says, is his only 
 pleasure, the best and dearest companion of his Wol- 
 fenbiittel solitude. ' Ah when — but you know what I 
 wish.' After this Lessing let a month pass without 
 writing a letter ; he was ill, dejected, concerned on her 
 account. Then he kept silent till October, when he 
 roused himself to write, reproaching himself, and full 
 of anxiety lest his friend should grow suspicious of 
 this long silence. He apologized for not writing for 
 so long, but he hopes he knows she will not doubt 
 him. Now, however, he must open his heart to the 
 only person in the world to whom he can really do so. 
 And he lays bare to her his circumstances, and the 
 vile mood that has hindered him even from writincf to 
 her. 
 
 ' But you will ask what was then at fault } 
 Thousands and thousands of things, all so petty that 
 they cannot be told, but which taken altogether had so 
 extraordinary an effect upon me, that to put it briefly, 
 during the whole time when I sent no news of myself, 
 I might as well have not lived at all. Not that I have 
 been ill, although I have not been well. I have been
 
 WOLFENBUTTEL. 293 
 
 worse than ill ; irritable, dissatisfied, furious with my- 
 self and the whole world, you alone excepted. In 
 addition to this, I had involved myself in a task that 
 required far more time and exertion than I had fore- 
 seen. During the last few days I have been obliged 
 to make a little pause in this work, and perhaps it is 
 this that makes me feel somewhat calmer at present. 
 I will make use of these moments that will doubtless 
 
 soon vanish again You know, my love, what I 
 
 have often confessed to you, that I cannot possibly 
 endure this place for long. In the solitude in which I 
 am forced to live I grow more stupid and angry from 
 day to day. I must go again among human beings, 
 from whom I am almost entirely shut out here. For 
 what does it avail me that I can call on this or on that 
 person here or in Brunswick .-• Visits are no social 
 intercourse, and I feel that I must of necessity have 
 intercourse, and that with people to whom I am not 
 indifferent, if only a spark of good is to remain in me. 
 Without society I go to sleep, and only wake now 
 and then to perpetrate some folly. Therefore hear, 
 my love, the plan I have made for myself, for how it 
 will go with you I see clearly. You will never get 
 away from Vienna, at any rate not yet awhile. If 
 therefore I also stay here and lay my hands in my 
 lap, nothing will come of what in happier moments 
 I pictured as so possible and so easy. This plan 
 can save me, or nothing.' 
 
 This plan was to remind the Duke of the pro- 
 mised Italian journey. The way would lead him 
 through Vienna, and he was determined to see after 
 things there with his own eyes, so that he might, if 
 possible, stay with her for good. In any case he will 
 thus see her again ; meanwhile he must work hard all
 
 294 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 the winter, and afterwards nothing shall retain him from 
 hastening to her. It makes his heart ache to think 
 how little happiness she too is enjoying, engulphed in 
 vexatious business affairs, and separated from her 
 children. A letter of the same date to his brother 
 breathes a similar spirit : 
 
 ' Wolfenbiittel : October 28, 1772. 
 
 ' Dear Brother, — You know probably by experi- 
 ence how matters stand with me when for a long time 
 I send no news of myself ; I mean that I am then 
 extremely dissatisfied. Who would seek to widen the 
 sphere of his life by friendship and sympathy when 
 life altogether almost disgusts him .-' Or who cares to 
 hunt afar off for pleasant sensations if he sees nothing 
 close at hand that can afford him a single one .-' For 
 some time past I had been free from illness, and have 
 therefore not been idle. I have worked more than 
 I am generally accustomed to work ; but only at things 
 which, I may truly say, a greater bungler than I might 
 have done just as well. I shall shortly send you the 
 first volume of " Contributions to History and Lite- 
 rature, from the Treasures of the Ducal Library at 
 Wolfenbiittel," &c., with which I mean to go on con- 
 tinuously until I once more have inclination and 
 strength to work at something more sensible. But 
 that is scarcely likely to be soon. Indeed I do 
 not even know whether I wish it. This dry librariar» 
 work can be so easily written off without any partici- 
 pation of mind, and without the slightest exertion. 
 Meantime I can always satisfy myself with this con- 
 solation, that I amdoing mydutyto my ofiice.and learn-, 
 ing something at the same time, even granting that 
 not the hundredth part of this something is worth 
 learning. Yet why do I write all this to you, and
 
 WOLFENBUTTEL. 295 
 
 distress you more than my total silence would have 
 done ? I wish that you, for your part, may really be 
 as happy as from your letter you seem to be. I am 
 sorry that you kept silence so long, thinking that I 
 was away. I have not gone further the whole summer 
 than from Brunswick to Wolfenbiittel, and from 
 Wolfenbiittel to Brunswick. Even these changes I 
 shall have to renounce for the future. Yet this shall 
 be the least of my cares, and I will gladly withdraw 
 still more from all society, and pinch and struggle 
 here in solitude, if only I can thereby acquire peace in 
 other matters.' 
 
 The latter remark refers to his urgent money 
 needs, owing to the Camenz demands and debts. 
 Thus passed the year, and with the commencement of 
 the new one (1773) he seemed a trifle more cheerful. 
 He writes to Frau Konig : 
 
 'Januar)' 8. 
 
 * I can no longer disguise from myself the fact 
 that I am more hypochondriacal than I ever thought 
 to become. The only thing that reassures me is this, 
 that I see from experience that my hypochondria 
 cannot have taken very deep root, for as soon as I 
 leave this accursed castle and go among men I can 
 manage for awhile. Then I ask myself, why remain 
 longer in this accursed castle .'' If I were still the 
 old sparrow on the roof, I should have been off again 
 a -hundred times. During the last eight days I have 
 been obliged to go into society. I had to go to court 
 for the new year, and did with the rest what is certainly 
 no use when one does it, but may do harm if one 
 neglects it, namely, I have scraped and bowed and 
 used my mouthpiece ; the only wish that I really felt 
 all the while was . . . alas ! you know only too well
 
 296 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 what, my love. Can it be that there is no happy year 
 more in store for me ? ' 
 
 He repeats how he is devoured with longing to 
 be with her, how every letter he writes to her makes 
 him unsettled for a week and incapable of work. He 
 apologizes for having left her so long without a letter; 
 it is a habit of his — he does not know whether he can 
 call it a good or a bad one — that he cannot write to a 
 person whom he loves, with his head full of dark fancies 
 and his heart overflowing with gall. 
 
 In this same January (1773) Lessing issued the 
 first volume of his ' Contributions.' He had received 
 the ducal permission to print whatever he held fit, 
 independent of the censor, and the opportunity was 
 thus given into his hands to serve the cause of 
 enlightenment. For since the Wolfenbiittel library 
 was peculiarly rich in MSS. bearing on theology, and 
 since Lessing held that no words of a truth-seeking, 
 honest-minded man could ever be harmful, it was his 
 intention to introduce sundry papers of this nature. 
 His design was to substitute continuous progress in 
 the place of religious immobility, to oppose to the 
 radical and flippant negations of the Berlin school of 
 enlightened rationalism the gravity of historical criti- 
 cism. Discussion, he held, must be salutary in as far 
 as it cleared the ground for truth ; discussion was 
 progress. The Aufkldrcrci sect of Nicolai was as 
 narrow as the most dogmatic adherents of authority, 
 and equally unable to conceive of anything beyond 
 the grasp of their own understandings. Lessing 
 desired free examination, but it was to be learned and 
 thorough. He desired tolerance ; but it was to be 
 inspired by charity. The tendency of the age was to 
 encyclopaedic knowledge ; but Lessing was the first
 
 WOLFENBUTTEL. 297 
 
 who resuscitated old books and documents, not as 
 mere curiosities, the monuments left by past periods, 
 but as additions to the history of the human mind. 
 He is therefore no mere collector, but for all his own 
 contempt of his labours as a librarian, he remains the 
 philosophical thinker through whose endeavours runs 
 a definite thread of purpose. He does not merely 
 impart his discoveries and the result of his investi- 
 gations, but in each case shows the path or the 
 circumstance that led to the discovery, because, as he 
 explains : 'The manner in which one has come to a 
 matter is as valuable, even as instructive, as the matter 
 itself.' In such a department a certain sense for the 
 small, the seemingly trivial, is useful and necessary. 
 This loving examination of minutiae was a literary 
 quality that Lessing combined, strangely enough, with 
 a wide range of vision. He defends this treatment in 
 his notice of the ancient glass windows of the Hirschau 
 Monastery. The weary reader will exclaim with 
 disgust : ' What ! broken glass ' ( Vitrca fractd). ' Yes, 
 by your leave ! even in the learned world one must 
 live and let live. What does not serve us may serve 
 another ; what is not important or attractive to us is 
 so to another.' 
 
 In these words lies Lessing's apology for his 
 ' Contributions,' of which two volumes were published 
 in 1773. Their contents were varied, and in their 
 isolation are of interest only to the erudite. The only 
 theological contribution of the year was rather in 
 support of orthodoxy than otherwise ; not only histori- 
 cally but dogmatically. It was neither more nor less 
 than two small writings of Leibnitz, which Lessing 
 had discovered in the ducal library, and which had 
 been overlooked by the editor of his collected works.
 
 298 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESS INC. 
 
 The one dealt with the question of eternal punishment, 
 the other was Leibnitz's defence of the Trinity. More 
 remarkable than Leibnitz's short preface is Lessing's 
 exposition and philosophical defence of eternal punish- 
 ment as promulgated by Leibnitz. The paper on the 
 Trinity was written in reply to the Socinian Wisow- 
 atius, and the defence was scarcely intelligible without 
 the attack ; Lessing accordingly printed both. Curi- 
 ously enough, in one obscure passage of the MS. 
 Mendelssohn helped him to find the true meaning. 
 ' Is it not strange,' he wrote to Moses, ' that you should 
 restore the true reading of a treatise that must seem, 
 and is, complete nonsense to you from end to end } 
 It is nonsense to me- also, and no doubt was the same 
 to Leibnitz ; and yet I am convinced that here still 
 Leibnitz thought and acted as Leibnitz : for it is 
 unquestionably better to defend an unphilosophical 
 position philosophically, than to reject it unphiloso- 
 phically.' 
 
 The theologians praised,the neologians condemned, 
 when they read these papers. Karl reproached his 
 brother with making advances to the orthodox party. 
 ' What do I care for the orthodox party .-' ' he replies. 
 ' I despise them as much as you do, only I despise 
 our new-fangled parsons still more, who are too little 
 of theologians and not nearly enough of philosophers, 
 I am convinced that if once these shallow heads get 
 uppermost they will in time tyrannize more than the 
 orthodox have ever done. Nor do I despise certain 
 learned labours as much as you, even if at first sight 
 they seem more laborious than useful. What you 
 consider for instance as a vain labour of Kennicott's 
 has accidentally helped us to a part of the lost books 
 of Livy.
 
 WOLFENBUJTEL. 299 
 
 Lessing sent the first volume of his ' Contributions ' 
 to Heyne with the following note : 
 
 ' Wolfenbiittel : January 13, 1773. 
 
 * You once prophesied that the discovery of Be- 
 rengarius would cost me dear, inasmuch as I should 
 acquire a taste for discoveries that would rob me of 
 my time and would but rarely reward me. Here- 
 with the fulfilment of your prophecy ! If you are 
 so good as to believe that I could have written 
 something better, I pray you not to forget that a 
 librarian ought to write nothing better. And a 
 librarian I am, and I do not wish to be one merely 
 in name. 
 
 * I am, with profound esteem, &c., 
 
 ' Lessing.' 
 
 In the meantime Lessing's resolve to go to Vienna 
 and see Frau Konig or to take some desperate and 
 decisive step was frustrated by the Hereditary Prince, 
 who early in February desired him to attend on him 
 in Brunswick. With this request Lessing complied, 
 and the Prince of his own accord told him that 
 he wished to give him a position more suited to his 
 deserts. A Hofrath had lately died whom the Duke 
 employed specially in such questions as concerned the 
 history and law of the ducal household. The Prince 
 thought it would be easy for Lessing to acquire the 
 needful skiil and knowledge to fill his place. The 
 salary appertaining, combined with his income as libra- 
 rian, would enable him to live respectably in Bruns- 
 wick. The only condition annexed was, that Lessing 
 should abandon his projects of quitting the service of 
 th& house of Brunswick or roaming about the world. 
 If he ac<5uiesced, the matter should be laid before
 
 300 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 the Duke for formal assent, on the Prince's return from 
 a short journey to Potsdam. Lessing accepted the 
 proposal with delight. Here he was at last at the 
 goal of his desires. He returned to Wolfenbiittel 
 confident that, at longest, in a fortnight he would see 
 an end put to all his misery. Of course he at once 
 informed Frau Konig. ' I do not know,' he says, 
 ' whether the Prince had got wind of my plans. But 
 you can easily imagine what I answered him. I 
 accepted his offer for the present, not however con- 
 cealing that without a better prospect I should not 
 have endured to remain here any longer.' 
 
 The Prince went to Potsdam and returned; Lessing 
 awaited a definite summons to Brunswick. None came. 
 So the weeks passed and the matter remained at the 
 same point. He could not write to Frau Konig. He 
 felt his honour compromised and that he had been 
 shamefully played with. Not till April did she again 
 hear from him. His impatience and irritated mood 
 found vent in this letter : 
 
 ' I could go mad ! What will you think of me ? 
 What must you think of me .-* I wrote to you more 
 than eight weeks ago that something was pending 
 here for me that should decide my future once for all, 
 and which I hoped would decide it as I could wish. 
 Hozv I wish it no one knows better than you. I 
 thought confidently that not a week, not a fortnight 
 would elapse before I could write to you with cer- 
 tainty of the matter. And if I did not write to you 
 sooner than when I could write as I wish, eight weeks 
 might easily pass again, and who knows if in the end 
 I should not have to write to you that I have been 
 deceived. Now is not this enough to drive one mad ! 
 Without the slightest provocation on my part, they
 
 WOLFENBUTTEL. 301 
 
 expressly send for me, make ever such a fuss over me, 
 stuff me with fair words and promises, and afterwards 
 act as though nothing had been mentioned. Since 
 then I have been twice to Brunswick, have shown 
 myself, and desired to know how matters stood. But 
 no answer, or as good as none ! Now I am here 
 again once more, and have sworn not to set foot in 
 Brunswick until the matter is as voluntarily brought 
 to an end as it was voluntarily set on foot. If they 
 once let me make an end with the library, and with 
 certain work that I can finish, and can only finish in 
 Wolfenbiittel, nothing in the world shall hold me here 
 any longer. I think I can anywhere find as much 
 as I give up here. And even if I did not find it .■* 
 Rather beg than submit to be treated thus.' 
 
 A few days later he writes to his brother, apolo- 
 gizing for his renewed silence, which has not arisen 
 from want of brotherly affection. He tells him also 
 of the advances made, and of the suspense in which 
 he has been kept. ' But in a year and a day at latest 
 I shall write to you from another place than Wolfen- 
 biittel. No doubt it is a good thing to study for a 
 while in a large library, but to bury oneself therein is 
 madness. I notice as well as others, that the work I 
 am doing now is blunting me. But for this very 
 reason I want to complete it as soon as may be, and 
 to continue and issue my " Contributions " down to the 
 last paltry item that was to be inserted according to 
 my plan. Not to do this would be wilfully to lose the 
 three years I have spent here.' 
 
 For three months Lessing kept his resolve, and 
 spent all his time in his own rooms or in the library. 
 A young Frenchman, Francois Cacault, was at the 
 time studying there. He had read Lessing's ' Drama-
 
 302 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 turgie/ and had been irritated by the attacks on his 
 nation, contending that ' les regies du bon gout sont 
 partout les memcs.' At last he determined to go and 
 see Lessing for himself, and was so charmed with him 
 that he completely changed his mind about the 
 ' Dramaturgic,' which he forthwith translated into 
 French. Nicolai gleefully writes to Lessing : ' And 
 so you have completely transformed M. Cacault, and 
 have justified my remark that it is needful to know 
 Lessing in personal intercourse to do him full justice.' 
 As Lessing was seeing no one else, that visitor was 
 not unwelcome, and he and Cacault spent most even- 
 ings together. Else he rather pretended to be busy 
 than was really so. His condition of despondency 
 and weariness was mastering him. He would have 
 taken some desperate step, and spoken his mind to 
 the Prince in a manner that would have endangered all 
 his future prospects, had not Frau Konig urged him 
 to be patient and moderate. He began twenty letters 
 to her, but left them all unfinished. At last, in June, 
 circumstances forced him to go to Brunswick. He 
 stayed six days, and returned somewhat more cheer- 
 ful ; but in the main no progress. Still he was able 
 to rouse himself to write to Frau Konig. * Can you 
 believe it,' he says, ' that I still do not know where I 
 am .'' This behaviour is intolerable to me, and nothing 
 short of your express injunction has availed to re- 
 strain me from taking a rash step, which nevertheless 
 I am still constantly tempted to take. Shall I not at 
 last be obliged to take it .'' I vow I cannot bear it 
 much longer. It must bend or break.' 
 
 Again the weeks passed on and no news. In 
 August the all-powerful Minister von Schliefcrt died. 
 He had till then managed affairs, and was notorious
 
 WOLFENBUTTEL. 303 
 
 for his procrastinations ; and, from some remarks let 
 fall by the Prince, Lessing was justified in supposing 
 that he was the cause of the delay. On the Minister's 
 death the Prince took the reins of government, and 
 endeavoured to repair by economy the shattered state 
 of the ducal finances. Now, therefore, Lessing might 
 expect that his affair would be brought to a conclu- 
 sion. Nothing of the kind, and in September Lessing 
 tells Frau Konig ' he is in danger of succumbing to 
 bitterness of anger.' He cannot write to her ; he is 
 physically and mentally incapable, he tears up letter 
 after letter, and all the while he is tortured with the 
 thought of what she must think of his silence, and 
 lest she should doubt his love. And yet he only 
 defers writing out of mere idle hope that from day to 
 day he may be able to send good news. ' You alone,' 
 he repeats, 'have hitherto prevented me, and still 
 prevent me, from taking an over-hasty step, whose 
 evil consequences I foresee, but which all the same I 
 should certainly have taken if I should not at the 
 same time have forfeited thereby the only serious 
 hope that I ever cherished in all my life. You know 
 what hope, my love.' 
 
 Nevertheless he did send in two remonstrances, 
 but without avail. He confided to Karl that he should 
 venture a third, and then, if they forced him to ask 
 for dismissal, he would of course at first be in some 
 perplexity whither to turn, but he certainly hoped 
 only at first. But as this condition of uncertainty 
 grew protracted, Lessing's courage failed him, and his 
 obstinate resolve not to show himself in Brunswick, 
 or to go among men, only heightened his condition of 
 hypochondria. His failing eyesight made the long 
 winter evenings doubly painful to endure alone. In
 
 304 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 this state of bitterness and wounded pride he kept up 
 an obstinate silence even towards Frau Konig. In 
 December he breaks it. It is the selfsame old story, 
 he says : he is angry, depressed, morose. 
 
 'For the last four months I have as good as never 
 left Wolfenbiittel and my accursed castle. I have 
 only been twice to Brunswick for a few hours, for I 
 have sworn never again, while my present condition 
 lasts, to remain there a night, where they (you know 
 who) behave to me in a fashion that is unendurable ; 
 in a fashion that at any other time, under other cir- 
 cumstances, nothing in the world could have made me 
 endure. I will therefore, however, not even run into 
 the danger of coming in his way. If he wants to boast 
 of having led me by the nose, let him. But all my 
 life I shall not forget it. Next January it will be a 
 year since he personally made me the first advance. 
 I will wait till then to tell him my mind in as bitter a 
 fashion as certainly never before was employed to- 
 w^ards any prince. 
 
 ' But what can I do meantime, except busy myself 
 among my books, so as, if possible, to forget among 
 them all visions of the future .'' For a far longer time 
 than to you, my love, I have not written to a soul: nei- 
 ther to my mother, nor my brothers, nor anyone else. 
 Neither do I answer anyone who writes to me on other 
 than library concerns. The best thing to do would be 
 to issue a circular to all my acquaintances, from most 
 of whom I do not even desire to see a letter, request- 
 ing them to regard me as dead. For in truth, my 
 love, it is almost impossible to me to write. Even to 
 you I have begun more than ten letters and torn them 
 up again. I can send you this one piece of good news, 
 that I am very well. I believe anger keeps me well.'
 
 WOLFENBUTTEL. 305 
 
 As Frau Konig was the only person to whom 
 Lessing opened his heart, so she was the only one 
 who could appease him. Her own affairs were any- 
 thing but prosperous, and she was suffering as well. 
 But she endeavoured her uttermost to cheer him. 
 
 ' I would gladly bear all my troubles, if only you 
 were happy and content. You cannot believe how 
 much I feel it, that I cannot think of you otherwise 
 than in so sad a condition of spirit that it almost 
 makes me doubt whether you can really be so well as 
 you imagine. It may be wrong of me to say this to 
 you, but the fear lest you should be neglecting your- 
 self urges me. You cannot possibly be well, or you 
 would have power and desire to resist the angry mood 
 revealed in every line of your letter. It is true you 
 have been badly treated, or rather they have mistaken 
 the manner in which to deal with a man like you. 
 But so long as the post offered to you is not disposed 
 of, you have no reason to be as indignant as you are. 
 That the person in question intended to deceive you 
 in making the offer, I cannot believe, for I should have 
 to picture him the basest wretch. I would rather be- 
 lieve that other business has caused him to forget the 
 matter, and no one reminds him of it since you do 
 not. And if what a stranger told me is true who 
 lately passed through these parts, the house is in 
 such difficulties that matters may soon come to a 
 national bankruptcy, and it is therefore not aston- 
 ishing if things of this kind are forgotten. Mean- 
 while it grieves me that it should be you who suffer 
 under it. A hundred times already I have wished 
 that the whole business had never been named. . . . 
 Spare me your circular, please ; I shall not accept it. 
 I would rather renounce everything in the world than 
 
 X
 
 3o6 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 your letters. I suppose you were not serious in your 
 intention of sending one to me, or I should have to 
 consider you as a most cruel man, and that you are 
 not.' 
 
 Frau Konig's clearsighted penetration had here 
 hit the right mark. When the hereditary Prince 
 assumed the conduct of affairs, as the goodnatured 
 old Duke was fast falling into imbecility, at best 
 engrossed by his mistresses, he found financial affairs 
 in a lamentable condition. The calamity of a state 
 bankruptcy could indeed only be averted by the most 
 desperate measures, measures revolting to our modern 
 ideas, for the Prince, who was willing to convert his 
 jewels into money, saw himself at last forced to sell 
 what was infinitely more precious — his subjects. 
 England and Holland were the purchasers. Schiller, 
 in ^ Cab ale tmd Licbc^ has treated of such a transac- 
 tion, common at the time with the minor German 
 courts. In the midst of these affairs Lessing had 
 been forgotten ; some excuse is therefore to be made 
 for the Prince. He certainly acceded to Lessing's 
 requests when he could, for next January (1774) 
 Lessing saw himself obliged once more to apply for 
 his salary in advance, his Hamburg creditors threaten- 
 ing him with distraint. At Frau Konig's solicitations 
 he refrained from writing his threatened letter to the 
 Prince, but his moroseness increased, and for four 
 months he again kept an obstinate silence. She 
 implored him to break it, at least to let her know 
 whether pleasure or displeasure was the cause : in the 
 former case she could forgive him, not in the latter. 
 
 ' For you must not be unhappy, at any rate not 
 for so long a time as you now have been, and then 
 too, I consider that I have a well-founded claim upon
 
 WOLFENBUTTEL. 307 
 
 your confidence, and should feel aggrieved if you did 
 not write to me because you had nothing pleasant to 
 write,' She then informed him of a rumour that had 
 reached her concerning contemplated unsectariaii 
 appointments at the University of Heidelberg, and ^ 
 asked if he wished her to make further inquiries. 
 
 He assented to this, though he hated teaching. 
 ' For here I cannot endure any longer. From day to 
 day things grow worse, and the salaries that have 
 been dwindling for a year and a half will doubtless 
 soon become yet smaller. From the Prince, as I now 
 know him, I may certainly anticipate that if to-day 
 or to-morrow he comes to the throne, he will rather 
 sell the whole library together with the librarian as 
 soon as he can find a purchaser. But how can they 
 [in Heidelberg] be induced to think of a man whose 
 name is only known to them by plays } , . . Offer 
 myself.-* I would go to death with more cheerfulness. 
 And as what should I offer myself .'' A man like me, 
 when he offers himself, seems everywhere most super- 
 fluous, or at any rate he is then only wanted as cheaply 
 as possible. Setting this aside, your idea is certainly 
 a very good one, and I did not laugh at it, my love. 
 I should be seriously pleased at it if I had not 
 sworn never again to rejoice over a hope. If, however, 
 you are able to do anything unofficially in the matter, 
 you have my full permission, and I beg of you at any 
 rate to write to me whatever more you may hear.' 
 Touching his silence, he gave her his word of honour 
 he had not known a single happy day since he wrote 
 last, and therefore what could he do better than bear 
 his anger in silence and not burden others with it } 
 He kept his resolve too firmly. This letter was the 
 
 X2
 
 3o8 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 only one Frau Konig received from him during that 
 whole year. 
 
 February 2, 1774, he writes to Karl that he must 
 not expect any apology for his long silence : it would 
 only be the same old story. He asks indulgence for 
 not having read some of Karl's plays sent to him for 
 revision, and says : ' If this astonishes you I must tell 
 you, that I only read * Gotz von Berlichingen ' a few 
 days ago, and then only in part. Leave me your 
 plays a little longer ; I will certainly read them still, 
 but not until I can read that kind of thing with a 
 calmer and more cheerful mind. From this you 
 perceive I have at least not abandoned all hope of 
 being yet again calm and cheerful.' 
 
 ' Gotz von Berlichingen ' by no means won his 
 approval. It had appeared a year previously, and 
 had been hailed as an illustration of Lessing's 
 ' Dramaturgic,' Goethe was named the German 
 Shakespeare, and the young fermenting minds of the 
 day whose advent Lessing had predicted in the clos- 
 ing chapters of the * Dramaturgic ' were extravagant 
 in their overlaudations of the golden literary age that 
 had dawned. Lessing from his Wolfenbiittel solitude 
 judged more sedately and correctly. He did not un- 
 derrate Goethe's genius, but he protested against the 
 comparison of a drama which transgressed all the 
 higher rules of composition, with the plays of the 
 greatest artist in the world. ' Gotz ' was a dramatized 
 chronicle, not a drama ; and it did not seem to him 
 so great a feat that a gifted poet, who allowed himself 
 a dispensation from all rules, should be able to string 
 together a series of interesting scenes. The repre- 
 sentatives of the Sturvi und Drang period were 
 inclined to look down on Lessing, with his rigid
 
 WOLFENBUTTEL. 309 
 
 adherence to Aristotle, as antiquated. They raised a 
 war-cry for absolute unconstraint. But Goethe himself 
 saw the error he had committed in ' Gotz,' and amply 
 acknowledged it in latef life. As the first production 
 of the Romantic school with its mediaeval leanings, its 
 young blood and its unhealthy sentimentality, it pro- 
 perly made an epoch. But Lessing's mind was too 
 healthy and too antique in form, to throw him into 
 the spirit that had evoked it. Though it was he who 
 made ready the way for the Romantic school, he 
 never inclined to it. Had he been in a happier mood, 
 there is no doubt it would have drawn from him a 
 polemic of some kind. As it was he contented him- 
 self by saying to Karl that theatrical matters have 
 long ago ceased to interest him, and it is perhaps well, 
 or he should certainly be in danger of growing angry 
 over the current theatrical confusion, and to begin a 
 quarrel with Goethe, for all his genius, on which he 
 insists so much. ' But Heaven forefend ! Rather would 
 I like to play a little comedy with the theologians, if 
 I need comedy.' 
 
 Ramler sent him a copy of his 'Anthology.' 
 * Many thanks for your beautiful " Anthology," ' he 
 writes ; ' I could almost envy you that you still collect 
 flowers, while I am condemned to gather nothing but 
 thorns. That is your own fault, you will say. I think 
 not ; I see nothing but thorns on my field, and it 
 happens to be my field. In vain do you remind me 
 of our mutual resolve to plant a more flowery one. 
 It was not to be. I am at an end, and every poetical 
 spark, of which in any case I had not many, is extinct. 
 But your fire still burns brightly. . . . How much I 
 wish to see you again ! Would it were your firm 
 resolve to visit me ! In any case you travel every
 
 3IO com I OLD EPHRAIM LESSIXG. 
 
 year. Why do }'ou not come once to Brunswick, where 
 }-ou have never been, and wheie you have so many 
 friends ? I, who wanted to roam the world, shall in 
 all likelihood moulder away in' this little Wolfenbiittel, 
 and never even see Berlin again. Think of this, and 
 hold out to me the sweet hope of your visit, one of 
 the few hopes by whose help I trust to endure the 
 melancholy winter that lies before me.' 
 
 An application from Wieland for contributions to 
 his paper, the ' Merkur'^ he answered with ' What 
 contributions do you expect from me .'' Works of 
 genius .'' All genius is confiscated just now by certain 
 people with whom I should not like to find myself a 
 fellow traveller. Literary contributions ? W'ho will 
 read them .'' ' 
 
 This somewhat bitter tone is attributable to 
 ' W^erther.' The hero was generally reported to be 
 Jerusalem, the son of the Abbot of Riddingshausen, 
 a young man whom Lessing had learnt to know and 
 love, and whose melancholy suicide in 1772 had made 
 a deep impression on his mind. Lessing saw how 
 utterly distorted was this so-called portrait, and he 
 inveighed with justice against such public caricatures. 
 Added to this the lacrymose sensibility of ' Werther,' 
 with its love-sick vapourings, was completely revolting 
 to Lcssing's manly character. The man ' who desired 
 immensely and willed feebly,' who perishes because 
 he is too weak to live, whose diseased spirit has not a 
 spark of self-respect or manly resistance to ill fortune, 
 was doubly removed from the sphere of Lessing's 
 comprehension at a time when he was himself suffer- 
 ing from the hope deferred that makcth the heart sick. 
 Still as ever he is the just critic.
 
 WOLFENB UTTEL. 31 1 
 
 'Wolfenbiittel : October 26, 1774. 
 
 * My dear Herr Eschenburg, 
 
 ' A thousand thanks for the pleasure you have 
 procured me by sending me Goethe's romance. If 
 so warm a production is not to cause more harm than 
 good, do you not think it should have a short, cold 
 epilogue ; a few hints how Werther came to have such 
 a peculiar character, how another youth to whom 
 nature has given similar leanings should defend him- 
 self? For else such youths might easily confound 
 poetical with moral beauty, and believe that he must 
 needs have been good who could so powerfully engross 
 our sympathy : and that he certainly was not. Nay, 
 if our Jerusalem's spirit had been wholly in this con- 
 dition, I should almost have to despise him. Do you 
 think that any Greek or Roman youth would thus 
 and therefore have committed suicide .-* Certainly not. 
 They knew better how to guard themselves from the 
 vapourings {Schw dimmer ei) of love ; in Sokrates' time, 
 such an i0 spcoros Karo'^r) whom toX/jluv h irapa (f)v<jLV 
 impelled, would scarcely be forgiven a girl. To 
 produce such little-great, contemptible, admirable 
 originals was reserved to a Christian education, which 
 so well understands how to convert a physical neces- 
 sity into a spiritual virtue. Therefore, dear Goethe, 
 another little chapter, and the more cynical the better.' 
 
