Pope was one of the persons Voltaire desired to see. He had already described him as “the most elegant, most correct, and most harmonious poet they ever had in England.” Pope could only speak French with difficulty, and Voltaire could not make himself understood. The result being unsatisfactory, Voltaire did not seek further company until he had acquired the language. An anecdote in Chetworth’s _History of the Stage_ relates that he was in the habit of attending the theatre with the play in his hand. By this method he obtained more proficiency in the language in a week than he could otherwise have obtained in a month. Madame de Genlis had the audacity to assert that Voltaire never knew English, yet it is certain he could, before he was many months in this country, both speak and write it with facility. By Nov. 16, 1726, he wrote to Pope, after that poet’s accident while driving near Bolingbroke’s estate at Dawley. In writing to his friend Thieriot, in France, he sometimes used English, for the same reason, he said, that Boileau wrote in Latin—not to be understood by too curious people. Voltaire is said to have once found his knowledge of English of practical use. The French were unpopular, and in one of his rambles he was menaced by a mob. He said: “Brave Englishmen, am I not already unhappy enough in not having been born among you?” His eloquence had such success that, according to Longchamp and Wagnière, the people wished to carry him on their shoulders to his house. While in this country he wrote in English a portion of his tragedy _Brutus_, inspired by and dedicated to Bolingbroke, and two essays, one on the Civil Wars of France, and one on Epic Poetry. In the introduction to the essays he expresses his conception of his own position as a man of letters in a foreign country. As these essays, although popular at the time, are now rare, I transcribe a paragraph or two from them: “The true aim of a relation is to instruct men, not to gratify their malice. We should be busied chiefly in giving a faithful account of all the useful things and extraordinary persons, whom to know, and to imitate, would be a benefit to our country. A traveller who writes in that spirit is a merchant of a nobler kind, who imports into his native country the arts and virtues of other nations.” In his _Essay on Epic Poetry_ Voltaire shows he had made a study of Milton, though his criticism can scarcely, be considered an advance upon that of Addison. He displays constant admiration for Tasso, to whom he was perhaps attracted by his sufferings at the hands of an ignoble nobility. He says: