THE LIFE OF VOLTAIRE.

THE life of Voltaire should necessarily be the history of the progress of the arts as promoted by his genius, of the power which he exercised over the opinions of his age, and of the long war which in his youth he declared against prejudice, and which he maintained to the day of his death.

When the influence of a philosopher ex­tends itself to the multitude, when it is sudden and felt at each instant of his life, he is indebted for this influence to his charac­ter, to his mode of observation, and to his conduct, as much as to his works. Every cir­cumstance relating to such a man promotes the study of the human mind; with which we cannot hope to become acquainted, if we do not observe its properties as they exist [Page 4] in those to whom Nature has been prodigal of her riches and her power, and if we do not seek in such minds what they possess in common with others, and in what they are distinguished. Man is in general indebted for his opinions, and even for his passions, and his character, to those by whom he is surrounded; he derives them from the laws, the prejudices of his country, as the plant receives nutriment from the soil and the elements. When we contemplate the vul­gar mind, we discover the power to which we are subject by nature, (or habit;) but not the secret of internal strength, nor the laws of the human understanding.

François Marie Arouet, who by assuming the name of Voltaire has rendered it so fa­mous, was born at Chatenay, on the 20th of February, 1694, and was baptized at Paris, in the church of St. Andre-des-Ares, on the 22d of November in the same year. His excessive weakness was the cause of this delay, which, during life, occasioned doubts concerning the place and time of his birth. Fontenelle, in like manner, was obliged to be privately baptized, because his life was despaired of, from the feebleness of his in­fancy. It is somewhat singular that these two men, both so famous in this age, whose lives and understandings were each of such [Page 5] long duration, should mutually be born languid and feeble.

The father of M. de Voltaire exercised the office of treasurer to the chamber of accounts; his mother, Marguerite d'Au­mart, was of a noble family of Poitou. Their son has been reproached for having taken the name of Voltaire: that is, for having followed a custom at that time gene­rally practised by the rich citizens and young­er sons, who, leaving the family name to the heir, assumed that of a fieif, or perhaps of a country house. His birth was questioned in numerous libels. His enemies, among men of literature, seemed to fear that the fashionable world would too readily sacri­fice its prejudices to the pleasure found in his society, and the admiration his talents inspired, and that a man of letters should be treated with too much equality. Such reproaches did him honour; malignity does not attack the birth of a man of literature, but from a secret consciousness, which it cannot stifle, that it is wholly unable to diminish his personal fame.

The fortune which M. Arouet the father enjoyed was doubly advantageous to his son; it procured him the advantages of educa­tion, without which genius never attains those heights to which it might otherwise [Page 6] arive. If we examine modern history, we shall find that all men of the first order, all those whose works have approached per­fection, had not to repair the defects of education.

Nor was the advantage of being born to an independent fortune less inestimable. M. de Voltaire never felt the misery of being obliged to abandon his liberty that he might procure subsistence; to subject his genius to labour, which the necessity of living en­forced; nor to flatter the prejudices, or the passions, of a patron. His mind was not enslaved by such habitual fears, which not only impede invention, but impress the character of incertitude and feebleness on every effort of the imagination. His youth, undisturbed by the doubts and fears of pov­erty, did not expose him to the danger of contracting that servile timidity which in­spires the weak mind with habitual depen­dence; or that acrid, restless, and suspicious irritability which is an infallible consequence to the man of genius, when contending be­tween that dependence to which he is by necessity subjected, and that freedom which the sublime thoughts by which he is occu­pied demand.

The young Arouet was sent to the Jesu­ists' college, where the sons of the first [Page 7] nobility, except those of the Jansenists, re­ceive their education. The Jansenists, who were hated at court, were seldom seen among men who, being at that time oblig­ed by custom to choose a religion which they did not understand, naturally adopted that which best could promote their temporal interest. The professors of rhetoric, under whom he was placed, were Father Porée and Father Jay: the first, being a man of understanding, and of a good heart, dis­covered the seeds of a future greatness in his scholar; and the latter, struck with the boldness of his opinions and the indepen­dence of his mind, predicted that he would become the apostle of deism in France; both of which prophecies were verified by time.

When he left college, he again found the Abbé de Châteauneuf, his god-father and the friend of his mother, an intimate at home. The Abbé was one of those men who, having entered into the ecclesiastic estate from complaisance, or from momenta­ry ambition not native to their mind, after­wards sacrifice fortune and sacerdotal digni­ties to the love of living at large, being unable continually to wear the musk of hypocrisy.

The Abbé de Châteauneuf was intimate [Page 8] with Ninon de l'Enclos, whom, for her pro­bity, her understanding, and her freedom of thought, he long had pardoned in des­pight of the somewhat notorious adventures her youth. The fashionable world were pleased that she had refused the invitation of her former friend, Madame de Mainte­non, who had offered to invite her to court, on condition that she would become a de­votee. The Abbé de Châteauneuf had pre­sented Voltaire to Ninon. Though but a boy, he already was a poet; already began to teize his Jansenist brother by his trifling epigrams, and to please himself with reci­ting the Moïsade of Rousseau.

Ninon had taken delight in the pupil of her friend, and had left him by will 2000 livres (about 80 guineas) to purchase books. Thus was he taught, by fortunate circum­stances, even in infancy and before his un­derstanding was formed, to regard study and labours of the mind as pleasing and ho­nourable employments; thus did he learn, by the society of people superior to vulgar opinions, that the mind of man is born free, and that he has a right to judge whatever he can comprehend; while, by a cowardly condescension to prejudice, the common course of education presents nothing to childhood but the disgraceful marks of ser­vitude.

[Page 9]Hypocrisy and intolerance were predomi­nant at the court of Louis the XIVth. which was much more seriously occupied in affect­ing the ruin of Jansenism than in relieving the sufferings of the people. The report of his incredulity had occasioned Catinat to lose the confidence which was due to his vir­tues and his abilities for war. De Ven­dôme was reproached with occasionally ne­glecting mass; and the success of the here­tic Marlborough, and the infidel Eugene, was attributed to his want of devotion. This hypocrisy had disgusted those whom it could not corrupt; and, in aversion to the austerities of Versailles, the most fashionable societies of Paris affected to carry their li­berty and the love of pleasure even to licen­tiousness.

The Abbé de Châteauneuf introduced the young Voltaire to these societies, and par­ticularly to the company of the Duke de Sul­ly, the Marquis de la Fare, the Abbé Servien, the Abbé de Chaulieu, and the Abbé Court­in; who were often joined by the Prince de Conti, and the grand Prior de Vendôme.

M. Arouet imagined his son was ruined, when he was told that he wrote poetry and frequented the society of people of fashion. He wished to make him a judge, and saw him employed on a tragedy. This family [Page 10] quarrel ended by sending the young Voltaire to the Marquis de Châuteauneuf, the French ambassador in Holland.

His exile was not of long duration. Ma­dame du Noyer, who had fled thither with her two daughters rather to avoid her hus­band than from zeal for the protestant reli­gion, was then at the Hague, where she li­ved by intrigues and libels, and proved from her conduct that she did not go thither in search of liberty of conscience.

M. de Voltaire became enamoured of one of her daughters; and the mother, find­ing that the only advantage she could gain from his attachment was that of making it public, carried her complaints to the ambas­sador, who forbade his young dependent to continue his visits to Mademoiselle du Noyer; and sent him back to his family for having disobeyed his orders.

Madame du Noyer failed not to print this story with the Letters of the young Arouet to her daughter, hoping that this already well known name would promote the sale of her book; and vaunted of her maternal severity and delicacy in the very libel in which she proclaimed her daughter's dishonour.

The fine feelings of the author of Zaïre and Tancrede are not discoverable in these [Page 11] letters. The sensations of impassioned youth are strong, but their gradations it is unable to distinguish; it neither can select those strong and rapid traits which characterize passion, nor find terms which paint its feel­ings to the imagination, and infuse them in­to the soul of the reader; while devoured by love, the most sincere and the most ar­dent, it is apparently dull, cold, or extra­vagant. The talent of painting the passions for the theatre appears to be one of the last which discovers itself in poets. Racine had given no tokens of it either in Les Frère [...] Ennemis, or in Alexandre; and Brutus pre­ceded Zaïre. Not only, must the passions have been felt before they can be described, but their emotions and effects must have been remarked when they have ceased to lord it over the mind, and when they exist only in the recollection. The heart is sufficient to make us sensible of their existence; but, to express them with energy and truth, the soul must hav [...] long been under their influ­ence, and experience must have been im­proved by reflexion.

The youth, when returned to Paris, soon forgot his love; but he did not forget to use every effortt hat he might wrest a young and estimable woman, who was natively virtu­ous, from a corrupt and intriguing mother. [Page 12] He employed the zeal of Proselytism ^*. He was aided by several bishops, and even jesu­its. The project failed, but Voltaire had afterward the good fortune to be of service to Mademoiselle du Noyer, when she had married the Baron de Vinterfeld.

His father, however, finding him persist in writing poetry, and living at large, for­bade him his house. The most submissive letters made no impression on him; the son even asked permission to go to America, pro­vided that before his departure he might but be permitted to kneel at his feet; but there was no choice, he must determine not to depart for America, but to bind himself to an attorney. He did not here remain long; M. de Caumartin, the friend of M. Arouet, pitied the fate of his son, and requested per­mission to take him to St. Ange; where, removed from those societies which alarmed paternal affection, he might reflect on, and make choice of a profession. Here he met with Caumartin, the elder, a respectable old man, who was passionately fond of Hen­ry the IVth, and Sully, at that time too much forgotten by the nation. Caumartin [Page 13] had been intimate with the best informed men of the reign of Louis the XIVth, and was acquainted with the most secret anec­dotes, such as they really happened. These he took a pleasure to recount, and Voltaire returned from St. Ange, occupied by the project of writing an epic poem, of which Henry the IVth, should be the hero, and ardently desirous of studying the History of France. To this journey are we indebted for the Henriade, and the age of Louis XIV.

The death of this monarch was recent; the people, of whom he long had been the idol, the very people who had pardoned his profusion, his wars, and his despotism, and had applauded his persecution of the pro­testants, insulted his memory by testifying in­decent joy. A bull, obtained from Rome against a book of devotion, had occasioned the Parisians to forget that glory of which they so long had been enamoured. Satires on the memory of Louis the Great were as numerous as eulogies had been during his life. Voltaire being accused of having written one of these satires, was sent to the bastile. The poem ended with the following line: ‘J'ai vu c [...]s maux, et je n'ai pas vingt ans ^*.’ Voltaire was then upwards of two and twenty, [Page 14] and the police took his conformity of age to be proof sufficient to deprive him of his liberty.

It was in the bastile that the young poet sketched his poem of the League, corrected his tragedy of Oedipus, which he had begun long before, and wrote some merry verses on the misfortune of being there a prisoner. The regent Duke of Orleans, being inform­ed of his innocence, restored him to free­dom, and granted him a recompense.

"I thank your royal highness," said Vol­taire, "for having provided me with food; but I hope you will not, hereafter, trouble yourself concerning my lodging."

The tragedy of Oedipus was performed in 1718. The author had hitherto been known only by his fugitive pieces, by some epistles which breathed the spirit of Chau­lieu, but written more correctly, and by an ode which had vainly contended for the prize bestowed by the French academy; to this a ridiculous piece written by the Abbé du Jarri had been preferred. The theme pro­posed by the academy was the decoration of the altar of Notre Dame; for Louis the XIVth, after having reigned seventy years, recollected it was time to perform the pro­mise of Louis the XIIIth. Thus was the sub­ject of the first serious poem, written by Vol­taire, [Page 15] devotion. Possessed of native and un­erring taste, he would not mingle the passi­on of love with a tale so horrid as that of Oedipus; and had been daring enough to present his piece to the theatre without ha­ving paid this tribute to custom. But it was rejected. The assembled comedians took it amiss that the author should dare to dispute their judgment. "The young man well deserves," said Dufresne, "as a pu­nishment for his pride, that his tragedy should be played with the long vile scene which he has translated from Sophocles."

Voltaire was obliged to cede, and to in­sert a whole episode of love. The piece was applauded, though in despight of the episode; and the long vile scene from So­phocles insured its success. La Motto, who was at that time the first among men of let­ters, said in his approbation that his tragedy gave promise of a worthy sucessor to Cor­neille and Racine; and the homage thus rendered by a rival, whose fame was estab­lished, and who had reason to fear he might see himself surpassed, must forever do ho­nour to the character of La Motte.

But Voltaire, proclaimed a man of genius and a philosopher to a croud of inferior au­thors and fanatics of all sects, even then gained a combination of enemies, whom the [Page 16] rising generations of sixty years have conti­nued to supply, and who often have molest­ed his long and glorious career. The fol­lowing celebrated lines—

were the first signal of a war, which not even the death of Voltaire could extinguish.

At one of the representations of Oedipus, Voltaire appeared on the stage, bearing up the train of the high priest. The Marchioness de Villars asked who was that young man who wished the piece might be condemned; she was told it was the author. This thought­less act, which spoke a man so superior to the trifling anxieties of self-love, made the marchioness desirous of his acquaint­ance. Voltaire, being admitted her visitor, conceived a passion for her, the first, and the most serious he ever felt, He was unsuc­cessful; and was for a considerable time diverted from study, which had already be­come necessary to his existence. He never, afterwards, mentioned this subject but with a sensation of regret, and almost of re­morse.

[Page 17]Having freed himself from his passion, he continued the Henriade; and wrote the tragedy of Artémire. An actress, whom he had formed, and who was at once his mistress and his pupil, played the principal character. The public, who had done jus­tice to Oedipus, was (to say the least) severe to Artémire. This is a common consequence of success; nor is secret aversion for ac­knowledged superiority the only cause, tho' this aversion has the art to profit by a na­tural feeling which renders us more difficult to be pleased in proportion as we have more to hope.

This tragedy was of no other value to Voltaire than that of obtaining permission for him to return to Paris, whence he had been banished by his intimacy with the en­emies of the regent, and among others with the Duke de Richelieu and the famous Baron de Gortz. Thus did this ambitious man, whose vast projects included all Europe, and threatened to overturn its governments, choose a young poet for his friend and almost for his confident. Men of genius seek for, and at once know each other; they have a common language, which they alone can speak and understand.

In 1722, Voltaire accompanied Madame de Rupelmonde into Holland. He was desi­rous, [Page 18] at Brussels, of being acquainted with Rousseau, whose misfortunes he pitied, and whose poetic talent he esteemed. The love of his art was too powerful for that just contempt which he ought to have conceived for the character of Rousseau. Voltaire consulted him on his Poem on the League; and read his Epistle to Urania to him, writ­ten for Madame de Rupelmonde. This poem was the first monument of his freedom of thinking, and of his talent of treating on moral and metaphysical subjects in verse, and of rendering them popular.

