the Socinian view? Not the least
consequence to Friedrich or us! Our business is exclusively with Gellert
here.

Readers have heard of Gellert; there are, or there were, English
Writings about him, LIVES, or I forget what: and in his native
Protestant Saxony, among all classes, especially the higher, he had,
in those years and onwards to his death, such a popularity and real
splendor of authority as no man before or since. Had risen, against his
will in some sort, to be a real Pope, a practical Oracle in those parts.
In his modest bachelor lodging (age of him five-and-forty gone) he
has sheaves of Letters daily,--about affairs of the conscience, of the
household, of the heart: from some evangelical young lady, for example,
Shall I marry HIM, think you, O my Father?" and perhaps from her Papa,
"Shall SHE, think you, O my ditto?"--Sheaves of Letters: and of oral
consulters such crowds, that the poor Oracle was obliged to appoint
special hours for that branch of his business. His class-room (he
lectures on MORALS, some THEORY OF MORAL SENTIMENT, or such like) is
crowded with "blue uniforms" (ingenuous Prussian Officers eager to
hear a Gellert) in these Winters. Rugged Hulsen, this very season, who
commands in Freyberg Country, alleviates the poor village of Hainichen
from certain official inflictions, and bids the poor people say "It is
because Gellert was born among you!" Plainly the Trismegistus of mankind
at that date:--who is now, as usual, become a surprising Trismegistus to
the new generations!

He had written certain thin Books, all of a thin languid nature; but
rational, clear; especially a Book of FABLES IN VERSE, which are watery,
but not wholly water, and have still a languid flavor in them for
readers. His Book on LETTER-WRITING was of use to the rising generation,
in its time. Clearly an amiable, ingenious, correct, altogether good
man; of pious mind,--and, what was more, of strictly orthodox, according
to the then Saxon standard in the best circles. This was the figure
of his Life for the last fifteen years of it; and he was now about the
middle of that culminating period. A modest, despondent kind of man,
given to indigestions, dietetics, hypochondria: "of neat figure
and dress; nose hooked, but not too much; eyes mournfully blue and
beautiful, fine open brow;"--a fine countenance, and fine soul of its
sort, poor Gellert: "punctual like the church-clock at divine service,
in all weathers." [Jordens, _Lexi