VOLTAIRE. 123 



where received him. He planned an antidote to the 

 errors which the admitted probity as well as the rare 

 opportunities of the Due de St. Simon were calculated 

 to propagate in his ' Memoirs,' still kept secret, but 

 destined soon to see the light. He worked at his 

 ' Agathocles ;' he corrected many parts of his historical 

 works ; and he prevailed upon the Academic Fran- 

 $aise to prepare its ' Dictionary ' upon the novel 

 plan of following each word in the different senses 

 given it at successive periods, and illustrating each 

 by choice passages from contemporary authors. 

 He proposed that each academician should take a 

 letter, and he began himself strenuously to work upon 

 letter A. These labours, and the excitement of the 

 reception at the theatre, proved too much for his 

 remaining strength, and he was seized with a spitting 

 of blood. A new exertion, made in the hope of obvi- 

 ating certain objections taken at the Academy to his 

 plan of the ' Dictionary,' brought on sleeplessness, 

 and he took opium in too considerable doses. Con- 

 dorcet says that a servant mistook one of the doses, 

 and that the mistake was the immediate cause of his 

 death, which happened on the 30th of May, 1778. 

 He was in the eighty-tilth year of his age. 



We have preserved, and in his own hand, the few 

 lines he wrote to Lally Tolendal, four days before 

 his death, that he died happy, on hearing the reversal 

 of the iniquitous sentence against his father, in whose 

 cause he had exerted himself twelve years before with 

 his wonted zeal and perseverance. Some very good 

 verses, addressed ten days before to the Abbe de 1'At- 



