Afterwards the same secretary lent
him the manuscript of the _Siecle de Louis XIV._, and Lessing
thoughtlessly taking it into the country with him, it was not forthcoming
when called for by the author. Voltaire naturally enough danced with
rage, screamed all manner of unpleasant things about robbery and the
like, cashiered the secretary, and was, we see no reason to doubt, really
afraid of a pirated edition. _This_ time his cry of wolf must have had a
quaver of sincerity in it. Herr Stahr, who can never keep separate the
Lessing as he then was and the Lessing as he afterwards became, takes
fire at what he chooses to consider an unworthy suspicion of the
Frenchman, and treats himself to some rather cheap indignation on the
subject. For ourselves, we think Voltaire altogether in the right, and we
respect Lessing's honesty too much to suppose, with his biographer, that
it was this which led him, years afterwards, to do such severe justice to
_Merope_, and other tragedies of the same author. The affair happened in
December, 1751, and a year later Lessing calls Voltaire a "great man,"
and says of his _Amalie_, that "it has not only beautiful passages, it is
beautiful throughout, and the tears of a reader of feeling will justify
our judgment.
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