He had to shorten his nights, sleeping only four hours, to
gain time for reading. And here Winckelmann made a step forward in
culture. He multiplied his intellectual force by detaching from it all
flaccid interests. He renounced mathematics and law, in which his reading
had been considerable,--all but the literature of the arts. Nothing was
to enter into his life unpenetrated by its central enthusiasm. At this
time he undergoes the charm of Voltaire. Voltaire belongs to that
flimsier, more artificial, classical tradition, which Winckelmann was one
day to supplant, by the clear ring, the eternal outline of the genuine
antique. But it proves the authority of such a gift as Voltaire's that it
allures and wins even those born to supplant it. Voltaire's impression on
Winckelmann was never effaced; and it gave him a consideration for French
literature which contrasts with his contempt for the literary products of
Germany. German literature transformed, siderealised, as we see it in
Goethe, reckons Winckelmann among its initiators.
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