The life of a writer was defined by Pope as “a warfare upon earth.” Never was this truer than in the case of Voltaire, who himself said: “_La vie à’un homme de lettres est un combat perpétuel et on meurt les armes à la main._” He was ever in the midst of the fight, and usually alone and surrounded by enemies. And his unfailing resources not merely kept them at bay, but compelled their surrender of an immense territory. His was a life of creation and contest. In the war against despotism and Christianity he achieved a new kingship of public opinion, and proved that the pen was indeed mightier than the sword. Heine said: “We should forgive our enemies—but not until they are hung.” Voltaire forgave his when he had gibbeted them in his writings. People who find it difficult to understand his bitterness against “L’Infàme” should remember the revolting cruelty of which religious bigotry was still capable in his day. The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the prolonged horrors of the Thirty Years’ War, and the Massacre of St. Bartholomew vibrated still. Condorcet wrote: “The blood of many millions of men, massacred in the name of God, still steams up to heaven around us. The earth on which we tread is everywhere covered with the bones of the victims of barbarous intolerance.” His rhetoric expressed the feeling of a generation who knew by experience the evils of religious bigotry and fanaticism. It is as a champion of Freethought that Voltaire deserves chiefly to be remembered. In that capacity I can only find words of praise. Complaints of his flippancy, his _persiflage_, his ridicule, his scurrility, his etc., came, and still come, from the enemy, and show that his blows told and tell. If he did not crush the infamous he at least crippled it. No doubt, under different circumstances, Voltaire would have fought differently. But he would never have thought of treating atrocities without indignation, or absurdities without ridicule. Gravity is a part of the game of imposture, and there is nothing the hypocrites and humbugs resent so much as having their solemn pretensions laughed at. . He knew the subtle power of ridicule. It was the most effective weapon, not only for the time and the nation in which he wrote, but for our time also. His blows were all dealt with grace and agility; his pills were sugar-coated. Grimm well said of him: “He makes arrows of every kind of wood, brilliant and rapid in their flight, but with a keen, unerring point. Under his sparkling pen, erudition ceases to be ponderous and becomes full of life. If he cannot sweep the grand chords of the lyre, he can j strike on golden medals his favorite maxims, and is j irreproachable in the lighter order of poetry.” But, I contend, there was a fundamental earnestness in his character; he was the apostle of plain every-day common sense and good feeling.