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 VOLTAIRE 405 boy was placed in a school of jurisprudence, with a view to the subsequent purchase of a judicial office ; but he preferred poetry to law. Besides, the abbe 1 de Chateauneuf had intro- duced him to the brilliant and licentious society of his mistress Ninon, which already reacted against the asceticism of Mme. de Maintenon, and indulged in railleries against all established institutions, religious, political, and social. His law studies were of course interrupted, and this fact, together with the composition of a poem in 1712 on the decoration of the choir of Notre Dame, led his father to connect him with the embassy of the marquis de Chateau- neuf to the United Provinces. At the Hague one Mme. Dunoyer accused him of seducing her daughter, though she was herself suspected of having favored the crime, and from a mer- cenary motive published their correspondence. This scandal obliged him to return to Paris, and his father pardoned him only on condition that he should resume his studies with a no- tary. A friend of the family, M. de Caumar- tin, procured permission for him to pass a few months in his country residence at St. Ange. On his return to Paris he was suddenly and strangely arrested and transferred to the Bas- tile. Louis XIV. had just died ; satirical and witty pamphlets celebrated the event as a happy deliverance ; and some of the lampoons or epi- grams being ascribed to Voltaire, though he was barely 20 years of age, the regent issued orders for his confinement. During the year he spent in prison he wrote a part of his epic the Henriade, and completed a tragedy, begun some years before, entitled CEdipe. Pleased with these performances, the regent released him, and added to the favor a considerable donation. CEdipe was soon afterward (1718) produced on the stage with brilliant success, and even his father became reconciled to his literary career. The play abounded in impres- sive scenes, lofty characters, and a most fer- vid and beautiful declamation ; it has since kept possession of the stage, but is rather a series of impassioned and eloquent dialogues than a drama. Voltaire now passed from cha- teau to chateau, to visit illustrious friends ; he studied at Amsterdam, passed some time at Brussels, and sought out Jean Baptiste Rous- seau in his place of exile. Yet in the midst of these, diversions he composed two new trage- dies, Artemire and Mariamne, and a comedy, Uindiscret, and completed the Henriade. The tragedies met with indifferent success in the representation, and the comedy was a failure. But his epic, suggested by the reign of Henry IV., having been purloined, altered, and pub- lished under the title of La ligue, by a copyist named Desfontaines, became rapidly popular. The sensation it produced, even in the muti- lated and factitious form in which it had been given to the public, compelled the author to hasten his own final revisions. Certain bold sentiments of philosophy and tolerance, how- ever, scattered among the poetic beauties, aroused the suspicions of the clergy, and he could not procure the license for printing. Though he offered to dedicate the poem to the king, the obstacles put in the way of its appearance were found nearly insuperable. While he was yet struggling to remove them, an incident occurred which suddenly changed the tenor of his life. At the table of the duke de Sully he took part in a discussion in a man- ner too free and spirited, and formally contra- dicted a chevalier Rohan-Chabot, who received the impertinence in high dudgeon. " "Who is this," asked the chevalier, warmly, "that pre- sumes to talk so loud?" "A young man," re- plied Voltaire, "who does not bear a high name, but who is capable of honoring that which he bears." As the name of the cheva- lier was his principal distinction, he felt the sly reproof, and some days afterward caused his lackeys to call Voltaire from the duke's dinner table and administer a severe chastise- ment with rods. Voltaire appealed to . the duke to resent the indignity, but in vain. He now practised fencing day and night, and when he thought himself sufficiently apt he challenged his assailant. The relatives of the latter procured a royal order for Voltaire's im- prisonment in the Bastile. At the end of six months he was set free, but on the condition that he should quit France. He went to Eng- land (1726), and resided there three years. Lord Bolingbroke introduced him into that society of freethinkers which was then the reigning school of literature. His first and most novel impressions were derived from the great spectacle presented by the enormous ac- tivity and orderly freedom of England. Next to this and his intercourse with the polished freethinkers, he was chiefly interested in the physical philosophy which, under the teach- ings of Newton, was pushing the antiquarian, scholastic, and moral sciences into the shade, and became an earnest student of mathematics, astronomy, and the experimental branches of knowledge. He saw in these not so much the comprehensive truths as the instrumentalities they furnished for assailing the moral systems of the Jesuits and other religionists. From his youth Voltaire had made war, more or less open, upon the prevailing tenets. The broth- ers Walpole persuaded George II. and his min- isters to head the subscription for a splendid impression of the ffenriade, and the whole aristocratic society followed in their wake. Voltaire rose speedily to the summit of renown as an epic poet, and when he returned to France he found himself a national idol. His admiration of the English and their polity he described shortly after his return (1729) in his Lettres mr les Anglai*. He made a considera- ble fortune by investing his literary gains in lotteries, in speculations, and in mercantile adventures to the coast of Africa. He next wrote the tragedy of Brutus, which was not a success that satisfied his ambition or vanity. Fontenelle and La Motte advised him to give