Clever, but wrong, do you say?
Well, yes:--and yet the ridiculous does require ridicule; wise Nature has silently so ordered.
And if ever truculent President in red wig, with his absurd truculences, tyrannies and perpetual struggles after the sublime, did deserve to be exploded in laughter, it could not have been more consummately done;--though perversely always, as must be owned.
"'The hole bored through the Earth,' for instance: really, one sometimes reflects on such a thing; How you would see daylight, and the antipodal gentleman (if he bent a little over) foot to foot; how a little stone flung into it would exactly (but for air and friction) reach the other side of the world; would then, in a computable few moments, come back quiescent to your hand, and so continue forevermore;--with other the like uncriminal fancies.
"'The Latin Town,' again: truly, if learning the Ancient Languages be human Education, it might, with a Greek Ditto, supersede the Universities, and prove excellently serviceable in our struggle Heavenward by that particular route.

I can assure M.de Voltaire, it was once practically proposed to this King's Great-grandfather, the Grosse Kurfurst;--who looked into it, with face puckered to the intensest, in his great care for furtherance of the Terrestrial Sciences and Wisdoms; but forbore for that time.

[Minute details about it in Stenzel, ii.
234-238; who quotes "Erman" (a poor old friend of ours) "SUR LE PROJET D'UNE VILLE SAVANTE DANS LE BRANDEBOURG (Berlin, 1792):" date of the Project was 1667.] Then as to 'Dissecting the Brains of Patagonians;' what harm, if you can get them gross enough?
And as to that of (exalting your mind to predict the future,' does not, in fact, man look BEFORE and AFTER; are not Memory and (in a small degree) Prophecy the Two Faculties he has?
"These things--which are mostly to be found in the 'LETTRES DE MAUPERTUIS' (Dresden, 1752, then a brand-new Book), but are now clipt out from the Maupertuis Treatises--we can fancy to be almost sublimities .-- Almost, unfortunately not altogether.

And then there is such a Sisyphus-effort visible in dragging them aloft so far: and the nimble wicked Voltaire so seizes his moment, trips poor Sisyphus; and sends him down, heels-over-head, in a torrent of roaring debris! 'From gradual transpiration of our vital force comes Death; which perhaps, by precautions, might be indefinitely retarded,' says Maupertuis.

'Yes, truly,' answers the other: 'if we got ourselves japanned, coated with resinous varnish (INDUITS DE POIX RESINEUX); who knows!' Not a sublime owlery can you drop, but it is manipulated, ground down, put in rifled cannon, comes back on you as tempests of burning dust." Enough to send Maupertuis pirouetting through the world, with red wig unquenchably on fire! Peals of laughter (once you are allowed to be non-official) could not fail, as an ovation, from the King;--so report the French Biographers.
But there was, besides, strict promise that the Piece should be suppressed: "Never do to send our President pirouetting through the world in this manner, with his wig on fire; promise me, on your honor!" Voltaire promised.