which all his fine writings had failed to make. He was allowed to enter the Academy, from which court influence had before excluded him; he was named gentleman of the King's chamber; and he received a pension of 2000 francs a year.

The tranquil pleasures of letters and of friendship, which form so much the burthen of his song during his residence at Cirey, were in the mean time suffering constant interruption, as he would represent, from the libels of persons every way below his notice, but, in reality, from his own irritable temper. The vehemence of the language in which he describes those attacks, makes the reader believe that the charges against him were of a heinous kind, and that the accusers were persons of importance; when both are examined, they generally turn out to be equally insignificant. One attack only, which absurdly accuses him of having failed to account for subscriptions to the 'Henriade,' he did right in requiring a friend to refute, who was personally acquainted with the whole matter, having devoted to his own use part of the money so received. He seems to have had some ground for complaining that this gentleman, a M. Theiriot, was slow in vindicating him; but his principal grievance is that Theiriot refused to attack the slanderer in his own person, and to repeat in public what he had so often written privately, that the accuser was the author of other libels against them both, and was the Abbé des Fontaines, a man of some reputation for ability, but leading a life of scandalous libelling, and whose ingratitude to Voltaire was sufficient to stamp him with infamy, as to his kind exertions had been owing the Abbe's escape from a charge of the most detestable nature. It is, however, a stain scarcely less deep on Voltaire's own memory, that although he firmly believed in the man's innocence, as indeed every one else did, he was no sooner enraged by the ungrateful return his services received, than he re

curred to the false charges in all his letters-nay, even by a plain allusion in more than one passage of his poems, of which we have already seen an instance in the Discours sur l'Homme.' He took a more legitimate course of punishing him by prosecuting the libel (a satire entitled 'Voltairomanie), and compelled the vile and abandoned slanderer to sign a public denial of it, and a complete disbelief of its contents.

Under the vexation which such attacks gave him, he was comforted not only by the friendship which he found always in his home at Cirey, but by the unvarying kindness of M. le Cidville, a respectable magistrate of Rouen, fond of literature; by the steady friendship of M. le Comte d'Argental, a man of large fortune, and owner of the Isles de Rhé and Aix, of the west coast, and his wife; by the unbroken attachment of M. 'd'Argenson, Secretary of State, his brother, the War Minister, and the Duc de Richelieu. It should seem as if Voltaire was, in his familiar intercourse, the better for being kept under some restraint by the superior rank, or other preponderating qualities, of his friends. Some such calming influence was necessary for his irritable nature. Jealousy formed no part of his character; he had a rooted horror of envy, as mean and degrading; he was always well disposed to encourage rising merit and enjoy the success of his friends, perhaps all the more readily when he aided them by his patronage and counsels; but he was easily offended, ready to believe that any one had attacked him, prone to take alarm at intended insult or apprehended combination against him; and as his nature was fundamentally satirical, he was unable to resist the indulgence of the very humour of which he could so ill bear being himself made the subject. Those who were at all dependent on him, his Theiriots and his publishers, found much less magnanimity than kindness in his temper. With his equals he rarely continued very long on cor dial terms. Maupertuis, indeed, had no excuse for his

proceedings; but the extravagances of J. J. Rousseau's crazy nature might well have been overlooked, and never should have been made the subjects of such deadly warfare as Voltaire waged against him. The other Rousseau's enmity he owed entirely to himself, as we have seen; it is extremely probable that Des Fontaines was set against him by hearing of his sarcasms on a subject to which all reference was proscribed; and his persevering attacks on Le Franc de Pompignan arose from no cause beyond some general reflections on philosophers in his inaugural discourse at the Academy; nor was he ever just enough to allow the singular merit of some, at least, of the Abbé's poetry. It is certainly one, and a principal, cause of the constant disputes, the hot water he lived in, that he was always writing, generally writing something offensive of somebody; and almost as generally writing something which was likely to call down the indignation of the constituted authorities in Church and State. But had he kept his writings to himself, or only published them anonymously without any confidants, his pen would have less frequently disturbed his repose. Instead of this, he generally began by showing his compositions, often by suffering copies to be taken; sometimes these were published without his leave; but often he allowed them to be printed, and straightway complained when the authorship was discovered. His denials then knew no bounds, either for repetition or for solemnity; and we have seen in the instance of the 'Letters on England' how little scrupulous he was in what manner he confirmed his asseverations, by laying the blame upon others. To this double source of the difficulties into which his writings brought him with the government, and of the individual resentment