Rousseau, on his part, read an Ode ad­dressed to Posterity, which Voltaire, as it is pretended, then told him would never arrive at the place to which it was addressed. He likewise read the Judgment of Pluto, which was as quickly forgotten as the ode. The two poets parted irreconcileable foes. Rousseau violently attacked Voltaire, who continued patiently to suffer during fifteen years. It is astonishing to think that the author of so many licentious epigrams, in which the clergy were continually made the subject of ridicule and opprobium, should seriously assign the thoughtless behaviour of Voltaire during mass and his Epistle to Ura­nia as the cause of his hatred. But Rousseau had assumed the mask of devotion, which [Page 19] was then an honourable asylum for such as had suffered in the world's opinion: a safe and commodious asylum which philosophy, among the other evils of which it is accused, has unfortunately, for hypocrites, eternally closed.

In 1724, Voltaire presented the world with Mariamne, which was but Artémire under new names, but with a less compli­cated and less romantic fable. It was writ­ten in the very style of Racine, and was forty times performed. In his preface, the author opposed the opinion of La Motte, who, possessed of much understanding and reason, but little sensible of the charms of harmony, discovered no other merit in ver­sification than that of difficulties overcome; nor any thing more than a formal custom, in poetry, invented to ease the memory, and to which habit alone had attributed charms. In his letters, printed at the end of Oedipus, he had before combated the opinions of the same poet, who regarded the observance of the three Unities as another prejudice.

We ought to think ourselves obliged to those who, like La Motte, dare to oppose common and received opinions. In order to defend ancient rules, they must necessa­rily be examined; and if received opinions, on examination, be found true, we enjoy [Page 20] the advantage of believing that from reason to which we had previously given our assent from habit; if false, the world is then freed from an error.

It is no uncommon thing, however, for men to be angry at those who oblige them to scrutinize what had been admitted upon trust. The minds, which like that of Mon­taigne, quietly slumber on the pillow of scep­ticism, are not common; and still less com­mon are those who are tormented by the desire of discovering truth. The vulgar love to believe without proof; and to cherish their security in blind faith, as a thing ne­cessary to their ease and safety.

About the same time, the Henriade ap­peared under the name of the League: an imperfect copy, stolen from the author, was clandestinely printed, in which there were not only parts omitted, but some vacancies were supplied.

Thus France was at last possessed of an Epic Poem. It must be regretted, no doubt, that Voltaire, the fables of whose tragedies are so full of action, who has made the pas­sions speak a language so natural and so true, and who could paint them so effectually as well by analizing their sentiments as by their sudden ebullitions, should not have display­ed in the Henriade those talents which ne­ver [Page 21] before were combined in the same man to so great a degree. Yet, a subject so well known and so recent gave but little room for the imagination of the poet. The gloo­my and persecuting spirit of fanaticism, ex­ercising itself on subaltern characters, could excite little more than horror. The chiefs of the league were animated by an ambiti­on which hypocrisy debased. The hero of the poem, gallant, brave, and humane, but continually subject to misfortune which a­lighted on him alone, could interest only by his courage and his clemency. Nor was it possible that the unnatural conversion of Henry the IVth should form an heroic ca­tastrophe.

But though the Henriade in pathos, vari­ety, and action, be inferior to those epic poems which were then in possession of uni­versal admiration, yet by how many new beauties was this inferiority compensated? Never was philosophy, so profound and so true, embellished by verses more sublime or more affecting. What other poem pre­sents to us characters drawn with greater strength and dignity, and without offence to historical facts? What other contains mo­rality more pure, humanity more enlight­ened, or is more free from the errors of prejudice and vulgar passion? Whether the [Page 22] poet causes his characters to act or speak, whether he paints the crimes of fanaticism, or the charms and the dangers of love, whether he transports his hearer to the field of battle, or into that heaven which he him­self created, he is every where a philoso­pher, and is every where deeply intent on promoting the true interests of the human race. In the very palace of fiction, we behold truth sublimely rise, and always painted in the most splendid and purest colours.

Of all epic poems the Henriade alone has a moral purport; not that it can be said to be the devellopement of one single truth, which is a pedantic idea and to which a poet can­not subject himself, but because it breathes throughout a detestation of war and fanati­cism, and a spirit of toleration and huma­nity. Each poem necessarily wears the complexion of the age in which it took birth; and the birth of the Henriade was in the age of reason. Hence, the greater the progress of reason among mankind the great­er will be their admiration of this poem.

The Henriade may be compared to the Aeneid: both bear the stamp of genius in whatever depended on the poet, and the defects of both are in the choice of the sub­ject, which was mutually dictated by a na­tional spirit. Virgil, however, intended on­ly [Page 23] to flatter Roman pride; but Voltaire had the more noble motive of preserving the French from fanaticism, by a recapitulati­on of the crimes into which their ancestors had been hurried.

The Henriade, Oedipus, and Mariamne had placed Voltaire much above his cotem­poraries; and seemed to secure a life of fame, when his repose was troubled by a fatal accident. He had returned a satyri­cal answer to some contemptuous words which had been spoken by a courtier, who revenged himself by causing Voltaire to be insulted by his servants without endangering his personal safety. The outrage was com­mitted at the gate of the Hotel de Sully, where he had dined; nor did the Duke de Sully deign to show any resentment; be­ing, no doubt, persuaded that the descend­ants of the Franks had preserved the right of life and death over the Gauls. Justice remained mute; the parliament of Paris, which had caused far less misdemeanours to be punished when committed against one of its own subalterns, imagined nothing was due to an undignified citizen, although the greatest man of literature the nation pos­sessed, and kept silence.

Voltaire was desirous of taking those means to revenge offended honour which [Page 24] the manners of modern nations have au­thorised, but which their laws have pro­scribed. The Bastile, and, at the end of six months, an order to quit Paris were the punishment of his first step. The Car­dinal de Fleury had not so much policy as even to denote the slightest mark of dissa­tisfaction against the aggressor. Thus when men are unprotected by the laws they are punished by arbitrary power for seeking that revenge, which the want of protection ren­ders legal, and which is prescribed as ne­cessary to the principles of honour. We venture to believe that the rights of man will be more respected in our times, that the laws will not remain impotent from any ridiculous prejudice of birth, and that when any quarrel shall happen between two citi­zens no minister will deprive him who re­ceived the first offence of his freedom.

Voltaire made a secret journey to Paris, but to no effect. He there met with more than one adversary, who disposed at plea­sure of judicial power and ministerial au­thority, and who could safely effect his ruin. He buried himself in retirement, and dis­dained longer to seek revenge; or, rather, revenged himself by overwhelming his en­emy with the weight of his increasing fame, and forcing him to hear the name which he [Page 25] wished to degrade incessantly repeated with acclamation throughout all Europe.

England was his place of refuge. Newton was no more; but his spirit was infused into his countrymen, whom he had taught to trust to experiment, and calculation only in the study of nature. Locke, whose death was likewise recent, had been the first to give the theory of the human understanding founded on expe­ence, and to show the path which may safely be followed in metaphysical pursuits. The philosophy of Shaftesbury, commented on by Bolingbroke, and embellished by the versifica­tion of Pope, had given birth in England to that deism which announced morality, found­ed on motives such as might affect great minds without offence to reason.

In France, mean time, the men of most understanding were labouring to substitute in our schools the hypothesis of Des Cartes, for the absurdities of scholastic philosophy. Any thesis, in which either the system of Copernicus or that of the Vortices was maintained, was a victory over prejudice. Innate ideas, in the eyes of the devout, were become almost an ar­ticle of faith; though they had at first been supposed heretical. Malebranche, whom men imagined they understood, was the philoso­pher in fashion. He was supposed a free-think­er, who allowed himself to regard the exist­ence of the five propositions, in the unintelligible book of Jansenius, as a thing in which the hap­piness [Page 26] of the human race was not concerned, or who had the temerity to read Bayle with­out the permission of a doctor in divinity.

This contrast could not but excite the enthu­siasm of a man, who, like Voltaire, had from his infancy shaken off prejudice. The example of England showed him that truth was not formed to remain in secret among a few phi­losophers, and men of the world, the pupils of these philosophers; who laughed with them at those errors of which the people are the victims, but became themselves the defenders of error, when their office or their rank made it their interest, supposed or real, and were ready to proscribe or even to persecute their preceptors, should they venture to speak what they themselves privately believed.

From this moment, Voltaire felt himself called to be the destroyer of prejudice of eve­ry kind, of which his country was the slave. He felt the possibility of succeeding by a happy mixture of boldness and pliabilty, by know­ing when to recede and when to advance, by artfully and alternately employing reason, ri­dicule, the charms of poetry, and theatrical ef­fect, and by simplifying truth so as to render it popular, amiable, and fashionable, without of­fence to frivolity. This good project, of ren­dering himself, by the force of his own genius, the benefactor of a whole nation, whence he meant to banish error, sired the mind of Vol­taire, and inspired him with fortitude. He swore to this to consecrate his life; and he [Page 27] kept his vow. The tragedy of Brutus was the first fruits of his journey to England.

The French theatre had not, since Cinna, breathed the haughty accents of freedom; and they had, there, been smothered by those of revenge. In Brutus, the strength of Cor­neille was discovered with additional pomp and splendor, combined with that simplicity which Corneille wanted, and the uniform elegance of Racine. Never were the rights of an oppressed people displayed with greater power, eloquence and even precision, than in the second scene of Brutus. The fifth act is equally remarkable for its pathos. The poet has been reproached for having made love a part of a subject so awful and terrible, and particularly love, which is deficient in interest; but, had the motive of Titus been any other than love, he would have been debased, the severity of Bru­tus would not then have rent the hearts of the spectators; and, had love been rendered too pathetic, it would have been to be feared that love would have destroyed the cause of liberty. It was after this piece had been acted that Fon­tenelle told Voltaire "He did not think his genius proper for tragedy, and that his style was too bold, pompous, and splendid."—"If so," replied Voltaire, "I will go and read your pastorals."

He supposed, at this time, he might aspire to a place in the French academy; and he might well have been thought modest to have [Page 28] waited so long. But he had not so much as the honour of dividing the votes of the acade­micians. The fat De Bose pronounced in a dictatorial tone, that Voltaire should never be one of their dignified members.

This De Bose, whose name is now forgotten, was one of these men, who, with little mind, and not too much knowledge, obtain admissi­on among men of rank and power, and suc­ceed precisely because they have neither the wit to inspire fear, nor to humble the self-love of those who seek the reputation of patronising men of letters. De Bose was become a per­son of importance. He exercised the office of inspector of new publications; which is an usurpation on the part of the magistrate, over men of letters, to whom the avidity of the rich and the powerful have left no employments but those whose execution requires the exer­tion of knowledge and talents.

After Brutus, Voltaire wrote the Death of Caesar; a subject which had previously been chosen by Shakspere, some scenes of whom he imitated and embellished. The tragedy was not played till several years had elapsed, and then in a college; he durst not risk a piece on the stage, destitute of love and of women, and which was likewise a tragedy in three acts: for it is not the most trifling innovations which ex­cite the least clamour among the enemies of novelty; little things necessarily impress them­selves on little minds. Still, however, a bold, [Page 29] noble, and figurative, yet natural, style, senti­ments worthy of the conqueror of the freest people on earth, and that force and grandeur of character, and deep thought which pervade the language of these last Romans, could not but be felt by spectators capable of discovering such merit, and men whose hearts and minds were related to these great personages, as well as by those who might love history, and such young minds as, in the course of education, had lately been occupied by similar objects.

Historical tragedies, such as Cinna, the death of Pompey, Brutus, Rome Preserved, and the Triumvirate, of Voltaire, cannot be equally interesting with the Cid, Iphigene, Zaïre, or Merope. The mild and tender passions can­not display themselves in conformity with his­torical fact; incidents cannot be so selected and disposed as to produce theatrical effect with equal success; the poet has not the same power over the characters; the general inte­rest, which is that of a people, or of a state rather than of an individual, is rendered less forcible, because it is dependent on sentiments less energetic.

But, far from stigmatising this species of writing, as the coldest and most unfavourable to dramatic genius, it ought to be encourag­ed; because it opens a vast field for the poet, in which he may unfold all the sublime truths of politics; because it displays grand historical pictures; and because, by these means, the [Page 30] soul may most effectually be formed and eleva­ted. We, doubtless, ought to place these a­mong the first of poems, which, like Maho­met and Alzire, are at once extensive, and abounding with pathos and terror. But these are uncommon subjects, and require the exer­tion of talents, which no poet but Voltaire has hitherto possessed.

The Death of Caesar was not allowed to be printed: the republican sentiments it contain­ed were attributed as crimes to the author. This was a ridiculous imputation; each cha­racter spoke its own language; and Brutus was not more the hero than Caesar; the poet, treat­ing an historical subject, drew his portraits af­ter history, with strict impartiality. But, un­der the government of the Cardinal de Fleury, which was at once tyrannical and pusillanimous, the language of slavery alone could appear to be innocent.

Who could, at present, suppose that the eu­logy on the death of Mademoiselle le Couvreur could have been made a subject of serious per­secution, and have obliged Voltaire to quit the metropolis, where he knew that absence would fortunately cause all things to be forgotten, and even the frenzy of persecution?

The theatre is truly a useful institution, at which even indolent and frivolous youth pre­serve something of the habit of feeling and of thinking, while moral ideas are not totally lost to their minds, and the pleasures of the imagi­nation [Page 31] are still felt to exist. The sensations which the representation of a tragedy excite, purify the soul, and raise it from that apathy and egotism which are the maladies to which the dissipated are, in the nature of things, con­demned. Such exhibitions form a kind of connexion between the two classes of men who do, and men who do not, think. They soft­en the austerity of the one; and, in the other, temper that want of feeling which is the child of thoughtlessness and pride. It is a singular fatality that in a country, in which the drama­tic art has been carried to the highest degree of perfection, the actors, to whom the public are indebted for the noblest of their pleasures, should be condemned by religion, and shun­ned from the most ridiculous of prejudices.

These prejudices Voltaire hardily opposed. Indignant to behold an actress, who had long been the object of enthusiastic applause, after being carried off by a sudden and cruel death deprived of the rites of burial, because in a state of excommunication, he loudly reproach­ed a frivolous nation which with cowardice bent the neck under so shameful a yoke, and the pusillanimity of those people in power who peaceably suffered the memory of her whom they had so much admired to be thus insulted. Though nations are slow to correct themselves, they still suffer themselves to be told of their faults with patience. But the priests, whom the parliaments would suffer to excommuni­cate [Page 32] none but wizards and players, were irri­tated to see a poet dare to dispute the half of their empire, and the people in power could not pardon him for having proclaimed their unworthy cowardice.