 Nicolai's dry, pedantic spirit, free from any leaning 
 to sentiment, was yet severer on * Werther.' He agreed 
 with Lessing's objections to its tendenc)' and pub- 
 lished a parody, ' The Joys of young Werther,' in 
 which Werther shoots himself only with chicken's 
 blood, marries Charlotte, and lives happy ever after. 
 
 Lessing preferred to confine his attention to severer
 
 312 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 paths of literature. In this year he issued a third 
 volume of the ' Contributions from the Ducal Library.' 
 The most noteworthy article dealt with Adam Neuser, 
 an unfortunate Lutheran divine, who had to resign 
 his post at Heidelberg on account of his religious 
 views, went to Transylvania where he joined the 
 Socinians, and at last fled to Constantinople, where he 
 apostatized to Islam, and died in the year 1576. For 
 this latter step he had been branded by Christians of 
 all denominations. Lessing had found in the Wolfen- 
 biittcl library a letter from Neuser to a friend, wherein 
 was ample extenuation of his step, revealing the per- 
 secutions he had suffered from his Christian brethren, 
 and freeing him from the suspicion of having entered 
 into a treacherous agreement with the Turks. Here 
 was another good man's fame to resuscitate ! Lessing 
 points to the barbarous cruelty of his Christian perse- 
 cutors, the theologians, whose reply to the repentant 
 heretic's promises of reform always amounted to this : 
 Off with his head first ; reform can follow after if it 
 pleases God. , . . ' Bene est, quod saltem nil in 
 gratiam Neuseri scripserint,' a reformed theologian 
 had ironically remarked to some Lutherans, who laid 
 the charge of this apostasy on Calvinism. ' Bene ! ' 
 retorted Lessing, ' I say it is bad that it did not happen, 
 bad that after two hundred years I must be the first 
 to win the ear of posterity for an unhappy man — an 
 vmhappy man who was persecuted out of Christianity. 
 Or if he was wrong in allowing himself to be perse- 
 cuted out, is he therefore right in nothing .? If the 
 conclusion is to be the soul of history, if we are to 
 judge all that has gone before by this, then it would be 
 as well if we had no history at all.' 
 
 ' The chief consideration to which Neuser's history
 
 WOLFENB UTTEL. 3 1 3 
 
 must lead a thoughtful reader, I need not indicate at 
 length ; but it is that which reminds me of fragments 
 of a very important work among the very newest 
 manuscripts of our library, and particularly of one of 
 them, so forcibly, that I cannot here refrain from say- 
 ing a word about them in general, and transcribing 
 this one as a specimen. 
 
 * They are, I say, fragments of a work that was 
 once completed and destroyed, or of a work that was 
 never finished. For they bear no general title ; their 
 author is nowhere named ; neither have I been able 
 in any way to learn how and when they came into 
 our library. Nay, I do not even know for certain 
 that they are fragments of one work, but I only con- 
 clude that this is so, because they all have one aim, 
 all refer to revealed religion, and criticize Biblical 
 history in particular. They are written with the 
 greatest boldness, but at the same time with the 
 greatest earnestness. The investigator never forgets 
 his dignity ; flippancy does not seem to have been his 
 failing, and nowhere does he permit himself mockery 
 or jokes. He is a true steady German in his mode of 
 * writing, and in his views. He gives his opinion 
 straight out, and despises all small modes of surpris- 
 ing the reader's approval. As the handwriting and 
 general appearance of his papers show that they may 
 have been written about thirty years ago, and as 
 many passages bear testimony to a profound know- 
 ledge of Hebrew, and the author everywhere philoso- 
 phizes on Wolfian principles, these combined circum- 
 stances have reminded me of a man who lived about 
 that time at Wolfenbiittel, and who found, under the 
 protection of an enlightened and gracious prince, that 
 toleration which furious orthodoxy would rather he
 
 314 COTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 had not found in all Europe ; of Schmid, the Wer- 
 theimcr translator of the Bible.* 
 
 Lessing then inserted the first of the fragments 
 out of Reimarus' manuscripts, ' On the Toleration of 
 Deists.' It was the mildest of the papers that he thus 
 tentatively put forth. He expected that it would 
 make some stir, but it fell flatter than he had antici- 
 pated. Only from Karl had he to listen to objections 
 on account of the way in which he was frittering away 
 his time and energy. He replied : 
 
 ' Frequent change in work is the only thing which 
 sustains me. True, in this way much is begun, and 
 little completed. But w^iat of that } Even if I never 
 finish anything more in my life, — nay, granting that 
 I never have finished anything,— what does it matter } 
 Perhaps you will think this sentiment somewhat 
 misanthropical, and }'ou accuse me of being so in 
 my views of religion. Now, without examining how 
 much or how little cause I have for being satisfied 
 with my fellow-men, I must tell you that in this 
 matter you have quite a false idea of me, and that 
 you thoroughly misunderstand my attitude towards 
 orthodoxy. Should / grudge the world further en- 
 lightenment } Should / not wish with all my heart 
 that everyone should think sensibly about religion .-* 
 I should despise myself if I had had any other object, 
 even in my scribblings, than to help forward these 
 great ends. But leave me my own way in which I 
 think to accomplish this. And what is more simple 
 than this way } I do not want to have the dirty 
 water, which has long been useless, kept, but I do not 
 want it thrown away until I know whence to take 
 cleaner. I do not want to have it thoughtlessly 
 thrown away.
 
 WOLFENB UTTEL. 3 1 5 
 
 ' Fortunately orthodoxy had been pretty well done 
 with. A partition-wall had been set up between it 
 and philosophy, behind which each could go its own 
 way, without hindering the other. But what do 
 people do now .-• They tear down the partition-wall, 
 and under pretence of making us reasonable Christians, 
 they turn us into most unreasonable philosophers. I 
 beg of you, dear brother, to inquire more closely into 
 this matter, and to look less to what our new theolo- 
 gians discard, than to what they wish to set up 
 instead. We are agreed in this, that our old religious 
 system is false. But I could not say with you that it 
 is a patchwork of bunglers and half-philosophers. I 
 know nothing in the world in which human under- 
 standing is more clearly shown or has been more 
 exercised. The system of religion which people now 
 want to put in place of the old is a patchwork of 
 bunglers and half-philosophers ; and it has far more 
 influence on reason and philosophy than the old 
 system ever assumed. And yet you blame me for 
 defending the old } My neighbour's house threatens 
 to fall in. If my neighbour wishes to pull it down, I 
 will give him due help. But he does not wish to pull 
 it down, he wishes to prop it up at the cost of total 
 ruin to my house. Let him leave that alone, or I will 
 treat his falling house as if it were mine.' 
 
 Pertaining to the library contributions, though 
 issued independently, was a work ' On the Antiquity 
 of Oil Painting,' assigned by Lessing to the ninth 
 century, which proved that the brothers Van Eyck 
 were not the first to use this medium. The treatise 
 made some noise, and the notion was extensively 
 combated. Waagen has however confirmed Lessing's 
 view that oil painting was known in Italy before Van
 
 31 6 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 Eyck's time, without at the same time diminishing the 
 honour due to Van Eyck. 
 
 It is evident that Lessing's mind was at this time 
 only' open to severe and dry researches. The MS. of 
 * Halladat' which Gleim sent to him for perusal, was 
 deferred several days, though it was sent by a messen- 
 ger who had orders to wait for a reply. He was ill in 
 body and mind, so that he neglected the most needful 
 concerns. Hand and head refused their services. 
 Things could not go on thus much longer. To Karl 
 he said, in April 1774 : 
 
 ' I will assuredly not remain another year in my 
 present wretched position, happen what may. My 
 friends must not on that account accuse me of restless- 
 ness. At a place like Wolfenbuttel, removed from all 
 intercourse such as I need, it has never been my 
 intention to spend my life in guarding books. To- 
 morrow I shall have been doing so for four years ; and 
 as I feel only too keenly how much drier and more 
 blunted my intellect and senses have become during 
 these four years, in spite of all my widened historical 
 knowledge, I should not for anything in the world like 
 to do so for four years more. But I must not even do 
 so for one year more, if I am ever to do anything else. 
 It is all up here. Here I can do nothing more. You 
 will read nothing of mine this Fair ; for I have done 
 nothing the whole winter, and am well satisfied that 
 I have at least accomplished that great work of 
 philosophy or cowardice, that I am still alive. May 
 God help me on in this noble work, which is well 
 worth while that we should daily eat and drink for 
 its sake ! ' 
 
 And again in November:
 
 WOLFENBUTTEL. 317 
 
 * Dearest Brother, 
 
 ' It is very good of you not to be angry at 
 my long obstinate silence. I begin this letter also 
 without knowing whether I shall finish it. Of such 
 beginnings of letters to you my writing-table contains 
 more than one. I am glad that you are well, that the 
 hypochondriacal mood in which you wrote one of your 
 last letters was only transitory. Mine is more obsti- 
 nate. The only means of deadening it is to throw 
 myself out of one paltry literary investigation into 
 another. It is on this account that my " Contributions " 
 are the only, thing I still continue, and yet I fear that 
 I shall not long be able to continue even these. I see 
 that ruin awaits me here, and am at length resigned 
 thereto.' 
 
 The new year dawned, and Lessing was resolved 
 to break away and seek new scenes and people. He 
 made no plan whither his steps should tend, save that 
 somehow they must lead towards his dear Eva. He 
 did not face any questions of prudence or otherwise. 
 His patience was at an end. He would away, no 
 matter where. He said he was resigned to stay and 
 perish, but he could not do so without making one 
 last desperate effort. He wrote to Frau Konig 
 announcing this resolve : 
 
 ' Yes, my love, I myself should not understand how 
 it was possible for me not to write to you for so long, 
 if I could not well recall from day to day how it came 
 to be deferred. All last summer I was suffering from 
 fever, but still the fever was not much at fault. Had 
 I been able to send you a single little piece of news, 
 not agreeable but at least not very disagreeable, I 
 should really have had the best opportunity of doing
 
 31 8 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 so during the fever. But to worry you still more, my 
 dearest, with things that I would gladly get rid of 
 myself and which I am of necessity obliged to think 
 of, when I think of you, even if I could have been 
 capable of that in the greatest heat of the fever, I 
 should despise myself. Even now, if I expressed my- 
 self somewhat more clearly about it, this letter would 
 certainly never be completed. God be thanked that 
 I know you to be gradually on the road to rest. These 
 three past years have been a horrid dream for you.' 
 
 He expressed his delight at the prospect of re- 
 union : ' If I still know what it means to be glad ! 
 You will find me in health ; better than, alas ! I may 
 expect to find you. To my acquaintances I seem as 
 happy as it is possible to be. God grant them that 
 they may not say some day, we have been terribly 
 deceived in him. I have got so far as to see that all 
 my sorrow, all my endeavours to escape from these 
 accursed circumstances, are in vain. Therefore, what 
 will happen, must.' 
 
 He went to Brunswick to make a last attempt in 
 his affair, and, this failing, he requested a half-year's 
 salary in advance, and leave of absence for a journey 
 to Berlin. ' For a fortnight I have been at Bruns- 
 wick,' he tells Karl, ' and in a most unpleasant situa- 
 tion, so that I must break away by some violent step, 
 if I do not want to be suffocated here in the mud. In 
 a fortnight at latest I go to Leipzig ; whether from 
 that place I shall go first to Dresden or to Berlin, I 
 cannot say yet.' 
 
 He himself called this journey a venture, but re- 
 assured Frau Konig he had not burnt his ships 
 behind him. No one at Brunswick knew that his real 
 goal was Vienna ; and only from Dresden did he
 
 WOLFENBUTTEL. 319 
 
 apply for an extended leave to go there, promising to 
 .return to Wolfenbiittel in two months at latest. At 
 Leipzig he spent a few days with his friend Weisse, 
 renewing their old friendly intercourse. Weisse 
 thought him softened down, and declared that he likes 
 him better than even before. He noticed that he had 
 something on his mind that he did not confide, and 
 felt convinced his restless spirit was about to break 
 away from the assured position of Wolfenbiittel : a 
 marvel to Weisse, who liked rest, while Lessing pro- 
 tested he had lived free for so many years and yet 
 not starved, and he hated both Wolfenbiittel and the 
 people of the court. Their conversation turned on 
 ' Werther,' and Weisse quite expected Lessing would 
 some day attack the book. Lavater's ' Physiognomie ' 
 was also touched upon. Lessing condemned it as 
 proving too much. If Lavater's theories were well 
 founded, it would be needful to see the whole naked 
 body, as an ugly face was often placed on a well- 
 formed figure. Lavater's character was one naturally 
 antipathetic to Lessing's. He had moreover offended 
 Lessing in his most vulnerable point, his affection for 
 Moses Mendelssohn, by public attempts, more distin- 
 guished by zeal than by good taste, to effect the 
 latter's conversion. 
 
 From Leipzig Lessing went to Berlin, where he 
 spent a fortnight with his brother and in the circle of 
 his friends. Here he met with offers to keep him in 
 Prussia. He did not pay much heed ; such offers 
 often came now ; he must go to Vienna first and see 
 after matters there. Frau Konig's affairs w^ere at last 
 arranged ; indeed it was only ill-health that had re- 
 tained her the last months. Lessing wrote from 
 Berlin, announcing his visit, and entreating her for his
 
 320 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 sake to stay in Vienna till he could join her. His 
 secret wish was that they should travel back together. 
 * If only I could fly ! ' he writes to her from Dresden. 
 His impatient longing to see her again is expressed in 
 every line he wrote, while waiting for the ducal per- 
 mission. Prague, which he had never seen, could not 
 detain him a day, so great was his longing. March 
 31 (1775) he arrived at Vienna, sooner than Frau 
 Konig had dared expect him, and these two sorely 
 tried mortals again enjoyed the bliss of meeting.
 
 ITALY. 321 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 ITALY. 
 (1775-1776. Aged 46-47.) 
 
 • Wenn etwas id getvaW ger als das Schicksal, 
 So ist's der Mutk, der's unerschiittert tragi ! ' — Geibel. 
 
 Alas, that the bliss should have been so brief! The 
 irony that seems to run like a fatal thread through 
 Lessing's life was about to entwine him in a cruel web. 
 One ardent wish was to be accorded at a moment 
 when it had sunk to secondary importance beside a 
 more engrossing one. 
 
 Ten happy days of intercourse were granted to 
 Lessing and Frau Konig at Vienna. His public 
 reception far exceeded his expectations. He was a 
 feted guest. ' Emilia Galotti ' was performed in his 
 honour, and his appearance in the house was greeted 
 with acclamation. With his release from the oppres- 
 sive atmosphere of Wolfenbiittel his spirits had risen, 
 his starved intellect had been recruited in Berlin, so 
 that he was once more the old brave, cheerful Lessing. 
 His candid and noble bearing won him all hearts. 
 The influential Councillor von Gebler wrote to Nicolai, 
 calling him that rare combination, a truly great and 
 amiable scholar. ' This I know, that if our Academy 
 of Science is ever established, and I can do anything 
 towards securing it such a great ornament, I shall not 
 
 Y
 
 322 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 nccflcct to do it. No German scholar has ever been 
 received here with such distinction as our excellent 
 friend, and that from our sovereign down to the 
 general public' 
 
 But ten days after Lessing, Prince Leopold of 
 Brunswick arrived at Vienna. He was the youngest 
 son of the reigning Duke, an amiable, intelligent 
 youth of twenty-three, the same who afterwards 
 perished in the waters of the Oder while endeavouring 
 to save the lives of some poor persons, and whose 
 memory has been embalmed in verse by Goethe. He 
 was an especial favourite of Maria Theresa, who 
 wished to retain him in her domiaions, and offered 
 him a regiment. This was against the traditions of 
 the House of Brunswick, who all served under Prussia. 
 The Prince had to ask for his father's permission and, 
 pending the answer, wished to take a short tour in 
 Italy. The journey was not to carry him farther 
 south than Venice ; by that time he expected to have 
 a definite reply. It was his wish that Lessing should 
 accompany him, and he promised to accommodate all 
 difficulties with his father respecting the extended 
 leave of absence. 
 
 This proposal placed Lessing in a painful per- 
 plexity. His prospect of marriage now seemed 
 immediate. On the other hand, his private afiairs 
 were still in a sorry state. Would it be wise, under 
 such circumstances, to refuse the request of a son of 
 the house he served .-' Nay, might not his readiness 
 to accede, even at personal inconvenience, operate in 
 his favour .'' Then there was the old wish to see Italy, 
 the tour was not to exceed eight weeks, the sacrifice 
 of time was not great. He assented. Maria Theresa, 
 delighted that her favourite should have so pleasant a
 
 ITAL V. 323 
 
 companion, accorded Lessing a second interview. 
 She chatted with him about Vienna, its pubhc insti- 
 tutions, its theatre, and learned men, and asked him 
 how he was satisfied with what he had seen of her 
 capital. Lessing, too truthful to condescend to flattery, 
 replied evasively. Maria Theresa thought his cautious 
 replies covered a reproach. ' I think I understand 
 you,' she said ; ' I know well that good taste does not 
 advance with us as it should. Will you not say where 
 the fault lies ? I have done all that my power and 
 insight allowed ; but I often think I am only a woman, 
 and a woman cannot achieve much in such matters.' 
 She expressed her satisfaction at his intended journey, 
 and, hearing they would go to Milan, gave Lessing 
 an autograph letter to the governor of Lombardy, 
 Count Firmian. 
 
 On April 25 the Prince and Lessing started. 
 Frau Konig felt the parting sorely. ' It was a sad 
 day for me. I can say with truth that the few days 
 I spent here with you were the only happy ones of 
 my whole residence. May God forgive your Prince 
 Leopold for robbing me of your company ! I shall 
 never pardon him.' Baron von Gebler had told her 
 to convey a hundred thousand respects to Lessing. 
 ' He almost put me on the rack to find out whether 
 you were well disposed towards him. Though I 
 acquiesced sincerely, he repeated the question at least 
 six times, and said each time, " I heartily wish him 
 well, and only desire that we may retain him here." 
 And I thought in my heart, I do not wish that, for 
 my dear Lessing is far more in place in the Wolfen- 
 biittel library than among court sycophants. At any 
 rate the library will interest him longer than they 
 would. Am I not right ? ' 
 
 Y 2
 
 324 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESS INC. 
 
 Lessing's great regret was that this journey had 
 come so suddenly as to find him unprepared. He 
 had not the books he needed, his interest had lately 
 been diverted from aesthetics ; ' and what I had known 
 and forgotten was no due preparation.' The travellers' 
 road led them byway of Salzburg to Brescia, and thence 
 to Milan, where they made their first considerable 
 halt. Lessing's eyesight, which had been troubling 
 him for some time past, suffered from the dust and 
 sun of Lombardy. But his letter to Karl expressed 
 his delight at this foretaste of Italy, that had renewed 
 his old resolve to live and die there. Everything he 
 saw and heard charmed him, but for writing he had 
 no time, as he had to attend to the Prince. This cir- 
 cumstance indeed became the principal drawback to 
 the journey. The Prince's time was spent in receiving 
 or returning visits, in dining out or in gala receptions. 
 To do Lessing honour, he was everywhere asked with 
 the Prince, and might not refuse, so that he found 
 himself forced to go through the shallow and tedious 
 routine of court festivities in interesting places whose 
 artistic treasures he craved to survey. He began to 
 wish for the time of return, and indulged in visions of 
 repeating his visit under more favourable conditions. 
 
 'Not an hour passes,' he wrote from Milan to 
 Frau Konig, ' wherein I do not find reason to regret 
 that I am not rather travelling with you. For I shall 
 derive little advantage from this journey, as I am 
 invited everywhere with the Prince, and so all my 
 time is lost in visiting and dining. To-day we dined 
 at the Archduke's. Only the advantages which I 
 hope to derive from this journey in Wolfenbiittel can 
 make such a mode of life endurable to me.' 
 
 Late in May the travellers reached Venice. The
 
 ITALY. 325 
 
 air of the lagoons did not suit Lessing, and the daily 
 and hourly dissipations into which he was perforce 
 drawn aggravated his discomforts. He was taken ill. 
 But a yet more unpropitious event occurred. At 
 Venice the Prince found a reply from his father, 
 placing impediments in the way of his wishes, and he 
 consequently determined to extend his journey, in 
 hopes the Duke might yet yield. 
 
 ' And now,' Lessing wrote to Frau Konig, ' let me 
 complain of the worst of all. We do not return at 
 once to Vienna, but go first to Florence. The Prince 
 cannot and will not return to Vienna before his con- 
 cerns there are regulated. And this is what comes of 
 having to do with princes ! You can never count 
 with them on any certainty, and if once they have 
 you in their clutches you must just fain endure, 
 whether you will or no. One of my first errands here 
 in Venice was to S. Cristoforo, to see where our 
 friend reposes, and to shed a sincere tear to his 
 memory. The same man in whose arms he had died 
 took me thither, and from him I received the assur- 
 ance that his death was only due to natural causes. I 
 know that you were not free from suspicion, and 
 wished to be satisfied on this point. That you can 
 now be. About a little monument that you must 
 place on his gra^e, more by word of mouth.' 
 
 Lessing witnessed the marriage of the Doge with 
 the Adriatic, especially brilliant that year on account 
 of a concurrence of royal personages. At Bologna the 
 Cardinal Legate and the aristocracy did the travellers 
 all honour, but Lessing's own communications were 
 only resumed at Florence, whence he wrote to Frau 
 Konig early in June, that he believed they were now 
 on their way back. He was only afraid lest their
 
 326 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 stay ill Turin should be extended beyond his wish. 
 He longed to be back in Germany, and with Frau 
 Konig. Sightseeing in the heat tired him ; he felt ill, 
 and was full of regret that he had been persuaded to 
 separate from her on such uncertain prospects. Yet 
 what was he to do ? He had now made this sacrifice 
 to the Prince ; in any event he must endure to the 
 end. He admits that he is writing in a hypo- 
 chondriacal mood. He is filled with yearning for 
 her, and only disappointed not to have found letters 
 from her. 
 
 It was really this which embittered Lessing's Italian 
 jouracy,and induced the sombre impatient mood which 
 unfitted him to enjoy such delights as he could have 
 secured, notwithstanding the serious drawbacks to 
 the true enjoyments of an Italian journey in the aris- 
 tocratic mode of travelling forced on him. After the 
 first letter at Milan, Lessing had not received a line 
 from Eva Konig ; after this Florentine letter she 
 heard no more from him until January 1776, when 
 he announced his return to Vienna. While she. was 
 waiting from week to w^eck for news, and torturing 
 her mind with fears on his account, only relieved by 
 an occasional mention of his name and his where- 
 about in the newspapers, he, deprived of even this 
 slender and uncertain source of intelligence, feared 
 lest she was ill — worse, even dead. With these black 
 thoughts he dragged himself through the length and 
 breadth of Italy, and hence his Italian impressions 
 arc lost to posterity. He did keep a note-book, but 
 its entries are scanty and laconic — the personal jot- 
 tings that aid memory, but not the copious out- 
 pourings that can interest or are comprehensible to 
 an outsider. They deal with matters of erudition,
 
 ITALY. 327 
 
 discoveries he had made in the various libraries, 
 architectural notes, social and political observations, 
 and fragmentary memoranda of conversations with 
 Italian scholars. 
 
 At Turin, as he had anticipated, their stay was 
 prolonged ; and then the Prince, still not receiving the 
 answer he desired, resolved yet further to extend the 
 trip. They went to Rome by way of Pavia, Parma, 
 Modena, and Loretto. Including three days devoted 
 to Albany and Frascati, they only sojourned a fort- 
 night in the Eternal City, and much of that time was 
 wasted in audiences of the Pope and Cardinals. The 
 intelligent Pius VI. conversed for a long time with 
 Lessing, whose fame had reached him through Cardi- 
 nal Albani. A nephew of the Pope presented him 
 with a costly antique cameo. Lessing tried to see 
 whatever he could, but the time was too short. It is 
 said that once the princely servants sought him a 
 whole day in vain, till he was at last discovered sit- 
 ting wrapt and alone before the Laokoon group, en- 
 deavouring to derive new thoughts from its contem- 
 plation. From Rome they passed on to Naples, 
 where Lessing visited Sir William Hamilton, and 
 admired his splendid collections. Here a ducal 
 courier reached the Prince, bearing an order that he 
 should return home forthwith. To this there could be 
 no demur, and the travellers at once set out to reach 
 Germany as quickly as might be, after having run 
 through the whole peninsula as far as Naples, includ- 
 ing the Isle of Corsica, in less than eight months. At 
 Bologna a letter from a Brunswick friend contained a 
 passing reference to Frau Konig, and Lessing thus 
 received the first assurance that she was living. He 
 accompanied the Prince as far as Munich, and then
 
 328 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 hastened to Vienna. The first thing he found there 
 was a large packet of letters from Frau Konig, which, 
 thanks to the negligence of officious friends who had 
 promised to expedite them, had accumulated there 
 while he was breaking his heart for lack of only- 
 one. He saw from them how first she had 
 borne patiently with his apparent neglect, but how 
 at last, when no answer came, not the smallest word 
 of love or remembrance, even her strong heart had 
 broken down, and she penned a last despairing ap- 
 peal. Had all the beautiful things her Lessing had 
 seen made him quite forget her } Had he not proniised 
 to quiet her anxiety by frequent letters .-' Did he no 
 longer know that all her trouble and grief would be 
 stilled by but one word, one little word, from him .-' She 
 tells him she is back again in Hamburg, and that the 
 hour she arrived is one of the few happy ones she had 
 again enjoyed for six years : it resembled the hour 
 when the note announcing his arrival was brought 
 her at Vienna. And now ! 
 
 Lessing's reply made all right again. He begs her 
 to retain for him that love which is all his happiness 
 and all his possession. He assures her, by all that is 
 holy, that bince the letter received at Venice he has 
 not had a line from her. What could he think but 
 that she was dead, or so seriously ill that she could 
 send no news .-' These black thoughts had poisoned 
 all his enjoyment of Italy. As a desperate resource 
 he had come to Vienna to make inquiries about her, 
 and behold ! the earnestly desired letters. He hears 
 she is well, but he implores for direct assurance from 
 herself. She replied at once. His letter had rescued 
 her from the terrible anxiety which she had endured six 
 months on his account, or rather on her own, for the
 
 ITALY. 329 
 
 newspapers occasionally informed her he was well, 
 also that he had decided to settle in Rome, and then 
 it grieved her to hear Lessing was well and happy, and 
 had forgotten her. That her letters never reached him 
 she had not dreamed. Next Easter her affairs would 
 be quite in order, and she would have five hundred to 
 six hundred thalers yearly income left. They would 
 have been in order ere this, but she had had no heart 
 to attend to them, devoured as she was with anxiety 
 for him. One of her children, too, had been ill. 
 Little Fritz, his godson and her pet, was flourishing, and 
 quite the most alert and clever of her children, almost 
 making her believe in the old notion that godfathers 
 influence their godchildren. Now that Lessing was 
 back, she trusted all would be well. It was a bad habit 
 of hers to anticipate the worst; he must wean her of this. 
 She urged him to abandon other projects and try to 
 come to some satisfactory arrangement at Wolfen- 
 bijttel ; she felt assured her dear Lessing was more 
 in place there than elsewhere. 
 
 Lessing's reply was written from Dresden. He 
 had left Vienna earlier than he had intended. He 
 had not visited any of the great folks, and had de- 
 parted sooner because Prince Kaunitz had asked 
 him to dinner. From this Frau Konig will see he had 
 abandoned all idea of Vienna. At Dresden the 
 Kurfiirst made advances to him, and assured him that 
 if he desired again to settle in his fatherland he should 
 not regret the step. Here he consulted with a friend 
 concerning a new edition of Winckelmann's works 
 and letters which he projected publishing. He also 
 spent four days with his aged mother, whom he had 
 not seen for eleven years. Thence he went to Berlin, 
 where he intended to stay three days and remained
 
 330 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 three weeks. He was feeling the cold keenly, and 
 the suffering induced made him relapse into low spirits. 
 From Brunswick he receiv^ed letters with the best 
 assurances but no certainty, and therefore, meanwhile, 
 he only gave ambiguous replies to various offers 
 now constantly made to him. The cold weather 
 changed to ^^■et, and he resolved to wait no longer. 
 He complained that he was made to go out so much 
 by his friends, when he would far rather have been 
 left at home in peace. He was out of temper, unde- 
 cided, disgusted with all about him, or rather seriously 
 ill, for such a state must be illness. * Oh, God!' he 
 exclaims piteously to Frau Konig, * when will this kind 
 of life end .'' when shall I at length be able to live for 
 you and for myself in peace and solitude .-"' In order 
 to reach Wolfenbiittel he had to borrow largely from 
 his brother, as his funds had been exhausted at Camenz. 
 The nearer he approached Brunswick the more gloomy 
 his mood became. What should he find there } 
 Would his affairs at last have advanced a step .■* And 
 if not, had not his whole Italian journey been for no- 
 thing, since it had certainly been in vain as far as 
 mental profit was concerned .-* 
 
 On February 23 Lessing returned to Bruns- 
 wick, after a year's unanticipated absence. He at 
 once hurried to pay his respects at court. Every- 
 one received him with cordiality, except the Heredi- 
 tary Prince whom he missed. But his affairs were 
 ill statu quo. This neglect exasperated him bitterly. 
 ' I shall wait another week or fortnight,' he wrote to 
 Frau Konig, ' and shall then bluntly write to the 
 Duke that the total derangement of my affairs obliges 
 me to seek an improvement of my condition, and, 
 since I do not see this before me in Brunswick, I am
 
 ITALY. 331 
 
 necessitated to ask for my dismissal. Then, if they 
 want to do anything for me, they will do it on this 
 declaration. If not — well, thi,n indeed I shall receive 
 my dismissal. Verily, my love, I cannot contemplate 
 that future without throwing down my pen.' To 
 Karl he told the same tale. If the court will not 
 listen to his proposals, he can only comfort himself 
 with the remembrance that all the various changes of 
 abode to which he has been forced by necessity 
 have proved more fortunate than otherwise. 
 
 All Frau Konig's womanly gentleness inspires her 
 reply. It was not for nothing she had feared to re- 
 ceive Lessing's first letter from Brunswick. She 
 entreats him to look more calmly at the matter. The 
 mode in which he intends to place his affairs before 
 the Duke seems to her most imprudent, more espe- 
 cially so as he holds the Prince to be no friend of his, 
 and he is therefore putting a dangerous weapon into 
 his hands. ' It seems to me I would not act thus even 
 in the most involved circumstances, and that yours 
 are not, or your debts must exceed what I know. 
 Else I cannot think how for a miserable thousand 
 thalers you could so compromise your honour as to 
 announce your circumstances to be totally deranged. 
 That would be, according to my mind, throwing your- 
 self away. Not so if you write to the Duke and tell 
 him you could not support yourself on your salary, 
 and had been forced to eke it out from your private 
 means, and were therefore obliged to beg for an addi- 
 tion. I am just as certain you would not be refused, 
 as I am certain that the matter would end very badly 
 if taken in hand as you propose.' 
 
