Frédéric Melchior Grimm was, however, no sentimental fool. He was, indeed, one of the most keen-witted of his great nation, though, like many other children of the Fatherland, he had on the surface of his worldly wisdom a fine layer of Teutonic sentimentality. If the Briton finds the sentiment mawkish, not so the Frenchman. Grimm’s extraordinary disease became his passport into the most exclusive circles in Paris. Born at Ratisbon on September 26, 1723, with a poor Lutheran pastor for a father, he had always known that he must make his own way in life, and had always made it. At school he found a useful friend in one of Baron Schomberg’s sons, and continued the friendship at the University of Leipzig. When he was still a student there, he wrote a play, ‘Banise,’ which, before he left, he was a sufficiently just and astute critic to find ‘pitiable.’ On leaving Leipzig he went to live in the Schombergs’ house, as tutor to his friend’s younger brother. Frederick the Great had already made the French language the fashion; and as at the Schombergs’ Grimm heard nothing else, he soon learnt to speak and read it. In 1748 came the first opportunity of his life; he took his pupil to Paris, and remained there after the boy had returned to his family. To say that Grimm throughout his existence always fell on his feet, would be a misleading idiom. He always fell on his head. The moment he found himself thrown into a new set of circumstances, his calm judgment skilfully arranged them to the very best advantage. At this time he was twenty-five years old, rather tall and imposing looking, something of a dandy in his dress (his enemies declared that he powdered his face and scented himself like a woman), with very little money in hand, no prospects, and a retrospect of that dismal failure ‘Banise,’ and that ‘thin travelling tutorship.’ In a very short time he got himself appointed as reader to the Duke of Saxe-Gotha. The salary was thin enough here too; but the Duke was a great person, and the Duchess was the friend and the correspondent of Voltaire, and to be, for the rest of her life, the friend and correspondent of Melchior Grimm as well. He was not long in finding a situation much more lucrative and responsible. In 1749, he became secretary, guide, and friend to a certain dissipated young dog of a Comte de Frise, or Frisen, who was always borrowing money of his famous uncle, Marshal Saxe, and certainly needed a prudent Grimm to look after him. If Grimm was only, or principally, honest because honesty is the best policy, if he did his duty because in the long run duty is the surest road to happiness, yet the facts remain that he did act uprightly, and that he had settled principles, a strict course of conduct and a strong line of action, in an age when no motives, good, bad, or indifferent, produced such happy results in his friends.