Voltaire felt that some great theatrical suc­cess could alone secure him the hearts of the public, and shield him from the attacks of fa­natacism. I [...] a country, in which no popular power exists, each class has some point at which to rally and form itself into a species of pow­er. A dramatic author is under the protec­tion of those societies who resort to the theatre for amusement. The public, by applauding allusions, flatter or offend the vanity of men in office, discourage or re-animate their oppo­nents, and cannot for this reason be openly de­fied. Voltaire, therefore, presented his Eu­riphile, which did not effect his purpose; but, far from being discouraged by want of success, and delighted with the subject of Zaïre, he fi­nished that tragedy in eighteen days, and it made its appearance on the stage four months after Euriphile.

Its success surpassed his hopes. This was the first piece in which, forsaking the tract of Corneille and Racine, he discovered art, style, and talents entirely his own. Never did love more true or more impassioned draw tears more sweet; never did poet before so depict the fury of jealousy in a mind so simple, so af­fectionate, and so generous. We love Oros­manes [Page 33] at the very moment he makes us shud­der. He sacrifices Zaïre, the affecting, the lovely, the virtuous Zaïre, yet we cannot hate him. And even, were it possible to forget Orosmanes and Zaïre, how awful is irreligion in the person of the aged Lusignan? How no­ble is the spirit of fanaticism, which the re­proaches of Narestam breathe? With what art has the poet painted the Christians whose interference disturb so sweet an union, a feel­ing and pious woman who has sacrificed her life and her love to her God, while the man who believes not in Christianity weeps for Zaïre, whose mind is distracted by filial affection, and who is the willing victim of a superstitious pre­judice, which forbids her to love a man of a different sect. This is a master-piece of art. Whoever does not believe in the Old Testa­ment, discovers in Athalia nothing but the school of bigotry, falsehood, and murder; but to all sects, and in all countries, Zaïre is the tragedy of the feeling and the innocent heart.

This tragedy was followed by that of Ade­laide de Guesclin, which had likewise love for its subject, and in which, as in Zaïre, French heroes and French history were recited in beautiful poetry: so as to increase the interest. But it was the patriotism of a citizen who de­lighted in the recollection of respected names and great events, and not the patriotism of the anti-chamber, which has since been so applaud­ed on the French theatre.

[Page 34]Adelaide failed of success. A wit, when Mariamne was acting, prevented it being heard to the end, by calling from the pit, The queen drinks. Another occasioned Adelaide to be condemned by answering Coussi, coussi ^*, to the noble and affecting question of Vendôme, Es tu content Couci ^†?

This same piece was again acted under the title of the Duke de Foix, after having been corrected, not in conformity to the judgment of the author but of his critics, and was more successful. But when, long after, the philo­sopher's three blows of the hammer had un­knowingly taught the audience not to hiss when the cannon was fired ^‡ in Adelaide, at a time when the play was again acted in despight of Voltaire, who had less recollection of the beau­ties of his piece than of the wounds which criti­cism had inflicted, it met with the most unbound­ed applause. The character of Vendôme, as amorous as that of Orosmanes, was then felt in all its force. The one, jealous in conse­quence of an imperious temper, the other, from an excess of love; the first, tyrannical from native impetuosity and pride, and the second, [Page 35] from the unfortunate habits attending on des­potic power. Tender and disinterested in his affection, Orosmanes renders himself guilty during that momentary frenzy into which he is hurried by excusable error, and punishes by sa­crificing himself. Vendôme, more personal and rather the slave of his passion than of his mistress, protects his crime with a more tran­quil fury, but expiates it by his remorse and the sacrifice of his love. The one exhibits those excesses and sufferings into which the vi­olence of despair plunges the generous soul; and the other, the power of repentant virtue over the strong mind, which had previously abandoned itself to passion.

It is said that the success of Adelaide was in­jured by the Temple of Taste, in which charm­ing work Voltaire had passed sentence on the writers of the past age, and even on some of his cotemporaries. Time has confirmed all his decisions, which each then appeared sacrilegi­ous. In observing such literary intolerance, the necessity, under which every writer labours who wishes to live in peace, of respecting opi­nions already formed of the merit of an orator or a poet, and the fury with which the public pursues those who dare, even on the most indif­ferent subjects, to think differently from them­selves, we should be tempted to imagine that man is intolerant by Nature. Wit, reason, and genius cannot always guard us against this mis­fortune. There are few men who have not some secret idols, the worship of which they cannot calmly see destroyed.

[Page 36]Pride and envy is frequently the origin of this sensation. The writer who, criticising those whom we admire, assumes an air of su­periority over them and consequently over our­selves, we regard as one that affects an offen­sive pre-eminence. We fear, while pulling down the statue of the man who is no more, he means to substitute that of a living favourite, whose fame fails not to afflict mediocrity. But when strong minds yield to this kind of into­lerance, this temporary and excusable weak­ness, the offspring of indolence and habit, they soon again cede to the force of truth, and are neither guilty of injustice nor persecution.

Voltaire had, in his retirement, conceived the happy plan of bringing his nation acquaint­ed with the philosophy, the literature, the opi­nions, and the sects of England; to effect which, he wrote his Letters on the English Nation. Newton, whose philosophic opinions, whose sys­tem of the earth, and whose optical experi­ments were scarcely known in France; Locke whose Essay on the Human Understanding, translated into French, had only been read by a few philosophers; Bacon, the extent of whose fame was that he had been lord chancellor; Shakspere whose genius and gross errors form a phenomenon in the history of literature; Congreve, Wicherly, Addison, and Pope, whose names were almost unknown even by our men of letters; the bigoted Quakers, who, without being persecutors, were fanatics in their de­votion, [Page 37] yet the most rational of Christians in their creed and in their morals, ridiculous in the eyes of the world, for having carried two virtues to excess, the love of peace and the love of equality; the other sects by which En­gland was divided; the influence which a ge­neral spirit of freedom had there obtained over literature, philosophy, arts, opinions, and man­ners; and the practice of inoculation which had been examined without prejudice, and met with few impediments, notwithstanding the sin­gularity and the innovation of the practice: such were the principal subjects of his work.

Fontenelle was the first who made reason and philosophy speak an agreeable and inviting language: he had the art to mingle reflexi­ons, sage, delicate, and frequently profound, with the sciences. In the Letters of Voltaire we discover the merit of Fontenelle, with more taste, simplicity, boldness, and gaiety. No rooted attachment to the errors of Des Cartes interfered, to spread a shadow over, and to disfigure, truth. He possessed the logic and pleasantry of the Lettres Provinciales ^*, but ex­ercised them on greater subjects; nor were they injured by a varnish of monkish devotion.

This work was the aera of a revolution in France; it gave rise to a taste for philosophy, and English literature; it interested us in the manners, policy, and commercial knowledge of [Page 38] that nation; and it brought us acquainted with the English language. A puerile partia­lity afterward took place of former indiffer­ence; and, by a remarkable singularity, Vol­taire had the glory of combating it, and of diminishing its influence. He had taught us to feel the merit of Shakspere, and to regard his works as a mine, whence treasures might be dug by our poets; and, when a ridiculous enthusiasm presented this eloquent, but wild and capricious poet, as a model to a nation possessed of Racine and Voltaire, and wished us to consider his canvass, overcharged with absur­dity and gross caricature, as the energetic and true pictures of nature, Voltaire defended the cause of taste and reason. He had first ex­claimed against the too great timitidy of our theatre, and was afterward obliged to exclaim against our inclination to imitate the licenti­ous barbarity of the English stage.

The publication of these letters excited per­secution, the bitterness of which, to read them at present, could scarcely be conceived: but innate ideas were opposed in them, and our doctors of that day believed, if there were no innate ideas, there would be no sufficiently marked characters to distinguish between the souls of men and of brutes. Besides, it was there maintained, after Locke, that there was no strict proof that God had not the power, if he had the will, to impart to matter the fa­culty of thinking. This was to infringe on the [Page 39] privilege of the divines, who pretended to know accurately and exactly, they and they alone, all that God has thought, and all that he could do, or has done, since, and even before, the beginning of the world.

In fine, Voltaire criticised some passages of the thoughts of Pascal: a work which the Je­suits, in their own despite, were obliged to re­spect as much as the works of St. Augustin. It gave scandalous offence to see a poet, nay more, a layman, dare to sit in judgment on Pascal. It appeared to be an attack on the only defender of the Christian religion, who, among the fashionable world, had the reputa­tion of being a great man. It was to attack religion itself: and how much would the proofs of religion be weakened, should the mathema­tician, Pascal, who had openly devoted himself to its defence, be convicted of having often reasoned ill.

The clergy demanded that the Letters on the English Nation should be suppressed; and they were so, by an arret of council. These arrets were given, without examination, as a kind of retribution, for the subsidy which go­vernment obtained from the assemblies of the clergy; and as a reward for the facility with which they were granted. Ministers for­got that the interest of the secular power was not to support, but to suffer the progress of reason to destroy, that empire of the priest­hood which has been so long and so bar­barously [Page 40] abused; and that it is not good poli­cy to purchase peace of an enemy, by sacrifi­cing our defenders.

The parliament burnt the book, according to a custom formerly invented by Tiberius, and rendered ridiculous since the invention of print­ing. But there are certain people for whom the experience of three ages are necessary, be­fore they can begin to perceive absurdity.

So much persecution, exercised at the very time when the miracles of the Abbé Paris and those of Father Girard were acting, loaded the two persecuting parties with ridicule and op­probrium. It was natural that they should unite against a man who daringly preached reason; and they went so far as to order informations to be issued against the author of the Letters. The keeper of the seals banished Voltaire, who, being at that time absent, received early infor­mation, and avoided the people sent to con­duct him to the place of his exile; rather choosing to combat at a distance, and where he could be in safety. His friends proved that he had not forfeited his promise, not to pub­lish his Letters in France; and that they had made their appearance from the treachery of a book-binder. Fortunately, the keeper of the seals had more zeal for his authority than for religion, and was much more of a minister than of a devotee. The storm was hushed, and Voltaire had permission to r [...]turn to Paris.

This calm was but of momentary duration. [Page 41] The epistle to Urania, which, till then, had been kept in secret, was printed; and Voltaire, to escape a new persecution, was obliged to dis­avow and attribute it to the Abbé de Chaulieu, who had been dead several years. The impu­tation did the abbé honour as a poet, without injuring his fame as a Christian.

The necessity of falsehood, in disavowing a work, is an act of extremity, alike repugnant to conscience and to dignity of character; but the crime is in the injustice of those men who render such a disavowal necessary for the safe­ty of the author. If that which is in itself in­nocent be made a crime, if absurd or arbitrary laws have infringed on the natural right, which all men possess, of not only having but pub­lishing their opinions, we then deservedly lose the other right of always hearing the truth, which is solely founded on freedom. We are forbidden to deceive, because to deceive any man is to commit an injury on him, or to ex­pose him to commit one himself. But injury supposes a right; and no one has the right to seek for and secure to himself the means of doing injustice.

We do not disculpate Voltaire, for having attributed his work to the Abbé de Chaulieu, but such an imputation is in itself indifferent, and a mere act of pleasantry; it is affording an ex­cuse to people in power, who are disposed to be indulgent, without daring to confess them­selves so, by the aid of which they may repel [Page 42] such persecutors as are over serious in their zeal.

The indiscretion, with which some of the friends of Voltaire, repeated fragments from his Maid of Orleans, was the cause of a new persecution. The keeper of the s [...] threat­ened to confine the poet in the worst and deep­est of dungeons, if any part of the poem made its appearance. Remembering the long space of time during which such subaltern tyrants, included by momentary power, have dated to hold similar language to men who have been the glory of their country and their age [...] the sensations of contempt rise in us and smother those of indignation. The oppressor and the oppressed are now both in the grave; but the name of the oppressed will he borne, on the wings of fame, to future ages, and singly pre­served from oblivion; while eternal shame will pursue the memory of his cowardly persecu­tors.

It was in these tempestuous times that the lieutenant, of the police, Hernalt, one day said to Voltaire:—"Write what you will, you ne­ver can overturn the Christian religion."— "We shall see that"—replied the poet ^*.

At a time when there was much conversa­tion concerning a man who had been arrested by a supposed forged lettre de cachet, Voltaire [Page 43] asked the, same magistrate what punishment would be inflicted on those who should fabricate false lettres de cachet.—"They will be hang­ed."—"That will be but doing right: let us hope the time will come when those who sign the true, will be served in the same way."

Wearied by so much persecution, Voltaire thought it necessary to change his mode of life, to effect which, fortune secured him the means. Ancient philosophers have vaunted of poverty as the safe-guard of independence: Voltaire, that he might be independent, wished to become rich; and he was equally to be commended. The ancients were unacquainted with that se­cret wealth which may at once be dispersed and secured, in various countries, beyond the reach of power. Confiscation and its abuses, amongst them, rendered wealth as dangerous as fame, or popular favour. The extent of the Roman empire, and the smallness of the Grecian republics, alike prevented men from the concealment of their riches, or their per­sons. The difference of manners among neigh­bouring nations, the almost general ignorance of foreign languages, and a less degree of in­tercourse throughout the world, were then so many impediments to a change of country.

The ancients likewise knew less of the con­veniencies of life, which among us are become necessary to all who are not born in poverty. Their climate subjected them to less nume­rous real wants; and the wealthy were more [Page 44] addicted to magnificence, refinement in de­bauchery, excess, and caprice, than to habitu­al and daily convenience. Thus, as it was more easy for them to be poor, and more dif­ficult to be rich without danger, riches were not among them, as among us, the means of escaping from unjust oppression.

Let us not blame a philosopher for having, in order to secure his independence, preferred such resources as the manners of his age sup­plied to those which belong to other manners and to other times.

The fortune which descended to Voltaire from his father and his brother was ample, and had been increased by the London edition of the Henriade, and fortunate speculations in the public funds. Thus, to the advantage of pos­sessing wealth, which ascertained independ­ence, he added that of being indebted for it to himself. The use he made of riches might prevail on envy itself to pardon him their ac­quirement.

Much of his wealth was expended in aiding men of letters, and in encouraging such youth as he thought discovered the seeds of ge­nius. This, in particular, was the applica­tion he made of the trifling profits he derived from his works and his theatrical productions, when he did not make a free gift of the latter to the comedians. Yet never was author more cruelly accused of injuries done to his booksel­lers; but the whole sw [...]rm of literary insects [Page 45] were at their command, and were themselves anxious to decry the conduct of a man whose works they were conscious they could not bring into disrepute. The pride of mediocrity, the vanity of men, even of merit, wounded by a too incontestible superiority, the busy world ever anxious to degrade knowledge and ta­lents which are the objects of their secret en­vy, and fanatics who were interested to calum­niate Voltaire, that they might have the less to fear, all conspired to increase the detrac­tion of booksellers and hyper-critics. But proofs of the falsehood of these imputations, as well as the favours heaped by Voltaire on some of his detractors, still subsist; nor can we re­member these proofs without a sigh, at the misfortune of genius thus condemned to suffer, and at that shameful facility men have to credit whatever can relieve them from the ne­nessity of admiring. Such sighs are the me­lancholy retribution of same.

