soon felt equal to the writing of a French play. He read
Racine and Corneille, and tried to master the doctrine of
the unities. But this task he soon gave up in disgust,
concluding with precocious wisdom that the plays were
better than the theory.

What is important in all this is that by the time
he was twelve years old Goethe was an accomplished
young Frenchman--at home in the French drama, and
accustomed to look at all things theatrical from the
French point of view. Later his mind underwent an
anti-Gallic revulsion, but impressions had been received,
which must certainly be counted in with the totality of
later influences, that made it impossible for him, in the
Napoleonic era, to take sides with the virulent haters of
France.

In 1765 Goethe entered the University of Leipzig,
registering, in accordance with his father's wish, as a
student of law. He was a good Latinist, but no Grecian
at all, had a smattering of Italian, and rather more than
a smattering of English. Already poetry was his ruling
passion. He had filled divers volumes with juvenile
verse, and he had high hopes of light and leading from
the Leipzig professors, especially from Gellert, who was
then at the height of his popularity. But he was dis-
appointed. No one took any interest in his poetic aspira-
tions, and the academic mill was just then grinding no
grist that he could assimilate as food. So he turned his
back on it--with emotions that were afterward cynically
recorded in Faust. In a few months he gave up hope
and fell into a moping melancholy. Then came a
distracting love-affair with Annette SchÖnkopf -- the
first in a long procession of terrestrial muses--which
revived the dying lyric flame, and at the same time

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