 Meanwhile Lessing, who was remaining at Bruns- 
 wick, met the Prince in the street by accident. The
 
 332 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 Prince greeted him cordially, expressed his satisfac- 
 tion at seeing him again, declared that Lessing's re- 
 turn had never been announced to him, that he wanted 
 to speak with him and begged him to wait a few days 
 at Brunswick : he would appoint an interview. Les- 
 sing replied that he would stay till Sunday. He waited 
 till Monday morning, but heard nothing. Then, 
 goaded to the uttermost, he could no more be re- 
 strained. He wrote the Hereditary Prince the threat- 
 ened letter, and placed his whole conduct so graphic- 
 ally before him, that, as Lessing remarked, he could 
 not fail to be piqued. Only in consideration of Frau 
 Konig's advice, he worded it all as mildly as he could. 
 The letter had due effect. Lessing's threat of demand- 
 ing his dismissal from the Duke came as an unexpected 
 blow to the Prince, who wished to keep him in Bruns- 
 wick. The Prince was on the point of joining his regi- 
 ment at Halberstadt, but he wrote a conciliatory letter, 
 though Lessing thought it somewhat too haughty, and 
 sent a councillor to him begging him to desist from 
 his purpose, and offering him better conditions. Les- 
 sing replied that this was all very well, but the Prince 
 himself must make him these offers. He would not 
 put in the smallest petition, and he further stated that 
 he should not hold this slight amelioration as binding 
 him to remain if something better came in his way. 
 The councillor reported the interview to the Prince, 
 who on hearing of it very nearly lost all patience with 
 Lessing. But he so well knew his value and was so 
 anxious to retain him in his service, that he deter- 
 mined to speak to him in person on his return, feeling 
 assured he could then remove all misunderstand- 
 ings. On April 5 the Prince wrote that he had re- 
 turned to Brunswick, and would be glad to see Lessing
 
 ITALY. 333 
 
 on the 6th. This letter did not reach Lessing till the 
 7th, when the Prince had again departed for Halber- 
 stadt. Lessing was furious, and chose to think that 
 the Prince had purposely misdated his letter. The 
 old mood of sullen anger once more mastered him. 
 He told Karl he could not chew through the cud of 
 all his annoyances by letter ; enough that he was in 
 the dark as to the Prince's ultimate designs, and was 
 living in the most unpleasant state of uncertainty, in 
 which he was prepared to meet the worst, and could 
 do no work beyond putting the affairs of the library 
 in order, so that he might be able to leave any mo- 
 ment. To this annoyance was added that his sister 
 was demanding money from him and Karl with the 
 bitterest strictures on their parsimony, and Lessing 
 had to protest again and again that they neither of 
 them had the money to give. 
 
 It was in the month of April of this year (1776), 
 that Lessing edited the literary remains of the young 
 Jerusalem. This task was undertaken as another 
 rehabilitation and a protest against Goethe. On his 
 return from Italy he found the ' Werther ' fever still 
 raging with intensity, and suicide all the fashion. 
 Everywhere the names Werther and Jerusalem were 
 coupled ; Lessing desired to show the world that this 
 was a distortion of truth. Karl Wilhelm Jerusalem 
 had been a youth of unusual promise, clear insight, a 
 lover of truth, a calm thinker, warmhearted but strong-, 
 not a weakling like Werther, only capable of contem- 
 plation and sensibility. He had given Lessing his 
 friendship during the short year he had lived in his 
 neighbourhood, and Lessing admits that he would 
 find it hard to name another mortal whom he had 
 learned to love so warmly in a year and a day.
 
 334 GO TT HOLD EPHRATM LESS INC. 
 
 Jerusalem had let him see a side of his character that 
 was perhaps unknown to his many friends. They 
 rarely met except tcte-d-tctc, and then the theme for 
 conversation was readily found. No matter whence 
 tiiey started ; they soon found themselves engrossed 
 in speculations on the sensations, the domain of the 
 beautiful, the purpose of life, and so forth. These 
 conversations led Jerusalem to develop his ideas into 
 essays, and it is these remains of his clear understand- 
 ing that Lessing wished to present to a world that had 
 not hitherto looked on Jerusalem as an author, which 
 indeed Lessing now first made him. ' His course 
 was brief, his pace rapid. Still, to live long is not to 
 live much. And if only to think much is to live long, 
 then his years were only too few for us.' Lessing 
 says that their conversations by no means ended in 
 agreement : Jerusalem inclined to Mendelssohn's 
 empirical philosophy that Lessing was fast outstrip- 
 ping ; but what mattered that } It was none the less 
 the lively suggestive intercourse of mind with mind. 
 ' The pleasure of a chase is ever worth more than the 
 booty, and variance that merely ensues because each 
 seizes truth from another point, is concord in the 
 essential and the richest source of mutual regard upon 
 which alone men can build a friendship.' 
 
 Early in July the Duke was struck down with 
 apoplexy, and the Prince returned to Brunswick. He 
 sent for Lessing and made him verbally the same 
 offers as he had made him through the councillor : to 
 increase his salary by two hundred thalers, to excuse 
 him repayment of the money he had drawn in ad- 
 vance, to place from eight hundred to one thou.sand 
 thalers immediately at his disposal, with a house near 
 the library, to be vacant next Michaelmas. The
 
 ITALY. 335 
 
 Prince further hinted that the serious ilhiess of the 
 reigning Duke might lead to other and yet more 
 advantageous changes for Lessing. In the meantime 
 the Duke bestowed on him the title of Hofrath. 
 
 ' What will perhaps astound you most,' Lessing 
 wrote to Frau Konig, ' is, that I could not avoid accept- 
 ing the Hofrath title ; that I did not seek it you are 
 surely convinced, as you know me, and also that I 
 told the Prince pretty plainly how little I cared about 
 it ; but I had to fear giving the old man oftence.' 
 
 Frau Konig, during this time, had been putting 
 her affairs in order. She had a weary mass of papers 
 to go through, and wished her Lessing were there to 
 aid her. Did he not once, to oblige her, entertain an 
 old woman four mortal hours, and would he refuse 
 this favour to his Eva ? Their correspondence 
 throughout this year had been brisk. The letters 
 were short and dealt chiefly with their own affairs, 
 but now that union seemed really near and possible, 
 verbal communication was desirable. Lessing there- 
 fore, in August, paid a flying visit to Hamburg. After 
 his return he wrote yet more frequently. He com- 
 plains of the house destined for him. It is small and 
 old-fashioned : would Frau Kdnig like him to look out 
 for a newer one in the town } By no means, she 
 replies ; she will soon make the house look nice and 
 comfortable, and has no intention of living in the 
 town, far from the library and without the possibility 
 of looking in on Lessing at all hours. Then Lessing 
 had to hire a cook ; they correspond about her wages ; 
 about the carriage that was to carry Frau Konig, Les- 
 sing, and four children back from Hamburg ; how many 
 horses they will need, and so forth. In the midst of 
 these preparations came an offer from the Palatine,
 
 336 COTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 Charles Theodore, of a yearly pension of a hundred 
 louis d'or, if Lessing would take part in labours 
 for the Academy of Sciences recently founded, 
 and of which the Palatine sent him a diploma of 
 membership. The obligations the post imposed 
 would, he was assured, be trifling. With the per- 
 mission of the Duke and Prince, Lessing accepted 
 the offer. The Palatine then held forth yet more 
 tempting terms. Lessing deferred taking any further 
 steps just then ; his chief desire now was to hasten 
 his marriage. His debts, that had pressed on him like a 
 nightmare, were at length discharged, and he- hoped 
 to be able not only to live at ease, but to help his mother 
 and sister more efficiently. He seemed suddenly 
 relieved from all material cares. If onl)' life and 
 health were granted him, he saw no cause to feel 
 uneasy for the future. About his health he seems 
 to have felt anxiety ; for the first time in his experience 
 he ardently craved for longer life, or else, as he told 
 Frau Konig, he will have put her to inconvenience 
 and expense for nothing. He begged her to make all 
 arrangements that their wedding may be of the most 
 private character, for he must confess he had not even 
 bought a new coat for the occasion. He told Karl he 
 meant to marry, but not when, and requested to be 
 spared Epithalamiums : his brother need not harness 
 either his own or others' Pegasus. He had not even 
 gone through the formality of asking his mother's per- 
 mission. 
 
 On October 8 the marriage was quietly cele- 
 brated near Hamburg, at the country house of one 
 of P'rau Konig's friends. A few days after Lessing 
 took home his wife to Wolfenbiittel he wrote 
 announcing the event, to Karl : ' I have much to tell 
 you about my marriage, and ought to tell it. You
 
 ITALY. lyj 
 
 know my wife, although you may hardly remember 
 her, as you only saw her once. If I assure you that I 
 have ever held her to De the only woman with whom 
 I should venture to live, you will then believe that she 
 possesses all I seek in a wife. If I am therefore not 
 happy with her, I should certainly have been more 
 unhappy with every other. In brief, come to us next 
 summer and see,'
 
 338 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESS TNG. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 MARRIED LIFE. 
 
 (1 776-1778. Aged 47-49.) 
 
 ' Here was a ma7i familiar -with fair heights 
 That poets climb. Upon his peace the tears 
 Atid troubles of our race deep inroads ?nade, 
 Yet life was jwctY to him ; he kept his heart 
 At home. Who saw his wife might well have thought, 
 " God loves this man. He chose a wife for him — 
 The true one/"' — J. Ingelow. 
 
 For once Lessing's anticipations were not to be dis- 
 appointed : he was most happy in his married Hfe. But 
 even here the ill star that presided over his lot worked 
 sorrow only too soon. This, however, was still 
 hidden in the future, and all looked bright and smil- 
 ing when he brought home his wife and her four 
 children to the old-fashioned little house that is still 
 occupied by the Wolfenbiittel librarians. A calm 
 happy time dawned. In the society of his beloved 
 wife, Lessing regained his old cheerfulness and 
 elasticity of spirit. Even his productive vein, that 
 had suffered under the past years of oppressive wait- 
 ing, showed signs of revival. He was still busy with 
 the issue of his ' Contributions,' but he felt the power 
 for better things return. Once more, after his old 
 habit, he made plan upon plan, and spoke of ^this col- 
 lation as tiresome, thankless, time-frittering work. 
 He who till now had been a restless nomad settled
 
 MARRIED LIFE. 339 
 
 down to the most homely domesticity. ' People of our 
 sort,' he tells Karl, who married about the same time, 
 'can only become good house-fathers, orderly and 
 exact, when they become so to please others.' And in 
 quite fatherly fashion Lessing begs his brother to buy 
 him various articles of finery for his womenkind, 
 feathers, flowers, and silks. All his letters breathe a 
 spirit of content and peace that had been too long 
 absent. He urged his friends to visit him and witness 
 his happiness with their own eyes. Mendelssohn 
 accepted the invitation, and wrote : 
 
 * You seem to me now to be in a calmer, more con- 
 tented mood, that harmonizes far better with my 
 mode of thought than that clever but almost bitter 
 humour that I have noticed in you for some years, I 
 did not feel strong enough to repress the sallies of 
 that humour, but I heartily wished that time and cir- 
 cumstances and your own reason might conquer it. 
 It seems to me that all I hear from you and see con- 
 firms me in the pleasant thought that my wish is now 
 fulfilled. In this better frame of mind I must needs 
 speak to you, if only to teach me what has most led 
 to this pacification : the wife or freemasonry .'* Better 
 reason or riper years ?' 
 
 Unquestionably the wife, would have been 
 Lessing's reply, and with truth. The influence of 
 Frau Konig upon Lessing's unquiet fiery tempera- 
 ment was most beneficial and salutary. The pictures 
 preserved to us of his interior are charming, and pre- 
 sent him in a most lovable light. In the spring of 
 1777, the historian Spittler spent three weeks study- 
 ing in the Wolfenbiittel library. He ever after re- 
 called them as three of the happiest and most instruc- 
 tive in his life, on account of the personal intercourse 
 
 z 2
 
 340 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESS INC. 
 
 he enjoyed with Lessing, who allowed him not only- 
 free admission to the library, but, what Spittler prized 
 far more, free access to his house, so that he was in 
 daily intercourse with him, and could listen to the 
 treasures of wisdom and knowledge which Lessing 
 ungrudgingly poured forth in private life. Lessing's 
 conversation was pre-eminently suggestive and stimu- 
 lating. He spoke fluently and well, in a penetrating, 
 agreeable baritone voice. He never monopolized the 
 conversation, but was always attentive to draw others 
 into its flow ; and though he could not disguise his 
 ample ard versatile learning, his talk in the social 
 circle was never pedantic or beyond the comprehen- 
 sion of all his hearers. He detested the schoolmen 
 who wanted to draw him into a corner and discuss au 
 fond pedantic trivialities. In writing he could be the 
 minute scholar as well as any of them, but in the 
 circle of his home or friends he was the genial host. 
 His easy and graceful deportment nowise betrayed 
 the sedentary bookworm. He was also distinguished 
 from the typical German man of letters in his uni- 
 formly neat dress, always made with quiet elegance 
 and attention to fashion. There was something 
 exceedingly characteristic in all he said or did. His 
 manner was decided and firm, but free from the 
 slightest taint of arrogance. A winning benevolence 
 shone out of his deep blue eyes, eyes that were his 
 greatest beauty, whether they danced with merriment, 
 flashed with anger, or looked boldly out into the 
 world. It was a joke among his friends, that every- 
 thing Lessing did was idiosyncratic and original, from 
 his tread to his knock at the door. He several times 
 tested this, trying to imitate that of Mendelssohn, of 
 Nicolai, of his brother : it was no use. Even if he
 
 MARRIED LIFE. 341 
 
 was not expected his friends would exclaim, There 
 comes Lessing ! His house was appointed with the 
 same unostentatious elegance that appeared in his 
 dress. Disorder and dirt were his enemies ; and, pro- 
 foundly learned man as he was, his study did not 
 show the outward untidy signs, so often held de 
 rignetir. It was his habit to rise about six and work 
 in his study for some hours, and only when writing 
 did he allow himself to sit crookedly or to wear a 
 loose coat. In due time he would go and wake the 
 children. If he had no duties at the library he would 
 write till dinner ; if he had, he would dress carefully 
 after breakfast and repair to his post. The dinner 
 hour was half-past twelve, and it rarely happened but 
 Lessing brought in some unexpected guests who had 
 been visiting the library or the librarian, for he had 
 become a celebrity, and people travelled far and wide 
 to speak to him or see him. ' Never mind if there is 
 not enough to eat,' he would say to his wife when 
 such invasions exceeded bounds, ' make up with bacon 
 and eggs,' And his wife, who was as hospitable as he, 
 invariably gave the visitors a hearty welcome, and 
 placed such fare before them as lay in her power ; 
 while the guests knew only too well that the best 
 food of all was that mental one which Lessing 
 liberally supplied. At table he was especially talk- 
 ative and agreeable. It was a rule with him that the 
 food partaken of should not be criticized, nor passing 
 annoyances form the theme of discourse. Cheerful 
 talk he held the best condiment to a meal, and his 
 jokes and heartiest laughter were reserved for home. 
 The afternoon he commonly devoted to recreation 
 and a short walk. At nine a frugal supper was served, 
 at which again visitors were often present. These
 
 342 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSIXG. 
 
 were usually more intimate friends, with whom 
 Lessing would afterwards play a game of his favourite 
 chess, sucking an empty pipe if smokers were present, 
 to appear sociable. He never smoked himself, and 
 had only done so once, when at school in Meissen, 
 and then only because it was forbidden. Between ten 
 and eleven he went to bed, enjoying a deep sleep that 
 never forsook him, and which, according to his account, 
 was always dreamless. Though naturally of a pas- 
 sionate disposition, he controlled himself strictly, and 
 it was rarely that his passion obtained the mastery, 
 but when it did his outbreaks were furious. To his 
 servants he was the most considerate of masters, always 
 fearing lest they should be doing too much. To his 
 children he was the most devoted of stepfathers. He 
 watched with tender care over thcifi moral and intel- 
 lectual training, striving ever to impress upon them 
 that they could never learn too much or too thoroughly, 
 ' for one does not learn for this world alone.' Courage 
 and uncompromising truth were the virtues he chiefly 
 sought to impress upon the boys, and he never re- 
 sorted to corporal punishments except twice, when 
 they had lied and been cowardly. He would join as 
 warmly in their play as in their lessons, even the most 
 fatiguing games found him unwearied. 
 
 Unlimited generosity was a fundamental trait of 
 Lessing's character. He never walked without stray 
 coins for beggars in his pockets. It is said that at 
 Breslau these coins were often not only silver but 
 gold. At the time a friend warned him against such 
 reckless expenditure, and bade him think of his old 
 age. * I hope,' he replied, * I shall never lack money 
 so long as I have these three fingers, and it does not 
 lack here,' pointing to his forehead. When it was re-
 
 MARRIED LIFE. 343 
 
 presented to him that not all beggars deserved 
 support, he answered, 'Ah God, if we also only- 
 received what we deserve, how much should we get ? ' 
 To be in need was a passport to his interest ; to be 
 assailed, a challenge to his chivalry. He would carry 
 the defence of the persecuted to the extent of 
 sophistry ; his greatest enemy was safe from him if in 
 grief or under oppression. ' Whom all attack I leave 
 in peace,' he would say. It cut him to the heart when 
 he could not fulfil to the uttermost all the demands 
 from Camenz. It was especially from his sister that he 
 had to hear unjust reproaches on this theme, and his 
 gentle replies to these unfair accusations reveal the 
 warmth and goodness of his heart. He often had 
 poor scholars staying with him for months, and 
 several oi \i\^ proteges did not merit the sacrifices he 
 made for them. He was no respecter of persons ; he 
 spoke as candidly with the Hereditary Prince as with 
 the beggar ; and it was this independent, assured tone, 
 so far removed from the cringing flattery usual at the 
 petty courts of the period, that puzzled the Prince 
 and slightly alienated him. And according to all 
 testimony, if there was one person in Lessing's house 
 who exceeded him in charity, activity, and serene 
 amiability, it was Lessing's wife. 
 
 Not long after their marriage Lessing saw himself 
 obliged to make an excursion to Mannheim, in 
 accordance with the terms of his pension, and in 
 order to examine various attractive offers that reached 
 him from that place. Frau Lessing accompanied 
 him. She was decidedly inimical to his rashly ex- 
 changing the quiet learned solitude of Wolfenbiittel 
 for any turbulent court life, but agreed with him that 
 it was right he should be alive to his material interests.
 
 344 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSIXG. 
 
 From the first Lessinc^ had suspected that the 
 real object of the Palatine's anxiety to attract 
 Inm concerned the theatre, for which it was desired 
 to have the prestige of his name, and with the 
 theatre Lessing was determined to have no more 
 dealings. He keenly recalled his Hamburg ex- 
 periences, and quailed at the thought. It was a craze 
 at that epoch among the little courts of Germany, to 
 be the centres of an intellectual regeneration, and, con- 
 formably to the ideas propagated by Lessing. the 
 foundation of a national theatre was deemed the great 
 work reserved for the century. Mannheim also wished 
 to be the home of this national theatre, and the 
 Palatine desired that Lessing should organize it. But 
 he dared not ask him directly, as Lessing had too 
 openly expressed his aversion to such undertakings. 
 He was therefore summoned to attend on affairs of 
 the Academy, and when there more distinct pro- 
 positions were made to him. He declined the office 
 of dramaturgist, but consented to assist with advice 
 in the engagement of actors, also to assist in the pro- 
 ject of founding a school for the histrionic art. He 
 had not much confidence in the whole scheme ; he 
 estimated it correctly as a manoeuvre on the part of 
 the Prime Minister to please his master, and that he 
 wished for a famous man like Lessing as his tool. 
 He was therefore puzzled on his return what to write 
 to Karl about Mannheim. 
 
 ' Certain things cannot be spoken of. Yes, spoken 
 of they may be, but not written. One either writes 
 too much or too little, if one has not oneself arrived 
 at a conclusion. In speaking, one can correct oneself 
 every moment ; this cannot be in writing. But so 
 much I may tell you in confidence. Thus far the
 
 MARRIED LIFE. 345 
 
 Mannheim journey strengthens my experience that 
 the German theatre is always vexatious to me ; that 
 I cannot meddle with it, no matter how little, without 
 annoyance and expense. 
 
 * And yet you take it amiss that I prefer throwing 
 myself into theology ? Certainly, if theology rewards 
 one at last as theology has done ! Well, so be it : I 
 should complain of that much less, because it is 
 certainly true that in my theological teazing or evil 
 savouring, whichever you like to call it, I am more 
 concerned about sound reason than about theology : 
 and I only prefer the old orthodox theology, which is 
 tolerant at bottom, because the former is at open 
 warfare with sound reason, and the latter would prefer 
 to bribe it. I make peace with my avowed enemies, 
 so that I may be better on my guard against my 
 secret ones.' 
 
 Lessing had just issued another ' Contribution,' in 
 which he had inserted five more extracts from the 
 MS. of Reimarus, under the title of ' Wolfenbiittel 
 Fragments,' and he waited, not without a certain 
 grave amusement, to see how the clergy would receive 
 these more outspoken attacks. They kept so quiet at 
 first, that two months after the publication, he was 
 able to write : 
 
 ' The silence of the theologians concerning the 
 " Fragments"of my Anonymous writer strengthens the 
 good opinion I have always entertained of them. 
 With due care one can write what one likes as far as 
 they are concerned. Not that which you take away 
 from them, but that which you wish to give, angers 
 them ; and with reason. For if the world is to be kept 
 g(jing with falsehoods, then the old ones, already cur- 
 rent, are just as good as the new.'
 
 346 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 During this time a faction had been forming 
 against Lessing in Mannheim, and the Minister von 
 Hompesch, having extracted some valuable advice 
 and help from him, cast about to avoid acquitting 
 his obligations. He pretended that in renouncing 
 the post of dramaturgist Lessing had renounced his 
 pension as well, and he wrote to him to this effect. 
 Lessing replied to von Hompesch with one of his 
 candid unvarnished epistles, in which he put his base 
 deception pretty plainly before him, and begged him 
 to rest assured that the moment his master or he cir- 
 culated any erroneous statements concerning him, he 
 should publicly refute them out of their own mouths. 
 The Palatine and his minister found themselves con- 
 strained to pocket this letter, whose tenor can have 
 been little familiar to them. They paid Lessing the 
 costs of his journey, presented him with thirty copper 
 medallions of all the Palatines, and kept silence 
 about a matter so little to their credit. Consequently 
 Lessing did the same. Only in his private letters is 
 seen what he thought of the affair. 
 
 ' The idea of a German national theatre is all 
 vanity. At least in Mannheim they never connected 
 any other idea with it than that a German national 
 theatre should be a theatre in which none but natives 
 should act. How thankful I am that I have quite a 
 different kind of comedy which I can have acted for 
 me as often as I please ! 
 
 * With regard to the national theatre, you should 
 have remembered what Christ said of the false pro- 
 phets who would personate Him towards the end of 
 time : " Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here 
 is He, or there, believe it not." If they shall say unto 
 you, Lo, he is in Vienna, believe it not. Lo, he is in
 
 MARRIED LIFE. 347 
 
 the Palatinate, go not thither. If only I had recalled 
 that text in time, I should still have had to go to 
 Mannheim. This is all I can or care to tell you about 
 the affair, with which I would rather have had nothing 
 to do.' 
 
 Yet neither this temporary annoyance, nor the 
 loss of his aged mother, which he felt deeply, could 
 long weigh upon Lessing, who was now so happy and 
 content within his own four walls. Late in the year 
 Mendelssohn paid his promised visit. It is recorded 
 that so strong was the prevailing feeling against Jews, 
 that even the sage Moses ever felt himself as belong- 
 ing to a proscribed class, and on his first introduction 
 to Frau Lessing he timidly presented her with a 
 bouquet of flowers as a peace-offering, to soften the 
 bad impression of his beard and gaberdine. He soon 
 saw that such precautions were not needed towards a 
 woman as large-minded as Lessing himself Men- 
 delssohn was a cherished guest, and he on his part 
 was delighted to witness his friend's well-being. 
 When he departed he took back Lessing's eldest step- 
 son, who wished to enter the Prussian military ser- 
 vice. On Christmas Eve, not long after their depar- 
 ture, Frau Lessing gave birth to a son, who died 
 within a few hours. 
 
 To Eschenburg, who had expressed his sympathy, 
 Lessing wTote : 
 
 ' Januaiy 3, 1778. 
 
 * I seize the moment when my wife lies uncon- 
 scious, to thank you for your kind sympathy. My joy 
 was only short. And I was so unwilling to lose him, 
 this son, for he had so much sense, so much sense.. 
 Do not think that the few hours of my fatherhood 
 have already turned me into such an ape of a father.
 
 348 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSIXG. 
 
 I know what I say. Was it not sense that he had 
 himself drawn into the world with iron forceps ? That 
 he soon scented evil ? Was it not sense that he seized 
 the first opportunity to get away again ? True, the 
 little headstrong boy is dragging away his mother 
 also. For yet there is little hope that I shall keep 
 her I wanted for once to be as well off as other 
 people. It has ill agreed with me.' 
 
 Two days after, Frau Lessing's condition was still 
 critical. 
 
 ' Wulfenbiittel : January 5, 1778. 
 
 ' My dear Brother, 
 
 ' Pity me that this time I have such a valid 
 reason for not having written to you during the time 
 you were so kind to my stepson. I have just lived 
 through the saddest fortnight I ever had. I was in 
 danger of losing my wife, a loss which would have 
 much embittered the remainder of my days. She 
 was confined, and made me the father of a pretty boy, 
 who was healthy and sound. But he only remained 
 so four-and-twenty hours, and afterwards succumbed 
 to the cruel way in which he was drawn into the world. 
 Or perhaps he thought little of the meal to which he 
 had been so forcibly invited, and crept away again of 
 his own accord. In short, I hardly know that I have 
 been a father : the joy was so short, and the sorrow 
 was .so overborne by the greatest anxiety. For the 
 mother lay unconscious for fully nine or ten days, and 
 every day and every night they had to send me away 
 a few times from her bed, telling me I was making the 
 last moments harder for her, for she knew me for all 
 her unconsciousness. At last the illness has suddenly 
 taken a turn, and since' three days I have the surest 
 hope that I shall this time keep her whose society
 
 MARRIED LIFE. 
 
 349 
 
 becomes more and more indispensable to me, even in 
 her present state.' 
 
 Eschenburg calls his letter tragical, and sincerely 
 trusts he can send better news. 
 
 ' I cannot remember what that tragical letter can 
 have been that I am supposed to have written you. 
 I am very much ashamed if it betrayed signs of 
 .despair ; also my fault is not despair, but rather 
 thoughtlessness, which only at times expresses itself 
 somewhat bitterly and misanthropically. My friends 
 must just continue to bear with me as I am. The 
 hopes for the recovery of my wife have sunk again 
 since the last few days, and really now I have only 
 the hope of soon being able to hope again.' 
 
 But three days after he has to announce the worst. 
 He does so with a laconicism that betrays his deso- 
 lation : 
 
 * My wife is dead ! and I have now gone through 
 this experience also. I am glad that many more such 
 experiences cannot be in store for me, and feel quite 
 relieved.' 
 
 'What a sad messenger to my stepson I must 
 make you,' he writes to Karl. ' His good mother, my 
 wife, is dead. Unquestionably I had not deserved 
 such happiness. If you had known her ! But it is 
 said to be only self-praise to laud one's wife. Well, 
 then, I will say nothing about her ; but if only you 
 had known her ! You will, I fear, never see me as our 
 friend Moses found me ; so content, so peaceful within 
 my four walls.' 
 
 On the day Lessing wrote this his wife had been 
 borne to the grave, and a vicious attack on his * Frag- 
 ments,' written by Pastor Goeze, had been put into 
 his hands.
 
 350 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 ' Yesterday morning,' he writes to Eschenburg 
 (January 14), 'the last of my wife was completely 
 taken from me. If I could buy with one half of the 
 days yet remaining to me the happiness of spending 
 the other half in the company of this woman, how 
 gladly would I do it ! But that may not be, and I 
 must begin anew to loiter along my path alone. A 
 good store of literary laudanum and theological diver- 
 sions will help me to survive passably from one day 
 to another.' 
 
 And he kept his word. He threw himself with 
 the whole weight of his bereavement into the theo- 
 logical arena. He was ready to play at that comedy 
 he had congratulated himself upon being able always 
 to have performed for his own benefit whenever he 
 felt so disposed. Indifferent to life, regardless of any 
 storm he might raise, so long as it deadened the 
 intensity of his grief while advancing the cause of 
 humanity, Lessing girded himself for a struggle, whose 
 results made him to be named, not inaptly, the Luther 
 of his time, and verified Cardan's prophecy that a 
 great change in religion would take place in the 
 eighteenth century. He was able to say with his 
 favourite Bayle, whom in some mental characteristics 
 he so much resembled : 'J'aurais cru qu'une querelle 
 avec les theologiens me chagrinerait, mais j'eprouve 
 par experience qu'elle me sert d'amusement dans la 
 solitude a quoi je me suis reduit'
 
 THE ^ WOLFENB'UTTEL FRAGMENTS: 351 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 THE ' WOLFENBUTTEL FRAGMENTS.' 
 (1778.) 
 
 'Die iVakrheit, die man fiiklt, nicht die der Priester, sehn 
 Und fiir uns sehen -will, freimiitkig Kachzvgehti,' — S. HeNZI. 
 
 ■ Unser Zeitalter ist das Zeitalter der fCritik, der sick alles unterwerfen 
 muss. Religion durch ihre Heiligkeit, utid Gesetzgehung dicrch ihn Ma- 
 jestdt, ivollen sich ge?nei>iiglickderselben entziehen. Abcf alsdann erregen. 
 sie gercciiten Verdacht -wider sick, und k'dnnen auf unvcrstelUe Achtung 
 nicfit Anspruch machen, die die Vernunft nur dcmjenigen bezuilligt, zvas 
 ifirc freic undoffentliche Priifung liat aushalten koniioi.' — KANT. 
 
 Four years had elapsed since the publication of the 
 first ' Wolfenbiittel Fragment,' claiming the benefit of 
 toTeraTTSfTfdr Freethinkers equally with Jews, Turks, 
 and Heathens. The thesis thus propounded had 
 attracted no notice. The orthodox did not hold them- 
 selves attacked, and the Berlin rationalists, with Nicolai 
 at their head, comprehended no larger and more 
 enlightened form of toleration than the toleration of 
 indifference. But it was this very indifference that 
 was hateful to Lessing. He did not believe in stag- 
 nation ; he saw how in the Nicolai coterie it had 
 engendered a conceit and spiritual arrogance, rivalling 
 those of the theologians. The two current tendencies 
 of theologic thought, the intellectual and the pietistic, 
 were rapidly ossifying, and what avenue was left for 
 truth.'' To rouse both parties, Lessing put forward
 
 352 GCTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 yet bolder extracts from the MSS. of Reimarus, not, 
 as he explained, because they expressed his own 
 views, but because he felt assured that they must 
 excite a salutary discussion. In publishing them he 
 did no more than what Leibnitz, whom he so much 
 resembled, approved in the evening of his life, when 
 he urged the publication of Bodin's ' Hcptaplomercs', 
 which, like the MSS. of Reimarus, had been long 
 familiar to a select circle. That truth should 
 be a common possession, was another principle 
 which Lessing held with Leibnitz, as he himselt 
 explains : 
 
 ' In his search for truth Leibnitz was never influ- 
 enced by received opinions. Firmly convinced that no 
 opinion could possibly have been received which was 
 not true from some point of view, and in a certain 
 sense, he was well content to turn and twist this 
 opinion about till he succeeded in rendering this point 
 of view visible, this certain sense comprehensible. 
 He struck fire from flint, but he did not hide his fire 
 in flint.' 
 
