Thomas Carlyle’s opinion of the author of this History is expressed in the following passages from his History of Friedrich II. of Prussia: “‘Frederick Baron Trenck,’ loud sounding phantasm, once famous in the world, now gone to the nurseries as mythical, was of this carnival (1742-3.) . . . A tall actuality in that time, swaggering about in sumptuous Life Guard uniform in his mess-rooms and assembly-rooms; much in love with himself, the fool! And I rather think, in spite of his dog insinuations, neither Princess had heard of him till twenty years hence, in a very different phasis of his life! The empty, noisy, quasi-tragic fellow; sounds throughout quasi-tragical, like an empty barrel; well-built, longing to be filled.”—Book xiv., ch. 3.