curious to the eye of M. de Voltaire. Sciences flourishing; Newton still
alive, white with fourscore years, the venerable hoary man; Locke's
Gospel of Common Sense in full vogue, or even done into verse, by
incomparable Mr. Pope, for the cultivated upper classes. In science,
in religion, in politics, what a surprising 'liberty' allowed or taken!
Never was a freer turn of thinking. And (what to M. de Voltaire is a
pleasant feature) it is Freethinking with ruffles to its shirt and rings
on its fingers;--never yet, the least, dreaming of the shirtless or
SANSCULOTTIC state that lies ahead for it! That is the palmy condition
of English Liberty, when M. de Voltaire arrives there.

"In a man just out of the Bastille on those terms, there is a mind
driven by hard suffering into seriousness, and provoked by indignant
comparisons and remembrances. As if you had elaborately ploughed and
pulverized the mind of this Voltaire to receive with its utmost avidity,
and strength of fertility, whatever seed England may have for it. That
was a notable conjuncture of a man with circumstances. The question,
Is this man to grow up a Court Poet; to do legitimate dramas, lampoons,
witty verses, and wild spiritual and practical magnificences, the like
never seen; Princes and Princesses recognizing him as plainly divine,
and keeping him tied by enchantments to that poor trade as his task in
life? is answered in the negative. No: and it is not quite to decorate
and comfort your 'dry dung-heap' of a world, or the fortunate cocks that
scratch on it, that the man Voltaire is here; but to shoot lightnings
into it, and set it ablaze one day! That was an important alternative;
truly of world-importance to the poor generations that now are; and
it was settled, in good part, by this voyage to England, as one may
surmise. Such is sometimes the use of a dissolute Rohan in this world;
for the gods make implements of all manner of things.

"M. de Voltaire (for we now drop the Arouet altogether, and never hear
of it more) came to England--when? Quitted England--when? Sorrow on
all fatuous Biographers, who spend their time not in laying permanent
foundation-stones, but in fencing with the wind!--I at last find
indisputably, it was in 1726 that he came to England: [Got out of
the Bastille, with orders to leave France, "29th April" of that year
(_OEuvres de Voltaire,_ i. 40 n.).] and he himself tells us that he
1728.' Spent, therefore, some two years there in al