AND

USSEAU IN ENGIMD

J.CHURTON COLLINS

VOLTAIRE, MONTESQUIEU, AND
ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND

1

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v^OLTAIRE, MONTESQUIEU

AND

ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND

BY

J:^"CHURTON COLLINS

PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE
UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM

LONDON

EVELEIGH NASH, FAWSIDE HOUSE

1908

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PREFACE

This book is an attempt to sketch the history of
three singularly interesting episodes in the literary
relations between France and England, namely,
the visits of Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Rousseau,
during periods extending respectively from the
spring of 1726 to the spring of 1729, from the
autumn of 1729 to the spring or early summer of
1731, and from January 1766 to May 1767. It is
an attempt to supply what has not been supplied
elsewhere, or indeed treated in any other way
than occasionally and collaterally, by any previous
writer, so far at least as I know.

The volume has grown up by successive accre-
tions. The first sketch of the portion treating of
Voltaire's visit appeared in the form of two articles
in the Cornhill Magazine for 1882. In 1886 these
articles were greatly enlarged, and in their new
form appended to Bolingbroke : a Historical Study,
published in that year by Mr. John Murray. They
are now again revised and extended by the addition
of much new material collected since, and assume
here their final form. The first sketch of the

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vi PREFACE

portion dealing with Montesquieu appeared some
years ago in the form of an article in the Quarterly
Review, but that too is not printed as it there
appeared, but has been carefully revised and also
enlarged. So scanty, however, are the materials
which throw light on Montesquieu's residence here,
partly in consequence of the destruction of his
full notes on England, and partly from the un-
fortunate disappearance of his correspondence with
Chesterfield, that I regret I have not been able to
add very much of importance to what I wrote
before. I can only say that I have spared no
pains to acquire new material : what consolation
there may be lies in the probability that such
material does not exist. The portion dealing with
Rousseau appeared in its first form in the
Quarterly Review nearly ten years ago. But this
has been considerably revised and enlarged.

It remains for me now to thank those who have
in various ways assisted me. I must begin, I am
sorry to say, with acknowledging no indebted-
ness to Mr. Archibald Ballantyne's volume entitled
Voltaire's Visit to England, published by Messrs.
Smith Elder in 1893. I was obliged at the time
to point out, in justice to myself, that the work
simply appropriated, without one word of acknow-
ledgment, the whole of the material collected by me,

PREFACE vii

and embodied in my essay printed in 1886 ; nor has
Mr. Ballantyne added a single fact of importance
to what he found there. Had he done so I hope I
should have had the magnanimity to allow my grati-
tude for instruction to outweigh any little irritation
I may have felt at not being quite fairly treated.

But to turn from an unpleasant to a more pleasing
subject. To the great kindness of Mr. Henry Ruther-
ford I am indebted for two hitherto unpublished
letters of Voltaire written in English while he was
at Wandsworth, and for an unpublished letter of
Lord Peterborough's, throwing important light both
on Voltaire's movements just before he left England
and on his relations with Dr. Towne, an incident
in his English experiences till now unknown to
his numerous biographers ; to Mr. Forbes Sieve-
king for most generously allowing me the use of the
long and valuable letter printed in the Appendix,
the original of which is in his possession. To Sir
Maurice Boileau, of Ketteringham Park, Norfolk,
I must express my thanks for his most kindly
allowing the singularly interesting portrait of
Rousseau, now in his possession, painted for
David Hume by Wright of Derby in the spring
of 1766, to be photographed for reproduction here.
My other obligations to those who have, whether
as strangers or friends, assisted me with material

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viii PREFACE

or in research are duly recorded, as occasion
offers, in the notes.

I am well aware what a trifling contribution
this little volume is to the promotion of a branch
of study the significance and interest of which we
are only now beginning to understand, I mean the
solidarity of the humanities, and the mutual
influence which the chief literatures of Europe
have exercised on each other both in relation
to evolution and in relation to idiosyncrasies. It
is only by minute investigation, and by investi-
gation in detail, that real progress can be made
in such a study. At present it seems to be repre-
sented rather by abstract generalisations than by
generalisations based on facts ; but unless in such
inquiries the second precede the first there can be
small security for soundness and truth.

Nor is this all. The literary relations of Eng-
land and France have always been of peculiar
interest, and have at no time been more intimate
and influential than they are at the present moment.
Such ties can never be drawn too close, and happy
indeed should I be if I thought that this little
volume could contribute, however slightly, to
illustrate, from one point of view at least, the
propriety and desirableness of what is now finding
more important expression in the Entente Cor Male.

CONTENTS

PAGE

Voltaire in England ..... i

Montesquieu in England. .... 117

Rousseau in England ..... 182

IX

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VOLTAIRE, MONTESQUIEU, AND
ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND

VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND

The residence of Voltaire in England is an unwritten
chapter in the literary history of the eighteenth
century. And yet assuredly few episodes in that
history are so well worth attentive consideration.
In his own opinion it was the turning-point of his
career. In the opinion of Condorcet it was fraught
with consequences of momentous importance to
Europe and to humanity. What is certain is that
.t left its traces on almost everything which he
subsequently produced, either as the professed
disciple and interpreter of English teachers, or as
an independent inquirer. That visit, says Lanfrey,
comprised " les annees les plus fructueuses de sa
vie." ^ It penetrated his life. " L'exemple de

> 1 LEglise et les Philosophes au Dix-huitihne Sikle, p. 113.
I

2 VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND

; I'Angleterre/' says Condorcet, " lui montrait que
; la verite n'est pas faite pour rester un secret
entre les mains de quelques philosophes et d'un
petit nombre de gens du monde instruits, ou plutot
endoctrines par les philosophes." ^ And he con-
tinues : " Des ce moment Voltaire se sentit appele
a detruire les prejuges de toute espece, dont son
pays etait I'esclave." Its influence extended to
his poetry and to his criticism, to his work as a
historian and to his work as an essayist. Nor is
this all. The circumstances under which he sought
our protection ; his strange experiences among us ;
his relations with Pope, Swift, and Bolingbroke,
with the Court, with the aristocracy, with the
people ; the zeal and energy with which he studied
our manners, our government, our science, our
history, our literature ; his courageous attempts to
distinguish himself as a writer in English — all
combine to form one of the most interesting pass-
ages in his singularly interesting career.

But unfortunately no portion of Voltaire's
biography is involved in greater obscurity. " On
ignore," writes Charles Remusat, " a peu pres
quelle fut sa vie en Angleterre. Ces deux annees
sont une lacune dans son histoire. C'est un point

1 Vie de Voltaire. Prefixed to (Euvres Cofnpletes de Voltaire
vol. i. p. 202.

/

VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND 3

de sa biographic qui meriterait des recherches." *
Carlyje, who attempted in the third volume of his
Frederick the Great to throw some hght on it,
abandoned the task in impatient despair. Mere
inanity and darkness visible — such are his expres-
sions— reign, in all Voltaire's biographies, over this
period of his life. " Seek not to know it," he
exclaims ; " no man has inquired into it, probably
no competent man ever will." ^

It happened, however, that at the very time
Carlyle was thus expressing himself a very com-
petent man was engaged on the task. The re-
searches of Desnoiresterres succeeded in dispersing
a portion at least of the obscurity which hung
over Voltaire's movements during these mysterious

^ VAngleterre an XVIII. Steele, vol. i. p. 380.

^ Carlyle's own account {History of Frederick, book x. ch. ii.),
while leaving the general darkness visible, teems with blunders.
He confounds the Chevalier de Rohan-Chabot with the Due de
Rohan ; misdates the second fracas with the Chevalier ; represents
Voltaire's second imprisonment in the Bastille as lasting six months,
whereas it lasted just fifteen days ; calls Sir Everard Falkener,
Edward, and evidently knows nothing at all about him ; asserts that
\he Hettriade was published in 1726 instead of 1728; represents,
or appears to represent, Pope as having written the Essay 07i Man
three years before it was written ; says that Voltaire's visit to
England lasted some two years, whereas it lasted two years and
eight months; and actually states that Falkener and Bohngbroke
are " perhaps the only names that turn up in Voltaire's letters of
the English period." None of them very heinous offences, perhaps,
but what would Carlyle have said had anyone else been the offender?

4 VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND

years. He took immense pains to supply the
deficiencies of preceding biographers. Judging
rightly that all that could now be recovered could
be recovered only in scattered fragments, he dili-
gently collected such information as lay dispersed
in Voltaire's own correspondence and writings,
and in the correspondence and writings of those
with whom his eminent countryman had, when
in England, been brought into contact. Much has,
it is true, escaped him ; much which he has col-
lected he has not, perhaps, turned to the best
account ; but it is due to him — the fullest and the
most satisfactory of Voltaire's biographers — to
say that his chapter, '* Voltaire et la Societe An-
glaise," must form the basis of all future inquiries
into this episode in Voltaire's life. To higher praise
he is certainly not entitled. Some of Desnoire-
sterres' deficiencies are supplied by Mr. Parton,
whose Life of Voltaire appeared in two goodly
octavos in 1881. Mr. Parton has made one or two
unimportant additions to what was already known, '
but he has done little more. I gratefully acknow- I
ledge my obligations both to Desnoiresterres and 1
to Mr. Parton ; but these obligations are slight, j
The first point to be settled is the exact date ojf
his arrival in England, and that date can, I think/,
be determined with some certainty. On 29tlii

1

VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND 5

April (O.S.) 1726 an order arrived for his release
from the Bastille, on the understanding that he
would immediately quit Paris and not return
without express permission from the King, within
at least fifty leagues of that city.^ It was under-
stood, though not required, that he would leave for
England, as he had already announced his inten-
tion of doing so to the Minister of the Department
of Paris. ^ On 2nd May he was released from the
Bastille, and apparentlyon the same day was escorted
by a Government official, one Conde, to Calais.^
At all events, on May the 5th he was, as his letter
to Thieriot and his letter to Madame de Ferriole
prove, at Calais ; ^ and at Calais he remained for
some days, the guest of his friend Dunoquet, the
Treasurer of the troops. How long he remained at
Calais we cannot say, as no documents have as yet
been discovered which throw light on his move-
ments between the 6th of May and the beginning of
June. From his letter to Madame de Ferriole it

1 Maurepas to De Launay, governor of the Bastille, printed
in the Documents Biographiques. Voltaire, CEuvres Complies, vol.
i. p. 308.

"^CEuvres Completes, vol. xxx. pp. 157 and 158, these letters
being dated respectively 5th May and 6th May.

^ Histoire de la Detention des Phtiosophes, par J. Delort, vol. ii.

P- 34-

* And see the Letter to A. M***, Melanges, vol. i. p. 17.

6 VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND

certainly appears that he had no immediate inten-
tion of embarking. He asks her to send him news,
and to give him instructions, and tells her that he
is waiting to receive them. In all probability he
continued at Calais, not as he had originally in-
tended for four or five days, but for nearly five
weeks, that is to say from the 6th of May to the 8th
or gth of June. In any case, whatever his move-
ments may have been, it is difficult to suppose that
he left for England before the 8th or 9th of June
(N.S.), though this is, it is true, difficult to reconcile
with " le milieu du printemps," the time he himself
assigns for his landing at Greenwich.

He tells us himself that he disembarked near
Greenwich, and it is clear from the passage which
follows that he landed on the day of Greenwich
Fair. That fair was invariably held on Whit-
Monday, and Whit-Monday fell in 1726 on May the
30th (O.S.). Now, a reference to the Daily C our ant
for May the 30th shows that a mail arrived from
France on Sunday the 29th, which would be, of
course, according to the new style, loth June.
Supposing, therefore, that his visit at Calais was
protracted to five weeks after his letter to Madame
de Ferriole — and there is, as we have shown, no
reason for supposing that it was not — the time
would exactly tally. That he should have remained

VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND 7

on board till Monday morning need excite no sur-
prise. But there is other evidence in favour of
this date. In the remarkable passage^ in which he
describes what he saw on landing, he tells us that
the vessels in the river had spread their sails (de-
ploye leurs voiles), to do honour to the King and
Queen (in adding the name of the Queen he was
of course mistaken, as she was in confinement at
Ahlen), and he particularly notices the splendour
of the royal barge, the two rows of merchant-ships
covering a space of six miles, and the rich liveries
worn by the King's menials. We turn to the
London Gazette for Monday, May the 30th, and we
find that on that day, the King's birthday, the
rejoicings for which had been deferred from the
preceding Saturday, was " celebrated with the
usual demonstrations of public joy " ; and in the
British Gazetteer for Saturday, May the 21st, we
read that " great preparations are making for
celebrating the King's birthday," and that " the
King's menial servants are to be new clothed on
that occasion." It may therefore be fairly inferred
that Voltaire first set foot in England on Whit-
Monday, May the 30th, 1726.

It was already known in England that he had
been released from the Bastille, and that it was

1 Letter to A. M***, Melanges, vol. i. p. i8.

8 VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND

his intention to come to London.^ With character-
istic prudence he had induced the Comte de Mor-
ville, then Minister of Foreign Affairs^ to obtain
from Horatio Walpole, who had succeeded Stair
as Ambassador at Paris, a letter recommending
him to the notice and favour of the Duke of New-
castle. In accordance with Morville's request,
Walpole wrote as follows to Newcastle, 29th May
1726 —

" I hope you will excuse my recommending to
you, at the earnest instance of M. de Morville, M.
Voltaire, a poet, and a very ingenious one, who is
lately gone to England to print by subscription an
excellent poem called " Henry the Fourth." He
has been indeed in the Bastille, but not upon the
account of any State affair, but for a particular
quarrel with a private gentleman ; and therefore
I hope your Grace will readily give him your favour
and protection in promoting the subscription." ^

He wrote also on the same day, making the same
request to Bubb Dodington. Nor was this all.
He gave him also a letter of introduction to the

1 British, Journal iox 14th May 1726 : "On the 3rd instant M.
de Voltaire was released from the Bastille and conducted as far as
Calais, being allowed to go over into England, and forbid to come
within fifty leagues of the Court. "Tis said he will publish in
London a large edition of his famous poem of the League, whereof
we have only an imperfect copy."

2 Printed in the National Review for August 1892.

VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND 9

Comte, afterwards Marechal and Due de Broglie,
then French Ambassador in London, asking him
to present Voltaire to the members of the Enghsh
Cabinet.^

On the voyage he had been the prey of melan-
choly thoughts. He drew, in the bitterness of his
soul, a parallel between his own position and the
position in which his favourite hero once stood.
And his feelings found expression in verse —

"Je ne dois pas etre plus fortuiie
Que le Heros celebre sur ma vielle :
II fut proscrit, persecute, damne
Par les devots et leur douce sequelle.
En Angleterre il trouva du secours,
J'en vais chercher."^

But on landing he soon recovered his cheerful-
ness, and, throwing himself in a transport of joy
on the earth, he reverently saluted it.^ Many of

^ See the letter recently discovered by M. J. J. Jusserand
printed in the Appendix, and referred to infra, pp. 72-73.

2 Quoted in the Historical Memoirs of the author of the
Henriade (I'jjS), where the writer speaks of having seen these
verses in a letter in Voltaire's own handwriting, addressed to M.
Dumas d'Aiguebere; they have since been printed in the
Commentaire Historique, CEuvres Completes, Paris, 1883, where it
is stated that the poem ended with the couplet —

"Je n'ai pas le nez toume
A etre prophete en raon pays."

2 Duvernet, Vie de Voltaire, p. 64.

10 VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND

his countrymen have described their first impres-
sions of the land of Shakespeare and Newton, but
to none of them has it ever presented itself as it
presented itself to the fascinated eye of Voltaire.
Everything combined to fill the young exile with
delight and admiration. Though his health was
delicate, he was in exuberant spirits. It was a
cloudless day in the loveliest month of the English
year. A soft wind from the west — I am borrowing
his own glowing description — tempered the rays
of the hot spring sun, and disposed the heart to
joy. The Thames, rolling full and rapid, was in all
its glory ; and in all their glory, too, were the
stately trees which have now disappeared, but
which then fringed the river banks on both sides
for many miles. Nor was it nature only that was
keeping carnival. It was the anniversary of the
Great Fair, and it was the anniversary of the King's
birthday. The river between Greenwich and
London was one unbroken pageant. Farther than
the eye could see stretched, with every sail
crowded, two lines of merchant-ships drawn up
to salute the royal barge, which, preceded by
boats with bands of music, and followed by
wherries rowed by men in gorgeous liveries,
floated slowly past. Everywhere he could discern
the signs of prosperity and freedom. Loyal ac-

VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND ii

clamations rent the air, and Voltaire observed
with interest that a nation of freemen was a '
nation of dutiful subjects.

From the river he turned to the park, and,
curious to see English society in all its phases, he
spent the afternoon in observing what was going
on. He wandered up and down the park, question-
ing such holiday-makers as could understand him
about the races, and the arrangements for the races.
He admired the skill with which the young women
managed their horses, and was greatly struck with
the freshness and beauty of their complexions, the
neatness of their dress, and the graceful vivacity of
their movements. In the course of his rambles he
accidentally met some English merchants to whom
he had letters of introduction. By them he was
treated with great courtesy and kindness. They
lent him a horse, they provided him with refresh-
ments, and they placed him where both the park
and the river could be seen to most advantage.
While he was enjoying the fine view from the hill,
he perceived near him a Danish courier, who had, ^
like himself, just arrived in England. The man's
face, says Voltaire, was radiant with joy ; he be-
lieved himself to be in paradise, where the women
were always beautiful and animated, where the sky
was always clear, and where no one thought of any-

12 VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND

thing but pleasure. " And I," he adds, " was even
more enchanted than the Dane." ^

The same evening he was in London, in all
probability the guest of Bolingbroke, at his house
in Pall Mall, where he was, he tells us, presented to
some ladies of the Court, to whom he related his
experiences at Greenwich, taking it for granted
that they had been present at the festivities wit-
nessed by him. But he was soon undeceived. No
people of fashion, he was coldly informed, ever fre-
quented such scenes ; that he had mistaken for
ladies and gentlemen mere peasants, servant girls,
and apprentices tricked out in holiday attire, and
mounted on hacks hired for the day. He could, he
continues, scarcely believe his ears or conceal his
irritation from the lady who had had the charity
so cruelly to disenchant him. The next day his
introduction to society in England gave him a still
greater surprise. Entering a dirty, ill-furnished,
ill-served, and ill-lighted coffee-house, he found
several of the merchants who had treated him with
so much civility and cordiality at Greenwich the
day before. On accosting them, however, they did
not even recognise him, and a curt " Yes " or " No "
was all the response he got when he attempted to

^ Letter to A. M***, Melanges, vol. i. p. 17 seqq., CEuvres
Completes, vol. xxii. pp. 18-20.

V

VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND 13

converse with them.^ Thinking that he must have
inadvertently offended them, and observing also
that they were very depressed, he ventured boldly
to ask what was the matter and why they were so
miserable. Upon that one of them sullenly re-
marked that the wind was in the east, qit'll faisait
un vent d'esf. While he was speaking, one of their
friends came in and said with the greatest indiffer-
ence : " Molly cut her throat this morning ; her
lover found her dead in her room with a blood-
stained razor beside her." Though Molly was a
young, rich, and beautiful girl, and about to marry
the man who had found her dead, the news was
received with as much indifference as it was told.
Voltaire remained some time, he tells, in -mingled
astonishment and perplexity, till the effects of an ^
east wind on the temper and spirits of the English
people were explained to him. Under its spell,
gloom and wretchedness obtained everywhere.
During the months when it prevailed people hung
themselves by the dozen. Everyone was ill or in
despair : it was the curse and ruin of the island.
It was an east wind that beheaded Charles I., and
an east wind that dethroned James II. " And if,"

^ Pollnitz, writing in 1733, notices this same peculiarity of the
English, which he attributes to their reserved and melancholy
temper. Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 454.

14 VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND

added the Court doctor who told him all this,
"you have any favour to ask at Court, you will
never get it except when the wind is in the south
or west." 1

It is not unlikely that Voltaire's first host in
England was, as I have already conjectured,
Bolingbroke, who had a town house in Pall Mall.
His acquaintance with that distinguished man had
\ begun at La Source in the winter of 1721. Their
acquaintance had soon ripened into intimacy,
and though since then their personal intercourse
had been interrupted, they had exchanged letters.
At that time Bolingbroke was an exile ; he had
recently obtained a pardon, and was now settled
in England, where he divided his time between his
town house in Pall Mall and his country house at
Dawley. The friendship of Bolingbroke would
have been a sufficient passport to the most brilliant
literary circles in London, but as the connection of
Bolingbroke lay principally among the Tories, the

1 Letter to A. M***, Me/anges, vol. i. Making all allowance for
Voltaire's exaggeration, we find a curious corroboration of what he
here relates in one of Cesar de Saussure's letters, dated 29th May
1727. He not only speaks of the terrible frequency of suicide, but
says that he himself was attacked by the mania, which he attributes
not to the influence of the east wind, but to the denseness of the
atmosphere of London and the coal-smoke. See his letters, trans-
lated and edited by Madame van Muyden, pp. 197-199. So, too,
PoUnitz, Memoirs, vol. ii, pp. 459, 460.

VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND 15

young adventurer had taken the precaution, as
we have seen, to secure patrons among the Whigs.
The name of Bubb Dodington is now a synonym
for all that is vilest and most contemptible in the
trade of politics, but at the time of which we are
writing his few virtues were more prominent than
his many vices. His literary accomplishments, his
immense wealth, and his generous though not very
discriminating patronage of men of letters, had de-
servedly given him a high place among the Maece-
nases of his age. At his country seat in Dorset-
shire he loved to assemble the wits and poets of the
Opposition, the most distinguished of whom were
Thomson and Young — the one still busy with his
Seasons, the other slowly elaborating his brilliant
Satires. For his introduction to Dodington he was,
as we have seen, indebted to the English Ambassador
at Paris, Horace Walpole the elder, who had, at the
instigation of the Comte de Morville, written a letter
recommending him to the patronage of Dodington.
How fully he availed himself of these and of other
influential friends is proved by the fact that when
he quitted England in 1729 there was scarcely a
single person of distinction, either in letters or in
politics, with whom he was not personally ac-
quainted. But his most intimate associate was an
opulent English merchant who resided at Wands-

i6 VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND

worth, and whos^ name was Everard Falkener.
He had become acquainted with him in Paris, and
had jHTOimsed, should opportunity offer, to \'i5it
him in England.^ Falkener' s house he seems to
have regarded as his home, and of Falkener himself
he always speaks in terms of afiection and gratitude.
He dedicated Zaire to him ; he regularly corre-
sponded with him ; and to the end of his hfe he
loved to recall the happy days spent under his good
friend's hc^pitable roof at Wandsworth. Many
years afterwards, when he wished to express his
sense of the kindness he had received from King
Stanislaus, he described him " as a kind of Fal-
kener." Of Falkener few particulars have survived.
We know from Voltaire that he was subsequently
appointed Ambassador to Constantinople, that he
held some appointment in Flanders, and that he
was knighted. We gather from other sources that
he became secretary to the Duke of Cumberland,
and that he was one of the witnesses called on the
trial of Simon Lord Lovat in 1747. To this it may
be added that he became towards the end of George
the Second's reign one of the Postmasters-General ;
that in 1747* he married a daughter of General
Churchill ; and that he died at Bath, November

1 GoWfimdi's ''■ Liic of Voltaire," Misc^//. W^ki, iv. p. 20.
* GentUmaTii Ma^aziiu for Febnxary 1747.

VOLTAIRE IX ENGLAND 17

16, 1758.^ That Voltsdre should have delighted in
his society is not surprising, for though we know
httle of Falkener's character, we know enough to
understand its charm. *' I am here " — so runs a
passage in one of his letters, quoted by Voltaire in
his remarks upon Pascal — " just as you left me,
neither merrier nor sadder, nor richer nor poorer ;
enjoying perfect health, ha\-ing ever3thing that
renders life agreeable, without love, without avarice,
without ambition, and without en\y ; and as long
as all that lasts I shall call m\-self a ver\' happy
man." ^

To what extent \'oltaire was acquainted with
the En^hsh lans:ua5:e on his arrival at Greenwich
it is impossible to say. We can find no traces of
his ha\in^ been ens:a£:ed in stud\"in^ it before his
retirement subsequent to the caning he received
from the Chevalier de Rohan, at the beginning of
February 1726. If this was the case, what he
knew of om" lan^ua^e was what he had been able
to pick up in about three months. His progress
must have been unusuaiiy rapid, for he had not only
made himself understood at Greenwich Fair, but
on the foIIo\\ing day he had mingled familiarly
with tlie company at the cofltee-houses. It is, of

* Gemaemam's Jfj^^jsf for November 175s.
^ CEmots Cn^ieieSt Baacbot^ toL xrxrm. p. 46.

i8 VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND

course, possible that the conversation had on these
occasions been carried on in his native language.
Then, as now, large numbers of French refugees
had found a home in London. They had their own
places of worship ; they had their own coffee-
houses, the principal being the " Rainbow " in
Marylebone, and there was quite a colony of them
at Wandsworth. Then, as now, almost all edu-
cated Englishmen were conversant with the
language of Racine and Moliere. Regularly as
each season came round a Parisian company
appeared. At Court it was the usual mode of
communication. By 1728 its attainment was held
to be so essential a part of education that in the
October of that year a journal was started, the
professed object of which was to facilitate the
study of it.^ Indeed, wherever he went he would
encounter his countrymen, or Londoners who could
converse with him in the language of his country-
men. In Bolingbroke's house he would probably
hear little else, for Lady Bolingbroke scarcely ever
ventured to express herself in English ; and of
Falkener's proficiency in French we have abundant
proof. But among the cultivated Englishmen of
that day there was one remarkable exception, and

1 See the Flying Post or Weekly Medley, the first number of
which appeared on October 8^ 1728.

VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND 19

that was unfortunately in the case of a man with
whom Voltaire was most anxious to exchange
ideas. *' Pope," wrote Voltaire many years after-
wards, could hardly read French, and spoke not
" one syllable of our language." ^ Voltaire's desire
to meet Pope had no doubt been sharpened by the
flattering remarks which Pope had two years before
made about the Henriade, or, as it was then
entitled. La Ligue. A copy of the poem had
been forwarded to him from France by Boling-
broke, and to oblige Bolingbroke he had managed
to spell it out. The perusal had given him, he said,
a very favourable idea of the author, whom he
pronounced to be ** a bigot, but no heretic ; one
who knows authority and national sanctions
without prejudice to truth and charity ; in a
word, one worthy of that share of friendship and
intimacy with which you honour him." ^ These
complimentary remarks Bolingbroke had, it seems,
conveyed to Voltaire, and a correspondence appears
to have ensued between the two poets, though no

^ See Spence's Anecdotes (Singer, 8vo), p. 204, note, and
Voltaire, Lettres Fhilosophiques, xxii. : " Ce que je sais, ainsi que tous
les gens de lettres d'Angleterre, c'est que Pope, avec qui j'ai
beaucoup vecu, pouvait k peine lire le frangais, qu'il ne parlait pas
un mot de notre langage, qu'il n'a jamais dcrit une lettre en
frangais."

2 Letter to Bolingbroke, dated April 9, 1724.

20 VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND

traces of that correspondence are now to be
found. ^

Of his first interview with Pope three accounts
are now extant. The first is that given by Owen
Ruffhead, the substance of which is repeated by
Johnson in his hfe of Pope ; the second is that
given by Goldsmith, and the third is that given by
Duvernet. It will be well, perhaps, to let each
authority tell his own story.

" Mr. Pope," writes Owen Ruffhead, " told one
of his most intimate friends that the poet Voltaire
had got some recommendation to him when he
came to England, and that the first time he saw him
was at Twickenham, where he kept him to dinner.
Mrs. Pope, a most excellent woman, was then
alive, and observing that this stranger, who ap-
peared to be entirely emaciated, had no stomach,
she expressed her concern for his want of appetite,
on which Voltaire gave her so indelicate and brutal
an account of the occasion of his disorder, con-
tracted in Italy, that the poor lady was obliged
immediately to rise from the table. When Mr. Pope
related that, his friend asked him how he could
forbear ordering his servant John to thrust Voltaire
head and shoulders out of his house ? he replied,
that there was more ignorance in this conduct
than a purposed affront ; that Voltaire came into
England, as other foreigners do, on a prepossession

1 See Pope's letter to Caryl, dated December 25, 1725.

; 1-1

VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND 21

that not only all religion, but all common decency I
of morals, was lost among us." ^ v^

Next comes Goldsmith —

" M. Voltaire has often told his friends that he
never observed in himself such a succession of
opposite passions as he experienced upon his first
interview with Mr. Pope. When he first entered
the room and perceived our poor, melancholy poet,
naturally deformed and wasted as he was with
sickness and study, he could not help regarding
him with the utmost compassion ; but when Pope
began to speak and to reason upon moral obligations,
and dress the most delicate sentiments in the most
charming diction, Voltaire's pity began to be
changed into admiration, and at last even into envy.
It is not uncommon with him to assert that no
man ever pleased him so much in serious conversa-
tion, nor any whose sentiments mended so much
upon recollection." ^ "

It is difficult to reconcile these accounts with
the narrative of Duvernet, who, as he almost
certainly had his information from Thieriot, is an
authority of great weight —

" Dans leur premiere entrevue ils furent fort
embarrasses. Pope s'exprimait tres peniblement
en frangais, et Voltaire, n'etant point accoutume aux

^ Life of Pope, 4to, p. 156.

2 "Life of Voltaire," Miscella7ieous Works, vol. iv. p. 24.

22 VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND

sifflements de la langue anglaise, ne pouvait se
faire entendre. II se retira dans un village et ne
rentra dans Londres que lorsqu'il eut acquis une
grande facilite a s'exprimer en anglais." ^

This seems by far the most probable account.
It is certain that Voltaire devoted himself
with great assiduity to the systematic study
of English shortly after his arrival among us.
He provided himself with a regular teacher, who
probably assisted him not only in the composition
of his letters, which he now regularly wrote in
English, but in the composition of his two famous
essays.^ He obtained also an introduction to Colley
Cibber, and regularly attended the theatres, follow-
ing the play in a printed copy.^

His studies were, however, interrupted by his
suddenly leaving England for France — an ex-
pedition attended with considerable peril, and
conducted with the utmost secrecy. The par-
ticulars of this journey are involved in great
obscurity. That he undertook it with the object
of inducing the Chevalier de Rohan to give him
an opportunity of avenging his wounded honour —
that for some time, at least, he remained disguised

1 Vie de Voltaire, p. 65.

2 La Voltairomanie, pp. 46, 47.

3 Chetwood's History of the Stage, p. 46.

/

VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND 23

in Paris, not venturing to have an interview with
any friend or with any relative — is clear from his
letter to Thieriot dated August 12, 1726/ and
written evidently from some place of concealment
in or near Paris. For some time he was doubtful,
he writes, whether he would again return to England,
much as he appreciated the advantages of living
in a country where thought was so nobly free, v
where all the arts were honoured and rewarded, |
and where, though there were differences in rank,|
the only other differences recognised were those
determined by merit./ If, he continued, he followed
inclination, he would certainly take up his abode
there and devote himself to study and thought.
But his health was bad and his means were small,
and he doubted whether either would admit of
his plunging into the excitement and hubbub of
London and Whitehall. He was not, however, long
in making up his mind, and " at the latter end
of July" he was again in England, "very much
dissatisfied " with his secret voyage into France,
which had been both^^successful and expensive.^
That he was at Wandsworth a month after this
is proved by a letter to Mademoiselle Bessieres,
dated October the 15th, in which he speaks of

1 CEuvres Completes, vol. xxxiii. p. 159.

2 See letter to Thieriot in Appendix,

24 VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND

himself as having been for two months in retire-
ment.

He arrived in England in a state of abject depres-
sion, and this depression was aggravated by ill-
health and the cross accidents of fortune. He had
brought with him a bill of exchange of the value
of "eight or nine French livres, reckoning all," and
this bill — as he was not in immediate need of money
— he had neglected to present. On presenting it
to the man on whom it had been drawn — one
D' Acosta, or, as he calls him in his letter to Thieriot,
" Medina," a Jew — the man informed him that
three days before he had become bankrupt, and
the money was lost. Voltaire's misfortune, how-
ever, happening to reach the ears of an English
gentleman, the gentleman good-naturedly sent
him a sum which is not specified, but which pro-
bably relieved him from pressing embarrassment.
It has been conjectured that this " gentleman "
was the King, and as in the letter informing Thieriot
of the fact he had said '' all that is king or belongs
to a king frights my republican philosophy, I
won't drink the least draught of slavery in the
land of liberty," it is not surprising that Voltaire
was unwilling to indicate the source of this timely
charity. In the Preface to the Henriade in the
edition of Voltaire's CBuvres Diverses, published in

VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND 25

1746, it is distinctly stated that the King, hearing of
the straits in which he was, sent him " deux mille
ecus." ^ The account which Voltaire gives of his
position at this time is so interesting and vivid that
it had better be described in his own words.

" I was without a penny, sick to death of a
violent ague, a stranger, alone, helpless in the midst
of a city wherein I was known to nobody. My Lord
and my Lady Bolingbroke were in the country. I
could not make bold to see our Ambassador in so
wretched a condition. I had never undergone such
distress. But I am born to run through all the
misfortunes of life." "

But what affected him most was a calamity to
which in this letter he does not refer, the news of
the death of his sister, Madame Mignot, the wife 'Tv
of M. Mignot, Correct eur de la Chambre des
Comptes. This threw him into an agony of
grief. There is nothing in Voltaire's voluminous
correspondence so touching as the letter in which
his feehngs on this sad occasion found vent. It
was addressed to Mademoiselle Bessieres, the lady
who had informed him of her death. It is dated
" Wandsworth, October 15, 1726." He describes
himself as acquainted only with the sorrows of

1 See CEuvres Completes, vol. viii. p. 5.

2 See letter printed in the Appendix.

26 VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND

life ; he is dead, he says, to everything but the
affection he owes to his correspondent. He refers
bitterly to the " retraite ignoree " from which he
writes, and he says it would have been far better,
both for his relatives and himself, had death removed
him instead of his sister. " Les amertumes et les
souffrances " — so run his gloomy reflections — " qui
en ont marque presque tons les jours ont ete souvent
mon ouvrage. Je sens le peu que je vaux ; mes
faiblesses me font pitie et mes fautes me font
horreur." On the following day he wrote in a
similar strain to Madame de Bernieres.

" Cetait a ma soeur a vivre, et a moi a mourir ;
c'est une meprise de la destinee. Je suis doulour-
eusement afflige de sa perte ; vous connaissez mon
coeur, vous savez que j 'avals de I'amitie pour elle.
Je croyais bien que se serait elle qui porterait le
deuil pour moi."

He was in deep distress, too, at the cruelty
and injustice with which he had been treated
by his brother ; and to this distress he subse-
quently gave passionate utterance in a letter
to Thieriot.^ But neither depression nor sorrow
ever held long dominion over that buoyant and
volatile spirit. On the very day on which he was

^ See letter dated "Wandsworth, June 14, 1727," CEuvres Com-
pletes (ed. 1880), vol. xxxiii. p. 172.

VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND 27

thus mournfully expressing himself to Madame de
Bernieres, he was, in another letter, dilating with
enthusiasm on the beauties of Pope's poetry.

*' I look upon his poem called the Essay on
Criticism as superior to the Art of Poetry of
Horace, and his Rape of the Lock is, in my
opinion, above the Lutrin of Despreaux. I never
saw so amiable an imagination, so gentle graces,
so great variety, so much wit, and so refined know-
ledge of the world, as in this little performance." ^

Of his movements during the autumn of 1726 we
know little beyond what may be gathered or de-
duced from his letter to Thieriot, namely, that he
was living with Falkener and his family at Wands-
worth. " I lead," he writes, " an obscure and
charming life . . . without going to London, and
quite given over to the pleasures of indolence and
of friendship. The true and generous affection of
this man who soothes the bitterness of my life
brings me to love you more and more." Of the
liberality and kindness of Bolingbroke and Lady
Bolingbroke he speaks with equal enthusiasm. " I
have found their affection still the same, even
increased in proportion to my unhappiness. They
offered me all their money and their house ; but,"
he adds, in the true spirit of Swift, " I refused all

^ Letter to Thieriot, printed in Appendix.

28 VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND

because they are lords, and I have accepted all
from Mr. Falkener because he is a single gentle-
man." ^ He was engaged in close study, and saw
little society. He instructs his correspondents in
France to direct their letters to the care of Lord
Bolingbroke ; but he was evidently not ii;! regular
communication with Bolingbroke, or with any
member of the Twickenham circle. This is proved
by the fact that he knew nothing of the serious
accident by which Pope was in peril of his life (he
had been overturned in a coach and nearly drowned
while on his way from visiting a friend) ^ until two
months after it had happened, as his letter to
Pope, dated November the i6th, shows. Another
letter,^ too — a letter undated, but evidently be-
longing to this period and written in English —
addressed to John Brinsden,^ Bolingbroke's sec-
retary, points to the same conclusion. On Friday,
November i6, he was undoubtedly at Bolingbroke's
house, for the letter addressed by him to Pope on
that day is dated from BoHngbroke's. As it is very
characteristic of Voltaire, it may be here inserted —

1 See Letter to Thieriot in Appendix.

2 See for an account of tiiis accident, which occurred in
September 1726, Johnson's Life of Pope, Lives (ed. Cunningham),
vol. iii. p. 51.

^ Preserved in Collet's Relics of Literature, p. 70.
* Printed in Appendix.

VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND 29

" Sir, — I hear this moment of your sad adven-
ture. The water you fell into was not Hippocrene's
water, otherwise it would have supported you ;
indeed, I am concerned beyond expression for the
danger you have been in, and more for your wounds.
Is it possible that those fingers which have written
The Rape of the Lock, the Criticism, and which have
so becomingly dressed Homer in an English coat,
should have been so barbarously treated ? Let
the hand of Dennis or of your poetasters be cut off ;
yours is sacred. I hope, sir, you are now perfectly
recovered. Really, your accident concerns me as
much as all the disasters of a master ought to
affect his scholar. I am sincerely. Sir, with the
admiration which you deserve. Your most humble
servant, Voltaire.

((

In my Lord Bolingbroke's house, Friday, at
noon. November 16, 1726."

Very little, however, of the following year
was spent in retirement, for we find traces of him
in many places. His attenuated figure and eager,
haggard face grew familiar to the frequenters of
fashionable society. He passed three months at
the seat of Lord Peterborough, where he became
intimate with Swift, ^ who was a fellow- visitor.

1 See a very interesting extract from an MS. journal kept by a
Major Broome, who visited Voltaire in 1765, and who heard this
and other particulars from Voltaire himself. It is printed in Notes
and Queries (first series), vol. x. p. 403.

30 VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND

It appears also that he visited and received much
kindness from Lord Bathurst.^ At Bubb Dod-
ington's mansion, at Eastbury, he met Young,
who had not as yet taken orders, but was seeking
fortune as a hanger-on at great houses. It was a
curious chance which brought together the future
author of the Night Thoughts and the future author
of La Pucelle ; it was still a more curious circum-
stance that they should have formed a friend-
ship which remained unbroken when the one had
become the most rigid of Christian divines, and the
other the most daring of anti-Christian propagan-
dists. Many years afterwards, Young dedicated to
him in very flattering terms one of the most pleas-
ing of his minor poems — the Sea Piece.

At Eastbury occurred a well-known incident.
A discussion had arisen as to the merits of Paradise
Lost. Young spoke in praise of his favourite poet ;
Voltaire, who had as little sympathy with Milton
as he had with iEschylus and Dante, objected to
the episode of Sin and Death, contending that as
they were abstractions it was absurd to assign
them offices proper only to concrete beings. These

^ See Roberts' Life of Hannah More, vol. i. p. 399. Hannah
More to her sister, sending two original letters of Voltaire's in
English, given her by the Lord Chancellor Bathurst, Bathurst's
second son. These I cannot trace.

VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND 31

objections he enforced with his usual eloquence
and sarcastic wit. The parallel between the hungry
monster of Milton, ' grinning horrible ' its ' ghastly
smile/ and the meagre form of the speaker — his
thin face lighted up, as it always was in conversa-
tion, with that peculiar sardonic smile familiar to
us from his portraits — was irresistible. And Young
closed the argument with an epigram (I quote
Herbert Croft's version) —

"You are so witty, profligate, and thin,
At once we think thee Milton, Death, and Sin."

It appears, however, from Young's poem, in which
he plainly refers to this conversation, that he
succeeded in impressing on his friendly opponent
" that Milton's blindness lay not in his song."

"On Dorset downs, when Milton's page,

With Sin and Death, provok'd Thy rage.
Thy rage provok'd, who sooth'd with gentle rhymes?

Who kindly couch'd the censure's eye.

And gave thee clearly to descry
Sound judgment giving law to fancy strong?

Who half-inclin'd thee to confess.

Nor could thy modesty do less.
That Milton's blindness lay not in his song?"

A letter written about this time to a friend

in France, probably M. Dussol, dated by the

editors — but dated wrongly — 1726, is a sufficient

\ proof that the young exile was no longer either

•u

32 VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND

discontented or unhappy. " You, who are a
perfect Briton," — thus the letter runs — " should
cross the Channel and come to us. I assure you
that a man of your temper would not dislike a
country where one obeys to (sic) the laws only,
and to one's whims. Reason is free here, and
walks her own way. Hypochondriacs are especi-
ally welcome. No manner of living appears strange.
We have men who walk six miles a day for their
health, feed upon roots, never taste flesh, wear a
coat in winter thinner than your ladies do in the
hottest days : all that is accounted a particular
reason, but taxed with folly by nobody." ^

In March he was present at the funeral of Sir
Isaac Newton. It was a spectacle which made a
profound impression on him, and he ever after-
wards delighted to recall how he had once been the
denizen of a country in which the first officers of
the State contended for the honour of support-
ing the pall of a man whose sole distinction
lay in intellectual eminence. How differently,
he thought, would the author of the Principia
have fared in Paris. He subsequently made the

^ Correspondance, CEiivres Completes, xxxiii. 163. That this is
wrongly dated 1726 by the editor is certain, for in it Voltaire refers
to his Essay on the Civil Wars of France published towards the
end of 1727.

VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND 33

acquaintance of the philosopher's niece, Mrs,
Conduit, and of the physician and surgeon who
attended him in his last moments ; from them he
learned many interesting particulars. It is per-
haps worth mentioning that we owe to Voltaire the
famous story of the falling apple.

The history of the preservation of this anecdote
is interesting, and it may be well perhaps for me
to justify what I have asserted, that we owe the
tradition of it to Voltaire. It is not, so far as I can
discover, to be found in any publication antecedent
to the Lettres sur les Anglais. It is not men-
tioned by Newton's friend Whiston in his Sir
Isaac Newton's Mathematical Philosophy more
easily Demonstrated, published in 1716. Nor is
it mentioned by Fontenelle in his Eloge of Newton
delivered in 1727, and inserted in the following
year in the Histoire de l' Academic des Sciences,
nor in the Life of Sir Isaac Newton, published
in London in 1728. It is not recorded by Henry
Pemberton in his View of Newton's Philosophy ,
1708, though Pemberton does record that Newton
was sitting in a garden when the first notion of
his great theory occurred to him. Pemberton's
words are : " The first thoughts which gave rise
to his Principia he had when he retired from
Cambridge in 1666 on account of the Plague. As

34 VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND

he sate alone in a garden, he fell into a speculation
on the power of gravity." It would seem, too,
that the story was not known to Newton's intimate
friend. Dr. Stukely, for Stukely says nothing about
it in his long letter to Dr. Mead (printed in Turner's
Collections for the History of Grantham), written
just after the philosopher's death, and containing
many particulars about Newton's life and studies.
But it was apparently known to Martin Folkes,
then Fellow, and subsequently President of the
Royal Society, and by him communicated to
Robert Green, who, in his *' Miscellanea Qusedam
Philosophica," appended to his Principles of the
Philosophy of the Expansive and Constructive
Forces, published in 1727, thus obscurely, or
rather enigmaticall}^, alludes to it (p. 972) : " Quae
sententia — i.e., the doctrine of gravitation —
originem duxit, uti omnis, ut fertur, cognitio nostra,
a Pomo ; id quod accepi ab ingeniosissimo at
doctissimo viro . . . Martino Folkes Armigero
Regiae vero Societatis socio meritissimo." But it
was first recorded in the form in which Voltaire
gives it by John Conduit, a very intimate friend
of Newton, and the husband of his niece, who in
1727 drew up a number of notes containing par-
ticulars of Newton's life for the use of Fontenelle,
then engaged in preparing his Eloge. Fontenelle,

VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND 35

however, made no use of the anecdote, and Conduit's
notes remained in manuscript till 1806, when they
were printed by Edmund Turner in his Collections
for the History of Grantham (p. 160). Conduit's
words are : "In the year 1665, when he retired
to his own estate on account of the Plague, he
first thought of his system of gravitation, which
he did upon observing an apple fall from a tree."
Voltaire's first account is in the fifteenth of the
Lettres sur les Anglais, published in 1733, or
possibly earlier, and it runs thus : " S'etant retire
en 1666 a la campagne pres de Cambridge, un jour
qu'il se promenait dans son jardin et qu'il voyait
des fruits tomber d'un arbre, il se laissa aller a une
meditation profonde sur cette pesanteur, dont tons
les philosophes ont cherche si longtemps la cause
en vain." Relating the anecdote afterwards in his
Elements de la Philosophic de Newton, part iii,
chap, iii., he gives his authority : " Un jour en
I'annee 1666 Newton retira a la campagne, et
voyant tomber des fruits d'un arbre, h ce que m'a
conU sa niece Madame Conduit, se laissa aller," etc.
It is satisfactory, therefore, to know that the
anecdote rests on the best authority, that, namely,
of Newton's favourite disciple and of the niece who
lived with him, as it is interesting to know that
Voltaire was the first to give it to the world.

