noire_ of all who affected respectability, and decried loudly
by the clergy as a very hotbed of vice. News of their son's haunts
reached the dismayed parents. They urged him to abandon his courses,
that could only end in mental and moral destruction. In vain the son
represented to them that he had lived in retirement too long, that he
now wished to become acquainted with the world and men, and that he
held the theatre to be a popular educator. In vain he represented that
he did attend the philosophical courses of Professors Kaestner,
Ernesti, and Christ. He was a playgoer, and what was still worse, he
was a play-writer, for the directress of the Leipzig Theatre, Frau
Neuber, a woman, of great taste and intelligence, had put on the stage
Lessing's juvenile effort, 'The Young Scholar.' Nay more, he associated
with a notorious freethinker, Mylius, and in concert with him had
contributed to various journals and periodicals. And meanwhile the
magistracy of Camentz was allowing Lessing a stipend on condition of
studying theology. It was too much. His son was neglecting the _dic cur
hic_, and to obviate this the father recalled him home by a stratagem,
informing him that his mother was dying and desired once more to see
her son. The _ruse_, intended also as a test of Lessing's filial
obedience, succeeded in so far as to prove that this was at least
unshaken; but his parents urged in vain that he should abandon his evil
ways. He once more expressed with great decision his disinclination
towards a theological career. But he was also firmly resolved to be no
longer a burden to his parents, whose large family was a great drain on
their resources. He determined to follow Mylius, who had gone to Berlin
in the capacity of editor, convinced that a good brain and steadfast
will would force their own way in the world.

Accordingly Lessing settled in Berlin in 1748, a youth of barely twenty
years, prepared to fight a hand-to-hand struggle for existence.
Frederick the Great at that time ruled in Prussia, and his capital was
in ill repute as a hotbed of frivolity and atheism. If anything could
be worse in the parents' eyes than their son's attendance at the
theatre, it was his presence at Berlin. They urged his return home. He
refused respectfully but decidedly. He had found employment that
remunerated him. Voss's _Gazette_ had appointed him literary editor, he
wrote its critical feuilletons, and here he had the first opportunity
of attac