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CHAPTER VII.
THE HENRIADE.
This seems the proper place for noticing his renowned poem, the "Henriade;" for though it had been finished some years, he was constantly retouching it, and now for the first time gave openly an edition to the world. One had been clandestinely printed, smuggled into Paris, and sold in 1724, by Voltaire himself—the official sanction, without which a book could not openly be published, haying been refused. A piratical one had also appeared,—published by that miracle of baseness the Abbé Desfontaines, who, after acknowledging, with servile protestations of gratitude, the deepest obligations to Voltaire, made it his constant business for years to vituperate him, and had caused the "Henriade" to be reprinted on his own account, adorned with passages of his own composition. It was to this scoundrel that a well-known retort was made. Excusing himself to the Minister of Police for one of his libels on Voltaire, he said, "I must live, you know." "I do not see the necessity," replied the Minister.
The number and importance of Voltaire's English friends enabled him to publish a quarto edition of his
