venerable man. Venerable man entered, loftily serene as a martyr
Preacher of the Word, something of an ancient Seigneur de
Beausobre in him, too; for the rest, soft as sunset, and really
with fine radiances, in a somewhat twisted state, in that good old
mind of his. "What have you been reading lately, M. de Beausobre?"
said the Prince, to begin conversation. "Ah, Monseigneur, I have
just risen from reading the sublimest piece of writing that
exists."--"And what?" "The exordium of St. John's Gospel:
In the Beginning was the Word; and the Word was with God, and the
Word was--" Which somewhat took the Prince by
surprise, as Formey reports; though he rallied straightway, and
got good conversation out of the old gentleman. To whom, we
perceive, he writes once or twice, [ OEuvres de Frederic,
xvi. 121-126. Dates are all of 1737; the last of
Beausobre's years.]--a copy of his own verses to correct, on one
occasion,--and is very respectful and considerate.

Formey tells us of another French sage, personally known to the
Prince since Boyhood; for he used to be about the Palace, doing
something. This is one La Croze; Professor of, I think,
"Philosophy" in the French College: sublime Monster of Erudition,
at that time; forgotten now, I fear, by everybody. Swag-bellied,
short of wind; liable to rages, to utterances of a coarse nature;
a decidedly ugly, monstrous and rather stupid kind of man.
Knew twenty languages, in a coarse inexact way. Attempted deep
kinds of discourse, in the lecture-room and elsewhere; but usually
broke off into endless welters of anecdote, not always of cleanly
nature; and after every two or three words, a desperate sigh, not
for sorrow, but on account of flabbiness and fat. Formey gives a
portraiture of him; not worth copying farther. The same Formey,