He once more expressed with great decision his disinclination towards a theological career. But he was also firmly resolved to be no longer a burden to his parents, whose large family was a great drain on their resources. He determined to follow Mylius, who had gone to Berlin in the capacity of editor, convinced that a good brain and steadfast will would force their own way in the world. Accordingly Lessing settled in Berlin in 1748, a youth of barely twenty years, prepared to fight a hand-to-hand struggle for existence. Frederick the Great at that time ruled in Prussia, and his capital was in ill repute as a hotbed of frivolity and atheism. If anything could be worse in the parents' eyes than their son's attendance at the theatre, it was his presence at Berlin. They urged his return home. He refused respectfully but decidedly. He had found employment that remunerated him. Voss's _Gazette_ had appointed him literary editor, he wrote its critical feuilletons, and here he had the first opportunity of attacking the Swiss and Leipzig factions, and of exposing the absurdities of both schools. He was able to teach himself Spanish and Italian, he translated for the booksellers, he catalogued a library; and while thus earning his livelihood _tant bien que mal_, he indirectly prosecuted his studies and enlarged his knowledge of literature and life. For at Berlin he was not forced to associate only with books, he also came in contact with intellectual men, his views expanded, his judgment became sure. A volume of minor poems that he published in 1751 excited attention. The essays he contributed to Voss's _Gazette_ gave him notoriety on account of their independent spirit, their pregnant flashes of originality and truth. This unknown youth ventured alone and unsupported to attack Gottsched's meretricious writings, and so successfully that even the vain dictator trembled, and the rival schools asked each other who was this Daniel that had come to judgment? With pitiless subtlety he exposed the crudity, the inflation of Klopstock's 'Messiah,' which at that time one half the world extolled, the other half abused, while he alone could truly distinguish in what respects the poem fell short of its pretensions to be a national epic, and where its national importance and merit really lay.