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Bolingbroke and Voltaire—A Fictitious Influence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Norman L. Torrey
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Extract

No english deist has been more discussed in connection with Voltaire than Bolingbroke. For Bolingbroke was an important political figure, who had definite personal relations with Voltaire, and whose name appears with great frequency in Voltaire's works. Yet no other English deist was so falsely quoted by Voltaire, and no other important deist, with the possible exception of Thomas Chubb, seems to have had less direct influence on the course of Voltaire's deistic criticism. Critics have spoken so long of Bolingbroke as master and of Voltaire as pupil that a tradition has been established, for which there seems to be no foundation in fact.

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Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 42 , Issue 3 , September 1927, pp. 788 - 797
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1927

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References

1 Walter Sichel: Bolingbroke and his Times (London, 1901); II, 167.

2 Desnoiresterres, La jeunesse de Voltaire (Paris, 1867), p. 369.

3 Œuvres (ed. Moland) XXII, 18-22. Cf. A. Ballantyne, Voltaire's Visit to England, p. 35.

4 Chase, The Young Voltaire (New York, 1926), p. 94.

5 Foulet, Correspondance de Voltaire (Paris, 1913), p. 60. Foulet suggests the reading “simple” for “single.”

6 But to the mind's eye another scene arises. Sichel; II, 216. Sichel's imagination even leads him to see Voltaire drinking with effusion.

7 Foulet, op. cit., p. 165.

8 Op. cit., p. 329.

9 Voltaire, Montesquieu and Rousseau in England (London, 1908), p. 61.

10 Op. cit., pp. 61, 62.

11 Op. cit., I, 2.

12 A. S. Hurn, Thèse pour le Doctorat d'Université, Paris, 1915.

13 Cf. Voltaire Œuvres (Moland edition), XX, 90; XL, 193; XXXIX, 569, for adverse criticisms on Bolingbroke's works.

14 Joseph Hahn, Voltaire's Stellung zur Frage der menschlichen Freiheit in ihrem Verhältnis zu Locke und Collins (Borna-Leipzig, 1905).

15 The Works of Lord Bolingbroke (Philadelphia, 1841), IV, 322.

16 XXVIII, 535, 536. Cf. XVII, 584.

17 Op. cit., III, 377. Cf. Ballantyne, op. cit., p. 91.

18 Op. cit., III, 20.

19 Ibid.

20 XXVI, 204, 208.

21 See the chapter on Peter Annet in my thesis, The English Critical Deists and their Influence on Voltaire, 1926, Harvard University Library.

22 Op. cit., p. 96 and n. 3.

23 Op. cit., III, 36.

24 Voltaire's most frequent references to Bolingbroke's criticisms are, nevertheless, on this head. Cf. table de matiêres, Moland ed. His certain source was Tindal's Christianity as Old as Creation (London, 1730).

25 Op. cit., III, 470.

26 XXVI, 488.

27 XXXI, 113.

28 XXVI, 119.

29 XXVI, 202, 204, 208, 217, 218, 236, 238, etc.