36 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC MEN.

admiration entertained of Voltaire ’s genius, and hisno’jledaring in breaking down the obstacles which the govern-ment and clergy of France threw in the way of thediffusion of knowledge, and his resolution in devotinghis life to authorship. He addressed a letter to him atCirey, requesting a correspondence. Voltaire could lotfail of being highly flattered by a prince, the heir to athrone, who wrote to him that “ Cirey should be hisDelphos, and his letters oracles.” Voltaire was far frombeing behindhand in compliments. He writes: “ I shedtears of joy on reading your letter — I recognise aprince who will assuredly be the delight of the humanrace. 1 am in every way astonished: you speak likeTrajan, you write like Pliny , and you express yourselfin French as well as our best writers. What a dif-ference between men ! Louis XIV . was a great king—I respect his memory ; but he had not your humanity,nor spoke French as well. I have seen his letters ; hedid not know the orthography of his own language.Berlin will he, under your auspices, the Athens ofGermany—perhaps of Europe .” The compliments onboth sides were to a great degree sincere. Fredericshared the enthusiastic, almost, worship in which Vol-taire was then generally held — and Voltaire regardingsovereigns and princes as powerful enemies, or at bestas mischievous animals, whom it was necessary tostroke into innocuousness, was carried away by hisdelight in finding one who adopted his own prin-ciples — looked up to him as a master, and added tothe value of his admiration, the fact of being himself aman of genius. After Voltaire had quarrelled with him,he spoke in a jocular tone of their mutual flattery ; butstill in a way that shows how deeply it sank at thetime. “ The prince,” he writes, “ employed his leisurein writing to the literary men of France , and the prin-cipal burden of his correspondence fell on me. Ireceived letters in verse, metaphysical, historical, andpolitical. He treated me as a divine man ; I calledhim Solomon ; epithets which cost us nothing. Some