perfectly. He had great facility as a
poet, and could express without trouble every mood in rhyme and verse.
But in his lyrics he has never, in the eyes of Frenchmen, entirely
overcome the difficulties of a foreign language, however carefully they
may have been revised by his intimates; indeed, he was wanting always,
it appears to us, in that equal rhetorical harmony of style which in
the time of Voltaire was the first characteristic of a renowned poet,
for we find commonplace and trivial expressions in splendid diction,
together with beautiful and pompous periods. His taste, too, was not
assured and independent enough; he was in his aesthetic judgment rapid
in admiring and short in deciding, but in reality far more dependent on
the opinions of his French acquaintance than his pride would have
admitted. The best off-shoot of French poetry at that time was the
return to nature, and the struggle of truth against the fetters of old
_convenances_, This was incomprehensible to the King. Rousseau long
appeared to him an eccentric poor devil, and the conscientious and pure
spirit of Diderot he considered as shallow. And yet it appears to us
that in his own poems, and especially in the light improvisations with
which he favoured his friends, there is frequently a richness of poetic
detail and a heart-winning tone of true feeling which they, especially
his pattern Voltaire, might envy him.

Like Caesar's "Commentaries," Frederic's History of his Time forms one
of the most important monuments of historical literature.[15] It is
true that, like the Roman General and like every practical statesman,
he wrote the facts as they were reflected from the mind of one who took
part in them; all is not equally appreciated by him; he does not do
justice to every party, but he knows incomparably more than those who
were at a distance, and enters, not quite impartially, but at the same
time with magnanimity to his opponents, into some of the innermost
motives of great occurrences. He wrote sometimes without the great
apparatus that a professional historian must collect around him; it
therefore happens that his memory and judgment, however authentic they
may be, sometimes leave him in the lurch; finally, he wrote an apology
of his house, his policy, and his campaigns, and, like Caesar, he is
sometimes silent, and interprets facts as he wishes them to be brought
before posterity. But the open-heartedness and love of truth with which
he deals wit