Note 789 — Chapter V
Reading edition
‘Quel est aujourd'hui parmi nous l'homme de lettres de quelque mérite qui n'ait éprouvé plus ou moins les fureurs de la calomnie et de la persécution?’ etc. Grimm, Corresp. vol. v. p. 451. This was written in 1767, and during more than forty years previously we find similar expressions; the earliest I have met with being in a letter to Thiriot, in 1723, in which Voltaire says (Œuvres, vol. lvi. p. 94), ‘la sévérité devient plus grande de jour en jour dans l'inquisition de la librairie.’ For other instances, see his letter to De Formont, pp. 423–425, also vol. lvii. pp. 144, 351, vol. lviii. p. 222; his Lettres inédites, vol. i. p. 547; Mém. de Diderot, vol. ii. p. 215; Letters of Eminent Persons to Hume, pp. 14, 15.