One of the
greatest military writers, a historian of importance, a clever poet,
and at the same time a popular philosopher, a practical statesman,
even a writer of very free and easy anonymous pamphlets, and sometimes
a journalist, he was always ready to take up his pen for anything that
inspired him and aroused his passions or enthusiasm, or to attack, in
verse or prose, any one who provoked or annoyed him--not only the pope
and the Empress, the Jesuits and the Dutch journalists, but also old
friends if they seemed lukewarm to him,--which he could not
endure,--or if they actually threatened to break with him. Never since
Luther has there been such a belligerent, relentless, untiring writer.
As soon as he put pen to paper he was like Proteus, everything: sage
or intriguer, historian or poet, whatever the situation demanded,
always an active, fiery, intellectual--sometimes also an
ill-mannered--man, with never a moment's thought of his royal
position. Whatever he liked he praised in poems or eulogies: the noble
doctrines of his own philosophy, his friends, his army, religious
liberty, independent investigation, tolerance, and popular education.
The conquering power of Frederick's mind had reached out in all
directions. When ambition inspired him to victory it seemed as if
there were no obstacle that would check him. Then came the years of
trial--seven years of terrible, heartrending cares--the great period,
in which the heaviest tasks that ever a man accomplished were laid
upon his rich, ambitious spirit, in which almost everything perished
which was his own possession, joy and happiness, peace and selfish
comfort; in which also many pleasing and graceful characteristics of
the man were to disappear, that he might become the self-sacrificing
prince of his people, the foremost servant of his State, and the hero
of a nation.
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