Various as were the acquirements of Freret, there was in the Bastile, and nearly contemporaneously with him, a prisoner, who far transcended him on that score, and who possessed a splendid genius. Poet, in almost every style of poetry, dramatist, historian, novellist, essayist, philosopher, controversialist, and commentator, the universal Voltaire was pre-eminent in several departments of literature, and was below mediocrity in none. “He was,” says a French author, “one of our greatest poets; the most brilliant, the most elegant, the most fertile, of our prose writers. There is not, in the literature of any country, either in verse or in prose, an author who has written on so many opposite kinds of subjects, and has so constantly displayed a superiority in all of them.” It has been said that Voltaire is a superficial writer, but this assertion is not borne out by the fact. On the contrary, it is wonderful that so gay and witty and fertile a writer, who was so much in the whirl of society as he was, should have displayed such profound research, such a vast command of materials, as Voltaire has undoubtedly done. As a man, Voltaire could be a warm friend, and was a champion of humanity, and a strenuous opponent of intolerance, superstition, and oppression. From our admiration of him a considerable drawback must, however, be made, for the readiness with which he lavished incense upon such worthless nobles as the Duke of Richelieu; for the aristocratical feelings which occasionally peep out even from among his liberal opinions; for his duplicity in showering praises and professions of kindness upon men whom he was at the same moment devoting to ridicule; for his meanness in stooping to falsehood, whenever he feared that avowing the truth would expose him to inconvenience; for his inflammable passions, which so often blinded his reason; for the sleepless animosity with which he strove to hunt down, disgrace, and crush whoever had offended him; for his obscenity and nauseating indelicacy; and for the fury with which he attacked objects which, in all ages, wise and good men have held sacred.