History of Friedrich II of Prussia — Volume 21

"From his Gardens you see the Alps, the Lake, the City of Geneva and its environs, which are very pleasant. He said:—

VOLTAIRE. "'It is a beautiful prospect.' He pronounced these words tolerably well.

SHERLOCK. "'How long is it since you were in England?'

VOLTAIRE. "'Fifty years, at least.' [Not quite; in 1728 left; in 1726 had come.] [Supra, vii. 47.]

D'HORNOI. "'It was at the time when you printed the First Edition of your HENRIADE.'

"We then talked of Literature; and from that moment he forgot his age and infirmities, and spoke with the warmth of a man of thirty. He said some shocking things against Moses and against Shakspeare. [Like enough!]... We then talked of Spain.

VOLTAIRE. "'It is a Country of which we know no more than of the most savage parts of Africa; and it is not worth the trouble of being known. If a man would travel there, he must carry his bed, &c. On arriving in a Town, he must go into one street to buy a bottle of wine; a piece of a mule [by way of beef] in another; he finds a table in a third,—and he sups. A French Nobleman was passing through Pampeluna: he sent out for a spit; there was only one in the Town, and that was lent away for a wedding.'

D'HORNOI. "'There, Monsieur, is a Village which M. de Voltaire has built!'

VOLTAIRE. "'Yes, we have our freedoms here. Cut off a little corner, and we are out of France. I asked some privileges for my Children here, and the King has granted me all that I asked, and has declared this Pays de Gex exempt from all Taxes of the Farmers-General; so that salt, which formerly sold for ten sous a pound, now sells for four. I have nothing more to ask, except to live.'—We went into the Library" (had made the round of the Gardens, I suppose).

SCENE II. IN THE LIBRARY.

VOLTAIRE. "'There you find several of your countrymen [he had Shakspeare, Milton, Congreve, Rochester, Shaftesbury, Bolingbroke, Robertson, Hume and others]. Robertson is your Livy; his CHARLES FIFTH is written with truth. Hume wrote his History to be applauded, Rapin to instruct; and both obtained their ends.'

SHERLOCK. "'Lord Bolingbroke and you agreed that we have not one good Tragedy.'

VOLTAIRE. "'We did think so. CATO is incomparably well written: Addison had a great deal of taste;—but the abyss between taste and genius is immense! Shakspeare had an amazing genius, but no taste: he has spoiled the taste of the Nation. He has been their taste for two hundred years; and what is the taste of a Nation for two hundred years will be so for two thousand. This kind of taste becomes a religion; there are, in your Country, a great many Fanatics for Shakspeare.'

SHERLOCK. "'Were you personally acquainted with Lord Bolingbroke?'

VOLTAIRE. "'Yes. His face was imposing, and so was his voice; in his WORKS there are many leaves and little fruit; distorted expressions, and periods intolerably long. [TAKING DOWN A BOOK.] There, you see the KORAN, which is well read, at least. [It was marked throughout with bits of paper.] There are HISTORIC DOUBTS, by Horace Walpole [which had also several marks]; here is the portrait of Richard III.; you see he was a handsome youth.'

SHERLOCK (making an abrupt transition). "'You have built a Church?'

VOLTAIRE. "'True; and it is the only one in the Universe in honor of God [DEO EREXIT VOLTAIRE, as we read above]: you have plenty of Churches built to St. Paul, to St. Genevieve, but not one to God.'" EXIT Sherlock (to his Inn; makes jotting as above;—is to dine at Ferney to-morrow).

SCENE III. DINNER-TABLE OF VOLTAIRE.

"The next day, as we sat down to Dinner," our Host in the above shining costume, "he said, in English tolerably pronounced:—

VOLTAIRE. "'We are here for liberty and property! [parody of some old Speech in Parliament, let us guess,—liberty and property, my Lords!] This Gentleman—whom let me present to Monsieur Sherlock—is a Jesuit [old Pere Adam, whom I keep for playing Chess, in his old, unsheltered days]; he wears his hat: I am a poor invalid,—I wear my nightcap.'...

"I do not now recollect why he quoted these verses, also in English, by Rochester, on CHARLES SECOND:—

     'Here lies the mutton-eating King,      Who never said a foolish thing,      Nor ever did a wise one.'

But speaking of Racine, he quoted this Couplet (of Roscomman's ESSAY ON TRANSLATED VERSE):—

     'The weighty bullion of one sterling line      Drawn to French wire would through whole pages shine.

SHERLOCK. "'The English prefer Corneille to Racine.'

