I should think myself richer in the possession of your Works than in that of all the transient goods of Fortune.

These the same chance grants and takes away: your Works one can make one's own by means of memory, so that they last us whilst it lasts.

Knowing how weak my own memory is, I am in the highest degree select in what I trust to it.
"If Poetry were what it was before your appearance, a strumming of wearisome idyls, insipid eclogues, tuneful nothings, I should renounce it forever:" but in your hands it becomes ennobled; a melodious "course of morals; worthy of the admiration and the study of cultivated minds (DES HONNETES GENS).

You"-- in fine, "you inspire the ambition to follow in your footsteps.

But I, how often have I said to myself: 'MALHEUREUX, throw down a burden which is above thy strength! One cannot imitate Voltaire, without being Voltaire!' "It is in such moments that I have felt how small are those advantages of birth, those vapors of grandeur, with which vanity would solace us! They amount to little, properly to nothing (POUR MIEUX DIRE, RIEN).
Nature, when she pleases, forms a great soul, endowed with faculties that can advance the Arts and Sciences; and it is the part of Princes to recompense his noble toils.