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Updated: May 21, 2025
The king, with his flute in hand, was walking up and down the room, when the door opened, and Major Quintus entered with Gellert. Frederick immediately laid his flute aside, and advanced to meet the poet with a gracious smile. Gellert's gentle and intellectual countenance was composed, and his eyes were not cast down or confused by the piercing glance of the king.
The corpulent Knobelsdorf related in a stentorian voice some amusing anecdotes of his travels. Chazot recited portions of Voltaire's latest work. The learned and witty Count Kaiserling recited verses from the "Henriade," and then several of Gellert's fables, which were becoming very popular.
Gellert's was no battling, defiant nature, which relies upon itself; he did not hurl his opponents down and go his way; he would convince them, and so they were always ready to encounter him. And as the applause of his friends rejoiced him, so the opposition of his enemies could sink him in deep dejection.
I have read, 'Put not your trust in princes. These words seem wise to me, and you must allow me to interpret them literally, and act accordingly." Gellert withdrew, and hastened home. The major returned to the king, admiring, almost envying, Gellert's modest, independent, and beautiful character. "Quintus," said the king, "I thank you sincerely for my new German acquaintance.
When we read his "Lectures upon Morals," which were not printed until after his death, we obtain but a very incomplete idea of the great power with which they came immediately from Gellert's mouth.
F. Weisse; "German Literature in the Middle of the Eighteenth Century," by Goethe; "Gottlieb Wilhelm Rabener," by H. Gelzer; "Gellert's Fables," by H. Prutz. Those who do not possess the comprehensive works of Gervinus, Cholerius, Wackernagel, etc., may thus in one volume find enough to be able to form a fair opinion of the nature of their labors.
We should do well to remember old Gellert's fine and touching lament, that the best gifts of all find the fewest admirers, and that most men mistake the bad for the good, a daily evil that nothing can prevent, like a plague which no remedy can cure. There is but one thing to be done, though how difficult! the foolish must become wise, and that they can never be.
While seated in the evening on his little cane-chair, he had often heard his father read from Gellert's fables, and sometimes from Klopstock's grand poem, "The Messiah." He and his sister, two years older than himself, had often wept scalding tears over the story of Him who suffered death on the cross for us all.
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