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The volume sketches the subject’s life from childhood and education through episodes of imprisonment, exile, foreign sojourns, and domestic retreats, charting the production of major writings and the circumstances of his later years while offering contemporary tributes and character assessments. It pairs the biographical narrative with curated selections of his prose and verse that illustrate recurring concerns: history and politics, war and population, critiques of religious authority and superstition, satire and moral reflection, and brief detached aphorisms. Together the sketches and extracts portray a public career devoted to reason, toleration, and literary engagement.
I abandon to the declaimer Bossuet the politics of the Kings of Judah and Samaria, who only understood assassination, beginning with their King David (who took to the trade of brigand to make himself king, and assassinated Uriah when he was his master); and to wise Solomon, who began by assassinating Adonijah, his own brother, at the foot of the altar. I am tired of the absurd pedantry which consecrates the history of such a people to the instruction of children.—l'A.B.C.