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Excerpt from Voltaire's Essay on Epic Poetry: A Study and an Edition Lettres philosophiques are to this edition, unless otherwise Specified. 3 Ballantyne, Voltaire's Visit to England, pp. 123 ff. Written by a Frenchman who had been in England but a year and a half and at a period when few Frenchmen learned English, their most obvious interest is linguistic. Less evident but in reality more important than the question of the language is that of the content. In this respect the Essay on the Civil Wars, a brief historical treatise, although of considerable interest, has naturally less to offer. Furthermore it can be read in the French translation in Voltaire's works, whereas the translation of the Essay on Epic Poetry has, like the English original, become very rare. The latter is therefore the more interesting of the two essays and it is to it that our discussion will be confined. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.