 ' The Anonymous writer,' says Lessing, ' was so 
 cautious, that he did not wish to vex anyone with 
 truth, and I — I do not believe in the least in such vex- 
 ation, firmly convinced that it is not the abstract truth 
 brought forward for examination, but only truth pro- 
 posed to be reduced to immediate practice, which is 
 capable of exciting vehement religious passion in the 
 multitude. The Anonymous was so discreet a man 
 that he did not wish to make either himself or others 
 unhappy b}' premature utterances, and I— I hazard 
 my own safety like a madman, because I am of 
 opinion that utterances, if they only have foundation, 
 never come too early for the human race. My Anony-
 
 THE ' WOLFENBUTTEL FRAGMENTS: 353 
 
 mous, who wrote I know not when, beheved that the 
 times must become more enlightened before he could 
 openly preach what he held truth ; while I believe 
 that the times are enlightened enough at least to 
 examine whether that which he held truth is really so.' 
 
 ' I drew the Anonymous into the world, not against 
 his wishes, I presume, but certainly without his wish.' 
 
 The five ' Fragments ' which Lessing inserted in 
 his 'Contributions' (1777) had the following titles: 
 * The pulpit denunciations of rationalism ; ' ' The im- 
 possibility of a revelation to which all men could 
 accord solid faith ; ' ' The passage of the Israelites 
 through the Red Sea ; ' ' That the books of the Old 
 Testament were not written to reveal a religion ; ' and 
 ' Concerning the accounts of the Resurrection.' The 
 mere headings evince that these papers are negative, 
 and regard all positive creeds as human devices. The 
 Anonymous writer defended reason, man's noblest 
 possession, against the divines who decry it as a weak, 
 fallacious guide, and show their sophistry in disparag- 
 ing the very weapon which they themselves are 
 compelled to employ in their own arguments. He 
 further demonstrated the untenability of the Revela- 
 tion theory, criticized the Old Testament as bearing 
 no stamp of divine authorship, exposed its discre- 
 pancies and the legendary character of the Mosaic 
 miracles. 
 
 The ' Wolfenbiittel Fragments ' are no longer read. 
 Modern theological criticism has far outstripped their 
 crude speculations, belonging to the mechanical school 
 of Deism, that held miracles as sheer, impostures. 
 Exegetical examination was unknown ; a narrative 
 was either false or true, wilfully perverted or dictated 
 by Heaven. Written before the growth of myth was 
 
 A A
 
 354 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 understood or had been scientifically investigated, 
 they were imbued with that early spirit of rationalism, 
 which in its earnest wish to be useful, ceased to be 
 reasonable, and grew fanatically intolerant, indis- 
 criminately condemning the past as worthless and 
 rotten. The rationalist could see in the adherents of 
 orthodoxy only the blind followers of a cunning im- 
 posture ; while these based their beliefs upon a rigid 
 theory of inspiration. ' The child- dream of a dead 
 universe, governed by an absent God,' was then in its 
 heyday. On the other hand the historical value of 
 the ' Fragments ' is unquestionable. Enlightenment 
 owes them vast obligations, since their publication 
 gave birth to a controversy whose like had not agitated 
 Protestantism since the Reformation. 
 
 Reimarus was a forerunner of David Strauss ; he 
 wrought in the spirit of Wolffs philosophy, as Strauss 
 in that of Hegel. The relative nature of truth was 
 as yet unrecognized, as well as the gradual adaptation 
 of truth to the requirement of every age. The spirit 
 of inquiry that begot the Reformation was a breath of 
 it ; Bodin preached it in his ' Repiibliqiie ;' but the minds 
 of men were unprepared for it. In Lessing's day it 
 was floating in the air ; he seized it and gave it written 
 shape. He had the honesty that places a man above 
 the factions- of creeds, and a good portion of the per- 
 sonal indifference to odium needed by the innovator. 
 In the notes — ' Hints,' he names them — with which he 
 accompanied his ' Fragments, ' he seeks to establish 
 the legitimacy of free discussion on controversial 
 themes. Until our time, he contends, religion had 
 been as ill attacked as defended : the author of the 
 ' Fragments ' seemed to him to approach the ideal of 
 a worthy adversary. But in the same sentence he
 
 THE ' WOLFENBiJTTEL FRAGMENTS: 355 
 
 expresses a wish that a man may arise who will no 
 less approach the ideal of a defender of religion. 
 
 Lessing has been reproached for hiding his 
 opinions. The classifiers of human minds have been 
 unable to force him into any of their categories, and 
 it was their utter misunderstanding of his purpose 
 that furnished for Lessing the amusing element in the 
 discussions excited by the publication of the ' Frag- 
 ments.' He was not afraid of the issue. Religion 
 was to him apart from theology, it consisted in 
 feeling. This was his fundamental axiom. He care- 
 fully distinguishes between Christians and theologians, 
 saying : ' How do this man's hypotheses and expla- 
 nations and proofs concern the Christian } The 
 Christianity which is so true, in which he feels him- 
 self so happy, cannot be a fiction, for it is here. When 
 the paralyzed man feels the beneficial shocks of the 
 electric spark, what does it concern him whether 
 Nollet or Franklin is right, or whether both are 
 wrong .'•' He turned against the conserv^atives, whose 
 belief in the letter closed their minds against the 
 theory which Lessing, with advanced insight, called to 
 his aid : he turned against the innovators whose reform 
 meant destruction. 'Dirty water,' says Reimarus, 
 ' ought not to be poured out before you have clean.' 
 ' But,' retorts Lessing, * he who does not pour out the 
 dirty water can never have clean.' For the author 
 of the ' Fragments' Christianity as a positive religion 
 fell with its props of miracle, revelation, and fulfil- 
 ment of prophecy. Not so for Lessing. He only 
 inferred that the props were vain. Such arguments 
 might confound the theologian, but they did not 
 touch the simple Christian. The weight of Lessing's 
 intellect leaned to untrammelled individual thought, 
 
 A A 2
 
 356 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING 
 
 and he regarded those who followed Reimarus, and 
 the orthodox, as the two extremes ; the neologians 
 holding the central place. He could sympathize with 
 all three parties and with none. This was extremely 
 puzzling to his contemporaries. His own thoughts 
 are reflected in some MS. notes published post- 
 humously. Preparing to study the manner in which 
 the Christian religion had been founded and spread, 
 he wrote : ' Undertake this investigation as an honest 
 man,' I say to myself: 'look everj'where with your 
 own eyes, distort nothing, embellish nothing. As the 
 conclusions follow, so let them follow : do not check 
 their course, do not influence it.' 
 
 For some little time the theologians were silent. 
 Then a storm of abuse burst upon the editor, or, as 
 some asserted, the disguised author of the ' Frag- 
 ments.' Controversial attacks poured from the press, 
 and Lessing was plunged into a vortex of dispute. 
 These tracts are now happily consigned to the oblivion 
 that awaits polemics, their tenor can only be inferred 
 from Lessing's answers. The kernel of all his 
 arguments is the relation between the Bible and 
 Christianity. But his adversaries did not place them- 
 selves on his platform. They admitted or ignored 
 the point in question — the validity of the historical 
 foundations — and only occupied themselves with the 
 danger to faith involved in the investigation. Thus 
 they laid themselves open to the vigorous dialectics 
 of Lessing, who, insensibly substituting himself in 
 the place of his author, ended by entering the lists in 
 person. In replying to his earliest opponents, he still 
 entrenched himself behind his editorial capacity. 
 Schumann, of Hanover, had controverted him, but 
 with politeness, and Lessing replied without a trace
 
 THE ' WOLFENBUTTEL FRAGMENTS: 357 
 
 of irritation or ill-will. Schumann had laid down 
 that only those who had read everything ever written 
 on the Bible, and who knew the history and language 
 of all nations, and possessed keen insight and logical 
 faculty, could judge of the Bible. Since that was 
 possible to very few, Schumann refers to the fulfilled 
 prophecies of the Old Testament, and the miracles of 
 the New, as proof of the Spirit and Power spoken of 
 by Paul and Origen. 
 
 * Sir,' says Lessing, in an introductory note to his 
 tract, ' Concerning the Proof of Spirit and Power,' 
 ' Sir, who could desire more to read your new work 
 than I 1 I hunger after conviction so much, that, like 
 Erisichthon, I swallow all that only looks like 
 nourishment. If you do the same with this sheet, 
 we are the right sort of men for each other. I am, 
 with the regard that one inquirer after truth never 
 ceases to hold for another, yours, etc' 
 
 Then follows a closely argued reply to Schumann's 
 strictures, whose purport is this : Miracles of which I 
 am an eye-witness are to be distinguished from those 
 transmitted on historical testimony. If I had been a 
 contemporary of Christ and an eye-witness of His 
 miracles, I might have yielded my reason captive ; but 
 I hear of these by tradition, and though no one doubts 
 that the accounts of these prophecies and miracles are 
 as trustworthy as historical facts can be, yet these are 
 always regarded as not demonstrable after long lapses 
 of time. If historical truth cannot be demonstrated, 
 it follows that nothing can be demonstrated through 
 historical truth. Why, therefore, should undemon- 
 strated truths claim to be believed as demonstrated, 
 and why should long use give them a right to be 
 unconditionally credited "> If even the miracles could
 
 358 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 be proved incontestably from history, such proof must 
 still partake of the shifting nature of historical data, 
 and we should not be justified in deducing a conclu- 
 sion that lies out of the domain of history. Historical 
 truths have no bearing beyond the domain of estab- 
 lished fact. We all believe that Alexander lived, and 
 conquered half Asia ; but who upon this would build 
 up a belief of great and far-spreading import, in con- 
 sequence of which he would deny every other fact 
 that in the least clashes with this .-' For might not the 
 whole history of Alexander prove as fabulous, and be 
 based on a mere poem, as was the ten years' siege of 
 Troy .-* Thus, if the resurrection of Christ were proved, 
 does it follow thence that we are obliged to believe 
 Him to be the Son of God, if this idea is contrary to 
 all the fundamental ideas we hold on the Divine 
 essence .'* Would not this be passing from historical 
 to metaphysical proof, a vitiating of the whole pro- 
 cess, a sort of paralogism as foreseen by Aristotle, 
 {jjbSTd^aaLs sis aXXo ysvos) ? If the further reply be 
 attempted, that these matters must be more than his- 
 torically certain, because attested by inspired his- 
 torians who cannot err, I answer that it is unfortu- 
 nately only historically certain that these historians 
 were inspired. 'And this is the ugly wide ditch I 
 cannot jump as often and as earnestly as I have tried. 
 If some one can help me over let him do it, I beg 
 him, I implore him.' 
 
 Lessing thus went further than his Anonymous 
 author ; for not content with shaking the historical 
 proof, he contended that, this proof established, there 
 followed no reason for believing what was contrary to 
 reason. 
 
 This pamphlet was followed by a lively dialogue
 
 THE ' WOLFENBUTTEL FRAGMENTS: 359 
 
 * The Testament of John,' quite in the spirit of Lucian. 
 Lessing had ended the preceding pamphlet with a 
 wish that all who were separated intellectually by the 
 Gospel of St. John might be united by his Testament, 
 apocryphal it is true, but none the less divine. He 
 refers to the touching legend preserved by Jerome, 
 how the aged John, spent by years, could repeat only 
 the simple words, ' Children, love one another ; ' and 
 when charged with monotony, insisted that ' Such was 
 the precept of the Lord, and he who followed this did 
 enough.' In the dialogue his adversary says he has 
 never heard of a Testament of John, and can find it 
 in no learned catalogue. ' Must everything then be a 
 book .'' The last will of John, the last remarkable, 
 often repeated words of the dying John, they can also 
 be called a Testament, can they not } These words 
 should be written in golden letters in every church ; 
 they contain the germ of all Christianity.' His 
 opponent objects. 
 
 ' Then Christian love is not Christian religion ? ' 
 asks Lessing. 
 
 Yes and no, says his adversary : yes, if combined 
 with the Christian dogmas ; no, a useless and absurd 
 incumbrance on the road to hell, if practised without 
 this faith. 
 
 He : Why should they take the yoke of Christian 
 love upon themselves, if the dogmas do not render it 
 easy and meritorious } 
 
 I : Very true, we must let them run this risk. I 
 only ask, however, is it wise of certain other people, 
 on account of the risk these people run because of 
 their Christian unchristian love, to deny them the 
 name of Christian } 
 
 He : Cui non competit definitio, non co^npctit de- 
 finitum. Did I invent that .''
 
 36o GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESS INC. 
 
 I : But if we extended the definition a little ? And 
 that in accordance with the saying of a certain good 
 man : ' Whoever is not against us is for us.' You 
 know him I suppose, this good man ? 
 
 He : Very well. It is the same who in another 
 place says : ' Whosoever is not with me, he is against 
 me.' 
 
 I : Ah so, yes certainly, that silences me. Oh, you 
 alone are the true Christian, and as well read in Scrip- 
 ture as the devil.' 
 
 This bitter conclusion reveals Lessing's rising 
 anger. Here, according to him, was the sum and sub- 
 stance of religion. But this was what the theologians 
 could not and would not allow. 
 
 An archdeacon of Wolfenblittel had defended the 
 narratives of the resurrection against the Anonymous 
 writer. He neither mentioned Lessing by name nor 
 did he name himself, but he knew whom he was 
 attacking as well as Lessing knew who was attacking 
 him. To this apologist Lessing replied with a refuta- 
 tion called a Diiplik. The main part consists of a 
 strictly critical discussion of all the discrepancies in 
 the Gospel narrative brought forward by the Anony- 
 mous writer. Lessing easily proved that his ' Neigh- 
 bour,' as he calls him, had not advanced a single sound 
 argument. In the commencement Lessing's tone is 
 cool, but in the course of exposition it becomes more 
 and more excited. It angers him when his Anony- 
 mous writer is treated with lofty contempt, as an 
 ignoramus unfitted to take part in controversy: a taunt 
 which he knew well could be refuted by merely giving 
 his real name. The charge that the Anonymous 
 writer had wilfully blinded himself against truth 
 aroused Lessing's indignation. It is not possible, he
 
 THE ' IVOLFENBUTTEL FRAGMENTS.' 361 
 
 protests, that a man should wilfully, consciously deceive 
 himself. 
 
 And he then speaks the famous words that have 
 almost become identified with his name : 
 
 ' Not the truth in whose possession a man is or 
 believes himself to be, but the earnest efforts which he 
 has made to attain truth, make the worth of the man. 
 For it is not through the possession but through the 
 search for truth that his powers are strengthened, 
 in which alone his ever-growing perfection exists. 
 Possession makes him calm, indolent, proud — 
 
 ' If God held all truth in His right hand, and in His 
 left the ever-living desire for truth, although with the 
 condition that I should remain in error for ever, and 
 if He said to me " Choose," I should humbly incline 
 towards His left, and say, " Father, give ; pure truth is 
 for Thee alone." ' 
 
 He again insists that after a lapse of years we 
 should not always investigate anew the foundations of 
 our building. This lesson is conveyed under the guise 
 of a parable about the temple of the Ephesian Diana. 
 ' I praise what stands above the earth, not what lies 
 hidden under the earth. Forgive me, dear architect, 
 that I do not want to know any more about that than 
 that it must be good and firm. For it bears and has 
 borne so long. . . . Strange that men are so little 
 content with that which they have before them. . . . 
 When will people cease wishing to hang nothing less 
 than eternity on a spider's web ! No scholastic dog- 
 matism has inflicted wounds so deep on religion as 
 historical exegetics are inflicting now.' 
 
 To the reproach that he might have employed his 
 leisure better than by throwing this brand into the 
 theological camp, Lessing replies :
 
 362 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 ' If I have not used my leisure to the best advan- 
 tage, what matter ? Who knows if I should not have 
 used it still worse with something else ? It was at 
 least my intention to use it well. It was at least my 
 conviction that I could thus use it well. I leave it to 
 time to show what my openly expressed opinion shall 
 and can achieve. Perhaps, according to the laws of a 
 Higher Dispensation, the fire is to continue to 
 smoulder for a long while yet ; to irritate healthy 
 eyes by its smoke for some while still, before we can 
 enjoy both warmth and light together. If it is so, then 
 do Thou Eternal Fount of all Truth, who alone knowest 
 when and where it should pour forth its waters, forgive 
 a useless and ofificious servant. He desired to clear the 
 mud from Thy paths. If he has thrown away grains 
 of gold with it, yet Thy grains of gold cannot perish. 
 . . . And now one word about myself, and I con- 
 clude. I am well aware that my blood flows dif- 
 ferently now that I end this Diiplik than it did when 
 I began. . . . Shall I excuse myself.? . . , 
 Promise to be more careful another time .'' 
 
 ' Can I do that .-' Can I promise .'' Yes, yes, I 
 promise never even to resolve to remain calm and 
 indifferent concerning certain things. If a man may 
 not grow warm and interested in matters he clearly 
 recognizes as distortions of reason and Scripture, 
 when and where may he grow so .? ' 
 
 The interchange of polemics with Schumann and 
 the ' Neighbour' proved mere forerunners to the ulti- 
 mate turmoil. Lessing's old Hamburg friend Goeze 
 became his chief adversary. Lessing's replies to him 
 have obtained not merely a fame equal to Pascal's 
 ' Provincial Letters,' but a larger amount of popularity, 
 in virtue of the highly comic and dramatic character
 
 THE ' WOLFENBUTTEL FRAGMENTS: 363 
 
 that distinguishes Lessing's polemics, and renders 
 them palatable to many to whom theological subtle- 
 ties and patristic lore are wholly indifferent. They 
 exceed in critical sagacity, forcible reasoning, and 
 lucid pointed style, anything ever written even by 
 Lessing ; and authors would do well to follow the 
 example of Coleridge, who wrote in the fly-leaf of his 
 copy, ' Year after year I make a point of reperusing 
 the Kleinc Schvifttn as master-pieces of style and 
 argument.' 
 
 After Lessing's removal to Wolfenbiittel, he had 
 continued on friendly terms with Goeze, who highly 
 lauded his work on Berengarius. They had also inter- 
 changed visits. But it unfortunately happened that 
 Goeze had asked Lessing for an official favour — a 
 mere trifle — at the time when he was devoured wath 
 anxiety about his wife. The matter escaped his 
 attention. Goeze complained of this discourtesy in a 
 newspaper, not naming Lessing except as the famous 
 librarian of a famous library, who grudged to others 
 what he used himself. On hearing this, Lessing in- 
 tended to write an immediate letter of excuse, but 
 neglected that also. Thereupon Goeze began 
 furiously to attack the editor of the ' Fragments.' The 
 first of these attacks reached Lessing as he sat beside 
 the corpse of his wife, and it is to this that he refers 
 in his letter to Eschenburg. It was almost a relief to 
 the undaunted gladiator that a new adversary should 
 have entered the arena, in wrestling against whom he 
 could forget his own overwhelming sorrow. 
 
 Goeze at once put the matter on a personal foot- 
 ing ; he denounced the ' Fragments ' themselves as no 
 modest scruples, but the rankest calumnies, and said 
 he should tremble for his dying hour if he were re-
 
 364 GO TT HOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 sponsible for bringing such essays to light, concluding 
 with a wish that their editor would in future give the 
 world better matter than poison from the library trea- 
 sures which he was appointed to guard. Goeze was 
 destined to feel the full weight of Lessing's zeal for 
 truth. In him Lessing found the typical self-satis- 
 fied, dogmatic theologian, narrow, shallow, unscru- 
 pulous, bibliolatrous, addicted to the flesh-pots of 
 Egypt under the hypocritical guise of philanthropy ; 
 in short, the pastor as he ought not to be. Goeze was 
 by no means the w^orst of Lessing's opponents, but he 
 was the most outspoken ; moreover, in his way, com- 
 plete and consistent, and as such attractive to Les- 
 sing, who loved a whole nature of whatever kind. In 
 every respect a man who answered to Heine's cynical 
 definition : ' Es sind in DattscJdand die TJieologcn die 
 dem licbcn Gott ein Ende iiiaclien — on 7i'est jamais 
 traJii que par les sicns! Never did Lessing write so 
 brilliantly, argue so closely, sally so humorously, as 
 during his brief but rapid interchange of tracts with 
 Goeze. 
 
 The prologue to ' the comedy ' consists of a 
 ' Parable,' in which religion is compared to the palace 
 which a wise king had built of a peculiar architecture 
 that fitted it for a variety of requirements. About 
 this structure a foolish strife was carried on, chiefly 
 by so-callod connoisseurs, as to the original ground 
 plans, various old drafts existed though their mean- 
 ing was lost, and which were therefore explained 
 according to the pleasure of each of these self-con- 
 stituted critics. Once upon a time the watchmen 
 of the palace cried Plre ! and what did these critics 
 do .-• Help to extinguish it .-* Oh no, each ran and 
 seized his own plan to decide which part of the palace
 
 THE ' WOLFENBUTTEL FRAGMENTS: 365 
 
 was the most essential, and which they should there- 
 fore save. They squabbled and wrangled over this, so 
 that the whole palace would have been consumed, but 
 happily its safety did not depend on them, for it was 
 no fire at all. The watchmen had been frightened by 
 the Northern Lights. 
 
 The interpretation is easy. The parable shows 
 the distinction between the essence and the historical 
 form of Christianity ; that religion exists indepen- 
 dent of critical questions, and that it was not endan- 
 gered by any publication save in the eyes of those 
 theologians who, instead of defending it, only thought 
 of defending their own cherished ideas. This parable 
 was accompanied by ' A Request,' addressed to 
 Goeze, an ironical but perfectly good-humoured letter. 
 Lessing engages the pastor to render justice to his 
 intentions as editor of the ' Fragments.' It begins 
 with a lively distinction between a pastor and a 
 librarian. The one is a shepherd who only values the 
 herbs that agree with his sheep, the other a botanist 
 who gathers with care all the plants hitherto un- 
 named by Linnaeus, regardless whether they be 
 poisonous or no. Thus with him, if he found aught 
 among his entrusted treasures that he believes un- 
 known, he publishes it, indifferent whether one person 
 pronounces it important, another unimportant, 
 whether it edify or scandalize. Useful and hurtful are 
 as much relative terms as great and small. If Goeze 
 held it his duty to withhold what might offend the 
 least of his congregation, Lessing equally held it his 
 duty to bring all that had ever been written into the 
 great foundling hospital of print. Each acted accord- 
 ing to his light, and neither had a right to upbraid 
 the other. His request on which he thinks he has a
 
 366 COTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSIXG. 
 
 right to insist, is that Gocze should make a decla- 
 ration ' as good as voluntar)-,' in his next ' Voluntary- 
 Contributions,' to the effect that he liad explained a 
 passage of Lessing's in a way wholly at variance with 
 the context. The remark that even if sceptical ob- 
 jections against the Bible could not be removed, Reli- 
 gion would remain undisturbed, had been construed 
 by Goeze as an acknowledgment on Lessing's part 
 that the objections were unanswerable, and he is now 
 publicly to declare that he has since been undeceived 
 by Lessing. 
 
 While Lessing was engaged on these ' pacific 
 sheets,' as he names them, he received the last num- 
 bers of the 'Voluntary Contributions,' wherein Goeze 
 attacked him with a passionate acrimony which made 
 it manifest that no peaceful understanding could be 
 establish!^ between them. Lessing therefore wrote 
 his * Farewell Letter,' wherein he abandoned the con- 
 ciliator}' tone and replied to Goeze's sledge hammer 
 comments with warmth. His mettle was aroused, his 
 soul on fire. What especially kindled his anger was 
 not so much Goeze's personal attack on himself, with 
 its venom, its merriment, and affected commiseration, 
 as the self-satisfied spiritual pride with which he 
 treated Lessing's Anonymous writer as a schoolboy 
 and a poltroon. He assures Goeze that if it were a 
 question of balancing man against man, this Anony- 
 mous personage was of such weight that in every 
 branch of learning seven Goezes would not counter- 
 balance that man's seventh part. 
 
 * You may believe this, Herr Pastor, on my word ; 
 and now my knightly farewell shall be brief Write, 
 Herr Pastor, and let write as much as you can compass ; 
 I shall write too. If I allow you to be right when
 
 THE ' WOLFENBUTTEL FRAGMENTS: 367 
 
 you are not right in the least matter concerning 
 myself and my Anonymous, it will be because I can 
 no longer hold a pen.' 
 
 He will not be decried as a man less favourably 
 disposed than Goeze to the Lutheran Church ; in fact, 
 he insists that he is better disposed, that he has 
 imbibed more of Luther's spirit, that revolted against 
 torpor and stagnation, than one who would fain pass 
 off a tender regard for a lucrative office as holy zeal. 
 Oh that he could have Luther to judge between 
 them ! 
 
 • Thou Luther, great man, ill understood, and by 
 none so ill-understood as by the short-sighted and 
 stiff-necked, who, with thy slippers in their hand, 
 shuffle along the way thou hast prepared, vociferating 
 or indifferent. Thou hast freed us from the yoke of 
 tradition ; who will free us from the more intolerable 
 yoke of the letter } Who will bring us a Christianity 
 at last such as thou wouldst teach now, such as Christ 
 Himself would teach } ' 
 
 Lessing was pretty sure that the matter would not 
 end here, that Goeze would never allow an opponent 
 to have the last word, though he always took care to 
 have the first, and that he would regard as an attack 
 what Lessing had meant as a defence. He was not 
 mistaken. Goeze's assaults followed fast and furious. 
 He accused Lessing of havingput forward his positions 
 * as mere axioms.' ' How can this be .<* ' asks Lessing, 
 'since everyone knows that axioms are positions 
 which must be accepted by all who can understand 
 them.' He then defends his remarks under the head- 
 ing * Axiomata, if such there be in these matters.' 
 
 The letter, he says, is not the spirit, and the Bible 
 is not religion. It follows that objections against the
 
 // 
 
 368 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 letter and against the Bible are not also objections 
 against the spirit and against religion ; for the Bible 
 clearly contains more than belongs to religion, and it 
 is a mere hypothesis that this more must be equally 
 infallible. Besides, religion existed before there was 
 a Bible. Christianity existed before the Evangelists 
 and Apostles had written. Some time elapsed before 
 the first of them wrote, and a very considerable time 
 before the whole canon was completed. Therefore, 
 let what will depend on these writings, it is clearly 
 impossible that the whole truth of religion can rest 
 upon them. If there was a time when religion was 
 already widely spread, in which it had already capti- 
 vated many souls, and }'et in which not one letter had 
 been written that has come down to us, then it must 
 be possible that everything which the Evangelists and 
 Apostles have written should be lost again, and the 
 religion which they taught might yet endure. Religion 
 is not true because the Evangelists and Apostles 
 taught it, but they taught it because it is true. The 
 written traditions must be explained out of their 
 innate truth, and no written traditions can give it 
 innate truth if it has none. To each of these pro- 
 positions he appends elucidatory comments, pithy, 
 logical, and pointed. 
 
 He explains his standpoint, Goeze having accused 
 him of not expressing himself in accordance with the 
 language of the Theological Schools. ' I am an 
 amateur in theology and no theologian ; I have not 
 been forced to swear to any system. Nothing binds 
 me to speak other language than my own. I pity all 
 honest men who are not so fortunate as to be able to 
 say this of themselves. But these honest men must 
 not try to cast the rope that fastens them to the
 
 THE ' WOLFENBUTTEL FRAGMENTS: 369 
 
 manger about the horns of other honest men ; else 
 my pity ceases, and I can only despise them.' 
 
 Lessing warns Goeze no longer to affect to believ^e 
 that he who doubts a particular proof of a thing doubts 
 the thing itself. Goeze attempts to prove not so 
 much by syllogisms as by tests. But are these tests 
 indisputable .'' and do we not move in an everlasting 
 circle, if we attempt to prove the infallibility of a book 
 by a passage from the same book, and the infallibility 
 of the passage from the infallibility of the book } 
 
 Goeze had propounded the question. Would a trace 
 of Christ's teaching have reached us, had the New 
 Testament remained unwritten ? * God forbid that I 
 should ever think so meanly of Christ's teaching,' ex- 
 claims Lessing, * that I should venture to answer this 
 question with No. No, I would not repeat this No, if 
 an angel from heaven had prompted it ; much less 
 when a Lutheran pastor would put it into my mouth. 
 All that happens in the world leaves traces in the 
 world, even if men cannot point them out at once ; and 
 should Thy teaching only, Divine Friend of man, 
 although Thou didst command that it should not be 
 written, but preached, have effected nothing, nothing 
 whatever, even had it been only preached, whence 
 its origin might be recognized } Should Thy words 
 not have become words of life, until transformed into 
 dead letters ? Are books the only way to enlighten 
 and improve mankind } Is oral tradition nothing } 
 And if oral tradition be subject to a thousand inten- 
 tional and unintentional perversions, are not books 
 subject to the same } Might not God, by the same 
 display of His immediate power, have equally guarded 
 oral traditions from perversion as we say He has 
 guarded the books } Out on the man, Almighty God, 
 
 B B
 
 370 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSiNG. 
 
 who would be a preacher of Thy word, and yet boldly 
 asserts that to attain Thy end, Thou hadst but the one 
 way which Thou wast pleased to make known to him ! 
 Out upon the theologian who, except this one way 
 that he can see, flatly denies all other ways that he 
 does not see. Defend me, good God, from ever 
 becoming thus orthodox, that I may never become 
 thus presumptuous ! ' 
 
 It is not in a spirit of parody, but in heartfelt 
 earnestness, that Lessing often sees himself obliged to 
 turn Goeze's words against himself With all esteem 
 due to his merits, he must observe that his positions 
 are often most dangerous heterodoxy, or most mali- 
 cious slander. ' He may choose which. Indeed, both 
 are at his service.' Goeze ' wonders ' Lessing can hold 
 this or that view. ' I do not even wonder that he 
 wonders. May Heaven long preserve us in the same 
 relations, he wondering and I not!' The answer to 
 Goeze's tenth and last refutation, Lessing frames in 
 the form of a dialogue, which he names ' Pulpit 
 dialogue, or a dialogue and no dialogue,' and which 
 is highly amusing to read. He feigns that Goeze is 
 preaching, and after the common homiletic fashion 
 putting questions, and that he, Lessing, is interrupt- 
 ing the speaker, who however does not consider him- 
 self interrupted, but talks on regardless whether their 
 words chime in or no. He is wound up and must run 
 down, so Lessing at last grows tired of talking any 
 longer to a deaf man. 
 
 Lessing promises a cop}' of this pamphlet to his 
 brother Karl. 
 
 ' I am very glad my Diiplik has pleased you. I 
 am delighted that you are beginning to enjoy the 
 haiit-comiqiie of polemics which make all other thea-
 
 THE ' WOLFE.XBUTTEL FRAGMENTS: 371 
 
 trical work shallow and watery to me. In a few days 
 you shall receive a pamphlet against Goeze, towards 
 whom I have placed myself in such a position that he 
 treats me as unchristian. But these are nothing but 
 the skirmishes of the light troops of my army ; the 
 main forces are slowly marching on, and the first 
 serious encounter is my " New hypotheses concerning 
 the Evangelists, considered as merely human his- 
 torians." I believe that I have written nothing more 
 thorough of its kind, and I may add, nothing more 
 suggestive. I sometimes wonder myself how naturally 
 everything follows from a single remark which I found 
 I had made without exactly knowing how.' 
 
