Voltaire was active as a poet about the Court. He was then in receipt of
a pension of two thousand livres from the king, and had inherited more
than twice as much by the death of his father in January, 1722. But in
December, 1725, a quarrel, fastened upon him by the Chevalier de Rohan,
who had him waylaid and beaten, caused him to send a challenge. For this
he was arrested and lodged once more, in April, 1726, in the Bastille.
There he was detained a month; and his first act when he was released was
to ask for a passport to England.

Voltaire left France, reached London in August, 1726, went as guest to
the house of a rich merchant at Wandsworth, and remained three years in
this country, from the age of thirty-two to the age of thirty-five. He
was here when George I. died, and George II. became king. He published
here his _Henriade_. He wrote here his "History of Charles XII." He
read "Gulliver's Travels" as a new book, and might have been present at
the first night of _The Beggar's Opera_. He was here whet Sir Isaac
Newton died.

In 1731 he published at Rouen the _Lettres sur les Anglais_, which
appeared in England in 1733 in the volume from which they are here
reprinted.

H.M.




LETTERS ON ENGLAND