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a blessing for the many; to confer and extend whichwas the duty of the enlightened. From that momenthe resolved to turn his chief endeavours to liberate hiscountry from priestly thraldom and antique prejudices.He felt his powers ; his industry was equal to his wit,and enabled him to use a vast variety of literary wea-pons. What his countrymen deemed poetry, the drama,history, philosophy, and all slighter compositions, ani-mated by wit and fancy, were to be put in use by turnsfor this great end. He published his “ Henriade ”while in England. It was better received than itdeserved ; and the profits he gained were the foundationof his future opulence. He wrote the tragedy of“ Brutus,” in which he imagined that he developed atruly republican spirit, and a love of liberty worthy ofthe Romans.
He spent three years in exile. He became eager toreturn to his country, to his friends, and to a publicwhich naturally understood him better, and couldsympathise more truly with him than the English .He ventured over to Paris . For a time his returnwas known only to a few friends, and he resided in anobscure quarter of .the capital. By degrees he tookcourage ; and the success of various tragedies which hebrought out raised him high in public favour, and pro-mised greater security for the future. He was regardedas the pride of France by the majority of his country-men. The priesthood—accustomed to persecute on themost frivolous pretexts of difference of opinion — whohad excited Louis XIV. to banish the Jansenists andsuppress their convents — to exile the virtuous Fenelon — to massacre the Huguenots , who had long wieldedreligion as a weapon of offence and destruction, andhad risen to a bad height of power by its misuse—heldhim in the sincerest hatred; while his attacks, excitedby, and founded on, their crimes, unveiled to the worlda scene which, had it not been rife with human suffer-ing, had been worthy only of ridicule. A couplet in“CEdipus” first awakened their suspicion and hatred:—c 2