History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 11 [16]
sensualities there were, is known;
and also (as some small offset, though that has not yet begun in
1740) what immense quantities of Physical Labor and contrivance
were got out of mankind, in that Epoch and down to this day.
As if, having lost its Heaven, it had struck desperately down into
the Earth; as if it were a BEAVER-kind, and not a mankind any
more. We had once a Barbaossa; and a world all grandly true.
But from that to Karl VI., and HIS Holy Romish Reich in such a
state of 'Holiness'--!" I here cut short my abstruse Friend.
Readers are impatient to have done with these miscellaneous
preludings, and to be once definitely under way, such a Journey
lying ahead. Yes, readers; a Journey indeed! And, at this point,
permit me to warn you that, where the ground, where Dryasdust and
the Destinies, yield anything humanly illustrative of Friedrich
and his Work, one will have to linger, and carefully gather it,
even as here. Large tracts occur, bestrewn with mere pedantisms,
diplomatic cobwebberies, learned marine-stores, and inhuman
matter, over which we shall have to skip empty-handed: this also
was among the sad conditions of our Enterprise, that it has to go
now too slow and again too fast; not in proportion to natural
importance of objects, but to several inferior considerations
withal. So busy has perverse Destiny been on it; perverse Destiny,
edacious Chance;--and the Dryasdusts, too, and Nightmares, in
Prussia as elsewhere, we know how strong they are!
Friedrich's character in old age has doubtless its curious
affinities, its disguised identities, with these prognostic
features and indications of his youth: and to our readers,--if we
do ever get them to the goal, of seeing Friedrich a little with
their own eyes and judgments,--there may be pleasant contrasts and
comparisons of that kind in store, one day. But the far commoner
experience (which also has been my own),--here is Smelfungus's
stern account of that:--
"My friend, you will be luckier than I, if, after ten years, not
to say, in a sense, twenty years, thirty years, of reading and
rummaging in those sad Prussian Books, ancient and new (which
often are laudably authentic, too, and exact as to details), you
can gather any character whatever of Friedrich, in any period of
his life, or conceive him as a Human Entity at all! It is strange,
after such thousand-fold writing, but it is true, his History is
considerably unintelligible to mankind at this hour; left chaotic,
enigmatic, in a good many points,--the military part of it alone
being brought to clearness, and rendered fairly conceivable and
credible to those who will study. And as to the Man himself, or
what his real Physiognomy can have been--! Well, it must be owned
few men were of such RAPIDITY of face and aspect; so difficult to
seize the features of. In his action, too, there was such
rapidity, such secrecy, suddenness: a man that could not be read,
even by the candid, except as in flashes of lightning. And then
the anger of by-standers, uncandid, who got hurt by him; the hasty
malevolences, the stupidities, the opacities: enough, in modern
times, what is saying much, perhaps no man's motives, intentions,
and procedure have been more belied, misunderstood,
misrepresented, during his life. Nor, I think, since that, have
many men fared worse, by the Limner or Biographic class, the
favorable to him and the unfavorable; or been so smeared of and
blotched of, and reduced to a mere blur and dazzlement of cross-
lights, incoherences, incredibilities, in which nothing, not so
much as a human nose, is clearly discernible by way of feature!"--
Courage, reader, nevertheless; on the above terms let us march
according to promise.
Chapter II.
THE HOMAGINGS.
Young Friedrich, as his Father had done, considers it unnecessary
to be crowned. Old Friedrich, first of the name, and of the King
series, we did see crowned, with a pinch of snuff tempering the
solemnities. That Coronation once well done suffices all his
descendants hitherto. Such an
and also (as some small offset, though that has not yet begun in
1740) what immense quantities of Physical Labor and contrivance
were got out of mankind, in that Epoch and down to this day.
As if, having lost its Heaven, it had struck desperately down into
the Earth; as if it were a BEAVER-kind, and not a mankind any
more. We had once a Barbaossa; and a world all grandly true.
But from that to Karl VI., and HIS Holy Romish Reich in such a
state of 'Holiness'--!" I here cut short my abstruse Friend.
Readers are impatient to have done with these miscellaneous
preludings, and to be once definitely under way, such a Journey
lying ahead. Yes, readers; a Journey indeed! And, at this point,
permit me to warn you that, where the ground, where Dryasdust and
the Destinies, yield anything humanly illustrative of Friedrich
and his Work, one will have to linger, and carefully gather it,
even as here. Large tracts occur, bestrewn with mere pedantisms,
diplomatic cobwebberies, learned marine-stores, and inhuman
matter, over which we shall have to skip empty-handed: this also
was among the sad conditions of our Enterprise, that it has to go
now too slow and again too fast; not in proportion to natural
importance of objects, but to several inferior considerations
withal. So busy has perverse Destiny been on it; perverse Destiny,
edacious Chance;--and the Dryasdusts, too, and Nightmares, in
Prussia as elsewhere, we know how strong they are!
Friedrich's character in old age has doubtless its curious
affinities, its disguised identities, with these prognostic
features and indications of his youth: and to our readers,--if we
do ever get them to the goal, of seeing Friedrich a little with
their own eyes and judgments,--there may be pleasant contrasts and
comparisons of that kind in store, one day. But the far commoner
experience (which also has been my own),--here is Smelfungus's
stern account of that:--
"My friend, you will be luckier than I, if, after ten years, not
to say, in a sense, twenty years, thirty years, of reading and
rummaging in those sad Prussian Books, ancient and new (which
often are laudably authentic, too, and exact as to details), you
can gather any character whatever of Friedrich, in any period of
his life, or conceive him as a Human Entity at all! It is strange,
after such thousand-fold writing, but it is true, his History is
considerably unintelligible to mankind at this hour; left chaotic,
enigmatic, in a good many points,--the military part of it alone
being brought to clearness, and rendered fairly conceivable and
credible to those who will study. And as to the Man himself, or
what his real Physiognomy can have been--! Well, it must be owned
few men were of such RAPIDITY of face and aspect; so difficult to
seize the features of. In his action, too, there was such
rapidity, such secrecy, suddenness: a man that could not be read,
even by the candid, except as in flashes of lightning. And then
the anger of by-standers, uncandid, who got hurt by him; the hasty
malevolences, the stupidities, the opacities: enough, in modern
times, what is saying much, perhaps no man's motives, intentions,
and procedure have been more belied, misunderstood,
misrepresented, during his life. Nor, I think, since that, have
many men fared worse, by the Limner or Biographic class, the
favorable to him and the unfavorable; or been so smeared of and
blotched of, and reduced to a mere blur and dazzlement of cross-
lights, incoherences, incredibilities, in which nothing, not so
much as a human nose, is clearly discernible by way of feature!"--
Courage, reader, nevertheless; on the above terms let us march
according to promise.
Chapter II.
THE HOMAGINGS.
Young Friedrich, as his Father had done, considers it unnecessary
to be crowned. Old Friedrich, first of the name, and of the King
series, we did see crowned, with a pinch of snuff tempering the
solemnities. That Coronation once well done suffices all his
descendants hitherto. Such an