Having no more need, for the security of his fortune, to court patronage, solicit places, or to traffic with booksellers, Voltaire renounc­ed all residence at the capital. Previous to the administration of Cardinal de Fleury, and his journey to England, his intercourse had been among people of the first fashion. Princes and nobles, those who were at the head of affairs, people of fashion and women most in vogue, were courted by him and were equally desi­rous of his company. He was every where re­ceived [Page 46] with pleasure and welcome, but he eve­ry where inspired envy and fear. Superior, in genius, he was even more so, in the wit of conversation, into which he infused whatever can render frivolity amiable, and at the same time interspersed traits of a more elevated na­ture. Born with the talent of humour, his repartees were often repeated; nor was there any want of an application of the word ma­lignant, to what was no more than the decision of the understanding, rendered acute by native wit.

On his return from England, he felt that in society, where men assemble from motives of va­nity and self-love, he should meet but with few friends. He therefore, though he did not quarrel with such societies, frequented them less. The taste he had acquired for magnifi­cence, grandeur, and whatever is uncommon and splendid, had become habitual, and he pre­served it even in retirement. By this taste, his works were often embellished, and it oc­casionally influenced his judgment. On his re­turn to his country, he confined himself to live familiarly with only a few friends. He had lost M. de Génonville and M. de Maisons, whose death he lamented in such affecting verse, which remains a monument of that true and deep sensibility which nature had bestowed, and genius disseminated through his works, and which was the fortunate origin of his ardent zeal for the happiness of mankind, which was [Page 47] the sublime and continued passion of his old age. He still possessed M. d'Argental, who, du­ring his long life, preserved sensations of affec­tion and admiration for Voltaire, and who was rewarded by his friendship and his confidence. Madame Forment and Madame Cideville were likewise his friends, and the considants of his works and his projects.

But about the time when he suffered such various persecution, friendship, still more ten­der, afforded him consolation and increased his love of retirement. The Marchioness du Chatelet was, like him, passionately enamour­ed of study and fame, as well as of philosophy; but it was of that kind of philosophy which springs up in the strong and free mind. She had studied metaphysics and geometry suffici­ently to analize Leibnitz, and translate Newton. She cultivated the arts; but not undistinguish­ingly, nor so as to prefer them to the knowledge of nature and man. Superior to prejudice, as well from strength of character as from reason, she had not the weakness to conceal how much prejudice was despised by her. In­dulging in the trifling amusements of her sex, rank, and age, she yet could contemn and aban­don them without regret in favour of retire­ment, labour, and friendship. Her superior­ity excited the jealousy of women and even of most of the men, with whom she necessarily associated. Yet she could pardon their envy without an effort. Such was the friend that [Page 48] Voltaire selected with whom to pass his days; days which were ever consecrated to works of genius, and embellished by mutual friendship.

Weary of literary disputes, disgusted to see the league which inferior writers had formed against him, and who were secretly supported by men, whose merit should have preserved them from such unworthy associates; finding likewise, that since he had dared to speak truth, his accusers were as numerous as his critics, and perceiving that they incessantly armed religion and government against him, because he was a good poet, he sought employment more peaceful in the study of the sciences.

He determined to publish an elementary Treatise of the Discoveries of Newton, rela­tive to the system of the earth and of light, that he might render them f [...]miliar to all who had the slightest knowledge of mathematics; and that he might make known, at the same time, the philosophic opinions of Newton, and his ideas of ancient chronology.

At the time that these Elements appeared, the Cartesian system prevailed even in the Academy of Sciences, at Paris. A few young geometricians only had the courage to forsake it; nor did any work exist in the French lan­guage from which an idea could be formed of the grand discoveries which had, for half a century, been rendered public in England.

The author, however, was refused a privi­lege for publication. The Chancellor d'Agu­esseau [Page 49] was a Cartesian in his youth, because the system was then fashionable among such as pique themselves on rising superior to vulgar prejudice; and, to these his philosophical opi­nions, were added [...] his political and religious sentiments against Newton. He discovered that a chancellor of France ought not to suffer an English philosopher, who scarcely was a Christian, to rise victorious over a supposed orthodox Frenchman. D'Ageusseau had a prodigious memory, and continued study had rendered him deeply learned in various species of erudition; but his mind, wearied by being made the receptacle of the opinions of others, had neither strength sufficient to combine his own ideas, nor to form fixt and definite prin­ciples. His superstition, his timidity, his re­spect for ancient customs, and his want of resolution, narrowed his views relative to a reformation of the laws and impeded his activ­ity. He died, after having been long a minister, and left France to regret that his great virtues had slumbered in inutility, and that his rare qualities had been lost to the world.

His severity respecting the Elements of the Newtonian Philosophy was not the only mark of littleness he showed during his censorship of the press. He would not give privileges for the printing of novels; nor would he suffer the novel of Cleveland to be published, but on condition that the hero should change his re­ligion.

[Page 50]Voltaire, at the same time, pursued the study of experimental philosophy, sent queries of every kind to the learned, and repeated their experiments, or made new ones in their stead.

He was a candidate for the prize, given by the Academy of Sciences, on the nature and propagation of fire; and assumed the follow­ing motto, which, for precision and energy, is not unworthy of the author of the Henriade:

The prize was given to the illustrious Eular, by whom, in scientific contest, no man need blush at being vanquished. Madame du Cha­lelet, as well as her friend, was likewise a candidate, and both pieces were mentioned in very honourable terms.

The dispute on the measure of forces at that time occupied mathematicians. Voltaire, in a memorial presented to and approved by the Academy, took the part of Des Cartes and Newton against Leibnitz and the two Bernou­illi's; nay even against Madame du Chatelet, who was become the partisan of Leibnitz.

We are far from pretending that these works are any addition to the same of Voltaire, or even that they deserve a place among the learned, but the merit of having made the French, who are not mathematicians, acquaint­ed with Newton, the true system of the earth, and the principal phenomena of optics, deserves notice in the life of a philosopher.

[Page 51]It is good to disseminate truth relative to objects of science, whether it relate to the great laws of nature and the order of the world, or to those common facts which fall under every man's observation. Absolute ig­norance is ever accompanied by error; and error in physics often is the support of preju­dices of a more dangerous kind. The philo­sophic knowledge of Voltaire was further use­ful to him as a poet; we do not, here, entirely refer to those pieces in which he had the rare merit of expressing truth in verse with preci­sion without disfiguring it, or ceasing to be a poet, or of addressing the imagination while he delighted the ear. The study of the scien­ces enlarges the sphere of poetic ideas, and enriches verse with new images. Without this resource, poetry, necessarily limitted by too confined a circle, would be no more than the art of re-producing, in harmonious language, com­mon thoughts and exhausted pictures.

Be the subject what it may, he who possesses extensive and profound knowledge will ever possesses an immense advantage. The poetic ge­nius of Voltaire would have been the same, but he would not have been so great a poet, had he not studied philosophy and history. Nor is it solely in augmenting the number of our ideas that such extraneous studies are useful; they add to the perfection of the mind, by exercising its various faculties in a more equal manner.

After having applied some years to expe­rimental [Page 52] philosophy, Voltaire consulted Clair­aut relative to his progress, who had the frankness to answer that after obstinate la­bour he would never arise above mediocrity in the sciences, and that he would vainly loose that time which same required he should dedi­cate to poetry and ethics. Voltaire listened pa­tiently and yielded to that natural inclination which incessantly led him to the Belles Letrres and to the wishes of his friends, who were un­able to accompany him in his new career.

He was not therefore entirely absorbed in the sciences during his residence at Cirey. He there wrote Alzire, Zulime, Mahomet, the History of Charles XII. finished his Dis­courses on Man, prepared the age of Louis XIV. and collected materials for his Essay on the Manners and Spirit of Nations, from Char­lemagne to the present age.

Alzire and Mahomet are immortal monu­ments of the height to which the human geni­us, poetry and philosophy can raise the tragic art. This art is not in these pieces confined to the pourtraying the passions, awakening their power over the soul, and making the sweet tears of love and of pity flow; it becomes the tutor of mankind, whom it inclines to virtue; indolent citizens, who bring with them to the theatre the weariness of having spent an useless day, are there called on to discuss the first grand interest of the human race.

In Alzire, we behold the noble but wild and [Page 53] impetuous virtues of the man of nature, com­batting the vices of society corrupted by [...]ana­ticism and ambition, and, ceding to virtue, made perfect by reason in the soul of Alzares, or in the dying and disabused Gusman. Here, we at once are taught how society corrupts man by making prejudice the substitute of ig­norance, and how it improves him when error is banished by truth.

But the most fatal of prejudices is that of fanaticism. Voltaire was determined the mon­ster should become the victim of the stage; and that he might expel it from every heart, he employed these terrible effects which trage­dy alone can afford. It, no doubt, was easy to render a fanatic odious, but that this fana­tic should be a great man, and that while ab­horring, we should of necessity admire him, that he should descend to mean artifice with­out degradation, that, while occupied in pro­pagating a religion and raising an empire, he should be in love without being ridiculous, that while committing every crime he should not inspire that painful horror which accompa­nies the acts of villains, that in the tone of a prophet he should speak the language of genius, that he should be superior to the bigotry with which he intoxicated his ignorant and intrepid disciples yet be above the baseness of hypocrisy, that his crimes should be successful, that he should triumph, yet should appear sufficiently punished by remorse, all this could only be ef­fected [Page 54] by the dramatic art, when employed by the true poet.

Mahomet was first acted at Lisle, in l741. During the representation, a letter from the king of Prussia was delivered to Voltaire, which informed him of the victory of Molwitz. He stopped the piece to read the letter to the au­ditors. You will see, said he, to his surround­ing friends, this tragedy of Molwitz will make mine successful. They ventured to play it at Paris; but the bigots by their exclamations, availing themselves of the weakness of the Cardinal de Fleury, prevailed on him to sor­bid the representation. Voltaire thought pro­per to send it to Benedict XIV. with two Latin verses for his portrait. The Pontiff Lamber­tini, a tolerant and easy prince, but a man of much understanding, sent him a kind answer, accompanied by some medals.

Crébillon was more scrupulous than the pope. He never would consent that a piece should be played, which, by proving that tragic terror may be increased to the utmost excess without sacrificing the pathos or revolting the mind, was a satire on that species of writing, of which he proudly believed himself to be the creator and the model. It was not till the year 1751 that M. D'Alembert, being appointed by M. D'Argenson to examine Mahomet, had the courage to approve it, and thus to expose himself to the mutual hatred of the men of let­ters leauged against Voltaire, and of the de­votees. [Page 55] His fortitude was the more deserving of respect, because the approver of a work docs not participate in its fame, and because he could find no recompence for the danger to which he exposed himself, except the plea­sure of having served his friend, and aided the triumph of reason.

Zulima failed of success; nor were the ef­forts of the author to correct and palliate its faults effectual. A tragedy is an experiment on the human heart, and an experiment which does not always succeed, even in the most able hands. Zulima, however, is the first wo­man presented on the stage, who, hurried by passion into criminal acts, still preserved all the generosity and disinterestedness of love. This character, so natural, so violent, and so tender, might perhaps have deserved indulgence from the audience, and the critics of the theatre, in favour of the new beauties of this part, might have pardoned the weakness of the 'others, which the author himself condemned with equal frankness and severity.

The Discourses on Man are one of the finest monuments of French poetry. The plan of them may not be so regular as that of the epis­tles of Pope, but they possess the advantage of philosophy more true, mild, and general. All the variety of harmony, a kind of careless­ness, soothing sensibility, an enthusiasm ever noble and ever real, impart a charm to them, which alternately delights the mind, the imagi­nation, [Page 56] and the heart; a charm, the use of which was known only to Voltaire, and which was that of pleasing, moving, and instructing, without ever fatiguing the reader, and of wri­ting to all understandings and to all ages. Flashes of true philosophy frequently break forth, and are generally addressed so to the feelings or to the fancy as to appear natural, and to become popular. This talent is as be­neficial and as rare as that of giving a pro­found appearance to false and trivial ideas is common and dangerous.

Quitting the company of Pope, we admire his genius, and the address with which he defends his system, but the soul is unmoved, and the mind presently finds that its objecti­ons have rather been eluded than answered. But we cannot leave Voltaire without encou­ragement or consolation; and, while we have a melancholy prospect of the evils to which na­ture has condemned man, we are likewise ac­quainted with their antidotes.

The life of Charles XII. was the first of the historical publications of Voltaire. The style, as rapid as the exploits of the hero, hurries on the reader to an uninterrupted train of splen­did expeditions, singular anecdotes, and ro­mantic events, which give curiosity and feeling no repose. The narrative is rarely interrupt­ed by reflexions. The author forgot himself that he might give place to his characters. He seems to relate what he has just heard concern­ing his hero. The single subject is battles and [Page 57] military enterprize; yet, the spirit of a phi­losopher and the soul of a defender of the hu­man race are present every where.

Voltaire wrote from original memorials, fur­nished by those who were witnesses of the events; and his historical truth is warranted by the respectable testimony of Stanislaus, the friend, the companion, and the victim of Charles XII.

The history was, notwithstanding, accused of being a novel, because it had all the inte­rest of one. Though no man, perhaps, ever excited so much enthusiasm, neither was any man ever treated with less indulgence than Voltaire. As a reputation for wit is in France the thing most envied, and as it was impossi­ble for his superiority in wit to remain unac­knowledged, he was most vehemently denied every other merit; and, the pretended claims to wit being as restless in every class of man­kind as in that of men of letters, the number of those who envied him was almost equal to that of his readers.

In vain had Voltaire imagined that the re­treat of Cirey would hide him from hatred; he had concealed his person only, his fame still offended his enemies. A libel, which was a malignant attack on his whole life, appeared to the disturbance of his repose. He was treat­ed like a prince, or a minister, because he exci­ted equal envy. The Abbé Desfontaines, who was indebted to Voltaire for liberty and per­haps [Page 58] for life, was the author of this lible. Ac­cused of a shameful vice, which superstition has classed among crimes, he had been impri­soned at a time when, from attrocious and ri­diculous policy, it was thought proper to burn a few men, in order to make another man con­ceive disgust fur this vice, to which they false­ly supposed him inclined.

