VOLTAIRE. 53 



for the rest of his life ; so that he cared little for the 

 profits of his works, and indeed gave many of them to 

 the booksellers and the actors for nothing. Not only 

 was he thus secured in the state of independence 

 which is an author's best protection against crude and 

 hasty composition, but he was able to follow the bent 

 of his taste in choosing his subjects, and of his dispo- 

 sition both to encourage young authors of merit, and 

 to relieve the distresses of deserving persons. Proofs 

 also remain which place beyond all doubt his kindness 

 to several worthless men, who repaid it with the black 

 ingratitude so commonly used as their current coin by 

 the base and spiteful, who salve their own wounded 

 pride by pouring venom on the hand that saved or 

 served them. 



But his residence in England had a still more 

 important result the importation l^e made from 

 thence of the Newtonian system, or rather, of all Sir 

 Isaac Newton's wonderful discoveries. So deeply 

 rooted were the prejudices of our Continental neigh- 

 bours in favour of the Cartesian philosophy, that 

 when Fontenelle pronounced his eloge of Newton, at 

 the Academic des Sciences, he gave the preference to 

 Des Cartes ; and even ten years later, the Chancellor 

 D'Aguesseau refused the licence to print Voltaire's 

 work because it denied and disproved the Cortices 

 an act of narrow-minded bigotry in science scarcely 

 to be matched in all its annals. Voltaire, soon after 

 his return from England, published his ' Lettres sur les 

 Anglais' a candid and intelligent work ; and in three 

 of these he gives a very correct though extremely 

 general and popular sketch of Newton's discoveries. 



