Friedrich, readers know by this time, had a great appetite for conversation: he talked well, listened well; one of his chief enjoyments was, to give and receive from his fellow-creatures in that way. I hope, and indeed have evidence, that he required good sense as the staple; but in the form, he allowed great latitude.
He by no means affected solemnity, rather the reverse; goes much upon the bantering vein; far too much, according to the complaining parties. Took pleasure (cruel mortal!) in stirring up his company by the whip, and even by the whip applied to RAWS; for we find he had "established," like the Dublin Hackney-Coachman, "raws for himself;" and habitually plied his implement there, when desirous to get into the gallop. In an inhuman manner, said the suffering Cattle; who used to rebel against it, and go off in the sulks from time to time. It is certain he could, especially in his younger years, put up with a great deal of zanyism, ingenious foolery and rough tumbling, if it had any basis to tumble on; though with years he became more saturnine.
By far his chief Artist in this kind, indeed properly the only one, was La Mettrie, whom we once saw transiently as Army-Surgeon at Fontenoy: he is now out of all that (flung out, with the dogs at his heels); has been safe in Berlin for three years past.
Friedrich not only tolerates the poor madcap, but takes some pleasure in him: madcap we say, though poor La Mettrie had remarkable gifts, exuberant laughter one of them, and was far from intending to be mad. Not Zanyism, but Wisdom of the highest nature, was what he drove at,--unluckily, with open mouth, and mind all in tumult. La Mettrie had left the Army, soon after that busy Fontenoy evening: Chivalrous Grammont, his patron and protector, who had saved him from many scrapes, lay shot on the field. La Mettrie, rushing on with mouth open and mind in tumult, had, from of old, been continually getting into scrapes. Unorthodox to a degree; the Sorbonne greedy for him long since; such his audacities in print, his heavy hits, boisterous, quizzical, logical. And now he had set to attacking the Medical Faculty, to quizzing Medicine in his wild way; Doctor Astruc, Doctor This and That, of the first celebrity, taking it very ill. So that La Mettrie had to demit; to get out of France rather in a hurry, lest worse befell.
He had studied at Leyden, under Boerhaave. He had in fact considerable medical and other talent, had he not been so tumultuous and open-mouthed. He fled to Leyden; and shot forth, in safety there, his fiery darts upon Sorbonne and Faculty, at his own discretion,--which was always a MINIMUM quantity:--he had, before long, made Leyden also too hot for him. His Books gained a kind of celebrity in the world; awoke laughter and attention, among the adventurous of readers; astonishment at the blazing madcap (a BONDIABLE, too, as one could see); and are still known to Catalogue-makers,--though, with one exception, L'HOMME MACHINE, not otherwise, nor read at all. L'HOMME MACHINE (Man a Machine) is the exceptional Book; smallest of Duodecimos to have so much wildfire in it, This MAN A MACHINE, though tumultuous La Mettrie meant nothing but open-mouthed Wisdom by it, gave scandal in abundance;so that even the Leyden Magistrates were scandalized; and had to burn the afflicting little Duodecimo by the common hangman, and order La Mettrie to disappear instantly from their City.
Which he had to do,--towards King Friedrich, usual refuge of the persecuted; seldom inexorable, where there was worth, even under bad forms, recognizable; and not a friend to burning poor men or their books, if it could be helped. La Mettrie got some post, like D'Arget's, or still more nominal; "readership;" some small pension to live upon; and shelter to shoot forth his wildfire, when he could hold it no longer: fire, not of a malignant incendiary kind, but pleasantly lambent, though maddish, as Friedrich perceived.
Thus had La Mettrie found a Goshen;--and stood in considerable favor, at Court and in Berlin Society in the years now current.
According to Nicolai, Friedrich never esteemed La Mettrie, which is easy to believe, but found him a jester and ingenious madcap, out of whom a great deal of merriment could be had, over wine or the like. To judge by Nicolai's authentic specimen, their Colloquies ran sometimes pretty deep into the cynical, under showers of wildfire playing about; and the high-jinks must have been highish.
[ Anekdoten, vi. 197-227.] When there had been enough of this, Friedrich would lend his La Mettrie to the French Excellency, Milord Tyrconnel, to oblige his Excellency, and get La Mettrie out of the way for a while. Milord is at Berlin; a Jacobite Irishman, of blusterous Irish qualities, though with plenty of sagacity and rough sense; likes La Mettrie; and is not much a favorite with Friedrich.
Tyrconnel had said, at first,--when Rothenburg, privately from Friedrich, came to consult him, "What are, in practical form, those 'assistances from the Most Christian Majesty,' should we MAKEAlliance with him, as your Excellency proposes, and chance to be attacked?"--"MORBLEU, assistance enough [enumerating several]:
MAIS MORBLEU, SI VOUS NOUS TROMPEX, VOUS SEREZ ECRASES (if you deceive us, you will be squelched)!" [Valori, ii. 130, &c.] "He had been chosen for his rough tongue," says Valori; our French Court being piqued at Friedrich and his sarcasms. Tyrconnel gives splendid dinners: Voltaire often of them; does not love Potsdam, nor is loved by it. Nay, I sometimes think a certain DEMONNEWSWRITER (of whom by and by), but do not know, may be some hungry Attache of Tyrconnel's. Hungry Attache, shut out from the divine Suppers and upper planetary movements, and reduced to look on them from his cold hutch, in a dog-like angry and hungry manner?
His flying allusions to Voltaire, "SON (Friedrich's) SQUELETTED'APOLLON, skeleton of an Apollo," and the like, are barkings almost rabid.