THE SALON 225
town. The same young men, students, unmarried lawyers, and
business men, would take their midday or evening meal regularly
at the same house, and naturally often formed stimulating and
lasting friendships. Goethe has described his table tfhote at
Leipzig in the " Bombshell" (Feuerkugel) Tavern, between the
Old and the New Market, when he attended the university there
in 1765-68. There, curiously enough (for Leipzig was the
literary centre of Germany at that time), his friends were
mainly medical men and botanists, who agreeably stimulated
his lifelong scientific interests.
Literature, however, was not ignored. " I spent the dinner-
hours with my friends cheerfully and profitably," writes Goethe.
"During this intercourse I perceived through conversation,
through examples, and through my own reflections, that the first
step in delivering ourselves from the wishy-washy, long-winded,
empty epoch could be taken only by definiteness, precision,
and brevity/' He proceeds to analyse the literary qualities
of Lessing, Ramler, Wieland, Klopstock; evidently such
discussions formed the subject of the table d'hote conversation.
At his table d'hSte in Strasbourg, when Goethe went to
the university there in 1770-^71, the senior member of his
circle was another medical man, Dr Salzmann, over fifty years
old, whose strong character, high philosophy, and piety greatly
impressed everybody. " He had attended the dinner-table for
many years, and maintained its good order and respectability."
There also Goethe met and learned to love Jung Stilling,
charcoal-burner, tailor, schoolmaster, private tutor, and now
medical student at the university. Jung Stilling was a man of
" simple and mystical piety." Goethe later published Selling's
Autobiography at his own expense and for the benefit of his
friend. A temporary visitor at the Strasbourg table d*htite was
Johann Gottfried Herder, Kant's most famous student, and,
after Lessing, Germany's greatest literary critic.
All this table d*h6te society, however, did not make a salon;
nor did the parties of students and other scholars who met
and still meet in the houses of kindly and hospitable professors
on certain evenings every month. The essence of the salon is
p