36 VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND

In the course of this year, 1727, Voltaire met
Gay, who showed him the Beggars' Opera before it
appeared on the stage ; ^ and it was probably also in
the course of this year that he paid his memor-
able visit to Congreve. His admiration of the most
brilliant of the comic poets of the Restoration is
sufficiently indicated in the Lettres PJiilosophiques ,
and that admiration he lost no time in personally
expressing. But Congreve, whose temper was prob-
ably not improved by gout and blindness, and who
was irritated perhaps by the ebullience of his young
admirer, affected to regard literary distinction as a
trifle. " I beg," he said, " that you will look upon
me, not as an author, but as a gentleman."
** If," replied Voltaire, disgusted with his foppery,
** you had had the misfortune to be simply a
gentleman, I should not have troubled myself to
wait upon you" ; and in telling the story he adds
that he was very much disgusted at such an un-
seasonable piece of vanity (je fus tres cheque de
cette vanite si mal placee).^

To Congreve he probably owed his introduction
to the Dowager Duchess of Marlborough, who not

1 MS. letter written by a Major Broome, who visited Voltaire in
1765 ; printed in Notes and Queries (first series), vol. x. p. 403.

2 Lettres Philosophiques XIX., CEuvres Completes, xxii. 161. The
anecdote, though it appears in the English version of these letters
published in 1733, was suppressed in the French edition of 1739.

VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND 37

only communicated to him some interesting
particulars which he afterwards wove into his
Steele de Louis XIV., and into his History of Charles
XII., but is said to have solicited his assistance in
drawing up her Memoirs. This task he at first
consented to undertake. The Duchess laid the
papers before him, and issued her instructions.
Finding, however, that he was to write not as
unbiased historical justice required, but as her
Grace's capricious prejudices dictated, he ventured
to expostulate. Upon that her manner suddenly
changed. Flying into a passion, she snatched the
papers from him, muttering : " I thought the man
had sense ; but I find him, at bottom, either a
fool or a philosopher." The story is told by
Goldsmith; it would be interesting to know on
what authority .1

Another story, resting, it is true, on no very
satisfactory testimony, but in itself so intrinsically
probable that we are inclined to believe it genuine,
is related by Desnoiresterres. Voltaire, hearing
that the Duchess was engaged in preparing her
Memoirs for publication, ventured to ask if he
might be permitted to glance at the manuscript.
" You must wait a little," she said, "for I am
revising it " ; coolly observing that the conduct

1 " Life of Voltaire," Miscellaneous Works, iv. p, 25.

38 VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND

of the Government had so disgusted her that she
had determined to recast the character of Queen
Anne, "as I have/' she added, " since these
creatures have been our rulers, come to love her
again." Pope's Atossa was assuredly no caricature,
and a better commentary on it it would be im-
possible to find.

Like most of his countrymen, Voltaire appears

f to have been greatly struck with the beauty of the

i English women, and about this time he became

} acquainted with one whose charms have been more

frequently celebrated than those of any other

woman of that age. Voltaire was one of the

thousand adorers of Molly Lepel, then the wife of

Lord Hervey. To her he addressed a copy of

verses, which are interesting as being the only

verses now extant composed by him in English.

Their intrinsic merit is not, it must be admitted,

of a high order, but as a literary curiosity they

will bear repetition —

"Hervey, would you know the passion
You have kindled in my breast?
Trifling is the inclination

That by words can be express'd.

In my silence see the lover —

True love is best by silence known ;

In my eyes you'll best discover
All the power of your own."

VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND 39

A curious fortune attended these verses. The}^
were subsequently transcribed and addressed to a
lady named Laura Harley — the wife of a London
merchant — by one of her gallants, and they formed
part of the evidence on which her husband grounded
his claim for a divorce.^ This has misled Mr.
Parton, who supposes that Voltaire wrote them,
not in honour of Lady Hervey, but in honour of
poor Mr. Harley' s erring wife. That they awoke
no jealousy in Lord Hervey is proved by Voltaire's
letter to Thieriot, dated April 1732, and by a letter
he addressed to Hervey himself in 1740. But the
beautiful wife of Lord Hervey was not the only
lady distinguished by the admiration of Voltaire.
He has spoken in rapturous terms of the graces
and accomplishments of Lady Bolingbroke, for
whom he finds a place in his Steele de Louis XIV .,
and an unpublished letter in the British Museum
shows that he had paid assiduous court to Lady
Sundon, who had evidently not been insensible to
his flattery.'^

And now we come to a very curious story, a
story which is related in detail by Ruffhead, and

^ This circumstance is mentioned by Chateauneuf in his Les
Divorces Anglais, vol. i. pp. xxxv., xxxvi., "Notions Prdliminaires,"
and is discussed by Desnoiresterres, La Jeunesse de Voltaire, p. 387.

- Brit. Mus. Add. MSS., 20,105.

40 VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND

has been repeated by Johnson. It had long been
suspected by Pope and Bohngbroke that Voltaire
was playing a double part ; in other words, that
he had formed a secret alliance with the Court
party, and was acting as their spy. Their sus-
picion was soon confirmed. In February 1727
appeared the third of a series of letters in which
the character and policy of Walpole were very
severely handled. The letter was written with
unusual energy and skill ; it attracted much at-
tention, and Walpole' s friends were anxious to
discover the author. While it was still the theme
of conversation Voltaire came to Twickenham, and
asked Pope if he could tell him who wrote it.
Pope, seeing his object, and wishing to prove
him, informed him in the strictest confidence
that he was himself the author of it, "and," he
added, " I trust to your honour as a gentleman,
Mr. Voltaire, that you will communicate this
secret to no living soul." The letter had really
been written by Bolingbroke, and bore in truth no
traces of Pope's style ; but the next day every
one at Court was speaking of it as Pope's com-
position, and Voltaire's treachery was manifest.
To this Bolingbroke apparently refers in a letter
to Swift (May the i8th, 1727) : " I would have you
insinuate that the only reason Walpole can have

VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND 41

to ascribe them [i.e., the occasional letters just
alluded to) to a particular person is the authority
of one of his spies, who wriggles himself into the
company of those who neither love, esteem, nor
fear the Minister, that he may report, not what he
hears, since no man speaks with any freedom
before him, but what he guesses." Conduct so
scandalous as this ought not to be lightly imputed
to any man, and it would be satisfactory to know
that Voltaire had either been traduced or mis-
represented. It is not likely, however, that the
story was invented by Warburton, from whom
Ruffhead almost certainly obtained it, and there is,
moreover, strong presumptive evidence in its favour.
Voltaire had undoubtedly been meddhng with the
matter, for in a letter to Thieriot, dated May 27,
1727, he says : " Do not talk of the Occasional
Writer. Do not say that it is not of my Lord
Bohngbroke. Do not say that it is a wretched
performance. You cannot be judge." It is certain
that he twice received money from the Court ; it
is certain that he visited Walpole, and that he
sought every opportunity to ingratiate himself with
the King and with the King's friends. It is clear
that neither Pope nor any member of Pope's circle
had much confidence in him. Bohngbroke has,
indeed, expressly declared that he believed him

V

42 VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND

capable of double-dealing and insincerity/ and
what Bolingbroke observed in him was observed
also by Young. ^ Nor was such conduct at all out
of keeping with the general tenor of Voltaire's
behaviour during his residence among us. That
traditions little creditable to him had wide circula-
tion is certain from Burigny's letter to the Abbe
Mercier.

" M. de Saint - Hyacinthe m'a dit et repete
plusieurs fois que M. de Voltaire se conduisit tres-
irregulierement en Angleterre : qu'il s'y est fait
beaucoup d'ennemis, par des procedes qui n'accor-
daient pas avec les principes d'une morale exacte :
il est m6me entre avec moi dans des details que je
ne rapporterai point, parce qu'ils peuvent avoir
ete exageres.

y> 3

This may, however, have had reference not to his
supposed treachery in the affair of the letters, but to
the scandals immediately preceding his departure
from England. Throughout his aims were purely
selfish, and to attain his ends he resorted to means
which no man of an honest and independent spirit
would have stopped to use. It would perhaps be

1 See his Letter to Madame de Ferriole, dated December 1725 ;
Lettres Historiques^ vol. iii. p. 274.

2 Spence's Anecdotes, p. 285.

^ Histoire Fosthume de Voltaire ; CEuvns Computes, vol. i.
p. 467.

VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND 43

unduly harsh to describe him as a parasite and a v
sycophant ; but it is nevertheless true that he too /
often figures in a character closely bordering on
both. His correspondence — and his conversation/
no doubt resembled his correspondence — is almost I
sickening. His compliments are so fulsome, his U
flattery so exaggerated, that they might excusably /
be mistaken for elaborate irony. He seems to i
be always on his knees. There was scarcely a
distinguished man then living in England who had
not been the object of this nauseous homage. He
pours it indiscriminately on Pope, Swift, Gay, ^ ■
Clarke, on half the Cabinet and on half the peerage.
In a man of this character falsehood and hypocrisy
are of the very essence of his composition. There
is nothing, however base, to which he will not
stoop ; there is no law in the code of social honour
which he is not capable of violating.* The fact
that he continued to remain on friendly terms with
Pope and Bolingbroke can scarcely be alleged as a
proof of his innocence, for neither Pope nor Boling-
broke would, for such an offence, have been likely to
quarrel with a man in a position so peculiar as that of
Voltaire. His flattery was pleasant, and his flattery,

1 For a characteristic illustration of Voltaire's duplicity and
meanness in social life, see Horace Walpole's " Short Notes of my /
Life," printed in Horace Walpole's Letters (ed. Mrs. Toynbee, vol. i.).

44 VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND

as they well knew, might some day be worth having.
No injuries are so readily overlooked as those
which affect neither men's purses nor men's vanity.
Another disagreeable trait in Voltaire's social
y character was the gross impropriety of his con-
versation, even in the presence of those whose age
and sex should have been sufficient protection
from such annoyance. In one of his visits to
Pope, his talk was, as has been already mentioned,
so offensive that it absolutely drove Mrs. Pope out
of the room.^

II

Towards the end of January 1727 he was
presented at Court, as was duly recorded in the
Daily Journal of January 27, 1727. *' Last week,
M. Voltaire, the famous French poet, was introduced
to his Majesty, who received him very graciously."
Some nine years before he had sent the King a copy
of his (Edipe, accompanying the presentation with
a poem, before which, though written in all serious-
ness, the irony of Pope's adaptation of Horace's
Epistle to Augustus must pale.

"Toi que la France admire autant que I'Angleterre " —

so runs the ludicrous flattery —

^ Johnson's Life of Pope; Ruff head's Life of Pope.

VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND 45

" Qui de I'Europe en feu balances les destins :
Toi qui cheris la paix dans le sein de la guerre,
Et qui n'es arme du tonnerre
Que pour le bonheur des humains;
Grand roi, des rives de la Seine
J'ose te presenter ces tragiques essais.

Un veritable roi sait porter sa puissance
Plus loin que ses Etats renferm^s par les mers :
Tu regnes sur I'Anglais par le droit de naissance,
Par tes vertus, sur I'univers."

That the King had made some return for the
young poet's flattery seems clear from a letter
written by Voltaire to Lord Stair, then our
ambassador at Paris, dated 20th June 1719, and
from a reference in a letter of Craggs' to Stair in
the September of the same year. It seems to have
taken the form of a beautiful watch ; ^ possibly it
may, in addition, have taken a more substantial
form also. But if Voltaire took care to do what
he could to ingratiate himself with the King, he
was equally careful to ingratiate himself with the
Prince and Princess of Wales, who presided over

1 Both these letters are printed in Graham's Annals and Corre-
spondence of the First and Second Earls of Stair ^ vol, ii. p. 128. "I
beg you, milord, to add to all your favours by sending to my father's
house the beautiful watch which you showed me. A letter will
charm him, and he will be delighted if the presents which the King
of England deigns to make me pass through his hands." The
passage in Cragg's letter is : "I might add, that they owe us a favour
of this nature for that which his Majesty did to M. Voltaire " {ibid.,
ii. 404)-

46 VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND

an opposition Court which might at any moment
become the reigning one. Accordingly Lady
Bolingbroke wrote to Mrs. Howard, afterwards
Countess of Suffolk, soliciting her patronage for
Voltaire, and asking her to present from him to
the Princess Caroline a copy of one of his tragedies.

iC

' Vous aimez I'esprit et le merite et vous este plus
capable d'en juger que personne. Acorde done je
vous prie vostre protection au seul poete frangois
que nous ayons a present et ayez la bonte de
presenter a S.A.R. madame la princesse une
tragedie qu'il vient de faire imprimer, et dont il
a pris la liberte de lui destiner cet exemplaire." ^

The letter is dated Cramfort (Cranford) " ce
dimanche," but neither the month nor the year is
indicated. The reference to the Princess shows that
it must have been written before the death of
George I. For the patronage of the Princess of
Wales he was indebted to Chesterfield.^

Nor was Mrs. Howard the only Court favourite
whose patronage he sought. A letter written by
him after his return to Paris in April 1729 shows
that he had received much kindness from Mrs.
Clayton, afterwards Lady Sundon. It is dated
Paris, i8th April 1729.

1 Brit. Mus. Add. MSS., 22,627, fol- 75-

2 Maty's Memoirs of Chesterfield, vol. i. p. 42.

VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND 47

" Madam, — Tho' I am out of London the favours
your ladyship has honoured me with are not, nor
will ever be, out of my memory. I'll remember
as long as J live, that the most respectable lady who
waits and is a friend of the most truly great queen
in the world, has vouchsafed to protect me and
receive me with kindness while J was at London.
I am just now arrived at paris, and J pay my
respects to your Court before I see our own. I
wish, for the honour of Versailles and for the improve-
ment of virtue and letters, we could have some
Ladyes like you. You see, my wishes are un-
bounded ; so is the respect and the gratitude J
am with, Madam, Your most humble obedient
servant, Voltaire." ^

On loth June 1727, George i. died, and the opposi-
tion Court became the reigning one. Of the events
immediately succeeding the King's death, the acces-
sion and coronation of George II. and the great
political excitement consequent on the inauguration
of a new reign, Voltaire says nothing in his corre-
spondence. In a letter written to Thieriot a few
days after the news of the King's death had arrived,
he makes no reference whatever to what must have
been engaging everyone's attention in London.^

I Brit. Mus. Add. MSS., 20,105.

' That Voltaire should apparently have known nothing about
Coronation, and taken no part in the festivities, is the more
arkable because one of his countrymen, C^sar de Saussure, then

\

48 VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND

Meanwhile he was dihgently collecting materials
which were afterwards embodied in his Lettres
Philosophiques , his Didiomiaire Philosophique, his
Siecle de Louis XIV., and his Histoire de Charles XII.
First he investigated the history and tenets of the
Quakers. With this object he sought the acquaint-
ance of Andrew Pitt, " one of the most eminent
Quakers in England, who, having traded thirty
years, had the wisdom to prescribe Hmits to his
fortune and desires, and settled in a little solitude
at Hampstead." ^ And it was in this solitude at
Hampstead that Voltaire visited him, dining with
him twice. He attended, also, a Quakers' meeting
near the Monument, and of this he has given a very
amusing account. The substance of his conversation
with Pitt, supplemented by his own independent
study of Quaker literature, he has embodied in the
article on Quakers in the Philosophical Dictionary
and in the first four Philosophical Letters. He
investigated the various rehgious sects into which
English Protestantism had divided itself, and to
these schisms he somewhat paradoxically ascribes
the harmony and contentment reigning in the re-
in London, has given a very elaborate and vivid account of it. See
a Foreign View o/Efiglandin the Reigns of George I. and George II.,
being the letters of De Saussure to his family, Letter X., pp. 239-270.
1 See obituary notice of Pitt in the London Daily Post for April
1736.

VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND 49

ligious world of England. " If," he observes,
" only one religion were allowed in England,
the Government would very possibly become
arbitrary ; if there were but two, the people
would cut one another's throats ; but as there
are such a multitude, they all live happy and
in peace." ^ He studied the economy of the
Established Church, and the habits and character
of the clergy, whom he pronounced to be superior
in morality and decency to the clergy in France.^
Our commerce, our finance, and our government
each engaged his attention, and on each he has
commented with his usual superficial cleverness.
Three things he observed with especial pleasure,
because they contrasted so strongly with what he
had been accustomed to witness in France. He
found himself for the first time in his life in the
midst of a free people, a people who lived unshackled
save by laws which they had themselves enacted ;
a people who, enjoying the inestimable privilege of
a free press, were, in the phrase of Tacitus, at
liberty to think what they pleased and to publish
what they thought. The English, he observes, are
the only people upon earth who have been able to

^ Letters concerning the English Nation (English version, 1733),
Letter VI.

2 Ibid., Letter V.
4

50 VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND

prescribe limits to the power of kings by resisting
them, and who have by a series of struggles at
last established a wise Government, where the
Prince is all-powerful to do good and at the same
time restrained from doing evil ; though these
liberties, he goes on to say, have been purchased
at a very high price. ^ He beheld a splendid and
powerful aristocracy, not, as in Paris, standing
contemptuously aloof from science and letters, but
themselves not unfrequently eager candidates for
literary and scientific distinction. The names of
many of these noble authors he has recorded, and
they are, he adds, more glorious for their works
than for their titles. With not less pleasure he
beheld the honourable rank assigned in English
society to a class which, in the Faubourg St.
Germain, was regarded with disdain. Voltaire was
perhaps the first writer of eminence in Europe who
had the courage to vindicate the dignity of trade.
He relates with pride how, when the Earl of Oxford
held the reins of Great Britain in his hands, his
younger brother was a factor at Aleppo ; how,
when Lord Townshend was directing the councils
of his Sovereign in the Painted Chamber, one of
his nearest relatives was soliciting custom in a

^ Letters concerning the Etiglish Nation, English version, 1733,
Letter VIII.

/

VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND 51

counting-house in the City. He draws a sarcastic
parallel between a " seigneur, powdered, in the tip
of the mode, who knows exactly what o'clock the
King rises and goes to bed, and who gives himself
airs of grandeur and state at the same time that
he is acting the slave in the ante-chamber of a
Prime Minister," and a merchant who enriches his
country, despatches orders from his counting-house
to Surat and Grand Cairo, and contributes to the
felicity of the world. ^

But nothing impressed him so deeply as the /

homage paid, and paid by all classes, to intellectual
eminence. Parts and genius were, he observed, a
sure passport, not, as in France, to the barren
wreath of the Academy, but to affluence and
popularity. By his pen Addison had risen to one
of the highest offices of the State. A few graceful
poems had made the fortunes of Stepney, Prior,
Gay, Parnell, Tickell, and Ambrose Philipps. By
his Essays Steele had won a Commissionership of
Stamps and a place in Parliament. A single comedy
had made Congreve independent for life. Newton
was Master of the Mint, and Locke had been a
Commissioner of Appeals. He records with pride
that the portrait of Walpole was to be seen only
in his own closet, but that the portraits of Pope

^ See the remarkable passage at the end of the tenth letter.

52 VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND

were to be seen in half the great houses in England.
" Go," he says, ** into Westminster Abbey, and
you find that what raises the admiration of the
spectator is not the mausoleums of the English
Kings, but the monuments which the gratitude of
the nation has erected to perpetuate the memory
of those illustrious men who contributed to its
glory." 1 He thought bitterly how in his own
country he had seen Crebillon on the verge of
perishing by hunger, and the son of Racine in the
last stage of abject destitution. When, too, on his
return to France, he saw the body of poor Adrienne
Lecouvreur refused the last rites of religion, and
buried with the burial of a dog, " because she was
an actress," his thoughts wandered to the generous
and large-hearted citizens who laid the coffin of
Anne Oldfield beside the coffins of their kings and
of their heroes.

" Ah ! verrai-je toujours ma faible nation,
Incertaine en ses voeux, fletrir ce qu'elle admire ;
Nos moeurs avec nos lois toujours se contredire :
Et le Frangais volage endormi sous I'empire
De la superstition?
Quoi ! n'est-ce done qu'en Angleterre
Que les mortels osent penser?
O rivale d' Athene, O Londres ! heureuse terre !
Ainsi que les tyrans, vous avez su chasser

1 Letter XXIII.

VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND 53

Les prejuges honteux qui vous livraient la guerre.
C'est \h qu'on salt lout dire, ct tout rccompenser;
Nul art n'est meprisc, tout succbs a sa gloire.
Le vainqueur de Tallard, le fils de la Victoire,
Le sublime Dryden, et le sage Addison,
Et la charmante Oldfield, et rimmortel Newton,

Ont part au temple de m^moire ;
Et Lecouvreur a Londres aurait eu des tombeaux
Parmi les beaux-esprits, les rois et les h^ros.
Quiconque a des talents a Londres est un grand homme."

— ' La Mort de Mile. Lecouvreur." ^

He pushed his inquiries in all directions, and \

surveyed us on all sides. Of the horse-races at
Newmarket, at which he took care to be present,
he gives a very vivid account, pausing to notice
that people of quality were not ashamed either to
be jockeys, or, forgetting their magnificence, to cheat
like jockeys in their betting.^ In the eleventh of
the Philosophical Letters he discusses, with true
philanthropic enthusiasm, the recently introduced
inoculation for smallpox, praising in the highest
terms Lady Mary Wortley Montague, who had the
courage to try it on her own son, and Queen Caroline,
who followed her example in experimenting on the
young Princess of Wales.

At the end of July he obtained permission from
the French Government to visit Paris, but it was
on the understanding that he was not to remain

^ CEiivres Completes^ vol. ix. p. 370. ^ JUd.^ vol. xxii. p. 23.

54 VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND

there for more than nine months, counting from
the day of his arrival. If that time was exceeded,
it was exceeded at his peril. This permission must
have been re-granted in consequence of some
request on the part of Voltaire ; indeed, he himself
speaks of having "snatched it," and his reason for
asking is no doubt explained by a passage in a
letter of his to Thieriot dated from Wandsworth
on the 15th of June. He tells him that the Henriade
must be printed somewhere secretly, and he asks
him where it could so be printed; **it must be in
France, in some country town. I question whether
Rouen would be a proper place. ... If you know
any place where I may print my book: with security
I beseech you let me know of it, but let nobody be
acquainted with the secret of my being in France " ;
adding, " I should be exceedingly glad of seeing you
again, but I would see nobody else in the world. I
would not be so much as suspected of having set
my foot in your country, nor of having thought of
it." He was therefore plainly intending to visit
France ^ for the purpose of printing his poem, and

1 Desnoiresterres asserts that Voltaire did not avail himself of
the permission given, but remained in England, and this is certainly
borne out, not only by the absence of any proof of his being away from
England, but by Voltaire's own letter to Thieriot, absurdly dated by
the editors 1753, properly to be dated end of 1728 or spring of
1729.

VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND 55

no doubt took the precaution of obtaining per-
mission to do so from the French Government,
which granted it.^ He then, no doubt, changed his
mind, and did not avail himself of the favour granted
him. He had probably seen that the best place for
him to print it would be London. In any case,
there is no indication at all of his having left
England at this time.

Ill

Among the Ashburnham MSS.^ there is a curious
relic of Voltaire's residence in England. It is the
Commonplace Book in which he entered from time
to time such things as struck him, either in his

1 " Maurepas h Voltaire, 29Juinet 1727. — Je vous envoie la permis-
sion que le roi a bien voulu vous accorder de rester h Paris, vaquer
a vos affaires pendant neuf mois. Com me ce temps est limite par
le jour de votre arrivee, vous aurez soin de m'en avertir ; je ne doute
pas que vous n'y teniez une conduite capable d'effacer les impres-
sions qu'on a donnees contre vous h Sa Majesty, et que I'avis que je
vous en donne ne vous touche assez pour y donner toute votre
attention." — Archives de la Bastille given in Voltaire's (Euvres
Completes, vol. i. p. 308. In a note to Voltaire's letter to Thieriot,
(Euvres Completes, xxxiii. p. 173, it is stated that on the 29th
July — the date of Maurepas' permit, he obtained 'une permission
datee de Versailles, et signee Phelypeaux," which allowed him three
months, and not nine.

2 Barrois, 653. For permission to inspect these most curious
notes, as some years ago I did, I am indebted to the courtesy and
kindness of Lord Ashburnham, in whose collection they then were.

56 VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND

reading or in what he heard in conversation. The
memoranda, which are interspersed with extracts
from Itahan and Latin Poets, are in Enghsh and
French, and they range from traditionary witti-
cisms of Rochester, often grossly indecent, and
from equaUy indecorous anecdotes and verses,
picked up no doubt in taverns and coffee-houses,
to notes evidently intended for the dedication
to BniUis, the Life of Charles XII., and the
Lettres Philosophiqiies, and to fragments of
original poems and translations. They unfortun-
ately throw no light on his personal life, beyond
communicating the not very important fact that
he kept a footman.

The variety and extent of Voltaire's English
) studies are, considering his comparatively short
^ residence in this country and his numerous occupa-
tions during that residence, amazing. He surveyed
us on all sides, and his survey was not confined to
the living world before him ; it extended back to
the world of the past, for, as his writings prove,
he was versed both in our antiquities and in our
history. But the subjects which most interested
\ him were, as was natural, philosophy and polite
letters.

In philosophy two great movements were at
this time passing over England : the one was in

VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND

^di scientific, the other in a theological or meta-
physical direction ; the one emanated from Bacon
and Newton, the other from that school of deists
which, originating with Herbert and Hobbes, had
found its modern exponents in Tindal, Toland,

I Collins, and Woolston. His guides in these studies
were Bolingbroke and Dr. Samuel Clarke. Of all
Newton's disciples, Clarke was the most generally-
accomplished. In theology, in metaphysics, in
natural science, in mathematics, and in pure
scholarship he was almost equally distinguished.
f. He had lived on terms of close intimacy with
Newton, whose Optics he had translated into
Latin. He was as minutely versed in the writings
of Bacon and Locke as in the writings of Descartes
and Leibnitz ; and of the learned controversies of

I his time there was scarcely one in which he had not
taken a leading part. With this eminent man
Voltaire first came into contact in the autumn of
1726. At that time their conversation turned
principally on metaphysics. Voltaire was fascin-
ated by the boldness of Clarke's views, and blindly
followed him. In his own expressive phrase,
** Clarke sautait dans I'abime, et j'osai I'y suivre."
But he soon recovered himself, and was on firm
ground again. He afterwards described Clarke as
absorbed so entirely in problems and calculations

>\

58 VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND

that he was little more than a mere reasoning
machine.*

His acquaintance with Clarke probably led to
his acquaintance with another distinguished disciple
of Newton. This was Dr. Henry Pemberton.
Pemberton was then busy preparing for the press
the first popular exposition of Newton's system, a
work which appeared in 1728 under the title of A
View of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophy. It is
clear that Voltaire had seen this work either in
proof or in manuscript. For, in a letter to Thieriot,
datedsome months before the treatise was published,
he speaks of it in a manner which implies that he
had inspected it.^ It was most likely under Pem-
berton's auspices that he commenced the study of
the Principia and Optics, which he afterwards
resumed more seriously at Cirey. That the work
was of immense service to him in his Newtonian
studies is certain. Indeed, his own account of the
Newtonian philosophy in the Lettres Philoso-
phiques and in the Elements de la Philosophie
de Newton is in a large measure based on Pem-
berton's exegesis.

From Newton, whose " Metaphysics" disgusted

" Lettres Philosophiques^ vii.

'^Letter to Thieriot, 27th May 1727; CEuvres Completes, vol.
xxxiii. p. 173.

/

! VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND 59

him, he proceeded to Locke. Locke's " Essay" he
perused and reperused with dehght. It became his
philosophical gospel. In his writings and in his
conversation he scarcely ever refers to it except
in terms of almost extravagant eulogy ; and to
Locke he remained loyal to the last. '' For thirty
years/' he writes in a letter dated July 1768, " I
have been persecuted by a crowd of fanatics
because I said that Locke is the Hercules of meta-
physics who has fixed the boundaries of the human
mind." ^ Again, in the SUcle de Louis XIV. : "Locke
seul a developpe I'entendement humain, dans un
livre ou il n'y a que des verites," adding happily,
"et ce qui rend I'ouvrage parfait toutes ces verites
sont claires." ^ His acquaintance with Bacon was
probably slight, and what he knew of his Latin
works was, we suspect, what he had picked up in
conversation from Bolingbroke and Clarke. No man
who had read the Novum Organum would speak
of it as Voltaire speaks of it in his Twelfth Letter.
But Bacon's English writings, the Essays, that
is to say, and the History of Henry VII., he had
certainly consulted. He appears also to have
turned over the works of Hobbes and Cudworth.

^ See the very interesting letter to Horace Walpole printed in the
appendix to the Historical Mejnoirs of the Author of the Henriade.
2 Chap, xxxix.

1/

\J

6o VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND

Berkeley he knew personally, and though he was,
he said, willing to profess himself one of that great
, philosopher's admirers, he was not inclined to be-
come one of his disciples. How carefully he had
read Alciphron is proved by his letter to Andrew
Pitt.^ His remarks in that letter on Berkeley's
treatise are so curious and acute that it may be
well to give them.

" I have read out the whole book : your mind
and mine do not deal in insincerity ; therefore 1
must tell you plainly that the Doctor's sagacity has
pleased more than convinced me. I admire his
acute genius without assenting to him ; and will
profess myself one of his admirers, but not of his
disciples. In short, good Sir, I believe in God, not
in priests ; it appears too plainly that this is a
party book, rather than a religious book. The
Doctor endeavours to draw his readers to himself
rather than to religion. In many places he is more
captious and acute than solid and judicious. I
have known the man ; he is certainly a learned
philosopher and delicate wit. I thank you ex-
tremely again for the present."

Nor did his indefatigable curiosity rest here.
He took a lively interest in natural science, and

1 This interesting letter, written in English, is printed in Leonard
Howard's Collection of Letters^ p. 604. Howard's character was not
above suspicion, but there seems no reason for questioning the
genuineness of this letter, the original of which was, he says, in the
hands of one of his friends.

VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND 6i

was acquainted with several members of the Royal
Society, and particularly with the venerable Pre-
sident, Sir Hans Sloane, to whom he presented a
copy of the English Essays.^ Of that society he
was some years after elected a Fellow, an honour
which he greatly appreciated.^

But what most engaged his attention was the
controversy then raging between the opponents and
the apologists of Christianity. It was now at its
height. Upwards of two years had passed since
Anthony ColHns had pubHshed his Discourse on the
Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion. No ■
work of that kind had made so deep an impression
on the public mind. It had been denounced from
the pulpit ; it had elicited innumerable replies from
the press. Other works of a similar kind succeeded,
each in its turn aggravating the controversy. In
1727 appeared, dedicated to the Bishop of London,
the first of Woolston's Six Discourses on the
Miracles of Christ, a work which brought into the
field the most distinguished ecclesiastics then living.
Most probably Voltaire owed infinitely more to
Bolingbroke than to all the other English deists

^ See the copy with the autograph inscription in the British
Museum.

2 He was elected a Fellow on November 3, 1743. Archives of
the Royal Society.

62 VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND

put together, but how carefully he had followed
the course of this controversy is obvious from
innumerable passages in his subsequent writings.
Of Woolston in particular he always speaks with
great respect, and he has, in an article in the
Didionnaire Philosophique, given a long and
appreciative account of the labours of that cour-
ageous freethinker. Nor was his admiration con-
fined to mere eulogy, for when, three years later,
Woolston was imprisoned and fined for his heterodox
opinions, Voltaire at once wrote off from France
offering to be responsible for a third of the sum
required.^

In the winter of 1727 he published a little
volume, which is not only among the curiosities,
but among the marvels of literature. The volume
contained two essays. The first was entitled " An
Essay upon the Civil Wars in France," the other,
] " An Essay upon Epic Poetry." ^ Both these
essays are composed in English — not in such
English as we should expect to find written by one

^ Duvernet, Vie de Voltaire, p. 72.

^ This was An Essay upoti the Civil Wars of France. Extracted

frotn Curious Manuscripts. A?id also upon the Epick Poetry of

the European Nations, from Homer doivn to Milton. By M. de

Voltaire. London : Printed by Samuel Jallasso7i in Prujean^s

Court, Old Bailey, and sold by the Booksellers of London and

Westminster, M.DCCXXVIL

I

VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND 63

who had acquired the language, but in such EngUsh
as would in truth have reflected no discredit on
Dry den or Swift. If we remember that at the
time when he accomplished this feat he had only
been eighteen months in England, and that he was,
as he informs us in the preface, writing in a language
which he was scarcely able to follow in conversa-
tion, his achievement may be fairly pronounced to
be without parallel in linguistic triumphs.^ As the
work is neither generally known nor very accessible,
it may be well to transcribe a short extract from
each discourse. The first essay is an historical
sketch of the civil troubles in France between the
accession of Francis the Second and the reconcili-
ation of Henry the Fourth with the Church of Rome.
The character and position of the Protestants are
thus described —

*' The Protestants began then to grow numerous,
and to be conscious of their strength. The super-
stition, the dull, ignorant knavery of the monks,
the overgrown power of Rome, men's passions for
novelty, the ambition of Luther and Calvin, the
policy of many princes — all these had given rise
and countenance to this sect, free indeed from

^ He told Martin Sherlock that he was never able to pronounce
the English language perfectly, but that his ear was sensitively alive
to the harmony of the language and the poetry. — Letters from an
English Traveller (Letter XXV.).

64 VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND

superstition, but running as headlong towards
anarchy as the Church of Rome towards tyranny.
The Protestants had been unmercifully persecuted
in France, but it is the ordinary effect of persecu-
tion to make proselytes. Their sect increased
every day amidst the scaffolds and tortures. Conde,
Coligni, the two brothers of Coligni, all their
adherents, all who were opposed by the Guises,
turned Protestants at once. They united their
griefs, their vengeance, and their interests together,
so that a revolution both in the State and in religion
was at hand."

The second essay, which is a dissertation on
Epic Poetry, and a review of the principal epic
poems of antiquity and of modern Europe, is a
piece not unworthy of a place beside the best of
Dryden's prefaces. The remarks on Virgil, Lucan,
and Tasso are admirable, and the critique on Para-
dise Lost, which is described as " the noblest work
which human imagination hath ever attempted,"
gives us a higher idea of Voltaire's critical powers
than any of his French writings. His vindication
of Milton's poem against some of the objections
urged against it so characteristically by the French
critics, his remarks on Milton's conception and
picture of the Deity, and on the grand unity of the
work amid its endless variety, would indeed have
done honour to Longinus. It is with something

VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND 65

like surprise that we find the future author of La
Pucelle capable of criticism so delicately discrimin-
ating as the following —

" It is observable that in all other poems love
is represented as a vice, in Milton only 'tis a virtue.
The pictures he draws of it are naked as the persons
he speaks of, and as venerable. He removes with
a chaste hand the veil which covers everywhere
else the enjoyments of that passion. There is
softness, tenderness, and warmth without lascivious-
ness ; the poet transports himself into that state of
innocent happiness in which Adam and Eve con-
tinued for a short time. He soars not above human
but above corrupt nature ; and as there is no in-
stance of such love, there is none of such poetry."

The objections he raises to the conduct of the
fiction in the description of the pandemonium of
the allegory of Sin and Death, of the bridge built by
Death and Sin, and of the war in Heaven, show an
acuteness which was probably not lost on Johnson
when in his famous critique he traversed the same
ground. But Voltaire holds the scales quite fairly,
admitting that *' there are perfections enough in
Milton to atone for all his defects." It is indeed
extraordinary to compare this acute and temperate
criticism of Milton with the remarks on Paradise Lost
in Candide,^ though what he puts into the mouth of

1 Chap. XXV. When he wrote the criticism on Milton in the
5

66 VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND

Pococurante is perhaps not designed to be taken
seriously.

For the account of Camoens he is said to
have been indebted to Colonel Martin Bladen.
" I remember," says Warton in his notes on the
Dunciad, " that Collins the poet told me that [his
uncle] Bladen had given to Voltaire all that account
of Camoens inserted in his Essay on the Epic Poets,
and that Voltaire seemed before entirely ignorant
of the name and character of Camoens." ^ Indeed,
the whole treatise well deserves attentive study.
The purity, vigour, and elegance of the style will
be at once evident from the following extract, which
is, we may add, a fair average sample —

'* The greatest part of the critics have filched
the rules of epic poetry from the books of Homer,
according to the custom, or rather to the weakness,
of men who mistake commonly the beginning of an
art for the principles of the art itself, and are apt to
believe that everything must be by its own nature

Steele de Louis XIV., chap, xxiv., he had certainly cooled in his
admiration of him.

1 Warton's Pope, vol. v. p. 284. Though Warton has in this passage
confused Martin Bladen, the translator of Ccesar's Commetitaries,
with Edmund Bladen, who was Collins' uncle, there is no reason for
doubting the substantial truth of what he reports. That Colonel
Martin Bladen had some special acquaintance with Spanish and
Portuguese seems certain, from the fact that in 1 7 1 7 he was offered
the Envoyship Extraordinary to the Court of Spain, and that in his
will he leaves legacies to Dr. de Arboleda and Josias Luberdo.

VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND 67

what it was when contrived at first. But as Homer
wrote two poems of a quite different nature, and
as the Mneid of Virgil partakes of the Iliad
and of the Odyssey, the commentators were
forced to estabUsh different rules to reconcile
Homer with himself, and other new rules again to
make Virgil agree with Homer, just as the astron-
omers laboured under the necessity of adding to
or taking from their systems, and of bringing in
concentric and eccentric circles, as they discovered
new motions in the heavens. The ignorance of the
ancients was excusable, and their search after the
unfathomable system of nature was to be com-
mended, because it is certain that nature hath its
own principles, unvariable and unerring, and as
worthy of our search as remote from our conceptions.
But it is not with the inventions of art as with the
works of nature."

If Voltaire was able after a few months' residence
in London to produce such prose as this, it is not
too much to say that he might with time and
practice have taken his place among our national
classics. With the exceptions of De Lolme and
Blanco White, it may be doubted whether any -^..^^.k
writer to whom English was an acquired language \.\i/\<\^ •
has achieved so perfect a mastery over it. It is,
however, not improbable, and indeed very likely,
that he obtained more assistance in composing
these essays than his vanity would allow him to

68 VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND

own. The Abbe Desfontaines asserts, indeed, that
the essay on Epic Poetry was composed in
French, and that it was then translated into
Enghsh under the superintendence of Voltaire's
** maitre de langue." ^ But the testimony of that
mean and malignant man carries little weight,
and if it had not been at least partially confirmed
by Spence we should have left it unnoticed.
What Spence says is this : " Voltaire consulted
Dr. Young about his essay in English, and begged
him to correct any gross faults he might find
in it. The Doctor set very honestly to work,
marked the passages most liable to censure, and
when he went to explain himself about them,
Voltaire could not avoid bursting out a-laughing
in his face." ^ The reason of this ill-timed merri-
ment it is not very easy to see ; the anecdote is
perhaps imperfectly reported. But in spite of
Desfontaines and Spence, there can be no doubt
that the Essays are what they pretend to be, the
genuine work of Voltaire. We have only to turn
to his English correspondence at this period to see
that he was quite equal to their production. The
f little book was favourably received. In the follow-
ing year a second edition was called for, a third

1 La Voltairo7nanie, p. 46.

2 Anecdotes (ed. Singer), p. 285.

VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND 69

followed at no long interval, and in 1731 it reached a
fourth ; a Discourse on Tragedy, which is merely
a translation of the French Discours sur la Tragedie
prefixed to Brutus, being added. And it long held
its own. Its popularity is sufficiently attested by
the fact that in 1760 it was reprinted at Dublin, with
a short notice, attributed, but attributed erroneously,
to Swift, who had of course been long dead.

Voltaire was not the man to waste his energy
on the production of a mere tour de force. The ,
volume had an immediate practical object. That |
object was to prepare the public for the appearance |
of the Henriade, which was now receiving the
finishing touches, and was almost ready for the
printer. It was probably to facilitate its publica-
tion that he removed about this time (end of 1727)
from Wandsworth to London, where he resided,
as the superscriptions of two of his letters show,
in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, at the sign of
the White Peruke. Nor is Maiden Lane the only
part of London associated with Voltaire during
this period. It would seem that Billiter Square
is entitled to the honour of having once numbered
him among its occupants. This we gather from an
undated letter addressed to John Brinsden, Boling-
broke's confidential secretary,^ in which Brinsden

1 Preserved in Collet's Relics of Literature, p. 70.

70 VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND

is directed to address his reply to Mr. Cavalier,
Belitery (sic) Square, by the Royal Exchange, a
request which Voltaire would scarcely have made
had he not been residing there. In Billiter Square,
which is described by a contemporary topographer
as " a very handsome, open, and airy place, with
good new brick buildings," he would be within
a few paces of his agents, Messrs. Simon and
Benezet.

Of the many letters which were doubtless written
by him at this time, some have been preserved.
One is addressed to Swift, to whom he had a few
months before given a letter of introduction to the
Comte de Morville. He sends him a copy of the
Essays, professes himself a great admirer of his
writings, informs him that the Henriade is
almost ready, and asks him to exert his interest to
procure subscribers in Ireland. In another letter
he solicits the patronage of the Earl of Oxford,
informing him of the distinguished part which one
of his ancestors plays in the Henriade, alluding
to his own personal acquaintance with Achilles de
Harley, and importuning the Earl to grant him
the favour of an interview.^ With Thieriot, on
whom he relied to push the poem in France, he

^ Unprinted letter among the manuscripts at Longleat, for a
copy of which I am indebted to the kindness of the hbrarian.

VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND 71

regularly corresponded. Meanwhile popular curi-
osity was stimulated by successive advertisements
in the newspapers, and in January 1728 an elaborate
puff appeared in the columns of the leading literary
periodical : ** We hope every day," so runs the
notice, " to see Mr. de Voltaire's Henriade. He
has greatly raised the expectations of the curious
by a beautiful Essay he lately published upon
the Civil Wars of France, which is the subject of
his Poem, and upon the Epic Poets, from Homer
down to Milton. As this gentleman seems to be
thoroughly acquainted with all the best poets,
both ancient and modern, and judges so well of
their beauties and faults, we have reason to hope
that the Henriade will be a finished perform-
ance ; and as he writes with uncommon elegance
and force in English, though he has been but
eighteen months in this country, we expect to find
in his poem all that beauty and strength of which
his native language is capable." ^

All through the summer and winter of 1727 he
was hard at work on the manuscript or the proofs.*
But this was not the only task he had in hand.
He was busy with his Essai sur la Poesie Epique,
which is not, he is careful to explain, a trans-

^ Present State of the Republic of Letters , vol. i. p. 88.
2 Letter to Thieriot, dated August 1728.

72 VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND

lation of his English essay, but an independent
work, a work of which the Enghsh essay was to be
regarded as the prehminary sketch.^ It was after-
wards prefixed to the Henriade. A comparative
study of the two will show with what skill he adapts
himself, even as a critic, to the countrymen of
Boileau and Racine on the one hand, and to the
countrymen of Milton and Addison on the other.
Meanwhile, at the end of April or at the beginning
of March, he had written to the French Ambassador,
the Comte de Broglie, asking him to subscribe
and obtain subscriptions for the Henriade. But
De Broglie, whose official position made caution
imperative, thought that before replying he had
better consult Morville. Accordingly he wrote
him the following letter —

From London, March 3, 1727.
Sir, — The Sieur de Voltaire, whom you did
me the honour to recommend to me, and in favour
of whom you sent me letters of recommenda-
tion introducing him to the ministers of the Court,
is about to print in London, by subscription, his
poem on the League. He asks me to secure sub-
scribers for him, and M. de Walpole does his very
best on his part to get him as many as possible.
I should greatly like to please him, but I have
not seen the work, and I do not know whether

1 See his English letter to Thieriot, dated 14th of June 1727.

VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND 73

the Court will approve of the additions and sup-
pressions he has introduced into the text given
to the public at Paris, and of the plates he has
ordered to be sent from thence in order to adorn
the same. I told him, therefore, that I could not
meddle with his undertaking till I knew whether
you liked it or not. I am always afraid that^
French authors should be tempted to make a
wrongful use of the liberty they enjoy in a country
like this, to write all that comes into their mindj
concerning religion, the Pope, the Government, or!
/ the members of it. Poets especially are wont to
use such licence without caring much whether or
no they cast obloquy upon what is most sacred.
And if there were anything of that sort in this poem
I should not like to incur the blame of having
subscribed to it and recommended others to do the
same. I most humbly beseech you. Sir, to be so
good as to send me instructions concerning the
line I must follow in this circumstance. I shall
conform my conduct to what you will do me the
honour to prescribe. — I have, etc.

