And at no period of his life did external conditions and inward experiences combine to put his self-control to a severer test than during these last years in Frankfort.

Frankfort itself, as we shall see, had become more distasteful to him than ever, and his abiding feeling towards it, now as subsequently, was that he could not breathe freely in its atmosphere.

On his return from Strassburg his father received him with greater cordiality than on his return from Leipzig, but the lack of real sympathy between them remained, and was undoubtedly one of the permanent sources of Goethe's discontent with his native town.

With no interest in his nominal profession, he had at the same time no clear conception of the function to which his genius called him.

Throughout these years in Frankfort he continued uncertain whether Nature meant him for a poet or an artist, and we receive the impression that his ambition was to be artist rather than poet.