fool or a philosopher.'

It is peculiarly tantalising that our knowledge should be almost at its
scantiest in the very direction in which we should like to know most,
and in which there was most reason to hope that our curiosity might have
been gratified. Of Voltaire's relations with the circle of Pope, Swift,
and Bolingbroke only the most meagre details have reached us. His
correspondence with Bolingbroke, whom he had known in France and whose
presence in London was one of his principal inducements in coming to
England--a correspondence which must have been considerable--has
completely disappeared. Nor, in the numerous published letters which
passed about between the members of that distinguished group, is there
any reference to Voltaire's name. Now and then some chance remark raises
our expectations, only to make our disappointment more acute. Many years
later, for instance, in 1765, a certain Major Broome paid a visit to
Ferney, and made the following entry in his diary:

Dined with Mons. Voltaire, who behaved very politely. He is very
old, was dressed in a robe-de-chambre of blue sattan and gold spots
on it, with a sort of blue sattan cap and tassle of gold. He spoke
all the time in English.... His house is not very fine, but
genteel, and stands upon a mount close to the mountains. He is tall
and very thin, has a very piercing eye, and a look singularly
vivacious. He told me of his acquaintance with Pope, Swift (with
whom he lived for three months at Lord Peterborough's) and Gay, who
first showed him the _Beggar's Opera_ before it was acted. He says
he admires Swift, and loved Gay vastly. He said that Swift had a
great deal of the ridiculum acre.

And then Major Broome goes on to describe the 'handsome new church' at
Ferney, and the 'very neat water-works' at Geneva. But what a vision has
he opened out for us, and, in that very moment, shut away for ever from
our gaze in that brief parenthesis--'with whom he lived for three months
at Lord Peterborough's'! What would we not give now for no more than one
or two of the bright intoxicating drops from that noble river of talk
which flowed then with such a careless abundance!--that prodigal stream,
swirling away, so swiftly and so happily, into the empty spaces of
forgetfulness and the long night of Time!

So complete, indeed, is the lack of precise and well-authenticated
information upon this, by far the most obv