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It was a time for rapid impressions to sway the ardent temperament of this boy genius of twenty-one. He read the works of Wilhelm Heinse, who depicts both the highest artistic pleasures and those of the opposite sort. Other authors following the same trend made him believe in the utmost freedom in politics, literature and morals.
In the course of a conscientious performance of the duties of his office, to which he had been regularly and divinely called, and without any urging on his part, he attained to this position by inward necessity. In 1515 he received his appointment as the standing substitute for the sickly city pastor, Simon Heinse, from the city council of Wittenberg.
This self-inspection, this importance attached to little personalities, disgusts us. The letters of Gleim, Heinse, Jacobi, Johannes Müller suffice to make us feel fully conscious of this disgust. We should now call the man a coxcomb who considered his precious ego so important that he had to carry on, year in and year out, a yard-long correspondence about himself.
The spirit that had been called forth also degenerated into mere bacchanalian license, and, in order to return to nature, the limits set by decency and custom were, as by Heinse, for instance, who thus disgraced his genius, wantonly overthrown.
It was not merely a Goethe, a Schiller, a Herder, whom Rousseau fired with new thoughts. The smaller men, such as Fr. Jacobi, Heinse, Klinger, shared the same inspiration. The worship of Rousseau penetrated all classes, and touched every degree of intelligence.
"Goethe was with us," so writes Heinse to one of his friends; "a beautiful youth of twenty-five, full of genius and force from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot; a heart full of feeling, a spirit full of fire, who with eagle wings ruit immensus ore profundo."
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