A History of the Modern World | Your holiness will therefore give me leave to lay at your feet both the piece and the author of it, and humbly to request your protection of the one, and your benediction upon the other; in hopes of which, with the profoundest reverence, I kiss your sacred feet |
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An extract from the letter• | Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 5th ed, 1954; "Cornu" article• Sidetracks: explorations of a romantic biographer |
Voltaire, Letter to Benedict XIV written in Paris on 17 August 1745: Your holiness will pardon the liberty taken by one of the lowest of the faithful, though a zealous admirer of virtue, of submitting to the head of the true religion this performance, written in opposition to the founder of a false and barbarous sect.
534-5 of the review "Modern language notes", Johns Hopkins Press, 1943, Baltimore | |
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