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| it did him honour. The president was Maupertuis ,a man of some ability, but whose talents were vitiated• by the taint of envy. He had considered himself thefirst bel esprit at court till Voltaire appeared. He andi: the poet had corresponded heretofore, and Voltaire hadj; not spared flattery in his letters ; but he neglected tof mention Maupertuis ’s name in his speech when he took
I his seat in the French academy. This was not aninjury to be forgiven ■ and though Voltaire paid himi every sort of attention, the other could ill brook hisI superior favour, especially as Frederic, who had neverI relished his conversation, frequently excluded him from| the royal suppers, and joined with Voltaire in makingJ him the object of their endless pleasantries. At first| Voltaire only jested, because he was a wit and could not
I help it ; but Maupertuis contrived to rouse a morebitter spirit.
He had discovered a new principle in mechanics,that of the least power : this principle met much oppo-!' sition, and Koenig, a Prussian mathematician, not onlyargued against it, but quoted a fragment of a letter ofLeibnitz , in tvhich this principle was mentioned andobjected to. Koenig confessed that he possessed only; ; a copy of the letter in question, acknowledging that the> original was lost. Maupertuis took advantage of this‘ circumstance; he induced the academy, of which hewas president , to summon Koenig to produce the ori-ginal ; and when this was allowed not to be found, heproceeded to accuse him of forgery. He got up a, meeting of such academicians as he could influence, bywhom Koenig was declared unworthy to be any longera member, and his name erased from the list.
Koenig had formerly instructed madame du Chatelet in the philosophy of Leibnitz. Voltaire consequentlyknew and esteemed him, and was indignant at the per-
i secution he suffered ; he took his part openly, and wasonly restrained from crushing his adversary by Fre-deric’s personal request not to make a jest of his aca-demy or its president. The seeds of animosity,
VOL. II. F