*It might be absurd enough in Mirabeau (the elder) to exalt him into the first of modern poets, as our Locke did Blackmore; yet few passages in Voltaire's own writings can compare with the famous simile of the Egyptians, and their sacrilegious abuse of the Sun.

which they occasioned, may very many of his quarrels and anxieties be traced.

But another circumstance must be mentioned, as throwing light upon his personal altercations with the

friends he at various times esteemed. His nature was open and ardent; he had the irritability which oftentimes accompanies genius, but he had the warm temperament, the generous self-abandonment, the uncalculating effusion of sentiment, which is also its attendant, and which sixty years' living in the world never cured-hardly mitigated-in Voltaire. His expressions were, no doubt, stronger than his feelings; but we know that this strength of expression has a certain re-action, and excites the feelings in its turn; certainly is ever taken into the account when its object makes a bad or a cold requital, and irritates the minds from which it had proceeded, if in no other way, at least by wounding their pride. Nothing can be more extravagant than the technology of Voltaire's affections: " My dearest friend" is too cold to be almost ever used; it is "My dear and adorable friend;" "My guardian angel;" "My adorable friend;" and often to the Argentals especially the union of both, "My adorable angels." All philosophers are Newtons; all poets Virgils; all historians Sallusts: all marshals Cæsars. The work of the President Henault is not certainly "son," but "votre charmant, votre immortel ouvrage ;" being the most dry and least charming history that ever was penned, and which never would be read but as a convenient chronicle. The expressions of affection, of eternal, warm, even passionate affection, are lavished constantly and indifferently. Nay, to one friend, a Marshal and Duke (Richelieu), he says, addressing him as Monseigneur, "Il y a dans Paris force vieilles et illustres catins, à qui vous avez fait passer de joyeux moments, mais il n'y en a point qui vous aime plus de moi."* With all this vehemence of feeling and facility

* Corr. Gén. iv. 193.

of effusion, as well as of exaggeration, there was joined an irritability that brought on cold fits occasionally, and then the snow, or rather the hail, fell as easily and abundantly as the tepid showers had before descended. Nothing can exceed his affection for his nieces, especially for Madame Denis; but he must have outraged her feelings severely, to draw from her such a letter as she wrote in 1754: "Ne me forcez pas à vous haïr". "Vous êtes le dernier des hommes par le cœur""Je cacherai autant que je pourrais les vices de votre cœur"- -are expressions used principally on account, not of his heart, which was sound, but his temper, which was uncontrolled, and they were used to him while lying on a sick bed at Colmar, which he had not quitted for six months. I shall have occasion afterwards to speak more particularly of his quarrels with Maupertuis, Frederick II., and Rousseau; in the first of which, the chief fault lay with the mathematician ; in the second, the great king claims the whole blame; and in the third, Voltaire was most censurable. At present, I have only entered upon the topics which arise during his residence at Cirey.

The same exaggeration that pervades his expressions towards others, is observable in all that he writes respecting himself, whether upon the sufferings of his mind or those, somewhat more real, of his body. He had, unhappily, a feeble constitution, and having taken little care of it in early life, he was a confirmed invalid for the rest of his days; but especially between forty and sixty. He suffered from both bladder complaints and those of the alimentary canal; and his surgical maladies, beside the pain and irritation which they directly occasioned, gave him all the sufferings and inconveniences of a bad digestion. There was therefore a sufficient foundation for frequent recourse to the state of his health. But he writes as if he was not merely in constant danger: he is generally at the point of death; and it is observable that the more deeply he is