To another event which occurred when he was
entering his seventh year, he ascribes the origin of an attitude of
mind which in his own opinion he did not overcome till his later
years. In 1756 broke out the Seven Years' War, in the course of which
there was a cleavage in German public opinion that disturbed the peace
of families and set the nearest relatives at bitter feud. Such was the
case in the Goethe circle--the father passionately sympathising with
Frederick; the maternal grandfather, Textor, the chief magistrate of
Frankfort, as passionately taking the side of Maria Theresa. In this
case the son's sympathies were those of his father, and in boyish
fashion he made a hero of the king of Prussia, though, as he himself
is careful to tell us, Prussia and its interests were nothing to him.
It was to the pain he felt when his hero was defamed by the supporters
of Austria that he traced that contempt of public opinion which he
notes as a characteristic of the greater part of his manhood, yet we
may doubt if any external event was needed to develop in him this
special turn of mind. As his whole manner of thinking proves, it was
neither in his character nor his genius to make a popular appeal like
a Burns or a Schiller.
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