FRIEDRICH THEN, AND FRIEDRICH NOW.
This was a man of infinite mark to his contemporaries; who had witnessed surprising feats from him in the world; very questionable notions and ways, which he had contrived to maintain against the world and its criticisms.

As an original man has always to do; much more an original ruler of men.

The world, in fact, had tried hard to put him down, as it does, unconsciously or, consciously, with all such; and after the most conscious exertions, and at one time a dead-lift spasm of all its energies for Seven Years, had not been able.

Principalities and powers, Imperial, Royal, Czarish, Papal, enemies innumerable as the seasand, had risen against him, only one helper left among the world's Potentates (and that one only while there should be help rendered in return); and he led them all such a dance as had astonished mankind and them.
No wonder they thought him worthy of notice.

Every original man of any magnitude is;--nay, in the long-run, who or what else is?
But how much more if your original man was a king over men; whose movements were polar, and carried from day to day those of the world along with them.
The Samson Agonistes,--were his life passed like that of Samuel Johnson in dirty garrets, and the produce of it only some bits of written paper,--the Agonistes, and how he will comport himself in the Philistine mill; this is always a spectacle of truly epic and tragic nature.