There is a
moderation of sincerity peculiar to Lessing in the epithet of the
following sentence: "How dearly must I pay for the single year I have
lived with a _sensible_ wife!" Werther had then been published four
years. Lessing's grief has that pathos which he praised in sculpture,--he
may writhe, but he must not scream. Nor is this a new thing with him. On
the death of a younger brother, he wrote to his father, fourteen years
before: "Why should those who grieve communicate their grief to each
other purposely to increase it?... Many mourn in death what they loved
not living. I will love in life what nature bids me love, and after death
strive to bewail it as little as I can."
We think Herr Stahr is on his stilts again when he speaks of Lessing's
position at Wolfenbuettel. He calls it an "assuming the chains of feudal
service, being buried in a corner, a martyrdom that consumed the best
powers of his mind and crushed him in body and spirit forever." To crush
_forever_ is rather a strong phrase, Herr Stahr, to apply to the spirit,
if one must ever give heed to the sense as well as the sound of what one
is writing. But eloquence has no bowels for its victims. We have no doubt
the Duke of Brunswick meant well by Lessing, and the salary he paid him
was as large as he would have got from the frugal Frederick.
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