Catherine II. of Russia wrote fairy and moral tales in the style of Marmontel, at that time so popular, comedies, and a kind of adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Merry Wives of Windsor,” her friend, the Princess Dashkov, who was appointed President of the Academy of Sciences, having co-operated with her in these studies.[156] In the “Romance of an Empress”[157] many amusing anecdotes are given of this her favourite pastime, which, it is said, “was in some sort a necessity, almost a physical necessity” to her. When asked why she wrote so many comedies, she replied, “_Primo_, because it amuses me; _secundo_, because I should like to restore the national theatre, which, owing to its lack of new plays, is somewhat gone out of fashion; and _tertio_, because it was time to put down the visionaries, who were beginning to hold up their heads.” In his “History of German Literature,” Kurtz includes the Empress among the German writers of the eighteenth century, as author of an Eastern romance, “Obidach” (1786), and two years later we find her writing burlesque verses on the King of Sweden. It was often asked how she found time to do so much, the answer being she rose at six o’clock. After his deposition, Gustavus IV. of Sweden, under the title of Colonel Gustafson, was occasionally heard of in various parts of Europe. At the period of the French Revolution in 1830, the pamphlet which he published on that event, and on its connection with Swedish affairs, showed, writes Dr. Doran,[158] that “the ex-king possessed neither charms of style nor power of reasoning. But his literary pursuits were now his sole pleasure, and he wrote “Reflections on the Aurora Borealis, and its Connection with Diurnal Motion,” the small effect produced by which wounded him, it is said, almost as deeply as his loss of a crown.