LESSING

LESSING, GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM, was born 22d January 1729, at Camenz, in Saxony, where his father, a pious and staunch Lutheran, was minister. He was the eldest son

Lessing, of a numerous family, and received his early education at
home. At the grammar school of Meissen, where he re-
ceived the surname of "admirable," he distinguished him-
self, not merely by extensive reading, but by clear and
independent thought. A paper sent to his father, at the
new year of 1743, when he was only a boy of fourteen,
and which was entitled, On the Similarity of one Year to
another, discusses such high themes as the possibility of a
golden age, and the doctrine of human deterioration. From
Meissen he was sent to the University of Leipzig, where
his parents designed that he should study theology. The
lectures of Ernesti and Gellert, however, were spent on
him in vain. Along with Christoph Mylius, his early bosom
friend, and several other gay companions, he conceived a
violent passion for the drama, and gave himself up to fen-
cing, dancing, the theatre, and debt. Some torn pages of
a comedy, however, found their way to Camenz in his box
at Christmas, and the young dramatist was ordered home.
To soothe his mother's anxieties, he laid his comic studies
aside, and kindly wrote her a sermon. At Easter, he re-
turned to college, with the view of studying medicine; but
his old passion broke out anew, and carried everything before
it. Finding his debts now grudgingly paid, and the sup-
plies in hourly danger of being cut off, he followed his friend
Mylius to Berlin, where they began a dramatic quarterly
(Beiträge zur Historie des Theaters), which, however, only
reached its fourth number. So little conscious was he of
the peculiar service which he was destined to render to the
literature of his country, that we find him about this time
busily engaged in translating Klopstock's Messiah into
Latin.

At the request of his parents, he resided for some time
at Witttemberg with his brother, who was studying for the
church; but he soon returned, unchanged in the bent of
his genius, to Berlin, where, with Moses Mendelssohn and
Nicolai, he plunged into a life of incessant literary activity.
With the former he wrote his essay on Pope as a meta-
physician (Pope als Metaphysiker), and with both he started
the Bibliothek der Schönen Wissenschaften. In 1755 he
removed from Berlin to Leipzig, whence he intended to
travel into England; but he got no farther than Holland,
and he retraced his steps to Leipzig soon after. In 1759
appeared those Letters on Literature, written in conjunction
with Mendelssohn and Nicolai, which may be said truly to
form an epoch in German literature. In 1760 Lessing went
to Breslau, as government secretary to General Von Tauen-
zien, probably with the view of recruiting his health by
change of scene, but more directly to fill his purse, which,
even in its emptiness, had been generously open to his bro-
ther's wants. A new passion for gambling, however, robbed
him of all, except his taste for study. After the drudgeries
of his office were over, the busy writer of Laokoon might be
seen bending over the faro-table, the perspiration starting
from his brow, as he rushed into the thankless game with a
strange impetuosity of mingled despair and superstition. In
1769 he went to Hamburg, as director of the theatre;
but his love for the stage was now too cold to be rekindled,
and most of his time was spent in antiquarian research.
Here he wrote his letters to Klotz, and here he formed his
intimacy with the pastor Götz, with whom he afterwards
fought his most memorable polemic. All his exertions in
this capacity scarcely kept poverty at bay, and he had serious
thoughts of quitting Germany, to beg or starve more plea-
surably at Rome, when his friend Ebert procured him the
office of librarian of the Wolfenbüttel Library. This lifted
him to a sudden affluence of L.90 per annum, with a free
house, and firewood. Of the rare treasures of the library
he has himself given an account; and he was scarcely in-
stalled in office, when he stumbled on a manuscript, by
Berengar of Tours, in which he defends his opinions against
Lanfranc; and its publication set at rest the doubts and

denials of his existence, long eagerly circulated in the
Church of Rome.

