Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 4.djvu/281

Rh even bribed by factions, had become but too plain to me: I hated every injustice beyond measure, for children are all moral rigourists. My father, who was concerned in the affairs of the city only as a private citizen, expressed himself with very lively indignation about much that had failed. And did I not see him, after so many studies, endeavours, pains, travels, and so much varied cultivation, between his four walls, leading a solitary life, such as I could never desire for myself? All this put together lay as a horrible load on my mind, from which I could only free myself by trying to contrive a plan of life altogether different from that which had been marked out for me. In thought I threw aside my legal studies, and devoted myself solely to the languages, to antiquities, to history, and to all that flows from them.

Indeed, at all times, the poetic imitation of what I had perceived in myself, in others, and in nature, afforded me the greatest pleasure. I did it with ever-increasing facility, because it came by instinct, and no criticism had led me astray; and, if I did not feel full confidence in my productions, I could certainly regard them as defective, but not such as to be utterly rejected. Although here and there they were censured, I still retained my silent conviction that I could not but gradually improve, and that sometime I might be honourably named along with Hagedorn, Gellert, and other such men. But such a distinction alone seemed to me too empty and inadequate; I wished to devote myself professionally and with zeal to those aforesaid fundamental studies, and, whilst I meant to advance more rapidly in my own works by a more thorough insight into antiquity, to qualify myself for a university professorship, which seemed to me the most desirable thing for a young man who strove for culture, and intended to contribute to that of others.