OF CATHARINE AND THE BOOKS UPON PETER AND HER.

"Catharine too had an intricate time of it under the Catin; which was consoled to her only by a tolerably rapid succession of lovers, the best the ground yielded.
In which department it is well known what a Thrice-Greatest she became: superior to any Charles II.; equal almost to an August the Strong! Of her loves now and henceforth, which are heartily uninteresting to me, I propose to say nothing farther; merely this, That in extent they probably rivalled the highest male sovereign figures (and are to be put in the same category with these, and damned as deep, or a little deeper);--and cost her, in gifts, in magnificent pensions to the EMERITI (for she did things always in a grandiose manner, quietly and yet inexorably dismissing the EMERITUS with stores of gold), the considerable sum of 20 millions sterling, in the course of her long reign.

One, or at most two, were off on pension, when Hanbury Williams brought Poniatowski for her, as we transiently saw.

Poniatowski will be King of Poland in the course of events....
"Russia is not a publishing country; the Books about Catharine are few, and of little worth.

TOOKE, an English Chaplain; CASTERA, an unknown French Hanger-on, who copies from Tooke, or Tooke from him: these are to be read, as the bad-best, and will yield little satisfactory insight; Castera, in particular, a great deal of dubious backstairs gossip and street rumor, which are not delightful to a reader of sense.