In 1774 began the publication of the Wolfenbüttelsche
Fragmente, a series of papers by an unknown hand, in which
the writer attacks the historical basis of Christianity with a
phalanx of arguments, which have since been spread out
into a thin line by Strauss. These papers were long attri-
buted to the pen of the librarian himself; but Samuel Rei-
marus, on his deathbed, set the question at rest by claiming
them for his own. After a short and unsatisfactory visit to
Italy and Vienna, Lessing returned to Wolfenbüttel; and,
in 1776, he married Madame König, a lady whom he had
betrothed at Hamburg, in hope of better days to come.
His happiness, however, was not of long duration. She
died in childbirth, in the spring of 1778, and left him to
drown his grief in incessant literary toil. His old friend
Götz, who had stepped into the arena with a pamphlet
against the Fragments, was the first to feel the edge of his
sharp, clear, nervous prose; and so fierce was the assault,
that the ministry of Brunswick, in alarm, prohibited the
prolongation of the contest. Lessing, however, continued
for some time to evade the prohibition by printing at Berlin,
but hit at length upon a more deadly expedient. When a
youth at college, he had been bold enough to introduce
upon the stage scenes and personages foreign to the drama
of his country. Der Freigeist; Der Mysogyn (the woman-
hater); and Die Juden, are among the titles of plays written
by him when a student at Leipzig. These were followed,
in later life, by Miss Sarah Sampson; Emilia Gallotti;
Philotas; Minna von Barnhelm; and several others. Un-
willing now to leave the sacred retreat of Wolfenbüttel,
a martyr to a single mode of controversy, he dressed his
opinions for the stage, and, in the mask of Nathan the Wise,
spoke his estimate of Christianity with Brahminic calmness
to the world. In this dramatized theology, he has probably
given to his country a more powerful impress than any of
its mighty thinkers from Luther to Schleiermacher. The
Education of the Human Race (Erziehung des Menschen-
geschlechts), and one or two minor works, all posthumous,
were the only contributions which he made, after its publi-
cation, to the progress of opinion.

With slow and leaden steps, exhausted and cheerless,
Lessing sank into the grave. His few hours of activity were
alternated with long and dreary fits of somnolence, from
which he struggled in vain to free himself, till death some-
what prematurely closed his career, 15th February 1781.
His works have been several times collected. The best
edition is that by Wendelin von Maltzahn, Leipzig, 1852,
and not yet (1857) completely published. The principal
sources of information in regard to his life, are to be found
in a short sketch by his nephew, and in the voluminous but
somewhat undigested biography of Danzel.

Lessing stands as one of the great landmarks in the lite-
rary history of Germany. He followed Klopstock in evok-
ing a national literature, which retained its elastic freedom
till Goethe once more subjected it to foreign chains. While
Klopstock, however, only pointed the way, Lessing led the
advancing host; and the sublime tranquillity of the one was
soon lost in the restless activity of the other. Lessing can-
not be called a poet, and he is perhaps scarcely more entitled
to be called a philosopher. He is more like a border chief
treading restlessly the confines of both with fearless famili-
arity and a sublime but solitary lawlessness. Freely to rove
in every path of human inquiry was to him a more royal pre-
rogative than to wield the sceptre of a fixed dominion. In
his athletic scepticism we see his superstitious horror of rest
on its tragic side; but even in his most playful dramas and
critiques there is a suppressed dialogue in every sentence, an
undertone of conflict, generally faint as a dream, but swelling
often into a wild and painful distinctness. In this respect he
betrays a hidden nature immeasurably nobler than Voltaire,

L'Estrange whose careless wit Lessing despised while wielding at will a keener wit of his own. No exposition of his opinions can more adequately represent the spring of his life than a saying which he repeated more than once, "that if God should hold truth in his right hand, and in his left, doubt, or the chase after truth, with the danger of wandering to and fro for ever in its search, and should bid him choose between the two, he would grasp the left hand and beg for doubt, with the words, 'Father, give me this—pure truth is for thee alone;'" and no comment can be more striking than the fact revealed by Jacobi, that when body and mind were both failing, the author of the Education of the Human Race was secretly resting his faith on the pantheism of Spinoza.