neous, like all the rest; and of new or of pleasant tells
us nothing.

"His enmity to M. de Voltaire did prove perpetual:--a bramble that might
have been dealt with by fingers, or by fingers and scissors, but could
not by axes, and their hewing and brandishing. 'This is the ninety-fifth
anonymous Calumny of La Beaumelle's, this that you have sent me!' says
Voltaire once. The first stroke or two had torn the bramble quite
on end: 'He says he will pursue you to Hell even,' writes one of the
Voltaire kind friends from Frankfurt, on that 7 pounds 10s. business. 'A
L'ENFER?' answers M. de Voltaire, with a toss: 'Well, I should think so,
he, and at a good rate of speed. But whether he will find me there, must
be a question!' If you want to have an insignificant accidental fellow
trouble you all your days, this is the way of handling him when he first
catches hold."

ABBE DE PRADES.--"De Prades, 'Abbe de Prades, Reader to the King,'
though happily not an enemy of Voltaire's, is in some sort La
Beaumelle's counterpart, or brother with a difference; concerning
whom also, one wants only to know the exact date of his arrival. As La
Beaumelle felt too strait-tied in the Geneva vestures (where it had
been good for him to adjust himself, and stay); so did De Prades in
the Sorbonne ditto,--and burst out, on taking Orders, not into eloquent
Preachings or edifying Devotional Exercises; but into loud blurts of
mere heresy and heterodoxy. Blurts which were very loud, and I believe
very stupid; which failed of being sublime even to the Philosophic
world; and kindled the Sorbonne into burning his Book, and almost
burning himself, had not he at once run for it.

"Ran to Holland, and there continued blurting more at large,--decidedly
stupid for most part, thinks Voltaire, 'but with glorious Passages,
worth your Majesty's attention;'--upon which, D'Alembert too helping,
poor De Prades was invited to the Readership, vacant by La Mettrie's
eagle-pie; and came gladly, and stayed. At what date? one occasionally
asks: for there are Royal Letters, dateless, but written in his hand,
that raise such question in the utter dimness otherwise. Date is
'September, 1752.' [Preuss, i. 368; ii. 115.] Farther question one does
not ask about De Prades. Rather an emphatic intrusive kind of fellow,
I should guess;--wrote, he, not Friedrich, that ABRIDGMENT OF PLEURY'S
ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY, and other the like dreary Pieces, which used to
be inflicted on manki