In his _Tagebuch_, under date August 7th, 1779, he writes as follows, and the passage may be taken as a commentary on the whole period of his life with which we are dealing: "Stiller Rueckblick auf's Leben auf die Verworrenheit Betriebsamkeit, Wissbegierde der Jugend, wie sie ueberall herumschweift, um etwas Befriedigendes zu finden.

Wie ich besonders in [Transcriber's Note: corrected error "im"] Geheimnissen, dunklen imaginativen Verhaeltissen eine Wollust gefunden habe."] As has been said, Goethe's contemporary letters addressed from Frankfort to his friends bring a different side of his life before us from that presented in the Autobiography.

From these letters we gather that he was by no means wholly engrossed in religious or mystical studies.

"During this winter," he wrote to his friend Oeser, about two months after his arrival in Frankfort, "the company of the muses and correspondence with friends will bring pleasure into a sickly, solitary life, which for a youth of twenty years would otherwise be something of a martyrdom."[54] In spite of the affectionate solicitude of Fraeulein von Klettenberg and other friends, he found Frankfort a depressing place after gay Leipzig.

"I could go mad when I think of Leipzig," wrote his sprightly friend Horn, who had also tasted the pleasures of that place; and Goethe shared his opinion.