Leipsic stage, many slight pieces of his own, and he had serious
thought of turning actor, which excited alarm in the parsonage at
Camenz and caused his recall home in January, 1747. It was found,
however, that although he could not be trained to follow his
father's profession, he had been studying to such good purpose, and
developing, in purity of life, such worth of character, that after
Easter he was sent back to Leipsic, with leave to transfer his
studies from theology to medicine.

Lessing went back, continued to work hard, but still also gave all
his leisure to the players. For the debts of some of them he had
incautiously become surety, and when the company removed to Vienna,
there were left behind them unpaid debts for which young Lessing was
answerable. The creditors pressed, and Lessing moved to Wittenberg;
but he fell ill, and was made so miserable by pressure for
impossible payments, that he resolved to break off his studies, go
to Berlin, and begin earning by his pen, his first earnings being
for the satisfaction of these Leipsic creditors. Lessing went first
to Berlin to seek his fortune in December, 1748, when he was
nineteen years old. He was without money, without decent clothes,
and with but one friend in Berlin, Mylius, who was then editing a
small journal, the Rudigersche Zeitung. Much correspondence brought
him a little money from the overburdened home, and with addition of
some small earning from translations, this enabled him to obtain a
suit of clothes, in which he might venture to present himself to
strangers in his search for fortune. A new venture with Mylius, a
quarterly record of the history of the theatre, was not successful;
but having charge committed to him of the library part of Mylius's
journal, Lessing had an opportunity of showing his great critical
power. Gottsched, at Leipsic, was then leader of the war on behalf