the King of Prussia by that
nickname: 'HE is like my Luc here; bites whoever caresses him!'--In 1756
M. de Voltaire, having still on his heart the Frankfurt Outrage, wrote
curious MEMOIRES [ah, yes, VIE PRIVEE]; and afterwards wished to burn
them; but a Copy had been stolen from him in 1768,"--and they still
afflict the poor world.

To the same effect speaks Johannes von Muller: "Voltaire had an Ape
called Luc; and the spiteful man, in thus naming the King, meant to
stigmatize him as the mere APE of greater men; as one without any
greatness of his own."--No; LUC was mischievous, flung stones after
passengers; had, according to Clogenson, "bitten Voltaire himself, while
being caressed by him;" that was the analogy in Voltaire's mind. Preuss
says, this Nickname first occurs "12th December, 1757." Suppose 11th
December to have been the day of getting one's leg bitten thrice over;
and that, in bed next morning,--stiff, smarting, fretful against the sad
ape-tricks and offences of this life,--before getting up to one's Works
and Correspondences, the angry similitude had shot, slightly fulgurous
and consolatory, athwart the gloom of one's mood? [Longchamp et Wagniere
_Memoires,_ i. 34; Johannes von Muller, _Works _ (12mo, Stuttgard,
1821), xxxi. 140 (LETTERS TO HIS BROTHER, No, 218, "July, 1796");
Clogenson's Note, in _OEuvres de Voltaire,_ lxxvii. 103; Preuss, ii.
71.] That will account for Luc.

Many of the Voltaire-Friedrich LETTERS are lost; and the remainder
lie in sad disorder in all the Editions, their sequence unintelligible
without lengthy explanation. So that the following Snatches cannot well
be arranged here in the way of Choral Strophe and Antistrophe, as would
have been desirable. We shall have to group them loosely under heads;
with less respect to date than to subject-matter, and to the reader's
convenience for understanding them.

VOLTAIRE ON FRIEDRICH, TO DIFFERENT THIRD-PARTIES, DURING THIS WAR.

TO D'ARGENTAL (Has not yet heard of LEUTHEN, which happened five days
before).... "I have tasted the vengeance of consoling the King of
Prussia, and that is enough for me. He goes beating on the one side, and
getting beaten on the other: except for another miracle [like Rossbach],
he will be ruined. Better have really been a philosopher, as he
pretended to be." [_OEuvres de Voltaire,_ lxvii. 139 ("The Delices, 10th
December, 1757").]

TO THE REVEREND COMTE DE BERNIS (outwardly still our flourishing
Prime-Min