so large and important a portion of his
work. A more delightful and a more indefatigable letter-writer never
lived. The number of his published letters exceeds ten thousand; how
many more he may actually have written one hardly ventures to imagine,
for the great majority of those that have survived date only from the
last thirty years of his long life. The collection is invaluable alike
for the light which it throws upon Voltaire's career and character, and
for the extent to which it reflects the manners, sentiments, and thought
of the age. For Voltaire corresponded with all Europe. His reputation,
already vast before he settled at Ferney, rose after that date to a
well-nigh incredible height. No man had wielded such an influence since
the days when Bernard of Clairvaux dictated the conduct of popes and
princes from his monastic cell. But, since then, the wheel had indeed
come full circle! The very antithesis of the Middle Ages was personified
in the strange old creature who in his lordly retreat by the Lake of
Geneva alternately coquetted with empresses, received the homage of
statesmen and philosophers, domineered over literature in all its
branches, and laughed Mother Church to scorn. As the years advanced,
Voltaire's industry, which had always been astonishing, continually
increased. As if his intellectual interests were not enough to occupy
him, he took to commercial enterprise, developed the resources of his
estates, and started a successful colony of watchmakers at Ferney. Every
day he worked for long hours at his desk, spinning his ceaseless web of
tracts, letters, tragedies, and farces. In the evening he would
discharge the functions of a munificent host, entertain the whole
neighbourhood with balls and suppers, and take part in one of his own
tragedies on the stage of his private theatre. Then a veritable frenzy
would seize upon him; shutting himself up in his room for days together,
he would devote every particle of his terrific energies to the
concoction of some devastating dialogue, or some insidious piece of
profanation for his _Dictionnaire Philosophique_. At length his fragile
form would sink exhausted--he would be dying--he would be dead; and next
morning he would be up again as brisk as ever, directing the cutting of
the crops.

One day, quite suddenly, he appeared in Paris, which he had not visited
for nearly thirty years. His arrival was the signal for one of the most
extraordinary manifestations of