more serious occupations. It is a burlesque poem in twenty-two cantos, in which the female champion of France figures in a variety of adventures, which are by no means calculated to exalt her claims to sanctity: Charles VII., Agnes Sorel, the famous knights Dunois and John Chandos, and other renowned personages, also appear in Hudibrastic guise. According to Longchamp, who was Voltaire's valet and copyist throughout his abode at Cirey, and who has left many particulars of his life there, it was at a supper at the Duke of Richelieu's that the idea of the poem was started. The subject of the Maid of Orleans had been treated as a serious epic by a French Academician, Chapelain, who, whatever his abilities in other walks of literature, had only succeeded in rendering his heroine so ridiculous by his stilted and wearisome eulogies and bad verses, as almost to forbid any one else to adventure in the same direction. "I will wager," said the Duke to Voltaire, "that you would have made much better use of the subject, and would have managed to exalt your heroine without making a saint of her." Voltaire, in reply, said that he did not think Boileau himself could have made much of such an unpromising theme, and that he believed that it lent itself much better to burlesque than heroic treatment. The Duke, agreeing in this, urged him to undertake the task; the guests joined in the request, becoming so importunate, that he at last agreed to examine the subject as soon as he could find leisure; and he kept his promise so well, that in a few weeks he had four cantos ready. These, being read to the same party at the Duke's, were so applauded that he resolved to extend and complete the work. In the course of it he introduced so many satiri-
