worthy thing, how many thousand unworthy things must a man
be able to forget!

From this Edict-of-Mantes environment, which taught our young Fritz his
first lessons of human behavior,--a polite sharp little Boy, we do
hope and understand,--he learned also to clothe his bits of notions,
emotions, and garrulous utterabilities, in the French dialect. Learned
to speak, and likewise, what is more important; to THINK, in French;
which was otherwise quite domesticated in the Palace, and became his
second mother-tongue. Not a bad dialect; yet also none of the best. Very
lean and shallow, if very clear and convenient; leaving much in poor
Fritz unuttered, unthought, unpractised, which might otherwise have come
into activity in the course of his life. He learned to read very soon,
I presume; but he did not, now or afterwards, ever learn to spell. He
spells indeed dreadfully ILL, at his first appearance on the writing
stage, as we shall see by and by; and he continued, to the last, one
of the bad spellers of his day. A circumstance which I never can fully
account for, and will leave to the reader's study.

From all manner of sources,--from inferior valetaille, Prussian
Officials, Royal Majesty itself when not in gala,--he learned, not less
rootedly, the corrupt Prussian dialect of German; and used the same,
all his days, among his soldiers, native officials, common subjects
and wherever it was most convenient; speaking it, and writing and
misspelling it, with great freedom, though always with a certain
aversion and undisguised contempt, which has since brought him blame in
some quarters. It is true, the Prussian form of German is but rude; and
probably Friedrich, except sometimes in Luther's Bible, never read any
German Book. What, if we will think of it, could he know of his first
mother-tongue! German, to this day, is a frightful dialect for the
stupid, the pedant and dullard sort! Only in the hands of the gifted
does it become supremely good. It had not yet been the language of any
Goethe, any Lessing; though it stood on the eve of becoming such. It
had already been the language of Luther, of Ulrich Hutten, Friedrich
Barbarossa, Charlemagne and others. And several extremely important
things had been said in it, and some pleasant ones even sung in it, from
an old date, in a very appropriate manner,--had Crown-Prince Friedrich
known all that. But he could not reasonably be expected to know:--and
the wiser Germans now forgive him