Imprisonment once over, he hastily quitted for England; shaking the dust of ungrateful France off his feet,--resolved to change his unhappy name, for one thing.
"Smelfungus, denouncing the torpid fatuity of Voltaire's Biographers, says he never met with one Frenchman, even of the Literary classes, who could tell him whence this name VOLTAIRE originated.

'A PETITE TERRE, small family estate,' they said; and sent him hunting through Topographies, far and wide, to no purpose.

Others answered, 'Volterra in Italy, some connection with Volterra,'-- and seemed even to know that this was but fatuity.

'In ever-talking, ever-printing Paris, is it as in Timbuctoo, then, which neither prints nor has anything to print ?' exclaims poor Smelfungus! He tells us at last, the name VOLTAIRE is a mere Anagram of AROUET L.J .-- you try it; A.R.O.U.E.T.L.J.=V.O.L.T.A.I.R.E and perceive at once, with obligations to Smelfungus, that he has settled this small matter for you, and that you can be silent upon it forever thenceforth.
"The anagram VOLTAIRE, gloomily settled in the Bastille in this manner, can be reckoned a very famous wide-sounding outer result of the Rohan impertinence and blackguardism; but it is not worth naming beside the inner intrinsic result, of banishing Voltaire to England at this point of his course.

England was full of Constitutionality and Freethinking; Tolands, Collinses, Wollastons, Bolingbrokes, still living; very free indeed.