am a man, and therefore born to suffer; to destiny's rigors my
steadfastness must correspond."--Quotation from I know not whom.]

But with these sentiments, I am far from condemning Cato and Otho. The
latter had no fine moment in his life, except that of his death. [Breaks
off into Verse:]

"Croyez que si j'etais Voltaire,
Et particulier comme lui,
Me contentant du necessaire,
Je verrais voltiger la fortune legere,"

--Or,to wring the water and the jingle out of it, and give the substance
in Prose:--

"Yes, if I were Voltaire and a private man, I could with much composure
leave Fortune to her whirlings and her plungings; to me, contented
with the needful, her mad caprices and sudden topsy-turvyings would be
amusing rather than tremendous.

"I know the ennui attending on honors, the burdensome duties, the jargon
of grinning flatterers, those pitiabilities of every kind, those details
of littleness, with which you have to occupy yourself if set on high on
the stage of things. Foolish glory has no charm for me, though a
Poet and King: when once Atropos has ended me forever, what will the
uncertain honor of living in the Temple of Memory avail? One moment
of practical happiness is worth a thousand years of imaginary in such
Temple.--Is the lot of high people so very sweet, then? Pleasure, gentle
ease, true and hearty mirth, have always fled from the great and their
peculiar pomps and labors.

"No, it is not fickle Fortune that has ever caused my sorrows; let her
smile her blandest, let her frown her fiercest on me, I should sleep
every night, refusing her the least worship. But our respective
conditions are our law; we are bound and commanded to shape our temper
to the employment we have undertaken. Voltaire in his hermitage, in a
Country where is honesty and safety, can devote himself in peace to
the life of the Philosopher, as Plato has described it. But as to me,
threatened with shipwreck, I must consider how, looking the tempest in
the face, I can think, can live and can die as a King:--

Pour moi, menace du naufrage,
Je dois, en affrontant l'orage,
Penser, vivre et mourir en roi."
[_OEuvres,_ xxiii. 14.]

This is of October 9th; this ends, worthily, the Lamentation-Psalms;
work having now turned up, which is a favorable change. Friedrich's
notion of suicide, we perceive, is by no means that of puking up one's
existence, in the weak