"Chevalier Wanbruck;" but our historical Admiral Drake need not have become "Dracke;" and the identity of a celebrated actress, whom he addresses in verse, is almost lost when he apostrophises her as "Ofilds;" nor is the matter rendered much clearer when she reappears as "Ophils." However, he felt so sure of his footing in our tongue that he wrote in it some acts of his tragedy of "Brutus."
He stayed nearly two years in England (living during part of the time in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, and during another part at Wandsworth), but no mention of his visit is to be found in contemporary records. Almost the only anecdote respecting it that has come down to us is the well-known one of his visit to Congreve. When Voltaire told him of the desire he had felt to converse with so famous a dramatist, Congreve intimated that he preferred to be visited as a private gentleman. "If you were nothing but that," said Voltaire, "I should never have come to see you." For three months he was the guest of the famous Lord Peterborough. His intimacy with Bolingbroke procured for him the acquaintance of Pope, with whom he had before maintained a correspondence. In a passage of the 'Age of Louis XIV.,' correcting an error about Pope, he says, "I had lived a whole year with Pope." This can only mean near Pope, and in the habit of seeing him. It is somewhat remarkable that in all Pope's correspondence of those years, with men to whom Voltaire was probably known, and who would certainly have received news of him with interest, there is no mention of personal acquaintance with the French poet. Voltaire not only read critically the works of Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, Butler, Swift, and Pope,
