What Voltaire Said
SIR,—In his Spectator's Notebook of your last two issues Janus has raised an interesting point about the attribution to Voltaire of a quotation which, although very close in sense, he worded incorrectly. This is generally quoted: " I do not agree with a word you say" (or, "1 dis- approve of what you say "), "but I will defend to the death your right to say it." However, Janus is justified in his doubt as to whether Voltaire ever did use it, and correct in his information that it was first attributed to him by S. G. Tallentyre (E. Beatrice Hall) in her book The Friends oJ Voltaire. In this book the remark was enclosed in quotation marks, and was therefore supposed to have been written in a letter to Helvitius ; but it does not occur in any of the letters in question which have ever been published. The nearest approach to it which I have come across in Voltaire occurs in his Oktionnaire Philosophique, and may well have been paraphrased by Beatrice Hall. In it she is referring to Helvitius, whom he greatly admired: " l'aimais l'auteur du livre De l'Esprit... . Mais je n'ai jamais approuve iii les erreurs de son !lyre, ni les veriies•triviales qu'il &bite avec em phase. lai pris son part haute- ment quand des homilies absurdes ton: condanine pour ces Writes meines."
It interested me particularly because it was the only famous quotation of Voltaire I knew before reading him which f did not come across in any of his works. It took .4ne some weeks to clear up the mystery to
[Janus writes: I quoted the version given by Lord Simon in the House of Lords.]
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