e there, I expect, on my passage, to give you
lodging! At Cleve or in Holland, I depend for certain on embracing you."
[Preuss, _OEuvres de Frederic,_ xx. pp. 5, 19-21; Voltaire, _OEuvres,_
lxxii. 226, &c. (not worth citing, in comparison).]

Intrinsically the Friedrich correspondence at this time, with Voltaire
especially, among many friends now on the wing towards Berlin and
sending letters, has,--if you are forced into struggling for some
understanding of it, and do get to read parts of it with the eyes of
Friedrich and Voltaire,--has a certain amiability; and is nothing like
so waste and dreary as it looks in the chaotic or sacked-city condition.
Friedrich writes with brevity, oftenest on practicalities (the
ANTI-MACHIAVEL, the coming Interview, and the like), evidently no time
to spare; writes always with considerable sincerity; with friendliness,
much admiration, and an ingenuous vivacity, to M. de Voltaire. Voltaire,
at his leisure in Brussels or the Old Palace and its spider-webs, writes
much more expansively; not with insincerity, he either;--with endless
airy graciosities, and ingenious twirls, and touches of flattering
unction, which latter, he is aware, must not be laid on too thick. As
thus:--

In regard to the ANTI-MACHIAVEL,--Sire, deign to give me your
permissions as to the scoundrel of a Van Duren; well worth while,
Sire,--"IT is a monument for the latest posterity; the only Book worthy
of a King for these fifteen hundred years."

This is a strongish trowelful, thrown on direct, with adroitness; and
even this has a kind of sincerity. Safer, however, to do it in the
oblique or reflex way,--by Ambassador Cumas, for example:--

"I will tell you boldly, Sir [you M. de Camas], I put more value on this
Book (ANTI-MACHIAVEL) than on the Emperor Julian's CAESAR, or on the
MAXIMS of Marcus Aurelius,"--I do indeed, having a kind of property in
it withal! [Voltaire, _OEuvres,_ lxxii. 280 (to Camas, 18th October,
1740).]

In fact, Voltaire too is beautiful, in this part of the Correspondence;
but much in a twitter,--the Queen of Sheba, not the sedate Solomon, in
prospect of what is coming. He plumes himself a little, we perceive, to
his d'Argentals and French Correspondents, on this sublime intercourse
he has got into with a Crowned Head, the cynosure of mankind:---Perhaps
even you, my best friend, did not quite know me, and what merits I had!
Plumes himself a little; but studies to be modest withal; has not m