" Broglie." '

The reply to this letter from Morville appears
to be lost, but as the name of De Broglie does

1 This letter was discovered by M. J. J. Jusserand in the
Archives of the French Foreign Office, vol. ccclviii., and printed
by him in his English Essays from a French Fen. The original is
Appendix IV. of that work, the translation of which, in the body of
the Essay, I have taken the liberty to borrow (p. 199). For the
original, see Appendix.

74 VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND

not appear among the list of subscribers to the
Henriade, it was probably thought prudent not to
accede to the request.

At last the Henriade was ready. It was
first announced, in a succession of advertisements,
that it would appear in February (1728) ; it was
then announced in a second succession of advertise-
ments that it would appear in March, and in
March it was published. The subscribers had at
first been alarmingly slow in coming forward ; but
when the day of publication arrived the names
on the subscription list amounted to three hundred
and forty-four ; and among the subscribers were
the King, the Queen, and the heads of almost all
the noble families connected with the Court. In
its first form the poem had been dedicated to
Louis XV. That dedication was now cancelled,
and a dedication, written in flowing English, to
Queen Caroline was substituted. Descartes, said
the poet, had inscribed his Principles to the
Princess Palatine Elizabeth, not because she was
a princess, but because of all his readers she under-
stood him best ; he too, without presuming to
compare himself to Descartes, had ventured to
lay his work at the feet of a Queen who was not
only a patroness of all arts and sciences, but the
best judge of them also. He reminded her that

VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND 75

an English Queen, the great EHzabeth, " who was
in her age the glory of her sex and the pattern of
sovereigns," had been the protectress of Henry IV. ;
And by whom, he asked, " can the memory of
Henry be so well protected as by one who so much
resembles Elizabeth in her personal virtues ? "
He promised her that she would " find in this
book bold, impartial truths, morality sustained with
superstition, a spirit of liberty equally abhorrent
of rebellion and of tyranny, the rights of Kings
always asserted, and those of mankind never laid
aside."

The Queen was not insensible of the honour
which had been paid her, and the fortunate
poet received a substantial mark of the royal
gratitude. It is not easy to determine the exact
sum. Voltaire himself states it to have been two
thousand crowns {ecus), which would, supposing
he means English crowns, have been equivalent
to five hundred pounds sterling. Baculard says it
was " six mille livres." ^ Nor was this all. The
King honoured him with his intimacy, and invited
him to his private supper-parties.^ Goldsmith
adds, but adds erroneously, that the Queen pre-

1 Preface d'une edition des (Euvres de M. de Voltaire (Long-
champ et Wagnibre), vol. ii. p. 492.

2 Ibid.., same page.

76 VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND

sented him with her portrait. A portrait of Queen
CaroHne Voltaire certainly possessed, but it was a
medallion, and it came to him, not from the Queen
herself, but through the hands of the Countess de la
Lippe from the Queen of Prussia/ His gratitude to
the hospitable country which had sheltered him,
and to its sovereigns, as well as his sincere admira-
tion of its government, found eloquent and happy
expression in the poem, for all that he applies to
Elizabeth, and to the England of Elizabeth, he
makes as obviously applicable to his own royal
patrons and to the England of their day. No
Englishman, indeed, could have read such a passage
as the following without feeling that the young
poet had made a very handsome return for the
kindness he had received from his own country's
ancient and inveterate foes —

"En voyant I'Angleterre, en secret il admire
Le changement heureux de ce puissant Empire,
Ou r^ternel abus de tant de sages lois
Fit longtemps le malheur et du peuple et des rois.
Sur ce sanglant theatre ou cent hdros p^rirent
Sur ce trone glissant dont cent rois descendirent,
Une femme, a ses pieds, enchainant les destins,
De I'^clat de son regne etonnait les humains.
C'^tait Elisabeth : elle dont la prudence
De I'Europe h. son choix fit pencher la balance,
Et fit aimer son joug a I'Anglais indomptd,
Qui ne peut ni servir, ne vivre en liberty.

^ Voltaire, Correspondance Generale, 22nd July 1728.

VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND 77

Ses peuples sous son r^gne ont oublid leurs pertes ;

De leurs troupeaux ftJconds, leurs plaines sont couvertes,

Les gu^rets de leurs bl^s, les mers de leurs vaisseaux :

lis sont craints sur la terre, ils sont rois sur les eaux ;

Leur flotte imperieuse, asservissant Neptune,

Des bouts de I'univers appelle la fortune :

Londres, jadis barbare, est le centre des arts,

Le magasin du monde, et le temple de Mars.

Aux murs de Westminster on voit paraitre ensemble

Trois pouvoirs ^tonnes du noeud que les rassemble,

Les deputes du peuple, et les grands et le roi,

Divises d'interets, reunis par la loi ;

Tous trois membres sacres de ce corps invincible,

Dangereux h lui-meme, a ses voisins terrible ;

Heureux, lorsque le peuple, instruit dans son devoir,

Respecte, autant qu'il doit, le souverain pouvoir !

Plus heureux, lorsque qu'un roi, doux, juste et politique

Respecte, autant qu'il doit, la liberte publique ! " ^

Nor need the sincerity of this glowing rhetoric
be suspected, for what he here expresses in verse
he has over and over again with equal emphasis
expressed in prose.

The poem succeeded beyond his most sanguine
expectation. He had certainly no reason to com-
plain of the way in which his English friends
supported him. The subscribers numbered three
hundred and forty-four, many of them taking
several copies ; Peterborough and Bolingbroke, for
example, took each of them twenty copies, and
Chesterfield ten. The list comprises almost every
distinguished person in the political, social, and

^ La Hetiriade, Chant i. ad fi>i.

78 VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND

literary world of those times, with the exception
of Pope, whose name, strangely enough, does not
appear. Every copy of the quarto impression
was disposed of before the day of publication.
In the octavo form three editions were exhausted
in less than three weeks — " and this I attribute,"
he says in a letter to a friend, " entirely to the
happy choice of the subject, and not to the merit
of the poem itself." Owing to the carelessness of
Thieriot he lost the subscription money due to
him from France, but the sum realised in England
was undoubtedly considerable. It has been
variously estimated : Nicolardot, in his Menage et
Finances de Voltaire, calculates it to have been ten
thousand francs ; and that is the lowest com-
putation. Baculard asserts that from the quarto
edition [edition imprimee par souscriptions) alone
the poet cleared ten thousand crowns. Perhaps we
should not be far wrong if we estimated the sum,
including the money received from George II., at
two thousand pounds sterling. Whatever it was, it
formed the nucleus of the most princely fortune ever
yet amassed by a man of letters. ^^ The publication

/

^ Carlyle {Life of Frederick, vol. iii. p. 220) computes Voltaire's
annual income, acquired not by his writings but by his " finance
talent " during his latter years, to have been, according to the money
value of the present day, about ;!^2 0,000 ; but this seems incredible.

VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND 79

of the Henriade involved Voltaire in a very dis-
agreeable controversy with two of his countrymen.
He had out of pure kindness given permission to
one Coderc, a publisher in little Newport Street,
near Leicester Fields, to print an edition of the
poem for his own benefit ; of this permission Coderc
made an assignment to another publisher named
Prevost. Accordingly in March 1728, almost im-
mediately after the appearance of the authentic
editions, appeared in the Daily Post an announce-
ment of a new issue of the Henriade. It was
printed — so it was stated — with the author's privi-
lege, and to the advertisement a postscript was
added to the effect that the poem now appeared
for the first time uncastrated and in its integrity.
All that Prevost had really done was to substitute
six bad verses, taken from the poem in its earlier
form, for six good verses in the later recension.
Voltaire, justly annoyed at this audacious stratagem
on the part of a piratical bookseller, at once replied
by inserting a counter advertisement both in the
Daily Post and in the Daily Journal : " This is to
give notice that I never gave any privilege to
Prevost, but I was betrayed into such kindness for
one Coderc as to grant him leave of printing my
book for his own benefit, provided he should sell
none before mine had been delivered. It is a

8o VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND

thing unheard of that a bookseller dares to sell
my own work in another manner than I have
printed it, and call my own edition castrated. The
truth of the matter is^ that he has printed six bad
and insignificant low lines, which were not mine,
printed in a former edition of La Ligue, and in
the room of which there are six others a great deal
bolder and stronger in the Henriade." ^ To this
Prevost replied in the columns of the same paper,
defending the course he had taken, and flatly con-
tradicting what Voltaire asserted. The two notices
continued to appear in the advertisement sheet of
the Daily Post till the end of March. ^
/ There can be no doubt that this controversy
was of great service in advertising the poem. It
is, indeed, by no means unlikely that the whole
thing was got up by Voltaire for that purpose.
He certainly bore Prevost no ill-will afterwards.
With Prevost, as we gather from a letter written
by Voltaire to Peter des Maizeaux, which was
printed, though not very correctly, in Collet's Relics
of Literature, p. 367, he had another grievance,
and, as the letter illustrates Voltaire's alertness and

1 Daily Post, March 21, 1728.

2 For the controversy, see advertisement sheets of the Daily
Post from 2ist March to 30th March, and of the Daily Journal
of same date.

VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND 8i

prudence in business affairs, it may be well to
insert it. The original, which is undated, is among
the Sloane MSS. in the British Museum.^ I give
a transcript of it —

" I hear Prevost hath a mind to bring you a
second time as an evidence against me. He sais
j have told you j had given him five and twenty
books for 30 guineas, j remember very well,
S', j told you at rainbow's coffee - house that j
had given him twenty subscription receipts for
the henriade and received 30 guineas down ; but
j never meant to have parted with 30 copies at
three guineas each, for 31 pounds, j have agreed
with him upon quite another foot ; and j am
not such a fool (tho' a writer) to give away all
my property to a bookseller.

" Therefore j desire you to remember that j never
told you of my having made so silly a bargain,
j told, 3 own, j had £30 or some equivalent
down, but j did not say 'twas all the bargain, this
j insist upon and beseech you to recollect our
conversation : for j am sure j never told a tale so
contrary to truth, to reason, and to my interest,
j hope you will not back the injustice of a book-
seller who abuses you against a man of honour
who is your humble servant, " Voltaire."

The money realised from the sale of the Henriade
was the more acceptable as it was sorely needed.

1 Sloane MSS. 4288, fol. 229.

82 VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND

For upwards of a year Voltaire had been in strait-
ened circumstances. To live in society was then
an expensive luxury, and the expenses were greatly
swelled by the fees which the servants of the
aristocracy were permitted to levy on their masters'
.guests. At no house in London did the abuse
reach a higher pitch than at Lord Chesterfield's ; and
Voltaire, who dined there once, was so annoyed at
the imposition, that, on Chesterfield asking him to
repeat his visit, he declined, sarcastically adding
that his lordship's ordinary was too dear.^ His
wretched health had, moreover, necessitated
medical attendance, and thus had added greatly to
his expenses. As early as February 1727 we find
him complaining of these difficulties to Thieriot :
" Vous savez peut-etre que les banqueroutes sans

^ John Taylor's Memoirs, vol. i. p. 330 ; and for these monstrous
impositions, see De Saussure : " If you wish to pay your respects
to a nobleman, and to visit him, you must give his porter money
from time to time, else his master will never be at home to you.
If you take a meal with a person of rank you must give every one
of the five or six footmen a coin when leaving. They will be ranged
in file in the hall, and the least you can give them is one shilling
each, and should you fail to do this you will be treated insolently
the next time. My Lord Southwell stopped me one day in the
Park, and reproached me most amicably with my having let some
time pass before going to his house to take soup with him. ' In
truth, my lord,' I answered, ' I am not rich enough to take soup
with you often.' His lordship understood my meaning and smiled."
— Letters, p. 194. PoUnitz complains bitterly of the same thing.
— Memoirs, vol. ii. pp. 464, 465.

VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND 83

ressources que j'ai essuyees en Angleterre " (a
reference, of course, to his mishap with Acosta),
" le retranchement de mes rentes, la perte de mes
pensions, et les depenses que m'ont cotitees les
maladies dont j'ai ete accable ici, m'ont reduit a
un etat bien dur." ^ He was now enabled to relieve
the necessities of his unfortunate fellow-countrymen,
many of whom were assisted by him when he was
in London, particularly one St. Hyacinthe.^

When the poem was passing through the press
a curious incident occurred. A proof-sheet of the
first page had by some accident found its way into
the hands of Theocharis Dadichi, a very distin-
guished modern linguist and Oriental scholar, who
afterwards became his Majesty's interpreter of the
Oriental languages.^ The poem then opened, not
with the simple ringing verses with which it now
opens, but with a series of verses of which the
first couplet may serve as a specimen —

"Je chante les combats et ce roi g^nereux
Qui for9a les Frangais k devenir heureux."

^ Correspondance Generale, 1727. ^ Duvernet, p. 72.

3 Of this Dadichi, of whom Voltaire's biographers appear to
know nothing beyond the name, which they mis-spell, there is an
interesting account in ^yxova^s Journal {Chetham Society^ vol. i. part i.
p. 184). Byrom, who also mis-spells his name, met him in London,
and was amazed at his linguistic attainments. The catalogue of his
library, which was sold after his death, is in the Bodleian Library.

84 VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND

Dadichi, whose taste had been formed on purer
models, was justly offended by this obscure and
forced epigram. He made his way to Voltaire's
residence, and abruptly announcing himself as the
** countryman of Homer," proceeded to inform him
that Homer never opened his poems with strokes
of wit and enigmas. Voltaire had the good sense
to take the hint given him by his eccentric visitor,
and the lines were altered into the Hues with which
all the world is famihar.^

It is surprising that there should have been
no notice or critique of the poem in journals
then current in London ; if there were, they have
escaped a careful search. In 1729, however, there
appeared, appended to an odd sort of Hterary and
historical periodical called the Herculean Labour,
or the AugcBan Stable, conducted and written
by one of Pope's butts, the notorious John Ozell, a
translation of the first canto into rhymed heroic
couplets, from Ozell' s hand. But before the year
was out there appeared, in an edition pubHshed
by a firm in Russell Street, Covent Garden, some
remarks which are, no doubt, a fair indication of
the impression made by the poem on the mind of
contemporary England. The writer, who writes in

1 For this anecdote, see Henriade, Variantes du Chant Premier ;
(Euvres Completes, vol. viii. p. 59.

VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND 85

French, begins by observing that as a rule he cares
little for French poetry ; it lacks energy, and it is
monotonous, but in the Henriade he discerns
qualities which he has not discerned elsewhere in
the verse of Frenchmen : it is various, brilliant, and
forcible. But he is, he says, at a loss to understand
how a poet whose conception of the Deity is so
wise and noble could have selected for his hero a
character so contemptible as Henri Quatre, who
was not merely a Papist, but a Papist " par l^che
inter^t." ^ He is angry that Voltaire should,
throughout the poem, lean so decidedly to the side
of Popery ; he is still more angry that he should
have placed on the same footing Popery and Pro-
testantism,— for the essence of Popery, he observes,
is intolerance, and the essence of Protestantism is
enlightened toleration. " You arrived in our
island," he goes on to say, " with a book against
our religion, and we received you with open arms ;
our King and our Queen presented you with money.
I wonder," he continues, " how an Englishman who
introduced himself to Cardinal Fleury with an
attack on Popery would be likely to fare." He

^ "Za Hefiriade de M". de Voltaire. Seconde edition revue,
corrigde et augment^e de Remarques critiques sur cet Ouvrage.
A Londres chez Woodman et Lyon, dans Russel Street, Covent
Garden, 1728."

86 VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND

concludes by hoping that Voltaire will continue to
reside in England, and he exhorts him to prepare
" une nouvelle edition moins Papiste de la
Henriade." This critique purported to be the work
of an English nobleman. In Paris it was generally
believed, or at least circulated, that it was written
by himself. It was only there, he bitterly observes,
that any one could think him capable of producing
such rubbish, philosophically but cynically adding :
" les sots jugements et les foUes opinions du vulgaire
ne rendront point malheureux un homme qui a ap-
pris a supporter les malheurs reels ; et qui meprise
les grands pent bien mepriser les sots." ^ It was
in reality the work of a French refugee named
Faget, whom Voltaire described to Thieriot as an
' enthusiastic who knows neither good English nor
French.' Voltaire was greatly amused at being
taken for a Catholic propagandist.^ " You will
see," he writes in a letter to a friend in France,

^ To Thieriot, 4th August 1728. CEuvres Completes, vol. xxxiii.
p. 181.

2 And it is not less amusing to us to find him thus writing to
Pere Poree : "Surtout, mon reverend pere, je vous supplie instamment
de vouloir m'instruire si j'ai parle de la religion comme je le dois ;
car, s'il y a sur cet article quelques expressions qui vous deplaisent
ne doutez pas que je ne les corrige k la premiere edition que Ton
pourra faire encore de mon poeme. J'ambitionne votre estime, non
seulement comme auteur mais comme Chretien." — Correspondance
Ginerale, Annee 1728; CEuvres Completes, vol. xxxiii. p. 183.

\

VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND 87

" by some annotations tacked to my book, and
fathered upon an English lord, that I am here a
confessor of CathoHc rehgion." To this criticism
he made no reply during his residence in England,
but, on its reappearance under another title in an
edition 1 of the Henriade printed at The Hague, he
answered it.

Meanwhile he had spared no pains to acquire
colloquial English, and to converse with the vulgar
in their own language, as many years afterwards
he demonstrated in a curious way to Pennant, the
antiquar}^ Pennant visited him at Ferney in 1765.
Voltaire's English had grown by then a little rusty
from misuse ; but, says Pennant, in his attempt to 1 ..
speak English he satisfied us that he was a perfect
master of our oaths and of our curses.^

It was probably during his sojourn either in
Maiden Lane or in Billiter Square that his adroit-
ness and fluent mastery over our language saved '
him from what might otherwise have been an un-
pleasant adventure. He chanced one day to be
strolling along the streets, when his peculiar appear-
ance attracted attention. A crowd collected, and
some ribald fellow began with jeers and hoots to
taunt him with being a Frenchman. Nothing is so
easily excited as the passions of a rabble, and the

1 T/ie Literary Life of the late Thomas Pennant, p. 6.

8S VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND

passions of a rabble, when their victim is defence-
less, rarely exhaust themselves in words. The mis-
creants were already preparing to pelt him with
mud, and mud would no doubt have been followed
with missiles of a more formidable kind, but
Voltaire was equal to the crisis. Boldly confront-
ing his assailants, he mounted on a stone which
happened to be at hand, and began an oration of

^ which the first sentence only has been preserved :
" Brave Englishmen ! " he cried, "am I not
sufficiently unhappy in not having been born

^ among you ? " How he proceeded we know not,
I but his harangue was, if we are to believe Wagniere,
so effective that the crowd was not merely appeased,
but eager to carry him on their shoulders in triumph
to his lodgings.^ This was not the only occasion
on which he experienced the rudeness with which
the vulgar were in those days accustomed to treat
his countrymen. He happened to be taking the
air on the river, when one of the men in charge of
the boat, perceiving that his passenger was a
Frenchman, began to boast of the superior privileges
enjoyed by English subjects ; he belonged, he said,
not to a land of slaves, but to a land of freemen.
Warming with his theme, the fellow concluded his
offensive remarks by exclaiming with an oath that
^ Longchamp and Wagniere, vol. i. p. 23.

VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND 89

he would rather be a boatman on the Thames
than an Archbishop in France. The sequel of the
story is amusing. Within a few hours the man
had been seized by a press-gang, and next day
Voltaire saw him at the window of a prison with
his legs manacled and his hand stretched through
the bars, craving alms. " What think you now of
a French Archbishop ? " he cried. ** Ah, sir,"
replied the captive, " the abominable Government
have forced me away from my wife and children
to serve in a King's ship, and have thrown me into
prison and chained my feet for fear I should escape
before the ship sails." A French gentleman who
was with Voltaire at the time owned that he felt
a malicious pleasure at seeing that the English,
who were so fond of taunting their neighbours with
servitude, were in truth quite as much slaves them-
selves. " But I," adds Voltaire in one of those
noble reflections which so often flash across his
pages, " felt a sentiment more humane : I was
grieved to think that there was so little liberty on
the earth." ^

It appears from Atterbury's Correspondence
that about the time the Henriade was published
Voltaire had also published an Ode written in

1 See for the whole story his Letter to M*** ; CEiwres Com-
pletes (Beuchot), vol. xxxviii. p. 22. .

90 VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND

English, but of that Ode, after a most careful
search, I have been unable to find any trace.^

To this period of Voltaire's residence in Eng-
land belongs a very interesting unpublished letter
addressed to a Dr. Towne, then in Barbadoes.
Dr. Towne was probably related to Richard Towne,
a mercer at York, who was born in 1665 and died
in 1746. More cannot now be recovered about
him, but it is clear that he had made the acquaint-
ance of Voltaire, to whom he appears to have sent,
in conjunction with some lady, a copy of com-
plimentary verses, apparently on the occasion of
the publication of the Henriade. This Voltaire
acknowledges as follows —

((

Sir, — I have received a copy of verses which I
am very far from deserving, and for fear of returning
wretched prose for that poetry, I tell you in few
words, I long to wait on you and the lady ; in the
meantime you should answer her for me. Farewell,
my dear doctor. I am with all my heart. Your
most humble obedient servant,

" Voltaire."

The letter, which is undated, is directed to
" Dr. Towne, where he is."

The next letter is of singular interest ; it not

^ See Atterbury's Correspo?idence, vol. iv. p. 114. Nichols (see
his note) was equally unsuccessful.

VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND 91

only shows Voltaire at his best in English com-
position, but it throws light on his own health and
condition at this date, and gives some very inter-
esting particulars about the death of one of the
most accomplished and distinguished physicians
which this country has ever produced, Dr. John
Freind. As Freind died on the 26th of July, this
letter must either have been begun at one date and
discontinued, or it must have been inadvertently
misdated. Towne had, some time before this, gone
to Barbadoes, and had expressed an intention of
translating the Henriade into English. Of this
translation he printed at least a portion, with
which Voltaire, as we learn from a letter of Peter-
borough, was "mightily pleased," and of which
Pope so much approved that in the event of Towne
determining to publish it he offered to " look it
over with the utmost care." ^ It does not appear
that Towne ever completed the version, or ever
published what he had done of it.

" At Wandsworth, July 23, 1728.
" Dear Sir, — I received yesterday your kind and
witty letter, which was sent to my lord Peterboro

1 For this account of Voltaire's relations with Dr. Towne, and
for these hitherto unpublished letters, preserved among his family
papers, I am indebted to the great kindness of Mr. Henry Ruther-
ford. For Peterborough's letter to Dr. Towne, i?ifra, p. 1 1 1 and
Appendix.

92 VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND

at the bath. You do me the greatest honour I
could ever boast of, in bestowing an Enghs dress
upon my french child. I receive the best reward
of all my labours if you go on in the generous
design of translating my undeserving work into a
language which gives life and strength to all the
subjects it touches. The henriade has at least in
itself a spirit of liberty which is not very common
in france, the language of a free nation as yours
is the only one that can vigourously express what
I have but faintly drawn in my native tongue :
the work will grow under your hands, worthy of
the british nation, and that tree transplanted in
your soil and grafted by you will bear a new and a
better sort of fruit.

Miraturque novas frondes et non sua poma.

I wish I could be the happy witness of your labour.
I assure you, dear Sir, I am strongely tempted of
coming to barbadoes ; for as the henriade wanted
to be translated by you, I want a warmer climate
for my health, which grows worse and worse in
England. I am sure your advices would mend my
constitution as well as you mend my poem ; you
would be my double Apollo.

Per te concordant nervis (sic)
et medicina tuum est.

As I am talking to you about phisic, I must acquaint
you that doctor friend is a dying for having out-
phisicd himself ; he took the other day ten ounces
of herapicra (sic) at once, with some sene (sic), and

VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND 93

since that noble experiment he hes speechless.
This must be looked upon as self-murther. I hope
you do not deal with your self so violently. I wo
(sic) you take a better care of y"" health.

I hear this minute doctor friend is dead.
Leaving behind him an ample fortune, and a great
reputation which nothing can lessen but his late
sickness ; he was the only patient whom he treated
so ill.

farewell, dear S' ; in case you are ever so kind
as to write to me, I desire you to direct your {sic')
to M". Cavalier, a merchant by the royal exchange.

I am for ever with sincerity, esteem, and
gratitude, S', y' very humble, obed. faithfull
serv. Voltaire.

So runs in exact transcript this interesting letter.

IV

As soon as the Henriade was off his hands he
applied himself steadily to his History of Charles XII.
In the composition of this delightful biography,
which he appears to have begun as early as 1727, he
was greatly assisted by Von Fabrice. Few men then
living knew more of the public and private life of
the great Swede than Fabrice, and what he knew
he liberally communicated. Much useful informa-
tion was derived from Bolingbroke and the Dowager

94 VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND

Duchess of Marlborough. But Charles XII. was
not the only work with which he was occupied.
He began, prompted by Bohngbroke and inspired
by Shakespeare and Lee, the tragedy of Brutus, the
first act of which he sketched in English prose.
We give a short specimen of the original draft, all
that remains, which the reader may find it inter-
esting to compare with the corresponding passage in
the French text as it now stands. It is the speech
of Brutus in the second scene of the first act —

** Brutus : Allege not ties : his (Tarquin's) crimes
have broken them all. The gods themselves, whom
he has offended, have declared against him. Which
of our rights has he not trod upon ? True, we
have sworn to be his subjects, but we have not
sworn to be his slaves. You say you've seen our
Senate, in humble suppUance, pay him their vows.
Even he himself has sworn to be our father, and
make the people happy in his guidance. Broken
from his oaths, we are let loose from ours. Since
he has transgressed our laws, his the rebelhon.
Rome is free from guilt." ^

1 Goldsmith's Miscellaneous Works, iv. 20. As it appears in
Brutus, Act I. Sc. 11, it runs —

"N'alleguez point ces noeuds que le crime a rompus,
Ces dieux qu'il outragea, ces droits qu'il a perdus.
Nous avons fait, Arons, en lui rendant hommage,
Serment d'obeissance, et non point d'esclavage ;
Et puisqu'il vous souvient d'avoir vu dans ces lieux,
Le S6nat a ses pieds, faisant pour lui des vceux,

VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND 95

This tragedy, which he completed on his
return to Paris, he dedicated in very flattering
terms to BoHngbroke. Mr. Parton, in his Hst
of Voltaire's writings, enters among them an
edition of Brutus published in London in 1727.
Of that edition, after a careful search, I can
find no trace. It was certainly unknown to
Desnoiresterres, to Beuchot, and to all the editors ;
and — what is, I think, final — there is no mention
of it in the exhaustive bibliography of Voltaire
published by M. Georges Bengesco. Mr. Parton
has, I suspect, been misled by an ambiguous
paragraph at the end of the preface to the fourth
edition of the Essay on Epic Poetry. Pollnitz tells
us that a translation of it had, in the spring of
1733. 3- better run in London than the original had
in Paris, adding that its author "was so entirely
captivated with the freedom of thinking among the
English that he had in some measure forgotten he
was a Frenchman." ^

At Wandsworth, or possibly in London, he

Songez qu'en ce lieu meme, k cet autel auguste,
Devant ces memes dieux, il jura d'etre juste.
De son peuple et de lui tel etait le lien :
II nous rend nos serments lorsqu'il trahit le sien ;
Et des qu'aux lois de Rome il ose etre infidele
Rome n'est plus sujette, et lui seul est rebelle."

^ Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 467.

96 VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND

sketched also another tragedy, a tragedy which
was not, however, completed till 1734. This was
La Mort de Cesar, suggested, as need hardly be
said, by the masterpiece of Shakespeare/ Mean-
while (end of 1728) he was engaged in the com-
position of those charming Letters which were
jafterwards published in English under the title of
Letters concerning the English Nation, and in French
under the title of Lettres Philosophiques. They
were addressed to his friend Thieriot, and under
Thieriot's auspices (par les soins de Thieriot) were
translated into English, Thieriot having come to
London for this purpose. The publication of the
English translation preceded the publication of
the French original ; and the reason for this, as
we gather from a letter written to Thieriot in
July 1733, was twofold. Voltaire well knew the
storm which their appearance was certain to raise
in France. He wished Thieriot, therefore, in the
preface to his translation, to lay stress on the fact
that they were not written for the public, but
were privately addressed to Thieriot himself.
The reception they received in an English dress
would be some indication as to how they would
fare in a French dress on the Continent, and the
fact that they were current in English would be

^ See CEuvres Completes (edit. 1877), vol. ii., note.

VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND 97

some justification for them appearing in French.
Of the immense importance of these letters histori-
cally there can be no question. '* Les Lettres
Anglaises," says Lanfrey, " sontj non seulement
le livre du si^cle oti il y a le plus de verites nou-
velles, mais ces verites y sont armees en guerre
et sonnent comme les filches inevitables du dieu
a Tare d' argent." ^ Before their appearance
France had been strangely indifferent to the
intellectual activity and achievement of England,
knowing little or nothing about our literature,
our philosophy, or our science. They initiated
a new era. " Cet ouvrage," observes Condorcet,
" fut parmi nous I'epoque d'une revolution ; 11
commenga a y faire naitre le gout de la philosophic
et de la litterature anglaise ; a nous interesser
aux moeurs, a la j5blitique, aux connaissances
commerciales de ce peuple ; a repandre sa langue
parmis nous." ^ The first French editions appeared
in 1734, but two editions had appeared in English
during the preceding year, one printed in London,
and the other in Dublin.

But the indefatigable energy of Voltaire did not
exhaust itself in study and composition. It appears

^ EEglise et les Philosophes au Dix-huitieme Sihle, p. 114, and
cf. his remarks on p. 113.

2 Vie de Voltaire ; CEuvres Completes, vol. i. p. 208.
7

\

98 VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND

from. Duvernet, that he attempted to open a perma-
nent French theatre in London, and with this object
he induced a company of Parisian actors to come
over; but the project met with so httle encourage-
ment that he was forced to abandon it, and the
company went back almost immediately to Paris/

In the midst of these multifarious pursuits he
had found time to peruse almost everything of
note both in our poetry and in our prose. He
began with Shakespeare, whose principal dramas
he studied with minute attention, analysing the
structure, the characterisation, the diction. His
criticisms on Shakespeare are, it is true, seldom
cited except to be laughed at, but the defects of
these criticisms originated neither from ignorance
nor from inattention. His real opinion of Shake-
speare is not to be gathered from the Theatres
Anglais and from the Lettre ^ V Academie, but
from the Lettres Philosophiques and from the
admirable letter to Horace Walpole.^ The in-
fluence of Shakespeare on Voltaire's own tragedies
is very perceptible, and the extent of that influence
will be at once apparent if we compare the plays
produced before his visit to England with the
plays produced on his return to France ; if we

^ Duvernet, p. 72.

2 Dated Ferney, July 1768. Correspondance Generale, vol. xiv.

VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND 99

compare (Edipe, Artemise, and Marianne with
Brutus, Eriphyle, and Zaire. Brutus and La Mort
de Cesar flowed not more certainly from Julius
Ccesar than Zaire from Othello; reminiscences of
Hamlet are unmistakable both in Eriphyle and
in Semiramis ; v/hile, as Professor Lounsbury has
pointed out, Macbeth is closely recalled in the two
most powerful scenes in Mahomet. The first three
acts of Julius CcBsar he subsequently translated
into French, and he has in the Lettres Philoso-
phiques given a characteristic but not very satis-
factory version of the famous soliloquy in Hamlet.'^
Of Chaucer, of Spenser, and of our Elizabethan
writers generally it is not surprising that he was as
ignorant as most English writers in those times were.
Milton he studied, as his Essay on Epic Poetry
and his article on the Epopee ^ prove, with great
diligence. He had, in addition to Paradise Lost,
read Paradise Regained a ' ^amson Agonistes,
neither of which he thought of much value. He
was well acquainted with the poems, the dramas,
and the essays of Dryden, of whom he speaks in the
Sitcle de Louis XIV. with unbounded enthusiasm :
"On distingue le celebre Dryden, qui s'est signale

^ For the relation of Voltaire to Shakespeare, see the interesting
Study of Professor Lounsbury, Shakespeare and Voltaire.
2 Didionnaire Philosophique, article " Epopee."

100 VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND

dans tous les genres de poesie ; ses ouvrages sent
pleins de details naturels, a la fois brillants,
animes, vigoureux, hardis, passionees, merite qu'-
aucun poete de sa nation n'egale, et qu'aucun
ancien n'a surpasse,"^ pronouncing his genius, how-
ever, to be too exuberant and not accompanied
with sufficient judgment;^ with the writings of
Dry den's contemporaries he was equally conversant.
Of Garth's^ Dispensary he had a high opinion, and
he places it above the Lutrin. Even such inferior
poets as Oldham, Roscommon, Dorset, Sheffield,
Halifax, and Rochester had not escaped his curious
eye. Rochester, indeed, he pronounced to be a poet
of great genius ; he puts his satires on a level with
those of Boileau, and in one of the Philosophical
Letters (the twenty-first) he turns a portion of the
satire on Man into French heroics. With the poems
of Denham he was greatly pleased ; and of Waller,
a portion of whose Elegy on the Death of Cromwell
he has also translated into French verse, he speaks
in terms of enthusiastic admiration, ranking him
above Voiture, and observing that " his serious
compositions exhibit a strength and vigour which
could not have been expected from the softness

1 Sihle de Louis XIV., chap, xxxiv.

2 Letter XVIII. of the Lettres Philosophiques.

3 Ibid., article "Burlesque."

VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND loi

and fluency of his other pieces." He read Otway,
whom singularly enough he underrated, and of
whose " Orphan " he has, in his Appel k toutes les
Nations, given a sarcastic analysis. He was
acquainted with Lee's tragedies, and he enjoyed
the comedies of Wycherley, Vanburgh, and Con-
greve, on which he has left many just and inter-
esting observations. Indeed, he did Vanburgh the
honour to steal from him many of the incidents,
most of the characters, and the whole of the under-
plot of the Relapse. It is singular that the French
editors, who are careful to point out that Le Conite
de Bottrsouffle ; Comedie Bouffe is merely a recast of
UEchange ; Comedie en trois ades, should have
omitted to notice that both of them are simply
Vanburgh' s play in a French dress.

But nothing illustrates his mastery over our
language and his power of entering into the spirit
of our literature, even when that literature is most
esoteric, so strikingly as his remarks on Hudihras.
" I never found," he says, " so much wit in any
single book as that. It is Don Quixote and the
Satire Menippee blended together." Of the opening
lines he has, in the twenty-second of Lettres Philo-
sophiques, given a French version, reproducing
with extraordinary felicity both the metre and
the spirit. With not less pleasure he perused the

102 VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND

poems of Prior. In the Philosophical Dictionary he
devotes an article to him, and in another article
he pauses to draw attention to the merits of Alma.
With Parnell's Hermit he was so pleased that he
has borrowed it, and, turning it into prose, has
inserted it in Zadig. With the essays and poems
of Addison, whom he pronounces to be the best
critic as well as the best writer of his age, he was
well acquainted.^ His style, he says, is a model :
"Sa mani^re d'ecrire est un excellent modele en
tout pays." His Allegories he has imitated;^ his
Campaign he took as the model for Fontenoy ; from
his criticism on Milton he has borrow^ed ; and his
Cato he placed at the head of English tragedies,
" la seule tragedie anglaise ecrite avec une elegance
et une noblesse continue." Indeed, he has gone so
far as to say that the principal character in that
drama is the " greatest that was ever brought
upon any stage." ^ His observations upon the
defects of the play are less open to question,
and prove that if he had the bad taste to prefer
Addison to Shakespeare, he was sufficiently ac-
quainted with the history of our drama to be able

1 For his remarks on Cato, see Didionnaire Philosophique, article
"Addison," where he gives a French version of Cato's soliloquy.

2 See particularly the Vision in section ii. of the article on
" Religion " in the Philosophical Dictionary.

2 Siecle de Louis XIV., chap, xxxiv.

VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND 103

to point out in what way the appearance of Cato
marked an era in its development. To the genius
of Swift he paid enthusiastic homage. He owed,

I- he said, to Swift's writings the love he bore to
the English language. He considered him im-
' measurably superior to Rabelais : " Monsieur Swift
est Rabelais dans son bon sens, et vivant en bonne
compagnie. II n'a pas a laverite la gaiete du premier,
mais il a toute la finesse, la raison, le choix, le bon
gout qui manquent a notre cure de Meudon";^
and he was so delighted with Gulliver's Travels
that he encouraged his friend Thieriot to undertake
a translation of them into French, judiciously
advising him, however, to confine his efforts to the
first part. His own Micr omegas is largely indebted
to Gulliver, just as his Relation de la Maladie
du Jesuite Berthier was plainly suggested by Swift's
account of Partridge's death. Nor did his nice and
discriminating appreciation end here. Voltaire was
the first critic who drew attention to the peculiar
merits of Swift's verses.^ So Anglicised had Vol-
taire become in his tastes, that he actually preferred
Bishop Burnet's Memoirs tothose of his own country-
men. *' Peut-etre," he observes, " ont-ils surpasse

^ Lettres Fhtlosophiques, xxii.

2 Ibid., xxii. • see, too, Lettres a S. A. M. Le Prince, Melanges,
V. 489.

104 VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND

leurs maitres ; leurs sermons sont moins compasses,
moins affectes, moins declamateurs qu'en France." ^
With the poems and tragedies of Thomson he
was, as a very interesting letter to George, Lord
Lyttelton, shows,^ thoroughly conversant. " I was
acquainted/' so runs the letter, which is written
in English, and is dated Paris, May 17, 1750 (N.S.),
" with Mr. Thomson when I stayed in England.
I discovered in him a great genius and a great
simplicity. I liked in him the poet and the true
philosopher, I mean the lover of mankind. I think
that without a good stock of such a philosophy
a poet is just above a fiddler who amuses our ears
and cannot go to our soul. I am not surprised your
nation has done more justice to Mr. Thomson's
Seasons than to his dramatic performances." As
. this letter is an interesting specimen of Voltaire's
composition nearly twenty years after he had left
us, it may be well to cite more from it ; he is ac-
counting for the comparative indifference with which
the English public regarded Thomson's tragedies.

"Thereis onekind of poetry of which the judicious
readers and the men of taste are the proper judges.

^ Sieck de Louis XIV., chap, xxxiv.

2 This letter is among the archives at Hagley, and I am
indebted for a copy of it to the kindness of the late Lord
Lyttelton. I have since discovered, what Lord Lyttelton did not
know, that it was printed in Phillimore's Life of Lyttelton.

VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND 105

There is another kind, that depends on the vulgar
great or small ; tragedy and comedy are of these
last species ; they must be suited to the turn of
mind and proportioned to their taste. Your nation
two hundred years since is used to a wild scene,
to a crowd of tumultuous events, to an emphatical
poetry mixed with low and comical expressions,
to a lively representation of bloody deeds, to a
kind of horror which seems often barbarous and
childish, all faults which never sullied the Greek,
the Roman, and the French stage. And give me
leave to say that the taste of your politest country-
men differs not much in point of tragedy from the
taste of the mob at bear gardens. 'Tis true we
have too much of action, and the perfection of this
art should consist in a due mixture of the French
taste and the English energy. . . . Mr. Thomson's
tragedies seem to me wisely intricated and elegantly
writ. They want perhaps some fire, and it may be
that his heroes are neither moving nor busy enough,
but, taking him all in all, methinks he has the
highest claims to the greatest esteem."

The poetry of Pope he read and re-read with an '.
admiration which occasionally expresses itself in
hyperbole. The Essay on Criticism he preferred
both to the masterpiece of Horace and to the Art
Poetiqiie of Boileau ; the Rape of the Lock he con-
sidered the best mock heroic poem in existence ;
and the Essay on Man, which appeared about
five years after he had returned to France, he

K

io6 VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND

describes as " the most beautiful didactic poem —
the most useful — the most sublime — that has ever
been written in any language." ^

It would be interesting to trace the influence
of Pope's poetry upon Voltaire's. This is not the
place for such an inquiry, but it may be remarked
that the Temple du Goilt was undoubtedly suggested
by the Dunciad, that Le Desastre de Lisbonne
and the Discours en vers sur VHomme bear the
impress of the Essay on Man, and that La Lot
Naturelle was certainly modelled on it.

It is easy to see that what attracted him in our

poetry was not its sublimity and highest flights,

not what he could find in Spenser or Shakespeare

or Milton in their most inspired moments, but what

) he found in them when they were on the levels of

I life, and what he found in the writings of Dryden

and his school, and this led him to a generalisation

on the characteristics of our poetry as piercingly

discriminating as it was profoundly and admirably

true : " Nulle nation n'a traite la morale en vers

I avec plus d'energie et de profondeur que la nation

I anglaise"; adding characteristically: " C'est la, il

' me semble, le plus grand merite de ses poetes." ^

^ See too " Parallble d'Horace, de Boileau, et de Pope," where
he says of the Essay, "Jamais vers ne form^rent tant de grandes
id^es en si peu de paroles." — Melanges, iii. 224. See, too, Lettres
Philosophiques, xxii.

2 Sikle de Louis XIV., chap, xxxiv.

VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND 107

At the beginning of 1729 he prepared to quit
England. For this to his friends he humorousty
assigned two reasons. He was disgusted, he said,
** with a foohsh people who believe in God and
trust in ministers ; and as he wished to believe
the Gospel he was resolved to go to Constantinople,
for belief in that Gospel was impossible when living
among the teachers of Christianity.^ There was
now, indeed, nothing to detain him. He had
published the Henriade ; he had completed his
collections for the Leftres Philosophiques ; he had
collected materials for the Sidcle de Louis XIV.,
and for the History of Charles XII. ; he had made
what friends he cared to make ; he had seen all
he wished to see ; and, what was of equal import-
ance to him, he had made money. But it would
be doing him great injustice to suppose that the
only ties which bound him to England were ties
of self-interest. He had become sincerely attached
to the country and to the people. He always con-
tended that the temper and character essentially
typical of the English and French were mutually
corrective. "Utraque poscit opem res et conjurat
amice." I believe that an Englishman who is well
acquainted with France, and a Frenchman who is
well acquainted with England, are both of them
1 See Peterborough's letter to Dr. Towne printed in the Appendix.

'/ \/

io8 VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND

much the better for it.^ " Had I not been obUged,"
he said in a letter to Thieriot, to look after my
affairs in France, depend upon it I would have
spent the rest of my days in London." And again,
many years afterwards, he wrote in a letter to his
friend Keate : *' Had I not fixed the seat of my
retreat in the free corner of Geneva, I would
certainly live in the free corner of England. I
have been for thirty years the disciple of your
ways of thinking." ^ The kindness and hospitality
which he received he never forgot, and he took
every opportunity of repaying it. To be an English-
man was always a certain passport to his courteous
consideration. When in 1776 Martin Sherlock
visited him at Ferney, he found the old man, then
in his eighty-third year, still full of his visit to
England. He had had the garden laid out in the
English fashion ; the books with which he was
surrounded were the English classics ; the subject
to which he persistently directed the conversation
was the English nation.^

His departure from England is said to have
been hastened by a quarrel with his bookseller,

^ Letter to the Abbe Le Blanc, 14th November 1738. CEuvres
Completes, xxxv. p. 41.

2 Voltaire to Keate, i6th January 1760; Brit. Mus. Addt. MSS.,
30,991.

^ Letters fro7n an English Traveller (Letter XXIV.).

VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND 109

Prevost ; and a story was afterwards circulated
by Desfontaines that, previous to his departure, he
was severely cudgelled by an infuriated member
of the trade — for what reason, and under what
circumstances, is not recorded/ However this
may be, it seems clear that he had either done
or said something which had made him enemies ;
there was certainly an impression in the minds of
some that he quitted England under a cloud. In
a notice of the History of Charles XII., in the
Gentleman's Magazine for May 1732, the writer
asserts that " Mr. Voltaire enriched himself with
our contributions, and behaved so ill that he was
refused admittance into those noblemen's and
gentlemen's families in which he had been received
with great favour and distinction. He left England
full of resentment, and wrote the King of Sweden's
Life to abuse this nation and the Hanoverian
family." The latter statement is, as we need
scarcely say, quite untrue ; the former statement
is as plainly a gross exaggeration. A very dis-
graceful story connected with his departure from
England appeared some years later in the columns
of the same periodical.^ It is there stated that

^ See La Voltairomaniey p. 37 ; and cf. Desnoiresterres, La
Jeunesse de Voltaire, p. 397.

