His appointed teachers did not perceive that a new source
of culture was within their hands. Homo vagus et inconstans!--one of them
pedantically reports of the future pilgrim to Rome, unaware on which side
his irony was whetted. When professional education confers nothing but
irritation on a Schiller, no one ought to be surprised; for Schiller, and
such as he, are primarily spiritual adventurers. But that Winckelmann,
the votary of the gravest of intellectual traditions, should get nothing
but an attempt at suppression from the professional guardians of
learning, is what may well surprise us.
In 1743 he became master of a school at Seehausen. This was the most
wearisome period of his life. Notwithstanding a success in dealing with
children, which seems to testify to something simple and primeval in his
nature, he found the work of teaching very depressing. Engaged in this
work, he writes that he still has within him a longing desire to attain
to the knowledge of beauty--sehnlich wuenschte zur Kenntniss des Schoenen
zu gelangen.
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