186 BAILLY. 



thing to fear from the liberal thinker of Ferney ? He 

 had only forgotten that the patriarch was above all a 

 man of good taste, and that the book on the body and 

 soul offended all the proprieties of life. Voltaire's article 

 appeared. He began with this severe and just lesson 

 " We should not be prodigal of contempt towards others, 

 and of esteem for ourselves, to such a degree as will be 

 revolting to our readers." The end was still more over- 

 whelming. " We see harlequin everywhere cutting 

 capers to amuse the pit." 



Harlequin had received a sufficient dose. Not having 

 succeeded in literature, he threw himself upon the 

 sciences. 



On betaking himself to this new career, the doctor of 

 Neufchatel attacked Newton. But unluckily his criti- 

 cisms were directed precisely to those points wherein 

 optics may vie in evidence with geometry itself. This 

 time the patron was M. de Maillebois, and the tribunal 

 the Academy of Sciences. 



The Academy pronounced its judgment gravely, with- 

 out inflicting a word of ridicule ; for example, it did not 

 speak of harlequin ; but it did not therefore remain the 

 less established that the pretended experiments, intended, 

 it was said, to upset Newton's, on the unequal refrangi- 

 bility of variously coloured rays, and the explanation of 

 the rainbow, &c., had absolutely no scientific value. 



Still the author would not allow himself to have been 

 beaten. He even conceived the possibility of retaliation ; 

 and, availing himself of his intimacy with the Duke de 

 Yilleroy, governor of the second city in the kingdom, he 

 got the Academy of Lyons to propose for competition all 

 the questions in optics, which for several years past had 

 been the subjects of its disquisitions ; he even furnished 



