only when death set its seal on him that the voice of those whom he
had served so long proclaimed him "the man first in war, first in
peace, and first in the hearts of his fellow-countrymen."

JOHN MORLEY

Born in 1838; graduated from Oxford in 1859; editor of the
_Fortnightly Review_ in 1867, and of _The Pall Mall Gazette_
in 1880; elected to Parliament in 1883; made Chief Secretary
for Ireland in 1886, and again in 1892; made Secretary for
India in 1906; published "Edmund Burke" in 1867; "Voltaire"
in 1872; "Rousseau" in 1876; a "Life of Richard Cobden" in
1881; and a "Life of Gladstone" in 1904.

VOLTAIRE AS AN AUTHOR AND AS A MAN OF ACTION[63]

The man of letters, usually unable to conceive loftier services to
mankind or more attractive aims to persons of capacity than the
composition of books, has treated these pretensions of Voltaire with a
supercilious kind of censure, which teaches us nothing about Voltaire,
while it implies a particularly shallow idea alike of the position of
the mere literary life in the scale of things, and of the conditions
under which the best literary work is done. To have really contributed
in the humblest degree, for instance, to a peace between Prussia and
her enemies in 1759, would have been an immeasurably greater
performance for mankind than any given book which Voltaire could have
written. And, what is still better worth observing, Voltaire's books
would not have been the powers they were, but for this constant desire
of his to come into the closest contact with the practical affairs of
the world. He who has never left the life of a recluse, drawing an
income from the funds and living in a remote garden, constructing
past, present, and future, out of his own consciousness, is not
qualified either to lead mankind safely, or to think on the course of
human affairs correctly. Every page of Voltaire has the bracing air of
the life of the world in it, and the instinct which led him to seek
the society of the conspicuous actors on the great scene was
essentially a right one.

[Footnote 63: From "Voltaire."]

The book-writer takes good advantage of his opportunity to assure men
expressly or by implication that he is their true king, and that the
sacred bard is a mightier man than his hero. Voltaire knew better. Tho
himself perhaps the most puissant man of letters that ever lived, he
rated literature as it ought to be rated below acti