, but his enemy disdained a duel with a man of inferior
station. The Rohan family was influential, and preferred to maintain
their dignity by putting the despised poet in prison.

Voltaire was ordered to leave Paris and decided to visit England, where
he knew that learned Frenchmen found a welcome. He was amazed at the
high honour paid to genius and the social and political consequence
which could be obtained by writers. Jonathan Swift, {158} the famous
Irish satirist, was a dignitary of the State Church and yet never
hesitated to heap scorn on State abuses. Addison, the classical
scholar, was Secretary of State, and Prior and Gay went on important
diplomatic missions. Philosophers, such as Newton and Locke, had
wealth as well as much respect, and were entrusted with a share in the
administration of their country. With his late experience of French
injustice, Voltaire may have been inclined to exaggerate the absolute
freedom of an English subject to handle public events and public
personages in print. "One must disguise at Paris what I could not say
too strongly at London," he wrote, and the hatred quickened in him of
all forms of class prejudice and intellectual obstinacy.

His _Lettres anglaises_, which moved many social writers of his time,
were burnt in public by the decree of the Parlement of Paris in 1734.
The Parlement, composed of men of the robe (lawyers), was closely
allied to the court in narrow-minded bigotry. It was always to the
fore to prevent any manifestation of free thought from reaching the
people. The old order, clinging to wealth and favour, judged it best
that the people--known as the Third Estate--should remain in ignorance
of the enormous oppressions put upon them. It had been something of a
shock to Voltaire to discover that in England both nobles and clergy
paid taxes, while in France the saying of feudal times held good--"The
nobles fight, the clergy pray, the people pay."

Sadly wanting in respect to those in high places was that Voltaire who
had not long ago been beaten by a noble's lackeys. He did not cease to
write, and continued to give offence, though the sun of the court shone
on him once through Madame de Pompadour, the King's favourite. She
caused him to write a play {159} in 1745 to celebrate the marriage of
the Dauphin. The _Princesse de Navarre_ brought him more honour than
had been accorded to his finest poems and tragedies. He was admitted
to the Academy of Letter