 Lessing, so chary of self-praise, so rarely satisfied 
 with himself, was for once content, and justly so. 
 The essay to which he refers is a most remarkable 
 production, almost prophetic in its foreshadowing of 
 the results of modern research. The first authorities 
 in Germany recognize it as the germ whence sprung 
 the modern explanation of the origin of the synoptical 
 gospels. It was intended to have been an extensive 
 work, but was never finished. Only its outline of 
 sixty-eight paragraphs saw the light, but here again 
 Lessing's ' Fragments ' became more suggestive than 
 the finished work of many another writer. He flung 
 forth truths irregularly. Everything about him looks 
 fragmentary, and yet withal he electrified his contem- 
 poraries and bridged the chasm between two ages. 
 His touch was regenerative, even if he only skimmed 
 a subject, and he had a faculty of shooting light into 
 unexpected regions till then held to be dull and 
 barren. He persisted that he did not care for theo- 
 logy, that he had been dragged into it by the hair of 
 his head ; but the result justifies the remark of Nicolai, 
 
 B B 2
 
 372 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 that he had always noticed in liim an itch to come 
 to close quarters with the theologians. Among his 
 posthumous papers are drafts of half-finished theo- 
 logical essays, in part answers to his adversaries, in 
 part suggested by their assaults. If he seemed 
 rather an advocate for orthodoxy than for the 
 rationalism of the period, it was because he con- 
 tended that the grosser the error the shorter the way 
 to truth. Of Rational Christianity he pertinently re- 
 marked that he never knew where Christianity left 
 off and reason began. The theologians deemed him a 
 Freethinker ; the Freethinkers held him a theologian. 
 While still a boy he had begun to doubt; not scof- 
 fingly, as was the fashion, but earnestly, religiously, 
 in the Tennysonian conviction that ' there lives more 
 faith in honest doubt than in half the creeds.' He 
 acknowledges that as a lad he grew the more scep- 
 tical the more decisively anyone wished to prove 
 Christianity ; while the more triumphantly and wan- 
 tonly anyone essayed to tread it down, the more he 
 felt impelled to uphold it in his heart. Where was 
 the way out of this labyrinth } His fragmentary 
 poem ^ Die Religion I dating from 1753, breathes the 
 same spirit of reverent doubt. With regard to a 
 future life, he ever maintained his inability to compre- 
 hend why a future life might not be awaited as calmly 
 as a future day. He was inimical to all futile and 
 unverifiable speculations, and this too was in accord- 
 ance with his whole being. He has been aptly desig- 
 nated as the ' supreme reason of an age of reason.' 
 
 His prime effort was to simplify religion, to mark 
 the divergence between essential and eternal truths, 
 and dogmatic and historical externals, for whose 
 poetical symbolism he had full comprehension, but
 
 THE ' WOLFENBUTTEL FRAGMENTS: 373 
 
 which were too commonly confounded by the mass as 
 equally essential and necessary. In a fragment entitled 
 ' Bibliolatry,' and directed against Goeze. Lessing has 
 modestly but firmly characterized his attitude towards 
 the church and religion in an extract from the ' Ion ' 
 of Euripides, by significantly substituting the word 
 Christ for Phoebus' : 
 
 Ka\6v 76 rhv ■k6vov, S> 
 Xp'Ttc, ao\ irph S6ij.ou Xarpevo) 
 
 'These lines,' says Lessing, 'Euripides puts into 
 the mouth of Ion, sweeping the steps before the 
 temple of Apollo. I too am not busied in the 
 temple, but about it. I too only sweep the steps 
 up to the shrine which the holy priests of the inner 
 temple are content to clear of dust. I too am proud 
 of this mean labour, for I know best to whose honour 
 I labour.' 
 
 He held it no inglorious task to sweep the 
 threshold before the divine seat of pure religion, 
 and neither Goeze nor his ilk should find him slacken 
 in his ardour. 
 
 Lessing had not been mistaken in his estimate of 
 Goeze's tactics. Every number of the latter's paper 
 contained abusive articles, pretended replies to the 
 ' Axiomata,' but quite beside the point. They were 
 headed, ' Lessing's weakness exposed.' Lessing 
 answered by eleven tracts, entitled ' Anti-Goeze, or 
 compulsory contributions to the " Voluntary Contribu- 
 tions" of the Rev. Mr. Goeze,' each headed by a pithy 
 motto taken from the Fathers, the first paper being 
 accompanied by the wish that it might, D. V., be the 
 
 ' ' In a worthy toil indeed, O Phoebus, I serve thee before thine 
 house, honouring thy seat of oracles.' — Buckley's Translation.
 
 374 GOT! HOLD EPHRAIM LESSIAC. 
 
 last. Lcssing speaks of these tracts as drolleries 
 {Schjiun'en). 
 
 ' And such drolleries Goeze shall certainly receive 
 as often as he writes any nonsense against me or my 
 Anonymous, in his " Voluntary Contributions." I am 
 firmly resolved on this point, even if my "Anti-Goeze " 
 becomes a regular weekly paper, as dull and useless 
 as any that was ever written or read in Hamburg.' 
 
 Katzhalgereioi he calls them in another place, and 
 admits that all he has written in this matter as a com- 
 batant he would not have written as a teacher. 
 
 'Jerome said that the accusation of heresy (and 
 how much more of irreligion !) was of that nature in 
 qua tolcrantan esse, ivipictatis sit, iion virtntis, and 
 yet I would rather be guilty of this impiety, than 
 abstain from making light of a virtue which is none 
 at all. Decorum, good taste, savoir-vivre, miserable 
 virtues of our effeminate age ! Varnish are ye and 
 nothing more ; but just as often the varnish of vice 
 as the varnish of virtue. What do I care whether my 
 representations have this varnish or not .'' It cannot 
 increase their effect, and I do not wish that people 
 should have to search long for the right light wherein 
 to see my picture.' 
 
 The first * Anti-Goeze ' was by no means the last. 
 These philippics followed rapidly one upon another, 
 and well reflect the genius of the German nation, a 
 learned nation for which religious enlightenment and 
 liberty of thought take the rank occupied in other coun- 
 tries by political aspirations. To contest its rights to 
 march freely in the paths of criticism, was to command 
 it to renounce its genius. And it was a Lutheran 
 pastor who ventured to interdict the free examina- 
 tion of tradition, and to cite Luther as his justifica-
 
 THE ' WOLFENBUTTEL FRAGMENTS: 375 
 
 tion ! The mere mention of Luther's name rouses 
 Lessing. 
 
 'The true Lutheran does not wish to be defended 
 by Luther's writings, but by Luther's spirit ; and 
 Luther's spirit absolutely demands that 110 man be 
 hindered from advancing after his own manner to- 
 wards the knowledge of truth. But all are hindered 
 if one be forbidden from imparting his progress to 
 others. Reverend Sir, if you cause our Lutheran 
 pastors to become our Popes, to prescribe to us where 
 we must stop in our investigation of Scripture ; to 
 place limits to our investigation, and to the publica- 
 tion of our results : then I am the first to exchange 
 these popelets for the Pope. And it is to be hoped 
 many think as resolutely, even if they do not speak as 
 openly. Now, Revd. Sir, pound on, and goad as many 
 Protestants as possible back into the bosom of the 
 Catholic Church. Such a Lutheran zealot can but 
 please the Catholics. You are as admirable a 
 politician as a theologian ! ' 
 
 Those on the other hand whom it does not scare 
 into Catholicism, the clerical system of inspiration 
 drives into Naturalism, as with the Anonymous. Les- 
 sing begs Goeze not to go blustering thus thought- 
 lessly. God knows he has no objections that he and 
 all the school rectors of Lower Saxony should take 
 the field against the Anonymous writer. He rather 
 rejoices : it was to this very end he published him, 
 that many might test and refute him. But he will 
 not have it trumpeted forth on that account that he, 
 Lessing, is an enemy to the Christian Religion, any 
 more than the man who notifies to the medical officer 
 that poison lurks in dark places, should be held the 
 propagator of the pestilence.
 
 376 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 ' Shout mc down you can every eighth day, you 
 know where. Write me down, you certainly shall not.' 
 
 Goeze, defeated in his main assaults, attempts 
 oblique sallies ; he taunts Lessing with his style, and 
 says that his logic smacks of the theatre. 
 
 'Everyman,' replies Lessing*(' Anti-Goeze ' II.) 
 ' has a style peculiar to himself, just as he has his own 
 nose; and it is neither polite nor Christian to laugh at 
 an honest man's nose, however odd it may be. How 
 can I help it, that I have no other style } That I do 
 not affect it, I am well assured. I am also conscious 
 that it is inclined to play the most extraordinary 
 pranks with just the very matters that I have pondered 
 most maturely. It plays with the subject the more 
 wantonly, the more I have striven to master it by cool 
 reflexion. It matters little how we write, but much 
 how we think. And surely you would not contend 
 that under tropes and metaphors, ambiguity and 
 insincerity, sense must necessarily be hidden, that no 
 one can think correctly and definitely who does not 
 employ the tritest and flattest expressions .-'... 
 How absurd to ascribe the depth of a wound not to 
 the sharpness, but to the polish of the sword ! How 
 equally absurd to ascribe the advantage which truth 
 gives our adversary to his dazzling style ! I know of 
 no dazzling style that does not borrow its lustre more 
 or less from truth. Truth alone gives true lustre, and 
 must serve as foil even to buffoonery and banter. 
 Therefore let us speak of this, of truth, and not of 
 style. I willingly resign mine to the criticism of the 
 world, and I admit it is possible that the theatre may 
 have somewhat spoiled it.' 
 
 Then follows a detailed patient analysis of his own 
 style, than which nothing could be more acute. He
 
 THE ' WOLFENBUTTEL FRAGMENTS: 377 
 
 sees its faults and he also sees its good points, and 
 having expounded these to Goeze, whom they really 
 did not concern, and probably did not interest, his 
 accusation having been merely a random stroke of 
 malice, Lessing concludes : 
 
 ' This, Revd. Sir, is my style, but my style is not 
 my logic. But yes, according to you my logic is the 
 same as my style, a theatrical logic. So you say. 
 But you may say what you like : good logic is always 
 the same, apply it to what one will. Even the man- 
 ner of application is the same. Whoever shows logic 
 in a comedy would not lack it in a sermon, just as he 
 who lacks it in a sermon would never achieve a decent 
 
 comedy When you, Revd. Senior Pastor, 
 
 persecuted the good Schlosser in so edifying a manner 
 on account of his comedies, a double question arose. 
 The one. May a clergyman write comedies } To 
 this I replied. Why not, if he can ? The second, 
 May a comedian write a sermon ? And to this I re- 
 plied, Why not, if he will ? 
 
 ' But wherefore all this chatter ? What matter now 
 the paltry questions of theatre and style, when so ter- 
 rible an accusation hangs over me ? I must, I must 
 take fire — or my coolness, my calmness will subject 
 me to reproach. How, Revd. Senior Pastor, have you 
 the effrontery to accuse me of direct and indirect hos- 
 tile attacks upon the Christian Religion ?' 
 
 Lessing reminds him that he has already once 
 defended himself on this point, and that Goeze has 
 nevertheless repeated the indictment. He exposes 
 his libels and miserable criticisms, and promises again 
 not to rest in this feud, but his paper is full, and he 
 does not mean to let Goeze have more than one sheet 
 at a time. He shall receive his punishment by the
 
 378 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 slow torture of drop by drop, poured on a bald 
 head. 
 
 The third ' Anti-Goeze' opens with the announce- 
 ment of his willingness to investigate the reality of 
 these ' direct and indirect attacks upon the Christian 
 religion ' charged against him. But stop : this shows 
 him that there must be at least one passage in the 
 New Testament that Goeze regards as uninspired, 
 'Judge not, that ye be not judged.' With what deli- 
 cate and insinuating gentleness has not he (Gceze) set 
 about this ticklish work ! Ouite in the tone and in 
 the manner of a certain M. Loyal in a certain comedy 
 that one does not willingly name before certain 
 people. He is so anxious about my fame — what mat- 
 ters that bubble 1 — so anxious about my salvation. He 
 trembles so compassionately for my dying hour. He 
 makes me here and there such pretty speeches, that T 
 may not feel it all too painful that he casts me out of 
 my Father's house (John xiv. 2). 
 
 Ce monsieur Loyal porte un air bien deloyal. 
 
 But what is all this to the purpose .-• Let us take up 
 the charges themselves. Enough that my heart does 
 not condemn me.' 
 
 These charges are the printing of the ' Fragments ' 
 and the defence of the author. The first is notorious, 
 and as little admits of contradiction as requires it. 
 The second he absolutely denies in the sense which 
 Goeze attaches to it. He published these ' Fragments ' 
 to promote free discussion, as he had already de- 
 clared. If it were still to do, he would print them, 
 should all the Goezes in the world condemn him. 
 He does not follow his scholastic distinction, that it 
 may be true that religion gains objectively but loses 
 subjectively by every assault ; and even if it be
 
 THE ' WOLFENBUTTEL FRAGMENTS: 379 
 
 granted, the gain stretches over all time, the loss is 
 hmited to the moment. 
 
 ' The gain is for all good men who love conviction 
 and enlightenment ; the loss affects but few who do 
 not deserve consideration either for their intellect or 
 their morals. The loss affects only the paleas Icvcs 
 fidei : the light Christian chaff which every puff of 
 doubt separates and wafts from the heavy grains. Of 
 these TertuUian says. Let them fly as much as they 
 please, Avolcnt quantum voleiit ! But not so our Church 
 teachers of to-day. Not a single husk of this Christian 
 chaff is to be lost ! Rather would they leave the 
 erains themselves unsifted and unwinnowed.' 
 
 What would TertuUian have said to the Revd. 
 Gentleman who raises such a noise about the paper 
 foundations of a possible heresy t 
 
 * Would he not have said, " Shortsighted man, 
 niJiil •ualebiint, si ilia taiitiim valere, non mireris " .'' 
 Your noise is to blame if these "Fragments " occasion 
 more harm than they were meant to do. The Anony- 
 mous wished to acquire no name by writing, or he 
 would have named himself. He wished to found no 
 congregation, or he would have done so in his life- 
 time. In a word, he who printed these "Fragments" 
 has far less responsibility than you who raise a frantic 
 outcry about them. He only made it possible for 
 many to read them. You bring about that many 
 have read and must read them ! ' 
 
 Perhaps, concludes Lessing, the Pastor prefers 
 hearing this rebuke out of the mouth of a Church 
 Father rather than from me. But his wrath against 
 the ' unco' gude ' has been visibly rising in this paper, 
 and he quits his tone of broad comedy to pen a pas- 
 sage truly sublime.
 
 38o GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 ' Oh ye fools, who would like to banish the whirl- 
 wind out of Nature because it has there buried a ship 
 in the sandbank, and here dashed one to pieces on 
 the rocky coasts ! Oh ye hypocrites ! for we know 
 you. You do not care for these unhappy vessels, or 
 you would have insured them ; you care solely for 
 your own little garden, your own little comforts, little 
 pleasures, little indulgences. The wicked whirlwind 
 has torn off the roof of one of your greenhouses, has 
 shaken your laden fruit-trees too roughly, overthrown 
 your own cosy orangery contained in seven earthen- 
 ware pots. What care you how much good the whirl- 
 wind may have effected in Nature .'' Could it not 
 have effected it without hurting your garden ? Why 
 does it not blow past your hedge .-• or at least fill its 
 cheeks less full when it nears your landmarks } ' 
 
 Goeze had started the ridiculous theory that to 
 obviate subjective injury and to extract objective ad- 
 vantage, all polemics should be written in Latin. 
 Here is fine scope for Lessing's ridicule, and he does 
 not spare him ; he asserts that he will test argumen- 
 tatively a proposition which others would have sum- 
 marily pronounced absurd, but he admits it is pro- 
 bable that the one will lead to the other. Granted 
 the practicability of Goeze's proposition, is it fair .'' 
 
 * Can a law be fair that would admit as many 
 incompetent as it would exclude competent persons .-* 
 And who does not see that this would happen here.'' 
 Is it mere knowledge of Latin that confers compe- 
 tence to entertain and put forth doubts on religion .-* 
 Is mere ignorance of Latin to render all men without 
 exception incompetent to deal with such things ? Is 
 no conscientious thoughtful man possible without 
 Latin ? Are there no fools, no blockheads, with
 
 THE 'WOLFENBVTTEL FRAGMENTS: 381 
 
 Latin ? I will not insist on De Roxas' conceit, that 
 " Latin makes the true fool," but neither does it make 
 the true philosopher.' 
 
 The next question is, would this unjust law be 
 expedient : would it not rather render the plain man 
 suspicious of the worth of a subject that no one 
 dared treat openly ? 
 
 ' Would it not also be ill-judged, because it would 
 increase the mischief which it is meant to repair ? 
 Objections against religion are to be written in Latin, 
 that they may injure as few as possible. Injure as 
 few as possible ? Yes, as few as possible in those 
 countries where Latin is only common to a certain 
 class ; but in all Europe, in the whole world 1 Scarcely. 
 For if the number of those people in all Europe who 
 know Latin, and yet are not capable of resisting every 
 noxious impression of possible doubt, be not greater 
 than that of those weak ones who, in each country, 
 do not know Latin, what then } To the devil a soul is a 
 soul ; or if he makes a distinction in souls, he would 
 even be the gainer. For instance, in lieu of a sleepy 
 German soul, perverted by German writings, he would 
 obtain a learned French or English soul. He would 
 obtain a larded roast instead of a dry one. His vote 
 therefore, the vote of the devil, this imprudent law 
 would certainly secure, even were it not over and 
 above iincJiristimi, as must already be assumed, seeing 
 it is unfair. For I understand by unchristian anything 
 that is at variance with the spirit and purpose of 
 Christianity. Now, as far as I understand this mat- 
 ter, the purpose of Christianity is not our salvation, 
 anyhow, but our salvation by means of our e?tlighten- 
 vient, which enlightenment is not a condition of 
 our salvation, but our salvation itself. How utterly
 
 382 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 opposed, then, to the spirit of Christianity is the 
 temper which would rather contribute nothing to 
 the enhghtenmcnt of many than possibly offend a 
 few. Must these few who never were, never will be 
 Christians, who merely dream away their unthinking 
 lives under the name of Christian, must this despicable 
 portion of Christians be for ever pushed before the 
 aperture through which the better part would see the 
 light ? What ! This despicable portion is not the 
 smallest ? It must be spared on account of its multi- 
 tude ? Then what sort of Christianity has been 
 preached hitherto, that the mass does not adhere to 
 true Christianity as it should ? What ! If these nomi- 
 nal Christians be offended, and some of them, by 
 reason of Freethinking works written in their language, 
 declare that they will no longer be what they never 
 were, what of that ? Tertullian asks, and I with him : 
 " Nonnc ab ipso Domi?io quidaui disccntiinn semi- 
 dalizati divertenmt ? " Whosoever, before he begins to 
 act or to write, thinks it needful to inquire whether 
 his actions or writings may scandalize here a weak 
 believer, there harden an unbeliever, or there play into 
 the hands of a knave who seeks fig-leaves, let him at 
 once renounce all action, all writing. I would not 
 deliberately tread on a worm, but if it is to be reckoned 
 sin to me if I tread on one by accident, I know 
 no other resource but not to remove my limbs 
 from the position wherein thc}^ find themselves, in 
 fact, cease to live. Every movement in Nature 
 develops and destroys, brings life or death ; brings 
 death to this creature in bringing life to that. Were 
 it better to. have no death and no motion, or death 
 with motion ? ' 
 
 Goeze, who loved to affect libcralit}-, replies that
 
 THE ' WOLFENBUTTEL FRAGMENTS: 3S3 
 
 this was not precisely his meaning ; only he wishes 
 that the assailants should not be allowed to unsettle 
 such questions as had been consecrated by the authority 
 of ages. 
 
 * Oh, happy times, when the clergy were still all in 
 all — thought for us, ate for us,' cries Lessing. ' How 
 gladly would the Senior Pastor lead you back in 
 triumph. ... I affirm that his permission to make 
 objections against Religion and the Bible, against what 
 he calls Religion and the Bible, amounts to nothing. 
 He gives and withholds, for he hedges it sternly and 
 pettily with so many clauses that it is dangerous to 
 use it.' 
 
 Lessing proves that it is Goeze who has made the 
 Anonymous writer assert that the Apostles were wilful 
 deceivers. 
 
 ' Mr. Goeze knows right well that my Anonymous 
 really maintained that the Apostles did precisely what 
 all legislators, all founders of new religions and states 
 find it expedient to do.' 
 
 But the mob for whom Goeze preaches do not 
 perceive this, and, like all religious zealots, he rests his 
 support on the mob. Wherefore, Lessing ends his 
 fifth * Anti-Goeze ' with the significant warning : 
 
 ' Even the vilest multitude, if only guided well by 
 their rulers, become enlightened in due time, higher 
 minded, better ; instead of remaining stationary at the 
 same point of religion and morality where their fore- 
 fathers stood many hundred years ago, as they ought 
 to do according to a fundamental axiom with certain 
 preachers. These do not break away from the mob, 
 but the mob at last breaks away from them.' 
 
 Lessing now considers that he has disposed of 
 Goeze's objections, and proved conclusively that a
 
 384 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 Church which understands its true interests would 
 not entertain the idea of hmiting in any way liberty 
 of speech and writing, and that least of all should an 
 exception of points be allowed to be made, because 
 this would arouse suspicions more injurious to religion 
 than any attack upon the excepted points. For his 
 part he, Lessing, has quite a superstitious regard for 
 every book, especially one only extant in MS. He 
 would have them all printed. 
 
 * But the Pastor will grow angry at my pursuing 
 him thus step by step, till I force him at last into a 
 corner whence he cannot escape me. He will already, 
 before I have quite hedged him in, try to slip away 
 from me and say : " Yes, but who speaks of mere 
 printing } That might certainly be thus excused. 
 The real crime consists therein that the Editor of the 
 'Fragments' has also undertaken the advocacv of 
 the author of the 'Fragments.'" ... I have nowhere 
 said that I hold the whole cause of my Anonymous 
 for good and true exactly as it stands. I have never 
 said that, rather I have said just the contrary. I have 
 said and proved that if the Anonymous is right in 
 many separate points, it yet does not follow thence 
 that he is right in his general conclusions. I boldly 
 venture to add what looks like a boast. ... I have 
 not only expressly stated that I am not pledged to the 
 opinions of my Anonymous ; I have, up to the time 
 when I published the " Fragments, " never written or 
 publicly maintained the slightest thing that could 
 expose me to the suspicion of being a secret enemy 
 to the Christian religion. On the other hand, I have 
 written more than one trifle in which I have not only 
 shown the teachers and doctrines of the Christian 
 religion in their best light, but have defended in par-
 
 THE 'WOLFENBUTTEL FRAGMENTS: 38? 
 
 ticular the Christian orthodox Lutheran reli"-ion 
 against CathoHcs, Socinians, and Neologians. With 
 these trifles the rev. gentleman is for the most part 
 personally acquainted, and he has before now, verbally 
 and in print, expressed his approval. How is it he 
 only now recognizes in me the devil, who has disguised 
 himself, if not in the garb of an angel of light, at least 
 in that of a man of not the vilest type ? Am I really 
 transformed, since I no longer breathe the same air 
 as he ? ' 
 
 He then prints at length the preface of Reimarus, 
 in which is stated that he did not wish his writings 
 to be brought to light before the time was ripe. 
 ' Luther and all Saints, Revd. Sir, <vhat have you read 
 there ? Confess, you did not think me so wicked. 
 The Anonymous, with all his freethinking, was at least 
 so honourable that he did not wish to mislead the 
 world by his views, while I do not hesitate to mislead 
 it by the views of another. . . That is all true, Revd. 
 Senior Pastor, that is all true. If only all the laud- 
 able modesty and caution of the Anonymous did not 
 cover too much confidence in his own arguments, tec 
 much contempt of the com.mon herd, too much dis- 
 trust of his age ! If only in consequence of these 
 views he had rather destroyed his MS. than left it for 
 the use of intelligent friends ! Then you think also, 
 Revd. Sir, that it recks not what the intelligent be- 
 lieve in secret, if only the mob, the sweet mob, be 
 left quietly in the groove wherein alone the clergy 
 know how to guide it. Is this indeed your opinion } ' 
 
 Goeze then complains of Lessing's mode of dis- 
 puting, to which Lessing replies that he might retort 
 the complaint. The imputation of having immo- 
 derately panegyrized his Anonymous is a more 
 
 c c
 
 386 GOTTHOLD EPHRaIM LESS INC. 
 
 serious charge, and merits a more serious answer. 
 True he had called the work profound and argumen- 
 tative, had spoken of its author as an honourable, irre- 
 proachable man, had said that in all kinds of learning 
 seven Goezes weighed less than the seventh part of 
 him. But did it therefore follow that he knew the 
 author intimately and personally .'' Quintilian says 
 that it is not possible for the same breast to harbour 
 honest and deceitful thoughts, nor can one mind 
 dwell upon the best and worst things, any more than 
 it is possible for one man to be good and bad at the 
 same time. In this sense Lessing had felt himself 
 justified in calling his Anonymous irreproachable, and 
 as for his religion, he knew not where else to find such 
 true comprehensive conceptions of rational religion, 
 and, though he openly rejects all revelation, yet he is 
 not on that account a man without religion. He, 
 Lessing, had not threatened, as Goeze says, to name 
 the author of the ' Fragments ; ' he had merely warned 
 him that it would be better not to treat the Anony- 
 mous too contemptuously, lest the discovery of his 
 name should bring him to confusion. 
 
 * If the Revd. Senior Pastor has not here wilfully 
 written afalsehoorl, it is at least a proof how he reads 
 me. He does not read that which I have written, but 
 only that which he would wish me to have written. 
 . . . It is true that I once thought that I recognized 
 my Anonymous in the person of the Wcrtheim Bible 
 translator. . . As soon as I found that I had been 
 too hasty in my conjecture about Schmid, I resolved 
 never again to indulge in such guesses. Yes, I further 
 resolved that even if I assuredly learned the true name, 
 I would not now or ever make it known to the world. 
 By this resolve I abide, so help me God, supposing
 
 THE ' WOLFENBUTTEL FRAGMEXTS: 387 
 
 even I had really learned the name since then. What 
 miserable curiosity, the curiosity after a name ! after 
 a few letters combined thus or thus ! I let it pass if 
 together with and through the name we learn how far 
 we may trust the testimony of a sneak. But here, 
 where there is no question of testimony or of matters 
 that rest solely on testimony, where reason is to 
 prove conclusions, of what avail the name of him who 
 is a mere vehicle of these conclusions .? Not only is 
 it useless, it is even injurious at times, since it gives 
 room for a prejudice that lamentably detracts from all 
 reasonable investigations. For either the Anonymous 
 is known as a man not wanting in power or v/ill 
 to recognize the truth, and at once the mass who 
 find thinking so difficult are carried away blindly ; or 
 it is found that the Anonymous is a man who is under 
 a cloud, and at once the mass will have nothing 
 further to do with him, in the fixed and admirable 
 belief that he who wants one sense must of necessity 
 want all five. Even meri of letters judge thus, who 
 do not ordinarily count it a small matter to hunt 
 down anonymous and pseudonymous authors ; and 
 I should act and judge more unphilosophically 
 than those men who, so to speak, have a right to 
 make useless and unphilosophical discoveries } Prii- 
 dentis est, says Heumann, ita qtwsvis dogmaticos 
 libros Icgere, quasi anctor plane sit ignotns. Here the 
 quasi exists. The reader need not forget what he has 
 never known.' 
 
 As all advocates of weak causes harp on one 
 string, Lessing has again to defend himself from the 
 charge of being the apologist of the anonymous writer 
 through thick and thin. It is not so ; he only speaks 
 as an upright man who will not allow any person to be so 
 
 c c 2
 
 388 COTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 tumultuously condemned, and he is the more bound 
 to do so because he has of his own motive pubHshed 
 fraements of a work detached from their connectinc: 
 whole. But why have these fragments been thought 
 worthy of more attention than fragments deserve ? 
 
 • Here I must add what I am not ashamed to 
 repeat, since it has once been confessed. I have 
 thrust the Anonymous into the world because I could 
 no longer live under one roof with him. • He was for 
 ever in my ears, and I confess again that I could not 
 always oppose as much to his whispers as I should 
 have wished. So I thought a third party must either 
 bring us nearer together or further apart, and this 
 third party can be none else but the public' 
 
 And the public up till now had not given Lessing 
 one single satisfactory reply. As for Goeze, he does 
 not even count him among the opponents of the 
 Anonymous ; he has not refuted him in a single 
 point, but has only abused his editor. 
 
 Meanwhile Dr. J. Reimarus had grown uneasy at 
 these disputes. His father's name had several times 
 been connected with the 'Fragments,' and he feared 
 lest the authorship should be divulged. He had in- 
 deed from the first opposed this publication, which 
 had only the sanction of his sister Elise. Lessing 
 wrote to reassure him : 
 
 ' Wolfcnbiittel : April 6, 177S. 
 
 ' I should like to see the man whom I have told 
 that your late father is the author of the "Fragments." 
 .... But I will take an early opportunity not only 
 to say a word in general about useless curiosity con- 
 cerning the author, but to declare myself also in 
 particular concerning your father, so that people shall 
 desist in future from calling me to account on that
 
 THE 'WOLFEXB'UTTEL FRAGMENTS.' 389 
 
 point. This opportunity will soon occur, since I am 
 just now going to print a " Fragment," and that the 
 last one, not in the " Contributions," but separately.' 
 
 In the middle of the Goeze controversy, Lessing 
 issued the most daring of the ' Fragments,' ' Con- 
 cerning the intentions of Jesus and His disciples.' 
 He published it separately, unaccompanied by com- 
 ments. In a short explanatory preface, he states that 
 he would have preferred to have withheld it for a 
 time, but it has been wrung from him. It was his 
 intention that it should slip into the world in the 
 sequestered corner of his librarian ' Contributions,' 
 but what could he oppose to force } In this essay the 
 character of Jesus, revered even by Deists, was for the 
 first time debased to the level of a politico-religious 
 fanatic and conspirator, just as the brotherhood of His 
 disciples was held to be a pre-arranged plot for the 
 deception of the world. 
 
 Lessing thought it needful to publish this, in order 
 'that opponents might understand whither the Anony- 
 mous tended, and attack him on that ground and no 
 longer wrangle over side issues. 
 
