Voltaire, during a stay that has lasted more than two years, has succeeded in learning the English language; he writes his notebooks in English and to the end of his life will be able to speak and write it fluently.
He has met such English men of letters as Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, and William Congreve, the philosopher George Berkeley, and Samuel Clarke, the theologian.
He has been presented at court, and he has dedicated his Henriade to Queen Caroline.
Though at first he had been patronized by Bolingbroke, who had returned from exile, it appears that he had quarreled with the Tory leader and turned to Sir Robert Walpole and the liberal Whigs.
He admires the liberalism of English institutions, though he is shocked by the partisan violence.
He envies English intrepidity in the discussion of religious and philosophic questions and is particularly interested in the Quakers.
He is convinced that it is because of their personal liberty that the English, notably Sir Isaac Newton and John Locke, were in the forefront of scientific thought.
He believes that this nation of merchants and sailors owed its victories over Louis XIV to its economic advantages.
He concludes that even in literature, France has something to learn from England; his experience of Shakespearean theater is overwhelming, and, however much he is shocked by the “barbarism” of the productions, he is struck by the energy of the characters and the dramatic force of the plots.
