8
VOLTAIRE.
his disciples love both literature and virtue." "The hours of his lessons," he says elsewhere, "were for us delicious hours; and I could have wished that it had been the custom in Paris, as in Athens, for those of all ages to share such lessons. I should have returned often to hear him." Whatever it may have afterwards pleased Voltaire to say about the college, it is clear that he was exceptionally fortunate in the instructors whom it gave to him. Contact with such minds must have been invaluable to an intellect so eager and so assimilative as his. He left the college at seventeen with a high reputation, especially for his poetic gifts.
