Herder's mordant humour and spirit of contradiction were a daily trial to Goethe's temper, and he describes his feelings of alternating attraction and repulsion as a wholly new experience in his life.
Herder, who had known Diderot and D'Alembert and Lessing, appears, indeed, to have treated Goethe as an undisciplined boy, spoilt by flattery, with no serious purpose in life, inconsequent and irresponsible.[76] Nor does he seem to have been specially impressed by any promise in the youth who was so completely to eclipse him in the eyes of the world.

In his letters from Strassburg he does not even mention Goethe's name; and, when he subsequently referred to him, it was in terms he might have applied to any clever and confident youth.
"Goethe," he wrote, "is at bottom a good fellow, only somewhat superficial and sparrow-like,[77] faults with which I constantly taxed him." If Herder's moods frequently jarred on Goethe, it is evident that the experience was mutual.

The physical and mental restlessness, which is suggested by the epithet "sparrow-like," and which was noted by others as characteristic of Goethe at this period, could not fail to irritate one like Herder, naturally grave, sobered by hard experience, and then suffering from a painful and serious ailment.
Equally distasteful to Herder were Goethe's explosive outbursts in general conversation and his liking for practical jokes at the expense of his friends.

To Herder as to everyone else Goethe aired his opinions with the "frank confidingness" which he notes as a trait of his own character, and which gave Herder frequent opportunities for scathing criticism.

Herder gibed at his youthful tastes--at his collection of seals, at his elegantly-bound volumes which stood unread on his shelves, at his enthusiasms for Italian art, for the writings of the Cabbalists, for the poetry of Ovid.[78] [Footnote 76: Herder thought that Goethe was lacking in enthusiasm.] [Footnote 77: Elsewhere Herder calls Goethe a _Specht_, a wood-pecker.] [Footnote 78: Writing to a correspondent in 1780, Goethe says: "Herder faehrt fort, sich und andern das Leben sauer zu machen."] At bottom, as Herder said, Goethe was a "good fellow," slow to take offence, and as little vindictive as is possible to human nature.