The
name first comes to the surface in Parson Clement Lessigk, nearly three
centuries ago, and survives to the present day in a painter of some
distinction. It has almost passed into a proverb, that the mothers of
remarkable children have been something beyond the common. If there be
any truth in the theory, the case of Lessing was an exception, as might
have been inferred, perhaps, from the peculiarly masculine type of his
character and intellect. His mother was in no wise superior, but his
father seems to have been a man somewhat above the pedantic average of
the provincial clergymen of his day, and to have been a scholar in the
ampler meaning of the word. Besides the classics, he had possessed
himself of French and English, and was somewhat versed in the Oriental
languages. The temper of his theology may be guessed from his having
been, as his son tells us with some pride, one of "the earliest
translators of Tillotson." We can only conjecture him from the letters
which Lessing wrote to him, from which we should fancy him as on the
whole a decided and even choleric old gentleman, in whom the wig, though
not a predominant, was yet a notable feature, and who was, like many
other fathers, permanently astonished at the fruit of his loins.
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