A most brilliant, swift, far-glancing young man, disposed to make himself generally agreeable.
For the rest, his wonder, we can see, was kept awake; wonder readily inclining, in his circumstances, towards admiration.

The stereotype figure of the Englishman, always the same, which turns up in Voltaire's WORKS, is worth noting in this respect.

A rugged surly kind of fellow, much-enduring, not intrinsically bad; splenetic without complaint, standing oddly inexpugnable in that natural stoicism of his; taciturn, yet with strange flashes of speech in him now and then, something which goes beyond laughter and articulate logic, and is the taciturn elixir of these two, what they call 'humor' in their dialect: this is pretty much the REVERSE of Voltaire's own self, and therefore all the welcomer to him; delineated always with a kind of mockery, but with evident love.
What excellences are in England, thought Voltaire; no Bastille in it, for one thing! Newton's Philosophy annihilated the vortexes of Descartes for him; Locke's Toleration is very grand (especially if all is uncertain, and YOU are in the minority); then Collins, Wollaston and Company,--no vile Jesuits here, strong in their mendacious mal-odorous stupidity, despicablest yet most dangerous of creatures, to check freedom of thought! Illustrious Mr.Pope, of the _Essay on Man,_ surely he is admirable; as are Pericles Bolingbroke, and many others.

Even Bolingbroke's high-lacquered brass is gold to this young French friend of his .-- Through all which admirations and exaggerations the progress of the young man, toward certain very serious attainments and achievements, is conceivable enough.
"One other man, who ought to be mentioned in the Biographies, I find Voltaire to have made acquaintance with, in England: a German M.Fabrice, one of several Brothers called Fabrice or Fabricius,--concerning whom, how he had been at Bender, and how Voltaire picked CHARLES DOUSE from the memory of him, there was already mention.
The same Fabrice who held poor George I.in his arms while they drove, galloping, to Osnabriick, that night, IN EXTREMIS:--not needing mention again.

The following is more to the point.
"Voltaire, among his multifarious studies while in England, did not forget that of economics: his Poem LA LIGUE,--surreptitiously printed, three years since, under that title (one Desfontaines, a hungry Ex-Jesuit, the perpetrator), [1723, VIE, par T.J.D.V.