Voltaire left France, reached London in August 1726, went as a guest to the house of a rich merchant at Wandsworth, and remained three years in this country, from thirty-two to thirty-five. He was here when George I. died, and George II. became king. He published here his Henriade. He wrote here his "History of Charles XII." He read "Gulliver's Travels" as a new book, and might have been present at the first night of The Beggar's Opera. He was here when Sir Isaac Newton died.
In 1731, Voltaire published at Rouen the Lettres sur les Anglais, which appeared in England in 1733 in the volume from which they are here reprinted.
Voltaire's Oedipe was played with success in November 1718. A few months later, he was again banished from Paris and finished the Henriade in his retirement, as well as another play, Artemise, which was acted in February 1720. Other plays followed. In December 1721, Voltaire visited Lord Bolingbroke, who was then an exile from England, at the Chateau of La Source. There was now constant literary activity. From July to October 1722, Voltaire visited Holland with Madame de Rupelmonde. After a serious attack of smallpox in November 1723, Voltaire was active as a poet at the Court. He was then in receipt of a pension of two thousand livres from the king and had inherited more than twice as much by the death of his father in January 1722. But in December 1725, a quarrel, fastened upon him by the Chevalier de Rohan, who had him waylaid and beaten, caused him to send a challenge. For this, he was arrested and lodged once more, in April 1726, in the Bastille. There he was detained a month, and his first act when he was released was to ask for a passport to England.
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