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CHAPTER IX.
THE DEATH OF CÆSAR.
The spirit of liberty which animated Voltaire's poem soon excited attention. Copies of it had passed among his friends from hand to hand, and passages became known to some of his enemies, who denounced him to the Chancellor. It was a curious feature of authorship in those days that an eminent writer might have, and often had, "enemies"—that there were people anxious to injure or destroy him; still more curious was it that these enemies should have the power of blighting the most promising career. What could enemies have done in our day against Mr Dickens, or Mr Thackeray, or Mr Tennyson? The power they had then was owing to the fact that no book could be openly published without the permission of appointed officials, and that those, frequently quite incompetent as judges of literary work, were open to many kinds of influence. Thus a personal dislike to an author on the part of a seemingly contemptible person, might assume a very practical form when a whisper to somebody who could influence a minister or a censor of the press might have such important consequences. Voltaire's social qualities were such, at once
