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Besides the edition of the Henriade, which was considerably altered and enlarged one of the changes was the silent removal of the name of Sully from its pages he brought out a volume of two essays, written in English, upon the French Civil Wars and upon Epic Poetry, he began an adaptation of Julius Caesar for the French stage, he wrote the opening acts of his tragedy of Brutus, and he collected a quantity of material for his History of Charles XII. In addition to all this, he was busily engaged with the preparations for his Lettres Philosophiques.
It was, indeed, typical of Voltaire and of his age that the Lettres Philosophiques should have been condemned by the authorities, not for any political heterodoxy, but for a few remarks which seemed to call in question the immortality of the soul.
Besides the above work, the following of his works incurred the same fate: the Lettres Philosophiques , the Cantique des Cantiques , the Dictionnaire Philosophique , also burnt at Geneva; L'Homme aux Quarante Écus , Le Dîner du Comte de Boulainvilliers . When we add to these burnings the fact that at least fourteen works of Voltaire were condemned, many others suppressed or forbidden, their author himself twice imprisoned in the Bastille, and often persecuted or obliged to fly from France, we must admit that seldom or never had any writer so eventful a literary career.
M. Lanson's great attainments are well known, and to say that M. Foulet's work may fitly rank as a supplementary volume to the edition of the Lettres Philosophiques is simply to say that he is a worthy follower of that noble tradition of profound research and perfect lucidity which has made French scholarship one of the glories of European culture.
A critical notice by her hand of M. Renan's Dialogues et Fragments Philosophiques, reprinted from those columns, bears date May, 1876, immediately before she succumbed to the illness which in a few days was to cut short her life. At the beginning of this year she had written on this subject to Flaubert, in the brave spirit she would fain impart to her weaker brethren:
It was in the first reaction from this dimly felt loss that he lit one day on a volume which Alfieri had smuggled into the Academy the Lettres Philosophiques of Francois Arouet de Voltaire. Zu neuen Ufern lockt ein neuer Tag.
Characteristically enough, Voltaire, at the last moment, did his best to reinforce his tentative metaphysical observations on 'M. Loke' by slipping into his book, as it were accidentally, an additional letter, quite disconnected from the rest of the work, containing reflexions upon some of the Pensées of Pascal. He no doubt hoped that these reflexions, into which he had distilled some of his most insidious venom, might, under cover of the rest, pass unobserved. But all his subterfuges were useless. It was in vain that he pulled wires and intrigued with high personages; in vain that he made his way to the aged Minister, Cardinal Fleury, and attempted, by reading him some choice extracts on the Quakers, to obtain permission for the publication of his book. The old Cardinal could not help smiling, though Voltaire had felt that it would be safer to skip the best parts 'the poor man! he said afterwards, 'he didn't realise what he had missed' but the permission never came. Voltaire was obliged to have recourse to an illicit publication; and then the authorities acted with full force. The Lettres Philosophiques were officially condemned; the book was declared to be scandalous and 'contraire
The eulogy of Locke in Voltaire's "Lettres Philosophiques" gave especial offense to the French churchmen. Voltaire writes to a friend that the censor might have been brought to give his approbation to all the letters but this one.
Maupertius had just published his "Lettres Philosophiques," in which it must be confessed there were passages which justified Voltaire's assertion that Maupertius was at one time insane, and was confined for some years in a madhouse at Montpellier. Maupertius proposed in these letters that a Latin city should be built, and this majestic and beautiful tongue brought to life again.
The preface to this ranks among the celebrated prefaces of the world, and it was written at the suggestion of his friend Hetzel, who objected strongly to the prefaces signed Felix David, which had been placed in 1835 at the beginning of the "Etudes de Moeurs au XIXieme Siecle," and of the "Etudes Philosophiques."
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