and can never be settled, till one of them has either destroyed the other, or deprived him of his liberty. Thus I have sketched out for you the ground of dispute between the two parties who have made most noise in the kingdom. I shall neither trace the effects of their different principles, nor give you any reflections upon their characters, as that would carry me out too far, and be au invidious undertaking. So far as we have now gone, it is the part of every good subject to go, who has capacity and opportunity. It happens that the origin of civil government is a subject which of late has been incomparably treated in a learned and elegant discourse by my excellent friend Dr. Horne, president of Magdalen College in Oxford* (now dean of Canterbury), to which I must refer you for farther information. There you will find every thing that learning and moderation can pertinently introduce, or at least, that need be said, for the settling of the question. It will give you satisfaction in point of argument; and the composition, while it instructs you in your duty, will improve your English. *See Discourses on several Subjects and Occasions, vol, ii, disc. 12. LETTER LETTER XXIII. ON THE CHARACTER OF VOLTAIRE. IF a wicked writer is not a witty one, he will do but little mischief; for poison is never swallowed, as such, but in a fit of despair. Wit may conspire with truth to give us pleasure; as wholesome wine may be brought to table in the richest vessel: but wit, when possessed by men of bad principles, recommends falsehood, as poison is offered to us in a gilded cup: Nulla aconita bibuntur Fictilibus. Tunc illa time, cùm pocula sumes Gemmata, et lato setinum ardebit in auro. Juv. Sat. 10. Truth in literature is the same thing with honesty in common life. You may admire an ingenious man but you would wish always to be concerned with an honest one: indeed no man can be safe in any other company. If a great genius is dishonest, his ingenuity only renders him the more dangerous: and it is to no purpose to tell us that he is a man. of parts; because none but a man of parts can corrupt the public with much success. No sharper, properly so called, can possibly be a fool. He that lives by his wits, must have some wits to live by: and every sharper, in proportion as he is more artful and insinuating in company, is so much the worse man. We should think it a very senseless apology for a highwayman or a cheat, to say that he is a man of genius. His talents may recommend him to rogues like himself; and they will set him at their head for his accomplishments but his eminence in his profession will be no recommendation with honest people; who if they fall into his company, have nothing to do but to look to their pockets. In this light I have been used to consider the celebrated Mr. Voltaire. I am pleased with a man of wit; and I admire a scholar, wherever I find him: but, at the same time, I abhor a cheat: and if he that robs a man of his money, and hinders the success of his neighbours, is detestable in society; he that would rob us of the truth, or render us unfit to receive it, is a worse character. If it is his first wish to deprive us of that truth which relates to our interests in another life; then he he differs from an evil spirit in nothing but the inferiority of his abilities. If Mr. Voltaire should be recommended to you by any of his friends and admirers; or any of his seducing publications should fall in your way (which some Englishmen have been very forward to translate), it is proper you should know what you are to expect, that you may be prepared against the ill effects of them; and possibly you may have some opportunity of rescuing others from the snares of his sophistry. I lately met with two volumes of a work in French, intitled Les Erreurs de Voltaire. They are written by the Abbé Nonnette, a moderate and candid writer, whose remarks have gone through many editions at Paris; and I wish they were translated into English. In a preliminary discourse to the work, he has drawn the literary character of Voltaire with great calmness and judgment; allowing him all the merit he could justly claim, and distinguishing properly between his excellencies and his errors. From this preliminary discourse I shall give you a pretty large extract in another letter. LETTER LETTER XXIV. ON THE SAME. THOUGH I could indulge myself with a quire of criticism on Mr. Voltaire, I rather chuse to give you something at present in the more humble character of a translator; and if it does not run off so smoothly as an original composition might do, that you must excuse. We take, or seem to take, the sentiments of another with more impartiality than we advance our own; and in the present case, I apprehend you will suffer nothing by the exchange. "Perhaps it would be difficult," says the Abbé Nonnette, "to find, in any age, a man of such great abilities and extensive knowlege as Mr. Voltaire. I think there never was his parallel. He was ignorant of no kind of literature: he wrote upon every thing: and though he may have fallen short of perfection in some of his productions, yet there is a variety of fancy which always discovers a superiority of genius. At the time of life when other young men are obliged to receive lectures from those who are wiser than them selves, |