The story of Goethe's life Author:George Henry Lewes 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: with the manager. Wolfgang saw, in his mind's eye, the name of his play already placarded at the corners of the street! Unhappily, Derones in his critical capaci... more »ty was merciless. He picked the play to pieces, and stunned the poor author with the critical jargon of that day; proclaimed the absolute integrity of the Three Unities, abused the English, laughed at the Germans, and maintained the sovereignty of French taste in so confident a style, that his listener was without a reply. If silenced, however, he was not convinced. It set him to thinking on those critical canons. He studied the treatise on the Unities by Corneille, and the prefaces of Racine. The result of these studies was profound contempt for that system; and it is, perhaps, to Derones that we owe something of the daring defiance of all " rule," which startled Germany in Gbtz von Berlichingen. CHAPTER III. VARIOUS STUDIES. At length, June, 1761, the French quitted Frankfurt; and studies were seriously resumed. Mathematics, music, and drawing were commenced under paternal superintendence. For mathematics Wolfgang had no aptitude ; for music, little ; he learned to play on the harpsichord, and subsequently on the violoncello, but he never attained any proficiency. Drawing continued through life a pleasant exercise. Left now to the calm of uninterrupted studies, he made gigantic strides. Even the hours of recreation were filled with some useful occupation. He added English to-his polyglot store ; and to keep up his several languages, he invented a Romance, wherein six or seven brothers and sisters scat- tered over the world corresponded with each other. The eldest describes in good German all the incidents of his travels ; his sister answers in womanly style with short, sharp sentences, and nothing but full...« less