There is no doubt that Voltaire felt keenly the indignity and injustice which he had undergone, and which had forced him into exile. In a letter of instructions written from England to his agent, he says, "If messieurs my debtors profit by my misfortunes and my absence to refuse payment, as others have done, you must not trouble yourself to bring them to reason—'tis but a trifle. The torrent of bitterness that I have drunk makes these few drops of small account." Nevertheless, except the good-humoured piece, the "Bastille," already mentioned, there is not a word in any of his writings to show that he was mindful of having been so grievously insulted and oppressed. What is no less extraordinary is, that possessing the courage, power, and disposition to defy those whom it was so dangerous to provoke, he never assailed the Government under which it had been possible to inflict on him such a measure of injury, and the hostility of which, directed by his potent enemies, rendered his long existence one of contest, evasion, and exile. No Frenchman living was more alive than he to the evils of absolute power. "Despotism," he says, "is the abuse of royalty, as anarchy of republics. A sultan who, without justice, or form of justice, imprisons or puts to death his subjects, is a highway robber who calls himself Your Highness." Nor was any one more alive than he to the evil of a privileged class. "That government would be worthy of Hottentots," he tells us, "in which a certain number of men should be allowed to say, 'Tis for those who work to pay—we owe nothing, because we do nothing." But it is only in such
arity and respect. To this, and to its grace of expression, the poem owes its fame, rather than to more substantial merits.