Voltaire, being informed of the misfortune of the Abbé Desfontaines, who was personally unknown to him, and whose only recommen­dation was that he was a man of letters, ha­stened to Fontainbleau in search of Madame de Prie, then all puissant, from whom he ob­tained the prisoner's liberty, on condition that be should not appear at Paris. Voltaire fur­ther procured him a place of retirement at the seat of a lady of his acquaintance. Here Desfontaines wrote a libel against his benefac­tor; this he was obliged to throw into the fire, but he never could pardon Voltaire the act of saving his life. He eagerly took every oppor­tunity the periodical publications afforded, of attacking him; and it was he who, by the mouth of a priest ^*, informed the world that Votaire was the author of Le Mondain, an in­genious poem, the intent of which was to show that luxury, by polishing man's manners and encouraging industry, obviates a part of those ills which take birth in the inequality of, and insensibility attendant on, riches.

[Page 59]He was thus exposed to the danger of new banishment, because, to the reproach of hav­ing preached up pleasure, a great one in the eyes of those who need the cloak of austerity to conceal vice more real, was added the ad­ditional crime of having ridiculed the amuse­ments of our first parents.

In sine, the journalists published the Vol­tairomanie; and then it was that Voltaire, who so long had silently suffered under the slanders of Desfontaines and Rousseau, aban­doned himself to emotions of anger, of which his enemies were little worthy.

Not satisfied with avenging himself by deli­vering up his adversaries to public contempt, and imprinting on them marks which no time can efface, he prosecuted Desfontaines who es­caped by disavowing the libel, and who im­mediately wrote others to console himself for the misfortune. Thus, at the age of forty-four, after having been patient during twenty years, Voltaire, for the first time, forgot that mode­ration which it were highly to be wished men of letters never should forget. Though they have received from nature the formidable gift of devoting their foes to ridicule and shame, they ought to disdain the use of this dangerous weapon in avenging their own quarrels, and employ it only against the performers of truth, and the enemies of the rights of man­kind.

The friendship, which, about the same time [Page 60] was formed between Voltaire and the prince royal of Prussia, was one of the first causes of the excessive anger of his enemies. The young Frederic had received from his father the edu­cation of a soldier only, but nature formed him for a man of an amiable, extensive, and elevated mind, as well as for a great generall. He was sent to Rhinesberg by his father, who, having conceived the project of beheading him as a deserter, because he had attempted to tra­vel without permission, yielded to the remon­strances of the imperial ambassador, and satis­fied himself with causing the prince to be present at the execution of one of his travel­ing companions.

In this state of retirement, Frederic, who was enamoured with the French language, poetry, and philosophy, chose Voltaire for his confident and guide. They mutually sent each other their works; the prince consulted the philosopher concerning his studies, and re­quested lessons and advice. They discussed the most curious as the most difficult metaphy­sical questions. The prince, at that time, stu­died the works of Wolf, whose systems and unintelligible language he soon abjured for philosophy more simple and more true. He also employed himself in a refutation of Ma­chiavel: that is, in proving that the most certain policy of a sovereign is to make moral rules his guide, and that his personal interest does not necessarily render him the enemy of [Page 61] his subject and his neighbours, as Machiavel had supposed, either from a love of hypothesis or to disgust his countrymen with a monarchi­cal government, toward which they seemed to be inclined by their weariness of a republican system ever tempestuous and often cruel.

In the preceding century, Tycho-Brahe, Des Cartes, and Leibnitz, had enjoyed the society of monarchs, by whom they had been loaded with marks of esteem? but confidence and freedom did not preside in this too unequal intercourse▪ Of these Frederic gave the first example, in which, unfortunately for his fame, he forgot to persist. He sent his friend, the Baron de Keyserling, to visit the Deities of Cirey, and to bear his protrait and manuscripts to Voltaire. The philosopher was moved, per­haps flattered, by this homage; but his great­est pleasure was the prospect of a prince des­tined to reign, who loved literature, and was the friend of philosophy and the foe of super­stition. He hoped the author of the Anti-Machiavel would be a pacific monarch, and he took serious delight in secretly printing the book which he believed must bind the prince to virtue from the fear of betraying his own principles, and of reading his condemnation in the work he himself had written.

When Frederic ascended the throne, he testified no change, but remained the friend of Voltaire. The cares of government did not enfeeble his love of poetry, nor his avid­ity [Page 62] to possess the unpublished writings of Vol­taire, which were read by scarcely any except himself and Madame du Chatelet. Yet, one of his first steps was to suspend the publication of the Anti-Machiavel. Voltaire obeyed, and the corrections which he had made with regret were rendered fruitless.

His desire that his disciple, now a king, should enter into a public engagement, which should secure his adherence to philosophic maxims, was increased. He went to meet him at Wezel, and was astonished to see a young monarch in a uniform, on a camp-bed, shivering with a fever. But his fever did not prevent him from profiting by his neighbour­hood to the principality of Liege, and enforc­ing the payment of a forgotten debt, from the bishop. Voltaire wrote the memorial, which was supported by the bayonet, and he returned to Paris well satisfied to have found his hero an amiable man. But he refused the offers of the king, who wished to draw him to Prussia, and preferred the friendship of Ma­dame du Chatelet to the favour of a monarch whom he admired.

The king of Prussia declared war against the daughter of Charles VI. and took advantage of her weakness to render some old preten­sions on Silesia valid. Two battles secured him the possession of the province. Cardinal de Fleury, who had undertaken the war in his own despite, continued his secret negocia­tions. [Page 63] The empress perceived her interest was not to treat with France, against whom she hoped for useful allies, who would themselves support the burden of the war; whereas, if she had none but the Prussian monarch to combat, she must be left to herself, and must behold the wishes and secret aid of those very powers on the side of her foe. She rather chose therefore to stifle her resentment, in­formed Frederic of the propositions of the cardinal, induced him to make peace by this confidence, and purchase by the sacrifice of Silesia, the neutrality of the enemy whom she had most to fear.

The war had not interrupted the correspon­dence between the king and Voltaire▪ Fre­deric sent poety from the field, while prepar­ing for battle, or amid the tumult of victory; and Voltaire, continuing to praise his military fame, never ceased to preach humanity and peace.

The Cardinal de Fleury died. Voltaire had been intimate with him, because he was desi­rous of learning the anecdotes of the reign of Louis XIV; and Fleury, who loved to relate them, dwelt on those which regarded himself, not doubting that Voltaire would eagerly in­sert them in his history. But the hatred of Fleury, and of all feeble men, for one who rose superior to common powers, was greater than his love of taste, and eve [...] than his vanity.

Fleury endeavoured to in p [...]d [...] freedom of [Page 64] speech, and even of thought, in France, that he might govern with the greater ease. Du­ring his whole life, he had maintained a war­fare of opinions in the kingdom, by his very endeavours to smother those opinions, and prevent them from troubling the public repose. He was terrified by the daringness of Voltaire; equally afraid of exposing himself, should he defend the poet, or his trifling claims to re­nown, should he abandon him with too much cowardice, Voltaire found him rather a clan­destine persecutor than a patron; but one who was retained by his respect for public opinion and his own fame.

Voltaire was designed to be his successor in the French academy: he had lately acquired new claims which must have silenced envy, had she been capable of a blush. He had enriched the stage by another master-piece: by Merope, the only tragedy in which tears freely and sweetly flow, without the aid of the misfor­tunes of love. The author of Zaïre had be­fore opposed the maxim of Boileau,

He had affirmed that nature was capable of producing more feeling and more heart-rend­ing effects on the stage; and in Merope, he proved his assertion.

[Page 65]If however Boileau, by surest, understood the least difficult, facts are in his favour. Various poets have written affecting tragedies founded on love; Merope stands alone.

Hurried on by the interest of the situations, a rapidity of dialogue till then unknown to the stage, and by the talent of an actress who had caught the empassioned tones of nature, the pit was agitated with unexampled enthu­siasm. Voltaire, who was concealed in a cor­ner of the house, was obliged to appear before the spectators. He came into the box of the lady of Marshal de Villars. The house called on the young duchess of Villars to kiss the au­thor of Merope; and she was under the neces­sity of obeying the imperious will of the public, intoxicated with admiration and pleasure.

This was the first time that the pit called for the author of a piece; but what was then no more than homage, rendered to genius, degenerated afterward into custom, and is now a ridiculous and humiliating ceremony, to which authors, who respect themselves, re­fuse to submit.

To this new claim, which even devotion was obliged to respect, was added the support of Madame de Châteauroux, then governed by the Duke de Richelieu; an extraordinary man, who at the age of twenty, had twice been in the Bastile, for the rashness of his gallantries; who, by the rumour and the number of his adventures, had made himself [Page 66] so fashionable, among women, as for it to be almost regarded as an honour to be dishonour­ed by him; and who, among his imitators, had formed a kind of gallantry in which love was no longer the inclination to pleasure, but the vanity of seduction. This same man after­ward contributed to the fame of the victory of Fontenoy, supported the revolution of Genoa, took port Mahon, and obliged an English army to lay down its arms; and when that army had broken the treaty, when it threat­ened his dispersed and feeble quarters, he stopped its progress by his activity and bold­ness. After which he sunk into the intrigues of the court, and lost, in the maneuvres of a tyrannical and corrupt administration, that fame which might have obliterated his early errors.

The Duke de Richelieu had from his infan­cy been the friend of Voltaire; and, though Voltaire had often cause of complaint against him, yet he preserved that remembrance of youthful affection which time cannot eradicate, and a kind of confidence which was rather maintained by habit than by conviction. The duke continued faithful to his old friend, as much as the levity of his character, his caprice, his petty despotism at the theatres, his con­tempt for every man who was not a courtier, his weakness toward people in power, and his insensibility for all that was noble, or useful, would permit.

[Page 67]At this period he promoted the interest of Voltaire with Madame de Châteauroux. But M. de Maurepas did not love Voltaire. The Ab­bé de Chaulieu had written an epigram against Oedipus, because he was offended to see a young man, who had become his rival in sugi­tive poetry, into which philosophy and volup­tuousness were infused, acquire the additional fame of succeeding at the theatre; and M. de Maurepas, whose vanity was to be the man of most wit at table, could not pardon Voltaire for so evidently robbing him of this advantage, with which it was not too ridiculous, at that time, for a minister of state to be flattered.

Voltaire attempted to disarm his anger by an epistle, in which he bestowed such praise as might appear most natural to the mind and cha­racter of M. de Maurepas. This epistle, which contained as much instruction as eulogium, ef­fected no change in the sentiments of the mi­nister; who, that he might prevent Voltaire from gaining a place in the academy, combi­ned with the priest Boyer, whom Fleury had preferred, as the tutor of the dauphin, to Mas­sillon, whose talents and virtue he scared; and which Boyer he, on his death-bead, recom­mended to the king to the charge of bestowing ecclesiastical benefices, apparently from the hope that his memory might be regretted by the Jansenists, M. de Maurepas was likewise glad to have an opportunity of secretly coun­teracting Madame de Châteauroux, with whose [Page 68] hatred for him he was well acquainted. Vol­taire, being informed of his intention, went to to him and asked, if Madame de Châteauroux should support him in the election, whether he would oppose him. I will, answered the mi­nister, and will crush you ^*.

He knew how easy this would be to a mini­ster; and that, under a feeble government, the influence of a mistress must yield to that of intriguing fanatic priests, who were more des­picable than a prostitute, in the eyes of reason, tho' more respected by the populace. Boyer was triumphant.

The minister soon after perceived how ne­cessary [Page 69] the alliance of the king of Prussia was to France. But this monarch feared to en­gage anew with a power whose timid and wa­vering policy could not inspire confidence. Voltaire, it was supposed, might induce him to change his opinion, and was secretly charg­ed with this negociation. It was agreed that the persecution of Boyer should be the pretext of his journey into Prussia. He thus obtained the liberty to ridicule the poor priest, who went to complain to the king that Voltaire made him appear a fool in foreign courts. The king answered—"It was a settled point."

Voltaire departed, and Piron, at the head of his enemies, wrote abundance of epigrams and songs on his pretended disgrace. Piron was in the habit of insulting all celebrated men who underwent persecution. His works abound with proofs of this mean malice; yet he had the character of a good natured man, because he was indolent; and, not having any native dignity of mind, he did not offend the vanity of others.

After having passed some time with the King of Prussia, who constantly refused all ne­gociation with France, Voltaire had the address to divine the true motive of his refusal. It was the weakness that France had persisted in not to declare war against the English, and by this conduct to appear to entreat for peace, when she had a right to dictate its conditions.

He returned to Paris and gave an account [Page 70] of his journey. The following spring the King of Prussia again declared war against the Queen of Hungary, by which useful diversion he obli­ged her troops to evacuate Alsatia. This im­portant service, with that of having penetrated, as he passed through the Hague, into the views of the Dutch who apparently were in a state of uncertainty, did not procure Voltaire any of those marks of respect from which he wished to raise a rampart against his literary enemies.

The Marquis D'Argenson was called to the ministry. He was a man who deserves to be ranked among those few people in power who have really loved philosophy, and the public good. His taste for literature had connected him with Voltaire, whom he more than once employed to write manifestos, declarations, and dispatches, the style of which was required to be correct, dignified, and well adapted.

Such was the manifesto which was to have been published by the Pretender, on his descent into Scotland with a sin all French army, which the Duke de Richelieu was to have command­ed. Voltaire had then an opportunity of la­bouring in conjunction with Count Lally, a zealous Jacobite, and the determined enemy of the English; whose memory Voltaire after­wards defended with so much fortitude when an unjust sentence, executed with barbarity, sa­crificed him to the resentment of some of the servants of the East India Company.

But he had, at the same time, a support [Page 71] more potent in the Marchioness de Pompadour, with whom he had been intimate while her name was d'Etiole. She committed the wri­ting of a piece to him, for the first marriage of the Dauphin. The place of gentleman of the chamber, the title of historiographer of France, and in fine the protection of the court, which was necessary to oppose the faction of devotees who excluded him the French academy, were the recompense he received. It was on this occasion that he wrote the following verses:

This was passing rather too severe a judg­ment on the Princess of Navarre, which is a work full of noble and affecting gallantry.

The favour of the court however was insuffi­cient to open the doors of the academy. He was obliged, in order to disarm the devotees, to write a letter to Father la Tour, in which he made protestation of his respect for religion, and, which was more necessary, of his attach­ment to the Jesuits. In despight of the ad­dress with which he manages his language in [Page 72] that letter, it were better he had renounced the academy than have had the weakness to write it. This weakness would have been inexcusa­ble had it been the sacrifice of vanity, in order to obtain a title which had long been incapa­ble of adding honour to the name of Voltaire. But he supposed it his shield; he imagined he should find support against persecution from the academy. He presumed too favourably of the fortitude and justice of his associates.

