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GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING

(1729-1781)

BY E. P. EVANS

ESSING was born January 22d, 1729, at Camenz in the Saxon province of Upper Lusatia, and died at Brunswick, February 15th, 1781. His father was a clergyman and his mother the daughter of a clergyman; and his earliest known ancestor, Clarence Lessigk, a curate in the Saxon Erzgebirge, was one of the signers of the formula concordia published in 1580, and designed to allay certain doctrinal dissensions which had arisen soon after the death of the reformer. From this ecclesiastical progenitor his line of descent ran unbroken through six generations of theologians, jurists, burgomasters, and other men of culture; and in illustration of the "survival of the fittest," the family name and characteristics were in our own day the heritage of one of the most eminent historical painters of Germany. Lessing belonged therefore to what Oliver Wendell Holmes used to call the "Academic Races," in whom scholarly tastes and aptitudes are inbred and transmitted from father to son, and who take to learning almost as instinctively as a cat takes to mousing. It is the scions of such a stock that constitute the largest contingent of those who pursue university studies, and fill the ranks of the learned professions; producing a horde of pedants like Lessing's younger brother Theophilus, and at rare intervals a man of genius like himself.

In June 1741, when he was scarcely thirteen, he was sent to the then celebrated grammar school at Meissen (Fürstenschule zu St. Afra), where he completed the prescribed six-years' course of study. in five years. In answer to the father's inquiry concerning his son's proficiency, the rector replied: "He is a horse that needs double fodder. The lessons, which are hard for others, are nothing for him. We cannot use him much longer." On September 20th, 1746, he was matriculated as a student of theology in the University of Leipsic. Two years later he went to Wittenberg, thence to Berlin, and again to Wittenberg, where he took the degree of master of arts on April 29th, 1752.

During these half a dozen years of quite varied and rather vagrant academical life, he devoted himself with energy and enthusiasm to

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