 This ' Fragment ' excited a storm of abuse, and 
 according to Elise Reimarus, Goeze, transported be- 
 ypnd all bounds, applied to the Imperial Ambassador 
 to prohibit Lessing from writing further. Whether in 
 consequence of this or not, Lessing received (in July 
 1778) an order depriving him of his privilege of 
 exemption from the censorship, while the last ' Frag- 
 ment,' its preface, and the ' Anti-Goezes ' were con- 
 fiscated, the reason assigned being that this exemp- 
 tion had been accorded on condition that Lessing 
 should publish nothing contrary to religion and morals. 
 He justified himself on the plea that he had under-
 
 390 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 stood this clause to mean that he should print no- 
 thing in his o\vn name or of his own composition dog- 
 matically adverse to religion, which condition, as he 
 understood it, he had strictly observed. To publish the 
 objections of others, he had held another matter, his 
 object being to afford an opportunity of confuting 
 them, and that our faith should not be reproached with 
 suppressing everything said against it. He would rather 
 abandon the publication of his ' Contributions ' alto- 
 gether, than submit to an unchristian restriction which 
 he could not be brought to believe was in accordance 
 with the wishes of the reigning Duke. He himself 
 had accompanied the ' Fragments ' with a refutation 
 which had been more praised by worthy Lutheran 
 theologians than modesty allowed him to repeat. Not- 
 withstanding he would obey, and have no more of the 
 * Fragments ' printed till they had been examined by 
 a ducal commission, but he hoped to be allowed to 
 continue his ' Anti-Goezes,' as he was the attacked 
 in this instance, and the bitterest things he had 
 brought forward against Goeze were only compli- 
 ments compared with what the Senior Pastor had be- 
 stowed on him, and the whole quarrel had no bearing 
 on the Christian religion. 
 
 No notice was taken of this justification, and 
 Lessing was further commanded to deposit the MS. 
 of the ' Fragments.' He obeyed, saying it was unfor- 
 tunately not complete, as the Hereditary Prince had 
 some sheets in hand, and significantly adding that this 
 copy was only one of many extant. He was quite 
 right in his surmise that this step was not taken at the 
 desire of the Duke, though the command bore his 
 lithographed signature. The Duke was now in the 
 last stage of senility, the Prince was absent with the
 
 THE < WOLFENBUTTEL FRAGMENTS: 391 
 
 army, and one of the Ministers, Von Praun, who bore 
 Lessing a grudge, had gladly seized this opportunity 
 to avenge himself. It seems, however, that the 
 method of revenge which he chose proved the greatest 
 favour he could have shown to Lessing. 
 
 To Ebert, who was entirely on Lessing's side, 
 Lessing wrote : 
 
 ' The confiscation amuses me excessively. It shall 
 not be my fault if this stupid step is not com- 
 pleted, whoever may be the real promoters. J; do not 
 see why I should exempt from suspiciofv^those you 
 name to me.^ Individually, not one of them will 
 answer to it, but I know full well that half a dozen 
 sensible men are often collectively no more than one 
 old woman.' 
 
 The Berlin and Hamburg friends were uneasy at 
 this news. Mendelssohn saw in the hubbub a realiza- 
 tion of his worst fears of the consequences of Lessing's 
 meddling with the clergy. Lessing pacifies his friends : 
 
 ' Wolfenbiittel : July 23, 1778. 
 
 ' It is certainly true that the Ministry, at the desire 
 of the Consistory, have forbidden my new " Frag- 
 ment" and my Anti-Goeze writings. They have 
 further forbidden me to print anything more from the 
 MS. of the " Fragments." I have my reasons for will- 
 ingly submitting to the confiscation of the new " Frag- 
 ments." Ought they not to confiscate my writings 
 also .'' About that I tussle finely, firmly resolved to 
 drive matters to the uttermost, and rather solicit my 
 dismissal than submit to designed humiliation. No- 
 thing has come from the Corporns Evangelicum, still less 
 from the Aulic Councillors, nor do I think I have 
 
 ' Jerusalem and Von Praun.
 
 392 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 much to fear from either. For (you will laugh) I can 
 as surely divide the Aulic Council among themselves 
 as Paul divided the Sanhedrim. As most of the 
 members are Catholics, I need only represent my 
 cause in such a way that the condemnation which the 
 Lutheran theologians will pronounce upon me shall 
 involve also the condemnation of all Papists, who as 
 little regard Scripture as being the foundation of re- 
 ligion as I do. With this intention I have already 
 written the enclosed sheet. You will see that I have 
 veered in such a manner as must finish off the Rev. 
 Senior Pastor. For I suppose you have read his 
 last about " Lessing's weakness," and seen what 
 explanation he demands from me.' 
 
 To Elise Reimarus he wrote in the same tone : 
 
 « Wolfenbiittel : Aug. 2, 1778. 
 ' Your anxiety, my dear friend, is very flattering 
 to me, and yet I must beg you to put it from you. 
 The matter is not really as bad as yOu fear. True 
 they have confiscated the new " Fragment," and want 
 to forbid my further writing of such things. But on 
 the last point I stand out firmly, and hope Goeze will 
 not have the pleasure to see me change my batteries. 
 They have made use of the absence of the Hereditary 
 Prince, and of the weakness of the old Duke, who is 
 incapable of attending to or signing anything. But 
 the assurance that both have little or nothing to do 
 with the whole matter gives me a freer field for 
 troubling the Ministry as much- as I like. It is 
 possible that I might feel myself forced to demand 
 my dismissal, and for this the gentleman who mig'ht 
 give it me would have to answer in good time. But 
 what would it be more than that .' Goeze and Co. shall
 
 THE ' WOLFENBiJTTEL FRAGMENTS.' 393 
 
 gain so little by it, that one and all who have tried to 
 draw off the water this way will regret their under- 
 taking. For taking the matter as a whole, I in my 
 person am as safe as I can be, and I hope to experience 
 the amusement of seeing most of the theologians come 
 over to my side, in order that, with a loss of a feather, 
 they may save the main body for a while. In short, 
 dear friend, do not be in the least anxious on my 
 account. I will certainly not take any foolish step, were 
 it only not to absent myself from a library which 
 might be necessary to the prosecution of my quarrel. 
 The remembrance that it is not indifferent to you 
 what turn my fate might take, will comfort and cheer 
 me in many a moment, when vexation at having 
 involved myself with such miserable rogues threatens' 
 to gain the upper hand. 
 
 ' Farewell, your cordial friend, 
 
 ' Lessing.' 
 
 The step to which Lessing refers v/as one that he 
 foresaw might lead to serious consequences, though 
 he treated it lightly. The confiscation had had the 
 usual result of causing the ' Fragments ' and Lessing's 
 writings to be reprinted, and extensively read by 
 persons who would otherwise not have troubled them- 
 selves about theology. In Saxony, Lessing's father- 
 land, it was forbidden under penalty to read or sell 
 the ' Anti-Goezes,' and Lessing was again interdicted 
 by the Brunswick Ministry from printing anything 
 concerning religion. He nevertheless issued a sheet 
 under the title, ' G. E. Lessing's necessary answer to a 
 very unnecessary question of the Revd. Senior Pastor 
 Goeze, in Hamburg,' printing it in Berlin, but placing 
 Wolfenbiittel on the title page, a fact which he
 
 394 GOTTHOLD EPHRATM LESSING. 
 
 notified to the Ministry. It was Lessing's intention 
 to open herewith a new series of 'Anti-Goezcs,' if Goeze 
 could not be silenced. 
 
 ' It depends on Goeze whether my future answers 
 will be long or short,' he tells Karl, who has attended 
 to the publication. ' I have material enough for 
 folios, and folios can be condensed into sheets.' 
 
 Lessing's concise and pregnant answer proved as 
 subversive of the formal principle of the Protestant 
 Church, as Luther's Theses of the Roman. He 
 pierced what Strauss names 'the Achilles heel ' of the 
 Protestant system, and indicated ihe possibility of 
 a reunion with the Catholic Church. The assertions 
 of Goeze and his school that the Bible was the only 
 foundation of the Christian religion, without which it 
 could not be proved, propagated, or subsist, was openly 
 directed against the Catholics. It was no mere 
 stratas^em that Lessino; united his cause with that of 
 ' this large portion of Christians.' 
 
 Goeze's question had been, What did Lessing 
 understand by the Christian religion, adding that not 
 until he knew this, should he enter upon the point in 
 dispute, i.e. whether Christianity could remain if the 
 Bible had never existed or were lost. With this question 
 Goeze thought he had driven Lessing into a corner, for 
 he said sneeringly, that no doubt Lessing would never 
 have opened out this dispute if he could have seen 
 whither it would tend, and how he would be forced to 
 expose the real thoughts of his heart. The gods had 
 certainly smitten Goeze with blindness not to recognize 
 the superiority of his adversary. Lessing placed him- 
 self entirely on the historical ground, and replied thai 
 he understood under religion the beliefs contained in 
 the creeds of the first four centuries of the Church.
 
 THE 'WOLFENBUTTEL FRAGMENTS: 395 
 
 In nineteen condensed theses he defines the substance 
 of the regula jidei of the early Church, proving that 
 this was extant before a single book of the New 
 Testament existed, and that therefore the regula fidci 
 and not the New Testament was the rock whereon the 
 Church was built ; that the New Testament, as con- 
 tained in our canon, was unknown to the early Chris- 
 tians, and such pottions as they knew were not held 
 by them in superstitious veneration, but were employed 
 as commentaries and homilies ; that the whole value 
 of the Apostolic writings consisted in their agree- 
 ment with the regula Jidei ; but that they were not 
 the source of the latter. The Scriptures were mere 
 records, whose writers never intended that their words 
 should be held in slavish and superstitious regard. 
 
 It was in this wise that Lessing approached the 
 Catholic position, that the Church authenticates the 
 Scriptures and not Scripture the Church. His study 
 of the Fathers while at Breslau enabled him to meet 
 the most learned patristic theologian on his own 
 ground. In conclusion he does not doubt but that 
 Goeze will give him an opportunity of carrying this 
 controversy farther, and the rather to induce him, he 
 has carefully refrained from any of those metaphors, 
 tropes, or allusions to which the Pastor objects, and 
 promises to avoid them in future if he will also employ 
 the same precision and simplicity in his replies. 
 
 How greatly this Goeze controversy had helped to 
 divert him in his sorrow, is shown by a letter to Elise 
 Reimarus : 
 
 ' Wolfenbiittel : Aug. 9, 1778. 
 
 ' I am quite left to myself here. I have not one 
 friend in whom I can entirely confide. I am daily 
 troubled by a hundred vexations. I have to pay dearly
 
 396* GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESS TNG. 
 
 for a single year spent with a sensible woman. How 
 often do I feel inclined to regret that I wanted to be 
 as happy as others. How often I wish that I 
 could return at once to my old isolated condition, and 
 be nothing, wish nothing, do nothing but what each 
 moment brings with it ! You see, my good friend, this 
 is ni)- real condition. Under these circumstances, are 
 }'ou right to advise me to remain in a post that has 
 long been burdensome to me, only to avoid gratifying 
 a miserable enemy .'' How much more unhappy I am 
 if I stay here to vex him. But I am too proud to 
 think myself unhappy. I gnash my teeth, and let the 
 boat go as the winds and waves list. Enough that I 
 will not upset it myself I am glad that you under- 
 stand the tactics of my last sheet so well. I will make 
 evolutions he has not foreseen ; for since he has en- 
 tangled himself in his own words, and asks not what 
 I believe of the Christian religion, but what I under- 
 stand it to be, my cause is gained, and one half the 
 Christians must always protect me against the other. 
 Thus Paul divided the Sanhedrim, while I need only 
 seek to hinder what would not happen in any case, 
 namely, seek to hinder the Papists from becoming 
 Lutherans, and the Lutherans Papists. Thank you 
 for your good wishes for the continuation of my con- 
 troversies, but I hardly need them. This controversy 
 has already become my hobby-horse, which can never 
 throw me so as to break my neck. They wont refuse 
 stabling to my hobby-horse here, unless I give notice 
 myself Farewell, my good friend : and as soon as 
 the High Priest ventures a syllable against my neces- 
 sary answer, be so kind as to send it me. 
 
 ' Yours sincerely, 
 
 ' Lessing.'
 
 THE ' WOLFENBUTTEL FRAGMENTS.' 397 
 
 The Brunswick Ministry censured his step, and 
 once again forbade him to print without their per- 
 mission, either in or out of the Duchy. Of this inter- 
 dict Lessing took no notice. EHse Reimarus had 
 sent him Goeze's latest, which he admits is getting 
 rather strong, and he is determined to answer it ! He 
 tells Elise that his reply is ready, and he would send 
 her the MS., but that he prefers to bring it himself, as 
 business affairs for his stepchildren will oblige him 
 shortly to visit Hamburg. If the business that brings 
 him there is not of the pleasantest, yet he knows one 
 house where he shall at least pass pleasant hours, 
 though he fears he shall have to arrange his visits 
 with more regard to prudence than to inclination. 
 
 About the middle of September he went to Ham- 
 burg , for which excursion the old Duke had given 
 ' his dear Lessing leave of absence for a fortnight,' that 
 extended to six weeks, owing to the serious illness of 
 his stepdaughter Amalie, who had accompanied him. 
 Elise Reimarus had been nervous as to his reception, 
 for since the publication of the last ' Fragment ' people 
 spoke of him as the arch-fiend, f o her surprise and 
 relief, Lessing's charming personality overcame all 
 preconceived dislikes. He met with a warm reception 
 everywhere, and not the least warm in the Reimarus 
 circle, or 'congregation ' as they called themselves : a 
 reception which, as Elise Reimarus remarks, could not 
 fail to annoy Goeze. Here in Hamburg he printed 
 his second necessary reply to Goeze, numbering it 
 ' one,' as he anticipated a whole new series of ' Anti- 
 Goezes.' To the amazement of friend and foe, this 
 reply silenced Goeze effectually. Not a line, not a 
 word came in answer, the real fact being that Goeze
 
 398 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 could not follow Lessing now that he had transferred 
 his ground from humorous and piquant sallies to 
 severely learned criticism. 
 
 Goeze had said that Lessing's idea that the Bible 
 was not the only foundation of Christianity was too 
 absurd to merit disproof, and merely quoted a saying 
 of Irenaius to overthrow him. It was at his peril 
 that he had misquoted the passage, and torn it unduly 
 from its context, and his assertion that it was not 
 needful to establish his position about the Bible was 
 very naturally construed by Lessing and the public as 
 a confession that he could not. Meanwhile Lessing 
 carefully confuted Goeze's assertion that all Christian 
 teachers, without distinction of party, rely upon the 
 Bible as the sole foundation of the Christian religion. 
 He expected an answer ; and worded his tract in 
 such a manner as to provoke one. But Goeze was 
 absolutely dumb. Neither did the Brunswick Ministry 
 notice Lessing's disobedience ; they perhaps saw they 
 had gone a little further than the absent Prince would 
 approve. Though the latter disliked these polemics, 
 and had expressed a wish that Lessing had at least 
 issued his last * Fragment ' in Latin, so that it might 
 not spread among the multitude, he was still too sincere 
 a friend to enlightenment and freethought to see it 
 persecuted in his dominions. Even the confiscated 
 ' Contributions ' were again permitted to be sold. 
 
 But Lessing could not comprehend this sudden 
 collapse ; he quite missed the lively interchange of 
 tracts that had diverted his sadness. He was told 
 Goeze was ill, and ordered to ride daily for two hours, 
 precisely the two hours he had commonly employed 
 in refuting Lessing. 'If this is so,' says Lessing,'!
 
 THE ' WOLFENBiJTTEL FRAGMENTS' 399 
 
 will at once begin to pray for his recovery.' But 
 whether it was that the prayer of such a heretic could 
 not obtain an answer, or from whatever cause, Goeze 
 never moved again, and the fierce quarrel of a year 
 was finished for all time.
 
 400 GOTTHULD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 'NATHAN THE WISE.' 
 
 ' The yeu'S.uiv, " The Christians lean on nought." " On nought lean the 
 yews," say the Christians. Yet both read the same Scriptures. Until thou 
 fo low their religion, neither Jews nor Christians will be satisfied with thee. 
 Say to them, " The direction of God is the true direction. . . . Will ye 
 dispute with us about God ? He is our Lord and your Lord. We have our 
 works and you have your iborks ; and unto Him we are sincerely devoted^ 
 
 Al Koran. The Cow. 
 
 Lessing had once before asserted that annoyance 
 kept him in health, and truly his contention with the 
 theologians seemed to have renewed his vital energy. 
 For since his wife's death a very marked physical 
 change had taken place in him. He withdrew more 
 and more from society, went more rarely to Bruns- 
 wick ; an inertness foreign to his nature, and an un- 
 controllable somnolency fastened upon him ; he would 
 go to sleep amid noise and laughter, and suddenly 
 start up with the question, * What is the matter .'' ' 
 though when roused he resumed conversation with 
 unimpaired mental vigour. He busied himself con- 
 scientiously with the care of his stepchildren, and in- 
 curred heavy sacrifices that it might not be thought 
 that he lived upon their income. Of himself and his 
 feelings, he spoke less than ever. Whenever he could 
 be absent from the library he retired to write in the 
 room where his wife expired, his only companion a 
 favourite cat.
 
 'NATHAN THE WISE: 401 
 
 The friend to whom he felt most drawn was Elise 
 Reimarus. She noticed his impaired health when he 
 came to Hamburg, but the intercourse with congenial 
 spirits enlivened him, and he returned to Wolfen- 
 biittel resolved to fall upon his enemies in the flank, 
 since he was no longer permitted to meet them in 
 
 open co mbat. ,, _«»..__ 
 
 / I must try if they will at least let me preach un- \ 
 hindered from my old pulpit, the st^ge,' he told Elise, / 
 with whom he had discussed the project of a drama 
 wherein he proposed to play the theologians a worse 
 trick than with ten more ' Fragments.' The idea was 
 not new. Indeed its first conception dates from 
 Wittenberg, when his studies of Cardan caused him 
 to balance the respective claims of various creeds ; but ; 
 the draft had been laid aside unfinished, like too 
 many others. His last reply to Goeze, contrary to 
 express command, made him fear lest dismissal might / 
 ensue, and bring him into urgent need for ready 
 money. He wished to be prepared for any contin- , 
 gency. One night what he calls an absurd fancy had i 
 overcome him. This was to take in hand the dis- \ 
 carded sketch and work it out to completion. He 
 imparted this notion to Karl, telling him that the main 
 idea of the drama had a sort of analogy with his pre- / 
 sent quarrels, an analogy of which he had not \ 
 ■dreamed when conceiving it. If he and Moses ap- j 
 proved the play shall be printed by subscription. He ■. 
 would not like its nature to be known too early ; but ' 
 if they care to learn it they may refer to the story of '! 
 the Jew Melchisedek, in the ' Decameron ' of Boc- \ 
 
 caccio. ---^ 
 
 Karl warmly applauded the project, in which he 
 and all Lessing's friends expected to find a humorous 
 
 C D
 
 402 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 satire on current theology. Lessing tells his brother 
 that he has quite misconceived his play ; it will be 
 anything rather than satirical, but as touching a 
 drama as he ever wrote. It has nothing to do with 
 the ' black coats,' and he had no intention himself to 
 block the way to the stage against his piece, though 
 it might be a hundred years before it ever got there. 
 Happy the state where it can and may ! The theo- 
 logians will rage at it inwardly, but they will take 
 good care not to declare themselves publicly. He by 
 no means intends to let drop his skirmishes with 
 Goeze and Co., this is only a dramatic interlude to 
 gain time and strength. To write it the more rapidly 
 it should be in verse, as his prose had at all times 
 cost him more labour than his poetry. But one 
 obstacle remained, the lack of ready money for his 
 subsistence. He needed at least three hundred 
 thalcrs to enable him to devote close attention to an 
 all-absorbing task. 
 
 Karl's proposal of payment in advance from the 
 subscribers was not approved. 
 
 ' For suppose I were to die suddenly.'' I should 
 then owe a thousand persons each a gulden, every 
 one of whom would abuse me to the amount of ten 
 thalcrs.' If Karl can find some one who will advance 
 the amount, he will give him an acknowledgment ; if 
 he were then to die suddenly, surely he would leave 
 enough behind to meet the bill. 
 
 A worthy Jew of Hamburg, IMoses Wesscly, of- 
 fered to advance the same on condition that Lessing, 
 whom he greatly admired, would write him an auto- 
 graph letter. 
 
 ' And if he does not write that letter } ' asked 
 Karl, who knew the uncertainty of his brother.
 
 'NATHAN THE WISE: 
 
 403 
 
 ' I shall send it him all the same,' was the reply, 
 * for he must acknowledge the receipt.' 
 
 Even this sum barely helped Lessing over his 
 pressing needs ; and he feared lest his work should 
 bear some impress of his pecuniary anxieties. He sent 
 a touching reply to one of his sister's repeated de- 
 mands, accompanied by a sum he could ill spare. ' If 
 you knew what cares I have had since the death of 
 my wife, and how miserably I have had to live, you 
 would surely have compassion on me, and not load 
 me with reproaches.' 
 
 In May 1779, * Nathan der Weise ' appeared : 'the 
 son of his advancing age whom polemics have helped 
 to life,' was Lessing's curt self-criticism. He foresaw 
 that the play might produce little effect on the stage, 
 if ever it got there ; enough for him if it be read with 
 interest, and among a thousand readers, one learns to 
 doubt the exclusive sanctity of "his own particular 
 creed. Lessing called his work a dramatic poem, not 
 a drama, and his reason for this was that, contrary to 
 the laws of Aristotle, an idea, and not an action, is the 
 nucleus of * Nathan.' Still it was meant for a poetical 
 drama, and L'essing's healthy critical faculty rejected as 
 an anomaly the bare notion that a drama could be 
 designed otherwise than for scenic representation. 
 Closet plays were not admitted into his aesthetic 
 domain, and though he despaired of his play reaching 
 the boards, yet he wrote it with all due regard to 
 dramatic exigencies. He always bore in mind that a 
 play is amenable only to the laws of stage representa- 
 tion. Hence, if a play of his had failed, or left the 
 audience unmoved, Lessing would have been the first 
 to condemn it, and would have regarded as a sorry 
 compliment the apology often put forward by enthu- 1 
 
 D D 2
 
 40+ GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 siastic critics, that excellency of workmanship is a 
 positive hindrance to the success of masterpieces on 
 the stage. 
 
 'Nathan the Wise' is the outcome of the Goeze 
 cHsputes. Since ' a verse may find him who a sermon 
 flies,' Lessing, in ' Nathan,' gave embodiment to his 
 attitude towards positive creeds, and he distinctly re- 
 marks that the sentiments expressed by Nathan are, 
 and always have been, his own. Nathan is Lessing 
 liimself, not Moses Mendelssohn as has been incor- 
 rectly averred. For even Mendelssohn, with all his 
 eclectic liberality, had not reached that rare height 
 whence pure spirits look sub specie aeterni, with us, 
 of us, and yet raised above us, not by preternatural 
 but by essentially human means, that are to hand for 
 each of us : self-conquest, self-renunciation, and love. 
 Like Shelley, Lessing held the ideal aim of theatrical 
 art to lie in ' teaching the human heart, through its 
 sympathies and antipathies, the knowledge of itself, 
 in proportion to the possession of which knowledge 
 every human being is wise, just, sincere, tolerant, and 
 kind.' The germinal motive of ' Nathan ' is but another 
 exposition of Lessing's views on the essence of 
 religion. ' The best positive religions are such as 
 contain the fewest conventional additions to natural 
 religion, that least hamper the good operations of 
 natural religion.' The purpose of the work is to de- 
 velop a cardinal truth and teach religious toleration. 
 It is therefore as new as when first written, and it 
 would be indeed a happy day for the history of man- 
 kind when the interest of 'Nathan' should become 
 purely historical, through the extinction of fana- 
 ticism and bigotry. Every friend of enlightenment 
 prays with Burns that ' come it may.' Meanwhile,
 
 'NATHAN THE WISE: 405 
 
 ' Nathan ' has helped, and will help, to reveal to those 
 who are often intolerant from mere thoughtlessness, 
 that truly all mankind are of one religion that takes 
 visible shape in outer forms, mere liveries to the inner 
 soul. The ' Bhagavad-Gita ' says : ' When thy mind 
 shall have struggled through the snares of delusion, 
 then thou wilt attain to indifference to doctrines.' 
 Better still are the words of the Church Father 
 Augustine, when he lays down that ' what is now called 
 the Christian religion has existed among the ancients, 
 and was not absent from the beginning of the human 
 race until Christ came in the flesh ; from which time 
 the true religion, which existed already, began to be 
 called Christian.' This is the keynote to ' Nathan,' 
 and it was a subtle trait of Lessing's that he chose for 
 the representative of his toleration dogma a Jew, a 
 descendant of the most exclusive nation, who deemed 
 itself God's chosen people, a people that does not 
 condescend to proselytize, since one cannot be- 
 come, one must be born a Jew. Spurned and de- 
 spised, thanks to the political supremacy of the Chris- 
 tians, the proudest people is also the most oppressed. 
 It is easy to be tolerant when our religion is predomi- 
 nant, less easy when toleration must result from 
 the victory of duty over inclination, the struggle 
 whereon, according to Kant, rests the foundation of 
 ethics. The natural inclination of the oppressed is to 
 vengeance ; it finds its vent in Shylock, and these two 
 stage Jews, Nathan and Shylock, may be regarded as 
 the opposite poles. In Shylock, the Jew almost 
 absorbs the man, he is deaf to the voice of mercy ; 
 while in Nathan, disinterested love of his neighbour 
 obliterates to absolute forgetfulness all distinctions of 
 race.
 
 4o6 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 Nathan is an embodiment of goodness, self- 
 developed and matured, a perfection reached through 
 spiritual knowledge and acquired in the school of 
 sorrow. The Christians had not merely wronged him 
 as a Jew ; they had in their fanaticism murdered his 
 wife and seven children ; so that even Nathan felt his 
 spirit broken, and for three days and nights lay in the 
 dust, and raged and cursed himself and all the world, 
 and swore unrelenting hatred to Christianity. But 
 reason returned. It bade him exercise what he had 
 long imagined, what surely is not more difficult to 
 exercise than to imagine, resignation to God's will. 
 All the evils that fate can pour on him do not in the 
 end lead him astray. ' For yet God is,' whispers 
 an inner voice. He will arouse himself, he will, he 
 will, so God but aid his will. 
 
 ' Nathan, Nathan, you are a Christian,' cries the 
 friar, moved by this recital of self-conquest, when 
 bigot hate threatened to get the upper hand. The 
 simple-minded brother can find no higher expression 
 of his admiration than to repeat his phrase, ' 'Fore God 
 you are a Christian, a better Christian never was.' 
 Then fearing he has been too complimentary to what 
 he should spurn, he qualifies and excuses his own 
 words with : ' Is not Christianity all built on Judaism }' 
 He admits it has often vexed him, cost him tears, that 
 Christians will forget so often that their Saviour was 
 himself a Jew. 
 
 ' Well for us both that you think so,' says Nathan, 
 ' f )r what makes me to you a Christian, makes you to 
 me a Jew.' 
 
 * Nathan the Wise ' may be judged by the religious 
 or the aesthetic standard. From the latter point of 
 view it has many weak points, and deserves all Schiller's
 
 'NATHAN THE WISE: 407 
 
 strictures. Its involved story and the preponderance 
 of philosophical thoughts that never sententiously 
 offend, but yet hamper rapidity of action, render it 
 somewhat too chilly and abstract as a play. Still, 
 thanks to Schiller, and with the hearty approval of 
 Goethe, it was brought on the stage and obtained great 
 and merited success. Lessing possessed in no common 
 degree what Matthew Arnold calls .he ' imaginative 
 reason ' as opposed to the imagination engendered by 
 feeling. Perhaps this is the cause why he just missed 
 being a poet. In his verse reason predominated too 
 much. Poetry was with him an exercise of the intel- 
 lect. The material of his nature was prose, which, in 
 inspired moments, under the white heat of intense 
 feeling, glowed into verse. And here, in ' Nathan,' 
 Lessing produced a work eternally great, a very 
 gospel of toleration, a protest against the thraldom of 
 bigotry, the slavery of ' the letter that killeth,' a poem 
 with all propriety entitled ' the Wise,' an epitome of 
 pure wisdom, high morality, and true religion ; such a 
 work as can only be written in the maturity of life by 
 a spirit that has struggled and overcome, and has 
 anchored secure, free from doubt, at peace wath itself, 
 safe from the assault of enemies, internal or external. 
 
 Introite, nam et hie Dii sunt, 
 (Enter ! for Deity is also here) 
 
 was the motto chosen by Lessing for his poem. 
 
 The story is intricate, its main threads lead back 
 far before the opening of the play. The scene, laid in 
 Terusalem during the Crusades, opens with Nathan's 
 return from a successful business journey. The first 
 news that greets him is that his house has been burned 
 during his absence, and that Recha, his daughter — as 
 she believes herself to be — has been rescued from the
 
 4o8 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 flames by a >-oung captive Templar, who has marvel- 
 lously escaped the death that awaits all Templars who 
 full into Saladiii's hands. Recha persists in thinking 
 an angel has saved her. ' Is it not miracle enough 
 that Saladin has spared a Templar's life } And why 'i 
 Because he so much resembled a brother whom he 
 adored, and who vanished some twenty years ago. 
 Is not this miraculous, incredible enough, that Saladin, 
 the just, the stern, should ha\e been so moved by a 
 trait, a feature, as to allow a Templar to walk at large 
 in Jerusalem } ' Thus Nathan gently reproves Recha 
 and her companion Daja for their childish belief in 
 miracles. Is not all this wonderful enough for lovers 
 of the marvellous ? It is sheer pride and vanity that 
 requires a special messenger from Heaven for itself. 
 Are there not miracles about us every day, if only we 
 would look at them, and not let their everyday dis- 
 guise and habitude strip them of novelty .'' But where 
 is this Frank, this so-thought angel ? he must thank 
 him for his service of mercy. 
 
 Nathan finds him walking under the palms that 
 shade the holy sepulchre. The Templar receives his 
 advances with all the haughty disdain of the Christian 
 towards the Jew. His bearing is rude and uncourteous, 
 and yet Nathan, the wise, the shrewd observer of 
 mankind, sees that this hard and bitter rind conceals 
 a sweet kernel. The Templar will not listen to thanks. 
 He has but done his duty ; his vows bid him su'ccour 
 the distressed ; he should thus stake his life again, even 
 though the life he saved was but a Jew's. Nathan 
 asks how he can serve him, he is rich. The Templar 
 replies, he does not want to buy, nor has the wealthiest 
 Jew ever seemed to hin better than the poor. He 
 has been told that his pc'^iole honour Nathan and call
 
 'NATHAN THE WISE: 409 
 
 him the Wise rather than the wealthy ; but he supposes 
 that rich and wise mean much the same to them. At 
 last Nathan, who sees that he is inexorable, begs he 
 will at least send his cloak to Recha, the cloak that 
 shielded her, that she may press on it a kiss of grati- 
 tude. Nathan weighs his words so well, his language 
 is so good, his sentiments so lofty, that the Templar is 
 attracted despite himself. He had not thought to find 
 Jews thus ; he falters, and feels constrained to tell 
 him why he scorns them. It is because they first 
 called themselves the chosen people, first imagined 
 differences among men, prided themselves that the 
 true God was revealed to them alone : a pride which 
 they have handed down as an heirloom and a curse to 
 Mussulman and Christian, whence has sprung the 
 pious madness that would force this better God, which 
 each nation thinks it owns, upon the whole wide world. 
 These words only serve to interest Nathan yet more 
 strongly in the young Frank, for has he not spoken 
 out of his very soul .'' ' We must be friends,' he ex- 
 claims. ' Despise my nation as much as you like. W^e 
 neither of us chose our kindred ; but are we our 
 people.'' And what is people.'' Are Christian and Jew, 
 Christian and Jew ere they are men .-' Ah ! if I had 
 indeed found in you one more soul to whom it is 
 enough to be a man.' Their budding friendship is 
 interrupted by a summons from Saladin to Nathan. 
 He is surprised. What can the Sultan want with him .-* 
 Before they part the Templar tells Nathan his name, 
 a name whereat he starts ; it raises old trains of thought 
 and memory, and they then separate with a promise 
 soon to meet again. 
 
