" Boyish scepticism of the
superficial sort is a common phenomenon enough, but the Lessing variety
of it seems to us sufficiently rare in a youth of twenty. What strikes us
mainly in the letters of these years is not merely the maturity they
show, though that is remarkable, but the tone. We see already in them the
cheerful and never overweening self-confidence which always so pleasantly
distinguished Lessing, and that strength of tackle, so seldom found in
literary men, which brings the mind well home to its anchor, enabling it
to find holding ground and secure riding in any sea. "What care I to live
in plenty," he asks gayly, "if I only live?" Indeed, Lessing learned
early, and never forgot, that whoever would be life's master, and not its
drudge, must make it a means, and never allow it to become an end. He
could say more truly than Goethe, _Mein Acker ist die Zeit_, since he not
only sowed in it the seed of thought for other men and other times, but
cropped it for his daily bread. Above all, we find Lessing even thus
early endowed with the power of keeping his eyes wide open to what he was
after, to what would help or hinder him,--a much more singular gift than
is commonly supposed. Among other jobs of this first Berlin period, he
had undertaken to arrange the library of a certain Herr Ruediger, getting
therefor his meals and "other receipts," whatever they may have been.
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