III.—­University Life

I had always had my eye upon Goettingen, but my father obstinately insisted on Leipzig.  I arrived in that handsome city just at the time of the fair, from which I derived particular pleasure, being specially attracted by the inhabitants of eastern countries in their strange dresses.  I commenced to study under Boehme, professor of history and public law, and Gellert, professor of literature.  The reverence with which Gellert was regarded by all young people was extraordinary.

Much has been written about the condition of German literature at that time.  I need only state how it stood towards me.  The literary epoch in which I was born was developed out of the preceding one by opposition.  Foreign influences had previously predominated, but in this epoch the German sense of freedom and joy began to stir itself.  Goettsched, Lessing, Haller, and, above all, Wieland, had produced works of genius.  The venerable Bengel had procured a decided reception for his labours on the Revelation of St. John, from the fact that he was known as an intelligent, upright, God-fearing, blameless man.  Deep minds are compelled to live in the past as well as the future.

Plunging into literature on my own account, I at this period wrote the oldest of my extant dramatic labours, “The Lover’s Caprice,” following it with “The Accomplices.”  I had seen already many families ruined by bankruptcies, divorces, vice, murders, burglaries, and poisonings, and, young as I was, I had often, in such cases, lent a hand for help and preservation.  Accordingly, these pieces were written from an elevated point of view, without my having been aware of it.  But they could find no favour on the German stage.

My health had become somewhat impaired, though I did not think I should soon become apprehensive about my life.  I had brought with me from home a certain touch of hypochondria, and a chronic pain in my breast, induced by a fall from horseback, perceptibly increased, and made me dejected.  By an unfortunate diet I destroyed my powers of digestion, so that I experienced great uneasiness, yet without being able to embrace a resolution for a more rational mode of life.  Besides the epoch of the cold-water bath, the hard bed slightly covered, and other follies unconditionally recommended, had begun, in consequence of some misunderstood suggestions of Rousseau, under the idea of bringing us nearer to nature and delivering us from the corruption of morals.

One night I awoke with a violent hemorrhage, and for several days I wavered between life and death.  Recovery was slow, but nature helped me, and I appeared to have become another man, for I had gained a greater cheerfulness of mind than I had known for a long time, and I was rejoiced to feel my inner self at liberty.  But what particularly set me up at this time was to see how many eminent men had undeservedly given me their affection, among them being Dr. Hermann Groening, Horn, and, above all, Langer, afterwards librarian at Wolfenbuettel, whose conversation so far blinded me to the miserable state I was in that I actually forgot it.