of this extraordinary man, from a medallion taken of him in wax when he was in England, into which country he came in the year 1726, as a place of refuge. He was much noticed by Queen Caroline, who procured him many fubfcribers for his Henriade, of which the first edition was printed in England. He was much careffed by the perfons of fashion and of wit in this country, Mr. Pope only excepted, who was much difgufted with him for his behaviour to his aged and infirm mother; and who, by a trick he put upon him in pretending to be the au thor of a certain political pamphlet of much celebrity in its time, difcovered him to be a perfon in whom no confidence could be placed. Dr. Young, in a converfation in which Voltaire had turned into ridicule Milton's Allegory of Death and Sin, thus defcribed him to his face :

Thou art fo witty, profligate, and thin, Like Milton's Devil with his Death and Sin. Voltaire, whilft in England, was the guest of Mr. Brunfden, who had been Lord Bolingbroke's Under Secretary of War, On quitting his houfe, he faid, "My dear Sir, I thank you for the kind hofpitality you have afforded me; I thank Mifs Brunfden for the care he has taken of me when I have been ailing; and I thank your fon for the very pretty verfes he has made up

on mc.

lu 1728 Voltaire returned to France, where, at a very advanced age, he finied a very long career of literary icority; in many respects, perhaps,

Voltaire's earlieft printed publication is an Ode to Saint Genevieve, the Patron Saint of Paris, which was printed in our Magazine for November 1790*, and which is not inserted in any edition of his works. This, it is fuppofed, he wrote to please his inftructors the Jefuits, as one of them always declared, that the young Voltaire, then about fifteen years of age, would, he was well affured, become the apostle of deifm. How true his prediction has been, the world have but too fatally experienced. A jeft, a bon mot, will convert thofe who are in any degree well inclined to that converfion. His brochures upon the moft serious fub. jects are always lively and well writ ten, and thefe, perhaps, not unfre quently turned the head of a young man, and corrupted his morals, whilft his hair was drefling. The "Galerie de l'Ancienne Cour" tells us,that Tronchin, his phyfician, ufed to fay, that Voltaire mind. "I wish," faid he, "that thofe died in the most extreme agonies of whofe principles he had perverted, had been prefent at his death. It was hardly poffible (added he) to hold cut against fo horrible a fight: Il n'etoit pas poffible de tenir contre un pareil fpectacle.' Our Dr. Johnson thus de fcribed him in Latin to his old antagonift Fréron: "Vir acerrimi ingenii, & paulorum literarum; a man of a very acute understanding, but of very little learning." This indeed is fo true, that when Voltaire talks of Greek or of Latin, a boy in the fourth form of Eton or of Westminster is above his match.

Many

Many learned perfons have convicted Voltaire of the groffeft faults and mifreprefentations. He, however, still perfifted in them, and fell upon his antagonists with the light arms of his wit and raillery. He was always complaining of being attacked, and yet no author ever attacked others more earneftly and with greater arrogance than himself. He was ever writing against his own perfecutors, and no one ever perfecuted others with more virulence and acrimony. Though a great democrat in his writings, he was a great and a grofs flatterer of perfons in high place. To fovereigns, to the ftrumpets of fovereigns, and to minifters, he was continually proftituting that exquifite incenfe which genius alone can bettow, and which fhould only be the reward of talents and of virtue. M. De Choifeul was much flattered by Voltaire when he was in power: after his digrace, Voltaire either took no farther

notice of him, or wrote fomething flighting of him. The Duke's revenge was to put Voltaire's books upon one of the weather-cocks of his country houfe at Chatelerauit in Touraine.

"Lettres de quelques Juifs à M. De Voltaire," is a book ever to be recommended to thofe perfons who read M. De Voltaire's irreligious tracts, though, indeed, he hardly ever wrote any thing in profe without bringing in by the head and shoulders fome witticifm or fome declamation against religion. Thefe Letters of certain Jews to Voltaire, contain the completeft antidote against his poifon. They are written in a very lively manner; they combat all his pofitions with great force of argument and great power of learning; and they completely fhew what a fciolift he was in literature, and how little fitted to write upon fubjects that require to be treated with great and profound erudition.

Edinburgh, Sept. 26, 1753.

MY DEAR BOB,

How many good excufes (and you know I was ever good at an excufe) might I call up to vindicate my paft thameful filence !I might tell how I wrote a long letter at my first coming hither, and feem vaftly angry at my not receiving an anfwer; I might allege that business (with bufinefs you know I was always pestered) had never given me time to finger a pen;--but I fupprefs thefe, and twenty more equally plaufible and as easily invented, fince they might be attended with a flight inconvenience of being known to be lies. Let me then fpeak truth: an hereditary indolence (I have it from the mother's fide) has hitherto prevented my writing to you, and fill prevents my writing at leaf twenty-five letters more, due to my friends in Ireland. No turnfpit dog gets up into his wheel with more reluctance than I fit down to write; yet no dog ever loyed the roaft, meat he turns better than I do him I now addrefs. Yet what fhall 1 fay now I'm entered? Shall I tire you with a defcription of this unfruitful country, where I must lead you over their hills all brown with heath, or their vallies fcarce able

to feed a rabbit?-Man alone feems to be the only creature who has arrived to the natural fize in this poor foil.→ Every part of the country prefents the fame difmal landscape :-no grove nor brook lend their mufic to cheer the ftranger, or make the inhabitants for get their poverty ;-yet, with all these difadvantages to call him down to hu mility, a Scotchman is one of the proudeft things alive. The poor have pride ever ready to relieve them :-if mankind fhould happen to despise them, they are mafters of their own admiration, and that they can plentifully beftow on themselves.

From their pride and poverty, as I take it, refults one advantage this country enjoys, namely, the gentlemen are much better bred than amongst us, -No fuch chara&ter here as our foxhunters; and they have expreffed great furprize when I informed them that fome men in Ireland of 1000l. a year fpend their whole lives in running af ter a hare, drinking to be drunk, and getting every girl, that will let them, with child and truly, if fuch a being, equipped in his hunting dress, came among a circle of Scotch gentry, they would behold him with the fame aftoniment that a countryman would