oems, so he made a second holocaust of those produced in
Leipzig. In a long letter addressed (February 13th, 1769) to
Friederike Oeser he thus expounds the artistic ideals at which he had
then arrived: "A great scholar is seldom a great philosopher, and he
who has laboriously thumbed the pages of many books regards with
contempt the simple, easy book of nature; and yet nothing is true
except what is simple--certainly a sorry recommendation for true
wisdom. Let him who goes the way of simplicity go it in quiet. Modesty
and circumspection are the essential characteristics of him who would
tread this path, and every step will bring its reward. I have to thank
your dear father for these conceptions; he it was who prepared my mind
to receive them; time will give its blessing to my diligence which may
complete the work he began."[63] In point of fact, partly owing to the
depressing conditions in which he found himself, and partly, it may
be, out of his own deliberate purpose, Goethe produced no work of
importance during the year and a half he spent in Frankfort. It was a
period of incubation, and the stimulus to production was to come to
him in another environment.

[Footnote 63: _Werke, Briefe_, Band i. 200.]

In the spring of 1770 Goethe recovered his normal health and spirits,
and, in accordance with his father's wish, he proceeded to Strassburg
to complete his legal studies. He left home with as intense a feeling
of relief as he had left it on the previous occasion. Between him and
his father there had been growing estrangement, and the estrangement
had ended in an open quarrel when he ventured to criticise the
architecture of the paternal house, which had been constructed under
his father's own directions. Thwarted though the father had been in
his hopes of his son, however, he was not turned from his purpose of
affording him every opportunity of laying a broad foundation of
general culture. It was his express wish that Wolfgang, after
completing his studies in Strassburg, should travel in France and
spend some time in Paris.

CHAPTER IV

GOETHE IN STRASSBURG

APRIL, 1770--AUGUST, 1771

Goethe was in his twenty-first year when he entered Strassburg in the
beginning of April, 1770. From his maturer age and the chastening
experience of the preceding eighteen months, therefore, it was to be
expected that his management of his life in his new home would be more
in accordance with his father's wishes than his