His
Nathan had not the success he hoped. It is sad to see the strong,
self-sufficing man casting about for a little sympathy, even for a little
praise. "It is really needful to me that you should have some small good
opinion of it [Nathan], in order to make me once more contented with
myself," he writes to Elise Reimarus in May, 1779. That he was weary of
polemics, and dissatisfied with himself for letting them distract him
from better things, appears from his last pathetic letter to the old
friend he loved and valued most,--Mendelssohn. "And in truth, dear
friend, I sorely need a letter like yours from time to time, if I am not
to become wholly out of humor. I think you do not know me as a man that
has a very hot hunger for praise. But the coldness with which the world
is wont to convince certain people that they do not suit it, if not
deadly, yet stiffens one with chill. I am not astonished that _all_ I
have written lately does not please _you_.... At best, a passage here and
there may have cheated you by recalling our better days. I, too, was then
a sound, slim sapling, and am now such a rotten, gnarled trunk!" This was
written on the 19th of December, 1780; and on the 15th of February, 1781,
Lessing died, not quite fifty-two years old.
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