I have to thank
your dear father for these conceptions; he it was who prepared my mind
to receive them; time will give its blessing to my diligence which may
complete the work he began."[63] In point of fact, partly owing to the
depressing conditions in which he found himself, and partly, it may
be, out of his own deliberate purpose, Goethe produced no work of
importance during the year and a half he spent in Frankfort. It was a
period of incubation, and the stimulus to production was to come to
him in another environment.
[Footnote 63: _Werke, Briefe_, Band i. 200.]
In the spring of 1770 Goethe recovered his normal health and spirits,
and, in accordance with his father's wish, he proceeded to Strassburg
to complete his legal studies. He left home with as intense a feeling
of relief as he had left it on the previous occasion. Between him and
his father there had been growing estrangement, and the estrangement
had ended in an open quarrel when he ventured to criticise the
architecture of the paternal house, which had been constructed under
his father's own directions. Thwarted though the father had been in
his hopes of his son, however, he was not turned from his purpose of
affording him every opportunity of laying a broad foundation of
general culture.
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