Still not even the reverence he paid his father's
memory could keep him steadily to office work. He
played truant to attend Gall's phrenological lectures ;
he wrote out his own thoughts under the cover of
ledgers and letters ; he had abandoned all hope of
making good his mistaken career, but he could not
renounce all intercourse with learning. His melancholy
increased, his letters abounded with invectives on his



28 AKTHUR SCHOPENHAUER.
blighted fate. These complaints reached his mother,
who for once could sympathise with her son. She con-
sulted her Weimar friends concerning him, and received
the comforting assurance that it was not too late for
him to retrace his steps ; an assurance she hastened to
communicate to Arthur, who received the news with a
flood of tears. With impulsive decision he threw up
business and hastened to Gotha, where, by the advice of
Femow, he was to enter upon his academic studies. He
took private lessons in Gfreek and Latin, besides the usual
curriculum ; his progxess was so rapid that the profes-
sors prophesied for him a brilliant future as a classical
scholar, and his German writings showed a maturity
of thought and expression that astounded everyone.
Schopenhauer laid great stress upon the acquisition of
ancient languages, and defended the study of Greek
and Latin with all the ardour of a fanatical philologist^
weighted with the heavy artillery of abusive utterance
that characterised his speech and writing. Heine calls-
the Nibelungen-Lied an epic written with granite
boulders. The criticism would not ill apply to Schop-
enhauer's massive, bold, lucid and relentless style.
