He would
have preferred one of the so-called learned professions for his
son,--theology above all,--and would seem to have never quite reconciled
himself to his son's distinction, as being in none of the three careers
which alone were legitimate. Lessing's bearing towards him, always
independent, is really beautiful in its union of respectful tenderness
with unswerving self-assertion. When he wished to evade the maternal eye,
Gotthold used in his letters to set up a screen of Latin between himself
and her; and we conjecture the worthy Pastor Primarius playing over again
in his study at Camenz, with some scruples of conscience, the old trick
of Chaucer's fox:--
"Mulier est hominis confusio;
Madam, the sentence of this Latin is.
Woman is mannes joy and mannes bliss."
He appears to have snatched a fearful and but ill-concealed joy from the
sight of the first collected edition of his son's works, unlike Tillotson
as they certainly were. Ah, had they only been _Opera_! Yet were they not
volumes, after all, and able to stand on their own edges beside the
immortals, if nothing more?
After grinding with private-tutor Mylius the requisite time, Lessing
entered the school of Camenz, and in his thirteenth year was sent to the
higher institution at Meissen.
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