rable circumstances, raise up the bitterest enemies, together
with the most devoted admirers. Somewhat of this faculty prepared for
the noble soul of Goethe bitter sorrows, transient connexions, many
disappointments, and a solitary old age. It was doubly fatal for a
King, whom others so seldom approach on a dignified and equal footing,
to whom openhearted friends might always become admiring flatterers,
unequal in their behaviour, now servile under the courtly spell of
majesty, now discontented censurers from a feeling of their own rights.

With King Frederic, however, the yearning for ideal relations, this
longing for men who could give his heart the opportunity of opening
itself unreservedly, was crossed in the first place by his penetrating
acuteness of perception, and also by an incorruptible love of truth,
which was inimical to all deceptions, struggled against every illusion,
despised all shams, and searched out the depths of all things. This
scrutinising view of life and its duties was a good shield against the
illusions which more often afflict a prince of imaginative tendencies,
where he has given confidence, than a private man; but his acuteness
showed itself also in a wild humour which was unsparing in its
remorselessness, sarcasm, and ridicule. From whence did these
tendencies arise in him? Was it Brandenburg blood? Was it inherited
from his great-grandmother, the Electress Sophia of Hanover, or from
his grandmother--that intellectual woman, the Queen Sophia Charlotte,
with whom Leibnitz corresponded on the eternal harmony of the world?
Undoubtedly the rough training of his youth had contributed to it.
Sharp was his perception of the weaknesses of others; wherever he spied
out a defect, wherever anything peculiar vexed or irritated him, his
voluble tongue was set in motion.

His words hit both friends and enemies unsparingly: even when silence
and endurance were commanded by prudence, he could not control himself;
his whole spirit seemed changed; with merciless exaggeration he
distorted the image of others into a caricature. If one examines this
more closely, one perceives that the main point in this was the
intellectual pleasure; he freed himself from an unpleasant impression
by violent outbursts against his victim; he had an inward satisfaction
in painting him grotesquely, and was much surprised if, when deeply
wounded, his friend turned his weapons against him. In this there was a
striking similarity to