In his discourse to the academy, he first threw off the yoke of custom, by which these discourses seemed rather condemned to be a string of compliments than of true praise. Vol­taire boldly spoke of literature and of taste, and his example is in some manner become a law, against which the academicians, who are man of letters, rarely venture to err. But he did not go so far as to suppress their reiterated praise of Richelieu, Séguier, and Louis XIV. which has hitherto been done only by two or three of the boldest academicians. He men­tioned Crébillon, in his discourses, with the no­ble generosity of a man who fears not to ho­nour the talents of a rival, or to afford arms to his own antagonists.

A new torrent of libels was poured upon him, which he had not the fortitude to despise. The police was, at that time, committed to a man who had passed some months in the coun­try with Madame de Pompadour. A wretched musician, of the opera band, was arrested, [Page 73] wnose name was Travenol, and who, with the advocate Rigoley de Juvigny, privately sold these libels. The father of Travenol, an old man of eighty, went to Voltaire, and demand­ed pardon for his guilty son; and the anger of the poet was hushed by the first cry of hu­manity. He wept with, embraced, and con­soled the old man; and hastened away with him, to obtain the liberty of his son.

Voltaire was not long in favour. Madame de Pompadour caused those honours to be con­ferred on Crébillon, which he had been refu­sed. Voltaire had constantly done justice to the author of Rhadamistus, but he could not be so humble as to suppose him superior to the author of Alzire, Mahomet, and Merope. In such exaggerated enthusiasm for Crébillon, he discovered nothing but a secret desire that he himself should be humbled: nor was he de­ceived.

The wit and the poet might have preserved powerful friends; but these titles in Voltaire concealed a philosopher, a man more earnest for the progress of reason, the acquirement of personal fame.

His character, naturally proud and indepen­dent, yielded to ingenuous adulation; he was prodigal of praise, but he preserved his feel­ings and his opinions, and the freedom of dis­covering them. Strong or affecting lessons rose out of panegyric: that manner of praising, which might succeed at the court of [Page 74] Frederic, could not but offend at any other court.

He therefore returned to Cirey, and soon afterwards to the court of Stanislaus. This prince, twice elected king of Poland, once by the will of Charles XII. and once by the de­sire of the nation, never possessed more than the title of sovereign. Having retired into Lorraine with this title, he there repaired, by his beneficent acts, the ills which the French adminstration had committed: the paternal government of Leopold corrected an age of devastation and misfortune. His devotion had neither deprived him of the love of pleasure nor of an affection for men of wit. His house was that of a wealthy private person: his man­ners those of native candour; of a man who had never been unhappy, except because others had determined to make him a king; nor ever dazzled by a title, from which he had derived nothing but danger. He wished to see Ma­dame du Chatelet and Voltaire at his court, or rather living as his inmates. The author of the Seasons ^*, the only French poet, who, like Voltaire, has united philosophy and wit, then lived at Luneville, where he was only known as an amiable young officer; but his first poe­tical productions, full of reason, wit, and taste, even then bespoke a man born to be an honour to his age.

[Page 75]At Luneville, where Voltaire lived a life of occupation and mild tranquillity, he had the misfortune to lose his friend. Madame du Charelet died, at the moment when she had finished her translation of Newton; the labour of which had shortened her days. King Sta­nislaus went to console and weep with Voltaire in his chamber.

Having returned to Paris, the poet betook himself to his labours, a means of dissipating grief, which nature has imparted but to few. Such a power over our thoughts, and such force of mind, which affliction cannot vanquish, are precious gifts, which must not be depreciated by confounding them with want of feeling. Sensibility is not weakness; it is a capability of grief, without being overwhelmed by it: the soul is not the less affectionate, nor has sorrow been less sincere, because opposed with fortitude; or because conquered by extraor­dinary powers.

Voltaire was weary of hearing the fashiona­ble world, and most men of letters, prefer Crébillon to himself; which they did less from opinion than to punish him for the universality of his talents. Men are ever more indulgent to circumscribed genius, which exerted on one object appears to be a kind of instinct, because it offends not so many species of self-love, and humbles their pride less.

This opinion of the superiority of Crébillon was maintained with so much passion, that, in [Page 76] the preliminary discourse to the Encyclopedia, M. D'Alembert had need of fortitude to grant equality to the author of Alzire and Merope, and durst not extend justice further. Voltaire at length determined to avenge himself, and oblige the public to give him his true rank, by writing Semiramis, Orestes, and Rome Pre­served; which three subjects had before been treated by Crébillon. Every cabal that had been formed against Voltaire had united, to obtain momentary success for the Cataline of his rival; a piece, the conduct of which is ab­surd and the style barbarous; in which Cicero proposes that his daughter should seduce Cata­line, and a high priest appoints a rendezvous for the lovers in a temple, where he introduces a courtezan in men's clothes, and afterward treats the senate as impious, because it there discussed on state affairs.

On the contrary, Rome Preserved is the ma­ster-piece of style and of reason, in which Ci­cero appears with all his dignity and eloquence; in which Cesar speaks and acts like a man born to reduce Rome to subjection, to overwhelm his opponents by his glory, and obtain pardon for tyranny by the force of his talents and vir­tues; and in which Cataline is a villain, but one who endeavours to excuse his vices from example, and his crimes from necessity. Re­publican energy and Roman feelings entirely possess the poet.

[Page 77]Voltaire had a small theatre on which he acted his pieces, and where he often played the part of Cicero. Never, it is said, was illusi­on more complete: while he recited he ap­peared to create his character; and when, in the fifth act, Cicero again appeared before the senate, when he excused his love of fame by reciting the following beautiful lines.

the character and the poet were one, and the auditor imagined he heard Cicero, or Voltaire, avow and excuse this weakness of great minds.

There is only one good part in the Electra of Crébillon, and this is a subaltern character. Orestes, who knows not that he is Orestes, is in love with the daughter Aegysthus, who has the misfortune to be called Iphianassa. The implacable Electra is enamoured with the son of Aegysthus, and these insipid amours occupy the scene, while the furies are leading a be­wildered son to the commission of parricide; being condemned by the gods to take this hor­rible revenge.

Voltaire felt that Clytemnestra should be rendered interesting by her remorse, by being [Page 78] characterised as rather feeble than guilty, and overawed by the cruel Aegysthus, but a sham­ed of having loved him, and sensible of the weight of her chains and of her crimes. If we compare this with the other tragedies of Vol­taire, we shall, no doubt, find it much inferi­or to his best works; but if we contrast it with Sophocles, whom he meant to follow, that he might teach the French the character and tra­gic conceptions of that poet, we shall perceive he had the art to preserve his beauties, imi­tate his style, correct his defects, and render Clytemnestra more pathetic, and Electra less barbarous. For which reason, when, in des­pite of cabal, the permanent beauties of the Greek poet were transmitted to the French stage, by a man worthy of becoming the in­terpreter of the most eloquent of the ancient tragic writers, and there enforce applause, Voltaire, more ardent in the interest of good taste than in behalf of his own fame, could not forbear calling from the pit, in a momentary effusion of rapture, "Go on Athenians, it is Sophocles."

The Semiramis of Crébillon was no sooner produced than forgotten, That of Voltaire is the same subject which, fifteen years before, he had treated under the name of Eryphile, and which he withdrew from the stage, though the piece was highly applauded. During its representations, he more perfectly felt all the difficulties of the fable. He perceived that, [Page 79] to render a woman who had destroyed her hus­band, that she might reign herself, interesting, it was necessary that the splendour of her reign, her conquests, her virtues, and the extent of her empire should force respect, and seize on the mind of the spectators; that the criminal queen should be the mistress of the world, and possess the virtues of a great monarch. He felt that, while exhibiting the prodigies of a foreign religion on the stage, it would be ne­cessary, by magnificence and an elevated and religious style, not to suffer the imagination to cool, to make the gods interfere on all oc­casions, and to conceal the absurdity of a mi­racle by incessantly presenting the consolatory idea of a Divine Power, exercising a slow but inevitable vengeance on the secret crimes of kings.

Love, offensive in Orestes, was necessary in Semiramis. Ninyas must have a mistress, that he might feel a tenderness for Semiramis, be sensible of her kindness, and that she might facinate him by her charms before he knew her to be his mother; otherwise the horror which incest inspires would have been injurious to that character which was to interest the au­dience. The style of Semiramis, the majesty of the subject, the pomp of the exhibition, and the peculiar pathos of some of the scenes, were triumphant over envy and faction. But it was long before equal justice, was rendered to Orestes, and Rome Preserved.

[Page 80]Complete justice, perhaps, has not yet been done; nor can we be surprised at this, when we recollect that all colleges and all the houses in which the teachers of youth are themselves educated are devoted to fanaticism, and that children in general are educated in prejudices against Voltaire.

These three pieces he wrote at Sceaux, the seat of the Duchess du Maine, who delighted in poetry, gallantry, and the arts; and who, in her palace, presented a picture of those inge­nious and splendid pleasures which had embel­lished the court of Lewis the XIVth, and dig­nified his follies. She delighted in Cicero, and prevailed on Voltaire to write his Rome Pre­served to avenge the outrage committed on the orator by Crébillon. Mahomet was sent to the pope, and Semiramis dedicated to a cardinal. He took a secret pleasure in convin­cing the French fanatics that the ecclesiastical princes knew how to combine the love of ge­nius with religious zeal, and that they did not think they promoted Christianity by treat­ing these men as its enemies who by their pow­ers of mind were the formidable rulers of pub­lic opinion.

It was at this period that he, at length, yielded to the invitations of the king of Prussia, and accepted the title of Chamberlain, the the grand cross of the order of merit, and a pension of 20,000 livres. In his own country, he saw himself the object of envy and hatred [Page 81] to men of letters, although he never had been their opponent in soliciting for places and pensions, never had humbled them by his cri­ticisms, nor ever had interfered in literary cabals, but had obliged all who needed his services, had endeavoured to gain their affec­tion by praising them and taking every oppor­tunity of winning the friendship of those whom self-love had rendered unjust.

The priests, who forgot not the Letters on the English Nation and Mahomet, while they were waiting occasion to persecute him, en­deavoured to decry him and his works, and employed their whole ascendancy over youth against him, especially that which, as spíritu­al directors, they preserved over private fami­lies and the devotees of the court. Absolute silence only could preserve him from calumny. He could publish no work without being cer­tain that malignity would endeavour thence to accuse him of being impious, or to render him suspected by government. Madame de Pompadour, elevated to a situation in which she wished to be surrounded by none but slaves, forgot their former intimacy. She could not pardon his not having suffered with sufficient patience the preference granted to Crébillon. Louis the XVth had a kind of dislike to Vol­taire, although he had flattered that prince to the injury of his own fame: but kings are, by habit, rendered almost insensible to public adulation; the m [...]tfu [...] praise of the courtiers, [Page 82] who, seizing every trifling occasion, repeat their panegyric continually and at the luckiest moments, is alone seducing. This flattery consists less in direct praise, than in an adroit approbation of the passions, inclinations, acts, and sentiments of the monarch; half a word, a motion, a general maxim which excuses their follies or their faults, produce greater effects than poetry which is worthy of posterity. The eulogies of genius soothe only those kings who have an actual love of fame.

It is said that Voltaire, approaching Louis XV. after the representation of the Temple of Fame, in which Trajan after his victories accords peace to the world, and receives the crown which had been refused to conquerors and reserved for the man who was the friend of humanity, thus addressed the monarch— Trajan est-il content ^*? and that the king was less flattered by the comparison than offended by the familiarity.

M. d'Argenson refused to support Voltaire as a candidate for the title of Free Associate of the Academy of Sciences, and for obtaining a seat in the Academy of Belles Lettres, of which place he was at that time ambitious, as a refuge against the army of periodical critics who were obliged by the police to treat liter­ary bodies with respect, except when other bodies or powerful individuals thought it their [Page 83] interest to humble them by abandoning them to the attacks of these contemptible ene­mies.

Voltaire, therefore, went to Berlin, and the very monarch, who had disdained him, and the court, in which he had been treated with disrespect, were offended at his departure. The loss of a man who honoured France, and the disgrace of having obliged him to seek an asy­lum in another country, were then only re­membered. In the palace of the king of Prus­sia, he found peace and even the semblance of freedom; feeling at first no kind of subjection, except that of passing some hours with the king to correct his works, and to teach him the art of writing. He usually supped with his majes­ty; and these suppers, at which there was free­dom in excess, where every question of meta­physics and morals was discussed without re­straint, where the most unbounded pleasantry enlivened, or cut serious argument short, and where the king generally disappeared to give place to the man of wit, were moments of agreeable relaxation to Voltaire. The remain­der of his time was consecrated to study.

Here he improved some of his tragedies, fi­nished his Age of Louis the XIVth, corrected his poem of the Maid of Orleans, wrote part of his Essay on the Manners and Spirit of Nati­ons, and composed a poem on Natural Law; while Frederic governed his states without a minister, inspected and improved his army, com­posed [Page 84] poetry and music, and wrote philosophy and history.

The royal family encouraged Voltaire in his pursuits; he addressed verses to the princesses, acted tragedy with the brothers and sisters of the king, and while he taught then to declaim, led them to feel the beauties of French poetry: for poetry ought to be spoken aloud; nor can it be understood, in a foreign tongue, by those who are not in the habit of hearing it recited by speakers, who can give it that accent and force which are its characteristics.

This Voltaire called the palace of Alcina; but the enchantment was of too short duration. The men of literature, who had been longer at Berlin than himself, were jealous of prefer­ence which was too conspicuous, especially of that kind of independence which he preserved, that familiarity which the charms and brillian­cy of his wit gave him, and that art of ming­ling truth with panegyric and of imparting to flattery the tone of jocular ease.

La Métrie told Voltaire that the king, to whom he was one day mentioning those marks of kindness he discovered for his chamberlain, replied, "I want him at present to revise my works; but having sucked the orange, we throw away the rind." When Voltaire heard this, the encantation was over; and his mind felt that kind of suspicion which never suffered him to lose sight of his project for escaping.

In the mean time the king was informed [Page 85] that Voltaire, being pressed by general Man­stein to revise his memoirs, had answered, "The king has sent me his dirty linen to wash, yours must wait;" and that, another time, he had said, in a fit of ill humour, pointing to some poetical papers of the king, lying on the table, "That man is Cesar and the Abbé Cottin."

Mutual inclination, however, acted on the monarch and the philosopher. Frederic said, long after their separation, that he had never met with so amiable a man as Voltaire; and Voltaire, notwithstanding his resentment, which never was entirely effaced, confessed, that when Frederic thought proper, he was the most pleasing of mankind. They likewise united in their open contempt for prejudice and super­stition; the pleasure they look in making them the eternal objects of their jests, their common love for that philosophy which is cheerful and inviting, and their mutual disposition to search and to seize on the ridiculous in whatever pre­tended to superior gravity, wire the same. Hence it should have seemed that the storm must have ended in a calm, and that interest and pleasure must have continued them in friend­ship: but the jealousy of Maupertuis rendered them irreconcilable.

