12 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC MEN.

works or letters of the extreme sufferings which solitaryand unemployed confinement must have inflicted on aman as vivacious, sensitive, and restless — delicate inhealth, and vehement in temper — as Voltaire , except inthe deep terror with which he regarded the possibilityof a second imprisonment. Thrown back on the storesof his own mind, his latest impressions were those ofthe conversations at St. Ange with the elder Cau-martin, and the enthusiasm excited for Henri IV. andhis contemporaries. The idea of an epic on this subjectsuggested itself. It flattered his honest pride to raise amonument of glory to the French nation in the form ofa national poem, while he was the victim of the govern-ment ; his literary vanity was enticed by the idea ofsending his name down to posterity as the author Of aFrench epic, a work hitherto unattempted in verse.He composed the first two cantos in his dungeon, inhis mind, committing them memory ; and it was hisboast that, in all his subsequent improvements, henever changed a word in the second canto. He wasprouder, in after life, of being the author of the “ Henri-ade ” than of any other production. His contemporariesregarded it with admiration ; even our own country-man, lord Chesterfield, declares it the best epic in anylanguage, simply because, according to the reasons hegives, it is the most devoid of imagination.

Epic poetry, in its essence, is the greatest achievementof the human intellect. It takes a subject of universalinterest ; it exalts it by solemn and sacred sentiments,and adorns it with sublime and beautiful imagery, thuslifting it above humanity into something divine. Whilethe mind of man enjoys the attribute of being able totincture its earthly ideas with the glory of somethinggreater than itself in its every day guise, which it canonly seize by snatches, and embody through the exer-tion of a power granted only to the favoured few, whomwe name great poets, — and while it can exercise thispower in giving grandeur to a narration of loftyand sublime incidents, — while this can be done by