that Friedrich
addressed any Letter, now or afterwards. No notice of Montesquieu; nor
of some others, the absence of whom is a little unexpected. Probably
it was want of knowledge mainly; for his appetite was not fastidious at
this time. And certainly he did hit the centre of the mark, and get
into the very kernel of French literature, when, in 1736, hardly yet
established in his new quarters, he addressed himself to the shining
figure known to us as "Arouet Junior" long since, and now called M. DE
VOLTAIRE; which latter is still a name notable in Friedrich's History
and that of Mankind. Friedrich's first Letter, challenging Voltaire
to correspondence, dates itself 8th August, 1736; and Voltaire's
Answer--the Reinsberg Household still only in its second month--was
probably the brightest event which had yet befallen there.

On various accounts it will behoove us to look a good deal more strictly
into this Voltaire; and, as his relations to Friedrich and to the world
are so multiplex, endeavor to disengage the real likeness of the
man from the circumambient noise and confusion which in his instance
continue very great. "Voltaire was the spiritual complement of
Friedrich," says Sauerteig once: "what little of lasting their poor
Century produced lies mainly in these Two. A very somnambulating
Century! But what little it DID, we must call Friedrich; what little it
THOUGHT, Voltaire. Other fruit we have not from it to speak of, at this
day. Voltaire, and what CAN be faithfully done on the Voltaire Creed;
'Realized Voltairism;'--admit it, reader, not in a too triumphant
humor,--is not that pretty much the net historical product of the
Eighteenth Century? The rest of its history either pure somnambulism; or
a mere Controversy, to the effect, 'Realized Voltairism? How soon
shall it be realized, then? Not at once, surely!' So that Friedrich and
Voltaire are related, not by accident only. They are, they for want of
better, the two Original Men of their Century; the chief and in a sense
the sole products of their Century. They alone remain to us as still
living results from it,--such as they are. And the rest, truly, OUGHT
to depart and vanish (as they are now doing); being mere ephemera;
contemporary eaters, scramblers for provender, talkers of acceptable
hearsay; and related merely to the butteries and wiggeries of their
time, and not related to the Perennialities at all, as these Two
were."--With more of the like sort from Sauer