 Al Hafi, Nathan's friend, a dervish and beggar, 
 whom Saladin had chosen as his treasurer, in the
 
 4IO GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 belief that the poor best know how to assist the poor, 
 now comes to warn Nathan not to obey the Sultan's 
 summons. Saladin's reckless liberality has emptied 
 his coffers, the rich Jew is to come to the rescue. Al 
 Hafi invites him to join his flight to the Brahmins 
 by the Ganges, where begging or borrowing is un- 
 known. He will but be stripped to the skin if he 
 stays here. *' That resource remains,' says Nathan, 
 and obeys the royal command. 
 
 Saladin is not easy at the prospect of this inter- 
 view. He has heard Nathan well spoken of, and feels 
 ashamed to extort his gold from him. He greets 
 him, saying, he has long wished to see the man the 
 people call ' the Wise.' 
 
 The people, says Nathan ; what if they meant 
 the name more in reproach than honour, if wisdom in 
 their eyes were merely cunning to our own advantage } 
 But a truce to word-fencing, and to business. Nathan 
 promises he will serve the Sultan cheaply with his 
 wares. 
 
 That was not the object of his sending, says 
 Saladin ; he wishes instruction from so wise a man. 
 He desires to know which faith, which law one who 
 has pondered these matters esteems as the best. He is 
 assured that Nathan is not a man to remain fixed 
 just where the chance of birth has placed him. 
 
 " ' Sultan, I am a Jew,' says Nathan, taken aback. 
 
 ' And I a Mussulman. The Christian stands be- 
 tween us. Of these three faiths but one can be the 
 true.' Saladin leaves him to reflect on his answer. 
 Nathan is much perplexed. What would the Sultan? 
 he foresees a trap in this. If he plays the stiff-necked 
 Jew, that will not serve ; if he accords the palm to the 
 Mussulman, Saladin will say rightly, then why not
 
 'NATHAN THE WISE: 411 
 
 turn Mussulman ? He has come prepared for a demand 
 for money, and the Sultan asks : Truth. Truth pure 
 and unalloyed, as if it too were gold tied up in bags 
 that can be transferred from one pocket to another. 
 He must be cautious here — soft, he has it ; it is not 
 only children whom we put oft' with tales. With 
 Saladin's permission, he will first relate to him an 
 ancient story. 
 
 In days of yore there lived an Oriental, who 
 owned a ring of priceless value, that had the hidden 
 virtue to make its owner beloved of God and men. 
 It never left his hand, and on his death he made 
 a disposition that should secure it an heirloom 
 in his house for ever to the best loved son. Thus it 
 passed from hand to hand for generations, until it 
 came to a father with three sons, all equally dear to 
 his heart. His end is near. In turn, he promises each 
 son the ring, as each one seems to him in turn the 
 dearest. At last, in dire perplexity, he summons a 
 jeweller, and orders two more such rings made exactly 
 after this pattern. When made, he himself cannot 
 distinguish the true one. Overjoyed he calls his sons, 
 gives each a ring and his blessing, and dies content. 
 What follows can be guessed. Each son claims to 
 be lord on the strength of his ring, disputes, discus- 
 sions follow, the true ring cannot be distinguished, as 
 little as among ourselves the true religion. 
 
 ' Is it thus you answer me.'' ' says Saladin. 
 
 ' I but seek to excuse myself from hazarding a dis- 
 tinction between three rings made purposely so much 
 alike.' 
 
 ' True, true, the rings — you trifle with me — but not 
 the creeds. Their differences are distinctly marked 
 even to meat, drink, and dress.'
 
 412 COTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 ' But onl}' not as to their ground of proof. Arc 
 they not all built alike on history, written or tradi- 
 tional, that must be received on trust ; and whose trust 
 do we naturally question least, but that of our family 
 and our forefathers from whom we sprang ? Can I 
 ask of you to convict your forefathers of falsehood, in 
 order to render credit to mine ? Surely the same 
 holds good for Christians ? ' 
 
 ' By the Almighty the man is right, and I am 
 answered,' thinks Saladin ; but he is anxious to hear 
 the sequel of the tale. 
 
 The end is that the sons could come to no agree- 
 ment and went to law. Each swore in turn that his 
 father had loved him best and given him his ring, and 
 each asserted that his dear good father could never have 
 been false. He would rather suspect his brothers of 
 foul play. The judge said that he must dismiss the 
 suit, since they cannot produce the father, who alone 
 could decide. But sta\', he remembers the true ring 
 has the power to make its owner beloved by God and 
 men ; the counterfeit can have no such virtue. ' Say 
 then, which of yo\i do two brothers love the best ? 
 You are silent. Each loves himself the best. The 
 rings act inwardly alone, not outwardly. Go, go ; you 
 are all three deceived deceivers, the real ring perchance 
 was lost, and to conceal the loss your father ordered 
 three for one. And now, if you desire my counsel instead 
 of my judgment, I say to you, rest with the matter as 
 it stands. Each of you has received a ring ; let each 
 one deem his true, and make it true by vying who 
 can display most gentleness, forbearance, charity, 
 united to heartfelt resignation to God's will. It may 
 be that your father no longer desired to tolerate the 
 exclusive tyranny of the one ring, and loving you all,
 
 'NATHAN THE WISE: 413 
 
 Avould not favour one son to the prejudice of the 
 others. Be that as it may, do you each strive as I 
 have said. If after a thousand, thousand years, the 
 virtues of the ring continue to show themselves in your 
 children's children, perchance one wiser than I will 
 sit on this judgment seat, who can decide.' 
 
 * Saladin,' asks Nathan, 'do you feel yourself to be 
 that man V ' I !' exclaims Saladin, touched to humi- 
 lity ; ' I ! poor dust that I am. Never, never ; his judg- 
 ment seat is not mine. Go, go ; but love me,' he says, 
 seizing Nathan's hand. 
 
 The Jew then asks as a boon, to be permitted to 
 advance to the Sultan the money needed for his war 
 supplies, and^ of which his generosities have deprived 
 him. He stipulates a reserve in favour of a Knight 
 Templar who has saved his daughter's life. Saladin 
 accepts this free-will loan reluctantly ; he esteems the 
 Jew now too much to rob him. The mention of the 
 Templar recalls the forgotten incident of his unwonted 
 clemency. He desires to see him again. 
 
 Meanv/hile the Templar has seen Recha, become 
 inflamed with love for her, and asks her hand of 
 Nathan, who puts him off with excuses, influenced by 
 a suspicion confirmed in the end. This caution, which 
 the hot-headed youth deems to proceed from Hebrew 
 arrogance, angers him. He listens to Daja's story 
 how Recha is no Jewess but a Christian child rescued 
 by Nathan. In his pious zeal and pique he hastens 
 to impart this news to the fanatical Patriarch of Jeru- 
 salem, thinking thus to force Recha out of Nathan's 
 power. He did not expect that the intolerant 
 Pharisaical prelate would give no quarter, and insist 
 that the Jew who could withhold from a Christian 
 child the privileges of her birth must be burned
 
 414 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSIXG. 
 
 for til is frightful deed, tliis unexampled enormity. 
 Nathan's virtues, his humanity, the fact that but for 
 his pity the child would have perished miserably, avail 
 liim nothing. ' The Jew must be burnt,' reiterates the 
 vindictive zealot. 
 
 Happily matters do not go so far. Nathan is 
 now under Saladin's especial protection. While the 
 Patriarch seeks to compass his bloodthirsty designs, a 
 meeting between the Knight, Nathan, and Recha in 
 the palace has revealed that the Frank is indeed the 
 son of Assad, Saladin's brother, by a Christian wife, 
 and that Recha is his sister, as is proved by a breviary 
 just confided to Nathan by the lay brother who 
 brought him the newborn motherless child to save it 
 from certain destruction, during the siege of Gaza. 
 And thus Christian, Mussulman, and Jew are united 
 into one family, knit together by common affection 
 and ties of blood. 
 
 This was the task Lessing had set himself in the 
 play. The parable of the rings is no episode but its 
 gist, and what is placed in the story as at the end of 
 time is here accomplished in very truth : choice repre- 
 sentatives of the three inimical religions join hands in 
 brotherhood. In Boccaccio's story one ring is indeed 
 the true one, but it is impossible to decide which. 
 Lessing improves on this ; there is a true ring, but it 
 caimot be recognized at sight. It acts upon its owner, 
 and only manifests itself from within to without. But 
 where is it, this true ring? this true religion .' Alas ! 
 as long as the quarrel about its possession endures, so 
 long hatred, arrogance, and egotism will bear sway, 
 and nothing can be decided ; and as soon as the power 
 has manifested itself, the quarrel will end, and nothing 
 further will be left to decide. The judge's decision is
 
 'NATHAN THE WISE: 415 
 
 that of Lessing. He does not intend to extol one 
 faith above the others. External creeds are accidents 
 of birth ; true religion is no magic gift from above ; it 
 manifests itself in character and action, and this prize 
 must for ever be sought for, struggled for, by each 
 individual for himself. Religion is a power that 
 demands action from men, and discloses itself in our 
 relations to God and to our neighbour. 
 
 Thus ' Nathan the Wise,' like every great poetical 
 work, is founded on one of those beautiful fables deep- 
 rooted in humanity : fables whose number is small, but 
 which ever combine anew and reappear afresh in 
 changed condition or in wondrous disguise. Lessing 
 intended that his drama should prove its effect by 
 means of its theme, and therein he succeeded. As a 
 play it does not approach ' Minna,' nor is its ex- 
 position as masterly as ' Emilia.' On the other hand, 
 its form is freer than ' Emilia,' and the rhymeless 
 iambics in place of the cumbersome Alexandrine, are a 
 happy innovation. Moreover, the versification gives it 
 Oriental colour, while the whole play is picturesque. 
 As regards time and place, though Lessing did not 
 strictly observe chronological accuracy, a needless 
 shackle as he had demonstrated, he yet happily em- 
 ployed historical facts to serve as framework to his 
 characters. These also are -chosen with care. If 
 Lessing made the rancorous persecuting Patriarch, 
 who really believes himself to be the chosen exponent 
 of God's will, a Christian, it was because he deemed 
 the fanaticism of intolerance especially despicable in a 
 member of the creed whose gentle Teacher had bid 
 men love one another. He also desired to show that 
 Christianity did not necessarily imply superior ex- 
 cellence. If the world ivoitld point to Goeze as the
 
 41 6 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 Patriarch's prototype, was it T.essing's fault ? Recha 
 and the Kni-ht Templar, each in their way, are 
 exponents of pure Theism : Recha from careful 
 nurture, the Knight from conviction. This trait in 
 the Templar is moreover historically correct. Many 
 became thus enlightened during the Crusades beyond 
 the exclusiveness of creeds, for these wars showed to 
 them the misery which religions, regarded by their 
 adherents as revealed, brought upon the world, and 
 that goodness and true piety were not the special 
 possession of one people. Daja is the silly, easy- 
 natured soul who treats creeds as a garment that one. 
 puts off and on. Her own dress is the best in her 
 eyes, and therefore she wants Recha to wear it. She 
 loves Recha and would see her a Christian, but her 
 letter-worship and consequent mischievous garrulity 
 nearly bring about the persecution of her kind pro- 
 tector, Nathan. The catastrophe is unsatisfactory ; it 
 does not appear why Lessing should have raised the 
 element of love in the pair whom he intended to prove 
 brother and sister at the last. When the Templar is 
 made to say that Nathan, in his sister, gives him 
 vastly more than he withheld, we are forced to smile. 
 And such a play should leave us with something 
 nobler on our lips than a smile of this nature. 
 
 The fierce discussions that have been waged about 
 ' Nathan,' the panegyric, the execration bestowed on 
 it, have created a literature of itself, the catalogue of 
 which alone fills a good-sized volume. Its immediate 
 effect was nevertheless, as Lessing had anticipated, an 
 ominous silence. Only here and there a favourable 
 word was spoken with bated breath. The high tone 
 taken by the ' Nathan ' removed it above the compre- 
 hension of any but the finest spirits. The world could
 
 'NATHAN THE WISE: 417 
 
 not understand a man so far in advance as to preach, 
 in an age of scepticism and indifference, an ideal belief 
 that should subvert conventions and bestow individual 
 freedom of thought. Never before had Lessing so 
 hungered for any little word of praise. He had always 
 needed contact with his fellows, and now even some 
 of his oldest friends had withdrawn from him on 
 account of the publication of the * Fragments.' He 
 felt daily more isolated and lonely. 
 
 ' What do you say to my " Nathan " } ' he asks Elise 
 Reimarus on sending her some copies. ' Do not leave 
 me long without your opinion. I understand in your 
 opinion that of the whole congregation. I have need 
 truly that you should judge it a little well, to make me 
 contented again with myself; for I am this so little 
 now, that I can hardly picture to myself the possibility 
 of being so again.' 
 
 He does not hesitate to confess that he absolutely 
 needs praise and approval in order to jog along the 
 road of life. During this summer of 1779 he was far 
 from well. While still writing * Nathan ' his peace of 
 mind had been poisoned, and the completion of the 
 play endangered, by an onslaught that was the more 
 stinging because the less expected. It came from 
 Semler, the first theological professor who had openly 
 taught the need of historical criticism and the tempo- 
 rary character of dogmas, and from whom Lessing 
 looked for support rather than obstruction. But 
 Semler, scared at the growth o^ a movement which he 
 had initiated, and whose progress he could not stem, 
 suddenly veered, and impugned the naturalism of 
 Reimarus and the good faith of his editor with an 
 insolence that was repaid to him in later years. For 
 as his strictures served to embitter Lessing's last
 
 41 8 CO 'IT HOLD EPHRAJM LESS INC. 
 
 days, so his own were poisoned by similar calumnies. 
 The plea by which Lessing had vindicated his publi- 
 cation, the desire to call forth a worthy champion into 
 the Christian arena, was clumsily satirized by Semler 
 under the form of a trial before the Lord Mayor, of an 
 incendiary who had set fire to a house in order to 
 prove if it were inflammable, and to give the firemen a 
 chance of evincing their efficiency. The Lord Mayor 
 will not condemn the man. ' He is no malefactor, he 
 is a madman ; take him to Bedlam : ' and he was taken 
 to Bedlam, and as everyone knows, there he remains 
 to this day. 
 
 This public accusation of insanity angered Lessing. 
 He resolved to answer Semler ; but deferred his reply 
 in order to settle with his minor opponents. So 
 weighty an adversary should receive a weighty reply. 
 Every spare hour that illness permitted during the 
 next few months, he devoted to projecting answers to 
 his theological assailants, and thus the contemplated 
 reply was never written. Nor did the others advance 
 beyond projects. All power for sustained work was 
 gone. Failing strength kept him indoors, and often 
 in bed. If only he could take as m^ny steps as he 
 wrote words, he once said, he should soon be a healthy 
 man. A little change of scene and cheerful society 
 might be beneficial, but it grew more and not less 
 lonely about him. 
 
 He was spared no annoyance which human malice 
 could invent. A report was circulated that the Jewish 
 Synagogue of Amsterdam had bribed him w^ith a 
 thousand ducats to publish the ' Fragments,' and thus 
 blacken the Christian religion. He was denounced 
 as Judas Iscariot the Second. Another mischievous 
 calumniator threw out sinister hints respecting Amalie
 
 'NATHAN THE WISE: 419 
 
 Konig's continued residence in her stepfather's house. 
 Lessing takes notice of this in a pathetic letter to 
 Elise Reimarus. The girl is dear to him as his own 
 daughter, indeed he had always regarded her as such ; 
 still, rather than hurt her in the eyes of the world, he 
 will let her go. She is the one, the only comfort of 
 his life ; without her he would fall back into the terrible 
 loneliness of his former existence, but which he will 
 scarcely find so tolerable now he has known better 
 things. Indeed, if she must go, he could easily be 
 forced to throw himself once more adrift and end life 
 as he began it, a vagabond, and a far worse one than 
 formerly, since love of study and general curiosity and 
 acquisitiveness would no longer rivet him as long in 
 one place as it had done before in his youth. 
 
 Happily this last sorrow was spared him : Amalie 
 Konig remained with the stepfather, whose fond affec- 
 tion she returned, until his end. Nor was that end 
 far distant. Unstricken in years as he was, it was too 
 surely evident to all who loved him that the keepers 
 of the house had begun to tremble and the strong man 
 to bow himself. 
 
 E S 2
 
 430 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSIXG. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 THE 'EDUCATION OF THE HUMAN RACE.' — 
 'ERNST AND FALK.' 
 
 ' Damit d-as GiUe wirke, ■wac/i':e, fromme^ 
 Damit der Tag des Edeln endlich komme.' — GOETHE. 
 
 The inclination ta excessive sleep^ which had been 
 somewhat lessened during Lessing's occupation upon 
 ' Nathan,' returned on the cessation of sustained 
 eftbrt. He was also troubled with asthma and 
 feverish attacks, all tending to confirm his impression 
 that he was nearing death, and his answer to Karl's 
 cheering assurances that there are no signs of failing 
 power in ' Nathan ' breathes the resigned tone of old 
 age. He felt his intellect growing inert, and losing 
 its versatility. He could not turn so rapidly and 
 easily from one subject to another. He had now 
 worked himself into the theological vein, and could 
 not cast it off until he had exhausted his adversaries, 
 and their stodk of venom seemed inexhaustible. His 
 life aim had been an arduous effort after knowledge 
 and truth ; truth unalloyed, unwarped, uncoloured by 
 prejudice or passion, the pure calm truth to which 
 Bacon gives the name Sicauii liwiou This search for 
 truth, pursued in every form, landed him on religion, 
 the most profound theme of humanity, the motor that 
 underlies all existence, without which man's life lacks
 
 THE 'EDUCATION OF THE HUMAN RACE: 421 
 
 purpose or reality. The theses he had enumerated in 
 his ' Necessary Answer ' were the most positive pro- 
 positions that had come from his pen ; but the notion 
 of binding all ages by the rule of one was far from his 
 mind. Fully impressed with the progressive and 
 necessarily shifting nature of truth, he never expected 
 any utterances of his to be regarded as final. To 
 guard against petrifaction, to fling forth fermenting 
 leaven into the world, was the underlying purpose of 
 all he wrote. Hence his works must never be judged 
 independently and separately, but in relation to his 
 mental bent, and the occasion whence they sprang. 
 He knew full well that in speculation nothing can be 
 absolutely final, but he ever strove to make the ideal 
 real by bringing it into connexion with humanity. 
 When issuing the fourth ' Fragment ' he had ap- 
 pended fifty-three paragraphs, headed ' The Educa- 
 tion of the Human Race,' or a refutation of the 
 dictum of Reimarus that the Old Testament could 
 not be regarded as a divine revelation, since it took no 
 account of the doctrine of Immortality. In these 
 paragraphs Lessing admitted the fact, but denied the 
 inference. In answer to a query from Dr. J. Reimarus 
 as to their author, he replied : 
 
 ' The " Education of the Human Race " is by a 
 cfood friend who loves to frame for himself all manner 
 of hypotheses and systems in order to have the plea- 
 sure of pulling them down again. These hypotheses 
 will certainly displace the goal whither my Anony- 
 mous tended. But what matters that t Let everyone 
 speak what he deems truth, and truth itself be com- 
 mended to God.' 
 
 The winter of 1779- 1780 was a sad one for Les- 
 sing. He fell from one indisposition into another.
 
 42Z GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESS INC. 
 
 None were serious, but all hindered the full use of his 
 intellectual faculties. It then occurred to him (since 
 he must do something) to expand his education idea 
 into a pamphlet. Early in February he sent the MS. 
 to Voss, purporting to be only its editor. 
 
 Lessing did not live to see the effects produced by 
 this little work of just one hundred paragraphs, wherein 
 pregnant truths are embodied with masterly terseness 
 and almost mathematical precision. The most various 
 spirits, Christians and Jews, speculative philosophers, 
 and socialistic politicians, have occupied themselves 
 with this Essay, that unrolls dim vistas of endless 
 progress. To Lessing maybe attributed the honour of 
 first preaching the gospel of humanity and the natural 
 evolution of the relatively imperfect, as opposed to 
 rigid perfection fixed and immutable. He even anti- 
 cipated with a prophetic spirit the modern principle 
 of a study of Nature in her universality, as controlled 
 by laws of infinite continuity and harmony. In his 
 fragment the ' Christianity of Reason ' he foretells 
 that one day a fortunate discoverer will extend the 
 realm of natural science into a corroboration of a 
 chain of all-pervading and endless development, 
 though it may not be till after centuries have passed, 
 not till all the phenomena of. Nature shall have been 
 fathomed, so that nothing is left but to refer these to 
 their true origin. The value of his ' Education of the 
 Human Race' lies in its suggestiveness. It is a 
 sketch that gives large glimpses into God's world and 
 the life of man. It does not pretend to the dignity of 
 a picture, filled up and shaded in, and hence it leaves 
 every thinker's individuality free play. Reimarus had 
 been purely destructive ; not so Lessing, assured as he 
 was that every matter that had ever occupied man-
 
 THE 'EDUCATION OF THE HUMAN RACE: ^2^ 
 
 kind, however distorted it might have grown with time, 
 concealed a germ of truth that had rendered it sub- 
 servient to the great purpose of fertihzing the world. 
 The human mind must pass through phases of igno- 
 rance, doubt, and error, before it can become capable 
 of receiving pure truth. This appHes to so-called 
 revelation, as to all else. Hence Lessing did not put 
 himself upon the standpoint of the philosopher who 
 endeavours to pierce to the ultimate ground of our 
 knowledge. Throughout this little treatise he starts 
 from the assumptions of established convictions, using 
 them as mere vehicles to convey his ideas. In the 
 preface he explains that the writer stands on an emi- 
 nence, from which he believes that he sees somewhat 
 more than the prescribed road of his time. 
 
 * But he does not call any hasty traveller who only 
 seeks to gain his night quarters, from off his path. 
 He does not demand that the prospect that so en- 
 trances him should entrance every other eye. And 
 so, I think, he might be permitted to stand still and 
 admire where he stands still and admires. If from out 
 the immeasurable distance that a mellow evening 
 light neither quite hides nor quite reveals to his gaze, 
 he brought back a hint for need of which I have often 
 been perplexed } I mean this hint : Why should we 
 not rather see in all positive religions the paths 
 whereby alone human reason could develop itself, and 
 is still to develop, instead of smiling at them or 
 growing angry .'' Nothing in the best of worlds merits 
 this disdain, or indignation, and religions only should 
 deserve it .-' God should have His hand in all things, 
 and only not in our errors .'' ' 
 
 Lessing then expounds his theory how God, as 
 Preceptor of humanity, has dealt with the world.
 
 424 GOTTIIOLD EPHRAIM l.ESSIXG. 
 
 Revelation is not a gift bestowed once for all. That 
 which education is to the individual, revelation is to 
 the race. And since education gives to man nothing 
 which he would not educe out of himself, only that it 
 gives it him more easily, so revelation gives nothing 
 to the human species which Ivanian reason left to 
 itself would not attain, only it gives it these things 
 earlier. As an experienced controversialist, Lessing 
 knew that errors are dispelled not by anathemas, but 
 by gradual enlightenment. Under the image of a 
 training school whose work is ever going on, he takes 
 a survey of the history of human thought, and indi- 
 cates its essentially progressive character. For the 
 sake of illustration he makes this fanciful contraction 
 from the general to the particular. In education 
 everything cannot be imparted at once ; the powers of 
 assimilation are not sufficiently developed, a certain 
 order must be maintained. In the school of humanity 
 there are three stages : The Hebrew people is the 
 first stage, and the Old Testament its class-book. 
 The Hebrews were rude and unruly people, who had 
 everything to learn. Only gradually could they rise 
 from, the conception of a patriarchal national Deity to 
 the knowledge of the one God. So too could their 
 moral education only be conducted on the plan of 
 rewards and punishments addressed to the senses. 
 Their regards went no further than this earth, they 
 yearned for no life to come. To have revealed this 
 to them, before their reason was ripe to grasp it, would 
 have been the fault of the schoolmaster who urges on 
 his pupil too rapidly. When the child has at length 
 come to years of understanding, the Father sends it 
 into foreign countries that it may see the world out- 
 side. In the Babylonian captivity the stripling en- 
 larges his experience by intercourse with a people of
 
 THE 'EDUCATION OF THE HUMAN RACE: ^z^ 
 
 wider culture. He learns the doctrine of immortality, 
 and asks why he was not taught this before ? Then 
 he seeks out his discarded Primer, in order to throw 
 the blame on it ; but lo ! the blame does not rest on 
 the book, but on the scholar who failed to appre- 
 hend the hints it contained. Thus enlightened in 
 respect of their treasures, the Hebrews returned a 
 better people than they left. But now a new danger 
 arose. They attempted to extract more out of their 
 text-book than it could yield, to insert what it did not 
 contain, to allegorize over much, lay undue stress upon 
 words, begetting a petty crooked understanding, a sure 
 sign that they had outgrown their Primer. A better 
 teacher was needed, and Christ came as the Instructor 
 of the youth of mankind. He taught them the doc- 
 trine of immortality. The lesson of immediate retri- 
 bution was superseded by the more elevated one of 
 eternal sanction, which enforced purity of heart, not 
 mere abstinence from actions that were injurious to 
 civil society. If the disciples of Christ, who faith- 
 fully propagated His doctrine, combined with it other 
 doctrines less enlightened and exalted, let us not 
 blame them, but rather examine whether these 
 chequered doctrines have not become a new impulse 
 of direction for human reason. The New Testament 
 has afforded and still affords the second best text- 
 book for the race. It is necessary that each scholar 
 should for a period hold bis Primer as the first of 
 books, that his impatience to finish it may not hurry 
 him on to things for which he has not yet laid the 
 foundation. 
 
 Then follows an exposition how revealed truths 
 must be transformed into truths of reason before the 
 ripe manhood of humanity can be reached, the third 
 stage.
 
 426 GOTTHOLD EPHRAJM LESSING. 
 
 ' Or is the human race never to arrive at this highest 
 step of ilkiniination and purity ? Never? Never? Let 
 me not conceive such blasphemy, All Merciful ! Edu- 
 cation has its goal in the race no less than in the 
 individual. That which is educated is educated for 
 something. No ; it will come, it will certainly come, 
 the time of perfection when man, his reason con- 
 vinced of a better future, will nevertheless not need 
 to borrow from the future the motives for his actions ; 
 when he will do good because it is good, not for the 
 sake of arbitrary rewards, that were intended simply 
 to fix and encourage his unsteady gaze in recognizing 
 the inner better rewards of well-doing.' 
 
 It will assuredly come, the time of this new and 
 eternal gospel, proclaimed by all enthusiasts, whose 
 only error is that they go on too fast, and believe 
 their contemporaries, who have scarcely outgrown 
 their childhood, can grasp maturity. The enthusiast 
 often casts true glimpses into the future, but he can- 
 not wait. He e.xpccts that for which Nature takes 
 thousands of years to mature itself in the moment of 
 his o\\n existence, 
 
 ' Yet beware, thou scholar of more forward capa- 
 city, who frettest and fumest over the last page of thy 
 Primer : beware lest thy weaker fellow-scholars mark 
 what thou dost divine or discern. . . . Go thine in- 
 scrutable ways, Eternal Providence ! Only let me not 
 despair of Thee because of Thy inscrutableness. Let 
 me not despair of Thee, even if Thy steps appear to 
 me to be going back. It is not true that the straightest 
 line is always the shortest. Thou hast so much to 
 carry on together on Thine eternal ways, so many 
 side steps to make. And how, if it were as good as 
 proved that the great slow wheel that brings the race
 
 THE 'EDUCATION OF THE HUMAN RACE J 427 
 
 nearer its perfection can be only put in motion by 
 smaller swifter wheels, of which each contributes its 
 unit force ? It is so. Just the same path whereby 
 the race reaches perfection must be traversed by 
 every individual man, by one sooner, by another 
 later.' 
 
 And until the day dawn for this new eternal gospel, 
 the second Covenant, that has not yet been exhausted, 
 must maintain its value and importance, even for those 
 who have outstripped the stage of wonder and read 
 it with their reason. Hence Lessing bids the more 
 advanced scholars have patience. 
 
 * Until they come up to you, these weaker school- 
 fellows, rather do you return once more to your 
 Primer and examine whether that which you held 
 mere turns of phrase, mere didactic stop-gaps, do not 
 perhaps contain something more.' 
 
 But how to account for some being clearly from 
 their birth so much further along their road than others? 
 Lessing ventures the speculation of pre-existence. He 
 names it an hypothesis, only insisting on it as such ; 
 but it is one of the oldest, and m.ust it be ludicrous 
 merely on account of its age ? since human reason 
 lighted on it at once before the sophistries of schools 
 had dissipated and weakened it ? 
 
 'Why should I not come back as often as I am 
 capable of attaining fresh knowledge, fresh skill ? Do 
 I bring away so much at once that it does not repay 
 the trouble of coming back ? Not on that account. 
 Then because I forget that I have been here already ? 
 The recollection of my former state would permit me 
 to make only a bad use of the present. And what I 
 must forget now, have I of necessity forgotten it for 
 ever .■* Or because too much time would be lost for me.''
 
 438 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 Lost? And what have I then to miss? Is not a whole 
 eternity mine ? ' 
 
 Thus, with questions thrown forth unanswered, 
 Lessing ends his ' L^ducation of the Human Race.' 
 And just this very incompleteness has rendered it so 
 stimulative of thought. Crude and imperfect in its 
 suggestiveness, its bold profound fancies haunt the 
 brain, and tempt further efforts to solve the enigma 
 of life : they teem, with fertilizing seeds of wisdom. 
 Truly ' the King's chaff is as good as other people's 
 corn.' Merely to indicate the commentaries bestowed 
 on the treatise from Lessing's days to ours would be 
 to write the history of freethought. 
 
 Five dialogues, in part written before this time, 
 complete his ' swan-song ' in the great question of 
 humanity. Three numbers of ' Ernst and Falk, or 
 dialogues for Freemasons,' had been published in 1778, 
 with a dedication to the Hereditary Prince, Grand 
 Master of the German lodges. 
 
 ' Most gracious Duke,' so ran the preface, ' I also 
 have slaked my thirst at the fountain of truth. How 
 deeply 1 have imbibed, only he can judge from whom 
 I expect permission to drink yet more deeply. It is 
 long that the people languish and perish of thirst.' 
 
 But the Duke thought that Lessing had drunk 
 deep enough, and signified that he had better publish 
 no more. Two more dialogues, notwithstanding (in 
 1780), saw the light, as the author alleged, from copies 
 taken without his authority. He even announced a 
 sixth, but this was never written. These five dia- 
 logues are masterly in their ndiveti^, depth, and gentle 
 blending of grave and gay. Their aim too is idealistic. 
 Lessing stood aloof from political affairs ; his letters 
 contain few allusions to contemporary events. Even
 
 THE 'EDUCATION OF THE HUMAN RACE: 429 
 
 while actively interested in the Seven Years' War, his 
 correspondence turns on vaster themes. He hated 
 ' the wretched thing called war.' At this time, when 
 advanced thinkers hailed the American stru^CTle for 
 independence, Lessing only remarked that Avhatever 
 cost blood could scarcely be worth blood. He had 
 no confidence in sweeping reforms, and for him the 
 essence of Freemasonry consisted in a recognition of 
 the infirmities inevitable to the best of governments, 
 while acting as a wholesome counterpoise to the aggra- 
 vation of such infirmities. 
 
