Souffrez [he says] que je vous fasse mon caractere, afin que vous ne vous y mepreniez plus ...  J’ai peu de merite et peu de savoir; mais j’ai beaucoup de bonne volonte, et un fonds inepuisable d’estime et d’amitie pour les personnes d’une vertu distinguee, et avec cela je suis capable de toute la constance que la vraie amitie exige.  J’ai assez de jugement pour vous rendre toute la justice que vous meritez; mais je n’en ai pas assez pour m’empecher de faire de mauvais vers.

But this is exceptional; as a rule, elaborate compliments take the place of personal confessions; and, while Voltaire is never tired of comparing Frederick to Apollo, Alcibiades, and the youthful Marcus Aurelius, of proclaiming the rebirth of ’les talents de Virgile et les vertus d’Auguste,’ or of declaring that ’Socrate ne m’est rien, c’est Frederic que j’aime,’ the Crown Prince is on his side ready with an equal flow of protestations, which sometimes rise to singular heights.  ’Ne croyez pas,’ he says, ’que je pousse mon scepticisime a outrance ...  Je crois, par exemple, qu’il n’y a qu’un Dieu et qu’un Voltaire dans le monde; je crois encore que ce Dieu avait besoin dans ce siecle d’un Voltaire pour le rendre aimable.’  Decidedly the Prince’s compliments were too emphatic, and the poet’s too ingenious; as Voltaire himself said afterwards, ‘les epithetes ne nous coutaient rien’; yet neither was without a little residue of sincerity.  Frederick’s admiration bordered upon the sentimental; and Voltaire had begun to allow himself to hope that some day, in a provincial German court, there might be found a crowned head devoting his life to philosophy, good sense, and the love of letters.  Both were to receive a curious awakening.

In 1740 Frederick became King of Prussia, and a new epoch in the relations between the two men began.  The next ten years were, on both sides, years of growing disillusionment.  Voltaire very soon discovered that his phrase about ’un prince philosophe qui rendra les hommes heureux’ was indeed a phrase and nothing more.  His prince philosophe started out on a career of conquest, plunged all Europe into war, and turned Prussia into a great military power.  Frederick, it appeared, was at once a far more important and a far more dangerous phenomenon than Voltaire had suspected.  And, on the other hand, the matured mind of the King was not slow to perceive that the enthusiasm of the Prince needed a good deal of qualification.  This change of view, was, indeed, remarkably rapid.  Nothing is more striking than the alteration of the tone in Frederick’s correspondence during the few months which followed his accession:  the voice of the raw and inexperienced youth is heard no more, and its place is taken—­at once and for ever—­by the self-contained caustic utterance of an embittered man of the world.  In this transformation it was only natural that the wondrous figure of Voltaire should lose some of its glitter—­especially since Frederick now