There, he gave evidence of his poetic talent and satiric verve—the latter cost him a brief exile to the Netherlands in 1713 and periods of imprisonment in the Bastille in 1717–1718. In the years that followed, he issued an epic poem,
Henriade (1723), celebrating the tolerance of King Henry IV of France and entrenching his literary prestige on the Parisian intellectual scene. A romantic quarrel with the chevalier de Rohan in 1726 resulted in Voltaire's being exiled to England, where he lived until 1728, taking advantage of the circumstances to improve his English and absorb English culture, especially in the field of philosophy. During this period, he read William Shakespeare, deepened his knowledge of Locke and Isaac Newton, became familiar with Deism, and made the acquaintance of Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, John Gay, and doubtless George Berkeley. This sojourn also enabled him to take a detached perspective on French intellectual, political, and religious life.
On his return to France, he published Temple du goût (1733), which anticipates his praise for French classicism in 1751 in Siècle de Louis XIV; Épître à Uranie (1732), an early challenge to the notion of divine goodness; and the famous Lettres philosophiques (1734), which contain the essentials of the philosophical plan he subsequently sought to carry out.
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