THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY2 The Lives and Opinions

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THE S'rORY OF PHILOSOPHY
tngly or with less grace. Their heads were down, their backs bent, their
hands pressed to their sides." And so the story rushes on. We can
imagine those evenings at Cirey!
IV. POTSDAM AND FREDERICK
Those who could not come to him wrote to him. In 1736 began his
correspondence with Frederick, then Prince, and not yet Great. Frederick's
first letter was like that of a boy to a king; its lavish flattery gives
us an inkling of the reputation which Voltaire though he had not yet
written any of his masterpieces had already won. It proclaims Voltaire
as "the greatest man of France, and a mortal who does honor to language.
... I count it one of the greatest honors of my life to be born
the contemporary of a man of such distinguished attainments as yours
... It is not given to every one to make the mind laugh"; and "what
pleasures can surpass those of the mind?" 29 Frederick was a free-thinker,
who looked upon dogmas as a king looks upon subjects; and Voltaire had
great hopes that on the throne Frederick would make the Enlightenment
fashionable, while he himself, perhaps, might play Plato to Frederick's
Dionysius. When Frederick demurred to the flattery with which Voltaire
answered his own, Voltaire replied: "A prince who writes against flat-
tery is as singular as a pope who writes against infallibility." Frederick
sent him a copy of the Anti-Machiavel, in which the prince spoke very
beautifully of the iniquity of war, and of the duty of a king to preserve
peace; Voltaire wept tears of joy over this royal pacifist. A few months
later Frederick, made king, invaded Silesia and plunged Europe into a
generation of bloodshed.
In 1745 the poet and his mathematician went to Paris, when Voltaire
became a candidate for membership in the French Academy. To achieve
this quite superfluous distinction he called himself a good Catholic, com-
plimented some powerful Jesuits, lied inexhaustibly, and in general behaved
as most of us do in such cases. He failed; but a year later he suc-
ceeded, and delivered a reception address which is one of the classics
of the literature of France. For a while he lingered in Paris^ flitting from
salon to salon, and producing play after play. From CEdipe at eighteen
to Irene at eighty-three he wrote a long series of dramas, some of them
failures, most of them successes. In 1730 Brutus failed, and in 1732 Eri-
phyle failed; his friends urged him to abandon the drama; but in the
same year he produced Zaire, which became his greatest success. Mahomet
followed in 1741, Merope in 1743, Semiramis in 1748, and Tan-
crede in 1760.
Meanwhile tragedy and comedy had entered his own life. After fifteen
years, his love for Mme. du Ghatelet had somewhat thinned; they had
"In Sainte-Beuve, i,