VOLTAIRE. 107 



between the two, and it has some of the merits of the 

 general or philosophical history. But how far it can 

 he relied on for perfect fairness is another matter. 

 He himself admits that it was necessary to write at a 

 distance from France, a work which treated of men's 

 conduct whose near relations still lived in the society 

 which he frequented at Paris. " To what," he asks, 

 " should I have been exposed at home ? Thirty diffe- 

 rent correspondences even here have I been obliged to 

 carry on after my first edition was published, all owing 

 to the difficulty of satisfying the distant cousins of 

 those whose history I had been relating." But if any 

 proof were wanting that his distance did not wholly 

 protect him from bias and, indeed, every one must see 

 that he was likely to feel such motives if he did not 

 mean his banishment from Paris to be perpetual we 

 have the evidence in such letters as that in which he 

 complains that such a one is not satisfied, but has made 

 remonstrances, and says that of another applicant's 

 ancestor he has not been able to speak so favourably as 

 was desired, but yet that he had gone a good deal out 

 of his way to embellish them (ewjoliver) as was 



his correspondence with the Empresses Elizabeth and Catherine, 

 described the Czar as " cutting off heads in a drunken debauch to 

 show his dexterity " (liv. i.). In both the ' Charles XII.' and 

 ' Peter I.' we find nearly the same unaccountable credulity as to 

 the wonders related of his studies his learning watchmaking, sur- 

 gery (to be able to dress wounds in the field), handicrafts, mathe- 

 matics all at the same time ; and Voltaire, who would, in any other 

 case, have been the first to ridicule these articles of popular belief, 

 and to expose the folly of a sovereign learning such things to fit him 

 for reigning, falls headlong into all the common errors on this sub- 

 ject. Peter's quarrels with his clergy, and his subduing their autho- 

 rity, had some hand in producing such errors by captivating Vol- 

 taire's esteem ; but he adopts them far more implicitly after his inter- 

 course had begun with the Court of Petersburgh. 