^ See a letter to the Editor of the Gentlefuafi's Magazine, vol.

no VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND

Peterborough, wishing to have a certain work
written, had commissioned Voltaire, then his guest,
to do it, and had suppUed him from time to time
with the money necessary to defray the expenses
of pubhcation. But these sums, instead of paying
them over to the pubhsher, who had, on the
strength of the first instalment, put a portion of
the work into type, Voltaire appropriated to his
own use. He then proceeded to play a double
game. He told the publisher, who for want of
funds had stopped the press, that Peterborough
would advance nothing further till the book was
out. To Peterborough, on the other hand, he
accounted for the delay in publication by attribut-
ing it to the dilatoriness of the publisher. At last
the publisher, justly considering that he had been
treated very hardly, determined to apply to Peter-
borough himself. With this object he had an
interview with him at Parson's Green. All was
explained. The Earl, so far from being guilty of
the injustice and meanness attributed to him by
Voltaire, had regularly advanced the money
required, as Voltaire had regularly retained it.
Peterborough's rage knew no bounds. He drew
his sword and rushed at his treacherous guest,

Ixvii. part ii. p. 820, seqq., signed E. L. B., in the number for
"^ctober 1797.

\

\

VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND iii

who happened to come up in the course of the
interview, and it was only by a precipitate flight
that Voltaire escaped mortal injury. That night
he concealed himself in a neighbouring village.
Next day he returned to London, and almost
immediately afterwards he left England for the
Continent.

This story no one would wish to believe, and there
is happily strong reason for doubting its truth. In
the first place, it did not appear till nearly seventy
years after the supposed event. It is related by
an anonymous writer, on anonymous authority,
and it appears in a letter obviously animated with
the most violent hostility to Voltaire. Nor is
there, so far as I know, any allusion to it elsewhere.
What makes it still more improbable is that, in an
interesting letter written by Lord Peterborough to
Dr. Towne, then in Barbadoes, which has reference
to Voltaire's movements at this time, there is no
mention of any such fracas or any such conduct
on the part of Voltaire, but it is at the same time
clear that Voltaire's flighty and uncertain temper
had somewhat perplexed his friends. The letter
is dated November, and was no doubt written in
the November succeeding Voltaire's departure for
France. "It is," says Peterborough, *'as hard to
account for our politics as for Mr. Voltaire's re-

112 VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND

solution and conduct. The country and people of
England are in disgrace at present, and [he] has
taken his leave of us as of a foolish people who
believe in God and trust in ministers, and he is
gone to Constantinople in order to believe in the
Gospels, which he says it is impossible to doe,
living among the teachers of Christianity." ^

Before setting out he went down to Twicken-
ham to have a final interview with Pope. " I
am come," he said, " to bid farewell to a man
who never treated me seriously from the first hour
of my acquaintance with him to the present
moment." To this. Pope — who as soon as Voltaire's
back was turned acknowledged the justice of the
remark — probably replied with evasive politeness,
or with an emphatic assurance to the contrary;
for it is certain that in none of Voltaire's subse-
quent writings are there any indications either of
unfriendliness or ill-will towards him. On the
contrary, his correspondence with Thieriot in 1733
has more than one affectionate reference to '' Sir
Homer Pope," as he speaks of him in one place,
and to " glutton Pope," as he humorously describes
him in another. What is certain is that, had he

^ For this interesting letter, hitherto unpublished, which is
printed in the Appendix, J am also indebted to the kindness of
Mr. Henry Rutherford.

VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND 113

quitted Pope under the impression that he had
been ill-treated by him, his vengeance would have
been sure, prompt, and signal.^

The exact date of Voltaire's departure from
England I have not been able to discover. We
may, however, conjecture with some certainty that
it took place during the second or third week in -^
March 1729 (N.S.). In a letter to Thieriot, dated
— but without the month — 1729, he says that he
hopes to be in Paris about the 15th of March.
In another letter to Thieriot, dated the loth of
March 1729, he writes : "In all likelihood I shall
stay at Saint-Germain, and there I intend to arrive
before the 15th." On the 25th of March he was
certainly in France, and probably at Saint-Ger-
main, as he writes to Thieriot on that date : " If
you can forget a few days your golden palace,
your feasts, . . . come hither, you will find a
homely frugal fare, a hard bed, a poor room,
but here is a friend who expects you." We may
perhaps deduce from the somewhat mysterious
paragraph at the end of this letter, a paragraph
apparently having reference to one M. Noce, really,
I suspect, referring to Voltaire himself — C'est chez,

^ The authority for all this is Owen Ruffhead {Life of Pope, p.
165), who almost certainly had the anecdote, which was communi-
cated by Pope himself, from Warburton.
8

114 VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND

Chatillon, perruquier a Saint-Germain/ rue des
Recollets, . . . il faut demander Sansons : il habite
un trou de cette baraque, et il y en a un autre
pour vous, — that he was Hving at this address
under the assumed name of Sansons.

It is probable, then, that he left England between
the loth and the 23rd of March 1729 (N.S.). The
time, therefore, spent by Voltaire in England was,
deducting a month for his short visit to France in
^ithe summer of 1726, about two years and eight
months, and not, as Carlyle and others erroneously
i assert, two years.

So ended one of the most important episodes
in the literary history of the eighteenth century,
the effects of which extended far beyond the
limits of its relation to letters. It would not,
indeed, be too much to say that what the Italian
wars were to the Europe of the Renaissance, the
intercourse between England and France initiated
by this visit of Voltaire was to the world of the
Revolution. Henceforth the barriers hitherto ex-

1 In his Correspondence (vol. i. of the last edition of the
(Euvres Complies) there is a letter to Thieriot, dated from Saint-
Germain-en-Laye, 2nd March 1729, a date which, as the letter of
loth March proves, is certainly erroneous.

VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND 115

isting between the intellectual activity of England
and France were removed, and a highroad was
opened along which streamed the forces which
transformed the France of the old regime into the
France of the nineteenth century. < In less than
seventy years afterwards that regime was in ashes,
and not a torch fired the pyre which had not been
lighted in England. To the receptive and plastic
genius of Voltaire, which at once absorbed and
assimilated all that had been achieved here in
politics, in philosophy, in letters, and in scienc^,
and which henceforth took the ply from its new
masters and its new teachers, must be assigned the
first place among these agencies. It was he who
interpreted to Europe what had placed England
in the van of progressive humanity, — her noble
constitution, her enlightened philanthropy, and,
above all, her realisation of what in other countries
was little more than the dream of enthusiasts, — the
equality of every citizen in the eyes of the law,
and the right of every citizen to think what he
pleased and to speak what he thought. Among
the inestimable blessings secured by the Revolu-
tion of 1688 were, in addition to those Acts which
transformed a despotic into a limited monarchy,!^
the Toleration _Act, which, however guarded and
grudging in what it actually conceded, was yet an

ii6 VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND

emphatic expression of principles everywhere at
work, the purification of the administration of
ij** justice and the freedom of the Press. It was just
at the time when the effects of all this had made
England present so striking a contrast, both politic-
ly ally and intellectually, to France and to the other
great States of Europe, that Voltaire visited us.
What he saw kindled in him not merely intellectual
admiration, but true moral enthusiasm, as we need
go no further than the noble dedication of Zaire
to see. It was here that he learnt to realise what,
in spite of abuses, constitutes the real_dignity
of man, here that he received his initiation in that
large philanthropy, that enlightened tolerance, and
those cosmopolitan sympathies and interests which
*^ ever afterwards distinguished him. And when,
many years afterwards, he wrote —

"Le soleil des Anglais, c'est le feu du g^nie,
C'est I'amour de la gloire et de rhumanitd,
Celui de la patrie et de la liberte,"

he did but express with a sincerity and fervour
which time never impaired, both his passionate
admiration for a country much dearer to him than
his own, and the grounds and reasons for that
generous preference. \y

MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND

The year which witnessed the departure of Voltaire
from our shores witnessed the advent of another
of his illustrious countrymen. Voltaire's memor-
able visit came to a close in the spring of 1729 ;
in the following autumn arrived Montesquieu. The
abundant material which throws light on Voltaire's
movements and experiences while he was among
us is unfortunately not available in the case of
Montesquieu. By a singular fatality, or rather
series of fatalities, almost all those documents
which would have enabled us to trace his career
during this interesting part of his life have been
destroyed or mislaid. We know from Maty ^ that
he regularly corresponded with Chesterfield — who
was his host during a portion at least of his visit —
and Chesterfield with him ; but of the letters which
passed between them not one has been preserved.

1 " Memoirs of Chesterfield," sect. ii. in Chesterfield's Miscell-
aneous Works, vol. i. p. 42.

117

ii8 MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND

I am enabled by the courtesy of the late Sir Robert
Herbert to state that, though there are many
memoranda among the Chesterfield papers bearing
on the period of Montesquieu's visit, a careful
search, most kindly made at my request, has re-
vealed nothing which has any reference to him.

It is all but certain that he recorded as fully
and carefully his impressions of England and of
the English as he did of the other countries which
he visited in the course of his travels ; but such
records are represented only by the Notes sur
r Angleterre, first published in 1818, which are so
meagre and trivial that they have all the appear-
ance of being garbled and mutilated/ To the
history of his manuscripts I shall presently recur,
but I may here remark in passing, that if I have
been correctly informed, his grandson, Charles
Louis, who settled, became naturalised, married,
and passed some thirty-four years of his life in
England, dying at his seat. Bridge Hill House, near
Canterbury, in 1824,^ deliberately destroyed the

^ They are printed in Montesquieu's works (edit. Laboulaye), vol.
vii. pp. 183-196.

2 It is curious that there should be no monument and no record
of the Baron de Montesquieu in Bridge Church, and yet we know
from the Times, 31st July 1824, and from the Church Register, that
he was buried there. " On Tuesday the remains of the Baron de
Montesquieu, of Bridge Hill House, were deposited in Bridge

MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND 119

missing commentaries. He was grateful to England
for the asylum which she had afforded him during
his exile, and had become much attached to his
adopted country. Such notes as have been pre-
served sufficiently indicate the probable tendency
of the fuller commentaries, for nothing could be
more offensively anti-English than these jottings.
And that Montesquieu's grandson, from considera-
tions of courtesy and gratitude, should have wished
a more elaborate expression of such sentiments to
be suppressed is not surprising. Enough, however,
may be gathered from various sources to sketch, at
least in outline, this important episode in the history
of the literary relations between England and France.
I am sorry to begin, as I am obliged to begin,
by finding fault with the only attempt which has,
as yet, been made to throw light on this passage
in Montesquieu's biography. The chapter in M.
Vian's Histoire de Montesquieu dealing with the
visit to England is the most unsatisfactory part
of his work ; it is jejune and superficial, and is,
moreover, full of errors and misrepresentations,
and that not in trifles but in matters of capital

Church. The Baron was an hereditary Marshal of France, and
descendant of the illustrious Montesquieu. Napoleon restored his
paternal estates, which had been confiscated during the French
Revolution, from a regard to the memory of his ancestor."

120 MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND

importance. A few of these may be specified.
Montesquieu did not travel with Chesterfield in
Italy, as M. Vian states ; he did not even meet
him there, for Chesterfield was then in residence
as Ambassador at The Hague. Nor is there any
evidence that he met Chesterfield at the Club de
r Entresol in Paris. ^ He met him, as he himself
tells us, for the first time at The Hague, with a
letter of introduction from Lord Waldegrave.^
There is no evidence that he stayed with
Chesterfield during the whole of his visit to Eng-
land ; and indeed this is impossible, for Chester-
field was then only occasionally in England. There
is no evidence that Montesquieu left England in
April 173 1 ; and to support this, as well as the
assertion that he resided with Chesterfield, M. Vian
has recourse to an expedient which cannot be
sufficiently reprehended. He quotes a letter of
Fontenelle's, which he describes as dated 1731,
and as being addressed to Lord Chesterfield's
house ; we turn to the letter, and find that it has
no date and no address.^ In M. Vian's account of
Montesquieu's introduction to the Queen, and of

^ Vian, p. 115, and this is reasserted by M. Zdvort. See his
Montesquieu, pp. 130, 131.

2 Voyages, ii. 235.

2 See (Euvres de Fontenelle (Paris, 1818), vol. ii. p. 566. The letter
does not appear at all in the edition cited by M. Vian, Paris, 1758.

MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND 121

his conversation with her at Kensington in 1730,
we are actually informed that the Queen was
Queen Charlotte ! Nor does M. Vian add anything
to our knowledge of this episode in Montesquieu's
life beyond what may be gathered from perfectly
obvious sources.

It is scarcely necessary to say that Charles I
Louis de Secondat, Baron de la Brede, afterwards
Baron de Montesquieu, sprang from a family long
distinguished by its soldiers and its lawyers, and
was born at La Brede, about three leagues from
Bordeaux, on i8th January 1689 : his father being
Jacques de Secondat, second son of the Baron de
Montesquieu ; his mother, Fran9oise de Penel, who
brought her husband the castle and estates of La
Brede. He received his early education at the
hands of the Oratorians at Juilly, and at Juilly
he remained from his twelfth to his twenty-second
year. He then went through a course of legal
study, and was entered as Counsellor in the Parlia-
ment of Bordeaux in 1714. In the following year
he married Mademoiselle Jeanne de Lartigue, and
about two years afterwards became President k
mortier ; his uncle, the head of the family, who held
this office, having bequeathed it to him, together
with all his property, on condition that he would
take the title of Montesquieu. The condition and

122 MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND

the responsibilities were accepted by him, but his
heart was neither in his work nor in his home.
His wife was plain and homely ; his official duties
were dry and most distasteful to him ; but he
neglected neither. If in private life, as a husband
and father, and in public life, as a magistrate and
citizen, he reduced his responsibilities to a mini-
mum, he decorously and punctually discharged
them. The rest of his time he gave to congenial
friends wherever he could find them — and he
sought them assiduously among the choice spirits
of his age, — to his studies, to his liaisons, and to
ambition. In his temperament there was a singular
mixture of the philosopher and of the libertine, of
austerity and of voluptuousness. In the Lettres
Persanes we find these characteristics blended ;
in the Temple de Guide, and in the Considerations
sur la Grandeur et Decadence des Romains, in
remarkable and curious contrast ; in the Esprit des
Lois occasionally discernible.

Montesquieu's attention was at first directed to
anatomy^ botany, and natural history. But he was
of Gascon descent, and the Gascon strain in him
soon led to less positive studies ; and he fell under
the fascination of Montaigne, with whom con-
stitutionally he had so much in common. Indeed,
in the admirable portrait which he has given of

MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND 123

himself in his Pensees Diverses he might be de-
scribing his master.

" L'etude/' writes this happy man, " a ete pour
moi le souverain remede contre les degouts de la
vie, n'ayant jamais eu de chagrin qu'une heure de
lecture n'ait dissipe. . . . Je suis presque aussi
content avec des sots qu'avec des gens d' esprit ;
car il y a peu d'hommes si ennuyeux qui ne m'aient
amuse. . . . J'ai eu naturellement de 1' amour pour
le bien et I'honneur de ma patrie, et peu pour ce
qu'on appelle la gloire. Quand j'ai voyage dans
les pays etrangers, je m'y suis attache comme
au mien propre, j'ai pris part a leur fortune
et j'aurois souhaite qu'ils fussent dans un etat
florissant." ^

'^ His thirst for knowledge, for all that could be
gathered from books, from observation and experi-
ence, grew insatiable. He revelled in the Latin
classics ; he devoured history and political philo-
sophy ; he explored the ancient philosophies, being
particularly attracted by Stoicism ; and, as the fruit
of these studies, he produced for the Academy at
Bordeaux two essays, entitled respectively La
Politique des Remains dans la Religion and Le
Systeme des I dees. Fiction and belles-lettres were
the recreation of his lighter moments ; Telemaque

1 (Euvres (edit. Laboulaye), vol. vii. p. 151.

124 MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND

he pronounced to be a divine work ; and in The
Thousand-and-one-Nights , he tells us, he absol-
utely revelled. But what chiefly interested him and
soon formed the centre of his studies was man,
/ not regarded psychologically so much as in relation
,' to politics and society. Of manners, of character,
of all in which human nature reveals itself, he was
an acute and unwearied observer. With him,
though he had as much delight within the walls of
a library as Goethe's Wagner, the world of books
was but the vestibule to the world of active life ;
in no writer were the instincts of the scholar and
recluse more happily tempered with the instincts of
the philosopher, the philanthropist, and the critic
of society and manners.

All this found expression, before he had com-
pleted his thirty-third year, in a work which has
long lost its vogue, but which will find delighted
readers as long as the French language exists.
The scheme of the Lettres Persanes was suggested
partly by Dufresny and partly by Chardin's Persian
travels ; but what constitutes the vitality, the
power, the charm of these brilliant sketches and
studies belongs solely to Montesquieu. There can
be little doubt that the twin brothers Usbec and
Rica were, as M. Sorel has observed, drawn from
Montesquieu himself ; the one is Montesquieu the

MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND 125

philosopher, the other is Montesquieu the painter
of manners and satirist. The work is a masterly
picture, and an equally masterly analysis of the
world of which Saint-Simon was the historian and
Dubois the type ; of a world of libertines and
harlots, of fribbles and sycophants, without religion,
without heart, and without hope.

But Montesquieu is neither a Tacitus nor a
Knox ; on his brow is no scowl, in his mouth no
jeremiad. To the dulcia vitia of that corrupt
time he may certainly be described as pandering.
Nothing, in truth, could be more grossly licentious
than many passages in these letters. His social
sketches are admirable ; his satire, though not
without touches as severe and poignant as anything
in Le Sage and La Bruyere, is the perfection of
urbane and delicate mockery. But when he scans
society with the eye of a political philosopher he
assumes quite a different tone ; and there are
many passages which read like extracts from the
Esprit des Lois, the germ of which is indeed to be
found in them. Of all his writings these letters
most comprehensively illustrate his genius and
temper ; and of all his writings they were, and
always have been, the most popular.

The Lettres could not, of course, be published
in France, or appear with the author's name. A

126 MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND

sagacious friend, indeed, attempted to dissuade him
from giving them to the world at all, adding, how-
ever, that if published they would " sell like
bread." To escape proscription, they were, like
Pascal's Provinciates, printed at Rouen, and
published at Amsterdam. Within a year they had
run through four editions and four pirated reprints.
Montesquieu has himself told us how the publishers
went about " plucking men of letters by the
sleeves" and saying, " Write me. Sir, some Persian
Letters." Their authorship was soon an open
secret ; and Montesquieu at once tasted all the
sweets of fame. A nobleman as well as an author,
he soon counted among his friends the great men
and the great ladies who were the flower of Parisian
society — the Comte de Caylus, Maurepas, the
Chevalier d' Ay dies, Madame de Lambert, Madame
de Tencin, Madame du Deffand. At Chantilly he
was the guest of the Due de Bourbon, whose
sister, Mademoiselle de Clermont, is said to have
inspired the Temple de Guide. This work, in which,
as in Arsace et Ismenie Montesquieu gave the reins
to the voluptuous fancies in which, in the Persian
Letters, he had only occasionally indulged, was
published at Paris in 1725. It does him little
honour even as an artist, and might, without loss,
have gone the way of the various bonnes fortunes

MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND 127

which, according to the Abbe de Voisenon, it
brought him.

He was now, in spite of his sarcastic picture
of the Academy in the seventy-third Persian
Letter, anxious for the honour to which every savant
and man of letters with any title to distinction
aspired. A member of that body having just died,
Montesquieu became a candidate for the vacant
place, and was elected. But the author of the
Persian Letters, if he had many powerful friends,
had many equally powerful enemies, who gained
the ear of Louis XV. The King, thus prejudiced
against him, refused to confirm the election, on the
ground that Montesquieu did not reside in Paris ;
and Montesquieu returned in pique to Bordeaux.
Two years afterwards, having disposed of his
Presidentship and settled in Paris, he again pre-
sented himself. This time he had the support of
the director, Mareschal d'Estrees, who at last suc-
ceeded in gaining over Fleury ; and the coveted
honour was conferred on him in January 1728.
His discourSy which was unusually brief, dis-
appointed everyone. The truth was that courtesy
and decorum compelled him to say much that
was against his conscience ; panegyrics on Richelieu
and Louis XIV. were strange things to come from
the lips of the author of the thirty-seventh Persian

128 MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND

Letter ; and he felt, no doubt, the humihation of
having to pronounce them.

He now began to prepare himself seriously for
the composition of the Esprit des Lois, the first
sketches of which he appears to have begun after
his return from Paris to Bordeaux. Accordingly,
he determined to investigate the constitutions and
characteristics of all the chief countries in Europe,
and to Collect by personal observation and inquiry
the materials necessary for his work. Setting out
from Paris with Lord Waldegrave, he first visited
Germany and Austria. In Vienna he was received
by Prince Eugene, and seriously thought of aban-
doning his literary pursuits and adopting diplomacy
as a profession. That, however, was not to be.
He next visited Hungary, and from Hungary he
passed to Italy. ; In the spring] of 1729 he left
Italy, and spent the greater part of that year
in Switzerland, in the Rhine country, and in
Holland. At The Hague he made the acquaintance
of Lord Chesterfield,^ to whom Waldegrave had
given him a letter of introduction, and in October
sailed with him in his yacht to England.

Of his experiences in these countries he made
full and elaborate notes, the most voluminous and
valuable being the records of his journeys in Italy,

■ ^ "Voyage en HoUande"; Voyages, vol. ii. p. 235.

MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND 129

Germany, and Holland. These have been pre-
served in their entirety. Of his notes on Austria
and Hungary we have only fragments ; and that
seems to be the case also with the notes on England.
Till 1894, these records, with the exception of the
jottings on England, remained in manuscript ;
but between that year and 1896 the late Baron
Albert de Montesquieu, with the assistance of M.
Celeste, published them. The history of the
Montesquieu manuscripts, of which these records
form only a portion, is so interesting that it well
deserves a digression.

When Montesquieu died in 1755, his son, Jean
Baptiste, inherited his manuscripts. A year or two
afterwards an elaborate edition of Montesquieu's
works was prepared by Richer for the press, and Jean
Baptiste was asked to allow the unpublished papers
to be included in it. But he was by no means
sure that their publication would be judicious, so
he consulted a friend, one Latapie, in whose judg-
ment he had great confidence. Latapie was opposed
to their publication, very sensibly observing, and
gladly do I transcribe his words —

" tout ce qui interesse des amis n'interesse pas
egalement le public, toujours tres severe sur ce
qu'on lui presente d'un homme celebre, parce
9

130 MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND

qu'il le juge d'apr^s lui-m6me, d'apres le point
de perfection ou il a porte ses premiers ouv-
rages "

— an observation which, especially in these days when
officious friends or stupid editors are so mischievously
active, might often with advantage be remembered.
In accordance with this advice, Jean Baptiste refused
his consent to the publication of the manuscripts ;
and Richer' s edition, which appeared in 1758,
appeared without them. Their suppression was
greatly regretted by Montesquieu's many admirers ;
and, some years later, Jean Baptiste was most ab-
surdly taunted with having withheld them because
he was jealous of his father's reputation, he him-
self being a candidate for fame on the strength
of certain unimportant contributions to natural
history. However, in 1783 he gave to the world
one of the unpublished papers, Arsace et Ismenie,
and, having done so, turned the key on the rest.

Jean Baptiste died in 1795, and the manuscripts
passed into the hands of his son, Charles Louis,
whose property was confiscated after the Reign of
Terror, he himself having emigrated to England.
In 1795 another edition of Montesquieu's works
was in preparation, and again the publisher desired
to include the manuscripts. Accordingly he wrote
to one Darcet, who had in his youth been tutor

MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND 131

to Jean Baptiste, and was acquainted with Latapie,
asking him to communicate with Latapie. Latapie
stated in reply that the manuscripts could not be
found ; that Jean Baptiste had fled during the
Terror, taking them with him ; and that his widow
did not know where they were deposited. All
that Latapie could do, he said, was to give from
memory a list of the pieces ; and this he did very
accurately, as afterwards appeared. Meanwhile
it turned out that the manuscripts were in the
possession of one Joachim Laine and his brother
Honorat, to whom Jean Baptiste had entrusted
them before his death in 1793. The Laines trans-
mitted them to Charles Louis after his " radiation
de la liste des emigres," and the restoration of his
property in 1801. By him they were deposited
somewhere in London, where they remained for
some years after the Baron's death. At last, on
an application being made for them by the Prefect
of the Gironde in the name of the representatives
of Montesquieu's family, the descendants of his
daughter — for the male branch had become extinct
— they were returned to La Brede.

But the history of their strange vicissitudes was
not yet ended. Laine expressed a desire to edit
them, and many of them were sent to him for that
purpose ; but he died without carrying out his

132 MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND

intention. Then one Aime Martin, with the assist-
ance of Honorat Laine, took up the work ; but both
died without making any way in it, and without
returning the papers to La Brede. On their re-
covery it was found that some of them were missing.
The Baron de Montesquieu now determined that
they should never again leave La Brede, and con-
tinued for many years to turn a deaf ear to all
applications even to inspect them.

At last it was determined that they should see
the light. In 1891 two tracts were printed ; in
the following year appeared a still more interesting
instalment, edited by the Baron de Montesquieu
himself. Melanges Inedits. Next appeared the
Voyages ; and the rest of the manuscripts are now
in course of publication. Montesquieu's fame is
not likely to gain by anything which appears in
these papers, and many pieces were certainly not
worth printing. Indeed, if we except the Voyages —
which are of interest for reasons quite unconnected
with literary merit, of which they have very little
— we are by no means sure that Latapie's original
advice was not after all the best.

II

But to turn from Montesquieu's manuscripts to
Montesquieu himself. It does not appear that he

MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND 133

had prepared himself for his visit to England by
acquiring the language ; but that he had studied
English history with care is clear from the hundred-
and-fourth Persian Letter. To English society he
had the best of introductions, for his sponsors were
the Earls of Waldegrave and Chesterfield. No
man was more respected and popular in diplomatic
and fashionable circles than Waldegrave, who was
grandson on his mother's side of James 11. and
Arabella Churchill, and nephew of Marshal Berwick.
With Berwick, whose acquaintance he had made
in 1716, when Berwick was commandant in Guienne,
Montesquieu was on intimate terms ; and it is not
unlikely that his intimacy with the uncle led to
his intimacy with the nephew. Waldegrave was
at this time Minister-Plenipotentiary at Vienna,
but had been called to Paris as one of the repre-
sentatives of England at the Congress of Soissons.
At Paris, Montesquieu met him, and the two men
soon became great friends.

Waldegrave was in a delicate and most difficult
position, in which it is quite possible that Montes-
quieu may indirectly have been of service to him.
He had been instructed to watch Berwick and the
Jacobite leaders, who, with Chauvelin, were doing all
in their power to exasperate Fleury against England,
and to thwart the negotiations preliminary to the

134 MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND

Treaty of Seville. On Montesquieu's return from
his travels Waldegrave presented him to George II.
at Hanover ; and shortly afterwards he did him
another and more useful service by introducing
him to Chesterfield. Chesterfield had, about a
year and a half before, been appointed Ambassador
at the Hague, and was at this time residing there
in that capacity. Montesquieu arrived at The
Hague about the middle of October 1729. The
author of the Persian Letters and the friend of
Madame du Deffand and of the Due de Bourbon
had no doubt little need to present the letter of
introduction with which Waldegrave had furnished
him. Chesterfield received him most graciously,
and, on hearing that he was on his way to England,
told him that he was about to leave for England
himself, and offered him a place in his yacht.
Montesquieu gladly accepted the offer, and the
two friends — for cordial friends they had become
during the voyage — arrived in London on Thursda}^
morning, October 23, 1729.*

^ Universal Spectator for Saturday, 25th October 1729:
"Thursday morning the Right Honourable the Earl of Chester-
field arrived here from The Hague." It is strange that Montesquieu
in his Notes sur VAngleterre should say that he left The Hague on
the last day of October. " Je partis le dernier octobre 1729 de la
Haye." Notes sur I'Angleterre. The newspaper is hardly likely to
be in error.

MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND 135

He found himself, he writes to his friend Father
Cerati, in a country which bore very httle resem-
blance to any other in Europe. He was by no
means favourably impressed by London. The
streets, he complains, were quite frightful, so badly
paved and so full of holes and ruts that it was
almost impossible for a carriage to make its way
along them ; and the carriages were as frightful
as the streets.^ The passenger, he says, on scram-
bling into them, found himself seated on an elevation
as high as a theatre ; but, high as this was, over
him towered the coachman and the luggage. In
peril alike from what was above and from what
was below, the unhappy traveller was indeed to be
pitied if he had not made his will.^ The houses
which overhung the streets he thought grim and
ugly ; and, with a few exceptions, he saw nothing
to admire in the architecture of the churches and
of the pubhc buildings. But he was pleased with
the parks and the many rura in urbe which were
so conspicuous in the London of those times. A
jotting in the Notes no doubt sums up his general
impression. " It seems to me," he writes, " that

1 Montesquieu's description is exactly corroborated by C^sar de
Saussure. See his letter in a Foreign View of England, p. 68, and
by PoUnitz, Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 431.

2 Lettres Fam., (Euvres Computes (edit. Laboulaye), vol. vii. p.
229 ; and Notes sur rAfigleterre.

/

136 MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND

Paris is a beautiful city with some ugly things ;
London an ugly city with some beautiful things." ^
The gloom of the climate oppressed him, and he
had no difficulty, he said, in understanding why
the English were so addicted to suicide.^

In the life and habits of the lower classes he
seems to have taken no interest, but the aristocracy
and the middle classes he studied with minute
attention. He notices the gross sensuality every-
where prevalent. " An ordinary Englishman," he
says, " must have a good dinner, a woman, and
comfort. So long as he has the means of getting
these he is contented ; if these means fail him,
he either commits suicide or turns thief.^ As he
gorges himself with meat, he is very robust till he
is about forty or forty-five ; at that age he breaks
up."

Corruption he found universal. " La corruption
s'est mise dans toutes les conditions." " The sover-
eign power here," he wrote, "is gold; honour and
virtue are held in small esteem. The English are a
free people, but they do not deserve their liberty ;
they sell it, he bitterly observes, to the King, and if

^ CEuvres, vol. vii. p. 185.

^ For his remarks about the frequency of suicide among the
English, see Pens'ees Diverses, CEuvres, vii. 467 ; L' Esprit des Lois, xiv.,
chaps, xii., xiii. ; Defense d' r Esprit des Lois, CEuvres, vol. vi. p. 159.

2 Notes, CEuvres, vol. vii. p. 486.

MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND 137

the King returned it to them they would sell it to
him again. Every vote is for sale ; some of the
Scotch members being contented to receive £200
a year as the price of their supporting the
Government." ^ He comments with the greatest
disgust on a story he had heard of an English
gentleman who had given a hundred guineas on
condition that for each one he had given he should
receive ten whenever he appeared on the stage.
He adds that extraordinary things are sometimes
done in France, but they are done to spend money ;
extraordinary things in England, but they are
done to get money. ^ Had I been born in England,
he says, I should never have consoled myself for
not having made a fortune in France. I have no
such regret. So far, he continues, from there being
any honour and virtue here, there is not even the
idea of them.

" I do not judge England by such men as these,
but I do judge her by the approbation which she
gives them. If such men were regarded as they
would be regarded in France, they would never
have dared to degrade themselves in such a

way." ^

^ Notes, CEuvres vol. vii. p. 190.

2 Notes, ibid., ' 191.

^ Pensks Di^ arses, CEuvres, vol. vii. p. 155.

/

\

138 MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND

But what he dwells on most is the coldness
and reserve of the English, and the impossibility
of making friends with them. " It is lamentable,"
he says, ** to hear the complaints of strangers, and
especially of the French who visit England. They
say that they cannot make a friend ; that the
longer they remain the less way they can make ;
that their civilities are regarded as insults. But
how," he asks, " can the English love strangers
when they do not love themselves ? how can they
ask us to dine with them when they do not dine
with each other?

" If it be pleaded that one comes to a country to
be loved and honoured, the answer is that neither
is necessary. We must do as the people of the
country do, — live for ourselves, care for no one, love
no one, count on no one. When I am in France
I make friends with everyone ; in England I
make friends with no one ; in Italy I pay compli-
ments to everyone ; in Germany I drink with
everyone." ^

" The English," he says in his Pensees Diver ses,-
" are so occupied that they have not time to be
polite ; but if they have little politeness they are
never unpolite " (" vous font peu de politesses,

^ Notes, (Euvres, vol. vii. pp. 185, 186.

2 Pensees Diverses, (Euvres, vol. vii. p. 191.

MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND 139

mais jamais d'impolitesses ").^ He notices the
originality of the EngHsh character ; they will not
even imitate the ancients whom they admire.
" Les Anglois sont des genies singuliers ; ils n'im-
iteront pas m^me les anciens qu'ils admirent :
leurs pieces ressemblent bien moins a des pro-
ductions regulieres de la nature, qu'a ces jeux
dans lesquels elle a suivi des hasards heureux." *
Their performances are not so much like the regular
products of nature as the freaks in which she has
been guided by happy accidents. He notes also
their freedom from prejudice. They have no bias
in favour of war, of birth, of titles and dignities,
of success with women, of any honours which
ministers can bestow ; all they wish is that men
should be men ; they value two things only, riches

^ (EuvreSy vol. vii. p. 195.

^ Pe?tsees Diverses, CEuvres Completes (edit. Laboulaye), vol.
vii. p. 169. It is impossible not to be struck with the similarity
between Montesquieu's picture of the English temper and character
and that given by Goldsmith in The Traveller. After comment-
ing on the mildness of the climate, Goldsmith goes on to say —

"Extremes are only in the master's mind.
Stern o'er each bosom Reason holds her stale
With daring aims irregularly great.

• ••••«

Fierce in their native hardiness of soul,

True to imagin'd right, above control.

While e'en the peasant boasts these rights to scan,

And learns to venerate himself as man."

See also Pollnitz's striking remarks, Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 455.

140 MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND

and merit. But they are full of envy, and think
less~ot their own prosperity than of the prosperity
of others ; and this spirit he discerns in all our
laws relating to navigation and commerce.^ To
the influence of the climate he attributes two other
characteristics peculiar to the English temper — the
depression, the tcedium vitce which so often leads
them to self-destruction, and the impatience, not
to be confounded with levity, which makes them
incapable of allowing things to remain long in the
same state. ^

He speaks with admiration of the quick-witted
intelligence which he found almost universal. " It
is impossible," he says, " to be too clever in dealing
with the English. A man who is not as quick-
witted as themselves can never understand them,
and will always be deceived by them"; adding,
that the Ministers of his time knew no more of the
people of this country than a baby ; and he in-
stances d'Hiberville and Kinski, d'Hiberville being
fooled by the Jacobites and Kinski by the repre-
sentations of the Tories. He notices how, beneath
the seething and tossing surface of a society agitated
by as many factions as human nature has passions,
lay, solid and immovable, a bottom of sound

1 See E Esprit des Lois, bk. xx. chap. vii.

2 Ji,id,, bk. xiv. chap. xiii. i

MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND 141

practical good sense. " To judge England," he
says, ** by what appears in the newspapers, one
would expect a revolution to-morrow ; but all that
is signified is that the people, like the people of
every other country, grumble at their governors,
and are free to express what the people in other
countries are only allowed to think." ^ But,
though there is much malice, there is no mischief.
" A man in England," he says, " may have as
many enemies as he has hairs on his head, yet
no harm befalls him." Contrasting liberty and
equality as they exist in London with liberty and
equality as they exist in Venice and in Holland,
he pays London the compliment of observing that
hers is the liberty and equality of gentlemen ; theirs
that of libertines and the rabble.^

Forgetting, apparently, the money which he
himself made out of his own vineyards, he seems
to have had something very like contempt for the
mercantile spirit, which extended even to the
aristocracy ; and he conceives that the custom of
allowing the nobility to engage in trade is one of
those things which has most contributed to weaken
the monarchy.^ " Had I been born in England,
I should not," he says, " console myself for not

^ Notes, CEtwres, vii, p. i88. ^ Notes.

^ Ibid., bk. XX. chap. xxi.

142 MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND

having made a fortune ; in France I am by no
means uneasy at not having done so." ^ Of the
young noblemen in England he gives anything but
a flattering account. " They may be divided," he
says, " into two classes. The first consists of those
who have some pretensions to learning because
they have been a long time at the universities,
and that has given them bad manners and a con-
strained and awkward air ; the others know
absolutely nothing." ^ By Enghsh women he was
plainly not attracted ; he found them more unre-
sponsive and repellent than the men. They im-
agine, he says, that a stranger who speaks to them
wishes to insult them. " Je ne veux point, disent-
elles, give to him encouragement.'' ^ He made no
friends among them ; nor does he in his subsequent
correspondence, if we remember rightly, while fre-
quently referring to his English acquaintance,
mention any lady.

Of the state of religion in England he gives
a very unfavourable account, fully corroborating
what Bishop Butler says in the preface to the
Analogy. " There is," he writes in his Notes,^ no
religion in England ; in the Houses of Parliament

^ Pens'ees Diverses, (Euvres, vii. 155.

- Notes, (Euvres, vii. 184.

' /bid., p. 195. ^ Ibid., p. 195.

MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND 143

prayers are never attended by more than four or
five members, except on great occasions. If one
speaks of religion, every one laughs." The very
phrase " an article of faith " provokes ridicule.
Referring to the committee which had recently
been appointed to inquire into the state of religion,
he says that it was regarded with contempt. In
France he himself passed as having too little re-
ligion, in England as having too much ; and yet,
he grimly adds, " there is no nation that has more
need of religion than the English, for those who
are not afraid to hang themselves ought to be
afraid of being damned." ^ To the Deistic contro-
versy, curiously enough, he makes no reference ;
but he observes of Whiston's work on the Miracles,
that it was not calculated to improve the morals
of the people.

Ill

In parliamentary affairs and in the politics of
the time he was, as might be expected, profoundly
interested. He had already in his hundred-and-
fourth Persian Letter expressed his admiration both
of the English theory of monarchy and of the

1 Fensees Diverses^ QLuvres^ vol. vii. p. 167.

-J^

144 MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND

independent temper of the English people, of a
monarchy which, originating from the people for
the benefit of the people, would maintain itself only
so long as it observed the conditions under which
it existed, of a people in whose eyes passive obedi-
ence and non-resistance were no virtues, and who
held that no unlimited power could be legitimate
because its origin was illegitimate. He attended
V the sittings of both Houses ; he took notes of the
"*- debates ; and he made a thorough study of our
^ ^^ constitution and government, the results of which
were afterwards embodied in two of the most
brilliant and masterly chapters of the Esprit des
Lois, namely, the sixth chapter of Book VI., and
the twenty-seventh chapter of Book XIX.

The evils inherent in party government have,
perhaps, never been so strikingly illustrated as in
the history of Walpole's administration, from the
appearance of the Craftsman, in December 1726,
to his fall in the spring of 1742. That he con-
trived to prevent England embroiling herself with
continental affairs, and assisted in maintaining the
peace of Europe at a most critical time ; that he
saved us from the miseries and horrors of a dis-
puted succession ; that he secured the repose whch
his country so sorely needed after the Treaty of
Utrecht, and thus enabled her to develop her

MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND 145

trade and domestic industries ; that he passed
many wise measm^es, and laid the foundations of
a mercantile prosperity without precedent in our
history — all this must in justice be conceded. But
it was purchased at a heavy price. Never, since
the days of the Cabal, had England sunk so low in
all that constitutes the true life of a great people.
The picture which Montesquieu painted is not a
shade too dark. Walpole openly scoffed at prin-
ciple, at virtue, at honour, at religion. Coarse
almost to brutality in his manners, in his conversa-
tion, in his tastes, he cared for nothing but politics ;
and politics with him meant little more than the
management of the House of Commons and the
maintenance of his own supremacy.

The important services which Walpole rendered
to his country were the result of great abilities
accidentally directed, in the course of a party game,
to beneficent and legitimate objects. The only
difference between himself and the Opposition was
that he was in power and responsible, while they
were out of power and irresponsible ; he had to
act, and to stand or fall by his actions ; they had
only to criticise, to protest, to clamour. He had
the support of the Crown and the command of the
public purse ; they had what they could compass

and effect by unscrupulous intrigue, and the equally
10

146 MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND

unscrupulous use of the tongue and of the pen. He
bribed, and they preached ; he, with the means of
corruption, practised it ; they, without the means,
denounced it. As he was in aUiance with the Court,
they thundered against royal favourites and ap-
pealed to the country. A very happy title was
adopted by them for the double purpose of reflect-
ing by implication on Walpole's policy, and of dis-
guising the monstrous incongruity of such a coalition
as they themselves represented ; they called them-
selves Patriots, and their tactics were simple and
uniform — vexatious opposition to every measure,
good or bad, which Walpole brought forward,
and the inculcation of a policy in foreign and
domestic affairs which had no other aim than to
thwart and discredit his.

Montesquieu arrived in England when these
ignoble feuds were at their height, and the Crafts-
man had become so rancorous and unmeasured
in its abuse that each number, before it issued from
the press, was submitted to three lawyers to see
that nothing in it could be brought technically
within the law of libel.^ In March 1729 the Treaty

^ This particular we owe to Montesquieu, Notes sur P Angle-
terre : " Le Craftsman est fait par Bolingbroke et par M. Pulteney.
On le fait conseiller par trois avocats avant de I'imprimer, pour
savoir s'il y a quelque chose qui blesse la loi," CEuvres^ vii. p. 185.

MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND 147

of Seville had been signed, and the Patriots were
taunting Walpole with deserting our old ally Aus-
tria, and pandering to our old enemies France and
Spain. The treaty had also furnished them with a
pretext for harping once more on the grievance
of maintaining a standing army in time of peace.
The first debate which Montesquieu attended
was on the 28th of January 1730. The question
before the House was a motion, introduced by the
Secretary of War, and seconded by Sir William
Yonge, for keeping up the number of the land
forces during the year. It was opposed by Shippen
in a vigorous and eloquent speech. The accuracy
of the notes taken by Montesquieu is corroborated
by the report of the speech in the Parliamentary
History ; but he gives some interesting particulars
which are not found elsewhere. Shippen, after
observing that the troops were not needed, " con-
sidering the glorious scene of affairs which the
honourable gentleman says is opened to us and
to all Europe "—the reference is to the Treaty of
Seville— goes on to say, '^ They are not needed to
force the Emperor into an immediate accession, nor
are they in any sort necessary for the safety of his
Majesty's person and government. Force and viol-
ence are the resort of usurpers and tyrants only." *

^ Pari. Hist., viii. 772.

148 MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND

At these words, says Montesquieu, " toute la
chambre fut etonnee " ; but, according to the Par-
liamentary History, the orator continued thus —

"I perceive some gentlemen take offence at my
words, and therefore, that they may not be mis-
construed, I will repeat them (et lui les repeta une
seconde fois). I assert, then, that it is a grounded
maxim in civil science that force and violence
are the resort of usurpers and tyrants only, because
they are with good reason distrustful of the people
whom they oppress, and because they have no other
security for the continuance of their unlawful and
unnatural dominion than what depends entirely on
the strength of their armies."

He concluded, according to the report in the
Parliamentary History, with a humorous and sar-
castic assurance that, however frugal he was
inclined to be with regard to the expenditure of
public money, there was one item in the Estimates
which he did not grudge, and that was the salary of
£200 a year for the physician of the Tower. They
were all interested, he said, and particularly the
Opposition, in maintaining a competent medical
officer in that particular place, " for members of
this House have been frequently sent thither, and
for very different reasons, some for speaking freely,
others for acting corruptly " — an allusion to Wal-

MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND 149

pole's incarceration in 1712. Of this part of the
speech Montesquieu says nothing, but he refers to
a detail not reported in the History, namely, that
the speaker repudiated Hanoverian maxims. " II
dit ensuite qu'il n'aimoit pas les maximes hanov-
riennes." He also related — and of this there is
no hint in the History — that the excitement caused
by the speech, and the fear of what the debate
might lead to, were so great that it was abruptly
brought to a close by cries on all sides of " Divide,
divide." ^ '* Tout le monde cria ' aux voix,' afin
d'arreter le debat."

The next debate, or rather series of debates, of
which Montesquieu gives an account, and at some
of which he appears to have been present, were the
debates on the Pension Bill. This Bill was perhaps
the most ingenious of the many manoeuvres of the
Patriots. Walpole's strength lay in the support
given him by those who were in the receipt of
pensions or in the possession of places conferred
by, and dependent on, the Crown. The Bill, intro-
duced by Sandys and supported by the whole
body of the Opposition, struck at the root of that
corruption on which Walpole mainly depended for
securing his majorities. It proposed to disable

^ For all this see Notes sur PAfigleterre, where Shippen appears
as Chipin, and Cobbett's Pari. Hist. {ed. 181 1), viii. 771-773.

150 MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND

anyone from sitting in Parliament who enjoyed
any pension during pleasure or for a number of years,
or any offices held in trust for them from the Crown,
and to require from every member sitting in the
House a statement on oath that he was not in
receipt of such patronage.^

The King, who called it " a villainous Bill,"
which ought ''to be torn to pieces in every par-
ticular," was as indignant as Walpole was per-
plexed.^ But Walpole was more than a match for
his crafty opponents. As he knew what popular
capital could be made out of an appeal against
corruption — for it is one thing for men to defend
and quite another thing to practise or utihse it —
he allowed it to pass the Commons, knowing
perfectly well that it would be rejected by the
Lords. He thus threw the responsibility of its
defeat on the Upper House, and so reheved himself
and his supporters in the Commons of any odium
which might be incurred by rejecting a measure
so evidently framed in the interests of political
virtue. It is not quite clear whether Montesquieu's
notes refer to the debates of February 1730, when
the Bill was first introduced, or to those of February
1731, when it was introduced a second time.

