outside and above them. Though they were issued anonymously, Lessing was now sufficiently known, and it was not long before they were universally attributed to him. Their peculiar merit was that they did not merely condemn the contemporary productions, but showed the way to their improvement. They are throughout written with dialectic brilliancy, vigour, and lively wit, so that they are classics to this day, although their immediate themes are long removed from our interests From these 'Letters Concerning Contemporary Literature' our modern science of criticism may be said to date. After this, works were no longer merely judged by ancient standards, but by their application to the demands of the age in which they were written. The news of Kleist's death affected Lessing severely, and so broke down his energies that he felt the imperative need of a change of scene. He therefore accepted an offer to act as secretary to General Tauentzien, who had been appointed Governor of Breslau. He followed him to that city in 1760, hoping to find renewed energies in a fixed employment that gave him good emolument and left him free time for self-culture. Lessing remained at this post for nearly five years, until the conclusion of the Seven Years' War, and though his letters of that period are very scanty, and though he gained evil repute at Breslau as a gambler and a tavern haunter, they were really the busiest and most studious years of his life. Here he read Spinoza and the Church Fathers, studied æsthetics and Winckelmann's newly issued 'History of Art,' wrote his 'Minna von Barnhelm,' and the 'Laokoon.' Their publication did not occur till his return to Berlin after the peace of Hubertsburg, when Lessing threw up his appointment, greatly to the dismay of his family, who had reckoned on it as a permanent resource. But Lessing had had enough of soldiers and military life, he had exhausted all they could teach him, and he craved to resume his studious and independent existence. He did not like it on resumption so well as he had thought he should at a distance. Restlessness seized him. He wanted to travel; to see Italy. His friends desired an appointment for him as royal librarian. He applied for the post, and was kept for some time in uncertainty. He failed, however, owing to Frederick's dislike to German learned men, and it was in vain that Lessing's friends pleaded that he was anything but the typical German pedant, uncouth, unkempt, who was Frederick's _bête noire_. To prove his efficiency for the post, Lessing had published his 'Laokoon.' He published it as a fragment, and, like too many of Lessing's works, it never grew beyond that stage.