and living in retirement, he wrote to a French lady on the subject thus:
"Your good authors are my principal resource: Voltaire especially charms me, with the exception of his impiety, with which he cannot help seasoning all that he writes, and which he would do better carefully to suppress, for one ought not to disturb established order. Let every one think as he will, or rather as he can, but let him not communicate his ideas if they are of a nature to trouble the peace of society."
What he said then, in 1768, Chesterfield had already said more than twenty years previously, writing to the younger Crebillon, a singular correspondent and a singular confidant in point of morality. Voltaire was under consideration, on account of his tragedy of Mahomet, and the daring ideas it contains:
"What I do not pardon him for, and that which is not deserving of pardon in him," wrote Chesterfield to Crebillon, "is his desire to propagate a doctrine as pernicious to domestic society as contrary to the common religion of all countries. I strongly doubt 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 trouble and disorder it might cause; but I am
