_ in social intercourse and light,
cynical banter in the interchange of his ideas on every subject,
trifling or serious. In such a society all free, spontaneous
expression of emotions or opinions was a mark of rusticity, as Goethe
was not long in discovering. The true Leipziger was, of course, a
Gallio in religion, and Goethe, who, on leaving his father's house,
had resolved to cut all connection with the Church, found no
difficulty in carrying out his intention during his residence in the
little Paris. But, so far as Goethe was concerned, the most notable
circumstance connected with Leipzig was that it had long been the
literary centre of Germany. There the most eminent representatives of
literature had made their residence, and thence had gone forth the
dominant influences which had given the rule to all forms of literary
production--poetry and criticism alike. At the time when Goethe took
up his residence in the town the two most prominent German men of
letters, Gellert and Gottsched (the latter dubbed the "Saxon Swan" by
Frederick the Great) were its most distinguished ornaments, though
the rising generation was beginning to question both the intrinsic
merit of their productions and the principles of taste which they had
proclaimed. What these principles were and how Goethe stood related to
them we shall presently see.

[Footnote 17: On the occasion of a visit he paid to Leipzig in 1783,
Goethe says: "Die Leipziger sind als eine kleine, moralische Republik
anzusehn. Jeder steht fuer sich, hat einige Freunde und geht in seinem
Wesen fort."]

Into this world Goethe was launched when he had just turned his
sixteenth year--"a little, odd, coddled boy," and, as he elsewhere
describes himself, with a tendency to morbid fancies. If he had come
to Leipzig with the resolve to fulfil his father's intentions, his
course was clearly marked out for him. He would diligently sit at the
feet of the professors of law in the university, and at the end of
three years he would return to Frankfort with the attainments
requisite to make him a future ornament of the legal profession. But,
as we have seen, he had other schemes in his head than the course
which his father had prescribed for him, and, if we are to accept his
own later testimony, in forming these schemes he was but following the
deepest instincts of his nature. "Anything," he exclaimed to his
secretary Riemer, when he was approaching his sixtieth year, "anything
but an enf