-and
approach very near to sincerity, though seldom quite attaining it.
Something traceable of false, of suspicious, feline, nearly always, in
those seductive warblings; which otherwise are the most melodious
bits of idle ingenuity the human brain has ever spun from itself. For
instance, this heading of a Note sent from one room to another,--perhaps
with pieces of an ODE AUX PRUSSIENS accompanying:--

--"Vou gui daignez me departir
Les fruits d'une Muse divine,
O roi! je ne puis consentir
Que, sans daigner m'en avertir,
Vous alliez prendre medecine.
Je suis votre malade-ne,
Et sur la casse et le sene,
J'ai des notions non communes.
Nous sommes de mene metier;
Faut-il de moi vous defier,
Et cacher vos bonnes fortunes?"--

Was there ever such a turn given to taking physic! Still better is this
other, the topic worse,--HAEMORRHOIDS (a kind of annual or periodical
affair with the Royal Patient, who used to feel improved after):--

... (Ten or twelve verses on another point; then suddenly--)

--"Que la veine hemorroidale
De votre personne royale
Cesse de troubler le repos!
Quand pourrai-je d'une style honnete
Dire: 'Le cul de mon heros
Va tout aussi bien que sa tete'?"--
[In--OEuvres de Frederic,--xxii. 283, 267.]

A kittenish grace in these things, which is pleasant in so old a cat.

Smelfungus says: "He is a consummate Artist in Speech, our Voltaire:
that, if you take the word SPEECH in its widest sense, and consider the
much that can be spoken, and the infinitely more that cannot and should
not, is Voltaire's supreme excellency among his fellow-creatures; never
rivalled (to my poor judgment) anywhere before or since,--nor worth
rivalling, if we knew it well."

Another fine circumstance is, that Voltaire has frequent leave of
absence; and in effect passes a great deal of his time altogether by
himself, or in his own way otherwise. What with Friedrich's Review
Journeys and Business Circuits, considerable separations do occur of
themselves; and at any time, Voltaire has but to plead illness, which he
often does; with ground and without, and get away for weeks, safe
into the distance more or less remote. He is at the Marquisat (as
we laboriously make out); at Berlin, in the empty Palace, perhaps in
Lodgings of his own (though one would