Edward Bruce Hamley

“ The state of things, however, against which he contended, did not exist in England. With the degree of freedom of thought to which we had then attained, and which contented the nation, we, all through George III.'s reign, feared tyranny less than licence, and superstition less than free-thinking. Deism was in disgrace: it threw a dark shadow on the repute of writers of the highest rank, such as Hume and Gibbon; and to lesser men the imputation of it was extinction. In these days opinion, far more tolerant, would probably not be very severe on Voltaire ”

“ This state of things was not, of course, pleasing to the French, who, indeed, were in the lowest stage of misery from the enormous taxes, which were the result of constant extravagance and war; but so powerful was the habit of submission, acquired in a reign already of unusual length, and so imposing the authority and the personal bearing of the old monarch, that, though the people manifested a natural if somewhat indecent joy when he died in 1715, he remained to the last every inch a king. ”

“ In his own time, the idea of Voltaire which had possession of the English mind was formed chiefly from the attacks that he directed against religion. He was regarded as a malignant spirit, subversive and destructive; a mocker at things sacred, things serious, and generally all things good. Johnson, in a conversation with Boswell, probably did not much exaggerate the prejudice against him. "Rousseau, sir, is a very bad man. ”