88 VOLTAIRE. 



fittest of the age to give it currency, and was relished 

 far more from the gratification its scurrility afforded 

 to malice, than from any intrinsic merit which it pos- 

 sessed. It is among the poorest and the most tedious 

 of its author's pieces ; and when it is said to have de- 

 stroyed Maupertuis' reputation, whoever reads it must 

 feel satisfied of its utter impotence to injure any one 

 but its author, had that reputation rested upon a solid 

 foundation. Unfortunately for Maupertuis, he had 

 been placed high, without any pretensions at all ; he 

 had exposed himself to just censure by his treatment 

 of a modest, an able, and a learned man ; he had 

 covered himself with ridicule by writings which seemed 

 to argue a deprivation of reason ; and it required not 

 the ' Diatribe of Dr. Akakia' to hurl him from the place 

 which he usurped.* 



Frederick committed on this occasion his second 

 error respecting this unfortunate person ; but it was a 

 far more fatal one than the former. He chose to enter 

 himself into the strife as a combatant, and he was 

 wholly unprovided with resources. He published a 

 pamphlet against Kcenig and Voltaire, in which he 

 betrayed, as might be expected, entire ignorance of the 

 subject. All scientific Europe took Kcenig's part, 

 though it is painful to reflect that the man at the head 

 of it sided with the King and his President ; but 

 though that man was Euler, he was one of the Aca- 

 demy who had been drawn into the shameful sentence 



* It is generally said that he had at one time the misfortune to be 

 confined in a lunatic asylum ; his latter conduct certainly seems to 

 countenance the report. 



