The events of Voltaire's life have been so often told that Mr. Parton has not been able to add much to our knowledge of his biography. He was born in 1694 and died in 1778, at the age of eighty-four, though at his birth he was so feeble that those who believe that the world's progress depends on the survival of the fittest would have thought him not fit to be brought up. This was also the case with Goethe and Walter Scott. His father was a notary, and the name Arouet had that of Voltaire added to it, it being a name in his mother's family. This affix was adopted by the lad when in the Bastille, at the age of twenty-four. As a duck takes to water, so Voltaire took to his pen. In his twelfth year he wrote verses addressed to the Dauphin, which so pleased the famous Ninon de l'Enclos, then in her ninetieth year, that she left the boy a legacy of two thousand francs. He went to a Jesuits' school, and always retained a certain liking for the Jesuits. His father wished to make him a notary, but he would "pen a stanza when he should engross;" and the usual struggles between the paternal purpose and the filial instinct ended, as usual, in the triumph of the latter. He led a wild career for a time, in the society of dissipated abbès, debauched noblemen, and women to whom pleasure was the only object. Suspected of having written a lampoon on the death of Louis XIV., he was sent to the Bastille, and came forth not only with a new name, but with literature as his aim for the rest of his life. His first play appeared on the stage in 1718, and from that time he continued to write till his death. He traveled from the _château_ of one nobleman to another, pouring out his satires and sarcasms through the press; threatened by the angry rulers and priests who governed France, but always escaping by some adroit manœuvre. In England he became a deist and a mathematician. His views of Christ and Christianity were summed up in a quatrain which may be thus translated. Speaking of Jesus, he says,-- "His actions are holy, his ethics divine; Into hearts which are wounded he pours oil and wine. And if, through imposture, those truths are received, It still is a blessing to be thus deceived."