The one was fire and fickleness, a child Most mutable in wishes, but in mind A wit as various,—gay, grave, sage, or wild,— Historian, bard, philosopher, combined; He multiplied himself among mankind, The Proteus of their talents: But his own Breathed most in ridicule,—which, as the wind, Blew where it listed, laying all things prone,— Now to o’erthrow a fool, and now to shake a throne. The other, deep and slow, exhausting thought, And having wisdom with each studious year, In meditation dwelt, with learning wrought, And shaped his weapon with an edge severe, Sapping a solemn creed with solemn sneer; The lord of iron,—that master−spell, Which stung his foes to wrath, which grew from fear, And doom’d him to the zealot’s ready Hell, Which answers to all doubts so eloquently well. Warton, the learned critic and author of a _History of Poetry_ (Dissertation I.) remarked: “Voltaire, a writer of much deeper research than is imagined, and the first who has displayed the literature and customs of the dark ages with any degree of penetration and comprehension.” Robertson, the historian, similarly observed that, had Voltaire only given his authorities, “many of his readers who only consider him as an entertaining and lively writer would have found that he is a learned and well informed historian.” Lord Holland wrote, in his account of the _Life and Writings of Lope de Vega_: “Till Voltaire appeared there was no nation more ignorant of its neighbors’ literature than the French. He first exposed and then corrected this neglect in his countrymen. There is no writer to whom the authors of other nations, especially of England, are so indebted for the extension of their fame in France, and, through France, in Europe. There is no critic who has employed more time, wit, ingenuity, and diligence in promoting the literary intercourse between country and country, and in celebrating in one language the triumphs of another. His enemies would fain persuade us that such exuberance of wit implies a want of information; but they only succeed in showing that a want of wit by no means implies an exuberance of information.”