Stilling had had a remarkable career; he had been successively charcoal-burner, tailor, schoolmaster, and private tutor, and he had come to Strassburg to qualify himself for the practice of medicine.

What attracted Goethe to him was a type of mind and character at every point dissimilar from his own.

With a simple mystical piety, which led him to believe that he was a special child of Providence, Stilling combined an intelligence and a zeal for knowledge which gave his words and his actions an individual stamp.

It is from Stilling that we have the most vivid description of Goethe in these Strassburg days.

As he sat with a friend at the common table for the first time, they saw a youth enter who, by his "large bright eyes, magnificent forehead, handsome person, and confident air," arrested their attention.[72] "That must be a fine fellow," remarked Stilling's friend, but both agreed that they might look for trouble with him, as he seemed _ein wilder Kamerad_.