[ OEuvres (Memoires), ii. 92, 93; IB. i. 143;Preuss, ii. 84.] The Dates, much more the features and circumstances, all lie buried from us, and--till perhaps the Lamentation-Psalms are well edited--must continue lying. As a fact certain, but undeniably vague.
Voltaire's procedure, one can gather, is polite, but two-faced;not sublime on this occasion. In fact, is intended to serve himself. To the high Princess he writes devotionally, ready to obey in all things; and then to his Eminency Cardinal Tencin, it rather seems as if the tone were: "Pooh! yes, your Eminency; such are the poor Lady's notions. But does your Eminency take notice how high my connections are; what service a poor obscure creature might perhaps do the State some day?" Friedrich himself is, in these ways, brought into correspondence with Voltaire again; and occasionally writes to him in this War, and ever afterwards: Voltaire responds with fine sympathy, always prettily, in the enthusiasm of the moment;--and at other times he writes a good deal about Friedrich, oftenest in rather a mischievous dialect. "The traitor!" exclaim some Prussian writers, not many or important, in our time. In fact, there is a considerable touch of grinning malice (as of Monkey VERSUS Cat, who had once burnt HIS paw, instead of getting his own burnt), in those utterances of Voltaire; some of which the reader will grin over too, without much tragic feeling,--the rather as they did our Felis Leo no manner of ill, and show our incomparable SINGE with a sparkle of the TIGRE in him; theoretic sparkle merely and for moments, which makes him all the more entertaining and interesting at the domestic hearth.
Of Friedrich's Lamentation-Psalms we propose to give the First and the Last: these, with certain Prose Pieces, intermediate and connecting, may perhaps be made intelligible to readers, and throw some light on these tragic weeks of the King's History:--1. EPITRE A MA SOEUR (First of the Lamentation-Psalms).--This is the famed "Epistle to Wilhelmina," already spoken of; which the King despatched from Bernstadt "August 24th," just while quitting those parts, on the Erfurt Errand;--though written before, in the tedium of waiting for Keith. The Piece is long, vehement, altogether sincere; lyrically sings aloud, or declaims in rhyme, what one's indignant thought really is on the surrounding woes and atrocities. We faithfully abridge, and condense into our briefest Prose;--readers can add water and the jingle of French rhymes ADLIBITUM. It starts thus:--"O sweet and dear hope of my remaining days; O Sister, whose friendship, so fertile in resources, shares all my sorrows, and with a helpful arm assists me in the gulf! It is in vain that the Destinies have overwhelmed me with disasters: if the crowd of Kings have sworn my ruin; if the Earth have opened to swallow me,--you still love me, noble and affectionate Sister: loved by you, what is there of misfortune? [Branches off into some survey of it, nevertheless.]
"Huge continents of thunder-cloud, plots thickening against me [in those Menzel Documents], I watched with terror; the sky getting blacker, no covert for me visible: on a sudden, from the deeps of Hell, starts forth Discord [with capital letter], and the tempest broke.
Ce fut dans ton Senat, O fouqueuse Angleterre!
Ou ce monstre inhumain fit eclater la guerre:
It was from thy Senate, stormful England, that she first launched out War. In remote climates first; in America, far away;--between France and thee. Old Ocean shook with it; Neptune, in the depths of his caves (SES GROTTES PROFONDES), saw the English subjecting his waves (SES ONDES): the wild Iroquois, prize of these crimes (FORFAITS), bursts out; detesting the tyrants who disturb his Forests,"--and scalping Braddock's people, and the like.
"Discord, charmed to see such an America, and feeble mortals crossing the Ocean to exterminate one another, addresses the European Kings: 'How long will you be slaves to what are called laws? Is it for you to bend under worn-out notions of justice, right? Mars is the one God: Might is Right. A King's business is to do something famous in this world.'
"O daughter of the Caesars," Maria Theresa, "how, at these words, ambition, burning in thy soul, breaks out uncontrollable!
Probity, honor, treaties, duty: feeble considerations these, to a heart letting loose its flamy passions; determining to rob the generous Germans of their liberties; to degrade thy equals;to extinguish 'Schism' (so called), and set up despotism on the wrecks of all.""Huge project"--"FIER TRIUMVIRAT,"--what not: "From Roussillon and the sunny Pyrenees to frozen Russia, all arm for Austria, and march at her bidding. They concert my downfall, trample on my rights.
"The Daughter of the Caesars, proudly certain of victory,--'t is the way of the Great, whose commonplace virtue, pusillanimous in reverses, overbearing in success, cannot bridle their cupidity,--designates to the Triumvirate what Kings are to be proscribed [Britannic George and me, Reich busy on us both even now], and those ungrateful tyrants, by united crime, immolate to each other, without remorse, their dearest allies." For instance:-- "O jour digne d'oubli! Quelle atroce imprudence!
Therese, c'est l'Anglais que tu vends a la France:
Theresa! it is England thou art selling to France;"--Yes, a thing worth noting. "Thy generous support in thy first adversities;thy one friend then, when a world had risen to devour thee.
Thou reignest now:--but it was England alone that saved thee anything to reign over!
Tu regnes, mats lui seul a sauve tes etats:
Les bienfaits chez les rois ne font que des ingrats.
