He was obliged to join some law classes, but he also heard lectures by Ernesti on Cicero’s “De Oratore,” and by Gellert on rhetoric and German literature. At first he attended his classes with exemplary diligence, but he soon made up his mind that they could not be of much service to him. The professors of law had little to say that he had not already learned at Frankfort, or that he could not readily master without their aid. Gellert’s lectures seemed to him pedantic and commonplace, and even Ernesti, a scholar of high distinction, did not help him to penetrate to the spirit, or to feel more deeply the charm, of Latin literature. During the whole time of his residence at Leipsic he continued, of course, to attend the university, but his relation to it was more nominal than real, and exercised little influence on his intellectual development.
He was received in a friendly way by Böhme, the professor of history, whose wife, a cultivated and pleasant woman, liked to talk with him. She offended him a little, however, by laughing rather too freely at some of his Frankfort modes of expression, and by disparaging the writings of his favourite poets. Every day he dined at the house of one of the medical professors, where he met chiefly students of medicine and natural science. When the novelty of his position at Leipsic wore off, he began to miss the pleasures to which he had been accustomed at home, and, above all, he longed for some friend to whom he might confide his inmost thoughts and aspirations. Gradually he fell into a dejected and forlorn state of mind, and so keenly did he suffer that in the spring of 1766 one of his Frankfort friends, Horn, who came to study law at Leipsic, could not find in him a trace of his old liveliness and good humour. The presence of Horn, who remained for some years one of his most intimate comrades, did much to revive Goethe; and soon afterwards the process was completed by another friend, Schlosser, who took Leipsic on his way from Frankfort to Treptow, where he was to act as private secretary to Duke Frederick Eugene of Würtemberg. Schlosser, who ultimately married Goethe’s sister, was a man of vigorous and independent character, somewhat stern in manner, but essentially kind and sympathetic, and he quickly succeeded in restoring Goethe to all his former cheerfulness and self-confidence.
Schlosser put up at the house of a vintner called Schönkopf, who, his wife having come from Frankfort, always welcomed visitors from her native place. Goethe was so much pleased with the company at Schönkopf’s table that he determined to dine and sup there daily, and this resolution he acted upon during the remainder of his time at Leipsic. Schönkopf had a pretty, coquettish daughter, Anne Catharine, and, needless to say, she no sooner saw the susceptible Goethe than she made a conquest of him. Like Gretchen, she was his senior by two or three years, but that, he felt, only made her the more worthy to be loved. Annette, as he usually called her, accepted his devotion with pleasure, and was sincerely fond of him; but, having a shrewd suspicion that she could never be his wife, she gave him no marks of favour that she was not equally ready to give to other admirers. Many a time Goethe was thrown into a fever of jealousy by her kindness to his rivals, but she had only to smile on him to exalt him to a heaven of enchantment and delight. Upon the whole, his relation to Annette, which went on for years, seems to have brought him more misery than happiness. It was impossible for him to claim her love as exclusively his own, yet he could not bear to think of it as a treasure that might pass into the possession of some one else.
He had not the good fortune to meet at Schönkopf’s any one who could be of vital intellectual service to him, but he enjoyed familiar intercourse there with many agreeable people—among others, Behrisch, a scholar who acted as tutor to a young Count. Goethe liked him as a loyal friend and intelligent critic. Gradually Goethe extended the circle of his acquaintance, until he had almost as many friends in Leipsic as in Frankfort. It was especially pleasant for him to visit at the house of Breitkopf, a printer, who had two sons about Goethe’s own age, one of them an admirable pianist and clever composer. Goethe was often present at musical parties in this hospitable house, and he himself took part in them, for he could not only sing, but play the flute. Afterwards he acquired some skill as a player on the cello.
By far the most eminent man with whom Goethe came into direct contact at Leipsic was Oeser, the director of the academy of drawing, painting, and architecture. Oeser was a native of Presburg, in Hungary, and had all the energy and enthusiasm so often possessed by his countrymen. His own artistic achievements were not of permanent importance, but he had an extraordinary power of exciting interest in art, and of stimulating to high effort all who came within the range of his influence. Long before this time, at Dresden, he had been intimate with Winckelmann, who had learned from him the doctrine that the qualities which give enduring charm to works of art are simplicity and calm. Goethe, who had a longing to master artistic methods, became his pupil, and he never forgot that he owed to this wise and genial teacher the germs of his most fertile ideas about art, and the first effective encouragement he had ever received to do full justice to his own powers. At Oeser’s home in Leipsic, and at his house in the country, he was always a welcome guest. Oeser had two daughters, one of whom was married. The other, Frederika, about Goethe’s age, lived with her father. Handsome, sprightly, and clever, she became one of Goethe’s best friends.
Oeser was not his only instructor in art. Stock, the engraver, lived with his wife and two young daughters (afterwards the wives of intimate friends of Schiller), at the top of the house in which was the home of the Breitkopfs. From him Goethe took lessons in etching, at which he worked with great enthusiasm and perseverance. He also amused himself by carving boards for bookbinding. There seemed to be hardly any limit to Goethe’s activity. Even he could not hope to excel in all his many undertakings, but in everything he tried he gained enough of insight to enable him to distinguish sharply between good products and bad, and to appreciate and enjoy those wrought on true and enduring principles.
All good pictures accessible at Leipsic he made himself familiar with, and in 1767 he took a short holiday for the purpose of studying the picture gallery at Dresden. He stayed at the house of a worthy, humorous shoemaker, with whom he had much friendly talk. At the gallery the pictures of all the great schools interested him, but those of the Dutch school, from their fidelity to fact, appealed to him most strongly. Day after day he resumed his study of the masterpieces he loved, and so deeply did they influence his mind that, when he returned to the actual world, he could not help seeing things as if they formed part of a picture. His friend, the shoemaker, seemed to him like a figure that had stepped out of a canvas by Ostade.
Powerfully as Goethe was fascinated by art, literature remained the real mistress of his affections. The Latin classics he read with growing pleasure, but he also constantly felt around him for new impressions and impulses, and by a kind of happy instinct he was led to the writers who were best fitted to nourish his genius. At Frankfort he had read Wieland’s translation of Shakespeare, and now Dodd’s “Beauties of Shakespeare” came in his way. His study of this selection did not yet disclose to him Shakespeare’s real significance, but it prepared him for deeper comprehension at a later stage. Wieland, having left far behind him the Pietistic fervour with which he began his career, was now tricking out in all sorts of forms, both of verse and prose, his easy Epicurean philosophy. Goethe read eagerly every one of his later writings; and, so far as style was concerned, he learned much from Wieland, who, with all his faults, knew how to present his ideas, such as they were, with lightness, delicacy, and grace. In 1766 Lessing’s “Laocoon” was published, and Goethe has described with what delight he and all the younger men of his day received this masterpiece of a great and serious spirit. As if by a flash of lightning, it revealed the broad lines of distinction that separate the arts from one another. It showed, too, that it is only by keeping strictly within its natural limits that each art can attain its highest objects, and that of all the arts poetry is necessarily the deepest, the most far-reaching, and the grandest. All this was new to Goethe, and spurred him to think out for himself the fundamental problems of critical thought. Not less enthusiastically did he welcome Lessing’s “Minna von Barnhelm,” which still remains the most exquisitely finished play of its kind in the German language. It impressed Goethe, because Lessing, unlike other German dramatists, had selected his motives directly from the life of his own time, but had conceived them with an imaginative force and subtlety that made them perennially interesting. In the spring of 1768 Lessing spent a month at Leipsic, but unfortunately Goethe did not see him. About