Maupertuis, a man of much wit, but not of too much learning, and of still less philosophy, was tormented by that desire of fame which makes us choose trifling means when the great are wanting, utter paradoxes when we are [Page 86] unable to discover truths, generalise formula when we cannot invent them, and accumulate incongruities when we are deficient in new ideas. In Paris, he had been seen to leave the company, or hide himself behind a screen, when he could not continue the principal speak­er; and in like manner at Berlin, whether at the academy of sciences or the table of the king, he would be the first. He was indebted to Voltaire for a great part of his reputation, as well as for the honour of being perpetual president of the academy of Berlin, and of ex­ercising authority there in his majesty's name.

Some jests which Voltaire had indulged in, when Maupertuis, following the king to the army, was taken prisoner at the battle of Mol­witz, had angered him, and he vented his com­plaints with ill humour. Voltaire returned a friendly answer, and appeased him by writing four lines for his portrait. Maupertuis, some years afterward, took it much amiss that Vol­taire had not mentioned him in his discourse, when elected to the French academy; and the arrival of Voltaire at Berlin compleated his disgust. He saw him the friend of the sove­reign, in whose presence he himself was but a courtier; and beheld him giving lessons to the man from whom he received orders.

Surrounded by enemies, and diffident of the continuance of royal friendship, Voltaire se­cretly regretted, and endeavoured to recover, his lost independence. He thought proper to [Page 87] employ a Jew to transfer a part of his proper­ty out of Prussia. The Jew betrayed his trust; and, to revenge himself on Voltaire, who, hav­ing detected him, would not suffer himself to be robbed, he brought an absurd action, know­ing that hatred is not difficult in admitting evi­dence. The king, to punish his friend for hav­ing attempted to preserve his liberty and property, pretended to believe him guilty, to deliver him up to justice, and even to exclude him his presence till the cause should be de­termined.

Voltaire addressed himself to Maupertuis, who had not yet openly testified his sentiments, and requested his interference with the chief judge. Maupertuis returned a haughty refu­sal, and Voltaire perceived he had another ene­my. This ridiculous suit, at length, ended as it should do; the Jew was condemned, and par­doned by Voltaire. The king then admitted Voltaire once more, and added new marks of respect to former kindness, by bestowing on him a house near Potsdam.

The eyes of hatred, however, are always open and watchful of opportunity. La Beau­melle, a protestant, and native of Languedoc, first an apprentice to a gospel minister at Ge­neva, and afterwards acting the French wit in Denmark, being soon dismissed from Copen­hagen, came to seek his fortune at Berlin; having no other title to fame than that of hav­ing lately published a libel. He went to Vol­taire, [Page 88] and presented the book to him, in which Voltaire himself was ill treated, and in which the men of wit, who had been invited into Prus­sia, among whom he was come to solicit a place, was compared to apes or those dwarfs who had formerly been maintained at certain courts. Such a ridiculous oversight was the momentary object of pleasantry at the king's supper; but the jests were reported to La Beaumelle by Maupertuis, who, charging them all to the account of Voltaire, made La Beau­melle his irreconcilable foe, and secured to himself a tool, who aided his malice by shame­ful libels, without bringing the character of the president of the academy in question.

Maupertuis wanted assistance; he had late­ly advanced the least possible action, as a new mechanical principle, which was much contro­verted, though the illustrious Euler did it the honour of defending it, and at the same time instructed its author in its full extent and true use. Koënig not only opposed it, but assert­ed it was not new, and quoted the fragment of a letter from Leibnitz, in which it was con­tained. Maupertuis, having learnt from Koënig himself that he had only a copy of the letter from Leibnitz, thought proper formally to summons him before the academy of Berlin, to produce the original. Koënig answered that he obtained his copy from the unfortunate Hienzi, who had long since been beheaded, for having attempted to deliver the people of the [Page 89] Canton of Bern from the tyranny of the senate. The original was not to be found among the remaining papers of Hienzi, and the academy, from motives partly of fear and partly of mean­ness, declared Koënig unworthy of the title of academician, and struck him from their list. Maupertuis seemed not to have known that the general voice of the learned only could be­stow, or take from him, the honour of making a discovery, that this opinion must be free and voluntary, and that any formal act, by render­ing it suspicious, would but diminish its autho­rity.

Voltaire had been acquainted with Koënig at Cirey, where he came to give lessons in the doctrines of Leibnitz to Madame du Chatelet. He had preserved a degree of friendship for him, though he had sometimes indulged him­self in jests to his disadvantage, during his re­sidence in France. He did not love Mauper­tuis, and hated persecution, whatever form it might assume to torment mankind; he there­fore openly took the the part of Koënig, and published some writings, in which reason and justice were seasoned by delicate and poignant wit. Maupertuis engaged the vanity of the king in behalf of the honour of his academy, and prevailed on him to exact a promise from Voltaire to ridicule neither it nor its president. The promise was given, but unfortunately the king, who had commanded silence, imagined he himself might speak. He wrote seve­ral humourous pieces, which, but with some [Page 90] little inequality, were partly against Mauper­tuis, and partly against Voltaire. The lat­ter imagined that the king, by this con­duct, had released him from his promise, and that the privilege of being the only one who should laugh was not included in the royal pre­rogative. He, therefore, profited by a gene­ral permission which he had formerly obtained, and sent his Akakia to the press, in which Mau­pertuis was devoted to eternal ridicule.

The king laughed. He had little affection, and less esteem for Maupertuis; yet, jealous of his own authority, he caused this piece of humour to be burnt by the hangman. This is a mode of vengeance which it is rather singular that a philosophic king should borrow from the inquisition.

The insulted Voltaire sent the monarch his cross, his key, and the patent for his pension, with the four following lines—

He sighed for freedom, but he could not ob­tain this by sending back wh [...]t he at first had called splendid baubles, but which he ever afterward named marks of slavery. He wrote from Berlin, where he was ill, for permission to [Page 91] depart. The king, who wished to humble but not to lose him, sent him some bark, but no permission. He again wrote that it was ne­cessary he should go and drink the waters of Plombiers; he was answered, those of Silesia were equally salutary.

Voltaire, at length, thought proper to ask to see his majesty, flattering himself that by his presence he could awaken sentiments which were rather wounded than extinct.

The baubles that he had formerly possessed were returned to him. He hastened to Pots­dam, saw the king, and a few moments produ­ced a total change. Familiarity revived, for­mer cheerfulness was recovered even at the expence of Maupertuis, and Voltaire obtained permission to go to Plombiers, on giving his promise to return. This promise was not, per­haps, very sincere, but it was less obligatory than one given between equals; the hundred and fifty thousand men, who guarded the Prus­sian frontiers would not suffer it to be consi­dered as given with entire freedom.

Voltaire hastened to Leipsic, where he made some stay, to recover his strength, which had been exhausted by this long persecution. Mau­pertuis sent him a ridiculous challenge, the on­ly effect of which was, that it opened a new source to his inexhaustible pleasantry. From Leipsic he went to visit the Duchess of Saxe-Gotha, a princess, who cultivated letters, loved philosophy, and was superior to prejudice. At [Page 92] her request he there began his Annals of the Empire.

From Gotha, he departed for Plombiers; and took the road to Frankfort. Maupertuis was determined on revenge; his challenge had been unsuccessful, and the libels of La Beaumelle he thought insufficient. This his contemptible second had been obliged to quit Berlin, after a ridiculous adventure and some weeks imprisonment. He had fled to Gotha with a chamber-maid, who had robbed the mis­tress she had left; his libels had driven him from Frankfort; and he had scarcely arrived at Paris before he was thrown into the Bastile. The president of the academy at Berlin had therefore to seek another avenger. He em­bittered the ill humour of the king. The slow­ness with which Voltaire travel [...]ed, his stay at Gotha, and a considerable annuity for the lives of himself and his niece Madame Dennis pur­chased of the Duke of Wirtemberg, all spoke his determination of never returning to Prussia, and he had taken with him a copy of the po­etical works of the king, which were then on­ly known to the wits of the court.

A fear was excited in Frederic's mind that a species of vengeance, terrible even to a roy­al poet, would be taken. It was possible, at least, that Voltaire should imagine he had a right to reclaim the verses he had given, and to specify those he had corrected. The king gave a knave, whom he kept in his pay at F [...]nk­fort [Page 93] to purchase or kidnap men for him, an order to arrest Voltaire, and not to release him till he should have yielded up his cross, his key, and the grant of his pension, together with the poems which Freitag called "the work of Poeshys of the king my master." These volumes had unfor­tunately been left at Leipsic, and Voltaire was kept in close confinement for three weeks. Ma­dame Dennis his niece, who had come to meet him, was treated with like rigour. Guards were placed at the door, and soldier continued in each of their chambers who never suffered them to leave his sight, such fears were enter­tained lest the work of Poeshys should escape. This precious pledge was at length restored to Freitag, and Voltaire was released; but not however till he had been obliged to bestow mo­ney on certain adventurers who took that op­portunity to commence litigious suits: having escaped from Frankfort he went to Colmar.

The king of Prussia, ashamed of his ridicu­lous anger, disavowed the proceedings of Frei­tag, but he had so much morality as not to pun­ish him for having obeyed. It is strange that a city, calling itself free, should suffer a foreign power to commit such vexations within its walls; but freedom and independence are to the fee­ble mere words. During the period of his friendship for Voltaire, Frederic, in the trans­ports of enthusiasm, has often kissed his hands▪ and Voltaire, after his imprisonment, compar­ing the [...] w [...] periods, said to his friends—"He [Page 94] has a hundred times kissed the hand he so late­ly manacled."

The only work he published at Berlin was the age of Louis XIV. which is the sole histo­ry of that reign, which can be read. On the authority of the the old courtiers of Louis XIV. or of those who had lived in intimacy with them, he there relates a small number of anec­dotes selected with discernment, and such as serve to paint the spirit and character of the persons of the age. Political and military events are given in a rapid, interesting man­ner; the picture abounds with bold strokes. In some chapters, he recounts the attempts which Louis XIV. made for the improvement of the laws and finances, and for the encouragement of trade and industry; and we ought to par­don Voltaire for having, on this occasion, fol­lowed the opinions of the most enlighted men of his own times, instead of that knowledge which did not then exist.

His chapters on Calvinism, Jansenism, Qu [...]et­ism, and the dispute on the Chinese ceremonies, are models of the manner in which a prudent friend of truth ought to treat these maladies so disgraceful to man, when the number or the power of the diseased is such as to make it ne­cessary gently to raise the veil which conceals their deformity. We have only to reproach him with too much severity against the Calvin­ists, whose enormities proceeded from self-defence, and whose crimes were but a kind of [Page 95] reprisal of juridical murders committed on them in certain provinces.

The discoveries made in the sciences, and the progress of the arts, Voltaire related with clear­ness, precision, and impartiality; and his de­cisions continually appeared dictated by a free and sound mind, and a mild indulgent philo­sophy.

The catalogue of the writers of the age of Louis XIV. was an original thought. It had never before entered the imagination, thus, by a trait or a few lines, to paint men of litera­ture, philosophers and poets, without dryness or affectation, with taste seldom mistaken, and accuracy ever poignant.

The work brought foreign nations aquainted with Louis XIV. among whom he had been disfi­gured by a multitude of libels, and taught them to respect a people whom they had previously viewed through the false medium of prejudice, jealousy, and hatred. The countrymen of Vol­taire were less indulgent. Such as were slaves from condition or character were highly offend­ed that a Frenchman should dare to discover follies in Louis XIV. Prejudiced people were angry at the freedom with which he treated the mistakes of generals, and the defects of great writers; and others, who in some re­spects were more just, reproached him with too much indulgence or enthusiasm. But his­tory is never impartially judged in the country to which it relates, the decisions of whose in­habitants [Page 96] are continually perverted by jarring interests and pre-conceived false ideas.

Voltaire passed near two years in Alsatia, during which he published his Annals of the Empire, the only chronologic abridgment which can be read without weariness, because it is written in a rapid style and abounds with philosophic deductions, expressed with energy. Thus Voltaire has given a model of that kind of writing, the merit and utility of which his friendship for the President Hénault induced him to exaggerate.

He thought, at first, of settling in Alsatia; but, unfortunately, the Jesuits attempted to convert him, and, not succeeding, began to disseminate calumniating rumours which be­spoke persecution. Voltaire endeavoured to ob­tain not permission to return to Paris, for this he had never been forbidden, but an assurance that he should not be disagreeable to the court. He knew Fance too well not to be sensible that, odious as he was by his love of truth to all powerful bodies, he must soon become the ob­ject of their persecution, would the court suf­fer him to be oppressed.

The answer was not to his satisfaction. Vol­taire found himself unprotected in his own country, though his name supported its ho­nour, at that time degraded throughout Eu­rope by ridiculous quarrels concerning Billets of Confession; and at the very moment when, by his publication of the Age of Louis XV. [Page 97] he had erected a monument to its glory. He determined to go and drink the waters of Aix, in Savoy. Passing through Lyons, Car­dinal de Tencin, famous for the conversion of Lass and the council of Embrun, informed him he could not invite him to dinner, because Voltaire was out of favour at court. But the inhabitants of that opulent city, in which the spirit of trade has not effaced the love of let­ters, recompensed him for the politic incivility of their archbishop. He there received those honours which public enthusiasm pays to genius. His pieces were played before him, amid the loud acclamations of a people, inebriated with the joy▪ of possessing the man to whom they were indebted for such dignified pleasures. But he durst not fix his abode at Lyons; the conduct of the Cardinal informed him he was not far enough from his enemies.

Passing through Geneva, to consult with Tronchin, the beauty of the country, the equality which appeared to prevail there, the advantage of being out of France, and in a city where French was the language of the people, the freedom of thought which was greater than in a monarchical or catholic coun­try, and the liberty of the press, founded in­deed less on the laws than on the interests of trade, all determined him to fix his retreat in that place.

But he soon perceived that a city in which the pedantic and austere spirit of Calvin had [Page 98] taken deep root, where the vanity of imitat­ing ancient republics, and the jealousy of the poor against the rich had established sumptuary laws, where theatrical exhibitions offended both Calvinistic fanaticism, and republican rigour, would to him neither be a safe nor an agreeable residence. He determined to pro­cure a place of refuge in the territories of Geneva against Catholic persecution, and a retreat in France against puritanical gloom, and accordingly to live alternately at Tourney, since called Ferney, in France, and the Delices at the gates of Geneva.

Here he fixed his abode with Madame Den­nis his niece; who, being a widow without children, was free to indulge her friendship for her uncle, and to acknowledge the kind­ness with which he had rendered her circum­stances easy. She took on herself the charge of his domestic affairs; and, to increase his tranquillity, by relieving him from such fa­tiguing trifles. This was the only aid he re­ceived; labour was to him an inexhaustible source of enjoyment; and freedom was all he wanted to render his moments happy.

