In this last capacity he had travelled in France, and visited Paris, where he had made the acquaintance, among others, of Diderot and D'Alembert.

In Hamburg he had for several weeks been in intercourse with Lessing, whom Goethe in a moment of caprice had neglected to visit in Leipzig.

Already, moreover, he had produced work in literary criticism which by its suggestiveness and originality had attracted much attention, and notably among the youth of Germany.
In hard-won experience, in extent of knowledge and range of ideas, therefore, Herder, as Goethe himself speedily saw and acknowledged, was far ahead of him along those very paths where he himself was ambitious of distinction.
The association of Herder and Goethe in these Strassburg days is one of the interesting chapters in European literary history.

Goethe himself bears emphatic testimony to Herder's determining influence at once on his mind and character.

"The most significant event of that time, he tells us, "and one which was to have the weightiest consequences for me, was my acquaintance with Herder and the closer bond that resulted from it." Bond there was between them, but it was not the bond of genuine friendship.