“C’est a toi Cygne des Saxons,
D’arracher ce secret a la nature avare;
D’adoucir dans tes chants d’une langue barbare,
Les durs et detestables sons’”
[Footnote: Oeuvres Posthumes, vol. vii., p 216.
“It is thine, swan of the Saxons,
To draw the secret from the miser Nature;
To soften with thy songs the hard
And detestable sounds of a barbarous tongue.”]
“Ah! your majesty,” cried Gottsched, forgetting his indignation over the langue barbare, in his rapture at the praise he had received, “you are kind and cruel at the same moment. You cast reproach upon our poor language, and, at the same time, give me right royal praise. Cygne des Saxons—that is an epithet which does honor to the royal giver, and to the happy receiver. For a king and a hero, there can be no higher fame than to appreciate and reverence men of letters. The sons of Apollo and the Muses, the scholars, the artists and authors, have no more exalted object than to attain the acknowledgment and consideration of the king and the hero. Sire, I make you a most profound and grateful reverence. You have composed a masterly little poem, and when the Cygne des Saxons shall sing his swanlike song, it will be in honor of the great Frederick, the Csesar of his time.”
“Now, my dear Quintus,” said the king, after Gottsched had withdrawn, “are you content with your great scholar?”
“Sire,” said he, “I must sorrowfully confess that the great Gottsched has covered his head with a little too much of the dust of learning; he is too much of the pedant.”
“He is a puffed-up conceited fool,” said the king, impatiently; “and you can never convince me that he is a great genius. Great men are modest; they have an exalted aim ever before them, and are never satisfied with themselves; but men like this Gottsched place themselves upon an altar, and fall down and worship. This is their only reward, and they will never do any thing truly great.”
“But Gottsched has really great and imperishable merit,” said Quintus, eagerly. “He has done much for the language, much for culture, and for science. All Germany honors him, and, if the incense offered him has turned his head, we must forgive him, because of the great service he has rendered.”
“I can never believe that he is a great man, or a poet. He had the audacity to speak of the golden era of literature which bloomed in the time of my grandfather, Frederick I., in Germany, and he was so foolhardy as to mention some German scribblers of that time, whose barbarous names no one knows, as the equals of Racine, and Corneille, and even of Virgil. Repeat to me, once more, the names of those departed geniuses, that I may know the rivals of the great writers of the day!”
“He spoke of Bessen and Neukirch,” said Quintus; “I must confess it savors of audacity to compare these men with Racine and Corneille; he did this, perhaps, to excite the interest of your majesty, as it is well known that the great Frederick, to whom all Germany renders homage, attributes all that is good and honorable to the German, but has a poor opinion of his intellect, his learning, and his wit.”