oncerning him would pretty soon have died away; nor could any amount of
unwise desire to satisfy that feeling in fellow-creatures less seriously
disposed have sustained him alive, in those baleful Historic Acherons
and Stygian Fens, where he has had to dig and to fish so long, far away
from the upper light!--Let me request all readers to blow that sorry
chaff entirely out of their minds; and to believe nothing on the subject
except what they get some evidence for.

SECOND English source relates to the Private Character. Friedrich's
Biography or Private Character, the English, like the French, have
gathered chiefly from a scandalous libel by Voltaire, which used to
be called _ Vie Privee du Roi de Prusse _ (Private Life of the King
of Prussia) [First printed, from a stolen copy, at Geneva, 1784; first
proved to be Voltaire's (which some of his admirers had striven to
doubt), Paris, 1788; stands avowed ever since, in all the Editions of
his Works (ii. 9-113 of the Edition by Bandouin Freres, 97 vols.,
Paris, 1825-1834), under the title _ Memoires pour servir a Vie de M. de
Voltaire, _--with patches of repetition in the thing called _Commentaire
Historique,_ which follows ibid. at great length.] libel undoubtedly
written by Voltaire, in a kind of fury; but not intended to be published
by him; nay burnt and annihilated, as he afterwards imagined; No line of
which, that cannot be otherwise proved, has a right to be believed;
and large portions of which can be proved to be wild exaggerations and
perversions, or even downright lies,--written in a mood analogous to
the Frenzy of John Dennis. This serves for the Biography or Private
Character of Friedrich; imputing all crimes to him, natural and
unnatural;--offering indeed, if combined with facts otherwise known, or
even if well considered by itself, a thoroughly flimsy, incredible
and impossible image. Like that of some flaming Devil's Head, done in
phosphorus on the walls of the black-hole, by an Artist whom you had
locked up there (not quite without reason) overnight.

Poor Voltaire wrote that _ Vie Privee _ in a state little inferior to
the Frenzy of John Dennis,--how brought about we shall see by and by.
And this is the Document which English readers are surest to have read,
and tried to credit as far as possible. Our counsel is, Out of window
with it, he that would know Friedrich of Prussia! Keep it awhile, he
that would know Francois Arouet de Voltaire, and a certain nume