^ See Pari. Hist., vol. viii. p. 792 seqq.
^ Coxe, Memoirs of Walpole, vol. i. p. 322.

MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND 151

Townshend appears to have spoken on the first
occasion to the effect recorded by Montesquieu
(see Coxe's Walpole, vol. i. p. 322), but he may
possibly have spoken on the second occasion,
though this is hardly likely, as he had then retired.
In any case he gives some details, including a report
of part of a speech of Townshend' s in the House
of Lords, which are not to be found, so far as I
can discover, elsewhere. " Why do we always
allow ourselves to incur the public odium of always
rejecting this Bill ? We ought to increase its
penalties, and so frame the Bill that the Commons
would reject it themselves." ^ So, in accordance
with this happy suggestion, the Lords proceeded
to increase the penalty against the corruptor and
corrupted from £10 to £500, and decided that
disputed elections should be tried by the ordinary
judges and not by a committee of the House.

^ Dans la derniere seance Milord Thousand (Townshend) dit :
"Pourquoi nos chargeons-nous toujours de cette haine publique
de rejeter toujours le bill? II faut augmenter las peines et faire
le bill de manibre que les communes le rejettent elles memes : de
fagon que, par ces belles iddes, les seigneurs augment^rent la
peine tant centre le corrupteur que le corrompu, de dix k
cinque cents livres, et mirent que se seroient les juges ordinaires
qui jugeroient les Elections et non la chambre; qu'on suivroit
toujours le dernier prejuge dans chaque cour." None of this is
reported in the Parliamentary History. {N'otes sur FAngleterre;
(Euvres, vol. vii. p. 192.)

152 MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND

" It was a wonderful Bill," adds Montesquieu, " for
it passed against the will of the Commons, the Peers,
and the King." He was evidently ignorant of the
tactics of Walpole, and could hardly have been
behind the scenes in English politics.

But by far the most interesting of Montesquieu's
experiences of parliamentary methods was gained
during the debate of March 2, 1730, on the affair
of Dunkirk. It will be remembered that one of
the provisions of the Treaties of Utrecht and of
The Hague was that the port and fortifications of
Dunkirk should be demolished. This condition the
French had been very reluctant to fulfil ; and the
work of demolition had been so often interrupted,
and had proceeded so slowly, that several protests
had been made against this dilatoriness in the last
reign. Finally, however, the destruction was, or
was believed to be, completed. But towards the
end of 1729 Bohngbroke had been informed that
the inhabitants of Dunkirk had rebuilt and repaired
what had been destroyed or half destroyed. The
report was confirmed by his secretary, a drunken,
blundering rascal, whom he had sent to inquire
into the matter. He saw with joy what political
capital could be made out of the information, and
at once communicated it to the Opposition. The
Craftsman set to work. A cry was raised that the

MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND 153

French were violating the Treaties of Utrecht and
The Hague, and defying England ; and it was in-
sinuated that Walpole, in his sympathy with our
old enemies, was conniving at their conduct. An
address was presented to the King, praying that
he would be pleased to give directions that the
orders, instructions, reports, and all proceedings in
regard to the port and harbour of Dunkirk since
the demolition should be laid before the House.
On the following day the King acceded to the
request. The result was a debate almost without
parallel in the heat and fury with which it was
conducted. It lasted from one o'clock in the
afternoon till nearly three o'clock in the morning
of the following day. Walpole, knowing the
source of all the misrepresentations on which the
action of the Opposition had been based, as well
as its object, took occasion to review the career
of Bolingbroke, — his treason, his treachery, his base
ingratitude. Wyndham defended him, and drew
a comparison between his friend and Walpole.
Pelham answered Wyndham, and Bolingbroke
again became the subject of a scathing exposure
and philippic.

" In my opinion," says Horace Walpole, " it was
the greatest day, with respect to the thing itself

154 MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND

and the consequences of it, both at home and abroad,
for his Majesty and the present Ministry that I e^^er
knew, and must, I think, prove a thunderbolt to
the adversaries here as well as to their friends on
your side the water." ^

Of this debate there are two accounts, — one given
by Horace Walpole in his letter to Harrington, a
passage from which I have just quoted, and the
account given by Montesquieu. Of the speeches
made, no reports have come down to us ; so the
extract given by Montesquieu from Walpole' s
speech is of particular interest. There is only one
discrepancy. Walpole says the debate began
" about five in the afternoon." Montesquieu says
it began " une heure apres midi." It may be well
in this case to give Montesquieu's account in the
original —

" J'allai avant-hier au parlement a la Chambre
basse ; on y traita de I'affaire de Dunkerque. Je
n'ai jamais vu un si grand feu. La seance dura
depuis une heure apres midi jusqu'a trois heures
apres minuit. La, les Frangois furent bien mal menes ;
je remarquai jusqu'oCi va I'aff reuse jalousie qui est
entre les deux nations. M. Walpole attaqua
Bohngbroke de la fagon la plus cruelle, et disoit
qu'il avoit mene toute cette intrigue. Le chevaher

1 Letter to Lord Harrington and Mr. Poyntz, Coxa's Walpole,
i. 324.

MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND 155

Windham le defendit. M. Walpole raconta en
faveur de Bolingbroke I'histoire du paysan qui,
passant avec sa femme sous un arbre, trouva qu'un
homme pendu respiroit encore. II le detacha et le
porta chez lui; il revint. lis trouverent le lende-
main que cet homme leur avoit vole leurs four-
chettes ; ils dirent : * II ne faut pas s'opposer au
cours de la justice : il le faut rapporter ou nous
I'avons pris.

) >} 1

With these experiences it is not strange that
Montesquieu had no very high opinion of English
politicians. " They have," he remarks, " no fixed
purpose, but govern from day to day. Purely
selfish and destitute of all principle, their sole aim
is to get the better of their opponents ; and to
attain that end they would sell England and all
the Powers of the world." ^

The people, he found, had little respect for their
rulers. The King he regarded as " a gentleman
who has a beautiful wife, a hundred servants, a
fine equipage, and a good table ; he is believed to
be happy, but his happiness is all on the outside." ^
There was nothing to admire in him, and scarcely
a day passes, says Montesquieu, in which one does
not lose some respect for him. On the subject of
the monarchy he makes one striking remark. He

1 Notes sur r Angleterre ; CEuvres (edit. Laboulaye), vol. vii. p. 191.
"^ Ibid.,^. 190. ^ Ibid., p. 188.

((

((

156 MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND

is convinced that it is to the interest of France to
support the King in England, for a repubhc would
be far more dangerous ; a republic would act with
all its powers in unison, whereas the King acts
with divided powers. " However," he continues,

things cannot rest much longer as they are." ^
Of the King he speaks elsewhere with contempt.

If he observes decorum in public, in private he
quarrels with his wife and with his servants, swears
at his steward, and allows the Queen to be grossly
insulted by his subjects." The Queen had, it
seems, bought a piece of land to add to her private
garden at Kensington, Thereupon Lady Bell
Molyneux had some of the trees torn up, and
brought an action against her for unlawful posses-
sion, and, on the Queen expressing her desire to
make some arrangement with her, she not only
refused to treat, but kept the Queen's secretary
waiting three hours before she would admit him
to her presence.^ A French aristocrat might well
be excused for expressing disgust and wonder at
such a state of things in a country which was
ostensibly a monarchy.

Montesquieu was struck with the number and
licentiousness of the newspapers and public prints,

^ Notes sur r Angleterre ; CE?evres (edit. Laboulaye), vol. vii. p. 193.
" /did., p. 186.

MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND 157

as well he may have been, for the daily and weekly
journals together numbered at least twenty. Con-
spicuous among them were the London Gazette,
British Journal, Weekly Medley, Evening Post,
Whitehall Evening Post, London Evening Post,
St. James's Evening Post, London Journal, Appleby's
Weekly Journal, British Gazetteer, The Postman,
The Craftsman, The Daily Post, Fog's Weekly
Journal, The Weekly Spectator, and probably
others. Few, indeed, are aware that metropolitan
journalism was as active at the beginning of
George II. 's reign as it is in our day, and quite as
popular among the masses. The very slaters, says
Montesquieu, have the newspapers brought on to
the roof that they may read them ('* un couvreur
se fait apporter la gazette sur les toits pour
la lire ")} It is clear that he was a regular
reader of these publications. One curious Anti-
catholic scandal he reports. He tells his friend.
Father Cerati, with what indignation he had read
how an innocent invention of the Cardinal de
Rohan, for playing at backgammon and other
games without noise and rattle, had, in one of the
current journals/ been represented as designed

^ Notes sur P Angleterre ; CEuvres (edit. Laboulaye), vol. vii. p. 189.
2 The account and the misrepresentation will be found in
■ppleby's Weekly Journal iox November 15, 1729.

158 MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND

to encourage gambling in churches and bedrooms.
He comments on the freedom of the press, and
observes how easily it might be misunderstood by
a foreigner. But its very licentiousness, he re-
marks, is its corrective ; for, as it expresses with
equal heat and intemperance the sentiments and
opinions of the innumerable sects and factions
into which the country is divided, it can do no
mischief, because what is vociferated here neutral-
ises what is vociferated there.

At present,, he says, England is the freest country
in the world, as the King can do no possible injury
to any of his subjects, becausejiia power is limited
and controlled by the law. If, he continues, the
House of Commons were to succeed in getting the
upper hand its power would be unHmited and
dangerous, because it would include the executive ;
whereas at present unlimited power is divided
between the Parliament and King, the exec-
utive being lodged in the King, whose power is
limited. He makes one prophetic remark, observ-
ing that if any nation were abandoned by its
colonies, England would be the first to have such
an experience. '' Je crois que si quelque nation
est abandonnee de ses colonies, cela commencera
par la nation angloise." ^

^ Notes sur V Angleterrc^ p. 194.

MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND 159

IV

Of Montesquieu's social relations and connection
with men of science in this country some interesting
particulars can be collected. There can be little
doubt that during the early part of his stay in
England he was the guest of Chesterfield at his
house in St. James's Square ; whether he con-
tinued to reside there when Chesterfield returned to
The Hague early in the following year is uncertain.
As the guest and friend of Chesterfield, every house
in London was, of course, open to him. He was pre-
sented at Court ; he was elected a member of the
Royal Society ; he became intimately acquainted
with the Dukes of Richmond and Montague,
whom he visited, and in whose society he passed,
he said, the happiest hours in his life ; ^ with
Carteret, afterwards Earl Granville ; with Charles
Yorke, son of the Lord Chancellor Hardwicke ;
with Andrew Mitchell, afterwards Ambassador at
Berlin, a man of singular charm whom he appears
to have regarded almost with affection ; and with
Martin Folkes, vice-president of the Royal Society,
with whom, on leaving England, he regularly

1 Lettres Fam. ; CEuvres Computes, vol. vii. p. 267.

i6o MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND

corresponded. What is curious is that he never
seems to have met BoHngbroke or Walpole, or to
have become acquainted with Pope, or indeed
with any other of the distinguished men of letters
then hving in London. His social relations seem
to have been confined almost exclusively to fashion-
able and aristocratic circles, and to members of the
Royal Society.

The reason was probably this. Though he
could read English and follow it when spoken, with
perfect facility, he could not speak it intelligibly.
This we learn from an amusing anecdote told by
Diderot. On his return to France, Montesquieu
happened to be with some ladies in the country,
and, as one of them was an English lady, he
addressed her in English ; but his pronunciation
was so bad that she burst out laughing. Upon
which he good-naturedly observed that it was not
the first mortification of the kind which he had
met with in his life. He added that, when he was
in England, he went to call on the great Duke of
Marlborough at Blenheim — obviously a mistake
of Diderot's for the Duke of Montague, who had
married Marlborough's daughter — and that, while
being conducted round the palace by the Duke,
he complimented his host on its splendours and
beauties in the best English he could command,

MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND i6i

having very carefully got up what he thought
were appropriate phrases. He had been talking
thus for at least an hour^ when the Duke said
to him : " I entreat you to be good enough to
speak to me in English^ as I cannot understand
French." ^ It may, however, be questioned
whether he was ever quite at home in our
language. In a letter to Charles Yorke, speaking
of Warburton's Julian, he says that it had en-
chanted him " quoique je n'aie que de tres
mauvais lectures anglois et que j'ai presque oublie
tout ce que j'en sgavois." ^

On October 5, 1730, he was presented by Chester-
field to the King, Queen, and Prince of Wales at
Kensington. The Queen, having asked him about
his travels, went on to talk about the English
stage. " How is it," she inquired of Chesterfield,
" that Shakespeare, who lived in the time of Queen
Elizabeth, has made his women talk so badly, and
such fools as well ? " Chesterfield replied that in
Shakespeare's time women did not go to the theatres,
and, as only inferior actors played female parts,

1 Diderot, Leftres a Mdlle. Volland, Letter LXXX. ; CEuvres
Completes (ed. Assezat et Tourneux), xix. 134, quoted by Vian.

2 Letter printed in Campbell's " Life of Charles Yorke," Lives of
the Lord Chancellors, vii. 75. It is surprising that this interesting
letter should not have been included in Montesquieu's collected
correspondence.

II

i62 MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND

Shakespeare did not take the trouble to make
them speak well. " But I/' says Montesquieu,
" suggested another reason. To make women speak
well a poet must have a knowledge of the world
and of good manners ; but a knowledge of books
is all that a poet requires to make heroes speak
well." A commentary on Shakespeare by Chester-
field and Montesquieu, we may remark in passing,
would certainly have added most amusingly to
the curiosities of criticism. The Queen then asked
if it was true that the French preferred Corneille
to Racine. Montesquieu, now on firmer ground,
replied that Corneille was generally regarded as
a sublimer genius than Racine, but Racine as a
greater writer than Corneille.^

He again met Queen CaroUne on the evening of
a day on which he had been dining with the Duke
of Richmond. At the Duke's table La Boine,
whom he describes as a stupid person, though a
French envoy, maintained that England was not
so large as Guienne, and Montesquieu contradicted
and set him down. In the evening the Queen said :
" I hear that you have been defending us against
your countryman, M. la Boine." Montesquieu
gallantly replied: "Madame, I could not imagine
a country in which you reigned to be other than

1 Notes sur FAngleterre ; CEuvres, vol. vii. p. 184.

Iv\RO\ PK Mo\ ll'.SOl IKT

MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND 163

a great country." ^ These were probably not his
only interviews with the Queen. In any case, it
was believed in Paris that he was a favourite with
her, as we gather from a letter addressed to him by
Fontenelle, asking him to use his influence to get
her to befriend a young artiste who, having been
most cruelly dismissed from the Opera in Paris,
had taken refuge in London.

" On dit que vous 6tes fort bien aupres de la reine " ;
and he flatteringly adds, " je I'eusse presque devine,
car il y a lon^ temps que je sais combien elle a
du gotlt pour les gens d'esprit, et combien elle
est accoutumee a ceux du premier ordre." ^

Before he was presented at Court he had had
an honour conferred on him which he highly
appreciated, and which was, in those days, coveted
not merely by men distinguished in science and
letters, but even by royalty itself. On February
26, 1730, he was elected a member of the Royal
Society. This honour he no doubt owed partly
to the influence of Chesterfield and the vice-pre-
sident, Martin Folkes, and partly to the fact that
he was a member of the French Academy. His

^ Montesquieu relates this with great complacency in his
Pensies Diverses, CEuvres (edit. Laboulaye), vol. vii. p. 156.

^ Fontenelle, CEuvres Computes (ed. Paris, 181 8), vol. ii. p. 566.

i64 MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND

chief claim to this distinction, and a very legitimate
one, was the reputation which he had gained by
the scientific papers read by him at the Academy
of Bordeaux.^ He announced his election to his
friend. Father Cerati, in a letter dated March i,
1730 : " Je fus regu il y a trois jours membre de
la Societe royale de Londres." ^ During the re-
mainder of his visit he regularly attended its
meetings.

With the vice-president, Martin Folkes, who
had been the friend of Newton, and who was one
of the most eminent scientific men of those times,
he formed an affectionate friendship. In a letter
addressed to him many years later he says : " Of
all people in the world your memory is dearest to
me ; I would rather live with you than with any
one. To live with you is to love you." ^ These
words may imply that, during part of his visit to
England, he resided with Folkes. His connection
with the Royal Society undoubtedly exercised
great influence on him, and introduced him to much
which was of incalculaj)le importance to his great
work. To the end of his life he took the greatest

1 " Sur la cause de I'echo " ; " Sur I'usage des glandes renales " ;
'• Sur la cause de la pesanteur des corps" ; "Observations sur Thistoire
naturelle" ; " Sur la cause de la transparence des corps."

2 Lettres Fam. (February 1742); (Euvres, vol. vii. p. 253.
8 Lettres Fam., xxx., (Euvres, vol. vii. p. 253.

MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND 165

interest in its transactions ; and it was under his
supervision that Robert Wallace's Dissertation on
the Numbers of Mankind in Ancient and Modern
Times was translated into French.

It was probably Folkes who introduced Montes-
quieu to Charles Yorke, who came afterwards to
so tragical an end, just after receiving the Great
Seal. Charles Yorke, in addition to various accom-
plishments, was one of the most charming men of
his time, and Montesquieu highly valued his friend-
ship, keeping up a constant correspondence with
him after he left England.^ Yorke sent him War-
burton's Dissertation on Julian, which Montes-
quieu highly appreciated, expressing his admira-
tion in such flattering terms that Yorke forwarded
the letter to Warburton. With the letter he sent
a note, which is interesting as showing the impres-
sion which Montesquieu had made on him —

" His heart is as good as his understanding, in all
he sa3^s or writes, though he mixes now and then
a little of the French clinquant with all his bright-
ness and sohdity of genius as well as originality of
expression." ^

And this seems to have been his just measure.

^ For Montesquieu's relations with Charles Yorke, see Campbell's
Lives of the Lord Chancellors, vii. 75, 76.

- Warburton's Correspondence (ed. 1809), p. 507.

i66 MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND

We have seen that Montesquieu's real opinion
of the Enghsh was not one which would be Hkel^
to please them ; but he was too well-bred and too
sincerely sensible of the hospitality he everywhere
received to express himself in anything but the
most flattering terms. In Spence's anecdotes we
read —

" Monsieur de Montesquieu, the author of the
Persian Letters, is now with Lord Waldegrave,
and is come to England with him. He says there
are no men of true sense born anywhere but in
England."^

Some years afterwards he wrote —

" The English love the great men of their
country, and in that extraordinary nation there are
few people who have not some personal merit.

>» 2

How httle was generally known of his movements
is indicated by the supposition that he was staying
with Waldegrave, who was then at Vienna. And
indeed, it is singular that the presence of such a
distinguished man was, as far as the general pubHc
was concerned, so entirely ignored. There is not
a single reference to him, so far as I can discover,
in the literary correspondence of those times, or

1 Anecdotes (edit. Singer), p. 250.

2 Lettres Fani.^ cxxvi. ; CEuvres, vol. vii. p. 407.

MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND 167

in the current newspapers ; his arrival, his move-
ments, his departure are aHke unchronicled. And
yet the Lettres Persanes had been translated into
English as early as 1722, had been extremely
popular, and had been reissued in a second edition
not long after his arrival in England. His name
was not, indeed, on the title-page ; but their
authorship, as the translator's preface shows, was
as much an open secret in London as it was in
Paris. The only reference to him, or rather to his
writings, which I can find in the public prints is
an announcement in the Weekly Medley for
November 29, 1728, of a translation of Mahmoiid
and Genesvide, " written by the author of the
Persian Letters." I need hardly say that no such
work had ever come, or ever was to come, from
his pen ; but the fiction at least shows that the
publishers thought his name a name to conjure
with.

That so little notice should have been taken of
him by the journals, and in the ana of contem-
porary authors, is the more remarkable when we
remember how frequently and how prominently
Voltaire before him, and Rousseau after him, figure
in both. But the reasons are not difficult to guess.
One we have mentioned already — his defective
knowledge of the language which kept him out of

i68 MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND

general society. Another is probably to be found
in his aristocratic leanings. He says in his Pensees
Diverses —

" Quoique mon nom ne soit ni bon ni mauvais,
n'ayant guere que deux cent cinquante ans de
noblesse prouvee, cependant j'y suis attache." *

In other words, he was an aristocrat who could not
afford to trifle with his position. Like La Roche-
foucauld and Bussy-Rabutin among his own country-
men, and like Horace Walpole and Gibbon among
ours, he neither wished to be regarded as a man
of letters nor affected the society of men of letters.
Hence his acquaintance in this country was confined
to Chesterfield's circle, and to a body of which
almost every nobleman in England with any taste
for learning was a member. If Chesterfield and
Folkes were the links which connected him with
intellectual society, the Dukes of Richmond and
Montague appear to have been the chosen com-
panions of his less serious recreations. In his
correspondence he writes that the happiest hours
of his life had been spent with them, and that it
was impossible to say whether they should be loved
most or respected most.^

^ (Etwres, vol. vii. p. 152.

2 Lettres Fam., xxiv. ; CEuvres, vol. vii. p. 245.

MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND 169

As Montesquieu had convivial tastes, we need
not question the sincerity of the statement about
happy hours ; but in his difficulty in settling the
proportion of love and respect is, we fear, to be
discerned the clinquant of which Charles Yorke
speaks. A duller and grosser person than Charles
Lennox, second Duke of Richmond, never existed.
Queen Caroline compared him to a mule, and
doubted whether he was more than half-witted ;
while Horace Walpole described him as '' the only
man who loved the Duke of Newcastle." He was
a heavy drinker ; and in his brutal and stupid
orgies at Goodwood champagne flowed so freely
that Montesquieu deemed it expedient to warn his
friend, the Abbe Comte de Guasco, against toasting
him too often at Richmond's table.* John, Duke of
Montague, had certainly convivial qualities of the
highest order, and was the author of a hoax com-
pared with which the best of Theodore Hooke's
dwindles into vulgar horseplay ; ^ but he was, and
remained all his life, little more than an overgrown
schoolboy. Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, his
mother-in-law, thus describes him ^ —

1 Le tires Fam., CEtwres, vol. vii. p. 332.

^ For an account of this inimitable pleasantry, see Jesse's
Memoirs of the Court of England from the Revohitio7i to the Death
of George II., vol. iii. pp. 58-61.

^ See Walpole^s Letters (edit. Cunningham), vol. i. p. 339.

170 MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND

" All my son-in-law's talents lie in things only
natural in boys of fifteen years old, and he is about
two-and-fifty : to get people into his garden and
wet them with squirts, and to invite people to his
country-houses and put things into their beds to
make them itch, and twenty such pretty fancies
like these."

Of one of these pretty fancies Mostesquieu was
the victim. The Duke had invited him, shortly
after they had become acquainted, to his country-
house, — in all probability Blenheim. Not long after
his arrival it was arranged that there should be " a
play of ambassadors," which means, I suppose, that
host and guest were to approach each other with
stately ceremony. Meanwhile a large tub full of
cold water had been concealed in a hollow under
the ground just where the guest had to step as he
made his bow. As soon as his feet reached the
tub, in he went, soused over head and ears in the
water. " I thought it odd, to be sure," said
Montesquieu, when he told the tale many years
afterwards to Charlemont,

" but a traveller, as you well know, must take the
world as it goes ; and indeed," he good-naturedly
added, " his great goodness to me and his incom-
parable understanding far overpaid me for all the
inconveniences of my ducking." ^

^ Hardy's Life of Charlemont^ vol. i. p. 65.

MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND 171

One of the most striking features of Montesquieu's
temper is illustrated by his commentary on this
incident. A grosser outrage on those social decen-
cies which even savages respect could be scarcely
imagined than the conduct of this English noble-
man. But Montesquieu, with reference to it, went
on to say —

" Liberty, however, is the glorious cause ; that it
is which gives human nature fair-play and allows
every singularity to show itself, and which, for one
less agreeable oddity it may bring to light, gives to
the world ten thousand great and useful examples."

And it was with the same lucid, balanced, and
catholic intelligence that he penetrated beneath the
surface of all that met his view in England. In
the ignoble game which Walpole and the Patriots
were playing at Westminster, in all the evils and
curses inherent in party government, in the un-
bridled licence of the press, in the coarse and
brutal manners of the commonalty, he saw that
for which all the elegance that made the Paris of
the Grand Monarqtie the home of the Graces and
the comely image of specious tranquillity would
have been, after all, but a sorry exchange.^

^ This is undoubtedly what is to be deduced from the general
tenor of his writings ; what he says in the preface to the Esprit des
Lois was no doubt a concession to prudence.

172 MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND

It is not likely that Montesquieu visited Ireland,
but he was interested in the Irish question, and
divined its importance. In a conversation which
he had with Charlemont many years later, at La
Brede, he strongly advocated the Union.

" Were I an Irishman " (he said) '* I should cer-
tainly wish for it ; and, as a general lover of
liberty, I sincerely desire it ; and for this plain
reason, that an inferior country connected with
one much her superior in force can never be certain
of the permanent enjoyment of constitutional
freedom unless she has by her representatives a
proportional share in the legislature of the superior
kingdom." ^

But it was not in politics, in science, and in
social life only that Montesquieu was interested.
Just before his arrival in England, and during his
residence here, William Kent, the forerunner of
Brown, was revolutionising horticultural embellish-
ment and initiating landscape-gardening. The old
Dutch and French style, in which, as Pope's
happy satire expresses it —

" No pleasing intricacies intervene,
No artful wildness to perplex the scene ;
Grove nods at grove, each alley has a brother,
And half the platform just reflects the other,"

1 Hardy's Life of Charlemont (ed. 1810) vol. i. p. 70.

MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND 173

was being exchanged for what Walpole calls the
style " that reahses painting and improves nature."
It was thus that Kent laid out the gardens of
Carlton House and Kensington, and Pelham's
garden and park at Claremont. The new fashion
had become the rage ; and among its admirers
none was more enthusiastic than Montesquieu.
He determined, on his return to France, to recon-
struct the grounds of La Brede on Kent's model,
and he gave his steward L'Eveille no rest till the
work was done. He refers more than once in his
correspondence to the delight he felt in seeing his
pleasance thus charmingly transformed. " I long
to show you my villa," he said to Charlemont,
** as I have endeavoured to form it according to
the English taste, and to cultivate and dress it
after the English manner" ; ^ and in describing it to
a friend he is careful to add that he had laid it out
in a fashion " dont j'ai pris I'idee en Angleterre."

The exact date of Montesquieu's departure from
England it is impossible to fix. M. Edgar Zevort
says that it was in April 1731, but he appears to
have no authority for this statement. He was
certainly at home at La Brede, as his correspondence
shows, on August 10, 1731. The latest event of

^ Hardy's Charlemont^ vol. i. p. 63.

174 MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND

which the date can be fixed is his presentation at
Court on October 5, 1730. But tradition agrees
in assigning a longer period for his residence here
than would be compatible with its termination in
the autumn of 1730. D'Alembert in his Eloge says
that Montesquieu was in England for three years ;
the writer of the article in the Biographie Uni-
verselle gives two years ; so also does J. J. Rut-
ledge in his £loge de Montesquieu} In the Eloge
by his son the time assigned is nearly two years
(" pres de deux ans ").^ The dates given by MM.
Vian,' Sorel, and others — from November 1729 to
April 1731, and from October 1729 to August 173 1
— being purely conjectural, carry no authority.
Taking tradition and probability as our guides,
we may assume that he left England either in the
spring or in the summer of 1731 ; and, as he arrived
on October 23, 1729, he must therefore have resided
here, as his son states, nearly two years.

Of his visit to England he retained to the last
the most pleasing impressions ; he spoke of it more
than once as the happiest time in his life. When,
many years afterwards, Charlemont visited him at
La Brede, he found the President full of delightful

^ £/oge de Montesquieu, p. 17.

2 See Appendix to Vian (ed. 1878), p. 401.

2 Histoire de Montesquieu, p. 128.

MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND 175

memories of England and of the English, though
perhaps courtesy had something to do with the
enthusiasm with which he spoke of them. " I
too," he said, " have been a traveller, and have
seen the country in the world which is most worthy
of our curiosity, I mean England." Adding,
" there is no country under Heaven which produces
so many great and shining characters." ^ But
his correspondence vouches for the sincerity of his
sentiments. " How I wish" (he wrote to his friend
Cerati) " that I could visit England again with
you ! " " The longer you remain in London, the
more kindness you will receive," were his words to
another friend, words, it must be owned, very difficult
to reconcile with what he had written in his Notes
sur r Angleterre. And for the rest of his life he kept
in close touch with his English friends. With Folkes
he regularly corresponded, and he proposed that
they should interchange copies of important books
printed in England and France, politely adding,
" il est bien certain que la marchandise angloise
vaudra mieux que la frangoise." ^

Some twelve years after his departure he com-
municated to the Royal Society, through Folkes,
an interesting paper " On stones of a regular figure

^ Hardy's Life of Charlemont, vol. i. p. 64.

- Letters Fam., (Eiivres (edit. Laboulaye), vol. vii. p. 265.

176 MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND

found near Bagneres in Gascony." ^ He corre-
sponded with Hume, who sent him his Treatise on
Human Nature, which he read, he says, with dehght.
He exchanged letters with Warburton — whose Dis-
sertation on Julian had " enchanted " him — on the
subject of BoHngbroke's posthumous works ; and
his letter to Warburton on the distinction between
attacks on Natural and Revealed Religion is of
singular interest." When his sight was failing, and
when he had, as he tells us himself, almost forgotten
all the English he knew, he employed an English
secretary to read to him, and took care to be
regularly informed of what was being produced in
[)hilosophy and science on this side of the Channel.
Of his correspondence it is quite clear that a
large portion has either been destroyed or lost ;
and nothing is more to be regretted than the
absence of the letters which passed between himself
and Chesterfield. For Chesterfield he had the
sincerest affection and esteem ; he thought him
the best of critics ; and it is not unlikely that the
Esprit des Lois owed much, and very much, to his
English friend's suggestions. The affection and
esteem were mutual. As soon as the news of

^ Printed in the Philosophic Trnjisactions of the Royal Society^
xliii. 26-34, but not included in his works.

2 CEuvres (edit. Laboulaye), vol. vii. pp. 431-434.

MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND 177

Montesquieu's death reached England, Chesterfield
inserted in a London newspaper a memorial of his
friend, which is a model of graceful and discriminat-
ing eulogy.

" His virtues did honour to human nature ; his
writings justice. A friend to mankind, he asserted
their undoubted and inalienable rights with free-
dom, even in his own country, whose prejudices in
matters of religion and government he had long
lamented, and endeavoured, not without some
success, to remove. He well knew and justly
admired the happy constitution of this country,
where fixed and known laws equally restrain
monarchy from tyranny, and hberty from licen-
tiousness. His works will illustrate his name and
survive him as long as right reason, moral obliga-
tion, and the true spirit of laws shall be under-
stood, respected, and maintained.

" 1

What Montesquieu owed to England is exactly
indicated in D'Alembert's iiloge —

" He formed intimate friendships with men ac-
customed to think and to prepare themselves for
great actions by profound studies ; with them he
instructed himself in the nature of the government,
and attained to a thorough knowledge of it."

1 See the Evening Post, February 17553 and Stanhope's
Chesterfield^ s Letters, iv. p. 148.
12

178 MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND

He said himself, in generalising on what his
acquaintance with the chief countries in Europe
had taught . him, that Germany was made to
travel in, Italy to sojourn in, France to live
in, and England to think in." ^ His stay in
England gave the ply to his future studies. It
transformed the author of the Persian Letters
and of the Temple de Guide into the author of
the Considerations sur la Grandeur et Decadence
des Romains and of the Esprit des Lois. The
study of our constitution, of our politics, of
our laws, of our temper and idiosyncrasies, of
our social system, of our customs, manners, and
habits, furnished him with material which was
indispensable to the production of his great work.
It was here that he saw illustrated, as it were
in epitome and with all the emphasis of glaring
contrast, the virtues, the vices, the potentialities
of good, the potentialities of evil, inherent in
monarchy, in aristocracy, in the power of the
people. It was here that he perceived and under-
stood what liberty meant, intellectually, morally,
politically, socially. He saw it in its ugliness, he
saw it in its beauty. Patiently, soberly, without
prejudice, without heat, he investigated, analysed,
sifted, balanced ; and on the conclusions that he
^ D'Alembert's Eloge de Montesquieu.

MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND 179

drew were founded most of the generalisations
which have made him immortal.

Nor must we forget the importance of the more
immediate result of his English studies. If Rapin
de Thoyras anticipated him in interpreting con-
stitutional government to Europe, it was not till
Montesquieu reinterpreted it that its principles
attracted serious and influential interest — with
what momentous consequences we all know. In
English history he was minutely and profoundly
versed ; and illustrations from it spring more
readily to his pen than any others. Essentially
original as his own work is, his indirect indebted-
ness to English writers is certainly considerable.
That he could read and follow our language in
conversation is proved by the untranslated books
with which he was acquainted, and by the notes
which he took in Parliament. He was intimately
acquainted with the wrilin;:^'' ^-f ' ocke, whom he
calls the great instructor of mankind ; he was
versed in the writings of Hobbes ; he had analysed
Algernon Sidney's Discourses. With Harring-
ton's Oceana, a work which has undoubtedly had
great influence on him,^ he was well acquainted.

^ For the influence of Harrington on Montesquieu, see some
interesting remarks in J. J. Rutledge's ^loge de Montesquieu^ pp.
19-22.

i8o MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND

He had carefully perused the histories of Burnet
and Echard, and knew Stowe's Survey of London.
He had read More's Utopia and Mandeville's Fahle
of the Bees. He more than once quotes Addison's
Spectator with a felicity which could only have
come from familiarity. For Shaftesbury he seems
to have had great admiration, whimsically placing
him with Plato, Malebranche, and Montaigne at
the head of the great poets of the world. From
the narratives of English travellers are derived at
least a third of his illustrations of eastern and
savage life. To our poets, indeed, he seldom refers ;
but his reference to the poets of his own country
are almost as rare. We had nothing to teach him
in style and in the art of composition, though the
England of his sojourn was the England of Boling-
broke and Pope ; and, so far as mere books are
concerned, he had, when he visited us, little to learn.
But it is not too much to say that the Esprit des
Lois would either never have seen the light, or
would have appeared without many of its most
shining parts, had Montesquieu never set foot on
our shores.

" Apres deux ans de sejour a Londres," as
Villemain ^ puts it, " Montesquieu revint, enrichi,
comme Voltaire, de tout un ordre d'idees nouvelles
^ Coiirs de Litterature Fran^aise, Lecture xiv. Dix-Huitihne Sicdc.

MONTESQUIEU IN ENGLAND i8i

— to proceed at once to the composition first of
La Grandeur et la Decadence des Romains, and then
to the serious inception of the Esprit des Lois.
An aphorism attributed to him no doubt exactly
indicates the nature of the important debt he owed
to his visit to this country, — " one should travel in
Germany, sojourn in Italy, and think in England."
It was in England that the ideas embodied in both
these masterpieces took definite form, in England
that they found stimulus and inspiration, from
England that they drew nutriment.

ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND

The circumstances under which Rousseau sought
an asylum in England, and his residence here
between January 1766 and May 1767, can scarcely
be described as an unwritten chapter in his bio-
graphy, because they have been treated with some
fulness both by Burton in his Life of Hume, and by
Mr. John Morley in his well-known monograph on
Rousseau. But Burton confines himself chiefly to
Rousseau's relations with Hume ; and considera-
tions of symmetry, as well as the plan and design
of Mr. Morley's work, necessarily precluded him
from entering too much into detail about what was
after all only a short episode in a long and some-
what crowded life. And yet this episode well
deserves particular attention. Nothing which con-
cerns a man so truly extraordinary can be without
interest ; everything which can throw light on his
peculiarities and character is of importance. The
visit to England was the turning-point of his life ;

i8z

ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND 183

it was more ; it witnessed or occasioned the trans-
formation of the author of La Nouvelle HUo'ise, of
Emile, of the Contrat Social, of the Lettre d
Christophe de Beaumont, into the author of the
Confessions, of the Reveries, of the Dialogues, and
of the Letter to General Conway. It found him, no
doubt, a compound as whimsical as Pascal's and
Pope's picture of man, but consistent in inconsist-
ency and perfectly intelligible, — it left him a psycho-
logical problem almost as puzzling and fascinating
as Swift.

It is commonly supposed that the eccentricities
which always distinguished him simply became
exaggerated in England, and that he was essentially
the same man between 1766 and his death as he had
been before. This was certainly not the case. To
speak of him indeed as losing the balance of his
mind and as becoming actually insane will help
us to no solution, for balance he never had, and
insanity in the ordinary acceptation of the term
is, for several reasons, out of the question as an
explanation of his peculiarities. But a great change
passed over him. He was no longer what he had
been. His genius, it is true, burned at times as
brightly as ever, but it became depraved and
morbid. The noble traits which had for so many
years more than redeemed his extravagance and

i84 ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND

folly reveal themselves only by glimpses. He
ceased practically to be responsible either for his
actions or for his utterances. It was not merely
that he lost all control over himself and allowed
his will to become the prey of every momentary
impulse, of every caprice of fancy, of every accident
of impression, but that he found a perverted
pleasure in torturing himself with pure delusions,
delusions as baseless and monstrous as the forgeries
of madness. The world owes too much to Rousseau
to do him injustice, and greater injustice could not
be done him than to draw no distinction between
his character and writings during the latter years of
his life and his character and writings when he
was in his vigour. Unfortunately, however, for
his reputation he is best known and commonly
judged by the work of his degeneracy, the Con-
fessions, the greater part of which was written
during his residence in England, and by the impres-
sion made by his quarrel with Hume. But the
Rousseau who penned the Confessions and who
quarrelled with Hume was not the Rousseau who is
the legitimate object of the homage and gratitude
of the civilised world, but the victim of a mysterious
and terrible malady, the first symptoms of which
began to declare themselves shortly after he arrived
in London. If we assume, as his biographers

ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND 185

assume, that no real change took place in him,
but that his normal and natural infirmities simply
became accentuated, it is impossible to regard him
with any other feelings than contempt and repulsion.
The assumption, indeed, involves more ; it casts
suspicion and discredit on his career and character
as a whole, on his sincerity as a man, on his sincerity
as a writer. But if we assume what for my own
part I believe to be the case, and what I venture
to think a careful review of his residence in England
will establish, then the true Rousseau becomes
separated from the false, and profound commisera-
tion takes the place of contempt.

And nowhere, as Mr. Morley well observes, is
the change which at this time passed over him
so painfully and even so terribly apparent as in the
portrait of him painted by Wright of Derby in the
spring of 1766, an impression of which appears as
the frontispiece of this essay. " It is," says Mr.
Morley, " almost as appalling in its realism as some
of the dark pits that open before the reader of
the Confessions." Who, indeed, can mistake the
story which that tragic face too surely tells ? — that
furrow-ploughed brow, those lined and harassed
features, that glance of mingled impotence, dejec-
tion, and defiance ?

i86 ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND

II

A brief review of the chief incidents in his career
from the summer of 1762 till he landed at Dover is
a necessary preliminary to an account of his life
in England. " Ici commence I'oeuvre de tenebres
dans lequel, depuis huit ans, je me trouve enseveli,"
are the words with which in his Confessions he
opens the records of the second part of that year.^
And the clouds had gathered with appalling sudden-
ness. It was two o'clock on the morning of the
9th of June in that year ; he had just closed
the Bible, in which he had been reading the story
of the Levite of Ephraim, and had sunk into a half-
doze. All at once he was disturbed by lights and
noises. An express had arrived from Madame de
Luxembourg, enclosing a letter from the Prince de
Conti. It informed him that the Parliament of Paris
had resolved to arrest him as the author of Emile,
and that he must fly at once. Leaving his mistress
Therese to look after his papers and to settle his
affairs, he hurried off in a postchaise in the direction

^ Confessions, Partie II. Livre XI. CEiivres Completes, vol. vi. p.
137, edit. Lahure. All the references in the notes are to this
edition.

\

ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND 187

of Switzerland. From this moment he knew no
peace. The ParUament of Paris had set a precedent
which other Councils were not slow to follow.
Before the end of the month the Council of Geneva
ordered The Social Contract, as well as Entile, to
be burnt, and forbade the author, under pain of
immediate arrest, to set foot on their territory.
The Council of Berne was about to follow, but he
anticipated their action by removing to Motiers,
in the Val de Travers, a principality of Neuchatel,
then under the dominion of Prussia. Here he
was joined by Therese, and here for upwards of
three years he resided, till the autumn of 1765.

But he had no rest. He had scarcely settled
there, secure under the protection of George, Lord
Keith, the Governor of Neuchatel, when he learned
to his surprise that the Sorbonne had condemned
Emile and censured its author. This was followed
by a mandement of Christophe de Beaumont, Arch-
bishop of Paris, against him, which affected him,
he said, much more, for the Archbishop was a man
whom he had always respected. He replied to this
in what is the masterpiece of his polemical writings,
the Lettre a Christophe de Beaumont, which well
deserves to be read by every one who would know
what Rousseau can be in his hour of strength. He
had scarcely answered the Archbishop when ignobler

i88 ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND

adversaries began' to pester him. Eight years before
he had been restored to the Reformed Church ;
he now pubHcly attended the services and was
admitted by the pastor to the Communion. This
greatly irritated his many enemies, and his con-
demnation by the Council of Geneva furnished
them with a handle against him. But if he had
many adversaries he had many partisans, and a
furious controversy ensued. Matters became the
more complicated because his case involved not
only the whole question of the prerogatives of the
Council, but a collision between the principles of
civil liberty and oligarchic despotism ; it was not
simply a religious feud, but a political feud also.
The allies of the Council and oligarchy took their
stand with his persecutors, the opponents of both
with his supporters. The Council found a voice
in a series of letters, written with great vigour
and ability b}^ Jean Robert Tronchin, under the
title of Lettres Rentes de la Campagne. To these
Rousseau, who had now taken the bold step of
formally renouncing his rights of citizenship and
burgess-ship in Geneva, replied in his famous
Lettres de la Montagne, a work which, read with
indignant sympathy, won him the fame of a martyr
in every country in Europe. Nothing he ever
wrote made a deeper impression, particularly in

I

ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND 189

England. Tronchin had been an honourable
opponent. This could not be said for his next
assailant. A more atrocious libel than the Senti-
ments des Citoyens, which Rousseau attributed, but
attributed erroneously, to the Pastor Vernes, never
disgraced controversy. Rousseau's answer was its
republication in Paris with a prefatory note stating
that it was from the pen of a Genevese pastor, and
he gave his name. Vernes denied that he was
the author, as well he might do, for the real author
was Voltaire.^ Rousseau insisted, however, that
the culprit was Vernes, and for some weeks, to the
infinite amusement of the real culprit, asseverations
and denials were bandied between them. The
clergy of Neuchatel very naturally took the side
of Vernes, and Rousseau was admonished not to
present himself at the next Communion. Against
this he protested, but protested in vain.

The whole place was now up in arms against
him. He had in truth embroiled himself with
enemies who never forgive, and who, if they are
foiled at one weapon, have no difficulty in finding
another ; and the controversy soon travelled out

^ See Voltaire, CEuvres Completes (Beuchot, Paris), vol. xxv. p.
309 seqq., with Beuchot's note. Mr. Morley and the biographers
do not appear to be aware that this was one of the many monkey-
tricks of Voltaire.

igo ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND

of the domain of legitimate polemics. A con-
spiracy was formed to drive him out of the province
by inciting the laity and peasantry against him.
The attention of the orthodox who could read was
directed to the Savoyard vicar's profession of faith
in Emile ; of those who could not read, to the
deductions drawn from it by those who could, and
to the censure of the Sorbonne. To the virtuous
it was pointed out that he was living with a mistress,
and this gave great scandal in a district where the
bourgeois were scrupulous about such matters.
His solitary rambles, his strange dress, and his
eccentric habits became pretexts for circulating
calumnies of all kinds against him. It was even
rumoured that he was Anti-Christ, and in the eyes
of the vulgar his Armenian furred bonnet, caftan,
and cincture lent colour to the accusation. The
wildest stories were current about the object of
his botanical excursions ; it was represented that
he was a secret poisoner, and that under the pre-
tence of botanising he went about in quest of
noxious herbs. But nothing, it seems, did him more
injury than a report that in one of his writings he
had asserted that women had no souls. This was
a master stroke on the part of his enemies, for it
was one of those remarks which, in Swift's phrase,
is levelled to the meanest intelligence. It struck

ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND 191

home, as it was sure to do, going the round of every
household in the province. Every lover, every
uxorious husband, every dutiful son and daughter,
and every woman in the district, to a soul, joined
the cry against this atrocious libeller of the female
sex.

