Henriade. Chesterfield and Bolingbroke at once took him up and introduced him into high places.[1] Voltaire never forgot him nor the services which he had rendered; and one of the most charming lights thrown upon the end of Lord Chesterfield's career is in a letter from the old sage of Ferney to his friend of younger days, now grown old as himself. Chesterfield was always a great admirer of Voltaire's, though by no means a blind one:
"I strongly doubt," he writes, "whether it is permissible for a man to write against the worship and belief of his country, even if he be fully persuaded of its error, on account of the terrible trouble and disorder it might cause; but I am sure it is in no wise allowable to attack the foundations of true morality, and to break unnecessary bonds which are already too weak to keep men in the path of duty."
But differences upon points of morality and religion did not prevent his having an immense regard for Voltaire's genius.
There is yet the other transaction in which Lord Chesterfield was engaged, and it will probably be as long remembered against him as the letters—his ill-famed treatment of Dr. Johnson. It is too well known how Johnson came to his door, and how
- ↑ It is just possible, though I have nowhere seen it affirmed, that Voltaire and Chesterfield may have met, still earlier, in Holland. For in 1713 they were both there. Their attainments there were all but parallel, Voltaire succumbing to a fatal passion in 1713, which did not, to our knowledge, overtake Chesterfield till his second visit in 1729.
