Page:The genius - Carl Grosse tr Joseph Trapp 1796.djvu/225

 without concern partake of its felicities. No intreaty could mollify, no offence provoke him. Without a single weak moment, without the least solicitude for his reputation, and as insensible to the opinion of the world as to that of his friends, he, with stedfast eyes followed, as he called it, the long projected plan of an austere virtue, which was to be his guide to the last gasp of a life without relish.

And what must appear most surprising, is, that so far from being the advocate of virtue, he would calmly move in the vortex of vices and follies, nor even seek to prevent them in His friends. He never spoke for or against men, their actions or opinions, and human greatness and human profligacy, seemed to him a mere nullity in the scale of beings.

He was not read in books, and to have made him take up one, it required to be a prodigy of literature. No moralist, no philosopher ever furnished him with principles, and he had borrowed them all from the vast book of experience, from the intercourse with men, and his own destiny.