ce. "One evening
[there is no date to it, except vaguely, as above, December, 1760-March,
1761], D'Argens, entering the King's Apartment, found him sitting on the
ground with a big platter of fried meat, from which he was feeding his
dogs. He had a little rod, with which he kept order among them, and
shoved the best bits to his favorites. The Marquis, in astonishment,
recoiled a step, struck his hands together, and exclaimed: 'The Five
Great Powers of Europe, who have sworn alliance, and conspired to undo
the Marquis de Brandebourg, how might they puzzle their heads to
guess what he is now doing! Scheming some dangerous plan for the next
Campaign, think they; collecting funds to have money for it; studying
about magazines for man and horse; or he is deep in negotiations to
divide his enemies, and get new allies for himself? Not a bit of all
that. He is sitting peaceably in his room, and feeding his dogs!'"
[Preuss, ii. 282.]

INTERVIEW WITH HERR PROFESSOR GELLERT (Thursday, 18th December, 1760).

Still more celebrated is the Interview with Gellert; though I cannot say
it is now more entertaining to the ingenuous mind. One of Friedrich's
many Interviews, this Winter, with the Learned of Leipzig University;
for he is a born friend of the Muses so called, and never neglects an
opportunity. Wonderful to see how, in such an environment, in the depths
of mere toil and tribulation, with a whole breaking world lying on his
shoulders, as it were,--he always shows such appetite for a snatch of
talk with anybody presumably of sense, and knowledge on something!

"This Winter," say the Books, "he had, in vacant intervals, a great deal
of communing with the famed of Leipzig University;" this or the other
famed Professor,--Winkler, Ernesti, Gottsched again, and others, coming
to give account, each for himself, of what he professed to be teaching
in the world: "on the Natural Sciences," more especially the Moral; on
Libraries, on Rare Books. Gottsched was able to satisfy the King on one
point; namely, That the celebrated passage of St. John's Gospel--"THERE
ARE THREE THAT BEAR RECORD--was NOT in the famous Manuscript of the
Vienna Library; Gottsched having himself examined that important CODEX,
and found in the text nothing of said Passage, but merely, written
on the margin, a legible intercalation of it, in Melanchthon's hand.
Luther, in his Version, never had it at all." [_Helden-Geschichte,_
vi. 596.] A Gottsched inclined to