of blockheads being so extreme!

I find, except Samuel Johnson, no man of equal veracity with Friedrich
Wilhelm in that epoch: and Johnson too, with all his tongue-learning,
had not logic enough. In fact, it depends on how much conviction you
have. Blessed be Heaven, there is here and there a man born who loves
truth as truth should be loved, with all his heart and all his soul; and
hates untruth with a corresponding perfect hatred. Such men, in polite
circles, which understand that certainly truth is better than untruth,
but that you must be polite to both, are liable to get to the end of
their logic. Even Johnson had a bellow in him; though Johnson could at
any time withdraw into silence, HIS kingdom lying all under his own hat.
How much more Friedrich Wilhelm, who had no logic whatever; and whose
kingdom lay without him, far and wide, a thing he could not withdraw
from. The rugged Orson, he needed to be right. From utmost Memel down to
Wesel again, ranked in a straggling manner round the half-circumference
of Europe, all manner of things and persons were depending on him, and
on his being right, not wrong, in his notion.

A man of clear discernment, very good natural eyesight; and irrefragably
confident in what his eyes told him, in what his belief was;--yet of
huge simplicity withal. Capable of being coaxed about, and led by the
nose, to a strange degree, if there were an artist dexterous enough,
daring enough! His own natural judgment was good, and, though apt to
be hasty and headlong, was always likely to come right in the end; but
internally, we may perceive, his modesty, self-distrust, anxiety
and other unexpected qualities, must have been great. And then his
explosiveness, impatience, excitability; his conscious dumb ignorance
of all things beyond his own small horizon of personal survey! An
Orson capable enough of being coaxed and tickled, by some first-rate
conjurer;--first-rate; a second-rate might have failed, and got torn to
pieces for his pains. But Seckendorf and Grumkow, what a dance they led
him on some matters,--as we shall see, and as poor Fritz and others will
see!

He was full of sensitiveness, rough as he was and shaggy of skin. His
wild imaginations drove him hither and thither at a sad rate. He
ought to have the privileges of genius. His tall Potsdam Regiment, his
mad-looking passion for enlisting tall men; this also seems to me one
of the whims of genius,--an exaggerated notion to have his "