THE KNIGHT OF THE POLAR STAR 303 



nor were his services accepted without suitable returns 

 of royal munificence. 1 He was allowed even to smoke 

 in the royal presence that he might be the more at his 

 ease ; and the queen constantly desired him to ask for 

 whatever he required, and pressed him to ask her for 

 anything he wished. ' Only a pottle of wild straw- 

 berries,' he requested, when, one day in the summer of 

 1751, he had a relapse of his gout and came to the 

 palace with a pale and distorted countenance. The 

 queen sent for them immediately. They had to be 

 sought for and gathered, for such homely fruits are not 

 grown in queens' gardens. Next day her Majesty saw 

 him in her museum of natural curiosities full of spirits 

 and perfectly recovered. 



4 During the dog-days Linnaeus, as usual, instead of 

 drinking mineral waters, ate wood strawberries, and 

 found himself very well in consequence. ' 2 Three years 

 afterwards he again had fits of the gout, but not so 

 violently : he always conquered their virulence by straw- 

 berries. 



Queen Louisa Ulrica, a very interesting woman, and, 

 like her brother Fritz, i of the royalest volition,' she also, 

 like her brother Frederick the Great, maintained a high 

 intellectual tone at her court. Linnaeus was a pleasanter 

 guest than Voltaire, though he too wrote on botany, 

 being a universal genius, and one of the three leading 

 spirits of the encyclopaedic age. Linnaeus, Johnson, and 

 Voltaire were these three black graces. Men were every- 

 1 Pulteney. 2 Diary, 1753. 



