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In 1726 he was, through the despotic and most unjust action of a powerful noble, again put in the Bastille, and was then allowed to exchange that fortress for the fogs of London. Up to this time he had no idea of attacking Church or State. He had, in 1722, written a letter on religion—in the vein, apparently, of some of Swinburne’s unpublished juvenilia—which a distinguished writer of the time, to whom he read it, described as “making his hair stand on end”; it was, however, not intended for circulation. But experience of England, for which he contracted a passionate admiration, and which (as Mr. Churton Collins has shown) he studied profoundly, sobered him with a high and serious purpose. He met all the brilliant writers of that age in England, and took a great interest in the religious controversy which raged over Anthony Collins’s Discourse. He returned to France in 1729, vowing to win for it the liberty and enlightenment he had enjoyed in England. The splendid English Letters which he wrote with that aim, and was afraid to publish, leaked out in 1734. The book was burned by the hangman, and he had to retire once more, for letting France know how enlightened England was in the days of George I.