Norwich bulletin., 1922-04-13
FAMOUS MEN.
VoLTARa E

It was Sunday morning, the last day | of May in 177S. Voltarie, the great | French philosopher and author, lay | dead in the house of Villette on the | banks of the Seine, nor far from the i spot on which he was born in 1894. It | was the passing away of life that | was tempestuous through most of it's l eighty four years.
 VoItaries work was done. His gen. erous scheme of a. national dictionary since so ably carried out in France and in the United States and else where, was not the least of his ser vices to civilization, and it was his last. He was aware that the French Academy had given a consent to his project, and he could not quite avoid the reflection that a man eighty-three years old was not certain to witness i it's completion.
 So at this advanced age, Voltarie set about preparing an elaborate discourse upon the subject, to read to the Acad- emy, that should convince the skepti- cal and rouse the lethargic; an essay which, by exhibiting all the charms and utilities of such a work, could prevent, in any case it's abandonment.
 In the sixty three years of Voltaire's | literary career he had put the French | language to every strain of which 1t l is capable, from epigram to tragedy from the easiest narrative to the new 1 est science. He knew it in its strength i and in it's weakness, it's wealth and its poverty; he knew it as no other man has ever known any language. Hence, he must have realized how stupen- i ous a task it was that lay before one of his years. Indeed, his strength was gone before he had appeased his crav- ing to accomplish. He resorted then to the most destructive of all stimu
 lants to jaded narves-a .stimulabt more deadly than alcohol to a spent student. In the coure of long eve ming, followed a day of toll, he drank much coffee.
 Voitaire kept at his task until late
 at night and drank in all "ten or twelve cups of coffee" When at last
 he went to bed he could not sleep and he never again enjoyed a sleep that
 was natural. The special session of the
 academy, appointed to arrange further
 details of the new scheme, was post
 poned on account of the feverish con-
 dition that this indulgence brought
 on. He was still able to get about,
 and even to walk out no one suppos-
 ing that his symptoms were of a se- rious nature. Had he not been an in
 valid always? Had he not at eighty three recovered from a broken blood
 vessel?
 1 VoItaire's pen was not yet quite at
 rest. His last epigram was proba bly, written just after this attack. His former protege, Gretry, had produced
 his opera of Midas" first at court,
 where it failed, and three weeks af- 5 lter, in May 1878, it was performed in l Paris where it succeeded.
 The last verses that Voltaire wrote
 were his poetic response to the verses Q of the Abbe Attaignant. which bears the date. Paris May IS, ITS. For four
 teen more days the philosopher strug-
 gled with death. Belle -et -Bonne, who |, never left his bedside during these i, last days, said to Lady Morgan 1T 7 Paris forty years, afterwards as sht
 did to everyone with whom she con
 yersed on the subject. '"To his las L moment everything he said and die X breathed benevolence and goodness O. T his character; all announced in hin 2 tranquility, peace and resignation"
 The surgeons who performed the all
 topsy on the body of Voltaire sait n they never saw man better consti S s1A"it tiS was, al4u euuS ne cOulS e struggle three weeks against maladie
 that would have killed other men in
 few days It was their opinion tha is he might have lived and labored fo ls several years longer, and perhap Id equahed the century of Fontanelle, bu le for. the excitement attendant upo
 his dictionary project and the oppo
 sition he had met with from promi ,e nent members of the Academy " Voltaire's body, which was at frs i, carried away from Paris by his neph I CIV, Abbe Mignot, was afterward tax % en to the Pantheon, where it no,
 rests.