What strikes us in his
course of study is its desultoriness and its comprehensiveness. At one
time and another he gained an acquaintance with English, French,
Italian, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. He read widely in history, secular
and sacred, and in the later stage of his early studies he took up law
at the express desire of his father. It was the aim of his father's
scheme of education that accomplishments should form an essential part
of it. So his son was taught music, drawing, dancing, riding, and
fencing. But there was another side to Goethe's early training which,
in his case, deserves to be specially emphasised. A striking
characteristic of Goethe's writings is the knowledge they display of
the whole range of the manual arts, and this knowledge he owed to the
circumstances of his home. His father, a virtuoso with the means of
gratifying his tastes, freely employed artists of all kinds to execute
designs of his own conception; and, as part of his son's education,
entrusted him with the superintendence of his commissions. Thus, in
accordance with modern ideas, were combined in Goethe's training the
practical and the theoretical--a combination which is the
distinguishing characteristic of his productive activity.
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