It was in the ten years from 1746 to 1756 that Frederic gained an importance and a self-confidence as an author, which up to the present day is not sufficiently appreciated in Germany. Of his French verses the Germans can only judge imperfectly. He had great facility as a poet, and could express without trouble every mood in rhyme and verse. But in his lyrics he has never, in the eyes of Frenchmen, entirely overcome the difficulties of a foreign language, however carefully they may have been revised by his intimates; indeed, he was wanting always, it appears to us, in that equal rhetorical harmony of style which in the time of Voltaire was the first characteristic of a renowned poet, for we find commonplace and trivial expressions in splendid diction, together with beautiful and pompous periods. His taste, too, was not assured and independent enough; he was in his aesthetic judgment rapid in admiring and short in deciding, but in reality far more dependent on the opinions of his French acquaintance than his pride would have admitted. The best off-shoot of French poetry at that time was the return to nature, and the struggle of truth against the fetters of old _convenances_, This was incomprehensible to the King. Rousseau long appeared to him an eccentric poor devil, and the conscientious and pure spirit of Diderot he considered as shallow. And yet it appears to us that in his own poems, and especially in the light improvisations with which he favoured his friends, there is frequently a richness of poetic detail and a heart-winning tone of true feeling which they, especially his pattern Voltaire, might envy him. Like Caesar's "Commentaries," Frederic's History of his Time forms one of the most important monuments of historical literature.[15] It is true that, like the Roman General and like every practical statesman, he wrote the facts as they were reflected from the mind of one who took part in them; all is not equally appreciated by him; he does not do justice to every party, but he knows incomparably more than those who were at a distance, and enters, not quite impartially, but at the same time with magnanimity to his opponents, into some of the innermost motives of great occurrences. He wrote sometimes without the great apparatus that a professional historian must collect around him; it therefore happens that his memory and judgment, however authentic they may be, sometimes leave him in the lurch; finally, he wrote an apology of his house, his policy, and his campaigns, and, like Caesar, he is sometimes silent, and interprets facts as he wishes them to be brought before posterity. But the open-heartedness and love of truth with which he deals with his own house and his own doings, are not less worthy of admiration than the supreme calm and freedom with which he views events, in spite of the small rhetorical flourishes which belonged to the taste of the time.