‘I am here,’ he wrote after Voltaire had gone, ’just as you left me, neither merrier nor sadder, nor richer nor poorer, enjoying perfect health, having everything that makes life agreeable, without love, without avarice, without ambition, and without envy; and as long as all this lasts I shall take the liberty to call myself a very happy man.’  This stoical Englishman was a merchant who eventually so far overcame his distaste both for ambition and for love, as to become first Ambassador at Constantinople and then Postmaster-General—­has anyone, before or since, ever held such a singular succession of offices?—­and to wind up by marrying, as we are intriguingly told, at the age of sixty-three, ‘the illegitimate daughter of General Churchill.’

We have another glimpse of Voltaire at Wandsworth in a curious document brought to light by M. Lanson.  Edward Higginson, an assistant master at a Quaker’s school there, remembered how the excitable Frenchman used to argue with him for hours in Latin on the subject of ‘water-baptism,’ until at last Higginson produced a text from St. Paul which seemed conclusive.

Some time after, Voltaire being at the Earl Temple’s seat in Fulham, with Pope and others such, in their conversation fell on the subject of water-baptism.  Voltaire assumed the part of a quaker, and at length came to mention that assertion of Paul.  They questioned there being such an assertion in all his writings; on which was a large wager laid, as near as I remember of L500:  and Voltaire, not retaining where it was, had one of the Earl’s horses, and came over the ferry from Fulham to Putney....  When I came he desired me to give him in writing the place where Paul said, he was not sent to baptize; which I presently did.  Then courteously taking his leave, he mounted and rode back—­

and, we must suppose, won his wager.

He seemed so taken with me (adds Higginson) as to offer to buy out the remainder of my time.  I told him I expected my master would be very exorbitant in his demand.  He said, let his demand be what it might, he would give it on condition I would yield to be his companion, keeping the same company, and I should always, in every respect, fare as he fared, wearing my clothes like his and of equal value:  telling me then plainly, he was a Deist; adding, so were most of the noblemen in France and in England; deriding the account given by the four Evangelists concerning the birth of Christ, and his miracles, etc., so far that I desired him to desist:  for I could not bear to hear my Saviour so reviled and spoken against.  Whereupon he seemed under a disappointment, and left me with some reluctance.

In London itself we catch fleeting visions of the eager gesticulating figure, hurrying out from his lodgings in Billiter Square—­’Belitery Square’ he calls it—­or at the sign of the ‘White Whigg’ in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, to go off to the funeral of Sir Isaac Newton