History of Friedrich II of Prussia, vol 10 | Page 9

and great mind.
The latter sort are not so easy to get; rarely producible on the soil of
this Earth! Nor is it certain how Friedrich might have managed with
one of this sort, or he with Friedrich;--though Friedrich unquestionably
would have tried, had the chance offered. For he loved intellect as few
men on the throne, or off it, ever did; and the little he could gather of it

round him often seems to me a fact tragical rather than otherwise.
With the outer Berlin social world, acting and reacting, Friedrich has
his connections, which obscurely emerge on us now and then. Literary
Eminences, who are generally of Theological vesture; any follower of
Philosophy, especially if he be of refined manners withal, or known in
fashionable life, is sure to attract him; and gains ample recognition at
Reinsberg or on Town-visits. But the Berlin Theological or Literary
world at that time, still more the Berlin Social, like a sunk extinct
object, continues very dim in those old records; and to say truth, what
features we have of it do not invite to miraculous efforts for farther
acquaintance. Venerable Beausobre, with his History of the
Manicheans, [ Histoire critique de Manichee et du
Manicheisme: wrote also Remarques &c. sur le
Nouveau Testament, which were once famous;
Histoire de la Reformation; &c. &c. He is Beausobre
SENIOR; there were two Sons (one of them born in second wedlock,
after Papa was 70), who were likewise given to writing.--See Formey,
Souvenirs d'un Citoyen, i. 33-39.] and other
learned things,--we heard of him long since, in Toland and the
Republican Queen's time, as a light of the world. He is now fourscore,
grown white as snow; very serene, polite, with a smack of French
noblesse in him, perhaps a smack of affectation traceable too. The
Crown-Prince, on one of his Berlin visits, wished to see this Beausobre;
got a meeting appointed, in somebody's rooms "in the French College,"
and waited for the venerable man. Venerable man entered, loftily
serene as a martyr Preacher of the Word, something of an ancient
Seigneur de Beausobre in him, too; for the rest, soft as sunset, and
really with fine radiances, in a somewhat twisted state, in that good old
mind of his. "What have you been reading lately, M. de Beausobre?"
said the Prince, to begin conversation. "Ah, Monseigneur, I have just
risen from reading the sublimest piece of writing that exists."--"And
what?" "The exordium of St. John's Gospel: In the Beginning
was the Word; and the Word was with God, and the Word was--" italic> Which somewhat took the Prince by surprise, as Formey reports;
though he rallied straightway, and got good conversation out of the old
gentleman. To whom, we perceive, he writes once or twice, [

OEuvres de Frederic, xvi. 121-126. Dates are all of 1737;
the last of Beausobre's years.]--a copy of his own verses to correct, on
one occasion,--and is very respectful and considerate.
Formey tells us of another French sage, personally known to the Prince
since Boyhood; for he used to be about the Palace, doing something.
This is one La Croze; Professor of, I think, "Philosophy" in the French
College: sublime Monster of Erudition, at that time; forgotten now, I
fear, by everybody. Swag-bellied, short of wind; liable to rages, to
utterances of a coarse nature; a decidedly ugly, monstrous and rather
stupid kind of man. Knew twenty languages, in a coarse inexact way.
Attempted deep kinds of discourse, in the lecture-room and elsewhere;
but usually broke off into endless welters of anecdote, not always of
cleanly nature; and after every two or three words, a desperate sigh, not
for sorrow, but on account of flabbiness and fat. Formey gives a
portraiture of him; not worth copying farther. The same Formey,
standing one day somewhere on the streets of Berlin, was himself, he
cannot doubt, SEEN by the Crown-Prince in passing; "who asked M.
Jordan, who that was," and got answer:--is not that a comfortable fact?
Nothing farther came of it;--respectable Ex-Parson Formey, though
ever ready with his pen, being indeed of very vapid nature, not wanted
at Reinsberg, as we can guess.
There is M. Achard, too, another Preacher, supreme of his sort, in the
then Berlin circles; to whom or from whom a Letter or two exist.
Letters worthless, if it were not for one dim indication: That, on inquiry,
the Crown-Prince had been consulting this supreme Achard on the
difficulties of Orthodoxy; [ OEuvres de Frederic,
xvi. pp. 112-117: date, March-June, 1736.] and had given him texts, or
a text, to preach from. Supreme Achard did not abolish the difficulties
for his inquiring Prince,--who complains respectfully that "his