Bolingbroke finely said of Marlborough: “He was so great a man that I forget his errors.” One can as justly say the same of Voltaire. I have scant¹ sympathy with those who, dealing² with great men, seek every opportunity of bringing them down to the common level. Voltaire was by no means a faultless character. He was far indeed from being an immaculate hero: he had the failings of his age and of his training. But they form no essential part of his work. How much has been made of the coarseness and immorality⁴ of Luther by men like Father Anderdon! All men have the defects of their qualities. Condorcet, in his Life of Voltaire, has placed on record this just criticism: “The happy qualities of Voltaire were often obscured and distorted by a natural mobility⁵, aggravated⁶ by the habit of writing tragedies. He passed in a moment from anger to sympathetic emotion; from indignation to pleasantry. His passions, naturally violent, sometimes transported him too far; and his excessive mobility deprived him of the advantages ordinarily attached to passionate⁷ tempers—firmness in conduct—courage which no terrors can withhold⁸ from action, and which no dangers, anticipated beforehand, can shake by their actual presence. Voltaire has often been seen to expose himself rashly to the storm—seldom to meet it with fortitude⁹. These alternations of audacity¹⁰ and weakness have often afflicted¹¹ his friends, and prepared unworthy triumphs for his envenomed enemies.”