Life of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing Author:Thomas William Rolleston Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV. IT was more than a year since Lessing's parents had seen him. He had left them a shy, uncouth, and probably self-important lad, for we are much mi... more »staken if Lessing had not some eye to foibles of his own in the "Young Scholar." They now saw a well-grown, compactly-built youth, showing in his bearing and behaviour the security of the practised athlete and the social culture which he had gained in " Paris-on-the-Pleiss." The head, with its waving light brown hair, was set a little proudly on the strong shoulders; the broad brow and open countenance expressed candour, courage, and genial power. But the look of the large dark-blue eyes, " true tiger eyes," as a later observer described them, must have told that there was "something in him dangerous.'' His dress in later years was always notably neat and even elegant, and although he was now in need of a new suit, the condition of the attire he wore rm:st have at least made it clear that he was no disciple of the horrible Mylius. In no point, indeed, they soon observed, was he or would he be the blind disciple of any man. His parents might not understand orapprove his ways, but it was evident that he was completely master of himself, knew his mind thoroughly, and would neither wilfully nor weakly sin against any truth which he could recognize for such. Their tone of denunciation was at once abandoned, and day after day the father and son argued out their differences, if sometimes with heat, a transient heat, yet at bottom with a cheerful toleration. Even the discovery that he had debts was not found insupportable. They were paid, with the help of a benevolent bachelor uncle, but, alas ! Lessing's path in life was never again wholly clear of that dismal swamp. He stayed till April at Kamenz, and then went back to Leipzig, ...« less