across to London in due course; and there he did another memorable
thing: made acquaintance with the Monsieur Arouet, then a young
French Exile there, Arouet Junior ("LE JEUNE or L. J."), who,--
by an ingenious anagram, contrived in his indignation at such
banishment,--writes himself VOLTAIRE ever since; who has been
publishing a HENRIADE, and doing other things. Now it was by
questioning this Fabrice, and industriously picking the memory of
him clean, that M. de Voltaire wrote another book, much more of an
"Epic" than Henri IV.,--a HISTORY, namely, OF CHARLES XII.; [See
Voltaire, OEuvres Completes, ii. 149, xxx. 7, 127.
Came out in 1731 (ib. xxx. Avant-Propos, p. ii).] which seems to
me the best-written of all his Books, and wants nothing but TRUTH
(indeed a dreadful want) to make it a possession forever.
VOLTAIRE, if you want fine writing; ADLERFELD and FABRICE, if you
would see the features of the Fact: these three are still the
Books upon Charles XII.


HIS PRUSSIAN MAJESTY FALLS INTO ONE OF HIS HYPOCHONDRIACALFITS.

Before this event, his Majesty was in gloomy humor; and special
vexations had superadded themselves. Early in the Spring, a
difficult huff of quarrel, the consummation of a good many grudges
long subsisting, had fallen out with his neighbor of Saxony, the
Majesty of Poland, August, whom we have formerly heard of, a
conspicuous Majesty in those days; called even "August the Great"
by some persons in his own time; but now chiefly remembered by his
splendor of upholstery, his enormous expenditure in drinking and
otherwise, also by his three hundred and fifty-four Bastards
(probably the maximum of any King's performance in that line), and