of
many years of research. Voltaire was determined henceforward to distil
its spirit into more compendious and popular forms. He had no more time
for elaborate dissertations; he must reach the public by quicker and
surer ways. Accordingly there now began to pour into Paris a flood of
short light booklets--essays, plays, poems, romances, letters, tracts--a
multitude of writings infinitely varied in form and scope, but all
equally irresistible and all equally bearing the unmistakable signs of
their origin at Ferney. Voltaire's inimitable style had at last found a
medium in which it could display itself in all its charm and all its
brilliance. The pointed, cutting, mocking sentences laugh and dance
through his pages like light-toed, prick-eared elves. Once seen, and
there is no help for it--one must follow, into whatever dangerous and
unknown regions those magic imps may lead. The pamphlets were of course
forbidden, but without effect; they were sold in thousands, and new
cargoes, somehow or other, were always slipping across the frontier from
Holland or Geneva. Whenever a particularly outrageous one appeared,
Voltaire wrote off to all his friends to assure them that he knew
nothing whatever of the production, that it was probably a translation
from the work of an English clergyman, and that, in short, everyone
would immediately see from the style alone that it was--_not_ his. An
endless series of absurd pseudonyms intensified the farce. Oh no!
Voltaire was certainly not the author of this scandalous book. How could
he be? Did not the title-page plainly show that it was the work of Frere
Cucufin, or the uncle of Abbe Bazin, or the Comte de Boulainvilliers, or
the Emperor of China? And so the game proceeded; and so all France
laughed; and so all France read.

Two forms of this light literature Voltaire made especially his own. He
brought the Dialogue to perfection; for the form suited him exactly,
with its opportunities for the rapid exposition of contrary doctrines,
for the humorous stultification of opponents, and for witty repartee.
Into this mould he has poured some of his finest materials; and in such
pieces as _Le Diner du Comte de Boulainvilliers_ and _Frere Rigolet et
l'Empereur de la Chine_ one finds the concentrated essence of his whole
work. Equally effective and equally characteristic is the _Dictionnaire
Philosophique_, which contains a great number of very short
miscellaneous articles arranged in alphabetical