"Ah, Monseigneur, I have just risen from reading the sublimest piece of writing that exists."-- "And what ?" "The exordium of St.John's Gospel: _In the Beginning was the Word; and the Word was with God, and the Word was--"_ Which somewhat took the Prince by surprise, as Formey reports; though he rallied straightway, and got good conversation out of the old gentleman.
To whom, we perceive, he writes once or twice, [_OEuvres de Frederic,_ 121-126.

Dates are all of 1737; the last of Beausobre's years.]--a copy of his own verses to correct, on one occasion,--and is very respectful and considerate.
Formey tells us of another French sage, personally known to the Prince since Boyhood; for he used to be about the Palace, doing something.
This is one La Croze; Professor of, I think, "Philosophy" in the French College: sublime Monster of Erudition, at that time; forgotten now, I fear, by everybody.

Swag-bellied, short of wind; liable to rages, to utterances of a coarse nature; a decidedly ugly, monstrous and rather stupid kind of man.

Knew twenty languages, in a coarse inexact way.
Attempted deep kinds of discourse, in the lecture-room and elsewhere; but usually broke off into endless welters of anecdote, not always of cleanly nature; and after every two or three words, a desperate sigh, not for sorrow, but on account of flabbiness and fat.

Formey gives a portraiture of him; not worth copying farther.