Voltaire, let us add, was no dilettante traveller constructing views and deducing theories of national life out of his own uninstructed consciousness. No German could have worked more diligently at the facts, and we may say here, once for all, that if it is often necessary to condemn him for superficiality, this lack of depth seldom at any time proceeds from want of painstaking. His unrivalled brilliance of expression blinds us to the extreme and conscientious industry that provided matter. The most illustrious exile that our free land has received from France in our own times, and assuredly far more of a giant in the order of imagination than Voltaire, never had intellectual curiosity enough to learn the language of the country that had given him twenty years of shelter. Voltaire, in the few months of his exile here acquired such an astonishing mastery over English as to be able to read and relish an esoteric book like Hudibras, and to compass the enormously difficult feat of rendering portions of it into good French verse.[56] He composed an essay on epic poetry in the English tongue, and he wrote one act of Brutus in English. He read Shakespeare, and made an elaborate study of his method. He declares that Milton does as much honour to England as the great Newton, and he took especial pains not only to master and appreciate the secret of Milton’s poetic power, but even to ascertain the minutest circumstances of his life.[57] He studied Dryden, ‘an author who would have a glory without blemish, if he had only written the tenth part of his works.’[58] He found Addison the first Englishman who had written a reasonable tragedy, and Addison’s character of Cato one of the finest creations of any stage.[59] Wycherley, Vanbrugh, and Congreve he esteemed more highly than most of their countrymen do now. An act of a play of Lillo’s was the base of the fourth act of Mahomet. Rochester, Waller, Prior, and Pope, he read carefully and admired as heartily as they deserved. Long after he had left England behind, he places Pope and Addison on a level for variety of genius with Machiavel and Leibnitz and Fontenelle;[60] and Pope he evidently for a long while kept habitually by his elbow. Swift he placed before Rabelais, calling him Rabelais in his senses, and, as usual, giving good reasons for his preference; for Swift, he says justly, has not the gaiety of Rabelais, but he has all the finesse, the sense, the variety, the fine taste, in which the priest of Meudon was wanting.[61] In philosophy, besides Locke, there is evidence that he read something of Hobbes, and something of Berkeley, and something of Cudworth.[62] Always, however, ‘harassed, wearied, ashamed of having sought so many truths and found so many chimeras, I returned to Locke; like a prodigal son returning to his father, I threw myself into the arms of that modest man, who never pretends to know what he does not know, who in truth has no enormous possessions, but whose