VOLTAIRE. "'That is because the English are not sufficiently acquainted with the French tongue to feel the beauties of Racine's style, or the harmony of his versification. Corneille ought to please them more because he is more striking; but Racine pleases the French because he has more softness and tenderness.'

SHERLOCK. "'How did you find [LIKE] the English fare (LA CHERE ANGLAISE?'—which Voltaire mischievously takes for 'the dear Englishwoman').

VOLTAIRE. "'I found her very fresh and white,'—truly! [It should be remembered, that when he made this pun upon Women he was in his eighty-third year.]

SHERLOCK. "'Their language?'

VOLTAIRE. "'Energetic, precise and barbarous; they are the only Nation that pronounce their A as E.... [And some time afterwards] Though I cannot perfectly pronounce English, my ear is sensible of the harmony of your language and of your versification. Pope and Dryden have the most harmony in Poetry; Addison in Prose.' [Takes now the interrogating side.]

VOLTAIRE. "'How have you liked (AVEX-VOUS TROUVE) the French?'

SHERLOCK. "'Amiable and witty. I only find one fault with them: they imitate the English too much.'

VOLTAIRE. "'How! Do you think us worthy to be originals ourselves?'

SHERLOCK. "'Yes, Sir.'

VOLTAIRE. "'So do I too:—but it is of your Government that we are envious.'

SHERLOCK. "'I have found the French freer than I expected.'

VOLTAIRE. "'Yes, as to walking, or eating whatever he pleases, or lolling in his elbow-chair, a Frenchman is free enough; but as to taxes—Ah, Monsieur, you are a lucky Nation; you can do what you like; poor we are born in slavery: we cannot even die as we will; we must have a Priest [can't get buried otherwise; am often thinking of that!]... Well, if the English do sell themselves, it is a proof that they are worth something: we French don't sell ourselves, probably because we are worth nothing.'

SHERLOCK. "'What is your opinion of the ELOISE' [Rousseau's immortal Work]?

VOLTAIRE. "'That it will not be read twenty years hence.'

SHERLOCK. "'Mademoiselle de l'Enclos wrote some good LETTERS?'

VOLTAIRE. "'She never wrote one; they were by the wretched Crebillon' [my beggarly old "Rival" in the Pompadour epoch]!...

VOLTAIRE. "'The Italians are a Nation of brokers. Italy is an Old-Clothes shop; in which there are many Old Dresses of exquisite taste.... But we are still to know, Whether the subjects of the Pope or of the Grand Turk are the more abject.' [We have now gone to the Drawing-room, I think, though it is not jotted.]

"He talked of England and of Shakspeare; and explained to Madame Denis part of a Scene in Henry Fifth, where the King makes love to Queen Catherine in bad French; and of another in which that Queen takes a lesson in English from her Waiting-woman, and where there are several very gross double-entendres"—but, I hope, did not long dwell on these....

VOLTAIRE. "'When I see an Englishman subtle and fond of lawsuits, I say, "There is a Norman, who came in with William the Conqueror." When I see a man good-natured and polite, "That is one who came with the Plantagenets;" a brutal character, "That is a Dane:"—for your Nation, Monsieur, as well as your Language, is a medley of many others.'

"After dinner, passing through a little Parlor where there was a head of Locke, another of the Countess of Coventry, and several more, he took me by the arm and stopped me: 'Do you know this Bust [bust of Sir Isaac Newton]? It is the greatest genius that ever existed: if all the geniuses of the Universe were assembled, he should lead the band.'

"It was of Newton, and of his own Works, that M. de Voltaire always spoke with the greatest warmth." [Sherlock, LETTERS (London, 1802), i. 98-106.] (EXIT Sherlock, to jot down the above, and thence into Infinite Space.)

GENERAL OR FIELDMARSHAL CONWAY, DIRECT FROM THE LONDON CIRCLES, ATTENDS ONE OF FRIEDRICH'S REVIEWS (August-September, 1774)

Now that Friedrich's Military Department is got completely into trim again, which he reckons to have been about 1770, his annual Reviews are becoming very famous over Europe; and intelligent Officers of all Countries are eager to be present, and instruct themselves there. The Review is beautiful as a Spectacle; but that is in no sort the intention of it. Rigorous business, as in the strictest of Universities examining for Degrees, would be nearer the definition. Sometimes, when a new manoeuvre or tactical invention of importance is to be tried by experiment, you will find for many miles the environs of Potsdam, which is usually the scene of such experiments, carefully shut in; sentries on every road, no unfriendly eye admitted; the thing done as with closed doors. Nor at any time can you attend without leave asked; though to Foreign Officers, and persons that have really business there, there appears to be liberality enough in granting it. The concourse of military strangers seems to keep increasing every year, till Friedrich's death. [Rodenbeck, iii. IN LOCIS.] French, more and more in quantity, present themselves; multifarious German names; generally a few English too,—Burgoyne (of Saratoga finally), Cornwallis, Duke of York, Marshal Conway,—of which last we have something farther to say at present.

