As was his habit among his friends, he would declaim to her passages from his favourite poets, and she, "an enemy to all that was trivial, feeble, and commonplace," would unsparingly point out their essential inanity.

When he ventured to recite his own poetical attempts, her criticism was equally unsparing.

The discipline was sharp, but for the "coddled" boy, who had been regarded at home as a youthful prodigy, it was entirely wholesome.

Yet, if we may judge from a description of him some ten months after his arrival in Leipzig, the chastening does not appear to have lessened his buoyant self-confidence.

The description is from the hand of a comrade of his own in Frankfort, Horn by name, the son of a former chief magistrate of the city.