ittle Book;
with traces of real EYESIGHT in it,--by one who had personally known
Voltaire, or at least seen and heard him.] He retired to the country for
six months, and perfected himself in these two branches. Being perfect,
he challenged Duc de Rohan in the proper manner; applying ingenious
compulsives withal, to secure acceptance of the challenge. Rohan
accepted, not without some difficulty, and compulsion at the Theatre or
otherwise:--accepted, but withal confessed to his wife. The result was,
no measuring of swords took place; and Rohan only blighted by public
opinion, or incapable of farther blight that way, went at large; a
convenient LETTRE DE CACHET having put Arouet again in the Bastille.
Where for six months Arouet lodged a second time, the innocent not the
guilty; making, we can well suppose, innumerable reflections on the
phenomena of human life. Imprisonment once over, he hastily quitted for
England; shaking the dust of ungrateful France off his feet,--resolved
to change his unhappy name, for one thing.

"Smelfungus, denouncing the torpid fatuity of Voltaire's Biographers,
says he never met with one Frenchman, even of the Literary classes, who
could tell him whence this name VOLTAIRE originated. 'A PETITE
TERRE, small family estate,' they said; and sent him hunting through
Topographies, far and wide, to no purpose. Others answered, 'Volterra
in Italy, some connection with Volterra,'--and seemed even to know that
this was but fatuity. 'In ever-talking, ever-printing Paris, is it as
in Timbuctoo, then, which neither prints nor has anything to print?'
exclaims poor Smelfungus! He tells us at last, the name VOLTAIRE is
a mere Anagram of AROUET L. J.--you try it;
A.R.O.U.E.T.L.J.=V.O.L.T.A.I.R.E and perceive at once, with obligations
to Smelfungus, that he has settled this small matter for you, and that
you can be silent upon it forever thenceforth.

"The anagram VOLTAIRE, gloomily settled in the Bastille in this manner,
can be reckoned a very famous wide-sounding outer result of the Rohan
impertinence and blackguardism; but it is not worth naming beside the
inner intrinsic result, of banishing Voltaire to England at this point
of his course. England was full of Constitutionality and Freethinking;
Tolands, Collinses, Wollastons, Bolingbrokes, still living; very free
indeed. England, one is astonished to see, has its royal-republican ways
of doing; something Roman in it, from Peerage down to Plebs; strange and