iously interesting side of
Voltaire's life in England, that some writers have been led to adopt a
very different theory from that which is usually accepted, and to
suppose that his relations with Pope's circle were in reality of a
purely superficial, or even of an actually disreputable, kind. Voltaire
himself, no doubt, was anxious to appear as the intimate friend of the
great writers of England; but what reason is there to believe that he
was not embroidering upon the facts, and that his true position was not
that of a mere literary hanger-on, eager simply for money and _reclame_,
with, perhaps, no particular scruples as to his means of getting hold of
those desirable ends? The objection to this theory is that there is even
less evidence to support it than there is to support Voltaire's own
story. There are a few rumours and anecdotes; but that is all. Voltaire
was probably the best-hated man in the eighteenth century, and it is
only natural that, out of the enormous mass of mud that was thrown at
him, some handfuls should have been particularly aimed at his life in
England. Accordingly, we learn that somebody was told by somebody
else--'avec des details que je ne rapporterai point'--that 'M. de
Voltaire se conduisit tres-irregulierement en Angleterre: qu'il s'y est
fait beaucoup d'ennemis, par des procedes qui n'accordaient pas avec les
principes d'une morale exacte.' And we are told that he left England
'under a cloud'; that before he went he was 'cudgelled' by an infuriated
publisher; that he swindled Lord Peterborough out of large sums of
money, and that the outraged nobleman drew his sword upon the miscreant,
who only escaped with his life by a midnight flight. A more
circumstantial story has been given currency by Dr. Johnson. Voltaire,
it appears, was a spy in the pay of Walpole, and was in the habit of
betraying Bolingbroke's political secrets to the Government. The tale
first appears in a third-rate life of Pope by Owen Ruffhead, who had it
from Warburton, who had it from Pope himself. Oddly enough Churton
Collins apparently believed it, partly from the evidence afforded by the
'fulsome flattery' and 'exaggerated compliments' to be found in
Voltaire's correspondence, which, he says, reveal a man in whom
'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.'