At the end of the summer of 1765 the unhappy
man found it impossible to remain longer at Motiers.
Stones were thrown at him in the street ; both he
and his mistress Therese were insulted and assaulted
whenever the}' went abroad. A diabolical plot
was formed to kill him as he left his house, and it
seemed certain that the only thing that could save
him from assassination was flight. After some
hesitation he resolved to betake himself to the
He de Saint Pierre, a charming little island in the
Lake of Bienne, the beauties of which he has cele-
brated in the fifth of his Reveries. Here for a few
weeks he had peace, and here he wished and ex-
pected to end his days. But the island was in the
jurisdiction of Berne, and scarcely had he settled
there when he received notice from the Bernese
Government to quit the island and their territory
within fifteen days. The blow was as crushing as
it was unexpected. He knew that the decree was
irrevocable, and that it was useless to resist it. All
he could do was to gain time. He wrote to the

192 ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND

Bailli Graffenried, telling him that he would obey
the orders of the authorities, but imploring him to
request them to grant him a few weeks that he
might make his preparations. Two days after-
wards he followed this letter with another. It
was a petition to the Bernese Government to lodge
him in a prison where he would live at his own
expense, and engage not to touch pen or paper or
hold any communication with the outside world
for the rest of his life. " All my passions," he
said, " are extinguished ; nothing remains but an
ardent desire for repose and retirement." His
miseries, he complained, were without example.
To a man in health and strength the ceaseless
distractions in which for many years his life had
been passed would be terrible ; to a poor invalid
exhausted with weariness and misfortune and
anxious only for the peace of death they were
intolerable.^ But all was of no avail. He must
quit the Bernese territory. What to do and whither
to go he knew not. To return to Neucheitel was
out of the question. From any long journey he
shrank in horror, for winter was approaching, and
he was afflicted by a malady which made travelling
not merely inconvenient but most distressing. He

1 See this most pathetic letter, — Lettre DCCXVIL, Ann^e
1765, (Euvres Completes, vol. viii. pp. 44-47-

ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND 193

had, however, no choice ; he must seek an asylum
somewhere. Should he go to Vienna, where his
friend the Prince of Wiirtemberg, who had long
wished the author of Emile to undertake the educa-
tion of his daughter, had already procured a passport
for him ? Or to Corsica, which had invited him to
be its legislator, and where he knew Paoli would
welcome him with open arms ? Should he accept
Madame d'Houdetot's invitation to settle in
Normandy, or Saint Lambert's to settle in Lorraine ?
Should he join his kind patron, Lord Keith, at
Berlin or Potsdam, and throw himself on the pro-
tection of the King of Prussia, who had already
befriended him ? This at last seemed the best
plan. The 30th of October found him at B^le, and
the beginning of November at Strasburg, but so
prostrated with what he describes as the most
detestable journey which he had ever made in his
life, that it would be as impossible for him, he said,
to go on to Berlin as it would be to go to China.
At Strasburg he changed his plans, and, as he could
not bear the fatigue of travelling to Berlin, he
determined to accept an invitation which had been
more than once pressed on him, but which he had
always refused.

13

194 ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND

III

In no country in Europe was Rousseau more
highly esteemed than in England. The most
favourable reviews both of his Nouvelle Helo'ise and
of his Emile had appeared in the English news-
papers and periodicals. Long extracts from the
first had shortly after its publication been a pro-
minent feature in the columns of the London
Chronicle, which had also instituted an elaborate
parallel between him and Richardson. The Gentle-
man's Magazine had drawn attention to its beauties.
Translations of it were widely circulated, and Julie,
Saint Preux, Walmar, and Lord Edward were as
familiar to polite society on this side of the Channel
as they were on the other. ^ Emile was equally
popular, though with a different class of readers,
and its theories were discussed in print and in con-
versation by all who were interested in the topics
which it treats. The hearts of Puritans had been
won by the Letter to D'Alembert, a translation of
which in the Annual Register closely followed the

^ In a letter to Madame Boy de la Tour he distinctly says
that this was the reason of his coming to England. Lettres Inedites,
publides par Henri de Rothschild, 1892.

ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND 195

appearance of the original. The Social Contract

had not been regarded with so much favour, but

its audacity and originahty had excited the keenest

curiosity about its author. The cruel persecutions,

moreover, to which he had been submitted in

Switzerland and France, and the proscription of

his writings, had been faithfully recorded in the

public prints, and had won for him the sympathy

of all friends of liberty. He was the native of a

principality which had been in close touch with

England ever since the days of the Marian exiles.

Many distinguished Genevese had been associated

with the Royal Society. Newton corresponded

with Abauzit. Delorme, Francois dTvernois, and

Mallet du Pan had upheld the British Constitution

as a model for Europe. Many eminent Genevans

— Alphonse Turretin, Tronchin, Andre de Luc,

De Saussure, Abauzit — all had studied in the

English Universities.^ The friend whom he most

loved and respected was a Scotsman, and in

Gibbon, whose neighbour he had been in 1763, he

had another link between Geneva and England.

Nor could he have been ignorant of the hospitable

welcome which another neighbour, Voltaire, had

received in 1726. Though he could neither read

1 See M. Joseph Texte's J. J. Rousseau et les Origines du
Cosmopolitisme Litt^raire, p. 107.

196 ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND

nor speak English, he was well acquainted through
translation with the writings of Hobbes, Algernon
Sidney, Locke, Milton, Addison, Pope, Richardson,
and the masterpiece of De Foe, all of which had
been influential on his work.^ Nor was this all.
Some years before, he had been entranced with
Voltaire's Lettres Philosophiques, and in 1756 he had
read with equal interest Beat de Muralt's Lettres
sur les Anglais et les Frangais,^ both of which had
not only impressed him most favourably with
regard to the English, but had shown him what
a cordial welcome would in all probability await
him.

As early as the spring of 1762, when Rousseau
first sought refuge at Neuch§.tel, the good sense of
Lord Keith had seen that his only safe asylum was
the asylum which Voltaire had sought. There he
could enjoy what he never could enjoy on the
Continent — " placidam sub libertate quietem."
This Lord Keith explained to him, promising to
recommend him to his friends in England, and
offering to place at his disposal a suite of apartments
at Keith Hall, a residence which belonged to him

1 The influence exercised on him by these writers requires no
illustration. For his admiration of Milton, see Emile, Livre V.
CEuvres Completes^ vol. ii. p. 216. See, too Apologie du Theatre^
CEuvres Cojnplkes, vol. i. p. 343.

" Texte, p. 122.

ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND 197

in Scotland. Madame de Boufflers gave him the
same advice, and both of them wrote to Hume.
Hume's reply reached Madame de Boufflers when
she was in London, in the summer of 1762. He
expressed the utmost readiness to assist Rousseau,
for there was, he said, no man in Europe of whom
he had entertained a higher idea, and whom he
would be prouder to serve ; he revered, he said, his
greatness of mind, ** which makes him fly obliga-
tions and dependence." He would instantly write
to all his friends, " and make them sensible of
the honour M. Rousseau has done us in choosing
an asylum in England." The English, he added,
were happy at present in a king who had a taste
for literature, and he only hoped that M. Rousseau
would not disdain the benefits which such a king
would be sure to confer on him. Hume then wrote
directly to Rousseau, supposing, erroneously, that
he was already in London. Meanwhile, Madame de
Boufllers had translated into French those parts
of Hume's letter which had reference to Rousseau,
and forwarded it, though with considerable delay,
to Neuch^tel. Rousseau read it with transports of
delight, showed it to Lord Keith, and hurried, in
ecstasy, to reply to it.

((

Que ne puis-je esperer de nous voir un jour "

igS ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND

— so runs the conclusion of his letter — " rassembles
avec Milord dans votre commune patrie, qui
deviendroit la mienne ! Je benirois^ dans une
societe si douce, les malheurs par lesquels j'y fus
conduit, et je croirois n' avoir commence de vivre
que du jour qu'elle auroit commence. Puisse-je
voir cet heureux jour plus desire qu'espere ! Avec
quel transport je m'ecrierois en touchant I'heureuse
terre oti sont nes David Hume et le marechal
d'ficosse —

" ' Salve, fatis mihi debita tellus !
Hie domus, hsec patria est.'"^

He regrets the mistake he had made in settling
at Motiers instead of going on to England. The
truth is, as we learn from one of his letters to
Madame de Boufflers, that he could not bear the
idea of living in a town, that he feared the long
journey, that his means were not sufficient to
support him in England, and that he would not
submit to increase them by accepting gratuities ;
and above all, that he feared he should not be
popular with the English people, because of an
ill-natured remark which he had made about^them
in Emile. The remark to which he refers is in a
note in the second book —

^ Correspondance, February 19, 1763; CEuvres Completes, vol.
vii. p. 336.

ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND 199

" Je sais que les Anglois vantent beaucoup leur
humanite et le bon naturel de leur nation, qu'ils
appellent good natured people; mais ils ont beau
crier cela tant qu'ils peuvent, personne ne le repete
apres eux." ^

But perhaps his chief reason was one which
both prudence and courtesy induced him to conceal.
He neither understood the English nor cared for
them.^ He says in his Confessions that when
Madame de Verdelin urged him to write to Hume
to reopen the arrangements for his reception in
England— -

" Comme je n'avois pas naturellement de
penchant pour I'Angleterre, et que je ne voulois
prendre ce parti qu'a I'extremite, je refusals
d'ecrire et de promettre." ^

And this is no doubt the real explanation of the
course he took. But what he would not urge
himself, Madame de Boufflers, Madame de Verdelin,
and Lord Keith had been urging for him. Accord-
ingly, at Strasburg, he received another letter from

^ CEuvres Completes, vol. i. p. 533.

2 In the Confessions, Partie II. Livre XL, he says bluntly, " Je
n'ai jamais aim^ I'Angleterre ni les Anglois." — CEuvres Complhes,
vol. vi. p. 132.

^ Cofifessions, Partie II. Livre XII., CEuvres Completes, vol. vi.
p. 167.

200 ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND

Hume, offering to escort him to London, and to
make arrangements for establishing him there.
Hume was at this time at the height of his reputa-
tion, both socially and as a man of letters. He
had just been Charge d' Affaires d'Angleterre, the
idol of the ruelles and salons, and, as a philosopher
and historian, the object of a homage so fulsome
and extravagant that it astonished even himself.
Rousseau was not insensible of the honour of having
so distinguished a chaperon ; and so, after some
coquetting, he consented, under the auspices of
Hume, to confer on the King of England the honour
which he had intended to confer on the King of
Prussia. " Tout bien pese, je me determine a
passer en Angleterre," he wrote to Peyrou. " Vos
bontes, monsieur, me penetrent autant qu'elles
m'honorent : la plus digne reponse que je puisse
faire a vos offres est de les accepter, et je les
accepte," he wrote to Hume ; ^ and the second week
in December found him in Paris. A few hours
after his arrival he was locked in the arms of Hume.
His appearance in Paris was the signal for
very remarkable demonstrations. The noblesse at
the Court, ladies and gentlemen of fashion, men
of letters, savants, and the mob in the streets,

'^ Correspondance. To Hume, 4th December 1765; (Etwres
Completes, vol. viii. p. 55.

ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND 201

vied with one another in attempting to get access
to him.

"It is impossible to express or imagine the
enthusiasm of this nation in his favour," wrote
Hume to Blair ; " as I am supposed to have him
in my custody, all the world, especially the great
ladies, tease me to be introduced to him ; Voltaire
and everybody else are quite eclipsed by him." ^

The awkward thing was that the arret of the Parlia-
ment had not been recalled, and, as he insisted on
parading the gardens of the Luxembourg in his
Armenian habit, and so attracting public attention
to the fact that he was defying the law, the police
warned him not to protract his visit ; otherwise
neither the passport of the Prince de Conti nor
the precincts of the Temple would prevent his
arrest.^ He took the hint, and on the 4th ^ of
January 1766 he quitted Paris with Hume and a
Genevese friend, M. de Luze. At Calais they
were detained by contrary winds, and it was not
until the night of Saturday or Sunday, the nth
or 12th of January, or it may have been a few

^ Burton's Life of Hume, ii.

2 Grimm's Correspondence, Part I. vol. v. p. 124.

3 Ibid., and this date is borne out by his letters to Madame de
Cr^qui and Madame Latour.

202 ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND

hours earlier, that they were able to sail. In any
case, they arrived in London on Monday, the isth.^
The passage from Calais to Dover, which took
twelve hours, was anything but an agreeable one.
The sea was running high ; the night was very
dark, and the cold so intense that even the sailors
were almost frozen to death. Hume went below, and
suffered severely from sea-sickness ; but Rousseau
courageously remained on deck, drenched with
the spray and drizzle, and chilled to the bone with
the cold. At last Dover was reached, and the
friends disembarked. What ensued Rousseau has
himself described.

Transported by the thought that he had at last
set foot on the land of liberty with so illustrious
a man as his escort, he suddenly fell on the aston-
ished Hume's neck, hugged him passionately in
silence, and covered his face — " that broad un-
meaning face," pea-green, no doubt, from recent
affliction — with kisses and tears. This little scene
over, they started for London.

It was soon known that " the celebrated M.
Rousseau," as the newspapers called him, had
arrived. "All the world," said the London Maga-
zine, " are eager to see this man, who by his singul-

^ London Chronicle ; Ge^ttleman^s Magazine ; Rousseau's letter
to Madame de Boufflers, i8th January 1766.

ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND 203

arity has drawn himself into much trouble " ; *
and in a few days he became almost as much the
rage in London as he had been in Paris. The
Hereditary Prince, the King's brother-in-law,
called on him incognito ; the Duke of York, it
would seem, called on him and missed him. General
Conway, then Secretary of State, and Lady Ayles-
bury expressed eager desire to be introduced to
him. Wilkes, who had just secretly come over
from Pairis to bargain with the Ministry for the
terms under which he would consent to be silent,
much to Rousseau's annoyance, forced himself
into his cabin. ^ Garrick not only gave a supper
in his honour at his house in the Adelphi, where
a distinguished company was invited to meet him,
but paid him the compliment of playing two char-
acters on purpose to oblige him^ — Lusignan, in
Aaron Hill's Zaire, and the triple character of the
poet. Frenchman, and drunken man, in Lethe}
Rousseau's behaviour on this occasion was char-
acteristic. Garrick had fixed Thursday, the 23rd

1 London Magazine, ist January 1766.

2 Horace Walpole to John Chute, Correspondence (edit. Cun-
ningham), vol. iv. p. 458.

^ Cradock's Literary and Miscellaneous Afemoirs, vol. i. pp.
205-6.

* Cradock says Lord Chalkstone, but this is evidently an error ;
Cradock's account certainly refers to this occasion.

204 ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND

of January, for the promised performance, and
had reserved a box for him opposite to the box
which the King and Queen, who were expecting
to see him, would occupy. But when the time
came to go to the theatre, Rousseau said that he
had changed his mind and would stay at home.
There was no one, he explained, to look after his
dog, which, if the door happened to be opened,
would run away in his absence. " Lock the door,
then," said Hume, " and put the key in your
pocket." This was accordingly done ; but as
they were going downstairs the dog began to howl.
Upon that Rousseau rushed back, and said that he
had not the heart to leave him in such distress.
Hume insisted that as the King and Queen were
looking forward to seeing him, and Mrs. Garrick
had dismissed another company to make room for
him, it would be absurd to disappoint them for
no other reason than the impatience of a dog. Still
the humane or whimsical master was not persuaded,
and Hume had the greatest difficulty in inducing
him to keep his engagement. It is probable that
courtesy towards Mr. and Mrs. Garrick had more
weight with our eccentric guest than the gratification
of royal curiosity. On arriving at the theatre they
found it crowded to excess, for curiosity to see
him was not confined to royalty. He was suffi-

ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND 205

ciently conspicuous, as he wore his Armenian
habit. He happened to enter his box at the very
time the King and Queen entered theirs. During
the whole performance it was observed that they
took more notice of himx than of the actors ; but
this perhaps was not so much a testimony of ad-
miration as of surprise, for Rousseau appears to
have behaved in a most extraordinary manner.
He cried, he laughed, and became so wild with
excitement that Mrs. Garrick was obliged to hold
him by the skirts of his coat to prevent him falling
out of the box into the pit. After the performance
he went up to Garrick and said in French : ** I
have cried all through your traged}^ and laughed
through all your comedy, without being at all able
to understand the language." ^ Of this scene
and of the sensation Rousseau made in London
we have a graphic account in a letter of Lady
Sarah Bunbury to Lady Susan O'Brien, dated
5th February 1766 —

" By way of news Mr. Rousseau is all the talk :
all I can hear of him is that he wears a pelisse and
fur cap, that he was at the play and desired to
be placed so that he might see the King, which,
as Mrs. Greville says, is a pauvreU unworthy a

^ Cradock's Memoirs, vol. i. pp. 205-6 ; London Chronicle for
January 23-25.

2o6 ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND

philosopher. His dressing particularly I think is very
silly, and if, as the papers say, he told Garrick that
he made him laugh and cry without understanding
a word, this, in my humble opinion, was very silly
too. . . . He sees few people, and is to go and live
at a farm in Wales, where he shall see nothing but
mountains and wild goats — mitre pauvrete.'' ^

Vanity is always contemptible and generally
ridiculous ; it was reserved for Rousseau to make
it grotesque and disgusting.

IV

And now Hume's troubles began, as Horace
Walpole shrewdly anticipated they soon would. ^
He had made himself responsible for the subsistence
and comforts of a man on whom the eyes of all
Europe were turned, but who took a perverse
pleasure not only in defeating every effort which
could be made on his behalf, but in placing himself
and his friends in ridiculous positions. His inordinate
vanity, which amounted to monomania, found its
chief gratification in affecting a superiority to all
those distinctions which are commonly associated
with reputation and fame, and in insulting the
world with the contrast between his enormous

^ Zi/e and Letters of Lady Sarah Lenfiox, vol. i. p. 167.
2 To Lady Harvey, Correspondence (edit. Cunningham), vol. iv.
P- 453-

ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND 207

importance in all that constitutes real eminence,
and the poverty and meanness in which he affected
to live. That all London should be running after
a philosopher who had lodgings in St. James's,
and who lived as his friend Hume lived, would have
afforded him no gratification, but that all London
should be running after a recluse who occupied with
a dog and a mistress two squalid rooms in a farmer's
cottage at Chiswick — that was quite to his taste.
Hume's first negotiation was with a market-gardener
at Fulham, and Diogenes himself might have been
satisfied with the accommodation offered. It was
a wretched cabin with only a single room to let,
containing two beds, one of which was occupied
by a sick person.^ This was sufficiently pictur-
esque, but this would hardly meet the case, as
Therese was expected from Paris in a few days.
Then Chiswick was tried, and in a farmhouse there
the exile was for a while restlessly settled. Here
he was joined by Therese, who had the honour of
being escorted from Paris by Boswell, a circum-
stance which Boswell very judiciously did not
communicate to his friend Johnson.

Of this woman and of the difficulties which her
arrival occasioned Hume gives a lively account in

1 Letter to Madame de Bouflflers, i8th January 1766, Corre-
spondance, CEuvres Complies, vol. viii. p. 63.

2o8 ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND

a letter to Madame de Boufflers, dated London,
19th January 1766 —

"This woman forms the chief encumbrance to
his settlement. M. de Luze, our companion, says
that she passes for wicked and tattling, and is
thought to be the chief cause of his quitting Neu-
ch§.tel. He himself owns her to be so dull that
she never knows in what year of the Lord she is,
nor in what month of the year, nor in what day of
the month or week, and that she can never learn
the difference of value of the pieces of money in
any country. Yet she governs him absolutely
as a nurse does a child. In her absence his dog
has obtained that ascendant. His affection for that
creature is above all expression or conception." ^

Rousseau's fidelity to this wretched woman is
partly to be explained, as Mr. Morley suggests,
by his cynical contempt for mere literary culture,
social accomplishments, and social position ; partly
by the fact that he found repose and amusement
in her passive stupidity ; and partly by the senti-
ment engendered by long association. To his
vanity also this connection administered, for it
was at once a proof of his social independence and
of his indifference to social distinctions. But
as with Swift so with him, the parvenu underlay

1 Burton's Life of Hume, vol. ii. p. 305.

ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND 209

the cynic ; and he has himself recorded the " in-
effable pleasure which the spectacle of Madame la
Mareschale de Luxembourg publicly embracing
Mademoiselle Therese le Vasseur " afforded him.
At Chiswick, General Fitzpatrick, among others,
called on him and found him in great distress at
having lost his dog, which had strayed away.
Hume, however, had managed to recover it, and
entered the room with the dog just after Fitz-
patrick arrived. Rousseau, in an ecstasy of delight,
poured out his gratitude to Hume, and passionately
embracing the dog, burst into tears over him.^

He gave poor Hume no rest. Chiswick, he said,
was too near London, and he was pestered with
callers and starers — which was not surprising, as
the reviews and newspapers had been, and still
were, full of gossip about him. The public curi-
osity and the public sympathy had been greatly
increased by four notices in the Monthly Review,
the London Magazine, and the London Chronicle,
giving elaborate accounts of the persecution to
which he had been subjected.^ This naturally
attracted the friends of liberty and toleration, then
prominent through the Wilkite agitation, who

1 Rogers' Table Talk (edit. Dyce), 106-7.

2 For January (1766); for February; for i6th January and
4th February, in which there is a sketch of his life.

14

210 ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND

honoured him as a hero and pitied him as a martyr
in those sacred causes. Thus conspicuous, he
made himself more so by going about in his
Armenian dress, and so was followed by crowds.^
But the homage which flattered, fretted and em-
barrassed him. He must get away ; he must have
repose ; he hated cities and crowded streets. Hear-
ing of an old monastery in Wales, he said he would
go and settle there. Wales would remind him of
Switzerland, and in Wales he was sure he could
live and die in peace. This fell through. Then
a Mr. Stanley offered him a residence in the Isle of
Wight, but the Isle of Wight was windy, had bare
hills, no trees, and people who would bore him.
As soon as it was known, and Hume no doubt took
care that it should be known, that he was in search
of a residence, several gentlemen most generously

^ In Hardy's Life of Lord Charlemont, vol. i. p. 230, there is an
interesting passage throwing Hght on Rousseau's conduct and habits
at this time. "When," said Charlemont, "Hume and Rousseau
arrived from France, happening to meet with Hume in the Park,
I wished him joy of his pleasing connection, and particularly hinted
that I was convinced he must be perfectly happy in his new friend,
as their sentiments were, I believed, nearly similar. ' Why no, man,'
said he, ' you are mistaken. Rousseau is not what you think him ;
he has a hankering after the Bible, and indeed is little better than a
Christian in a way of his own.' Excess of vanity was the madness
of Rousseau. When he first arrived in London he and his Armenian
dress were followed by crowds, and as long as this species of admira-
tion lasted, he was contented and happy."

ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND 211

came forward and offered him apartments in their
country houses. Among others a Mr. Townshend,
a wealthy man, who was a great admirer of his
writings, invited him to Uve in his house, and,
to relieve him of any sense of obligation, offered to
take any sum he pleased for his board. But Mr.
Townshend was married, and as Rousseau made
it a condition that his gouvernante, as Therese was
now called, should occupy a seat at Mrs. Town-
shend's dinner-table, the proposal fell through.

At last a solution of the difficulty seemed at
hand. He went down with Hume into Surrey,
where he spent two days at the house of a Colonel
Webb. He was delighted with the " natural and
solitary beauties of the place," and thought and
said that he could be happy there. Hume ac-
cordingly negotiated with Colonel Webb for the
purchase of the house, and a small estate adjoining.
And here it was hoped that Rousseau would settle
at last. But he suddenly changed his mind.
Though the place was fifteen miles from town,
it was not, he grumbled, sufficiently out of the
world and out of the range of visitors ; so this fell
through. And now he took it into his head that
he would receive no letters. They had cost him
from twenty-five to twenty-six louis d'or at Neu-
chatel, and he would pay postage no more. Ac-

212 ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND

cordingly the next time Hume, to whom his letters
were directed, brought a cargo of them to Chiswick,
he was told to send them back to the post-office.
Hume explained that if they were taken back they
would be opened and read, and that all his secrets
would be known, which would neither be fair to him-
self nor fair to his friends. He replied impatiently
that he did not care. It is quite possible that Hume,
seeing the inconvenience which would be likely to
result from such folly, and thinking it better that he
and not strangers should be acquainted with his
friend's concerns, took on himself to sift the corre-
spondence, and so gave a handle to the accusation
which Rousseau afterwards brought against him.

Hume had meanwhile been endeavouring to
serve him in other ways. When they were detained
at Calais he had asked him whether, if it were
offered, he would accept a pension from the King.
He replied he should be guided entirely by what
his friend Lord Keith advised. Hume, having
no doubt about what Lord Keith's opinion would
be, immediately after his arrival in London applied
to General Conway, then Secretary of State, and
General Graeme, Secretary and Chamberlain to
the Queen, and asked them to lay the matter
before the King. Their application was successful,
and it was arranged that Rousseau should have

ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND 213

a pension of a hundred a year, on condition that
the grant of it should not be pubhcly known. To
this condition he acceded, but the matter remained
in abeyance in consequence of the illness of General
Conway. A grant without such a condition would
have been more gratifying, no doubt ; that such a
condition should have been imposed is not sur-
prising. The favour with which Rousseau was
regarded was by no means universal. The crowd
who had not read the Nouvelle Helo'ise and the
Contrat Social might run to stare at him ; leaders
of fashion like Lady Aylesbury and Lady Kildare
might cry to Hume, with gushing Mrs. Cockburn,
" Oh, bring him with you ; the English are not
worthy of him. Sweet old man, he shall sit
beneath an oak and hear the Druids' songs ; bring
dear old Rousseau." ^ But there were many, like
Gray and Burke, ^ who would probably have felt

^ Letters of Eminent Persons, p. 125.

2 What Burke thought of him, he has himself very plainly
stated. " We had the great professor and founder of the philosophy
of vanity in England. As I had good opportunities of knowing
his proceedings almost from day to day, he left no doubt on my
mind that he entertained no principle, either to influence his heart
or to guide his understanding, but vanity. With this vice he was
possessed to a degree little short of madness." — " Letter to a
Member of the National Assembly," Works {q.^\\.. Bohn), vol. ii. p. 536.
Burke was well acquainted with Rousseau's writings long before he
made Rousseau's acquaintance, and for what he thought of them,
see Annual Register iox 1762, p. 227.

214 ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND

that he never had a flash of truer intuition than
when he said, in reference to his writings, " Je
Grains toujours que je peche par le fond, et que
tons mes systemes ne sont que des extravagances " ;
and there were still more who would have echoed
Johnson's sentiments, when he was asked by Bos-
well whether he really thought Rousseau a bad
man : " If you mean to be serious, I think him one
of the worst of men, a rascal who ought to be hunted
out of society, as he has been. Three or four
nations have expelled him, and it is a shame he is
protected in this country; " adding, '^ I would sooner
sign a sentence for his transportation than that
of any felon who has gone from the Old Bailey
these many years." ^ But Johnson, so thought
Rousseau's friends, was a bigot. Gray a recluse,
and even Burke had his limitations. There is an
interesting passage in Madame d'Arblay's Diary
illustrating the impression which Rousseau made
on his royal benefactor —

" Mrs. Delany told several anecdotes, which had
come to her immediate knowledge, of Rousseau
while he was in England. . . . The King too told
others which had come to his own ears, all charging
him with savage pride and insolent ingratitude.
. . . ' Some gratitude, sir,' said I, * he was not

^ 'Qosw^itWs Johnson, edit. Croker, 1851, p. 175.

ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND 215

without. When my father was in Paris, which
was after Rousseau had been in England, he visited
him in his garret, and the first thing he showed him
was your Majesty's portrait.' " ^

But to return. Among the friends to whom
Hume had spoken about his difficulties in suiting
the humours of Rousseau was a Mr. Davenport, a
wealthy and accomplished country gentleman, who,
in addition to other residences, had a house which
he seldom occupied at Wooton, near Ashbourne,
in the Peak of Derbyshire. It was sixteen miles
from any town, and, surrounded by rocks and
forests, stood by itself on the slope of a high hill
looking down on a wild and picturesque glen, and
commanding an almost unbounded landscape of
mountain, meadow, and woodland scenery. A little
above it is the village of Wooton, about half a mile
below the village of Ellaston. It had scant attrac-
tions except to lovers of nature and solitude ; for
a few scattered farms, a small hamlet, and here
and there at wide intervals a country house, were
its only immediate links with human society. The
climate during the greater part of the year was
heavy and humid, the weather in the winter and
early spring piercingly cold ; and though the

^ Diary and Letters, vol. ii. p. 397.

2i6 ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND

scenery was eminently picturesque and iniposing,
it was somewhat sombre and austere. Rousseau
was entranced with the description of the place
— it was the very spot in which he desired to end
his life.^ Mr. Davenport would willingly have
placed the house at his disposal and boarded him
also gratuitously, and such was his intention ;
but Hume explained to him that such an offer
would be regarded as an insult by his sensitive
protege. Rousseau's income, derived partly from
contracts with his booksellers and partly from a
small annuity which he had been persuaded to
accept from Lord Keith, the only friend whom
he had so honoured, amounted to about £80 a
year, and Hume suggested that out of this he should
pay for himself and his gouvernante £30. To this
proposal Mr. Davenport good-naturedly acceded ; so
Rousseau and Therese left Chiswick for Wooton.
But the evening before their departure a very
remarkable scene was witnessed in Hume's
lodgings in Lisle Street, including a repetition of
the embarrassing demonstration on the beach at
Dover. To explain this we must go back.

Some six weeks before, Hume wrote to Blair :

^ For an elaborate description of Wooton and the neighbour-
hood, see Rousseau's letter to Madame de Luze, loth May 1766;
CEuvres Computes, vol. viii. pp. 92, 93.

ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND 217

" The philosophers of Paris foretold to me that
I could not conduct Rousseau to Calais without a
quarrel ; but I think I could live with him all my
life in mutual friendship and esteem." The philo-
sophers of Paris had more discernment than he
gave them credit for, as he was soon to see. One
evening at Madame Geoff rin's, not long before
Rousseau and Hume left Paris, Horace Walpole
was joking about Rousseau's affectations and
absurdities, and especially his boasts about his
importance in the eyes of great people. What
fun it would be, he suggested, to concoct a flatter-
ing letter to him from the King of Prussia, inviting
him to Potsdam. On his return home he set to
Work and sketched the letter. Next day he showed
it to Helvetius and the Due de Nivernois, who
were so amused with it that, after revising some
faults in the language, for it was in French, they
persuaded Walpole to allow copies of it to be
circulated privately among their friends.^ In a
few days it was all over Paris. " The copies,"
wrote Horace Walpole to Conway, '' have spread
like wildfire, et me void a la mode." ^ It was not a

^ Letter to Hume, loth July 1766. As it is not very long it
may be transcribed. It is printed in Burton's Life of Hume, vol.
ii. p. 321 ; and in Horace Walpole's Correspondence (edit. Cunning-
ham), vol. iv. p. 463, Walpole gives a full account of its concoction.

2 Correspondence (edit. Cunningham), vol. iv. p. 463.

2i8 ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND

very brilliant jeu d' esprit,^ but it made an extra-
ordinary sensation, or, as Walpole put it, " an
enormous noise in a city where they run and cackle
after an event like a parcel of hens." The news
of it soon spread to England, and in the British
Chronicle for January 31, among the foreign news
appears : "A letter is handed about Paris said to
be written by the King of Prussia, but it is not
well authenticated." Before this notice appeared,
Hume told Rousseau of the letter, which seems at
first to have made very little impression on him,
as he supposed it was one of the fabrications of
his old enemies at Geneva. At last he heard a

^ " MoN CHER Jean Jacques, — Vous avez renonce a Geneve
votre patrie. Vous vous etes fait chasser de la Suisse, pays tant
vante dans vos ecrits ; la France vous a decr^t^ ; venez done chez
moi. J'admire vos talent ; je m'amuse de vos reveries, qui (soit
dit en passant) vous occupent trop et trop longtemps. II faut a
la fin etre sage et heureux ; vous avez fait assez parler de vous^ par
des singularites peu convenables h. un veritable grand homme : de-
montrez a vos ennemis que vous pouvez avoir quelquefois le sens
commun : cela les fachera, sans vous faire tort. Mes etats vous
offrent une retraite paisible : je vous veux du bien, et je vous en
ferai, si vous le trouvez bon. Mais si vous vous obstinez h rejetter
mon secours, attendez-vous que je ne le dirai a personne. Si vous
persistez k vous creuser I'esprit pour trouver de nouveaux malheurs,
choisissez les tels que vous voudrez ; je suis roi, je puis vous en
procurer au gre de vos souhaits ; et, ce qui surement ne vous arrivera
pas vis-k-vis de vos ennemis, je cesserai de vous pers^cuter, quand
vous cesserez de mettre votre gloire h I'etre. Votre bon ami,

" Frederick."

ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND 219

rumour that it was Walpole who had given cur-
rency to it. Walpole, he knew, was a friend of
Hume's. Upon that he asked Hume if the rumour
was true ; but Hume parried the question, having
unfortunately a moment before given him a letter
authorising Walpole to bring some important papers
belonging to Rousseau from Paris. This raised
Rousseau's suspicions. Could Hume have been a
party to the cruel hoax ; could he be in league
with his persecutors ? He had already been sur-
prised to find that a son of one of the bitterest of
his enemies at Geneva, the physician Tronchin,
was not only on the most intimate terms with
Hume, but was actually lodging with him, a circum-
stance which Hume had somewhat lamely ex-
plained by saying that the son was not like the
father. He then remembered that manv of his
letters had been opened, that the newspapers had
of late ceased to pay him compliments, and that
he and Therese had been treated with marked
coldness by one of the ladies in the house. He
called to mind also a very extraordinary incident
which had happened on the way from Paris to
Calais. Hume and himself had occupied the same
bedroom at an hotel. In the middle of the night
he heard David crying out in his sleep, not once
onty, but several times, and with a vehemence

220 ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND

which was quite frightful : " Je tiens J.J. Rous-
seau ! Je tiens J.J. Rousseau ! " He had endea-
voured to interpret the words as favourably as
possible, and to laugh off, next morning, the terror
they had caused him ; but there could be little
doubt what they meant — David had, in the English
phrase, " got him," got him as a hunter gets his
prey. All this was rankling in his mind when he
had a last interview with Hume before setting
out for Wooton. They had just finished supper.
Therese had retired, and Hume and he were sitting
in silence before the fire. During supper both
Therese and himself had been perplexed and dis-
tressed by the way in which their host had been
fixing them alternately with his eyes, and by the
*' diabolical expression " in them. And now that
the friends were alone these stares were repeated.
Rousseau tried to return them : it was impossible ;
he quailed under them ; he nearly fainted. All
his suspicions were corroborated ; but no — he
looked again — if the glances were those of a devil,
the features were those of an honest man. He
was struck with remorse ; he despised himself.
He rushed forward, threw himself on Hume's neck,
hugged him in ecstasy, and with a face bathed in
tears and a voice choked with sobs cried passion-
ately : " Non, David Hume n'est pas un traitre,

J
J

f-

ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND 221

cela n'est pas possible ; et s'il n'etoit pas le meilleur
des hommes, il faudroit qu'il en flat le plus noir."
The scene must have been sufficiently embarrass-
ing to Hume, but he remained perfectly calm,
politely but coldly " returned the caresses," patted
his hysterical friend several times on the back,
exclaiming : " Mon cher monsieur ! Quoi done,
mon cher monsieur ? " and without further com-
ment retired to bed.^

Rousseau, with Therese, arrived at Wooton in
the third week of March, but in a bad temper and
with another grievance. Mr. Davenport, wishing
to save him the expense of the journey, or rather
to reduce it to a trifle, had, with delicate kindness,
resorted to a little stratagem. He had chartered
a return chaise, pretending that it was a public
conveyance which happened by good fortune to
be starting at the very time Rousseau was to leave
London, which was on the 19th of March, and, to
disguise his charity the more effectually, had even
gone so far as to have an advertisement inserted
in a newspaper announcing its departure. But by

^ Of this absurd scene Rousseau has given four full accounts —
in a letter to Madame de Boufflers, in one to Malesherbes, in the
long one to Hume, and in his Recit des Particularites de la Vie de
J. J. Rousseau. See too Hume's Succinct Account, but in a letter
to Dr. Blair, Hume attributes Rousseau's conduct simply to his
annoyance about the post-chaise.

222 ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND

some means Rousseau's suspicions were aroused.
He challenged Hume on the subject, and accused
him of conniving with Mr. Davenport in insulting
him. He was not a beggar, he would live on no
man's alms ; nothing, he said, could have given
him greater offence.^

Shortly after his arrival at Wooton he wrote to
Hume two most friendly letters, calling him his
dear patron, and expressing his gratitude for all
he had done for him.^ But the suspicions which
he had entertained of him had not been disabused,
and in a letter to D'lvernois, dated only two
days after his second letter to Hume, he speaks
of Hume's intimacy with Tronchin's son, of his
being " tres lie encore a Paris avec mes plus danger-
eux ennemis," of the fact that the newspapers
had ceased to speak favourably of him, and that
his letters had been suppressed and opened ; he
shows, in fact, that all his old grievances, real or
imagined, against Hume were still rankling. A
week after his arrival at Wooton, he wrote to Mr.
Davenport earnestly requesting that he would take
care that his letters should not pass through any
other hands than his own, or those of his servants,
asking him to keep this request secret, and adding

1 Letter to Peyrou, 4th October 1766,

2 March 22 and March 29 ; CEuvres Completes, vol. viii. pp. 76, 77.

ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND 223

that " some day when we know each other better
I will tell you more about this." ^

And now an event occurred which brought
matters to a climax. On the 3rd of April the forged
letter was printed both in French and English in
the St. James's Chronicle, and two days afterwards
it appeared in translation in the British Chronicle
and in the London Chronicle. Rousseau was furious.
He wrote off at once to the editor of the St. James's
Chronicle, complaining of the insult done to the
King of Prussia as well as to himself, pointing
out that its insertion with Frederick's name at-
tached to it was connivance with forgery, and
apprising the editor that it had been fabricated
in Paris ; and he added : " Ce qui navre et dechire
mon cceur, I'imposteur a des complices en Angle-
terre." ^ Rousseau's letter, with an editorial note
prefixed, appeared on the loth —

" The imposture was a very innocent one, and
we do not imagine that many readers were deceived
by it ; we are told that it was a jeu d' esprit by an
English gentleman now at Paris, well known in the
catalogue of noble authors."

In the same paper appeared a letter to Rousseau,

^ Lettres Inedites, par Streckeisen-Moultou, p. 457.
2 Corresfiondance, CEuvres Completes, vol. viii. p. 85.

224 ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND

purporting to be written by a Quaker, signing
himself " Q. A."—

" Ne t'effarouche pas une bagatelle ; tu es
ici dans un pays de liberte ; la liberte a ses incon-
venients, comme vous voyez ; elle s'emancipe
par fois avec des caracteres plus respectables que
la tienne ; . . . ainsi tes termes de ' navre ' et
' dechire * sont un peu trop forts."

In the impression for the 3rd of May he found a
defender —

" Let me recommend," says the writer, " my
brother scribblers to be content with teasing one
another. The Philosopher is too much above us ;
let us leave him unmolested in his Derbyshire
retreat. It may perhaps produce something which
will reflect honour on the country he lives in, and
to have adopted a Rousseau will be some excuse
to posterity for our own dearth of literary
merit." ^

Rousseau was now certain that his suspicions
about Hume were correct. Hume was the ally of
Walpole, who had circulated the letter ; of D'Alem-

1 See the numbers of the S/. Jameses Chronicle under above
dates.

ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND 225

bert, who had written it ; ^ of the newspaper editors
who had given currency and prominence to it. To
Madame de Boufflers, to his cousin F. H. Rousseau,
to Peyrou, to Malesherbes, and to other corre-
spondents he pours out his grievances about his
perfidious friend.^ He regarded Walpole, he said,
as the secret agent of three or four men who had
formed a plot against him, a plot which he could
not comprehend, — " mais dont je vois et sens I'exe-
cution successive de jour en jour." These men
were Hume, D'Alembert, Voltaire, and Tronchin.
At this time, too, another insertion in the English
newspapers, for which he considered Hume respons-
ible,^ added greatly to his irritation. Ever since
the controversy about the theatrical performances
at Geneva, Voltaire had pursued him with un-
relenting hostility. La Guerre Civile de Genhe
and VIngenu, indeed, were still to come, and Vol-
taire's authorship of Les Sentiments des Citoyens

1 "J'y reconnois a I'instant le style de M. d'Alembert . . .
mon ennemi d'autant plus dangereux qu'il a soin de cacher sa
haine." Letter to Malesherbes, loth May 1766. He had not seen
the notice in thc^.S/. James's Chronicle apparently, or perhaps he did
not understand the allusion to the Catalogue of Royal and Noble
Authors. He afterwards said in his letter to Hume that it mattered
little whether it was d'Alembert's composition or that of his prete-
nom Walpole.

2 See his correspondence between 9th April and 22nd May,
compared with his letter to Hume dated loth July.

2 Letter to Hume, loth July 1766.
15

226 ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND

Rousseau never seems to have suspected ; but in
1 761 appeared, under the name of the Marquis de
Ximenes, the Lettres sur La Nouvelle Helo'ise, and
in 1766 the cruel and rancorous Lettre au Docteur
Pansophe} Almost as soon as this letter was
published the severest passages in it were trans-
lated, and according to Rousseau aggravated in
the translation, and printed in Lloyd's Evening
News. About the same time (12th April) the
London Chronicle printed a translation of a very
severe letter of Voltaire to him, occasioned by a
protest made against Rousseau's excommunication
by the Council of Geneva, on the ground that the
partisans of Voltaire and D'Alembert had unfairly
influenced the Council. Next appeared two mali-
cious notices, one attributing his favourable recep-
tion at Paris to the respect felt for Hume, and
describing him as the son of a musician, which
appears to have particularly annoyed him ; and the

^ The authorship of this Voltaire repeatedly denied, but Decroix,
the collaborator of Condorcet, had no doubt that Voltaire wrote it,
and Beuchot did not scruple to insert it in his edition of Voltaire's
works. Internal evidence surely proves conclusively that, if
Voltaire did not write the whole, he had at least a hand in it ; his
own denial, it is needless to say, goes for nothing. In a letter,
dated November 1766, he has the impudence to say : "II pretend
que je lui ai ^crit, etc. — moi, qui ne lui ai pas ^crit depuis environ
neuf ans " ; and this after the Sentiments and the Lettres sur La
Nouvelle Helo'ise ! "

ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND 227

other taunting him with " opening his door to the
rich and closing it to the poor," and with " coldness
to his relations." Both of these libels, for so he
described them, he attributed confidently to Hume.^
It will thus be seen that if Rousseau was wrong in
supposing that Hume had had any hand in these
publications, he was perfectly right when he spoke
of the changed attitude of the Press towards him.
The newspapers and magazines, it is needless to
say, had filled their columns with all this, not
because there was any prejudice against him, for
journalists, like politicians, seldom either love or
hate, but simply because, as gossip was busy with
his name, copy retailing or adding to such gossip
was acceptable.

Meanwhile Hume, quite unconscious of what
was fermenting at Wooton, had been urging on the
pension, when General Conway put into his hands
a letter which he had received from Rousseau.
This letter is not extant, and we only know
its purport by a letter from Hume to Rousseau,
dated 17th May, and printed by Streckeisen-
Moultou, telling Rousseau how greatly both he

^ These pieces Hume had never even read ; see the Succinct
Account. They were written by Gibbon's friend, Deyverdun, as
he afterwards acknowledged to Hume, begging him to publish the
fact. — Hume's Private Correspondence, p. 230.

