Voltaire as Correspondent
† by JEAN SEZNEC
Fellow of All Souls, and Marshal Foch Professor of French Literature in the University of Oxford
Recently Dr. Theodore Besterman published the one-hundred-and-fourth, and last, volume of his monumental edition of the correspondence of Voltaire. Professor Seznec considers what effect this tremendous achievement of scholarship has had on our picture of Voltaire as the centre of the Enlightenment's communications network. And he argues that far from being an archaic figure in the world of modern specialisation, Voltaire is still an admirable exemplar of graceful and civilised common sense. What we need today is a ' gigantic Voltaire.'