have sat here in my garret, wriggling and wrestling on the worst
terms with a Task that I cannot do, that generally seems to me
not worth doing, and yet _must_ be _done._ These are truly the
terms. I never had such a business in my life before. Frederick
himself is a pretty little man to me, veracious, courageous,
invincible in his small sphere; but he does not rise into the
empyrean regions, or kindle my heart round him at all; and his
history, upon which there are wagon-loads of dull bad books, is
the most dislocated, unmanageably incoherent, altogether dusty,
barren and beggarly production of the modern Muses as given
hitherto. No man of _genius_ ever saw him with eyes, except
twice Mirabeau, for half an hour each time. And the wretched
Books have no _indexes,_ no precision of detail; and I am far
away from Berlin and the seat of information;--and, in brief,
shall be beaten miserably with this unwise enterprise in my old
days; _and_ (in fine) will consent to be so, and get through it
if I can before I die. This of obstinacy is the one quality I
still show; all my other qualities (hope, among them) often seem
to have pretty much taken leave of me; but it is necessary to
hold by this last. Pray for me; I will complain no more at
present. General Washington gained the freedom of America--
chiefly by this respectable quality I talk of; nor can a history
of Frederick be written, in Chelsea in the year 1855, except as
_against_ hope, and by planting yourself upon it in an extremely
dogged manner.

We are all wool-gathering here, with wide eyes and astonished
minds, at a singular rate, since you heard last from me!
"Balaklava," I can perceive, is likely to be a substantive in the
English language henceforth: it in truth expresses compendiously