228 ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND

himself and General Conway had been con-
cerned at his refusal of the pension. To Hume
Rousseau made no reply, but he wrote to General
Conway. He was deeply touched, he said, with the
favours with which it had pleased his Majesty to
honour him, and with the kind services of Conway.
He would not refuse the pension. So far from
rejecting the benefits of the King through the pride
which had been imputed to him, his pride would be
in pluming himself on them ; and the only thing
that pained him was that he could not honour
himself as much in the eyes of the world as he
could do in his own. Let those honours be deferred
— deferred for happier times — and it would then
be seen that he had only deferred availing himself
of them that he might endeavour to make himself
worthier of their reception. This was very natur-
ally interpreted as meaning that he would not
accept the pension unless it was made public.
Conway was unwilling to approach the King again
on the subject ; Hume, however, persuaded him to
give way, and got the Duke of Richmond also to exert
his influence. But there was one thing which they
could not do, and that was to submit the King to
the indignity of a second refusal. Accordingly,
although he had received no answer to his former
letter, Hume wrote again to Rousseau, telling him

ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND 229

what he had done, and asking him to say positively
whether he would accept the pension if it were
publicly granted him. Then the storm burst.
A week after came the answer : "I believed that
my silence, interpreted by your conscience, would
have said enough^but as you will not listen to it
I will speak. I know you, and you do not know
it." He then went on to say that he had told him
before that if he was not the best of men he was
the worst, that he would have no further inter-
course with him, and would accept nothing of
which he was the instrument. He concluded by
bidding adieu to him for ever.^ Hume was as
indignant as he was astounded. He replied at
once, with a passionate vehemence very unusual
with him, and, perhaps without precedent in his
life, demanding an explanation : " You owe this
to me ; you owe it to truth and honour and jus-
tice, and to everything deemed sacred among men.
Tell me what has given you offence ; tell me of
what I am accused. Tell me the man who accuses
me." And Rousseau told him. What he told
him has been already related. The key to the
letter is afforded by a naive admission at the
beginning : " I know only what I feel " C* Je ne

1 See the long letter to Hume dated loth July 1766. CEuvres
Cotnpletes, vol. viii. pp. 111-127.

230 ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND

sais que ce que je sens"). Locke has remarked
that the difference between the reasoning of a
madman and that of a fool is that a fool reasons
incorrectly on correct premises, and that a mad-
man reasons correctly on absurd premises. This
is just what Rousseau does here. A diseased
imagination furnishes him with his data, but his
logic is flawless, his conclusion inevitable. We
know as a matter of fact that Hume, so far from
having any part in the concoction of the forged
letter, knew nothing about it till it was in circula-
tion ; that, so far from being responsible for the
so-called libels in the English press, he never at
an}/ time wrote or connived at a line which could
wound Rousseau's feelings, much less cast discredit
on him. We know that he was not in league with
Rousseau's enemies ; that with Voltaire and Dr.
Tronchin he had no relations at all, while his inti-
macy with Walpole and D'Alembert was without
any reference to Rousseau ; that if he did not
suppress the " libels " on his friend, it was because
he could not ; and that if he did not explain his
conduct to Rousseau, it was because he was unaware
that there was anything to explain. On the other
hand, it is due to Rousseau to say that there is no
reason for supposing that in acting as he did he
did not act in perfectly good faith. There can be

ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND 231

little doubt that he was convinced of the truth of
what he alleged ; there can be as little doubt that
he had no unworthy motive for his conduct.
Madame de Bouffiers said of him with perfect
justice : " Ne croyez pas qu'il soit capable d' arti-
fice, ni de mensonge, qu'il soit un imposteur ni un
scelerat. Sa colere n'est pas fondee, mais elle est
reelle." ^

When we consider the effect of the course he
took, the monstrous injustice done to his bene-
factor, the criminal ingratitude devolving on him-
self, it is really provoking to find in his narrative
all the indications of conscientious truthfulness.
There is not, it is true, an incident which he does
not misread and pervert, but there is not an inci-
dent which is not, in detail, accurately stated : his
facts may be practically fictions, but his fictions are
substantial!}^ facts. He never resorts to falsehood
or even to deliberate sophistry. Every line of the
letter has the impress of sincerity, but it is the
sincerity, the terrible sincerity, of monomania.

Hume knew perfectly well that the letter was
intended for publication, and would be all over
Europe in a few weeks. He might be forgiven for
being indignant and excused for being perplexed,
and his correspondence at this time shows that he

^ Letters of Eminent Persons, p. 241.

232 ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND

was both. He wrote a very weak letter to Rous-
seau, complaining that Rousseau had misrepre-
sented the " tender scene " between them on the
night before the departure for Wooton, explained
that the alleged diabolical expression in his eyes
had simply arisen from a fixed look or stare which
was usual with him when absent in thought, denied
that the scene between them had reference to
anything else than the post-chaise grievance, and
declining to enter into any further details, concluded
with reminding his former friend of the services he
had done him in endeavouring to procure him a
pension, and with bidding adieu to him for ever/
But in a letter to Dr. Blair his wrath flamed out,
and we find him describing his ungrateful protege
as " the blackest and most atrocious villain that
now exists in the world," adding that he was
heartily ashamed of everything that he had ever
written in his favour.

For the next few weeks both he and Rousseau
relieved their feelings by giving their version of the
affair to their common friends, but it soon became
public property. A notice of the quarrel appeared
early in August in the Brussels Gazette, and this
was copied with further particulars into the English
papers and magazines. At first no one could make

^ Printed in Burton's Life of Htime, vol. ii, 341-2.

ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND 233

head or tail of the affair, and sheer perplexity held
opinion in suspense. But it was not long before
very decided views began to be taken, and parties
to form themselves. In London and Paris nothing
else was talked about, and Hume scarcely exag-
gerated when he said that if the King of England
had declared war against the King of France it
could not have been more suddenly the subject of
conversation. " La rupture de M. Hume et de
Jean Jacques a fait un bruit terrible ici," wrote
Madame Riccoboni to Garrick. Hume had threat-
ened, and now determined, to publish a full account
of the whole matter. But his friends strongly
dissuaded him from doing so. Lord Keith and
Madame de Boufflers out of consideration for
Rousseau, as well as for himself, Horace Walpole
to prevent ridicule, Adam Smith from prudential
motives, which he well explained : —

" To write against him is," he said, " you may
depend upon it, the very thing he wishes you to
do. He is in danger of falling into obscurity in
England, and he hopes to make himself consider-
able by provoking an illustrious adversary. He
will have a great party ; the Church, the Whigs,
the Jacobites, the whole wise English nation, who
will love to mortify a Scotchman, and to applaud
a man who has refused a pension from the King.

234 ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND

It is not unlikely, too, that they may pay him
very well for having refused it, and that he may
have had in view this compensation." ^

Adam Smith was then in Paris, and the advice
he gave was the advice of most of Hume's French
friends, the Baron d'Holbach, Turgot, Madame
Riccoboni, Mademoiselle Riancour, and many
others. But by the end of July opinions changed.
At a general meeting of Hume's literary friends in
Paris, convened by D'Alembert, it was the unani-
mous opinion that he ought to justify himself by
publishing a full narrative.

" I find," wrote Baron d'Holbach, " that most
of those who are interested in you are of opinion
that you cannot dispense with a vindication ; it
has become necessary, because of the great
number of partisans, of fanatical partisans, which
Rousseau has throughout all Europe, and especi-
ally here ; even now they are making capital
out of your silence, and saying that it is strange
that accusations so grave as you bring against
Rousseau should be brought against anyone with-
out proof. And so I am obliged to depart from
my pacific counsels.'

" 2

1 Printed in Burton's Life of Hume, vol. ii. 341-2. Letter
dated 7th Oct. 1766.

2 Letters of Eminent Persons, p. 261.

ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND 235

The truth is that Rousseau, the tone of whose
correspondence on this subject was that of 'the
very subHmity of outraged innocence, had been
writing in all directions to the effect that Hume
dared not publish the indictment against him, and
the proofs on which it was based. But what had
perhaps the most weight in inducing Hume to
take the step he did was Rousseau's threatened
appeal to posterity. It was known that he was
writing his Confessions, and that it was his inten-
tion to tell the story which Hume had not the
courage and honesty to tell. Hume naturally
shrank from allowing his reputation to be at the
mercy of the most plausible and most eloquent
madman who ever lived. If it was to be gibbeted,
it should at least be gibbeted to the disgrace of
the gibbeter. But he held back to the very last.
Finally the documents were collected and for-
warded to Paris, and their publication was left to
the discretion of his friends. After some hesitation
they were placed in the hands of M. Suard, the
author of the Melanges de Litterature, who, with
the assistance of D'Alembert, arranged, edited,
and translated them where necessary into French,
publishing them in the form of a pamphlet. So
out came an Expose Succinct de la Contestation
qui s'est elevee entre M. Hume et M. Rousseau, avec

236 ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND

les pieces justificatives. This was in October/
Early in November appeared an English transla-
tion, superintended by Hume himself, A Concise
and Genuine Account of the Disptite between Mr.
Hume and M. Rousseau, translated from the French,
with the Letters that passed between them during
their Controversy. No one who reads the Account
can doubt that Hume acted wisely in taking this
step, though he afterwards regretted it. The tone
is perhaps a little too acrimonious, but as nothing
is asserted without documentary proof, and testi-
mony the truth of which is self-evident, and as
Rousseau's monstrous assumptions and deductions,
and Hume's entire innocence of what had been
imputed to him, come out as clear as fire in dark-
ness, acrimony is, we feel, considering what was
involved, perfectly excusable. Hume never for-
gets that he is a gentleman. He lays no undue
stress on his unwearied and immense kindness
to Rousseau, on his patience and forbearance under
most trying provocation, or on the many services
he had done him. He always expresses himself
with measure and propriety. With the purely
impartial reader the prevailing sentiment towards
Rousseau will be rather pity than indignation, the

1 For all this, see Letters of Eminent Persons^ pp. 186-188 and
202 seqq.

ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND 237

narrative showing so unmistakably that it is
recording the conduct of a man in frenzy.

PubUc curiosity was so great, that there was
scarcely an important newspaper or magazine
which did not publish the Account in instalments.
Thus for two days, the 15th and 17th of November,
it occupied four columns in the St. James's
Chronicle, nearly the whole paper. The greater
part of it was printed also in the London Chronicle
between the 15th and 25th November. Next it
appeared in the London Magazine, the Gentle-
man's Magazine, and the Monthly Review. In-
gratitude is perhaps the only vice which has never
found an apologist, and sympathy with Hume as
well as indignation against Rousseau were all
but universal. In Paris and London there were
scarcely two opinions. " You can't conceive,"
wrote Robert Wood,^ " how much you are put
in the right and Rousseau in the wrong by every
creature here." The general opinion was that Rous-
seau was mad, or, as Madame Riccoboni bluntly
put it, " Rousseau est fou ; le succes de ses oeuvres a
derange sa tgte." Such also was the opinion of
Mademoiselle de I'Espinasse.'^ Hume was over-
whelmed with letters of condolence and con-

1 Letters of Eminent Persons, p. 264.

2 Ibid. p. 208.

238 ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND

gratulation, and among them one from Ferney,
in which Voltaire took the opportunity of giving
his own sentiments on ** le plus mechant coquin
qui ait jamais deshonore la litterature." ^ Hume's
pamphlet led to the pubhcation of another by
Horace Walpole. But " A Narrative of what passed
relative to the Quarrel of Mr. David Hume and J. J.
Rousseau, as far as Mr. Horace Walpole was con-
cerned in it," beyond heaping further abuse on
Rousseau, and illustrating Walpole' s horror of
being mixed up with men of letters, is of httle
interest. If Rousseau's conduct was generally
reprobated, he was not without supporters. His
compatriot Fuseli rushed into the arena with
a wild and ill-written pamphlet, defending him
against what he describes as the aspersions of Mr.
Hume and Monsieur Voltaire,^ and a clergyman
of the Estabhshed Church, a man of some dis-
tinction in liberal circles. Dr. Ralph Heathcote,
appeared also, though with some reserve, as his
apologist.'^ In France the pamphlets eHcited by

1 See the letter to Hume, 24th October 1766, and the letter to
Darnaville, dated 3rd November 1766.

2 A Defence of M. Rousseau against the aspersiofts of Mr. Htwie,
Monsieur Voltaire, and their Associates, long extracts from which
appeared daring November, both in the St.Ja??ies's Chronicle and in
the London Chronicle. See, too, Knowles, Life of Fuseli, vol. i. 44-5.

3 " A Letter to the Honourable Horace Walpole concerning the
Dispute between Mr. Hume and M. Rousseau."

ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND 239

the controversy were very numerous, not merely
because of the interest taken in Rousseau per-
sonally, but because of the different questions
and issues involved in his disgrace or vindica-
tion.^ Nor was he without supporters in the
popular press. A letter in the St. James's
Chronicle for the 27th November, signed " An
Orthodox Hospitable Old Englishman," speaks
very severely of Horace Walpole's conduct, con-
cluding with —

" M. Rousseau is a persecuted and an un-
fortunate stranger. I neither know him nor
Hume, nor Horace Walpole, but humanity obliges
me to wish that poor Rousseau may not be made
uneasy here, but left in as much peace as possible."

Two other correspondents in December also take
up the cudgels for Rousseau. One says he was
much concerned to consider Rousseau's condition ;
the unhappy philosopher had come into this
country to avoid the malevolence he had met
with in his own, only to meet with abuse
and reproaches, and abuse and reproaches which
he (the writer) must take leave to say were not

^ The most powerful pamphlet on his side was, Precis pour M.
Jean Jacques Rousseau^ en reponse a V Expose Succinct de M. Hume.
It was anonymous.

240 ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND

worthy of English gentlemen.^ In the Poet's
Corner of the same paper ^ a contributor breaks
out into the following exhortation :

" Rousseau, be firm ! though malice, like Voltaire,
And superstitious pride, like D'Alembert,
Though mad presumption Walpole's form assume.
And base-born treachery appear like Hume,
Yet droop not thou; these spectres gathering round,
These night-drawn phantoms, want the power to wound.
Fair truth shall chase th' unreal forms away,
And reason's piercing beams restore the day;
Britain shall snatch the exile to her breast,
And conscious virtue soothe his soul to rest."

In the following number, however, appears
a parody of these lines, reversing their sense and
converting them into a satire on their subject.
The press, speaking generally, was, as might be
supposed, anything but favourable to him ; and
another correspondent in the same paper, who has,
however, as little sympathy with Hume as with
Rousseau, observes that there was nothing surpris-
ing in their quarrel, for they were both " deists
and infidels," and what but feuds between such
heretics could be expected ? Nor were the wits
silent. A ludicrous travesty of the indictment
against Hume went the round of some of the

1 See the letters, S/. James's Chronicle^ nth and 13th
December.

2 nth December.

ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND 241

periodicals. A facetious artist depicted Rousseau
as a Yahoo newly caught in the woods, and Hume
caressing and offering him some oats, which he
angrily refuses, while Voltaire and D'Alembert
are whipping him up behind, and Horace Walpole
making him horns of papier mdche. A very
sensible correspondent in the London Chronicle
lamenting that there should be such dissensions
between men who might with more propriety be
advancing each other's interests and reputation,
recommends, he says, to their serious consideration
a remark of their witty friend the Abbe Troublet —

" Je me trouvai un jour dans une compagnie
assez nombreuse, ou etaient deux esprits et deux
hommes tres riches. Je dis aux premiers qui
s'attaquaient Fun 1' autre : ' Voyez un peu comme
les deux messieurs menagent, se flattent, se re-
spectent, bel exemple a suivre ; ils ne donnent
point de scenes aux gueux ; n'en donnez point
aux sots.' " ^

Meanwhile Rousseau's name was being brought
prominently before the public in another capacity.
His Devin de Village was translated and produced
at Drury Lane Theatre on the 21st of November,
and appears from the notices in the newspapers
to have been very well received.

^ London Chronicle, Deceoiber.
16

242 ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND

V

But it is time to return to Rousseau at Wooton.
He made no reply whatever to Hume's pamphlet,
but he kept circulating industriously his version
of the affair, in letters to Lord Keith, to Guy the
bookseller, to Ray, to Peyrou, to Madame de
Boufflers, to D'lvernois, to all in fact who he thought
would give currency to what he wrote, in London,
Paris, Berlin, and Geneva. The burden of these
letters, both before the appearance of Hume's
pamphlet and afterwards, is the same. The sole
course open to him is to possess his soul in patience,
to endure, to submit. The league which had been
formed against him was too powerful, too skilful,
too zealous, had too much credit with the public,
for one who had nothing else to rely on but truth, to
resist. To cut off the heads of that hydra would only
be to multiply them. The refutation of one of their
calumnies would only be followed by the appearance
of twenty others crueller still. Let Hume triumph
in his infamy, let him bruit abroad what slanders
he pleases ; "he has filled England, France, the
newspapers, all Europe, with cries for which I have
no response, and with calumnies of which I should

ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND 243

deem myself worthy if I deigned to repel them."
The one consolation to him is that Hume had at
last been unmasked, and that what had long been
muffled in darkness had come into the light of
day. When Hume's Account and the anonymous
reply to it from Paris — the " Precis pour M. Jean
Jacques Rousseau " — were sent to him^ he expressed
the utmost indifference —

((

I admire," he wrote, " the courage of the
author of that work, and above all their allowing
it to be circulated in London. For the rest they
can do and say in my favour just what they please ;
for myself I have nothing to say to Mr. Hume,
except that I find him too insulting for a good
man, and too passionate for a philosopher." ^

At Wooton he could enjoy to his heart's content
the solitude which he so much affected. As neither
he nor Therese could speak or understand any
English, they could hold no communication except
through signs transacted chiefly by Therese ^ with

1 Letter to M. Laliaud, November 15, 1766, CEuvres
Cotnplctes, vol. viii. p. 157 ; and for all the other particulars see his
correspondence passim during the summer and autumn of this
year.

2 In a letter to Hume, dated 29th March 1796, he thus expresses
himself: — "J'en trouve un plus grand a ne pouvoir me faire bien
entendre des domestiques, ni surtout entendre un mot de ce qu'ils
disent. Heureusement Mile, le Vasseur me sert d'interprete, et
ses doigts parlent mieux que ma langue." — CEuvres Completes, vol.
viii. p. 77.

244 ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND

the housekeeper or with the servants ; and this,
he said — very ungratefully, for he acknowledges
at first that their courteous attentions were so
studious as to be almost oppressive — afforded him
the greatest satisfaction. " Could I learn English,"
he said, " I would only speak French, especially if
I had the happiness to know that they did not
understand a word of it." But this had its incon-
veniences, and a misunderstanding between Therese
and the venerable housekeeper about a kettle and
some cinders might have led to serious consequences.
Shortly after his arrival the clergyman of the place
called on him, but as he would only speak in French
and the clergyman would only speak English, the
interview began and ended almost without the
exchange of a word. At a second interview they
got on better, and the reverend gentleman, it
appears, took a great fancy to him. His only
amusement was botanising and indulging in soli-
tary rambles in the woods and among the rocks.
" J'ai repris," he writes, " mes promenades soli-
taires, mais au lieu d'y r^ver j'herborise, c'est une
distraction dont je sens le besoin." ^ But he was not
happy ; his nights, he said, were cruel ; he could
not sleep : his body suffered even more than his

^ To M. de Malesherbes, Correspondatice, CEuvres Completes, vol.
viii. p. loi.

ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND 245

heart, and melancholy thoughts were his constant
companions. In April, Lord Strafford invited him
to his seat in Yorkshire ; but fifteen leagues, he
replied, were too far for a pedestrian who was
hard upon sixty years of age, and a carriage was
not to his taste. As the year wore on he became,
if not more contented, more sociable. Mr. Bernard
Granville, who had a beautiful country seat some few
miles off at Calwich, made his acquaintance, and a
very pleasant intimacy ensued. At Calwich, Rous-
seau stayed some days, and was introduced to the
Duchess of Portland, who joined him on a botanical
excursion on the Peak, and to whom he wrote a
beautiful letter on the charms of botany.^ He was
also introduced to the ' fascinating ' Miss Dewes,
who insisted on becoming his physician. Mrs.
Delany, Mr. Granville's sister, became quite alarmed
when she perceived the favourable impression
which Rousseau was making on her circle, and
more especially when she heard that Lady Kildare,
the daughter of the Duke of Richmond, had said
that she would " offer Rousseau an elegant retreat
if he would educate her children." But for all
that she did not scruple to hold out " The Rous-
seau," as she called him, as one of the inducements
to tempt Lady Andover to visit Calwich. Among

^ Correspondance^ (Euvres Completes, vol. viii. p. 145-6.

246 ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND

others who sought his acquaintance was Erasmus
Darwin the poet-botanist, who by a stratagem
secured an interview with him. Knowing Rous-
seau's dishke to strangers, he stationed himself on
a terrace where he knew the great man would pass,
and affected to be examining a plant. " Are you a
botanist ? " he suddenly asked, as Rousseau came up.
Rousseau, interested and off his guard, entered at
once into conversation with him, and Darwin
flattered himself that this would be the beginning
of an acquaintanceship he so much desired. But
the morbid solitary on reflection suspected the
trick which had been played on him, and at once
retired into himself, and Darwin could never again
get access to him.^

He was now engaged in writing his Confessions.
At what time he began them we have no means
of knowing ; his earliest reference to them is in
a letter to Peyrou, dated 21st June of this year
(1766), and he tells Lord Keith in July that they
were his amusement on rainy days. " L'occu-
pation," he writes to Keith, " pour les jours
de pluie, frequens en ce pays, est d'ecrire ma
vie : non ma vie exterieure comme les autres, mais
ma vie reelle, celle de mon ame, I'histoire de mes

1 History and Topography of Ashbour7ie, p. 248 ; and Howitt's
Visits to Remarkable Places, p. 513.

ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND 247

sentiments les plus secrets." ^ So passed the
summer and autumn ; and if the sufferings which
his enemies, or rather his own diseased mind,
inflicted on him were, as they no doubt were,
severe, he had apparently much to solace him.

Traditions of Rousseau long lingered at Wooton.
Asjlate as 1840, William Howitt found two of the
villagers who perfectly remembered him and
Therese, under names curiously perverted into
Ross Hall and Madam Zell, or, as I have since
been told, " Miss Mainselle," evidently a corrup-
tion of the French Mademoiselle. One, a very old
lady, told how she and her brother used to meet
him, on their way to school, poring on the park
wall for mosses, or prying in some lonely nook for
plants, clad in a long gown and belt, on his head a
black velvet cap with gold tassels and a pendent
top, and how frightened they used to be at the
outlandish figure, the more terrible to them be-
cause of his taciturnity. One old man told Howitt
that he had heaid that Rousseau " thought nothing
of going over Weaver when the feeris were out
dancing a nights." ^ Two of his caps and a pipe
which belonged to him were long preserved in

^ Correspondance, CEvvres Completes, vol. viii. p. 130.
2 For these traditions, see Howitt's Visits to Remarkable Places,
pp. 513, 514.

248 ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND

the village. Both of Howitt's informants spoke of
his and Therese's kindness to the poor, adding that
it was popularly supposed that he was some king
who had been driven from his dominions, and also
that he held communion with supernatural beings.
Local tradition still points to some mezereons
among the rocks which are said to have sprung
from seeds sown by him, and a grotto near Wooton
Hall is still known as Rousseau's Cave. Another
of his favourite retreats was beneath a circular
cluster of oaks, known locally as " The Twenty
Oaks," the site of which commanded a fine
prospect of most picturesque hill and woodland
scenery.^

But Rousseau's host at Wooton was to fare
as his host at London had fared before him, though
happily without having any crimes imputed to
him. Up to December his relations with his
patron had been most friendly. His letters to
him and his references to him in his other corre-
spondence are in the highest degree complimentary
and even affectionate. He is a " tres galant
homme, plein d' attention et de soins " — his kind-
nesses had only been equalled by the delicacy with
which they had been conferred — " ses attentions
seules m'empgchent d'oublier que je suis dans la

1 History and Topography of Ashbourne (1839), p. 248.

RorssEAu's Cave, Woottox Hall.

"'

ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND 249

maison d'autrui." And indeed it is easy to see
that Davenport was, in every sense of the term,
a true Enghsh gentleman, the soul of courtesy,
liberality, kindliness. But he had neglected to
answer some questions which Rousseau had asked
him. What they were does not appear ; they seem
to have had reference to some impertinences on the
part of the servants. " I would as willingly put
myself at the mercy of all the devils in Hell," wrote
Rousseau some time before to Dutens, " as at that of
English domestic servants." ^ Then, and instantly,
the scene changed. A furious letter from Rous-
seau, demanding to know on what footing he stood
at Wooton, and threatening that if he was not
informed immediately he should leave the house,
was the result.^ And the letter was the more
offensive as it reminded his host that he had not
sought his hospitality — it had been practically
forced on him. Mr. Davenport appears to have
sent a satisfactory reply, for the storm blew over,
and the spring of 1767 found the philosopher still
at Wooton on good terms with his host, and in
love with an idle and contemplative life, which
became each day more delicious to him.^

^ To Dutens, CEuvres Completes, vol. viii. p. 189.

- To Davenport, Dec. 22, 1766, CEuvres Co}7ipletes, vol. viii. p. 160.

^ Letter to the Marquis de Mirabeau, 31st January 1767.

250 ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND

In March, much to the surprise of General
Conway, he appHed through Mr. Davenport for
the pension which he reminded him had been
promised. The result is greatly to Hume's credit,
for the application which it was now necessary
to make to the King depended on his decision.
The King, after what had passed, was not dis-
posed to regard Rousseau with much favour, but
as the pension had been promised it should be
granted, he said, and Rousseau, little thinking
what he owed to his good-natured enemy, char-
acteristically acknowledged it. He accepted it,
he writes to Conway, as "1^ arrhes d'une epoque
heureuse autant qu' honorable, qui m'assure, sous
la protection de sa majeste, des jours desormais
paisibles." This was on the 26th of March. On
the 2nd of April he was writing to Peyrou in a
strain which shows unmistakably that his mind
was unhinged, and from this moment insanity, or
something indistinguishable from insanity, marks
his correspondence and his actions. It seems that
a letter addressed to him by Peyrou had fallen by
mistake into the hands of his cousin, F. H. Rous-
seau, and had, very naturally, been returned to
him after being opened. His cousin he believed
to be an ally of Hume, and he flew to the conclusion
that Hume and Hume's friends were again tamper-

ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND 251

ing with his letters. He tells Peyrou that he has
been entrapped on all sides : that spies have been
set to watch him for the purpose of stealing his
papers, presumably the manuscript of the Confes-
sions. " O destiny, O my friend," he cries, " pray
for me, I have not merited the misfortunes which
are crushing me." If he is not rescued and things
come to the worst, it will only remain for him to
burn all his papers, and that he will do rather than
that they should fall into the hands of his enemies.
Some friend must come to him — letters are vain,
because all letters are intercepted between Wooton
and London.^ On the 30th of April he wrote to
Mr. Davenport, telling him that next day he in-
tended to quit Wooton for ever.

" I shall leave," he said, " my small belongings,
as well as those of Mademoiselle le Vasseur, and
I shall leave also the proceeds of the sale of my
engravings and books, as securitj^ for the debt
incurred by me since Christmas. I am not
ignorant of the snares which threaten me, nor of
my powerlessness in protecting myself from them.
It only remains for me to finish with courage a
career passed with honour. It is easy to oppress
me, but difficult to degrade me."

1 See the two letters to Peyrou dated 2nd and 4th of April,
CEuvres Completes, vol. viii. pp. 19 1-2 and 193-4.

252 ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND

He thanked him for the " noble hospitaUte "
which he had shown him, and concluded by saying
that he should often regret the retreat which he
was quitting, but he should regret still more the
fact that he had not succeeded in making so
agreeable a host a friend.^

The sole reason assigned by him for this abrupt
departure was that Mr. Davenport had forgotten
some promise which he had made him, and had left
the house without ascertaining, what he probably
knew, that his guest was comfortable . The next day,
ist May, he and Therese departed, without a word to
anyone, leaving their trunks packed, with the keys
dangling at the locks, between ;f20 and £30 in Mr.
Davenport's possession, and no directions as to what
was to be done with either the trunks or the money,
or any address. Mr. Davenport, in amazement,
did not know what to do. Supposing, however, that
he had gone to London, he sent on some papers
to him to an address there, but learned to his
further perplexity that nothing had been heard
of him. More than a fortnight passed without
any news of the fugitives. The London Chronicle
recorded his flight from Wooton, and conjectured
that, as it was known that he had taken the road
to London, he was probably concealed in or near

^ To Davenport, CEuvres Completes, vol. viii. p. 196.

ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND 253

there, commenting severely at the same time on
his ingratitude to his EngUsh friends.^ At last,
on 17th May, Mr. Davenport received a letter
from him dated May iith,^ at Spalding, in Lincoln-
shire, apologising for his unceremonious departure
from Wooton, and expressing his readiness to
go back there if Mr. Davenport would receive him
and facilitate his return.

" I preferred," he said, " liberty to a residence
at your house. But I infinitely prefer a residence
at your house to any other kind of captivity, and
I prefer every kind of captivity to that in which I
am, which is horrible, and which, come what may,
cannot be endured."

On the receipt of this letter, Mr. Davenport im-
mediately despatched a servant to Spalding,
assuring his troublesome correspondent of his
continued protection ; but the man learned on
arriving that Rousseau had started for Dover four
days before.

But this was not the only letter he wrote from
Spalding. He sent a petition to the Lord Chan-
cellor, Lord Camden, telling him that he had been
seduced into England by a promise of hospitality,
but that he had met with the worst usage, that he

^ London Chronicle, 1 2 th May.

2 Burton's Life of Hume, vol. ii. p. 369.

254 ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND

was in danger of his life from the plots of his
enemies, and that he prayed, therefore, that the
Lord Chancellor would, as the first civil magistrate
of the kingdom, appoint a guard to conduct him
safely out of the kingdom, the expense of which
guard he would himself defray. Lord Camden,
who replied through his secretary, merely observed
that he was mistaken in the nature of the country,
for that the first post-boy he could apply to was
as safe a guide as the Chancellor could appoint.^
In the same strain he wrote to General Conway,
claiming the protection of the King, and desiring
that a party of cavalry might be immediately
ordered to escort him to Dover. To this Conway
replied by assuring him that postilions were a
very sufiicient guard throughout every part of the
King's dominions.^ At Spalding he resided at
the White Hart Inn, and it is curious to find that
a writer in such panic as this letter implies was
making himself exceedingly agreeable to the
clergyman of the place, the Rev. John Dinham,

1 Burton's Life of Hume, vol. ii. p. 375. The letter to Lord
Camden seems to have been published, for Gray had read it. Gray
to the Rev. James Brown, 6th June 1767.

2 I give this on the authority of Hardy's Life of Lord Charlemont,
vol. i. p. 231. Charlemont says that General Conway showed him
both Rousseau's letter and his own reply. If this be correct,
Rousseau must have written twice to General Conway from
Spalding.

ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND 255

with whom he passed several hours each day, and
who found him " cheerful, good-humoured, easy,
and enjoying himself perfectly well, without the
least fear or complaint of any kind." ^ Another
inhabitant of Spalding, a Mr. Edmund Jessop,
then practising as a surgeon there, desired to make
his acquaintance. He accordingly sent a note to
him in Latin to the effect that he should be glad
to converse with him on the subject of one of his
late publications, which, though condemned by
many, had merited, in Mr. Jessop's opinion, the
greatest approbation ; and Mr. Jessop appears to
have given the rein to compliment. Rousseau's
reply could not have encouraged his correspondent
to press further attentions on him.

" You address me as a literary man, sir, in a
literary language, on subjects of literature. You
load me with eulogies so pompous that they are
ironical, and you think to intoxicate me with such
incense. You are mistaken, sir, on all these
points. I am not a man of letters. I was so
once, to my misfortune, but I have long since
ceased to be so. Nothing relative to that pro-
fession suits me now. Excessive eulogy has

^ This was communicated to Hume by a Mr. Fitzherbert, who
had it from the clergyman himself. See Burton's Hiune, vol. ii.
P- 375- For the names of the inn, the clergyman, and the doctor
I am indebted to the courtesy of Dr. Martin Perry of Spalding.

256 ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND

never flattered me. At the present moment,
especially, I have more need of consolation than
incense. . . . My errors may be great, my senti-
ments ought to have been an atonement for them.
I believe there have been many points on which
people have not desired to understand me. You
style yourself a surgeon. If you had spoken to
me of botany, and of the plants which your country
produces, you would have given me pleasure,
and I should have been able to discourse with you
on that ; but as for my books, and of every other
sort of books, you would speak to me in vain,
because I no longer take any interest in matters
of that kind. I do not reply to you in Latin, for
the reason already assigned. I have no more of
that language now left me than just as much as is
necessary to understand Linnaeus' phrases." *

His object in seeking refuge in so remote a
place as Spalding was evidently to elude the pursuit
of his fancied enemies ; this is therefore another
proof of the genuineness of his fears. It was
probably want of money which induced him to
press on to Dover, for, having received no reply

1 For this incident, as well as the letter, see London Magazine for
August 1767, pp. 4 1 8, 4 1 9, where it is printed, as here given, in English.
The letter, presumably retranslated, is given in French in Rousseau's
CEuvres Completes, Paris, i8?5. It is dated loth May, which is quite
right, though the editor, not knowing the circumstances, says that
it should be loth April. In Rousseau's CEuvres Completes, Paris,
181 7 (vol. viii. p. 407), the letter is dated 13th May.

ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND 257

to his letter to Mr. Davenport, he concluded, as
he informed Mr. Davenport in a letter written
on the day he left Spalding, that a return to Wooton
would not be allowed. His money had run so
short that he was reduced to the necessity of
breaking up a silver spoon or fork which he hap-
pened to have with him to defray his expenses
at the inns on the road.^ He travelled with such
expedition that the journey from Spalding to
Dover, a distance of some two hundred miles,
only occupied two days.

On arriving at Dover he found that the wind
was contrary. This drove him nearly frantic. He
interpreted it as part of a plot, and an " order from
superior authority " — meaning presumably Provid-
ence— to retard his departure, with the view of grati-
fying the designs of his enemies. Though he could
not speak English, he mounted on an eminence and

^ He communicated this fact to his friend Corancez. See
Corancez's account of Rousseau, contributed to the Journal de
Paris, numbers 251, 256, 258, 259, 260, 261, and reprinted in the
Bibliotheque des Memoires relatifs a PHistoire de France pendant le
X VHP Steele, pp. 58-69. The English translation of this appeared in
1798 with the following title-page, Anecdotes of the last Twelve Years
of J. J. Rousseau. Originally published in the Journal de Paris by
Citizen Corancez, one of the Editors of that Paper, translated frotn
the French. It was written in answer to a book entitled De mes
rapports avec J. J. Rousseau et de notre correspondance, par
J. Dussaulx. Dussaulx was an enemy of Rousseau, and his object
was detraction.
17

258 ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND

harangued the astonished people, who could under-
stand neither his conduct nor his words. This, he
afterwards acknowledged to Corancez, was a
** real fit of madness." ^ But it seems that he was
under the impression that the Due de Choiseul,
then Prime Minister in France, was in league with
his enemies in England, and intended to have him
arrested. Under the influence of this utterly
groundless panic he wrote — and an extraordinary
letter it was — again to General Conway. He
begins by imploring Conway to listen attentively
to him and to weigh carefully what he was going
to say. He could not understand, he said, with
what object he had been brought to England —
some object there was, that was certain. Con-
sidering his insignificance it could hardly have
been a State affair (" une affaire d'etat ") ; such
a supposition was so inexplicable as to be simply
incredible ; and yet the plot against him, the alli-
ance of the most estimable and distinguished men in
the kingdom, nay, the whole kingdom itself, with
a single individual, desiring to humiliate another
individual, was if possible still more inexplicable.
But it was a fact, and he must face it. Conway's
mind, he makes no doubt, had been poisoned

^ For the whole of this see Corancez, English translation, pp.
68-69.

ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND 259

against him ; still he was not without hope
that an appeal to his reason might have some
effect. To assist him to leave England in safety
would be at least a prudent action, for if he was
privately made away with or kidnapped he was
so well known that inquiries were sure to be made
into his disappearance, and the whole thing would
some day come out. One of the objects of the
conspiracy against him was undoubtedly to pre-
vent him writing the memoirs in which, as was well
known, it was his intention to tell the truth about
his treatment in England. But he would engage
not to write them ; he would bind himself by the
most solemn ties to refrain from either putting
on paper or speaking a single defamatory or
disrespectful word about England or about any
man in England ; he would never mention even
Hume's name, or if he did he would speak of him
with honour. As a guarantee and earnest of his
promises he would at once place in Conway's
hands all his papers relative to England, and he
would write him a letter placing on record the
whole of what he had agreed to. As an additional
guarantee he would retain the pension which the
King had conferred on him, and so bind himself by
indissoluble ties to the sacred claims of gratitude
to the King and to the country that have made

26o ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND

him their debtor. Thus far he had addressed
himself to Conway's reason — he would conclude
with a w^ord addressed to his heart. He had before
him a miserable man reduced to despair, awaiting
only the manner of his death. He could recall
that poor wretch to life ; he could be his saviour ;
he could make the most unfortunate of men a
happy man once more.^

At Dover he wrote also to Mr. Davenport,
telling him that when he beheld the sea and
realised that he was indeed a free man, he resolved
to return to Wooton ; but he was diverted from
that intention by seeing in one of the English
newspapers some severe remarks on the way in
which he had treated his host ; he refers, no doubt,
to the paragraph in the London Chronicle of the
I2th of May.'^ This decided him to quit England.
On the 2ist or 22nd of May he was at Calais, and
England knew him no more.

There was much speculation about his motives
for acting as he had done in quitting Wooton,
and in writing to the Lord Chancellor and to General
Conway. It is not at all improbable that the

^ Letter to General Conway, dated Dover {CEuvres Completes ^
vol. viii. pp. 196-200). It is not improbable that it was written at
Spalding, and perhaps posted at Dover.

2 See London Chronicle for that date.

ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND 261

wretched woman who was his companion was
responsible at least for the first step. " C'etait
une mechante femme, qui a cause beaucoup de
chagrins a Rousseau," says one who knew her
well.^ She must have found the life at Wooton
intolerably dull. So stupid that she could not
learn English, she had no other companion than
Rousseau, of whom she probably saw comparatively
little, for he loved solitude and meditation ; ^ she
does not appear to have accompanied him in his
long daily walks, nor to have gone with him into
such society as they had. He rarely refers to her
in his correspondence. We know that she was not
on good terms either with Mr. Davenport's house-
keeper or with the servants. It was natural that
she should wish to get back to her own country
and to more congenial surroundings, and it is
difficult to see how she could do so except by
making Rousseau discontented with England.
Dullard and simpleton though she was, she had
him completely under her influence, and probably
conjured up the phantoms which drove him mad,
partly perhaps to amuse herself, and partly for the

^ See Memoires de Mens. Girardin, vol. i. pp. 19-37; but see
also the Memoirs and Correspondence of Sir Ja?nes E. Smith, vol. i.
pp. 180-81, where a more favourable account is given of her.

2 He tells us that when he was busy with his works whole weeks
passed without any conversation with her {Confessions, xii. 188).

262 ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND

practical purpose referred to. Some attributed his
conduct to pure calculation, and saw no madness
in it at all. His desire, they thought, was to get
himself talked about, to advertise himself, as Sterne
and Foote were doing, by his eccentricities. This
was the opinion of Adam Smith and of Gibbon.
Gibbon puts that view very emphatically.^ *' He
withdrew to the heart of a desert, where he was
allowed to vegetate so peacefully that he was com-
pelled to quarrel with all our men of letters in
order to become notorious," his flight from Wooton
and his letters to Lord Camden and General Conway
being moves in the same game. " Mes sentimens
pour lui," wrote D'Alembert, " n'en recevront
aucun changement : je le regarde comme un fou
tres dangereux, dont tout le merite se borne a une
belle loquele et a une fort mauvaise logique." ^

The conclusion to which Hume came was that
he was " a composition of whim, affectation, wicked-
ness, vanity, and inquietude, with a very small, if
any, ingredient of madness." This is probably
much nearer the truth than the other view. Men
tempered as Rousseau so obviously was seldom
calculate their actions, and are rarely guided in

1 See letter of Gibbon published by General Meredith Read in
his Historic Studies, vol. ii. p. 360.

^ Letters of Eminent Persons, p. 210.

ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND 263

any action by any one motive. It is certainly not
easy to understand how a man could conduct him-
self as Rousseau appears to have done at Spalding,
and be at the same time in such a distempered
state of mind as his letter to General Conway in-
dicates. It is equally difficult to reconcile the
lucidity, precision, and method apparent in the
expression and arrangement of all he writes, with
the coexistence of hallucinations so monstrous
and baseless as to be absolutely incompatible with
sanity. The problem would be solved if we ac-
cepted the hypothesis of Gibbon and Adam Smith,
and a cunning and despicable knave, black with
ingratitude and treachery, would take the place of
a madman. But no one who studies his corre-
spondence, and particularly the letters to Peyrou,
can doubt his sincerity. The truth is that, like
Tasso and Cowper, he was the subject of a malady
which can hardly be called insanity, because it
leaves so many functions un-deranged and so many
faculties unimpaired, but which exhibits itself in
a peculiar form of monomania. In Mr. Morley's
admirable analysis of Rousseau's temperament
and character, he notes that the chief feature was
the exaltation of emotion over intelligence, and
observes that the tendency of the dominant side of
a character to diseased exaggeration is a fact of

264 ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND

daily experience. This is the key to Rousseau's
pecuUarities. Inordinate self-consciousness and in-
ordinate vanity became at last exalted into mania.
He imagined that the eyes of the whole world were
upon him, or ought to be upon him ; he became
the centre of all he thought and of all he felt. He
seems to have supposed, said the author of the
Letter to Horace Walpole, *' that as soon as he
arrived at Dover the English should have been
affected as they were at the Restoration on the
landing of the Prince of Orange." He was a pro-
scribed exile in a country the language of which
he could not understand, to the manners and ways
of which he was an entire stranger. He grew
suspicious of what he could not comprehend, and
suspicion soon hardened into distrust. He thought
it probable that Hume was jealous of him, and this
became the nucleus of his morbid fancies. His
sensitive pride, galled at the thought of depend-
ence and on the watch for everything which could
be construed into a slight ; his constitutional
timidity, always on the rack of expectation, as he
knew, and knew truly, that he had many enemies ;
the hospitable reception given in the newspapers
to Voltaire's libels ; his solitary life, passed with a
companion who, there can be little doubt, encour-
aged him in his delusions, and perhaps aggravated

ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND 265

them — all this amply accounts for his outrageous
conduct, without our having recourse to meaner
motives for an explanation. When he said, as he
did to Peyrou, that the design of Hume and his
associates was to cut off all his resources, all his
communications with the Continent, and make
him perish in distress and misery, it is impossible
to doubt that he said what he firmly believed.
Mr. Morley has well observed that Rousseau was
at bottom a character " as essentially sincere,
truthful, careful of fact and reality, as is consistent
with the general empire of sensation over untrained
intelligence."^ He said of himself, with simple
truth—

" Je me rends le temoignage que pendant quinze
ans, que j'ai eu le malheur d'exercer le triste metier
d'homme de lettres, je n'ai contracte aucun des
vices de cet etat ; I'envie, la jalousie, I'esprit d'in-
trigue et de charlatanerie n'ont pas un instant
approche de mon coeur." ^

A more exasperating guest has never shared the
hospitality of England, but the descendants of the
hosts of Rousseau have no reason to be ashamed of

^ Rousseau, vol, ii. p. 302.

2 No one can doubt the correctness and honesty of Rousseau's
painfully elaborate analysis of his own temperament and character
both in the Dialogues and in the Reveries. See particularly the
Fourth of the Reveries.

266 ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND

their ancestors. All who could entertain or in any
way serve him seem to have vied with one another
in pressing their civilities and attentions upon
him. He was, he says, embarrassed by the kind-
ness with which he was treated. To study his
comforts, to gratify and if possible to anticipate
his wishes was, he tells us, the pleasure of everyone.
As soon as it was known that he desired a retreat
in the country, several private residences were at
once placed gratuitously at his disposal. The
prudery of English society was relaxed in his
favour, and a transparent fiction was accepted
that he might be spared the annoyance of see-
ing his sordid paramour neglected or slighted.
Never has the character of an English gentleman
been more strikingly illustrated than in the conduct
of Mr. Davenport. No provocation could make
him forget the relation in which he stood to one
whom he had accepted as a guest. Frank, thought-
ful, and urbane, his kindness and generosity were
only equalled by the tact and grace with which his
favours were conferred. " It is only by the atten-
tions I receive," wrote Rousseau to Madame de
Boufflers, " that I know I am in another's house."
And from first to last it was the same. Davenport's
only reply to the letter in which his troublesome
and ungrateful guest so abruptly and rudely bade

ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND 267

adieu to him was, on the first intimation of his
desire to return, to send a servant after him as-
suring him of his continued protection and good-
will. Of Hume's goodness to him enough has been
said, but it may be added that, after the provoca-
tion he had received, he was not only, as we have
seen, instrumental in obtaining the pension for him,
but on Rousseau's return to France he exercised all
the influence in his power to protect him from the
vengeance of the Parlement de Paris, and to secure
him a safe asylum/

It is curious to compare the way in which
Voltaire and Rousseau employed their time in
England, and the impression which their residence
here made upon them. In a few months Voltaire
could both read and speak English with perfect
fluency. He studied our manners, our customs,
our police, our laws, our constitution, our politics,
our religion and religious sects, our divinity, our
philosophy, our science. He made himself a
perfect master of our literature, and of our liter-

1 A circumstance so honourable to Hume should be emphasised.
It is recorded in a letter from Turgot to Hume, ist June 1767.
Letters of Eminent Persons^ p. 159. One sentence deserves
quoting : " II n'y a que I'interet meme que vous prenez, et la
singularite de cette circonstance, qui puisse peut-etre adoucir le Roi
sur le compte de Rousseau, en faisant demander la chose en votre
nom par M. Choiseul."

268 ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND

ature in all its branches. He prided himself, and
not without justice, on his English composition
both in verse and prose. He entered heartily into
every movement of the time. He was a member
of the Royal Society. He made his way into every
circle, and into every coffee-house and club in
London. He left us with the highest respect,
affection, and admiration, and the whole of his
future life was coloured by his association with us.
There is, it must be owned, a great difference be-
tween a man of twenty-five and thirty and a man
between fifty and sixty. But the apathy and in-
difference of Rousseau to all that related to the
asylum of his exile can hardly be attributable to
years. He made one attempt to learn the language,
by comparing an English translation with the
French text of his own Emilius, but soon abandoned
the task in disgust, as he could not bear to be
reminded, he said, of his own writings. The net
result of his study of English was the acquisition
of thirty words, and those he forgot at Wooton —
*' tant leur terrible baragouin," so he described the
language of Shakespeare and Milton, ** est in-
dechiffrable a mon oreille." His references to our
literature in his letters at this time begin and end
with a single passage about Richardson.^ He is

' Letter to Peyrou, 21st June 1766.

ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND 269

silent about the interesting men whom he must
have met ; about pubhc events ; about the country ;
about everything which would naturally engage
the attention of a visitor and traveller. Nothing
can be more wearisome than his correspondence,
which is occupied almost entirely with the discus-
sion of his grievances, and of himself. It has not,
except occasionally, even that charm of style which
is inseparable from his characteristic writings. It
is the reflection of a man who has, to employ a
forcible and popular phrase, " gone all to pieces."
It gives us the key to the character of which
Wright's portrait is the silent interpreter. It would
seem that, from the moment he set foot on English
soil, the Nemesis which seldom fails in the long run
to attend the profligate subjection of the reasonable
to the emotional nature, began to pursue its dis-
astrous course. The generous enthusiast of Emile
and the Social Cofitrad, the vigorous and masculine
controversialist of the Letter to Beaumont and the
Letters from the Mountain, disappears in a morbid,
h3^sterical and sentimental egotist, and indeed in
something worse, in one of the most pitiable illus-
trations of the Aristotelian Acolast to be found in
the records of men of genius.

The influence exercised by English writers on
Rousseau was, though perhaps exaggerated by

270 ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND

Texte/ no doubt considerable, but it affected him
rather indirectly than directly, always through the
medium of translation and long before his visit to
us. The Nouvelle Helo'ise unquestionably owed
much, as well in its form as in its sentiment, to
Richardson's masterpiece ; while almost all the
elements entering into its composition could be
resolved into elements distinctly traceable to what
was finding expression both in our poetry and in
our prose fiction between about 1740 and 1770.
The extravagance and eloquence of the Contrat
Social are all his own, but some of its central ideas
were derived from Hobbes, Algernon Sidney, and
Locke. Emile owes at least its foundations and
much of its substance to Locke's educational
treatise, which had been translated into French as
early as 1695 ; while to a French version of Milton's
Paradise Lost, the fourth, fifth, and ninth books, the
sentimental portions are largely indebted. How
greatly he profited from the perusal of a French
translation of the Spectator he has himself recorded
in the third book of the First Part of the Confes-
sions, and the perusal of the Spectator he recom-
mends in Emile as of great educational value to
young women. To Robinson Crusoe he assigns the

1 See Joseph Texte's Jean-Jacques Roicsseau et les Origines du
Cosnwpolitisme Litteraire.

ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND 271

first place among books of instruction for the
young, and has more than once spoken of it in
extravagant terms ; on Entile its influence is
plainly discernible. Pope's Essay on Man was a
great favourite with him. " Le poeme de Pope
adoucit mes maux et me porte a la patience," he
says in a letter to Voltaire, where he discusses its
philosophy.^

But Rousseau was never a great reader. Much
which may be attributed to English influence came,
no doubt, filtered through other sources, or belonged
to the atmosphere created by that anglomanie
which, initiated by Voltaire and Beat Ludvig Von
Muralt, had been accentuated by Montesquieu, by
the Abbe Prevost, and by a long succession of
translators. Everything, indeed, of importance
which in and after our Augustan age had appeared
in English literature had received a French dress,
and was in that form more or less influential wher-
ever French was spoken. What, therefore, Rous-
seau owed to England, he owed to it long before he
set foot on our shores.

1 Correspondance ; CEuvres Completes, vol. vii. p. 35.

f'

APPENDIX

To Dr. Towne.

Nov. the 14th [No year],
Parsons Green.

Sr. — Your friend Capt. Kingstone returning to
Barbadoes, I take this occasion of assuring you
of the satisfaction it was to me to be informed by
him of yr. good health, and of the kind reception
you met with from everybody there. If I were
inchned to envy you anything which eld. give
you pleasure, it should be the enjoyment of that
charming sun — which we so seldome see here,
and which has been more cruell this winter than
usually by almost a continuall absence.

Mrs. Robinson going (sic) to write to you very
lamenting she had no news to tell you. However
ill-informed of the affairs of this world, and how
they are like to goe, you may be assured you know
as much as the Plenipotentiary at Soisson, per-
haps as much as our ministers here, and all the
discovery that we lookers on can make is that one
week they doubt, and one week they hope. The
city of London follow their example, and this

happens at Exchange Alley to be the doubting
18 =■"

274 APPENDIX

week. It is as hard to account for our politics as
for Mr. Voltaire's resolutions and conduct ; the
country and people of England are in disgrace at
present, and [he] has taken his leave of us, as of a
foolish people who believe in God and trust in
ministers ; and he is gone to Constantinople in
order to believe in the Gospels, which he says it
is impossible to doe living among the teachers of
Christianity.

He was mightily pleased with your translation
of part of the book. We all wish you had Leasure
to doe the whole. Mr. Pope approved it so much
that he assured me he would look it over with the
utmost care if you proceeded and ever intended to
publish it.

After repeated assurances from great men that
a war wd. be avoided, and that we shld. have
peace in some shape or other, it is now very pro-
bable they will find themselves mistaken, letters
of mark are given to great Dutch and English
East India men to take the Ostend ships beyond
the Cape of Good Hope, and the soldiers are in full
expectation of imployment.

I wish we doe not repent the oportunities
we have lost and the time we have given our
enemies, — I am,

Sr., Your most affectionate humble servant,

Peterborow.
Endorsed

Ld. Peterburrow.

APPENDIX 275

B

Sr. — I wish you good health, a quick sale of 3^.
burgundy, much latin and greek to one of yr.
children, much law, much of Cooke and Littleton,
to the other, quiet and joy to Mistress Brinsden,
money to all. When you'll drink yr. Burgundy
with Mr. Furneze pray tell him I'll never forget
his fauours. But dear John, be so kind as to let
me know how does my Lady Bullingbrooke. As
to my lord, I left him so well I don't doubt he is
so still. But I am very uneasie about my lady.
If she might have as much health as she has spiritt
and witt, sure she would be the strongest body
in England. Pray dear Sr. write me something
of her, of my lord and of you. Direct yr. letter
by the penny post at Mr. Cavalier, Belitery
Square by the R. Exchange. I am sincerely
and heartily yr. most humble, most obedient
rambling friend,

Voltaire.

(Historical MSS. Commission, Appendix to Ninth
Report, p. 475.)

A Londres le 3 Mars,
1727.

Monsieur, — Le S. de Voltaire, que vous m'avez
fait I'honneur de me recommander et pour lequel

276 APPENDIX

vous m'avez addresse des lettres de recommanda-
tion pour les ministres de cette cour, est prest a
faire imprimer k Londres, par souscription son
poeme de la Ligue. II me sollicite de lui procurer
des souscrivants, et M. de Walpole s' employe de
son cote tout de son mieux pour tocher de luy en
faire avoir le plus grand nombre qu'il sera poss-
ible ; je serois tres aise de luy faire plaisir, mais
comme je n'ay point veu cet ouvrage, et que je
ne sais point si les additions et soustractions
qu'il dit avoir fait a celui qu'il a donn6 au public
a Paris, ni les planches gravees qu'il en a fait
venir pour I'enrichir seront approuvees de la Cour,
je luy ay dit que je ne pouvois m'en mesler qu'
autant que vous I'auriez pour agreable. Je crains
toujours que des auteurs frangois ne veuillent
faire un mauvais usage de la liberte qu'ils ont
dans un pays comme celuy-cy d'ecrire tout ce
qui leur vient dans 1' imagination sur la Religion,
le Pape, le Gouvernement, ou les personnes qui le
composent. Ce sont des licences que les poetes
particulierement se croyent toujours en droit de
se donner, sans s'embarrasser de prophaner ce
qu'il y a de plus sacre. Et s'il se trouvoit quel-
que chose de pareil dans ce poeme, je ne
voudrois pas 6tre dans le cas d'essuyer le reproche
que j'y aurois souscrit et engage des gens a y
souscrire. Je vous supplie tres humblement.
Monsieur, de vouloir bien me mander la conduite
que je dois tenir a ce sujet ; je me conformeroy a
ce que vous me feres I'honneur de me prescrire.

APPENDIX 277

J'ay celuy d'etre, avec un tres sincere et tres
parfait attachement,

Monsieur,
Votre tres humble et tres obeissant serviteur,

Brogue.

D

This letter is written on two sheets of quarto paper, yellow
with age, and begins only with p. 4. The original ink is faded
and brown, but many corrections seem from their comparative
blackness to be of later date. The letter terminates abruptly
at p. 9, and was perhaps, as its present owner, Mr. Forbes
Sieveking, conjectures, recopied by Voltaire before being
despatched to Theriot.

the best poet of England, and at present, of all
the world, j hope you are acquainted enough
with the English tongue, to be sensible of all the
charms of his works, for my part j look on his
poem call'd the essay upon criticism, as superior
to the art of poetry of horace ; and his rape of the
lock la houcle de cheveux [that is a comical one],
is in my opinion above the lutrin of despreaux.
j never saw so amiable an imagination, so gentle
graces, so great varyety, so much wit, and so
refined knowledge of the world, as in this little
performance.

now my dear Tiriot, after having fully answered
to what you asked about English books, let me
acquaint you with an account of my for ever
cursed fortune, j came again into England in

278 APPENDIX

the latter end of July very much dissatisfied with
my secret voiage into France both unsuccesful
and expensive, j had about me onely some bills
of exchange upon a jew called Medina for the sum
of about eight or nine thousand french livres,
reckoning all. at my coming to london i found
my damned jew was broken, j was without a
penny, sick to death of a violent agiie, a stranger,
alone, helpless, in the midst of a city, wherein j
was known to nobody, my lord and my lady
bolingbroke were in the country, j could not
make bold to see our ambassadour in so wretched
a condition, j had never undergone such dis-
tress ; but j am born to run through all the mis-
fortunes of life, in these circumstances, my star,
that among all its direful influences pours allways
on me some kind refreshment, sent to me an english
gentlemen unknown to me, who forced me to
receive some money that j wanted, an other
London citizen that j had seen but once at paris,
carried me to his own country house, wherein j
lead an obscure and charming life since that time,
without going to london, and quite given over to
the pleasures of indolence and of friendship, the
true and generous affection of this man who sooths
the bitterness of my life brings me to love you
more and more, all the instances of friendshipp
indear my friend Tiriot to me. j have seen often
mylord and mylady Bolinbroke. j have found
their affection still the same, even increased in
proportion to my unhappiness. they offered me all,

APPENDIX 279

their money, their house ; but j refused all, because
they are lords, and j have accepted all from Mr.
faulknear, because he is a single gentleman.

j had a mind at first to print our Poor Henry
at my own expenses in london, but the loss of my
money is a sad stop to my design : j question if j
shall try the way of subscriptions by the favour
of the court, j am weary of courts, my thiriot. all
that is King, or belongs to a king, frights my
repubhcan philosophy, j won't drink the least
draught of slavery in the land of liberty.

j have written freely to the abbot desfontaines
it is true, and j will allwais do so, having no reason
to lay myself under any restraint, j fear, j hope
nothing from your country, all that j wish
for, is to see you one day in london. j am enter-
taining myself with this pleasant hope, if it is
but a dream, let me enjoy it, don't undeceive me,
let me believe j shall have the pleasure to see you
in london, [drawing up] the strong spirit of this
unaccountable nation, you will translate their
thoughts better, when you live among em. you
will see a nation fond of her liberty, learned, witty,
despising hfe and death, a nation of philosophers,
not but that there are some fools in england, every
country has it madmen, it may be, french folly
is pleasanter than english madness, but, by god,
english wisdom and Enghsh Honesty is above yours,
one day j will acquaint you with the character
of this strange people, but tis time to put an end
to my enghsh talkativeness, i fear, you will take

28o APPENDIX

this long epistle for one of those tedious english
books that j have advised you not to translate,
before j make up my letter, j must acquaint you
with the reason of receiving yours so late, t'is
the fault of my correspondent at Calais master
dunoquet. so you must write to me afterwards,
at my lord bolmgbroke' s House, london. this way
is shorter and surer, tell all who will write to me
that they ought to make use of this superscription.

j have written so much about the death of my
sister to those who had writ to me on this account,
that i had almost forgotten to speak to you of her.
j have nothing to tell you on that accident but
that you know my heart and my way of thinking.
j have wept for her death, and I would be with
her. Life is but a dream full of starts of folly, and
of fancied, and true miseries, death awakes us from
this painful dream, and gives us, either a better
existence or no existence at all. farewell, write
often to me. depend upon my exactness in answer-
ing you when j shall be fixed in london.

Write me some lines in english to show your
improvement in your learning.

j have received the letter of the marquess of
Villars, and that which came from turky by
marseille.

j have forgot the romance which- you speak of.
j don't remember j have ever made verses upon
this subject, forget it, forget all these deliriums
of my youth, for my part j have drunk of the
River lethe. j remember nothing but my friends.

INDEX

Abauzit, Firmin, 195.

Addison, Joseph, 53, 72, 102,

180, 196.
Aeschylus, 30.
Andover, Lady, 245.
Anne, Queen, 38.
Annual Register, 194, 213 7tote.
Appleby's Weekly Journal, 157.
Ashburnham, Lord, 55 note.
Atterbury, Bishop, 89, 90.
Augustus, 44.
Aylesbury, Lady, 203, 213.

Bacon, Francis, 57, 59.

Baculard, on Voltaire's in-
come, 75, 78.

Ballantyne, Archibald, his Vol-
taire's visit to England, vi., vii.

Bathurst, Lord, 30.

Beaucharap de Genevois, 195.

Bengesco, Georges, 95.

Berkeley, Bishop, Voltaire's
opinion of, 60.

Berwick, Marshal, 133.

Bessieres, Mdlle.^ 23, 25.

Beuchot, M.^ editor of Voltaire,
89 note, 95, iSg'^note, 226 note.

Bladen, Edmund, 66 note.

Bladen, Martin, 66.

Blair, Dr., 201, 216, 221 note,
232.

Boileau, N. Despreaux, 72, 100,
105, 106 note.

Boileau, Sir Maurice, vii.

Bohngbroke, Lord, 2, 3 note, 12;
probably Voltaire's first host,
14, 18, 19, 25, 27, 28, 29,
40, 41, 42, 43, 57, 59, 61,
77, 93, 94, 95, 146 note; his
connection with the Dunkirk
affair, 152-5, 160, 176, 180,278.

Bohngbroke, Lady, 25, 27, 39,
46, 275,278.

Boswell, James, 207, 208 note.

Bourbon, Due de, 17 note, 126,

134-
Boy de la Tour, Mme., 194 note.
Brinsden, John, 28, 69.
Brinsden, Mistress, 275.
British Chronicle, 218, 223.
British Gazetteer, 7.
British Journal, 8 note.
Broglie, Due de, 9, 72-3, 277.
Broome, Major, 29 note, 36 note.
Brown, Rev. James, 254 note.
Brown, Lancelot, 172.
Brussels Gazette, 232.
Bunbury, Lady Sarah, her letter

on Rousseau, 205-6.
Burke, Edmund, 42; on Rousseau,

213 note, 214.
Burnet, Bishop, 103.
Bussy-Rabutin, 168.
Butler, Bishop, 142.
Byrom, John, 83 note.

Camden, Lord, 253, 254, 260, 262.
Camoens, Luis, 66.

281

282

INDEX

Campbell, Lord, i6i notCy 165
note.

Carlyle, Thomas, on Voltaire's
visit to England, his errors,
3 and note, y^ note, 114.

Caroline, Princess, afterwards
Queen, 46, 53, 74, 75, 76,
85, 156, 161, 162, 163, 169.

Carteret, afterwards Earl Gran-
ville, 159.

Cavalier, Mr., 70, 93, 275.

Caylus, Comte de, 126.

Celeste, M., 129.

Cerati, Father, 134, 135, 157, 164,

175-

Chalkstone, Lord, 203 note.

Chardin, Sir John, 124.

Charlemont, Lord, 170, 172,
173, 174, 210 note, 254 note.

Charles I., 13.

Charlotte, Queen, 13.

Chateauneuf, his Divorces Ang-
lais, 39 note.

Chauvelin, 133.

Chesterfield, Lord, vi., 46, yy,
82, 117, 120, 128, 133, 134,
159, 161, 162, 168; his me-
morial to Montesquieu, 176-7.

Chetwood,WilliamRufus, 22 note.

Choiseul, Due de, 258.

Christophe de Beaumont, 187.

Churchill, Arabella, 133.

Churchill, General, 16.

Chute, John, 203 note.

Cibber, Colley, 22.

Clarke, Dr. Samuel, 57, 58, 59.

Clayton, Mrs., 46.

Cobbett, 149 note.

Cockburn, Mrs., 213.

Coderc, 79.

Collet, Stephen, 28 note, 6g note,
80.

Coligni, 64.

Collins, Anthony, 57, 61.

Collins, William, 66.
Conde, Prince de, 5, 64.
Condorcet on Voltaire's visit to

England, i, 2 ; on Les Lettres

Anglaises, 97, 226 note.
Conduit, John, originator of "the

falling apple " story, 34-5.
Conduit, Mrs., 33, 35.
Congreve, William, Voltaire's

visit to, 36, 51, loi.
Conti, Prince de, 187, 201.
Conway, General, 203, 213, 214,

217, 227, 228, 250, 254, 258,

259, 260, 262, 263.
Corancez, 257 note, 258.
Corneille, Pierre, 162.
Cornhill Magazine, v.
Cowper, Thomas, 263.
Coxe, Archdeacon, i so note, 151,

154 note.
Cradock, Joseph, 203 note, 205

note.
Craftsman, The, 144, 146, 152.
Craggs, James, 45.
Crebillon, Prosper J., 52.
Croft, Herbert, 31.
Cudworth, Ralph, 59.
Cumberland, Duke of, 16.
Cunningham, Peter, 169 note,

203 note, 206 note, 217 note.

d'Acosta, cheats Voltaire, 24.

Dadichi, Theocharis, 83, 84.

d'Aiguebere, Dumas, 9 note.

Daily Courant, 6.

Daily Journal, 44, 80 7iote.

Daily Post, 48 note, 79, 80.

d'Alembert, Jean le Rond, 174,
177, 178 note, 224, 225, 226,
230, 235, 240, 241, 262.

Dante, 30.

d'Arblay, Mme., her anecdote of
Rousseau, 214-5.

Darnaville, 238 no^e.

INDEX

283

Darwin, Erasmus, 246.
Davenport, Mr., places his house

at Rousseau's disposal, 215-6 ;

his kind stratagem, 221, 222,

249, 250, 251, 252, 253, 257,

260, 266.
d'Aydies, Chevalier, 126.
de Arboleda, Dr., 66 note.
de Bernieres, Mme., 26, 27.
de Bouffiers, Mme., 197, 19S,

199, 202 note, 207 note, 208,

221 note, 225, 231, 233, 242,

265.
de Clermont, Mile., 126.
de Crequi, Mme., 201 note.
Decroix, L. P., 226 note.
de Ferriole, Mme., 5, 6, 42 note.
Defoe, Daniel, 196.
de Harley, Acliilles, 70.
de la Lippe, Countess, 76.
de Lambert, Mme., 126.
Delany, Mrs., 214, 245.
de Lartique, Jeanne, 121.
De Launay, 5 note.
de I'Espinasse, Mile., 237.
de Lolme, John Louis, 67.
Delort, J., 5 note.
de Luxembourg, Mme., 186, 209.
de Luze, M., 201, 208.
de Luze, Mme., 216 note.
De Marque, 195.
Denham, Sir John, 100.
Dennis, John, 29.
de Penel, Fran^oise, 121.
de Rohan, Cardinal, 157.
de Rohan-Chabot, Chevalier,

3 note, 17, 22.
de Rothschild, Henri, 194 note.
de Saussure, Cesar, 14 note, 47

note, 82 note, 135 note, 195.
Descartes, Rene, 57, 74.
de Secondat, Jacques, 121.
Desfontaines, Abbe, 68, 109,

279.

des Maizeaux, Peter, 80.

Desnoiresterres, Gustave, on
Voltaire's visit to England,
3-4 ; his story of the Duchess
of Marlborough, ^j, 39 note,
54 note, 95, 109 note.

d'Estrees, Marshal, 127.

de Tencin, Mme., 126.

de Verdelin, Mme., 199.

de Voisinon, Abbe, 127.

Dewes, Miss, 245.

Deyverdun, 227.

d'Hiberville, 140.

d'Holbach, Baron, his advice to
Hume, 234.

d'Houdetot, Mme., 193.

Diderot, Denis, his story about
Montesquieu's bad English.

Dinham, Rev. John, 254.

d'lvernois, Fran9ois, 195, 222,
242.

Dodington, Bubb, 8, 15, 30.

Dorset, Earl of, 100.

Dryden, John, 53, 63, 64, 99-100,
106.

du Deffand, Mme., 126, 134.

Dufresny, Charles Riviere, influ-
ence on Montesquieu, 124.

Dussaulx, J., 257 note.

Dutens, 249 note.

Duvernet, Abbe, 9 note ; his
account of Voltaire's first
interview with Pope, 21-2,
62 note, 82 note, 98 and note.

Echard, Laurence, 180.
Elizabeth, Queen, 75, y6, 161.
Elizabeth^ Princess Palatine, 74.
Eugene, Prince, 128.

Falkener, Sir Everard, 3 note ;

account of him, 16, 17, 18, 27,

28, 279.
Fitzpatrick, General, 209.

284

INDEX

Fleury, Cardinal, 85, 127, 133.

Flying Post, 1 8 note.

Folkes, Martin, 34, 159, 163, 164,

165, 168, 175.
Fontenelle, Bernard le Bovier

de, 33, 34, 120, 163.
Foote, Samuel, 262.
Francis II., 6;^.
Friend, Dr. John, 91 ; Voltaire's

account of his death, 92-93.
Fuseli, Henry, 238.

Garrick, David, entertains

Rousseau, 203-6, 233.
Garrick, Mrs., 204, 205.
Garth, Sir Samuel, Voltaire's

admiration of his Dispensary,

100.
Gay, John, 36, 43, 51.
Gentleman's Magazine, 16 note,

17 note, 194, 202 note, 237.
Geoffrin, Mme., 217.
George I., 7, 10, 24, 25, 44, 45,

46, 47-

George II., 47, 74, 75, 78, 85,
134, 150, 153, 15s, 156, 157,
161.

George III., 161, 200; at Gar-
rick's play, 204-5, 212, 214,
228, 250, 254, 258.

Gibbon, Edward, 168, 195, 262,
263.

Goethe, 124.

Goldsmith, Oliver, 16 note, 20 ;
his account of Voltaire's first
interview with Pope, 21 ; his
story of the Duchess of Marl-
borough, 27, 75, 94 note,
139 note.

Graeme, General, 212.

Graff enried, Bailli, 192.

Graham, his Stair Annals, 45 note.

Granville, Bernard, 245.

Gray, Thomas, 213, 214, 254 note.

Greene, Robert, 34.
Greville, Mrs., 205,
Grimm, 201 note.
Guasco, Abbe Comte de, 169.

Halifax, Earl of, 100.

Hardy, Francis, his Life of
Lord Charlemont, 170 note,
172 note, 175 note, 210 note,
254.

Harley, Laura, 39.

Harrington, James, 154, 179.

Harvey, Lady, 206 note.

Heathcote, Dr. Ralph, 238.

Helvetius, 217.

Henry IV. of France, 6^, 75, 85.

Herbert, Sir Robt., 118.

Herbert, Lord of Cherbury, 57.

Hervey, Lord, 38, 39.

Hill, Aaron, 203.

Hobbes, Thomas, 57, 59, 179,
196, 270.

Homer, 29, 66, 67, 71, 84.

Hooke, Theodore, 169.

Horace, 27, 44, 105, 106 note.

Howard, Leonard, 60.

Howard, Mrs., 46.

Howitt, William, 246 note, 247.

Hume, David, vii., 176, 182,
1 84 ; his relations with
Rousseau, 197-202, 204 ; his
endeavours to find a residence
for Rousseau, 206-12 ; pro-
cures him a pension, 212-3 ;
and a residence, 215-6; the
scene with Rousseau at his
lodgings before leaving for
Wooton and the incidents
leading up to it, 216-21 ;
Rousseau's suspicions of him,
222 ; their quarrel and the
incidents leading up to it,
224-9 ; his innocence, 230-1 ;
his indignation, 232 ; stir

INDEX

285

caused by the quarrel, 233 ;
publishes an explanatory
pamphlet, 235-6 ; vindicated,
236 ; congratulated, 237-8 ;
correspondences on the con-
troversy, 238-41, 242-3, 250,
25s 7ioie, 259, 262, 264, 265,
267.

Jallasson, Samuel, 62.

James II., 13, 133.

Jesse, J. Heneage, 169 note.

Jessop, Edmund, his letter to
Rousseau, 255.

Johnson, Samuel, 20, 28 note, 40 ;
on Voltaire's offensive talk, 44,
65, 207 ; on Rousseau, 214.

Journal de Paris, 257 note.

Jusserand, J. J., 9 note, Ji note.

Keate, George, 108.

Keith, George, Lord, 187, 193,
196, 197, 199, 212, 216, 233,
242, 245.

Kent, William, his new horti-
culture, 172-3.

Kildare, Lady, 213, 245.

Kings tone, Capt., 273.

Kinski, Count, 140.

Knowles, his Life of Fuseli, 238
yiote.

Knox, John, 125.

La Boine, 162.

Laboulaye, Editor of Montes-
quieu, 118 note, 123 note, 135
note, 139 yiote, 155 note, 156
note; Montesquieu, 157 note,
159 note, 163 note, 175 note,
176 note.

La Bruyire, 125.

Laine, Honorat, 131, 132.

Laine, Joachim, 131.

Laliand, M., 243 note.

Lanfrey, G. F., on Voltaire's
visit to England (on Les Lettres

Anglaises), 97.
La Rochefoucauld, 168.
Latapie, 129, 130, 131, 132.
Latour, Mme., 201 note.
Lature, 186 note.
Le Blanc Abbe, 108.
Le Conoreur Adrienne, 52, 53.
Lee, Nathaniel, 94, loi.
Leibnitz, 57.
Lepel, Molly, t,%, 39.
Le Sage, 125.
le Vasseur Therese, 186, 187,

191, 207, 209, 211, 217, 219,

220, 221, 243, 244, 247, 248,

251, 252, 261.
L'Eveille, 173.
Lloyd's Evening News, 226.
Locke, John, 51, 57; Voltaire's

high opinion of, 59, 179, 196,

230, 270.
London Chronicle, 194, 202, 205

note, 209, 223, 226, 237, 238

note, 241, 252, 253 note, 260.
London Gazette, 7.
London Magazine, on Rousseau,

202-3, 209, 237, 256 note.
Longchamp and Wagniere, 75.
Longinus, 64.
Louis XIV., 127.
Louis XV., 74, 127.
Lounsbury, Prof., 99 and note.
Lovat, Simon, Lord, 16.
Luberdo, Josias, 66.
Lucan, 64.
Luther, Martin, 62-
Lyttelton, George, Lord, 104.
Lyttelton, Lord, 104 note.

Malebranche, 180.
Malesherbes, 221 note, 225, 244.
Mallet du Pan, 195.
Mandeville, Bernard de, 180.

286

INDEX

Marlborough, Duke of, i6o, 170.
Marlborough, Sarah, Duchess of,

169 ; stories of, 36-8, 94.
Martin, Airne, 131.
Maty, Dr., 46 7iote, 117.
Maurepas, 5 note, 55 note, 126.
Mead, Dr., 34.
" Medina," 24, 278.
Mercier Abbe, 42.
Mignot, Mme., 25.
Milton, John, 30, 31 ; Voltaire's

admiration of, 64-5, 66 note,

21, 72, 99, 102, 106, 196, 268,

270.
Mirabeau, Marquis de, 249 note.
Mitchell, Andrew, 159.
Mohere, 18.

Molyneux, Lady Bell, 156.
Montague, Duke of, 159, 160,

168, 169.
Montague, Lady Mary Wortley,

53-
Montaigne, Michael, 122, 180.

Montesquieu, Baron Albert de,
129, 132.

Montesquieu, Baron, Charles
Louis de, 118, 119, 130, 131.

Montesquieu, Jean Baptiste de,
129, 130, 131.

Montesquieu, Charles Louis de
Secondat, v., vi. ; scanty
material to throw light on
his visit in England, 11 8-9;
Vian's Histoire de Montes-
quieu, 1 19-21 ; his birth and
early career, 12 1-2 ; his thirst
for knowledge, 123 ; his Lettres
Persanes, 124-6 ; his Temple
de Guide, 126; his rejection
from and final election to the
Academy, 127 ; he collects
materials for his Esprit des
Lois, 128-9 ; history of the
Montesquieu manuscripts 129-

132 ; his introduction to
English society, 133 ; his
meeting with Waldegrave

133 ; his introduction to
Chesterfield, 134; his impres-
sion of London, 135-6 ; of
England and the English,
136-42 ; of the young noble-
men, 142 ; of the state of
religion, 142-3 ; of our con-
stitution and government, 143;
the low moral tone of the

English government at that
time, iAA-€) \ the first debate
attended by Montesquieu,
147-9 ; fhe debates on the
Pension Bill, 149-52 ; the
Dunkirk affair, 152-5 ; his
opinion of English politicians,
the people, and the King,
155-6; his surprise at the
number of newspapers, 157 ;
remarks on the freedom of
England, 158 ; his social
relations, 159-60; his poor
knowledge of the English
tongue, 1 60- 1 ; presentation
to Court, 161 ; his interviews
with Queen Caroline, 160-3 ;
elected a member of the
Royal Society, 163 ; his
friendship with Martin Folkes,

164 ; with Charles Yorke,

165 ; more opinions of the
English, 166 ; the scant refer-
ences to him at this time,
166-7 ; ^"d tl^G probable
reasons, 167-8 ; his con\dvial
tastes, 169 ; the practical joke
played on him by the Duke
of Montague and his mild
reference to it, 170-1 ; his
opinions on the Irish ques-
tion, 172 ; his enthusiasm for

INDEX

287

Kent's new style of horti-
culture, 172-3 ; probable date
of his departure, 173-4 ; his
impressions of England, 174-
175 ; his correspondence to
and continual interest in Eng-
land, 175-6 ; Chesterfield's
memorial to him, 177 ; his
debt to England and the
importance of his visit, 177-
181 ; 271.

Monthly Review, 209, 2^7,

More, Hannah, 30 note.

More, Sir Thomas, 180.

Morley, John, 182, 185, 189 note,
208, 263, 265.

Morville, Comte de, 8, 15, 70, 72,

73-
Muralt, Beat De, 196.

Napoleon, 1 19 note.

National Review, 8 note.

Newcastle, Duke of, 8, 169.

Newton, Isaac, 10, 32 ; the
history of the " falling apple "
anecodote, 33-5, 51, 53, 57,
58, 164, 195.

Nicholls, John, 90 note.

Nicolardot, 78.

Nivernois, Due de, 217.

Noce, M., 114.

Notes and Queries, 29 note, 36 note.

O'Brien, Lady Susan, 205.
Oldfield, Anne, 52, 53,
Oldham, John, 100.
Otway, Thomas, loi.
Oxford, Earl of, 50, 70.
Ozell, John, 84.

Paoli, General, 193.
Parliamentary History, 147 note,

148, I so note.
Parnell, Thomas, 51, 102.

Parton, James, his Life of
Voltaire, 4, 39, 95.

Pascal, Blaise, 17, 126, 183.

Pelhara, Henry, 153, 173.

Pemberton, Henry, ^^, 58.

Pennant, Thomas, 87.

Perry, Dr. Martin, 255 note.

Peterborough, Lord, vii., 29, yy,
91 and note, 107 note ; Vol-
taire's alleged disgraceful
treatment of, iio-i, 112, 274.

Peyrou, Du, 200, 222 note, 225,
242, 24s, 250, 251, 263, 265,
268 note.

Philipps, Ambrose, 51.

Pitt, Andrew, 48, 60.

Plato, 180.

PoUnitz, Count, innate, 14 note,
82 note, 95, 135 note, 139 note.

Pope, Alexander, 2 ; ihis ignor-
ance of French, 19 ; Voltaire's
first interview with, 20-1-2 ;
Voltaire's enthusiasm over his
poetry, 27 ; the accident to,
28, 38, 40, 41, 43, 44, 51, 78,
84, 91, 105, 106; Voltaire's
final interview with, 112-3,
160, 172, 180, 196, 271, 274.

Pope, Mrs. Alex., 20, 44.

Poree, Pere, 86 note.

Portland, Duchess of, 245.

Poyntz, 154 note.

Prevost, The Abbe, 79, 80, 81,
109, 271.

Prior, Matthew, 51, 102.

Prussia, King of, 193, 200, 217,
218, 223. '

Pulteney, William, 146 note.

Rabelais, FranQois, 103.
Racine, 18, 52, 72, 162.
Rapin de Thoyras, 179.
Read, General Meredith, 262

note.

288

INDEX

Remusat, Charles, on Voltaire's
visit to England, 2-3.

Rianecourt, Mile., 234.

Riccoboni, Mme., 233, 234, 237.

Richardson, Samuel, 196, 268,
270.

Richelieu, Cardinal, 127.

Richmond, Duke of, 159, 162,
168, 169, 228, 245.

Robinson, Mrs., 273.

Rochester, Earl of, 56, 100.

Rogers, Rogers, 209 note.

Roscommon, Earl of, 100.

Rousseau, F. H., 225, 250.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques, v., vi.,
vii., 167 ; his visit to Eng-
land the turning-point of his
life, 182-5 J incidents leading
up to his visit, 186-93 ; the
high esteem held for him in
England before his visit, 194-5;
his acquaintance with English
writers, 196 ; Lord Keith's
hospitality, 196 ; Hume's
kindness to him, 197 ; reasons
for his delay in coming, 198-9 ;
his meeting with Hume in
Paris, 200 ; his departure
thence and arrival at Dover,
201-2 ; he becomes the rage,
203 ; Garrick entertains him,
203-5 ; his appearance and
behaviour, 205-6 ; Hume's
endeavours to find him a
residence, 207-12 ; Hume pro-
cures him a pension, 212-3 '
opinions of him, 213-4; he
at last obtains a residence,
215-6 ; the scene with Hume
and the incidents leading up
to it, 216-21 ; Walpole's con-
cocted letter, 218 ; arrival
at Wooton, 221 ; his sus-
picions of Hume, 222 ; pub-

lication of the forged letter,
223 ; he considers himself
the victim of a plot, 225 ;
malicious notices wrongfully
attributed to Hume, 226-7 '■>
Hume unconscious of this
urges on the pension, 228-9 ;
the quarrel breaks out, 229 ;
innocence and indignation of
Hume, 230-2 ; sensation
caused by this quarrel, 233 ;
Adam Smith's letter to Hume,
233-4 ; Hume advised to
justify himself, 234 ; Hume
publishes his pamphlet, 235-6;
correspondence and general
opinions on the controversy,
237-41 ; R. circulates his
version of the affair, 242-3 ;
life at Wooton, 243-6 ; writes
his Confessions, 246 ; tradi-
tions of him at Wooton,
247-8 ; unpleasantness with
Davenport, 248-9 ; insanity
coming on, 250-1; his de-
parture from Wooton, 252 ;
his letter to Davenport, 253 ;
imagines his life in danger,
254 ; his letter to Mr. Jessop,
255-6 ; his arrival at Dover,
257 ; his panic-stricken letter
to General Conway, 258-60;
departure from England, 260;
possible reasons for quitting
Wooton, 260-2 ; analysis of
his temperament, 262-5 ; the
unfailing kindness with which
he was treated, 266-7 ; the
unfavourable contrast between
his visit and Voltaire's, 267-8 ;
his wearisome and egotistical
correspondence, 269 ; influ-
ence of English writers on
him, 269-71.

INDEX

289

Ruffhead, Owen, his account of
Voltaire's first interview with
Pope, 20-1 ; his story of
Voltaire's treachery, 39-41 ;
on Voltaire's offensive talk,
44 ; on Voltaire's final intei"-
view with Pope, 112-3.

Rutherford, Mr. Henry, vii., 91,
1 12 note.

Rutledge, J. J., his Eloge on
Montesquieu, 174, 179.

Saint Lambert, 193.

Sandys, Samuel, 149.

Saussura, Cesar de, 47 noie, 135

note.
Shaftesbury, 180.
Shakespeare, William, 10, 94,

96 ; influence of, on Voltaire,

98-9, I02, 106, 161, 162,

268.
Sheffield, Thomas, 100.
Sherlock, Martin, 63 note, 108.
Shippen, William, on the need-

lessness of keeping up an

army, 147-8.
Sidney, Algernon, 179, 196, 270.
Sieveking, Mr. Forbes, vii., 277.
Simon and Benezet, 70.
Singer, S. W., 68 note, 166 note.
Sloane, Sir Hans, 61.
Smith, Adam, his advice to

Hume, 233-4, 262, 263.
Sorel, Albert, 124, 175.
Southwell, Lord, 82 note.
Spectator, 270.
Spence, Joseph, 19 note, 42

note, 68, 166.
Spenser, Edmund, 99, 106.
Stair, Lord, 45.
Stanhope, Lord, 177 note.
Stanislaus, King, 16.
Stanley, Mr., 210.
Steele, Sir Richard, $ i

Stepney, George, 51.

Sterne, Laurence, 262.

St. Hyacinthe, 83.

St. James's Chronicle, 223, 224
noie, 225 noie, 237, 238 note,
239, 240 note.

Stow, John, 180.

Strafford, Lord, 245.

Streckeisen-Moultou, 223 note,
227.

Stukely, Dr., 34.

Suard, 235.

Suffolk, Countess of, 46.

Sundon, Lady, 39, 46.

Swift, Jonathan, 2, 27 ; Vol-
taire's intimacy with, 29, 40,
43.63,69, 70; Voltaire's high
estimate of, 103, 183, 190,
208.

Tacitus, 49, 125.

Tasso Torquato, 64, 263.

Taylor, John, 82 note.

Texte, M. Joseph, 195 noie, 196
note, 270.

Thieriot, 5, 21, 23 and noie,
24, 26, 27, 28 noie, 39, 41,
47, 54 and note, 55 note, 58, 70,
71 noie, 72 noie, 78, 82, 86,
96, 103, 108, 113, 114 note,
277.

Thomson, James, 15 ; Voltaire
on, 104-5.

Tickell, Thomas, 51.

Towne,Dr., vii.,90, 107 note, 11 1,

273-
Towne, Richard, 90, 91.
Townshend, Lord, 50, 150.
Townshend, Mr. and Mrs., 211.
Toynbee, Mrs., 43 note.
Tronchin, Jean Robert, 18S,

189, 195, 219, 225, 230.
Troublet, Abbe, 241.
Turgot, 234, 267 note.

19

290

INDEX

Turner, Edmund, 34, 35.
Turretin, Alphonse, 195.

Universal Spectator, 1 34.

Vanburgh, Sir John, loi.

Van Muyden, Madame, 14.

Vernes, Pastor, 189.

Vian, M., his Historie de Mon-
tesquieu, 1 19-21, 174.

Villars, Marquess of, 280.

Villemain, Abel Francois, 180.

Virgil, 64, 67.

Voiture, 100.

Voltaire, v., vii. ; importance of
his visit to England, i ;
obscurity of this part of
his life, 2-3 ; Desnoiresterres
researches, 3-4 ; his arrival
in England, 4-12 ; his intro-
duction to society, 12-14 ;
his introduction to Boling-
broke, 14 ; to Bubb Doding-
ton, 15 ; to Everard Falk-
ener, 16-17 5 his acquaint-
ance with English on his
arrival, 17-18 ; his previous
acquaintance with Pope, 19 ;
his first interview with Pope,
20-22 ; his secret voyage
back to France, 22-3 ; his
misfortunes on his return to
England, 24-6 ; his enthusi-
asm of Pope, 27 ; his life with
Falkener, 27-8 ; he meets
Swift, 29 ; and Young, 30 ;
discussion on Paradise Lost,
30-1 ; his letter on the free-
dom of England, 32 ; his
presence at Sir Isaac Newton's
funeral, 32 ; our indebted-
ness to him for the tradition
of " the falling apple," 33-5 ;
his meeting with Gay, 36 ;

and Congreve, 36 ; his intro-
duction to the Dowager
Duchess of Marlborough, 36-
■^2, ; his acquaintance with
Molly Lepel, and the verses
addressed to her, 38 ; subse-
quent history of the verses,
39 ; the curious story of his
treachery, 39-41 ; his double
dealing and insincerity gener-
ally, 42-3 ; his offensive be-
haviour, 44 ; his presenta-
tion to Court, 44-5 ; and to
the " opposition " court, 46-
47 ; his acquaintance with
Andrew Pitt, 48 ; his com-
ments on our religious sects,
our government, 49-50 ; his
vindication of the dignity of
trade, 50-1 ; his comparison
of the homage paid to genius
in England to that in France,
51-2; on horse-racing, 53;
his permission to visit France
probably not acted upon,
53-5 ; his commonplace book,
55-6 ; his acquaintance with
Dr. Samuel Clarke, 57 ; and
with Dr. Henry Pemberton,

58 ; his admiration of Locke,

59 ; his acquaintance with
Bacon, 59 ; his remarks on
Berkeley's treatise, 60 ; his
interest in natural science,
60-1 ; and in the controversy
between the opponents and
upholders of Christianity,
61-2 ; his " Essay upon the
Civil Wars in France," 62-
64 ; his " Essay upon Epic
Poetry," 64-7 ; his mastery
of the English language, 67 ;
and the doubts thrust upon
it, 68 ; his removal from

INDEX

291

Wandsworth to London, 69 ;
his correspondence at this
period, 70 ; the elaborate
"puff" to his Henriade, 71 ;
his request for subscriptions,
72 ; pubhcation of Henriade,
74-5 ; his gratitude for its
success, 76 ; its enormous
success, 77-8 ; his contro-
versy with Prevost, 79-81 ;
his annoyance at the ex-
penses of Uving in society,
82 ; the incident of the
opening hnes of Henriade,
83-4 ; criticisms on the poem,
84-6 ; his unpleasant ad-
ventures, 87-9 ; his letters
to Dr. Towne, 90-3 ; his
Brutus, 94-5 ; his Mort de
Cesar, 96 ; his Letters con-
cerning the English Nation,
96-7 ; his attempt to open a
French theatre in London,
98 ; influence of Shakespeare
on, 98-9 ; his ignorance of
Chaucer and the Elizabethan
writers, 90 ; his knowledge
of Milton and Dryden, 99-
100 ; and of the minor poets,

100 ; and of Wycherley, Con-
greve, and Vanburgh, loi ;
his admiration of Hudibras,

1 01 ; and of Addison's Cato,
102-3 ; -J?is enthusiasm of
Swift, 103 ; his acquaintance
with Thomson, 104-5 J his
admiration of Pope, 105-
106 ; his general criticism on
English poetry, 106-7 ; pre-
parations for his departure,
107-9 ; his alleged disgraceful
treatment of Lord Peter-
borough, I TO- 1 ; his final inter-
view with Pope, 1 1 2-3;

probable date of his depart-
ure, 1 1 3-4 ; effects of his
visit, 1 14-6, 117, 167, 180,
189, 19s, 196, 201, 225, 226,
230, 238, 240, 241, 264;
comparison with Rousseau
267-8, 271, 274, 275, 277.

Wagniere, 88.

Waldegrave, Lord, 120, 128,
133, 134, 166.

Wallace, Robert, 165.

Waller, Edmund, 100.

Walpole, Horatio, the elder, his
letter to the Duke of New-
castle, 8, 15.

Walpole, Horace, his Short Notes,
43 note ; Voltaire's letter to,
98, 154, 168, 206; concocts a
letter to Rousseau, 217; the
concocted letter, 218 tiote ;
story of the hoax, ib., 225,
233 ; his pamphlet on the
Rousseau and Hume quarrel,
238, 240, 241, 264.

Walpole, Sir Robert, 40 ; Voltaire
visits him, 41 ; his administra-
tion, and Montesquieu's re-
marks on, 144-50, 152, 153,
155, 160.

Warburton, Bishop, 41, 113
note, i6r, 165, 176.

Warton, Joseph, 66.

Webb, Col., 211.

Weekly Medley, 18 note, 167.

Whiston, William, 33, 143.

White, Blanco, 67.

Wilkes, John, calls on Rousseau,
203.

Wood, Robert, 237.

Woodman et Lyon, 85.

Woolston, Thomas, 57, 61, 62.

Wright, Joseph, of Derby, vii.,
1S5, 269.

292

INDEX

Wurtemberg, Prince of, 193.
Wycherley, William, loi.
Wyndham, Sir William, 153, 155.

Ximenes, Marquis de, 226.

Yonge, Sir Wm., 147.
York, Duke of, 203.

Yorke, Charles, 159, 161, 165,
169.

Young, Edward, 1 5 ; his meeting
with Voltaire, 30 ; his epi-
gram on Voltaire, 31, 42 ;
Voltaire consults him, 68.

Zevort, M., 120 note, 173.

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