lents, and all his long experience of the world, he had no more
self-command than a petted child or an hysterical woman. Whenever he was
mortified, he exhausted the whole rhetoric of anger and sorrow to
express his mortification. His torrents of bitter words, his stamping
and cursing, his grimaces and his tears of rage, were a rich feast to
those abject natures whose delight is in the agonies of powerful spirits
and in the abasement of immortal names. These creatures had now found
out a way of galling him to the very quick. In one walk, at least, it
had been admitted by envy itself that he was without a living
competitor. Since Racine had been laid among the great men whose dust
made the holy precinct of Port Royal holier, no tragic poet had appeared
who could contest the palm with the author of Zaire, of Alzire, and of
Merope. At length a rival was announced. Old Crebillon, who many years
before had obtained some theatrical success, and who had long been
forgotten, came forth from his garret in one of the meanest lanes near
the Rue St. Antoine, and was welcomed by the acclamations of envious men
of letters, and of a capricious populace. A thing called Catiline, which
he had written in his retirement, was acted with boundless applause. Of
this execrable piece it is sufficient to say that the plot turns on a
love affair, carried on in all the forms of Scudery, between Catiline,
whose confidant is the Praetor Lentulus, and Tullia, the daughter of
Cicero. The theatre resounded with acclamations. The king pensioned the
successful poet; and the coffee-houses pronounced that Voltaire was a
clever man, but that the real tragic inspiration, the celestial fire
which had glowed in Corneille and Racine, was to be found in Crebillon
alone.

The blow went to Voltaire's heart. Had his wisdom and fortitude been in
proportion to the fertility of his intellect, and to the brilliancy of
his wit, he would have seen that it was out of the power of all the
puffers and detractors in Europe to put Catiline above Zaire; but he had
none of the magnanimous patience with which Milton and Bentley left
their claims to the unerring judgment of time. He eagerly engaged in an
undignified competition with Crebillon, and produced a series of plays
on the same subjects which his rival had treated. These pieces were
coolly received. Angry with the court, angry with the capital, Voltaire
began to find pleasure in the prospect of exile. His attachment for
M