e of himself
and his friends?

Voltaire's literary activities were as insatiable while he was in
England as during every other period of his career. Besides the edition
of the _Henriade_, which was considerably altered and enlarged--one of
the changes was the silent removal of the name of Sully from its
pages--he brought out a volume of two essays, written in English, upon
the French Civil Wars and upon Epic Poetry, he began an adaptation of
_Julius Caesar_ for the French stage, he wrote the opening acts of his
tragedy of _Brutus_, and he collected a quantity of material for his
History of Charles XII. In addition to all this, he was busily engaged
with the preparations for his _Lettres Philosophiques_. The _Henriade_
met with a great success. Every copy of the magnificent quarto edition
was sold before publication; three octavo editions were exhausted in as
many weeks; and Voltaire made a profit of at least ten thousand francs.
M. Foulet thinks that he left England shortly after this highly
successful transaction, and that he established himself secretly in some
town in Normandy, probably Rouen, where he devoted himself to the
completion of the various works which he had in hand. Be this as it may,
he was certainly in France early in April 1729; a few days later he
applied for permission to return to Paris; this was granted on the 9th
of April, and the remarkable incident which had begun at the Opera more
than three years before came to a close.

It was not until five years later that the _Lettres Philosophiques_
appeared. This epoch-making book was the lens by means of which Voltaire
gathered together the scattered rays of his English impressions into a
focus of brilliant and burning intensity. It so happened that the nation
into whose midst he had plunged, and whose characteristics he had
scrutinised with so avid a curiosity, had just reached one of the
culminating moments in its history. The great achievement of the
Revolution and the splendid triumphs of Marlborough had brought to
England freedom, power, wealth, and that sense of high exhilaration
which springs from victory and self-confidence. Her destiny was in the
hands of an aristocracy which was not only capable and enlightened, like
most successful aristocracies, but which possessed the peculiar
attribute of being deep-rooted in popular traditions and popular
sympathies and of drawing its life-blood from the popular will. The
agitations of the reign of Anne