Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Goethe's Letters to Leipzig Friends
As the twig is bent the tree's inclined, is an aphorism no less trite than true in its usual applica tion to the human subject; hence we study with the deepest interest all those circumstances in the early youth of a man distinguished later as a genius, which may possibly have directed the current of his thoughts and actions into a channel destined to swell into a mighty torrent, bearing all before it by its innate strength of character.
Amongst the great minds which have arisen in modern times few have been productive of more powerful effect on their age than the prince of German writers, Goethe, who, by the force of his intellect and the breadth of his Views, initiated a new era in the literature of his own land, and at the same time operated with considerable effect upon re?ecting minds in other countries. It is beyond my province to refer more particularly to the mode in' which the in?uence he thus - exercised made itself felt the fact is sufficiently attested by the crowd of authors who have striven to follow where he so nobly led.
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