"It seems to me," said George Eliot, "much better to read a man's own writings, than to read what others say about him, especially when the man is first-rate and the others third-rate." In these words lie perhaps the best reason for a translation of the Letters of Voltaire. S. G. Tallentyre is the author of The Life of Mirabeau, The Life of Voltaire, and The Friends of Voltaire.