Though he neglected the lectures of his
professors, he was assimilating knowledge on every subject that
appealed to his natural instincts. In truth, all the manifold
activities of his later years were foreshadowed during his sojourn in
Leipzig, as, indeed, they had already been foreshadowed during his
boyhood in Frankfort.
As in Frankfort, he took in knowledge equally from men, books, and
things.[33] In the house of a Leipzig citizen, a physician and
botanist, he met a society of medical men, and he records how his
attention was directed to an entirely new field through listening to
their conversation. Now, apparently for the first time, he heard the
names of Haller, Buffon, and Linnaeus, the last of whom he, in later
years, named with Spinoza and Shakespeare as one of the chief moulding
forces of his life. Through the influence and example of other men he
intermittently practised etching, drawing, and engraving--all arts in
which he retained a lifelong interest. But among all the persons in
Leipzig who influenced him Goethe gave the first place to Friedrich
Oeser, director of the academy of drawing in the city. Oeser was about
fifty years of age, jovial in disposition, and an experienced man of
the world.
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