At seventeen years of age Voltaire wrote _Œdipus_, at eighty-three he wrote _Irène_. During the intervening years he enriched the world of thought with seventy volumes of irresistible humor--of brilliant and caustic wit,--in truth, a mine of literary gems undimmed with mediocrity's prosy dullness. In fact, it was this quality of humor and mirth that made Voltaire's writings so distasteful to his opponents--so welcome to mankind. Other writers, who went far beyond Voltaire, were not considered dangerous, because they were never read. They were sincere and learned, but tedious and austere. Their disbelief was condoned by its metaphysical obscurity--their skepticism was redeemed by its unmitigated dullness. But with Voltaire the case was very different. His writings were read and appreciated by old or young, grave or gay, sage or sophist, prince or peasant. To answer him was impossible--to abuse him was thought commendable. "Napoleon, during fifteen years," says Lamartine,[8] "paid writers who degrade, vilify, and deny the genius of Voltaire; he hated his name as _might_ must ever _hate intellect_; and so long as men yet cherished the memory of Voltaire--so long he felt his position was not secure." The church voluntarily joined in this work of aspersion. To the priests it was no hardship,--it was a welcome task--a labor of love. They hated the writings they could not answer--the genius they could not destroy. "The church," says Macaulay,[9] "made no defense, except by acts of power. Censures were pronounced; books were seized; insults were offered to the remains of infidel writers but no Bossuet, no Pascal, came forth to encounter Voltaire. There appeared not a single defense of the catholic doctrine which produced any considerable effect, or which is even now remembered." "His element," says Schlosser,[10] "was the lighter kind of poetry, and his fugitive verses, his sharp wit, his bold opinions, produced effects in his time, like flashes of lightning, for they illuminated at the same time the night of Jesuitical superstition, and struck and shivered to pieces the majestic towers and gothic domes of the middle ages. "The so-called fugitive pieces alone, if he had written nothing else, would have been sufficient to secure Voltaire's immortality; for in these he is altogether in his sphere; he has only to think of the people whom he calls exclusively the world, and he can direct every spark of his genius to the production of instantaneous effect, delight his reader by his fancy, and surprise him by his wit.