The Remaining Works of Benedictus de Spinoza

sentimentality branched out and sweetened the "burning strength" and, consequently, acted according to the pharmacopoeia of Schiller original: "Siehe obigen Epigraph" | gloss: "See the above epigraph.". This very age partly contributed to the development of tenderness. For me, that time was arriving when childhood ends and youth begins: this usually happens at sixteen. Childish, naive beauty disappears, youthful beauty has not yet appeared; there is disharmony in the features: they become coarser, there is no grace; the voice modulates from thin to thick, the eyes are languid but occasionally sparkle, the cheeks are pale but occasionally flush—physical perfection is approaching. The same happens in the soul: indefinite feelings, the germs of passions, agitation, languor, the feeling of something secret and unknown, and following that, youth, enthusiastic lyricism full of love, open arms to the whole world of God. Being an early bloomer, I reached this epoch sooner, and the buds in my soul unfolded at fourteen. I felt that childhood had ended and youth had begun, and I was offended that no one noticed the turning point in my existence. Unfortunately, Vasily Evdokimovich noticed this and, by virtue of that, began to teach me aesthetics, in which, God rest his soul, he was extremely limited, and at that same time, he forced me to write articles. It is a pity, a great pity, that when we were moving from the old house to the new one, these articles were lost! With what pleasure I would reread them now! What did I not write! There were articles written in competition with Temira, there were literary reviews, and in them, I "annihilated" classicism. Vasily Evdokimovich went into raptures while correcting them (and it is no wonder, as my thoughts were repetitions of his own). I translated my reviews into French and proudly presented them to the Marshal: "Look," I said, "how I respect your Boileau." There were also historical articles: a comparison of Marfa the Mayoress (that is, the real one, and not the Spartan Marfa about whom Karamzin wrote a story) with Zenobia of Palmyra; Boris Godunov with Cromwell. It is a pity that I did not write my comparisons in French, otherwise I am sure they would have been so inept that they would have ended up as examples in Noël's "Course of Literature," in the section Parallèles et Caractères Parallels and Characters.