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Updated: October 19, 2025
The morality of these females seems to have been of the slightest description; and Henriade Venelle had no hesitation in yielding to a proposal of this infamous soldier that he should represent her husband, who was at the time serving his king and country in the ranks of the army.
Among the competitors less favourably treated, we perceive one of the greatest writers whom France has produced; the author of the Henriade.
This premier gentilhomme de France was proud of his want of reading, and used often to declare that the only two books he had ever skimmed were the wearisome Henriade of Voltaire and the frivolous Liaisons Dangereuses of Laclos.
In the Henriade, in Zaire, and in Alzire, Christian piety is exhibited in the most amiable form; and, some years after the period of which we are writing, a Pope condescended to accept the dedication of Mahomet.
The Henriade met with a great success. Every copy of the magnificent quarto edition was sold before publication; three octavo editions were exhausted in as many weeks; and Voltaire made a profit of at least ten thousand francs.
He shewed me a bundle of manuscript, which I found to be an excellent translation of Voltaire's "Henriade" into Italian verse. Tasso himself could not have done it better. He said he hoped to finish the poem at Florence, and to present it to the grand duke, who would be sure to make him a magnificent present, and to constitute him his favourite.
But to conclude that this detected spy was Voltaire, whose favour at Court was known to be the reward of treachery to his friends, is, apart from the inherent improbability of the supposition, rendered almost impossible, owing to the fact that Bolingbroke and Swift were themselves subscribers to the Henriade Bolingbroke took no fewer than twenty copies and that Swift was not only instrumental in obtaining a large number of Irish subscriptions, but actually wrote a preface to the Dublin edition of another of Voltaire's works.
"Truly," said he, "I was mistaken. As you say, Monsieur Voltaire is a short, red-haired man but he is not the worst poet in France. The creature has written some things that are not so bad the Henriade, for example it could not be better if I had done it myself. And I have made a little play after his Mariamne, which is not so bad either my actors will now have pleasure in giving it.
"I have just been brought to bed of Six Twins; which require to be baptized, in the name of Apollo, in the waters of Hippocrene. LA HENRIADE is requested to become godmother: you will have the goodness to bring her, this evening at five, to the Father's Apartment.
Young Arouet passed eleven months in the Bastille; he there wrote the first part of the poem called La Henriade, under the title of La Ligue; when he at last obtained his release in April, 1718, he at the same time received orders to reside at Chatenay, where his father had a country house.
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