Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 20

[cahn]

Yuletide signups so far:
3 requests for Frederician RPF, 2 offers
2 requests for Circle of Voltaire RPF, 3 offers !! :D :D

(I am so curious as to who the third person is!)

Comments

Re: Boswell in Prussia: All Things Fritz

[felis]

a friend of mine, a young gentleman very good-humoured, very agreeable, and very mad

:D

I don't know if you know Keith's description of him, in a letter to Rousseau from January 18th, 1765?

Boswell is a man of some position, but full of hypochondriacal and visionary ideas; he has often seen ghosts. I hope he will not fall into the hands of people who will quite turn his head. He was very pleased with the reception you gave him.

(Source, which is the book I mentioned above. It's a direct quote from his letter, therefore hopefully reliable, unlike the narration, which omits the whole journey and simply says that Boswell - the son of his old friend, the Judge, Lord Auchinleck [...], now twenty-four, clever, gay young will-of-the-wisp, [...] despatched by his father to go through a course of two years' study at the Universities of Utrecht and Leyden; but he had broken loose, and was now starting on the "grand tour" in Europe (here) - came to visit in July 1764. And that both Rousseau and Voltaire received Boswell for Milord's sake, which, huh? This book has some protagonist bias.)