" "He who is only in good health, and is willing to work, has
nothing to fear in the world." "What another man would call want, I call
comfort." "Must not one often act thoughtlessly, if one would provoke
Fortune to do something for him?" In his first inexperience, the life of
"the sparrow on the house-top" (which we find oddly translated "roof")
was the one he would choose for himself. Later in life, when he wished to
marry, he was of another mind, and perhaps discovered that there was
something in the old father's notion of a fixed position. "The life of
the sparrow on the house-top is only right good if one need not expect
any end to it. If it cannot always last, every day it lasts too
long,"--he writes to Ebert in 1770. Yet even then he takes the manly
view. "Everything in the world has its time, everything may be overlived
and overlooked, if one only have health." Nor let any one suppose that
Lessing, full of courage as he was, found professional authorship a
garden of Alcinoues. From creative literature he continually sought
refuge, and even repose, in the driest drudgery of mere scholarship. On
the 26th of April, 1768, he writes to his brother with something of his
old gayety: "Thank God, the time will soon come when I cannot call a
penny in the world my own but I must first earn it.
Pages:
426
427
428
429
430
431
432
433
434
435
436
437
438
439
440
441
442
443
444
445
446
447
448
449
450