 It was a time of unrest in Europe ; the spirit of 
 revolution was abroad. Authority received shocks 
 from all quarters, and the younger spirits unconsciously 
 felt the pervading ferment. Such a state of feeling 
 vents itself in Germany in a perfect epidemic of secret 
 societies, no matter how paltry their object. It was 
 the case now. All manner of Orders sprang up, and 
 Freemasonry, the oldest and worthiest of such cor- 
 porations, provoked renewed interest. Herein Lessing 
 recognized a hopeful sign. A counterpoise was needful 
 to rulers absolute in Church and State. A state is an 
 evil, but a necessary one ; and would not be an 
 evil at all if order could exist without government. 
 But when Ernst asks, 'Will it ever come so far that 
 every individual will know how to rule himself.?' 
 Falk, who represents Lessing, replies, ' Hardly.' Free- 
 masonry, he explains, is no arbitrary institution, but a 
 necessary thing, founded in the nature of man and the 
 constitution of society ; ascertainable, therefore, by 
 unassisted human thought. There is no secret except 
 such as is the most shrouded of all, because the intel- 
 lect is not ripe to grasp it. Hence it is that Freemasons 
 take their apprentices through so many preliminary
 
 430 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 stages, and why so few penetrate to the core of its 
 pretended mystery. The fault is in them, not in the 
 order. And if this be not the true ontology of Free- 
 masonry, says Lessing, he should be curious to know 
 what is. He is confident that Freemasonry has existed 
 from all time, like Christianity ; it is anterior to all 
 lodges, and exists outside of them, as religion is anterior 
 to all churches, and existed before all forms. 
 
 In these dialogues the question is rather of the 
 ideal of Freemasonry than of its actual condition. It 
 should annihilate all distinctions of caste, fortune, 
 nationality, religion. Freemasons should constitute 
 an universal brotherhood, that applies itself to heal the 
 inevitable ills of society, without subverting society 
 itself; for to abandon the social bond would be to 
 return to a state of nature. Order and freedom are 
 the high goals to which humanity should strive, and 
 these can only be attained in union. Though Rousseau 
 is not named, it is manifest that Lessing is here oppos- 
 ing his gospel of the peculiar sanctity incident to a 
 state of nature. The natural state Lessing shows is 
 imperfect, because it is not intellectual. His ideal 
 State, like Plato's ideal city, must not be founded by 
 the private passions of men, but in reason. With his 
 favourite, Aristotle, he lays down that the happiness 
 of the State and the individual are identical. Neither 
 can true humanity be evoked except by human inter- 
 course. All things must work together towards pro- 
 gress, and how can progress proceed from a solitary 
 savage .'' Ernst's question, why there should not be one 
 State, living in amity, instead of many often inimical 
 ones, is answered by an appeal to variety of race and 
 climate, necessitating variety of governments and 
 creeds. It is the task of the Freemason to approach
 
 THE 'EDUCATION OF THE HUMAN RACE: 431 
 
 each community, and break down the barriers of 
 nationahty and creed. He must everywhere act as 
 mediator. 
 
 ' He must quietly await the rising of the sun and 
 leave the candles to burn as long as they will and can. 
 To put out the lights, and when they are extinguished 
 to perceive that it is needful to rekindle the stumps, 
 or to put up new candles, that is not the office of the 
 Freemason.' 
 
 How far Lessing's doctrines are Utopian, how far 
 they exceed in spirituality, or approach in reality to 
 the secret of Freemasonry, only Freemasons can decide 
 This much is certain, that with few exceptions his 
 contemporary brother Masons deemed him a visionary. 
 But does not that in some sort corroborate the justice 
 and sagacity of Lessing's estimate .''
 
 432 GOrrHOLD EPHRAIM LESSINi 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 JACOBI AND SPINOZA. — THE END. 
 
 (1780-81.) 
 ' I'liter — ^ieb ! Das reirie TAcht 
 
 Der Wakrheit ist ja dorhfurdichallein.' 
 
 So sprach Er. Wahrlich weise ; denn er sah, 
 Wie gross sein Gott, luie klein er setter war. 
 Die ew'ge il'eiskeit aber sprach : ' Du irrst : 
 Die reine Wakrheit istfiir mich ; doch die, 
 Die so ivie Du sic suchen, Jindcn sie 
 Bey mir ; und, Dick zu iiberjUhren, komin.' 
 
 ' You do not know what sympathy I begin to feel 
 now with all sick people, even when they do not con- 
 cern me,' Lessing writes to Elise Reimarus in the 
 summer of 1780. ' I am myself not exactly ill, but 
 not exactly well. I have had influenza — and indeed 
 I have it still, for it has just come back.' Goeze him- 
 self had got into theological trouble by preaching an 
 outrageous sermon against the Catholics, and had 
 been censured by the very Aulic Council which he had 
 sought to rouse against Lessing. Small wonder that 
 he met with ridicule on all sides. ' Is it true,' Les- 
 sing asks his friend, ' that the Senior Pastor has re- 
 canted .'' If he has done that, he is a complete knave 
 and fool. P"or nothing could preserve the little honour 
 he has to lose but that he should persist in defending 
 all the nonsense he has ever preached or written, cost 
 what it may.' 
 
 Larly in July F. H. Jacobi paid Lessing the
 
 JACOBI AND SPINOZA.~THE END. 433 
 
 memorable visit which was destined to excite such con- 
 troversy concerning Lessing's philosophical opinions 
 as to cost Moses Mendelssohn his life, in his exceeding 
 zeal for his friend's memory. The two men had not 
 been personally acquainted. Lessing had read and 
 admired Jacobi's philosophical romance, 'Allwill,' and 
 had sent him a presentation copy of ' Nathan.' Here- 
 upon Jacobi expressed a desire to make Lessing's 
 acquaintance ; proposed a visit and a joint trip to 
 Berlin. Lessing cordially invifed him to stay at his 
 house. As to the journey to Berlin, ' It would cer- 
 tainly be my wish. But it is my habit to wish what 
 I wish with so much keen anticipation of enjoyment, 
 that fortune generally thinks herself quit of the 
 trouble of fulfilling my wishes.' The pedantic Jacobi 
 desired to lay out the subject of their conversations 
 beforehand : a proposal that amused Lessing, who 
 thought the subjects would find themselves. 
 
 During this five days' visit Jacobi incessantly 
 importuned Lessing for his views on Pantheism, 
 Theism, Spinozism, Freewill, and all cognate topics. 
 The joint visit to Berlin was not undertaken. It is 
 probable that by this time Lessing had had quite 
 enough of the importunate Jacobi, who tried his 
 best to force him into a regular exposition of his 
 philosophical creed. Jacobi was at that time deep in 
 the study of Spinoza, and scented Spinozism in every 
 utterance. He was too narrow-minded, and too much 
 possessed with a fixed idea, to follow Lessing's larger 
 views. He came to Wolfenbiittel with the purpose 
 of sounding Lessing, and he afterwards published an 
 abstract of their conversation. His veracity is un- 
 impeachable, and though he quotes Lessing's words 
 from memory, they are too characteristic not to be 
 
 F F
 
 434 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 (genuine. Still, due allowance must be made for the 
 inevitable fallacies of memory, for Lessing's love of 
 paradox, and for the amusement that he could not 
 fail to feel in thus ' trotting out ' the man of one 
 idea, whom, according to Goethe, 'God had punished 
 v/ith metaphysics like a thorn in the flesh.' The in- 
 cident recalls the dialogue between Lessing's Lay- 
 brother and Templar. 
 
 ' I am to sound the gentleman to see if he be such 
 a man.' 
 
 ' Proceed then, sound me. (I am curious to see 
 how this man sounds.) ' 
 
 Lessing is a follower of Spinoza ; such was the 
 startling announcement Jacobi made to the world 
 soon afterwards. He proved it by quoting Lessing's 
 criticism on the monologue in Goethe's grand frag- 
 ment of 'Prometheus.' Jacobi had shown Lessing the 
 poem in MS., and subsequently published it without 
 the permission of Goethe, and much to his annoy- 
 ance. Herein also Jacobi scented Spinozism, the fact 
 being that Spinozism was to him a generic term, into 
 which every form of 'ism' fitted. It was his mono- 
 mania that all logical thinkers must end as followers 
 of Spinoza, and that only faith could save them from 
 this abyss. He spoke with disrespect of the great 
 Hebrew thinker. Lessing, with his more just and 
 balanced intellect, reproved the current execration of 
 Spinoza. His catholic sympathies and his propensity 
 to seek the implicit truths contained in every doc- 
 trine, led him to resort to Horace's plan : ' Condo et 
 compono, quae mox dcpromere possiin^. His remark, ' If 
 I were to call myself after any master, I know no 
 other than Spinoza whom I would name,' was tor- 
 tured by Jacobi into a distinct avowal of Spinozism.
 
 JACOBI AND SPINOZA.— THE END. 435 
 
 Now Lessing's mind was too spontaneously energetic 
 for discipleship. He did not pretend to follow or to 
 found any philosophical system. He had no love for 
 metaphysics, and as opposed to Moses Mendelssohn, 
 in one of his letters he called himself a bel-esprit. He 
 was a thinker who thought on from day to day, im- 
 bibing and imparting ideas from all sources. Lessing 
 had said to Jacobi that there was nothing to object to 
 in Spinoza's 'Ethica.' But is the fact that one has no 
 objection to the ethics of a philosophy a confession of 
 adherence to it .-* 
 
 Much ingenuity has been expended in determin- 
 ing Lessing's philosophical creed. One party claim 
 him for Leibnitz, another for Wolff, a third for 
 Spinoza ; one for idealism, another for eclecticism, a 
 third for pantheism. All seem unable to perceive 
 that he had no system ; that in philosophy, as in 
 religion, he did not believe that truth was the ex- 
 clusive property of a sect. His mind, like every 
 thinking mind, had a speculative bias, but it revolted 
 against formalism. The direction which his specula- 
 tions had taken in his latter years had made him feel 
 isolated from his friends. Mendelssohn was all under- 
 standing, Nicolai all utility, and now he was brought 
 into contact with Jacobi, who was all emotion. With 
 the exception of this one conversation, to which he 
 had been urged in an evil hour, Lessing had not of 
 late communicated his philosophical ideas to any one 
 but the younger Jerusalem. Nothing came to light in 
 this dialogue that was not already to be found in his 
 writings. Two essays from the Breslau period were 
 evidently suggested by Spinoza, as well as a letter to 
 Mendelssohn of that date. He had only been a little 
 more definite in conversation. The notes that accom- 
 
 K F 2
 
 436 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 panied Jerusalem's works, and especially the essay 
 on the freedom of the will, showed that in some re- 
 spects he inclined to Spinoza's views on this point. 
 He does not distinctly say so, but he refers to a sys- 
 tem decried for its conclusions, and which certainly 
 would be far more popular if people could be in- 
 duced to consider these conclusions in a more rational 
 light. Spinoza had declared religious prejudices to 
 be the source of human vassalage, and that freedom 
 consisted in the intelligent love of God. This Lessing 
 also taught in ' Ernst and Falk,' and in his ' Educa- 
 tion of the Human Race.' Spinoza says it is all our- 
 selves, inward and outward, all expressions of one 
 mightyunity. Lessing says: Know thyself. Act, and do 
 not reason. Look within ; in your own nature lie the 
 unfathomed depths and mysteries of life. Do not 
 look above, that is not for us, we cannot grasp it. 
 Spinoza's was a dead God, Lessing's was a living one : 
 not an anthropomorphic creation, but a conscious ex- 
 istence, distinct from the universe, though pervading 
 it. Spinoza's God was to be recognized by intuition, 
 Lessing's by the world and his works. Spinoza's ab- 
 stract nature tried to fathom the absolute. Lessing's 
 restless activity turned to real life, and there found 
 free play for his faculties. He laughed at those who 
 made heaven the subject of conjectures, and were lost 
 in labyrinths of mystery, filling the head and leaving 
 the heart empty. He smiled gently at Leibnitz's 
 theory of monads. His clear practical mind triumphed 
 over the theoretical day-dreaming of the Germans, 
 the accredited owners of cloud-land. He showed 
 the unfruitfulness of these self-complacent musings in 
 dream-land, and endeavoured by word and example 
 to rouse his countrymen, mentally and morally. His
 
 JACOB I AND SPINOZA.— THE END. 437 
 
 unresting, scrutinizing intellect ever pushed onwards 
 to gain ' more light' Hence he felt attached to Leib- 
 nitz, whose conceptions of truth he had declared to 
 be of such a nature that they could not be com- 
 pressed in narrow limits. And as with Leibnitz, so 
 with Lessing : it is difficult, nay, impossible even for 
 the most acute to detect his exact meaning. It is 
 more than probable that Lessing could not have accu- 
 rately defined it himself 
 
 No doubt, however, as to Lessing's exact meaning 
 disturbed the mind of Jacobi, who set off for Berlin, 
 quite happily convinced that he bore all Lessing in 
 his note-book. On his return he again stayed with 
 Lessing, who accompanied him to Halberstadt, where 
 they visited their common friend, Gleim. Here Jacobi 
 received yet further confirmation of Lessing's pan- 
 theistic leanings. For when requested to write a 
 motto on the walls of Gleim's summer-house, what 
 did he write, but : "Ej/ icaX irav. Could anything be 
 more convincing .-• 
 
 Fortunately for Lessing, the storm concerning his 
 Spinozism did not break loose during his lifetime. 
 After this visit to Halberstadt he refused Jacobi's in- 
 vitation to Dusseldorf, where the latter owned a charm- 
 ing country house, and where he promised Lessing 
 complete rest and freedom from all aggressions. 
 Lessing gave the preference to Hamburg. He ar- 
 rived there early in October, feeling ill and dejected, 
 but soon intercourse with sympathetic friends told on 
 him favourably, and he was once more the old Lessing, 
 ' and what that means you best know,' Elise 
 Reimarus said in a letter to Nicolai. His charming 
 personality, animated conversation, and humour de- 
 lighted all who met him. They could hardly credit
 
 438 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 that this was the redoubtable Lessing. A spark of 
 reviving youth seemed aflame in him, and when he left, 
 his friends were hopeful of complete recovery. He 
 was sufficiently confident of this himself to enter upon 
 a contract for new plays with the Hamburg theatre. 
 
 But this appearance of strength was the last flicker 
 of the candle. Hardly had he returned to his Wolfen- 
 biittel solitude, than all signs of permanent recovery 
 vanished. His first letter to Elise Reimarus, written 
 in disjointed sentences, reveals his broken courage and 
 hopes. 
 
 ' In proportion to my haste to get home, was the 
 unwillingness with which I reached it. For the first 
 thing I found was myself 
 
 'And with this revulsion against myself, am I to 
 begin to work and be well ? 
 
 ' " Certainly," I hear my friends call after me, "for a 
 man like you can do all he wills." 
 
 ' But, dear friends, what if this be only another way 
 of saying. Can all that he can } And whether I shall 
 ever feel this power of can again, that is the question .-• 
 
 * What is the good of a thing untried } Well then, 
 my dear friend, since you advise, be it so. 
 
 ' I will send you news of my health regularly, 
 every week.' 
 
 He desires to be remembered to all her circle. Ah ! 
 if only he could have stayed among them ! If he 
 only had one of these friends to bear him company! 
 
 In the next letter he expresses his fears that a 
 change had occurred in his malad}', and that the 
 materia peccans had fallen from his body to his soul. 
 In the following he announces that no particular crisis 
 had taken place, ' but what is not, may be, and I sup- 
 pose death is also a crisis of illness.'
 
 y A GOBI AND SPINOZA.— THE END. 439 
 
 In November his patron Prince Ferdinand, who 
 had on the previous March become the reigning Duke 
 of Brunswick, apprised Lessing that he had received 
 pl'ivate information that the Corpus EvangeHcum in- 
 tended to reprimand the ' Fragment ' pubhcations. 
 The Duke assured him that he would have his pro- 
 tection in event of an evil issue. To this gracious 
 advance Lessing replied with a curt indifference that 
 repelled the Duke. He afterwards regretted his 
 peevishness, and confessed that no oflfer of service 
 merited such a rebuff ' I do not know myself why 
 for some little time I have felt annoyed with our 
 Duke. Notwithstanding all, he is a noble-minded 
 man.' To atone for his error he consented to do some 
 theological work for the Duke, though he hoped to 
 have written plays, and thought he had done with the 
 priests who were embittering his days. 
 
 Neither resolve was realized, for every day his 
 sufferings increased. His eyesight nearly failed, he 
 could only see to write on bright days and by help of 
 strong glasses. Day by day his strength dwindled, it 
 took him hours to pen the shortest note ' I am a 
 rotten gnarled trunk,' he wrote to Mendelssohn in 
 December. ' Alas ! dear friend, the play is over.' The 
 new year found him worse, overcome by numbness of 
 limbs, difficulty of speech, and utter incapacity to 
 write or spell correctly. Meanwhile his intellect was 
 as fresh as ever, so that many of his friends thought 
 his illness imaginary. He himself however was con- 
 vinced of its gravity. 
 
 ' I shall be the next,' he said, after attending a 
 friend's funeral. 
 
 In January he made a little excursion to Bruns- 
 wick, where, since his wife's death, he often spent
 
 440 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESS INC. 
 
 some time in a modest lodging which he had hired 
 on the market place. His friends remarked a chancre. 
 The fire of his eyes was dimmed, he dragged his 
 feet lifelessly, his difficulty of breathing was painful, 
 and every little exertion seemed too much for him. 
 Vet he persisted in dining twice at court and in join- 
 ing an evening party. On his return from this latter 
 he was speechless. Still he imperatively forbade his 
 servant to send for a doctor, and expressed a wish to 
 be left alone. He passed a bad night, but next 
 morning the servant found he had risen, determined 
 to return to Wolfenbiittel. He was dissuaded with 
 difilculty. A doctor arrived who prescribed for him, 
 while news of his illness was sent to Amalie Konicr 
 who immediately came over. During his illness, 
 which lasted twelve days, he was composed and pas- 
 sive, at times quite bright. He spent many hours out 
 of bed, and received visitors with his wonted geniality. 
 He liked to be read to and hear all that was stirring. 
 At times he fancied his end very near, at others dis- 
 tant ; but he did not count on complete recover}', and 
 declared he was prepared to meet life or death. He 
 refused at first to admit the Abbot Jerusalem, but 
 when assured he came only as a friend, he saw him. 
 He wished to be spared all ecclesiastical importunity. 
 It is recorded, that on hearing that the dying Voltaire 
 had been molested by the Curate of St. Sulpice, 
 Lcssing said to a friend, half in joke, half in earnest : 
 ' When you see me dying, call a lawyer that I may 
 testify that I do not die in any of the reigning 
 faiths.' 
 
 His friends were alternately buoyed with hopes and 
 depressed by fears. On the morning of February 
 15th, he felt particularly well, and was able to receive
 
 JACOB] AND SPINOZA.— THE END. 441 
 
 visitors, and talk and joke with them. He was up 
 and dressed, and when towards evening he was told 
 that other anxious friends were in the ante-room, he 
 rose to see them. When he opened the door, his face 
 too clearly bore the stamp of death, and scarcely had 
 he raised his cap in greeting, than his feet refused 
 their service, and he had to be borne back to bed. 
 With a look inexpressibly serene and transfigured, he 
 pressed his weeping daughter's hand. A stroke had 
 smitten him, speech was difificult. Still he rallied, and 
 seemed able to attend to a book that his protege 
 Daveson was reading aloud, when, looking up, Dave- 
 son perceived he was at his last gasp, and in the arms 
 of his faithful Jewish friend, Lessing passed away 
 quite suddenly. When asked how he had died, 
 Daveson replied, ' As he had lived, like a sage, calm, 
 resolute, conscious to the last moment.' 
 
 ' Lessing is dead,' wrote Goethe, whom the news 
 found just on the point of starting for Wolfenbiittel 
 to visit the great man whom he admired increasingly 
 as his intelligence ripened. ' We lose much, verj- 
 much in him, more than we think.' 
 
 It was long indeed before Germany awoke to the 
 consciousness of all that she had lost in Lessing. 
 The detraction of his adversaries had much to answer 
 for in this indifference ; the circumstances of his time, 
 perhaps, even more. It was a strange period of 
 transition in which his lot was cast, and it needed a 
 v^ision as comprehensive as his own to follow him in 
 all his various relations to its manifold aspects. It is 
 easy for us, though more distant, to see further. 
 
 Lessing was a man in whom two ages, two 
 opposed tendencies of thought were combined in
 
 442 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 unique harmony. He exhibited in his person all the 
 good elements of the eighteenth century, while he be- 
 came the pioneer of the new. It was his peculiar 
 characteristic to be at the same time the representa- 
 tive of his own and of a succeeding generation. For 
 while the eighteenth century was negative and de- 
 structive, the nineteenth is affirmative and construc- 
 tive : Lessing was both. He anticipated the nineteenth 
 century in its tendency to return to the past, and its 
 endeavours to disengage primitive truth from the dis- 
 figuring accretions of later ages. In this respect 
 alone he presents a remarkable contrast to Voltaire ; 
 a contrast wholly to his advantage. In art, in 
 religion, he helped towards the liberation of mankind 
 from the shackles of mere tradition and authority as 
 such. But while he destroyed, he built ; he did not 
 use the thin weapons of sarcasm and persiflage to un- 
 dermine both good and bad together, and leave his 
 fellows shelterless. Hence it is that Lessing may lay 
 claim to be the intellectual pioneer of our present 
 culture. There are few departments of thought into 
 which he did not penetrate, and none into which he 
 penetrated without leaving the impress of his genius 
 behind him. So varied and catholic were his interests, 
 that to many he is only known as a theologian, to 
 others as an aesthetician, to others again as a 
 dramatist, poet, critic, or philologist. In one point 
 only he did not free himself from a characteristic 
 defect of his age ; and this was his indifference to the 
 beauty and significance of Nature. In this respect 
 alone he cannot be ranked as a precursor of Goethe, 
 whom he anticipated in his attachment to the Greeks, 
 Shakespeare, and Spinoza. 
 
 Born at the most depjessed period of his native
 
 JACOBI AND SPINOZA.— THE END. 443 
 
 literature, he lived to see the first fruits of Goethe's 
 genius, while the year of his death was marked by the 
 publication of the book which may be said to close 
 the eighteenth century mode of thought, the ' Critique 
 of Pure Reason.' 
 
 The sculptor Ranch exhibited correct and de- 
 licate perception, when among the crowd of famous 
 men that surround the monument of Frederick 
 the Great at Berlin, he placed Lessing with his 
 face turned towards Kant, as though exchanging 
 ideas with him. Both were great emancipators 
 of the human mind. Both strove to establish in- 
 dividual liberty of thought and action. Both tried 
 to awaken in their countrymen a just conception of 
 the nature of freedom. It is small wonder that in- 
 terest in Lessing has revived latterly in Germany, for 
 the overgoverned and bureaucratic German still has 
 need of him. At the same time Lessing never con- 
 founded liberty and hcence. He did not live to see 
 the French Revolution ; but he would have been the 
 first to proclaim that despotism was equally degrading 
 whether it wore an imperial diadem or a red cap. He 
 desired that each human being should be a man, 
 thinking for hiniself. He recognized this as the secret 
 of freedom, when he said, ' Think wrongly if you 
 please, but think for yourself 
 
 Looking at his literary activity in detail, we may 
 often regret that it is so fragmentary, that so much of 
 his energy should have been spent in ephemeral 
 themes and in personal altercations. But regarded 
 collectively, the same large-hearted purpose of know- 
 ledge and truth is seen to pervade it all. Lessing felt 
 himself summoned to act as the champion of truth, 
 and therefore bound to repress everything antagonistic
 
 444 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 to the truth. Though the occasion was sometimes petty, 
 the results were often grand. If he seemed the advo- 
 cate now of this idea, now of that, it was because his 
 intellect was not only powerful, but versatile, and 
 could recognize the multiform aspects of truth. Im- 
 mutability in mutability was the keynote to his life, 
 as it is to the proper understanding of the world. 
 
 Such was the writer Lessing. 
 
 But beside the writer there stands the man, and 
 rarely do the two harmonize as they do here. Lessing 
 was not only a very great man, he was a good and 
 strong man. The story of his life, which it is impos- 
 sible to read without a feeling of deep compassion, is 
 one of the saddest told. Yet he bore it with a forti- 
 tude so noble, he so rarely uttered a complaint against 
 fortune, that while we admire, we hardly venture to in- 
 trude with pity on a nobility so far above our power. 
 From early manhood one struggle and disappointment 
 followed another, yet we cannot say that they came 
 by any fault of his own. Endowed with a nature that 
 needed tender affection and sympathy more than most, 
 he had to do without it, and did without it, with a 
 power of endurance quite marvellous. When in middle 
 life he seemed to touch peace and find a responding 
 heart, he was again condemned to di.sappointment; 
 and when, after years of patient and heroic love, 
 he was at last united to the woman of his choice, his 
 happiness on earth was cut short by the overwhelming 
 blow of death, within the brief span of a little year. 
 But not even this cruel stab of fortune could quell the 
 staunch champion of truth and humanity. He fought 
 on his fight undaunted, against ignorance, bigotry, 
 and tradition. He never relaxed in fervour for his 
 cause until he was himself brought low by the uncon-
 
 JACOB I AND SPINOZA.~THE END. 445 
 
 querable adversary. He was young when he was 
 taken, but he "was spent with labour. 
 
 When Lessing laid himself down wearily to sleep, 
 the foundations of his work had been strongly laid, 
 fixed immutably, and their results are with us. For 
 his influence has been steadily on the increase, and the 
 renewed interest taken in his writings, both here and 
 in Germany, is not without its deep significance to 
 those who read aright the signs of their times. 
 Lessing's labours were not for Germany alone, they 
 were for Europe. It will be long before we have out- 
 grown them, though we may occasionally and for a 
 while entrust ourselves to less judicious guidance. 
 
 Few who have visited the quaint mediaeval city of 
 Brunswick will forget the fine statue of Lessing, Riet- 
 schel's masterpiece, that stands near the church of St. 
 Aegidius. Houses of the last century, with red gabled 
 roofs, surround it, while close to it are some green trees. 
 Raised above these, on a granite pedestal, stands the 
 figure of Lessing. Its material is fine bronze, more 
 sombre than marble, but more fitted to a frim 
 northern climate and to a man of the north. He is 
 represented in the dress of his time ; his head is 
 slightly upraised, his eye looks forth firmly, un- 
 dauntedly, leaving an impression on the beholder of 
 attention, combined with self-restraint and dignity. 
 The conventional cloak is wanting. This was an 
 innovation of the sculptor. ' I will make him with- 
 out a cloak,' he said. ' Lessing throughout his life 
 never cloaked anything, and just in him the cloak 
 would have seemed to me a lie.' Simple, dignified, 
 bold, watchful as he was in life, so he stands there in 
 brazen death : an effigy that seems to live and breathe, 
 raised above our petty stature as the Colossus that he
 
 446 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 
 
 was, and yet humanly deigning to influence and help 
 us by his genuine tenderness for the failings and 
 frailty of our race. 
 
 Whoever sees him as he stands there, or reads the 
 story of his life, cannot fail to repeat with his own 
 Nathan : 
 
 ' Tlic man answers to his fame, his fame is but his shadow.' 
 
 LONDOy : PRINTED BY 
 
 SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREBT SQUARE 
 
 AND PARI-IAMENT STKEKT
 
 By the same Author, uniform, in crown Svo. with Portrait, 
 
 price 7 J. ^d. 
 
 Arthur Schopenhauer, 
 
 HIS LIFE AND HIS PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 'This excellent little volume will supply a real need, and will be 
 welcomed by many who have felt a genuine curiosity regarding 
 Schopenhauer. . . . The task which the Authoress has set herself 
 has been executed with unquestionable ability, fidelity, and good taste. 
 As a memoir the work, though not claiming to be exhaustive, leaves 
 extremely little to be desired. The information given is well selected 
 and well arranged, and the delineation of the philosopher's personality 
 is such as to leave a complete and vivid impression on the mind. . . . 
 Schopenhauer's personal history is of greater variety and interest 
 than that of most philosophers.' Inquirer. 
 
 'In Arthur Schopenhauer Miss Zimmern has selected a 
 striking and, in some respects, an imposing figure for a biographical 
 sketch. She has rendered good senice, too, to English readers, by 
 giving them some of the fruits of the lecent eager study of the philo- 
 sopher in his own country. In Miss Zimmern the stern old pessimist 
 has been fortunate enough to find in the sex he was wont to despise one 
 gifted with a quick, delicate, and comprehensive insight into his 
 character and work. It is through a many-sided, finely-cultivated sen- 
 sibility that Miss Zimmern succeeds in presenting Schopenhauer 
 to her readers as a really picturesque figure. Finally, her biography is 
 written in a very delightful style, in simple, clear, and sufficiently 
 graceful English.' Examiner. 
 
 'Unliterary public will be grateful to Miss Zimmern for giving them 
 some preliminary account of the man and his work. She has achieved 
 her task very skilfully. . . . Schopenhauer himself is admirably 
 sketched. His character presented broadly-marked qualities ; and these 
 Miss Zimmern seizes with much force, never dwelling too long on any
 
 Arthur Schopenhauer. 
 
 one point, yet perfectly satisfying curiosity. There are few philosophers 
 of whom we possess -o life-like a portrait as that drawn in these pages. 
 . . Altogether, he was emphatically an "original "; and his personality 
 will probably be studied with interest when his philosophy is examined 
 only by professional readers.' Globe. 
 
 ' Now that the idealist school of German philosophers has ceased 
 to be studied either in Germany or elsewhere, we may say that 
 Schopenhauer's teaching is almost the only Teutonic influence of 
 English philosophy of much consequence. . . . Miss Zimmern has 
 done licr work with rare tact and delicacy. licr narrative is flowing 
 and clear, and there is not a dull page in her volume. It is not often, 
 in truth, that a philosoplier has been fortunate enough to secure so ad- 
 mirable a biographer.' Observer, 
 
 ' Miss Zimmern, who writes in a clear and easy style, has presented 
 us with an amusing book. . . . Schopenhauer's life is interesting 
 apart from the light which it undoubtedly sheds on his philosophy. 
 His was a strongly-marked individuality, striving to be himself in an age 
 when everyone is striving to be a more or less successful copy of someone 
 else. His sayings had the stamp of originality, but his doings were 
 equally original. He apparently believed in his philosophy. It was 
 his vade mecum at all times and on all occasions, and he was not content 
 till he had carried it into practice. Besides being a metaphysician, he 
 was also a moralist and a man of the world. He had rare powers of 
 observation, and his remarks on whatever came under his notice were, 
 though sometimes questionable, at all times profound and striking. 
 He looked at the world, it is true, through the glasses of his philoso- 
 phical theories, but the finesse of his analysis and the keenness of his 
 judgments remained unimpaired. He had, moreover, the gift of con- 
 veying his thought in a terse epigrammatic form ; in fine, he had a 
 seemingly inexhaustible source of sarcasm and of satire, which imparted 
 to all his sayings a quaintness and a flavour hitherto unknown to German 
 philosophy, and rarely met with beyond the boundaries of the land of 
 Voltaire.' Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
 London, LONGMANS & CO.
 
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