Carlyle tells us that the chief quality of Voltaire was _adroitness_. He denies that he was really a great man, and says that in one essential mark of greatness he was wholly wanting, that is, earnestness. He adds that Voltaire was by birth a mocker; that this was the irresistible bias of his disposition; that the first question with him was always not what is true but what is false, not what is to be loved but what is to be contemned. He was shallow without heroism, full of pettiness, full of vanity; "not a great man, but only a great _persifleur_." But certainly some other qualities than these were essential to produce the immense influence which he exerted in his own time, and since. Beside the extreme adroitness of which Carlyle speaks, he had as exhaustless an energy as was ever granted to any of the sons of men. He was never happy except when he was at work. He worked at home, he worked when visiting, he worked in his carriage, he worked at hotels. Amid annoyances and disturbances which would have paralyzed the thought and pen of others, Voltaire labored on. Upon his sick bed, in extreme debility and in old age, that untiring pen was ever in motion, and whatever came from it interested all mankind. Besides the innumerable books, tracts, and treatises which fill the volumes of his collected works, there are said to be in existence fourteen thousand of his letters, half of which have never been printed. But this was only a part of the outcome of his terrible vitality. He was also an enterprising and energetic man of business. He speculated in the funds, lent money on interest, fitted out ships, bought and sold real estate, solicited and obtained pensions. In this way he changed his patrimony of about two hundred thousand francs to an annual income of the same amount,--equal to at least one hundred thousand dollars a year at the present time. He was determined to be rich, and he became so; not because he loved money for itself, nor because he was covetous. He gave money freely; he used it in large ways. He sought wealth as a means of self-defense,--to protect himself against the persecution which his attacks on the Church might bring upon him. He also had, like a great writer of the present century, Walter Scott, the desire of being a large landed proprietor and lord of a manor; and, like Scott, he became one, reigning at Ferney as Scott ruled at Abbotsford.