Holland or Geneva. Whenever a particularly outrageous one appeared,
Voltaire wrote off to all his friends to assure them that he knew
nothing whatever of the production, that it was probably a translation
from the work of an English clergyman, and that, in short, everyone
would immediately see from the style alone that it was--_not_ his. An
endless series of absurd pseudonyms intensified the farce. Oh no!
Voltaire was certainly not the author of this scandalous book. How could
he be? Did not the title-page plainly show that it was the work of Frère
Cucufin, or the uncle of Abbé Bazin, or the Comte de Boulainvilliers, or
the Emperor of China? And so the game proceeded; and so all France
laughed; and so all France read.

Two forms of this light literature Voltaire made especially his own. He
brought the Dialogue to perfection; for the form suited him exactly,
with its opportunities for the rapid exposition of contrary doctrines,
for the humorous stultification of opponents, and for witty repartee.
Into this mould he has poured some of his finest materials; and in such
pieces as _Le Dîner du Comte de Boulainvilliers_ and _Frère Rigolet et
l'Empereur de la Chine_ one finds the concentrated essence of his whole
work. Equally effective and equally characteristic is the _Dictionnaire
Philosophique_, which contains a great number of very short
miscellaneous articles arranged in alphabetical order. This plan gave
Voltaire complete freedom both in the choice of subjects and in their
manipulation; as the spirit seized him he could fly out into a page of
sarcasm or speculation or criticism or buffoonery, and such liberty was
precisely to his taste; so that the book which had first appeared as a
pocket dictionary--'ce diable de portatif', he calls it in a letter
proving quite conclusively that _he_, at any rate, was not responsible
for the wretched thing--were there not Hebrew quotations in it? and who
could accuse him of knowing Hebrew?--had swollen to six volumes before