34 VOLTAIRE. 



and that he had ptit him down with two lines of 

 Virgil, showing it to be either long or short, though 

 he had not read Virgil for fifty years. Voltaire 

 replied that a third verse should have been given, and 

 inscribed on the Pope's picture by all his subjects- 



" Hie vir, hie est tibi quern promitti ssepius audis ;" 



adding very inaccurately, if not ignorantly, that the 

 word is both long and short in this line, whereas it is 

 only long by position. 



The late Lord Grantley told me that when he was 

 a young man fresh from Eton, he passed a few days at 

 Ferney, and found Voltaire much puzzled to restore, 

 consistently with the metre, a Latin couplet which a 

 stranger had made upon him, of which a word or two 

 had been displaced. The Etonian pleased him exceed- 

 ingly by at once performing the easy operation 



" Eece domus qualem Augusti non protulit aetas 

 Hie sunt Meecenas, Virgiliusque simul." 



The author of < Catiline ' had confounded himself by 

 beginning with domus. It must be added, however, 

 that he wrote an excellent motto for a dissertation 

 upon heat, which he preferred in the competition for 

 an academy prize 



" Ignis ubique latet, naturam amplectitur omnem 

 Cuncta parit, renovat, dividit, unit, alit." 



Crebillon, then director of the Parisian stage, was 

 far less tolerant towards the ' Mahomet ' than the 

 Roman pontiff had been, and prohibited the repre- 

 sentation of the play for ten years, when D'Alembert 

 (in 1751), named by D'Argenson to examine it, 



