II.

While there is no lack of historical accounts about the relations existing between Voltaire and Frederick the Great, yet there are phases of that relationship which still lend themselves to fresh interpretation when viewed by one so keenly analytical as Georg Brandes. The Danish critic declares emphatically that history can show few instances where a ruler in his relations with a great productive mentality has proceeded in such a way as to make the contact significant to both principals.

“In ancient times,” Brandes writes, “Aristotle was the teacher of Alexander, and the latter, when on his campaign would send Aristotle books and material for study. But Alexander could exert no influence on the philosopher. Caesar and Cicero knew each other thoroughly. Cicero was Caesar’s political opponent. Nevertheless, Caesar paid homage to Cicero as the representative of literature and repaid his attacks by showing him knightly attention. But neither Caesar nor Cicero owed each other any intellectual enrichment.

“In later times the relations between Goethe and Karl August lasted from the early youth of both until the death of the prince. Goethe was indebted to the Duke of Weimar for a secure position and received through this connection much experience. But intellectual impression he did not obtain from this source, for in spite of Karl August’s considerable capability, a genius he was not.

“In even later times there is the relationship between Richard Wagner and Ludwig II. Wagner had King Ludwig to thank for comfort and a place where he could work in quiet. But the King did not influence the composer intellectually.

“The historical relation between Voltaire and Frederick the Great stands alone. This is no harmonious relationship. In the course of the first fifteen years enthusiasm is abroad; then the friendship is undermined through Voltaire’s undisciplined methods and Frederick’s exasperation. Then again the relationship is renewed, the break is healed and the friendliness is maintained through the lives of both. This is striking evidence of the spirit of world-citizenship that prevailed in the eighteenth century, since the ruler and the writer belong to two different people, even while their language is the same. But the decisive fact here is that both the writer and the ruler are geniuses, the acknowledged geniuses of the period, and that they influence each other.”

Where Georg Brandes excels in portraying great men of the past is in his masterful pictures of contrasts, the analytical and synthetic so nicely proportioned that in its final presentation the picture leaves no doubt but what scholarly devotion to a set task leaves little to be said on the subject beyond what Brandes himself contributes. On the question of the Voltaire relationship with Frederick he writes further:

“When in August, 1736, Voltaire received the first letter from the Crown Prince of Prussia he was in his forty-second year. The writer was 24 years old. Voltaire was famed throughout Europe and looked upon as the most important author of the period. Frederick was a young prince, unknown except for what he had gone through. He had had to suffer for his inclination and peculiar intellectuality, just as Voltaire had to pay a price for his wit and the revolutionary might of his thinking. Both had been the victims of the brutality of the time and the arbitrariness of the system of government.

“The father of Frederick, whom Carlyle idealized, in spite of all his good qualities as organizer, was restive and quick tempered; with all his rectitude often raw and cruel. He had prescribed an educational program for his son that excluded everything unnecessary, among this Latin and literature. The King detested everything foreign. If he permitted French this was simply because German was then scarcely considered a language. He took pleasure in personally giving his subjects a beating on the street in case the one or other incident gave him dissatisfaction.

“When Frederick as a youth studied forbidden things, got into debt, cared nothing for parades of the troops, the father demanded that he should renounce his right to the throne. When he refused he was treated barbarously, called a coward because he did not resist. In 1730 he made an attempt to escape to England. But an intercepted letter to his friend Katte revealed the scheme to the King. Again he was treated abominably and a court-martial was appointed for the purpose of sentencing him to death. That was the custom of the time. Twelve years before, Peter the Great had his son Alexei beaten to death and he himself wielded the knout. When the Prussian court-martial failed to act as blindly as the Russian the King had the prince put in prison in Kuestrin.”

Passing over the years intervening between that earlier time and when Frederick ascended the throne, May 31, 1740, a period replete with letter writing and exchange of compliments describing in Brandes’ inimitable manner, the Danish critic tells of Frederick’s joy that now at last he can come face to face with the object of his admiration.

“Frederick, in spite of the many things to occupy him, makes his debut as a true disciple of Voltaire,” declares Brandes. “His first act is the doing away with torture as punishment, the dissolution of the Potsdam guard, the guard that the father had hired, secured at whatever cost, and calling back a thinker like Wolff to become once more professor at Halle.”

The first meeting between Voltaire and Frederick the Great gives Brandes an opportunity for bringing into play his exceptional faculty for entering into the very minutest description of these contrasting personalities, and while German culture of that day affected the French satirist quite differently from what he experienced on English soil, still there is no doubt that Voltaire’s international outlook was broadened through contact with the King who in his own way stood head and shoulders over his people.

Badly as Voltaire was being treated at home, the fact that the King of Prussia made so much of him and gave his admiration public expression did not fail to improve his status in the eyes of the leading men of France. The time had gone by when Louis XIV dominated Europe so that fear prevailed because of the French generals and armies. A number of defeats like that at Dettingen resulted in the fact that Europe as a whole made merry on account of French politics and French militarism.

Outside of France Louis the Beloved did not count. All eyes were directed toward the King of Prussia. Every power tried to draw him within its particular circle. The English strove to keep alive his dislike of France. It would mean much to the French nation, who so far had been unable to retain her former allies and had been unsuccessful in gaining new ones, if it by any possibility could enter into an alliance with just that King whose name spelled ingenious energy. Frederick was a hero to Voltaire. On the other hand, Voltaire was the idol of the King. At any rate, therefore, it was worth the trial to utilize the poet as secret diplomat.

What followed has been dealt with exhaustively by many able pens, but Brandes manages to give the historical facts a setting so picturesque and informing that the entire relationships between Frederick the Great and Voltaire appears in a new light and illustrates pointedly what the French nation owed to the man whose doctrines were the cause of a persecution that reflects little glory on the period so far as France was concerned. Nevertheless, Francois de Voltaire has found in the twentieth century no writer who to better purpose brings out the particular qualities that places him among the great internationalists than Georg Brandes has done in his monumental work.