In Summer, 1774, Conway—the Marshal Conway, of whom Walpole is continually talking as of a considerable Soldier and Politician, though he was not in either character considerable, but was Walpole's friend, and an honest modest man—had made up his mind, perhaps partly on domestic grounds (for I have noticed glimpses of a "Lady C." much out of humor), to make a Tour in Germany, and see the Reviews, both Austrian and Prussian, Prussian especially. Two immense LETTERS of his on that subject have come into my hands, [Kindly presented me by Charles Knight, Esq., the well-known Author and Publisher (who possesses a Collection by the same hand): these Two run to fourteen large pages in my Copy!] and elsewhere incidentally there is printed record of the Tour; [In Keith (Sir Robert Murray), Memoirs and Correspondence, ii. 21 et, seq.] unimportant as possible, both Tour and Letters, but capable, if squeezed into compass, of still being read without disadvantage here.

Sir Robert Murray Keith—that is, the younger Excellency Keith, now Minister at Dresden, whom we have sometimes heard of—accompanies Conway on this Tour, or flies alongside of him, with frequent intersections at the principal points; and there is printed record by Sir Robert, but still less interesting than this of Conway, and perfectly conformable to it:—so that, except for some words about the Lord Marischal, which shall be given, Keith must remain silent, while the diffuse Conway strives to become intelligible. Indeed, neither Conway nor Keith tell us the least thing that is not abundantly, and even wearisomely known from German sources; but to readers here, a pair of English eyes looking on the matter (put straight in places by the help there is), may give it a certain freshness of meaning. Here are Conway's Two Letters, with the nine parts of water charitably squeezed out of them, by a skilful friend of mine and his.

CONWAY TO HIS BROTHER, MARQUIS OF HERTFORD (in London).

"BERLIN, July 17th, 1774.

"DEAR BROTHER,—In the hurry I live in—... Leaving Brunswick, where, in absence of most of the Court, who are visiting at Potsdam, my old Commander," Duke Ferdinand, now estranged from Potsdam, [Had a kind of quarrel with Friedrich in 1766 (rough treatment by Adjutant von Anhalt, not tolerable to a Captain now become so eminent), and quietly withdrew,—still on speaking terms with the King, but never his Officer more.] and living here among works of Art, and speculations on Free Masonry, "was very kind to me, I went to Celle, in Hanover, to pay my respects to the Queen of Denmark [unfortunate divorced Matilda, saved by my friend Keith,—innocent, I will hope!]... She is grown extremely fat.... At Magdeburg, the Prussian Frontier on this side, one is not allowed, without a permit, even to walk on the ramparts,—such the strictness of Prussian rule.... Driving through Potsdam, on my way to Berlin, I was stopped by a servant of the good old Lord Marischal, who had spied me as I passed under his window. He came out in his nightgown, and insisted upon our staying to dine with him—[worthy old man; a word of him, were this Letter done]. We ended, on consultation about times and movements of the King, by staying three days at Potsdam, mostly with this excellent old Lord.

"On the third day [yesterday evening, in fact], I went, by appointment, to the New Palace, to wait upon the King of Prussia. There was some delay: his Majesty had gone, in the interim, to a private Concert, which he was giving to the Princesses [Duchess of Brunswick and other high guests [Rodenbeck (IN DIE) iii. 98.]]; but the moment he was told I was there, he came out from his company, and gave me a most flattering gracious audience of more than half an hour; talking on a great variety of things, with an ease and freedom the very reverse of what I had been made to expect.... I asked, and received permission, to visit the Silesian Camps next month, his Majesty most graciously telling me the particular days they would begin and end [27th August-3d September, Schmelwitz near Breslau, are time and place [Ib. iii. 101.]]. This considerably deranges my Austrian movements, and will hurry my return out of those parts: but who could resist such a temptation!—I saw the Foot-Guards exercise, especially the splendid 'First Battalion;' I could have conceived nothing so perfect and so exact as all I saw:—so well dressed, such men, and so punctual in all they did.

