VOLTAIRE.

Otago Witness, Issue 2051, 15 June 1893, Page 41

VOLTAIRE.

The framework of Voltaire's life was a moat extraordinary one.

He lived to 84, although he was ever in bad health or worse.

His existence was a long and perpetual warfare, and his energy indomitable and indefatigable.

Plays, tales, histories, poemp, philosophies, theologies, essays, miscellanies, letters, Jjpamphletp, and leaflets came unceasingly for 60 years from bis never-resting pen.

Exiled at 22, put into the Bastile a year later for nearly a twelvemonth, cudgelled at 31, in the Bastile again and exiled to Eagland at 32, then three years with the English philosophers and men of letters ; flying from am st at 40 and again at 53 ; " nobbling " the easy-going Pope — not of Twickenham but of Rome, for truth is stronger than farce— at 51 by an unparalleled stroke of chicanery ; three years at Berlin with Frederick when he was nearly GO and the King's age was about 40 ; and the familiar and constant correspondent of Catherine of Russia, he yet found time every day, from the age of 35 onwards, for the practice of an innate "financial dexterity" which eventually made him a very rich man.

His schemes and coups and bargains and money-lendings in this line were of tho mopt audacious, unscrupulous, able, and eversuccessful kind; and no one who has not studied them knows the man Voltaire. — Speaker.