The most curious instance of his moral preoccupation (which, as the commonest and that with which we are most familiar, we may get rid of first) has reference[51] to Marmontel’s _conte_ of _Soliman the Second_.[52] Lessing rather liked Marmontel, who had been civil to _Miss Sara Sampson_, I think, and whom he somewhere couples with Diderot, thereby showing that he at any rate was able to distinguish in the author of the _Eléments de Littérature_ something very different from a _perruque_. He admits “the wit, the knowledge of the world, the elegance, the grace” of this “excellent and delightful” tale. But he is fearfully disturbed at its morality. The Sultan, it seems, is “a satiated libertine”; [but would not Rymer be for once justified in urging this as “a character worn by them in all ages of the world” in which there were Sultans?] Roxelane is “a baggage which gets its way.” [Undoubtedly: but do not baggages as a rule get theirs?] Lessing, however, cannot away with “the thing,” as he calls the owner of the _petit nez retroussé_. What a wretched part is the great Soliman made to play! He and Roxelane “belong neither to the actual world, nor to a world in which cause and effect follow a different order, but to the general effect of good.” “The Turk only knows sensual love” [Rymer! Rymer!]. Lessing is afraid that the _lune rousse_ will rise for Soliman on the very morrow of his wedding: and that he will see in Roxelane “nothing but her impudence and the _nez retroussé_.” [Now as these were the very things that captivated him, it might rather seem that all would be well.] In Soliman the instructive is lacking. “We ought to despise both him and Roxelane; or rather one [which one?] ought to disgust and the other to anger us,” though, or perhaps more particularly, _because_ “they are painted in the most seductive colours.”