HISTORY OF FRIEDRICH II. OF PRUSSIA
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admissibility one day.

An Enterprise which turns out to be, the longer one looks at it,
the more of a formidable, not to say unmanageable nature!
Concerning which, on one or two points, it were good, if
conveniently possible, to come to some preliminary understanding
with the reader. Here, flying on loose leaves, are certain
incidental utterances, of various date: these, as the topic is
difficult, I will merely label and insert, instead of a formal
Discourse, which were too apt to slide into something of a
Lamentation, or otherwise take an unpleasant turn.


1. FRIEDRICH THEN, AND FRIEDRICH NOW.

This was a man of infinite mark to his contemporaries; who had
witnessed surprising feats from him in the world; very
questionable notions and ways, which he had contrived to maintain
against the world and its criticisms. As an original man has
always to do; much more an original ruler of men. The world,
in fact, had tried hard to put him down, as it does, unconsciously
or, consciously, with all such; and after the most conscious
exertions, and at one time a dead-lift spasm of all its energies
for Seven Years, had not been able. Principalities and powers,
Imperial, Royal, Czarish, Papal, enemies innumerable as the
seasand, had risen against him, only one helper left among the
world's Potentates (and that one only while there should be help
rendered in return); and he led them all such a dance as had
astonished mankind and them.

No wonder they thought him worthy of notice. Every original man of
any magnitude is;--nay, in the long-run, who or what else is?
But how much more if your original man was a king over men;
whose movements were polar, and carried from day to day those of
the world along with them. The Samson Agonistes,--were his life
passed like that of Samuel Johnson in dirty garrets, and the
produce of it only some bits of written paper,--the Agonistes,
and how he will comport himself in the Philistine mill; this is
always a spectacle of truly epic and tragic nature. The rather,
if your Samson, royal or other, is not yet blinded or subdued to
the wheel; much more if he vanquish his enemies, not by suicidal