The effect of this success was extraordinary, both on my schoolfellows and on my own family.  My mother devoutly folded her hands in thankfulness, and in my own mind my vocation seemed quite a settled thing.  It was clear, beyond the possibility of a doubt, that I was destined to be a poet.  Professor Sillig wished me to compose a grand epic, and suggested as a subject ’The Battle of Parnassus,’ as described by Pausanias.  His reasons for this choice were based upon the legend related by Pausanias, viz., that in the second century B.C. the Muses from Parnassus aided the combined Greek armies against the destructive invasion of the Gauls by provoking a panic among the latter.  I actually began my heroic poem in hexameter verse, but could not get through the first canto.

Not being far enough advanced in the language to understand the Greek tragedies thoroughly in the original, my own attempts to construct a tragedy in the Greek form were greatly influenced by the fact that quite by accident I came across August Apel’s clever imitation of this style in his striking poems ‘Polyidos’ and ‘Aitolier.’  For my theme I selected the death of Ulysses, from a fable of Hyginus, according to which the aged hero is killed by his son, the offspring of his union with Calypso.  But I did not get very far with this work either, before I gave it up.

My mind became so bent upon this sort of thing, that duller studies naturally ceased to interest me.  The mythology, legends, and, at last, the history of Greece alone attracted me.

I was fond of life, merry with my companions, and always ready for a joke or an adventure.  Moreover, I was constantly forming friendships, almost passionate in their ardour, with one or the other of my comrades, and in choosing my associates I was mainly influenced by the extent to which my new acquaintance appealed to my eccentric imagination.  At one time it would be poetising and versifying that decided my choice of a friend; at another, theatrical enterprises, while now and then it would be a longing for rambling and mischief.

Furthermore, when I reached my thirteenth year, a great change came over our family affairs.  My sister Rosalie, who had become the chief support of our household, obtained an advantageous engagement at the theatre in Prague, whither mother and children removed in 1820, thus giving up the Dresden home altogether.  I was left behind in Dresden, so that I might continue to attend the Kreuz Grammar School until I was ready to go up to the university.  I was therefore sent to board and lodge with a family named Bohme, whose sons I had known at school, and in whose house I already felt quite at home.  With my residence in this somewhat rough, poor, and not particularly well-conducted family, my years of dissipation began.  I no longer enjoyed the quiet retirement necessary for work, nor the gentle, spiritual influence of my sisters’ companionship.  On the contrary, I was plunged