The Remaining Works of Benedictus de Spinoza

Sentimentality spread and sweetened the "burning power" and, consequently, acted according to the pharmacopeia of Schiller original: "See the aforementioned epigraph."; the very age partly contributed to the development of tenderness. For me, the time was arriving when childhood ends and youth begins: this usually happens at sixteen. The naive beauty of childhood disappears, the beauty of youth has not yet appeared; there is disharmony in the features: they become coarser, there is no grace; the voice wavers between thin and thick, the eyes are languid, and then suddenly they sparkle, the cheeks are pale, and then suddenly they flush—physical perfection begins. The same thing happens in the soul: indefinite feelings, the germs of passions, agitation, languor, the feeling of something secret and unknown, and following this, youth, enthusiastic lyricism, full of love, arms opened to the entire world of God... As an early-blooming flower, I reached this epoch sooner, and the buds in my soul unfolded at fourteen; I felt that childhood was over and youth had begun, and I was offended that no one noticed the change in my being. Unfortunately, Vasily Yevdokimovich noticed it and, by virtue of this, began to teach me aesthetics, in which—not to be uncharitable—he was extremely limited, and he forced me to write articles at that time. It is a pity, a great pity, that when we moved from the old house to the new one, these articles were lost! With what pleasure I would read 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 Yevdokimovich was delighted, while correcting them (and it is no wonder—they were his own thoughts repeated by me). I translated my reviews into French and proudly presented them to the Marshal: "See," I said, "how I respect your Boileau." There were also historical articles: a comparison of Marfa the Governess (that is, the real one, and not the Spartan Marfa about whom Karamzin wrote a novella) with Zenobia of Palmyra; and Boris Godunov with Cromwell. It is a pity I did not write my comparisons in French, for I am sure they were so inept that they would have ended up as samples in Noel's Course of Literature, in the section Paralèles et Caractères Parallels and Characters.