"The New Palace at Potsdam is extremely noble. Not so perfect, perhaps, in point of taste, but better than I had been led to expect. The King dislikes living there; never does, except when there is high Company about him; for seven or eight months in the year, he prefers Little Sans-Souci, and freedom among his intimates and some of his Generals.... His Music still takes up a great share of the King's time. On a table in his Cabinet there, I saw, I believe, twenty boxes with a German flute in each; in his Bed-chamber, twice as many boxes of Spanish snuff; and, alike in Cabinet and in Bed-chamber, three arm-chairs in a row for three favorite dogs, each with a little stool by way of step, that the getting up might be easy....

"The Town of Potsdam is a most extraordinary and, in its appearance, beautiful Town; all the streets perfectly straight, all at right angles to each other; and all the houses built with handsome, generally elegant fronts.... He builds for everybody who has a bad or a small house, even the lowest mechanic. He has done the same at Berlin." Altogether, his Majesty's building operations are astonishing. And "from whence does this money come, after a long expensive War? It is all fairyland and enchantment,"—MAGNUM VECTIGAL PARSIMONIA, in fact!... "At Berlin here, I saw the Porcelain Manufacture to-day, which is greatly improved. I leave presently. Adieu, dear Brother; excuse my endless Letter [since you cannot squeeze the water out of it, as some will!]—Yours most sincerely,

"HENRY SEYMOUR CONWAY."

Keith is now Minister at Dresden for some years back; and has, among other topics, much to say of our brilliant friend the Electress there: but his grand Diplomatic feat was at Copenhagen, on a sudden sally out thither (in 1771): [In KEITH, i. 152 &c., nothing of intelligible Narrative given, hardly the date discoverable.] the saving of Queen Matilda, youngest Sister of George Third, from a hard doom. Unfortunate Queen Matilda; one never knows how guilty, or whether guilty at all, but she was very unfortunate, poor young Lady! What with a mad Husband collapsed by debaucheries into stupor of insanity; what with a Doctor, gradually a Prime Minister, Struensee, wretched scarecrow to look upon, but wiser than most Danes about; and finally, with a lynx-eyed Step-sister, whose Son, should Matilda mistake, will inherit,—unfortunate Matilda had fallen into the awfulest troubles; got divorced, imprisoned, would have lost her head along with scarecrow Struensee had not her Brother George III. emphatically intervened,—Excellency Keith, with Seventy-fours in the distance, coming out very strong on the occasion,—and got her loose. Loose from Danish axe and jail, at any rate; delivered into safety and solitude at Celle in Hanover, where she now is,—and soon after suddenly dies of fever, so closing a very sad short history.

Excellency Keith, famed in the Diplomatic circles ever since, is at present ahead of Conway on their joint road to the Austrian Reviews. Before giving Conway's Second Letter, let us hear Keith a little on his kinsman the Old Marischal, whom he saw at Berlin years ago, and still occasionally corresponds with, and mentions in his Correspondence. Keith LOQUITUR; date is Dresden, February, 1770:—

HAS VISITED THE OLD MARISCHAL AT POTSDAM LATELY.... "My stay of three days with Lord Marischal.... He is the most innocent of God's creatures; and his heart is much warmer than his head. The place of his abode," I must say, "is the very Temple of Dulness; and his Female Companion [a poor Turk foundling, a perishing infant flung into his late Brother's hands at the Fall of Oczakow, [Supra, vii. 82.]—whom the Marischal has carefully brought up, and who refuses to marry away from him,—rather stupid, not very pretty by the Portraits; must now be two-and-thirty gone] is perfectly calculated to be the Priestess of it! Yet he dawdles away his day in a manner not unpleasant to him; and I really am persuaded he has a conscience that would gild the inside of a dungeon. The feats of our bare-legged warriors in the late War [BERG-SCHOTTEN, among whom I was a Colonel], accompanied by a PIBRACH [elegiac bagpipe droning MORE SUO] in his outer room, have an effect on the old Don, which would delight you." [Keith, i. 129; "Dresden, 25th February, 1770:" to his Sister in Scotland.]

