Generally
considered, we see that the course of his studies was such as in any
circumstances he would himself have probably followed. Under no
conditions would Goethe have been content to restrict himself to a
narrow field of study and to give the necessary application for its
complete mastery. As it was, the multiplicity of his studies supplied
the foundation for the manifold productivity of his maturer years. In
no branch of knowledge was he ever a complete master; he devoted a
large part of his life to the study of Greek and Roman antiquity, yet
he never acquired a scholar's knowledge either of Greek or Roman
literature.[10] If on these subjects he has contributed many valuable
reflections, it was due to the insight of genius which apprehends what
passes the range of ordinary vision.
[Footnote 9: It was doubtless due to the absence of strict drill in
his youth that Goethe, as he himself tells us, never acquired the art
of punctuating his own writings.]
[Footnote 10: Goethe said of himself that he had no "grammatical
vein."]
A striking fact in Goethe's account of his early years is the emphasis
he lays on the religious side of his education.
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