employments or on private means for their maintenance,
and these were sometimes, as with Klopstock and Goethe,
augmented by the generosity of enlightened patrons. Les-
sing alone of the important writers of the period depended
solely on the industry of his pen from his adolescence till
he was past forty years of age.

There were certainly many lesser men who sought to
live by authorship and journalism, but the miserable finan-
cial gains, which this career afforded, tempted the majority
into facile hack-work and destroyed in consequence their
individuality and sincerity. Lessing, however, through all
his difficulties and his distress preserved his personality
intact. His formidable strength of character overcame all
hindrances and, at this unpropitious date, gave to the world
the spectacle of a completely independent man of letters.
In a word, Lessing is the first modern figure in German
literature.

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing was born on 23rd January,
1729, in Kamenz, in what was then the Electorate of
Saxony. This little town lies some thirty miles north-east
of Dresden. Then as now it was no more than a quiet
country town. ¹ But the surroundings in which Lessing
passed his boyhood left singularly little mark upon his
personality. No description of its landscape or of the
architectural peculiarities of the town throws any light upon
his work. His was a cosmopolitan temperament, naturally
at home in great cities, and Kamenz could only have
appeared to him as a hindering and restricting environment,
had he been obliged to remain there throughout his
adolescence. Circumstances, however, early withdrew him
from its influence, so that its effect upon him is negligible.

More important was the atmosphere of the family into
which he was born. His father, Johann Gottfried Lessing

-4-