nature, an irrepressible and fruitful intellect, made you a great poet without any effort of your own.  I feel and acknowledge the inferiority of my talent.  I swim about in the ocean of poetry with my life-preserver under my arm.  I do not write as well as I think.  My ideas are stronger than my expressions; and in this embarrassment, I am often content if my verses are as little indifferent as possible, and do not expect them to be good.” [Footnote:  The king’s own words, p. 346.]

“It is entirely in your majesty’s power to make them perfect.  With you, sire, it is as with the gods—­’I will!’ and it is done.  If your majesty will condescend to adorn the Graces and sylphs, the sages and scholars, who stumble about in this sublime poem with somewhat rugged feet, with artistic limbs, they will flutter about like graceful genii, and step with majesty like the three kings of the East.  Now let us try—­we will write this poem again.”

He made a long mark with a pen over the manuscript of the king, took a new sheet of paper, and commenced to write the first lines.  He criticised every word with bitter humor, with flashing wit, with mocking irony.  Inexorable in his censure, indifferent in his praise, his tongue seemed to be armed with arrows, every one of which was intended to strike and wound.

The face of Frederick remained calm and clear.  He did not feel that he was a mighty king and ruler, injured by the fault-finding of a common man.  He was the pupil, with his accomplished teacher; and as he really wished to learn, he was indifferent as to the mode by which his stern master would instruct him.

After this they read together a chapter from the king’s “Higtoire de Mon Temps.”  A second edition was about to appear, and Voltaire had undertaken to correct it.  He brought his copy with him, in order to give Frederick an account of his corrections.

“This book will be a masterwork, if your majesty will only take the pains to correct it properly?  But has a king the time and patience?- -a king who governs his whole kingdom alone?  Yes, it is this thought which confounds me!  I cannot recover from my astonishment; it is this which makes me so stern in my judgment of your writings.  I consider it a holy duty.”

“And I am glad you are harsh and independent,” said the king.  “I learn more from ten stern and critical words, than from a lengthy speech full of praise and acknowledgment!  But tell me, now, what means this red mark, with which you have covered one whole side of my manuscript?”

“Sire, this red mark asks for consideration for your grandfather, King Frederick the First; you have been harsh and cruel with him!”

“I dared not be otherwise, unless I would earn for myself the charge of partiality,” said the king.  “It shall not be said that I closed my eyes to his foolishness and absurdity because he was my grandfather.  Frederick the First was a vain and pompous fool; this is the truth!”