AND THEN SEEN HIM IN BERLIN, ON THE SAME OCCASION.... "Lord Marischal came to meet me at Sir Andrew's [Mitchell's, in Berlin, the last year of the brave Mitchell's life], where we passed five days together. My visit to his country residence," as you already know, "was of three days; and I had reason to be convinced that it gave the old Don great pleasure. He talked to me with the greatest openness and confidence of all the material incidents of his life; and hinted often that the honor of the Clan was now to be supported by our family, for all of whom he had the greatest esteem. His taste, his ideas, and his manner of living, are a mixture of Aberdeenshire and the Kingdom of Valencia; and as he seeks to make no new friends, he seems to retain a strong, though silent, attachment for his old ones. As to his political principles, I believe him the most sincere of converts" to Whiggery and Orthodoxy.... "Since I began this, I have had a most inimitable Letter from Lord Marischal. I had mentioned Dr. Bailies to him [noted English Doctor at Dresden, bent on inoculating and the like], and begged he would send me a state of his case and infirmities, that the Doctor might prescribe for him. This is a part of his answer:—

"'I thank you for your advice of consulting the English Doctor to repair my old carcass. I have lately done so by my old coach, and it is now almost as good as new. Please, therefore, to tell the Doctor, that from him I expect a good repair, and shall state the case. First, he must know that the machine is the worse for wear, being nearly eighty years old. The reparation I propose he shall begin with is: One pair of new eyes, one pair of new ears, some improvement on the memory. When this is done, we shall ask new legs, and some change in the stomach. For the present, this first reparation will be sufficient; and we must not trouble the Doctor too much at once.'—You see by this how easy his Lordship's infirmities sit upon him; and it is really so as he says. Your friend Sir Andrew is, I am afraid, less gay; but I have not heard from him these three months." [Keith, i. 132, 133; "Dresden, 13th March, 1770:" to his Father.]

CONWAY TO KEITH, ON THE LATE THREE DAYS AT POTSDAM. [Date, "Dresden, 21st July, 1774:" in KEITH, ii. 15.] "I stayed three days at Potsdam, with much entertainment, for good part of which I am obliged to your Excellency's old friend Lord Marischal, who showed me all the kindness and civility possible. He stopped me as I passed, and not only made me dine with him that day, but in a manner live with him. He is not at all blind, as you imagined; so much otherwise, that I saw him read, without spectacles, a difficult hand I could not easily decipher.... Stayed but a day at Berlin;" am rushing after you:—Here is my Second Letter:—

CONWAY'S SECOND LETTER (to his Brother, as before).

"SCHMELWITZ [near Breslau] HEAD-QUARTERS,

August 31st, 1774.

"DEAR BROTHER... I left that Camp [Austrian Camp, and Reviews in Hungary, where the Kaiser and everybody had been very gracious to me] with much regret." Parted regretfully with Keith;—had played, at Presburg, in sight of him and fourteen other Englishmen, a game with the Chess Automaton [brand-new miracle, just out]; [Account of it, and of this game, in KEITH too (ii. 18; "View, 3d September, 1774:" Keith to his Father).]—came on through Vienna hitherward, as fast as post-horses could carry us; travelling night and day, without stopping, being rather behind time. "Arrived at Breslau near dark, last night; where I learnt that the Camp was twenty miles off; that the King was gone there, and that the Manoeuvres would begin at four or five this morning. I therefore ordered my chaise at twelve at night, and set out, in darkness and rain, to be presented to the King of Prussia next morning at five, at the head of his troops.... When I arrived, before five, at the place called 'Head-quarters,' I found myself in the middle of a miserable Village [this Schmelwitz here]; no creature alive or stirring, nor a sentinel, or any Military object to be seen.... As soon as anything alive was to be found, we asked, If the King was lodged in that Village? 'Yes,' they said, 'in that House' (pointing to a clay Hovel). But General Lentulus soon appeared; and—

"His Majesty has been very gracious; asked me many questions about my tour to Hungary. I saw all the Troops pass him as they arrived in Camp. They made a very fine appearance really, though it rained hard the whole time we were out; and as his Majesty [age 62] did not cloak, we were all heartily wet. And, what was worse, went from the field to Orders [giving out of Parole, and the like] at his Quarters, there to make our bow;—where we stayed in our wet clothes an hour and half [towards 10 A.M. by this time].... How different at the Emperor's, when his Imperial Majesty and everybody was cloaked! [Got no hurt by the wet, strange to say.] ... These are our news to this day. And now, having sat up five nights out of the last six, and been in rain and dirt almost all day, I wish you sincerely good-night.—H. S. C.

"P.S. Breslau, 4th September.—... My Prussian Campaign is finished, and as much to my satisfaction as possible. The beauty and order of the Troops, their great discipline, their" &c. &c., "almost pass all belief.... Yesterday we were on horseback early, at four o'clock. The movement was conducted with a spirit and order, on both sides, that was astonishing, and struck the more delightful (SIC) by the variety, as in the course of the Action the Enemy, conducted by General Anhalt [head all right as yet], took three different positions before his final retreat.