intitled Les Erreurs de Voltaire. They are written by the Abbé Nonnette, a moderate and candid writer, whose remarks have gone through many editions at Paris; and I wish they were translated into English. In a preliminary discourse to the work, he has drawn the literary character of Voltaire with great calmness and judgment; allowing him all the merit he could justly claim, and distinguishing properly between his excellencies and his errors. From this preliminary discourse I shall give you a pretty large extract in another letter.

LETTER XXIV.

ON THE SAME.

THOUGH I could indulge myself with a quire of criticism on Mr. Voltaire, I rather choose to give you something at present in the more humble character of a translator; and if it does not run off so smoothly as an original composition might do, that you must excuse. We take, or seem to take, the sentiments of another with more impartiality than we advance our own; and in the present case, I apprehend you will suffer nothing by the exchange.

"Perhaps it would be difficult," says the Abbé Nonnette," to find, in any age, a man of such great abilities and extensive knowledge as Mr. Voltaire. I think there never was his parallel. He was ignorant

of no kind of literature: he wrote upon every thing: and though he may have fallen short of perfection in some of his productions, yet there is a variety of fancy which always discovers a superiority of genius. At the time of life when other young men are obliged to receive lectures from those who are wiser than themselves, he published those poetical essays which soon made him known all over France. From the pieces he wrote for the theatre, it was the general opinion, that under the reign of Lewis XV. there was no occasion to lament the loss of those great writers, Corneille and Racine, whose productions had done so much honour to the reign of Lewis XIV.

"His works are distinguished by that brilliancy of wit, that fire and elegance of expression, which is not to be acquired by the most intense application: it is the effort of genius, and the gift of nature. After a few years, when his judgment was more mature, he ventured upon philosophy, and treated of it as if he had been nothing but a philosopher; while his poetry would have tempted one to believe he had studied nothing but poetry all his life. But his thoughts were not confined to these: he studied history and criticism; and made observations on the manners and principles of mankind. He attempted every thing, and his genius carried him through; and notwithstanding numberless small errors, one may everywhere trace the genius of Voltaire.

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." A knowledge of books, too extensive to have been properly digested, with an indefatigable ardour of mind, and an extraordinary memory, emboldened him to write on all kinds of subjects. A descriptive imagination gave that force to his style, which made ample amends for the want of some lesser graces. The energy of his expressions, his striking contrasts, and

the variety of objects he brings together to set off one another, surprise and engage his readers, even while they disbelieve what they are reading. This is what we are authorised to say of Mr. Voltaire's style.

"For all these talents united, he was regarded as the prodigy of the age in which he lived. He might have been the idol of it; but the frequent abuse of his talents, his extravagant assertions, with that superior tone and dictatorial carriage which he always affected over those who cultivated the sciences and belles lettres, raised him more enemies, censurers, and rivals, than ever he had admirers.

"The human mind has powers with which it can raise itself to the most sublime speculations: but then there are rules to which it must be subservient, and boundaries to which it ought to confine itself. Some wits are equally bold and happy in their attempts; while others are absolutely rash and inconsiderate. It was Mr. Voltaire's misfortune to be too ambitious of exalting himself to the top of every thing, though with the neglect of those good rules and necessary regulations. A judicious reader will therefore immediately discover that the author has no fixed principles; that he has no sound logic; that he is often without true learning; always without discretion and a proper respect to things of the last importance. He will see through all those lively sallies of wit, those bold reflections, and that varnish which is so artfully spread over all his writings. These are ornaments which may dazzle and surprise light and superficial understandings incapable of reflection; but will make very little impression on those who are able to look farther and judge properly.

"Mr. Voltaire is always most extravagant when religion comes in his way; and to this great object we

shall confine ourselves. Religion is that alliance and society which subsists between God and man; a society which brings with it the greatest advantages to mankind, and lays them under the highest obligations: a man truly wise and reasonable finds nothing upon this earth so worthy of his love and veneration. Here all false principles and rash assertions are infinitely dangerous; and they are more particularly so, when they are presented in a form which flatters the pride of the human understanding; when they seem to be the offspring of truth, reason, and even wisdom itself. It is a matter of great concern to detect the falsehood of such principles, and to trace the consequences which follow them; consequences, which at best are ridiculous, and sometimes exceedingly shocking: and, lastly, to learn how to distinguish, in such serious subjects, between truth itself, and that which has only the appearance of it.

"There is scarcely any one piece of Mr. Voltaire in which he has not meddled with religion; and not one in which he has treated it with any respect. He has spoke of it as a poet, an historian, and a philosopher; never as a Christian. Some profane liberties are taken in most of his poetical pieces. His General History is nothing but a satire, in which the bitterness of calumny most commonly takes the place of truth and in his Philosophical Miscellanies, where he is more of a sceptic than Bayle, he opposes all true principles, and pleads in defence of all errors.

"Yet I must own he never makes a direct attack upon the truth of Christianity: his method is rather to employ all the force of his wit in support of those errors which Christianity condemns. With him the philosophers who are called Materialists are a sort of men void of all prejudices, who only wish to conduct

themselves according to the light of nature. He brings in their arguments; weighs their reasons; admires the force of them; and pronounces them to be unanswerable. Then he gives a pompous list of those famous philosophers who have been Materialists : puts in some of the Fathers of the Church amongst them; and there he leaves his reader.

"All reasonable men must reckon the doctrine of fatality or destiny amongst the worst reveries of philosophy. A blind fate, which draws after it all human events; which leaves nothing to the wisdom and prudence of man; and with which all created beings are but as the springs of a machine; such a sort of destiny is a contemptible absurdity, as inconsistent with reason as with religion. It is impossible that Mr. Voltaire could believe such an absurdity as this, which could only take possession of a stupid Hottentot or blind Mussulman. This, however, is the subject of most of the allegorical pieces in his Miscellanies, and of those reflections which occur so frequently in his General History. A wise man must despise them; a weak man may be ensnared by them; and here the libertine finds an authority for all his extravagances.

"But most dangerous of all, because it is best calculated to seduce people, is his way of treating religious worship, the exercises of piety, the government of the church, and the institutions of its ministry. Here he employs all his wit and satire, his grave arguments and his solemn declamations, to inspire contempt and aversion for every thing of this kind. All that has been written against the Christian or the catholic religion by libertines, and those modern authors who give themselves the pompous name of philosophers, this he industriously quotes; endeavouring to make the wit more pointed, and the ridicule