VOLTAIRE. 73 



ence was necessary for his irritable nature. Jealousy 

 formed no part of his character; he had a rooted 

 horror of envy, as mean and degrading ; he was 

 always well disposed to encourage rising merit and 

 enjoy the success of his friends, perhaps all the more 

 readily when he aided them by his patronage and 

 counsels ; but he was easily offended, ready to believe 

 that any one had attacked him, prone to take alarm 

 at intended insult or apprehended combination against 

 him ; and as his nature was fundamentally satirical, 

 he was unable to resist the indulgence of the very 

 humour of which he could so ill bear being himself 



o 



made the subject. Those who were at all dependent 

 on him, his Theiriots and his publishers, found much 

 less magnanimity than kindness in his temper. With 

 his equals he rarely continued very long on cordial 

 terms. Maupertuis, indeed, had no excuse for his 

 proceedings ; but the extravagances of J. J. Rousseau's 

 crazy nature might well have been overlooked, and 

 never should have been made the subjects of such deadly 

 warfare as Voltaire waged against him. The other 

 Rousseau's enmity he owed entirely to himself, as we 

 have seen ; it is extremely probable that Des Fon- 

 taines was set against him by hearing of his sarcasms 

 on a subject to which all reference was proscribed ; 

 and his persevering attacks on Le Franc de Pom- 

 pignan arose from no cause beyond some general 

 reflections on philosophers in his inaugural discourse 

 at the Academy ; nor was he ever just enough to allow 

 the singular merit of some, at leastj of the Abbe's 

 poetry.* It is certainly one, and a principal, cause of 



* It might be absurd enough in Mirabeau (the elder) to exalt him 



