Another cartoon, still better known, is that of the familiar scene of his apotheosis at the Comédie Française. A briefer sketch of that same year of his death, 1778, may be given, because it contrasts with his sharp sketch of Charles XII at Adrianople, carried on a sofa from his carriage, when, to avoid been seen, the King covered his face with a cushion-- “M. de Voltaire appeared in full dress on Tuesday, for the first time since his arrival in Paris. He had on a red coat lined with ermine; a large peruke, in the fashion of Louis XIV, black, unpowdered; and in which his withered visage was so buried that you saw only his two eyes shining like carbuncles. His head was surmounted by a square red cap in the form of a crown, which seemed only laid on. He had in his hand a small nibbed cane; and the public of Paris, not accustomed to see him in this accoutrement, laughed a good deal.” One interesting point about Voltaire’s English associations, in so far as they prepare the way for the writing of his “Charles XII,” has not hitherto been pointed out. It is this: that a history of the “Wars of Sweden,” written by no less a hand than Defoe’s, was in existence when Voltaire was studying English literature in London. The work, or at any rate its first part, was anonymously published, like Voltaire’s, in 1715; a continuation was added, and the two parts were then issued together in 1720. Between these two dates, let us note, or in 1719, “Robinson Crusoe” had appeared. Defoe’s career has some incidents of prison and persecution that are like enough to Voltaire’s to warrant a fanciful apposition of the two rebel authors. He was in severe straits when he wrote the first part of his Wars of Charles XII; deeply involved in political intrigues. He had had, too, a severe illness--a violent fit of apoplexy--at the end of the previous year; and his trial for libelling Lord Annesley in the whig “Flying Post” was impending. His sentence, and curious escape from being imprisoned, and his “Hymn to the Mob,” have at best a remote bearing on the present book. But one notes these ironical lines to the Mob as having an added irony, when read in the light of his “Charles XII” and Voltaire’s interest in his writings-- “Thou art the Essence of the War; Without thee who wou’d in the Field appear? ’Tis all thy own, whoever gets the Praise-- Thy Hands that fight, and ’tis thy purse that pays. How partial is the common state of things, And how unjust the Fame of Emperors and Kings!” Defoe’s “History of the Wars” is written as “by a Scots gentleman in the Swedish service.” It is a more documentary book than Voltaire’s, to all outward appearance; and in it he has written with characteristic fidelity to the make-believe of his literary double the pseudo “Scots gentleman.” It has much the air of the off-hand, matter-of-fact military narrator, who does not look for rhetorical openings, or greatly trouble himself to make the most of his subject.