It is time to look at this verse in its literary relations, from which I have been diverted by its commanding import as a political event; but this naturally enhances the interest in its origin. The poem which furnished the prototype of the famous verse was “Anti-Lucretius, sive de Deo et Natura,” by the Cardinal Melchior de Polignac. Its author was of that patrician house associated so closely with Marie Antoinette in the earlier Revolution, and with Charles the Tenth in the later Revolution, having its cradle in the mountains of Auvergne, near the cradle of Lafayette, and its present tomb in the historic cemetery of Picpus, near the tomb of Lafayette, so that these two great names, representing opposite ideas, begin and end side by side. He was not merely author, but statesman and diplomatist also, under Louis the Fourteenth and Fifteenth. Through his diplomacy a French prince was elected King of Poland. He represented France at the Peace of Utrecht, where he bore himself very proudly towards the Dutch. By the nomination of the Pretender, at that time in France, he obtained the hat of a cardinal. At Rome he was a favorite, and also at Versailles, with some interruptions. His personal appearance, his distinguished manners, his genius, and his accomplishments, all commended him. Literary honors were superadded to political and ecclesiastical. He succeeded to the chair of Bossuet at the Academy. But he was not without the vicissitudes of political life. Falling into disgrace at court, he was banished to the abbacy of Bonport. There the lettered Prince of the Church occupied himself with a refutation of Lucretius, in Latin verse. The origin of the poem is not without interest. Meeting Bayle in Holland, the Frenchman found the indefatigable skeptic most persistently citing Lucretius, in whose elaborate verse the atheistic materialism of Epicurus is developed and exalted. Others had answered the philosopher directly; but the indignant Christian was moved to answer the poet through whom the dangerous system was proclaimed. His poem was, therefore, a vindication of God and religion, in direct response to a master-poem of antiquity in which these are assailed. The attempt was lofty, especially when the champion adopted the language of Lucretius. Perhaps no writer of Latin verse since the admired Sannazaro, found equal success. Even before its publication, in 1747, it was read at court, and was admired in the princely circle of Sceaux. It appeared in elegant editions, was translated into French prose by Bougainville, and into French verse by Jeanty-Laurans, also most successfully into Italian verse by Ricci. At the latter part of the last century, when Franklin reached Paris, it was hardly less known in literary circles than a volume of Grote’s History in our own day. Voltaire, the contemporary arbiter of literary fame, regarding the author only on the side of literature, said of him, in his “Temple du Goût”:--