Hitherto, we have written the tempestuous life of a philosophic poet, whose lo [...]e for truth, and whose independence of character had oc­casioned him more enemies than friends, who gave no reply to their malice except by epi­grams which were either witty or dreadfully severe, and whose conduct had more frequent­ly [Page 99] been guided by the sensations of the mo­ment than the result of any plan which reason had formed.

In his present retirement, removed from illusion and whatever could excite momentary or personal passion, we shall see him yield en­tirely to his prevailing and incessant love of fame, to the still more potent necessity his mind felt of being productive, and to his zeal for the destruction of prejudice, which was indeed the most powerful and active of all the sensa­tions he felt. This peaceful life, seldom dis­turbed, and then by the threats of persecution, rather than persecution itself, we shall see adorned not only, like his youth, by the exer­cise of private benevolence, a quality common to all men whose hearts have hot been harden­ed and minds corrupted by misfortune or van­ity, but by those acts of enlightened and bold benevolence, which, while they relieve the sufferings of certain individuals, are of service to the whole human race.

And hence it was that, indignant to behold a corrupt minister pursue the unfortunate Byng to dea [...]h that he might conceal his own errors and flatter the pride of the English populace, Voltaire, in order to rescue this innocent vic­tim from the Machiavelian arts of Pitt, em­ployed every means which genius and compas­sion could inspire, and singly raised his voice against injustice; while astonished Europe in silence saw such an example of atrocity wor [...] [Page 100] of the most barbarous times, which England dared to give in this age of humanity and knowledge.

The first work he sent from his retreat was the Orphan of China, a tragedy written dur­ing his residence in Alsatia, at a time when he hoped he might have been allowed to live at Paris, and was desirous of theatrical success to secure his friends and impose silence on his foes.

In the commencement of the tragic art, poets were certain of astonishing the mind by giving to the characters sentiments contrary to nature, and by sacrificing the true feelings of the heart to the more uncommon love of fame, exaggerated patriotism, and devoted­ness to princes.

As reason, at such a period, is ev [...] inferi­or to taste, vulgar opinion seconds such as employ those means, or are seduced by them. Leontine necessarily inspires admiration; and the haughtiness of his character induces an au­dience, who idolize their king, to pardon him the sacrifice of his son. But when means like these, of producing effects by a departure from nature, begin to be exhausted, and when art improves, the poet is then obliged to write more conformably to reason, and seek re­sources in nature herself. Yet, such is the force of habit, the sacrifice of Zamti, founded indeed on more dignified and powerful motives [...]an that of Leontine, expiated by tears and [...] seduced the spectators.

[Page 101]Astonishment only was excited at the first representation of the Orphan, by the follow­ing truly philosophic lines:

The audience hesitated, and the voice of na­ture needed the aid of reflexion in order to be heard. Thus can a great poet sometimes decide the mind between ancient errors and truths, which to vanquish wavering yet still opposing prejudice, is obliged so wait for new support. Men often dare not confess to them­selves that slow progress which reason makes in their minds; but they are ready to follow her when, appearing in a strong and effective manner, they are obliged to acknowledge her presence. Thus, these same verses have since been continually heard with transport, and Voltaire enjoyed the pleasure of having aven­ged nature.

This play is the triumph of virtue over power, and of the laws over arms. Till then, Mahomet excepted, no poet had successfully made one of these men, whose fame appears awful, and whose characters present the picture of extraordinary strength of soul, in love without degradation. Voltaire, a second time conquered this difficul­ty; the love of Gengis Khan is interesting in des­pite [Page 102] of the violence and ferocity of his charac­ter, because it is true and impassioned, because it wrests from him a confession of the vacancy his heart felt amid all his power, and because he at last sacrificed his love to fame, and his thirst of conquest to the charms, before un­known to him, of pacific virtues.

The repose of Voltaire was soon disturbed by the publication of the Maid of Orleans. This poem, in which licentiousness and philo­sophy are combined, and truth assumes the mask of satiric and voluptuous humour, was begun about the year 1730, but had never been finished. The author had intrusted what he had written of it only to a few of his friends, and to some princes. The rumour of its ex­istence had brought down menace on him; and, by not finishing it, he took the surest means to avoid the dangerous temptation of making it public. Copies unfortunately got abroad, one of which fell into inimical and selfish hands, and the work appeared not only with such defects as the author had left; but with lines added by the editors full of gross­ness and ill taste, and with satiric traits which might endanger the safety of Voltaire. The desire of gain, the pleasure of attributing their own wretched verses to a great poet, and the more malignant pleasure of exposing him to persecution, were the motives of this act of infidelity, the honour of which was divided between la Beaumelle and the Ex Capuchin Maubert.

[Page 103]They succeeded only so far as to trouble that repose for a moment which they wished to destroy. His friends evaded the persecution, by proving the work to be spurious, and the hatred of the editors served him whom it meant to wound.

This, however, obliged Voltaire to finish the poem, and present a work to the world, at which the author of Mahomet and the age of Louis XIV. need not blush. The work ex­cited lively feelings of enthusiasm in a numer­ous class of readers, while the foes of Voltaire affected to decry it as unworthy of a philosopher, and almost as a blemish on the writings and the life of a poet.

But, if it be useful to render superstition ridiculous in the eyes of men addicted to vo­luptuousness, and by the very weakness which hurries them into dissipation destined some time to become the unfortunate victims or the dan­gerous tools of this vile tyrant of men, if af­fectation of austerity in manners, if the exces­sive value attached to their purity, be service­able only to hypocrites who, wearing the mask of chastity, may neglect every other virtue, and cast a sacred veil over the most pernicious vices of society, such as intolerance and per­secution, if accustoming the world to regard those errors from which men of honour and conscience are not exempt as crimes, the pow­er of that dangerous sect, who govern and dis­turb the world be extended over the purest [Page 104] minds by their having exclusively rendered themselves the interpreters of celestial just­ice, we shall then only behold in the author of the Maid of Orleans the foe of hypocrisy and superstition.

Voltaire himself, when speaking of la Font­aine, has well remarked that works, in which voluptuousness and humour are mingled, amuse without heating or seducing the imagination. And if such works be sources of pleasure to the fancy, which lighten the uneasy moments of life, diminish the misfortunes of privation, un­bend a mind fatigued by labour, and fill up mo­ments in which the weary and sunken soul can neither act nor meditate with effect, wherefore rob men of an aid which nature presents? What will be the effect of such reading? No other than that of disposing men to more mildness and indulgence. It was not such books that Gérard or Clement read; or that the scouts of Cromwell carried in the pommels of their saddles.

Two works very different in themselves ap­peared at the same epoch: the poem on Natur­al Law, and the poem of the Destruction of Lisbon. To display morals, the principles of which reason teaches all men which are sancti­oned by their hearts, and which remorse in­forms them it is their duty to practice; to show that these are the principles which God, the common father of men, alone could impart, since they alone are uniform; to prove that the [Page 105] duty of individuals is mutually to pardon their mistakes, and that of sovereigns to prevent the pernicious tendency of those vain opinions which fanaticism and hypocrisy support, by wisely treating them all with indifference; such is the purport of the poem on Natural Law.

This work, the finest which man ever conse­crated to the Deity, excited the anger of the devotees, who called it the poem of Natural Religion; though Religion is only mentioned in order to oppose intolerance, and though there is no such a thing as natural religion. It was burnt by the parliament of Paris, which began to be terrified as well at the progress of reason as at that of Molinism. Under the con­duct, at this period, of men who were either blinded by pride or false policy, it imagined it would be more easy to impede the advance­ment of knowledge than to merit the applause of the enlightened. It felt not the want itself had of the good opinion of the public; it misconstrued those who were to be its guides, and declared itself the enemy of men of letters, at that precise moment when the suffrage of these men in France, and even over all Europe, began to acquire influence.

However the poem of Voltaire, which has since been commented on in various celebrated books, is still that in which the connexion be­tween morality and the being of a God is most clearly demonstrated. Thirty years later and the [Page 106] book which was burnt as impious, would al­most have appeared a work of religion.

In the poem on the Destruction of Lisbon, Voltaire indulged those sentiments of terror and melancholy which this dreadful accident inspired. He led the tranquil sect of Optimists a­mid these fearful ruins, combated their cold and puerile doctrine with the indignation of a phi­losopher deeply sensible of the sufferings of mankind, exposed the difficulties on the origin of evil in their full force, and avowed it is im­possible for them to be solved by man.

This poem, in which at the age of more than sixty the mind of Voltaire, warmed by a love of humanity, displays all the strength and fire of youth, was not the only work in which he op­posed Optimism. He published Candide, the first of philosophic romances; which species of writing he brought from England, and added to its perfection. It is a kind of composition which appears easy of execution, but it re­quires an uncommon talent; that of expressing by a jest, a flight of the fancy, or by the in­cidents of the romance, the result of profound philosophy, without ceasing to be natural, pleasing, and accurate. Hence it is necessary to select such effects as need neither develope­ment nor proof, and at once to avoid com­mon place unworthy of repetition, and ab­straction which is too deep or too new, and which is not adapted to the multitude: that is, it is necessary to be, without appearing to be, a philosopher.

[Page 107]We may add, few books of philosophy are more useful. Such romances are read by frivo­lous men, whom the very name of philosopher disgusts or renders gloomy, and who, however, it is requisite should be freed from prejudice, and made the opponents of the herd who are interested in its defence. The human race would be condemned to eternal error if, to free them from it, it were necessary to study and under­stand the proofs of truth. Fortunately the native intelligence of the mind is sufficient for the comprehending of those simple truths which are the most essential. It is therefore sufficient to discover some means of fixing the attention of the indolent, and of engraving these truths in their memory; and this is the great use of philosophic romances, and the merit of those in which Voltaire has alike sur­passed his imitators and his models.

Candide was soon followed by a free transla­tion of the book of Ecclesiastes, and a part of the song of Solomon.

Madame de Pompadour had been persuaded that it would be profoundly politic for her to assume the mask of devotion, by which she might shield herself from the scruples and in­constancy of the king, and at the same time calm the hatred of the people. She wished to make Voltaire an actor in this farce. The duke de la Valiere proposed to him to translate the Psalms, the book of Proverbs, Solomon's song, and the Ecclesiastes. The edition was to have [Page 108] been printed at the Louvre, and the author to have returned to Paris under the protection of the religious favorite. But Voltaire could not act the hypocrite, not even to be made a cardinal, some hopes of which were given him about this time. Such proposals generally come too late; and were they made in time, the policy of them would not be very certain. He who must be a dangerous enemy might become a still more dangerous ally. Let us suppose Calvin or Lu­ther called to the purple, when they might have accepted the dignity without disgrace, and let us imagine what would have been the consequence. The baubles of vanity do not satiate souls impelled by the ambition of reign­ing over the minds of men; they do but sup­ply new arms.

Voltaire, however, was tempted to make essays in translation; not to recover his religi­ous repute, but to exercise himself in another species of composition. When they appeared, the devout imagined he only had intended to parody that which he had translated, and ex­claimed it was shameful. They did not imagine that Voltaire had softened and purified the text; that his Ecclesiastes had less of the doc­trine of materialism than the original; and that his song of songs was less indecent than the sa­cred text. These works were therefore once more burnt, for which Voltaire avenged him­self by a satiric and humuorous letter, in which he mocked at the hypocrisy of morals, the pe­culiar [Page 109] vice of the modern nations of Europe, which has contributed more than is imagined to destroy that energy of character by which the ancients were distinguished.

In 1757, the first edition of his works, act­ually made under his own inspection, was print­ed. He revised it with rigorous attention, se­lected some of his numerous fugitive pieces with severity, but with judgment, and added his immortal Essay on the Manners and Spirit of Nations.

Voltaire had long complained that among the moderns especially, the history of a country was that of its kings, or its chiefs; that it spoke only of wars, treaties, and civil commotions; and that the history of morals, arts, sciences, legislation, and political government, had been almost forgotten. Those very ancients in whose writings we find most of morals, and internal politics, have only in general added, to the history of wars, that of popular factions. We imagine, while we read such historians, that the human race was created only to exhi­bit the political or military talents of a few in­dividuals; and that the object of society is not the happiness of the species, but the pleasure of having revolutions to read, or to relate.

Voltaire formed the plan of a history which should contain all that was most important for men to know: such as the effects produced on the peace and happiness of nations, their pre­judices, knowledge, virtues, and vices, and the customs and the arts of different ages.

[Page 110]He chose the period from Charlemagne to the present century; but, not confining himself solely to European nations, he interested and in­structed the reader by an abridged retrospect of the state of the other parts of the globe; the revolutions they had undergone, and the opinions by which they had been governed.

It was to reconcile Madame du Chatelet to the study of history, that he had undertaken this immense labour, which obliged him to read books of erudition, such as would have been supposed incompatible with the liveliness of his fancy, and the activity of his mind. The sup­position that he should serve the human race supported him, and erudition was not dull to a man who, having the sagacity to detect and amuse himself with the ridiculous, found an in­exhaustible source of this in the speculative or practical doctrines of our ancestors; and in the follies of those who have transmitted or com­mented on them, while admiring them either with sincerity or hypocrisy equally laughable.

Such a work could please none but philoso­phers. It was accused of being frivolous, be­cause it was clear, and read without labour; and of being inaccurate, because there are some errors of names and dates discoverable in it, which in themselves are things absolutely indif­ferent. Yet it has been proved, by the very reproaches of his bitterest critics, that, in a hi­story so extensive, no writer was ever more ex­act. [Page 111] He was often taxed with partiality, be­cause he exclaimed against those prejudices which pusillanimity or meanness had too long respected; and it is easy to show that, far from exaggerating the crimes of sacerdotal despo­tism, he has rather diminished their number, and softened their atrocity. In fine, it was taken amiss that, in a picture of the wicked­ness and folly of man, he has sometimes indul­ged in strokes of pleasantry; and that he has not always spoken seriously of human extrava­gance; as if that which is often dangerous ceas­ed therefore to be absurd.

These prejudices, which it was the interest of powerful bodies to disseminate, are not yet eradicated▪ The habit of generally seeing dulness and precision combined, and, by the side of critical dicision of finding the insipid scaffolding on which it was reared, has given birth to the other habit of thinking nothing accurate which is not pedantic. We are ac­customed to see gloomy stupidity accompany historical precision; as we see men of certain professions always cloathed in black. But men of genius derive no satisfaction from a merit which fools can claim as easily as themselves; and this merit they are supposed not to possess, because they alone forbear to vaunt of it. The Travels of the young Anacharsis will per­haps efface this too commonly received opinion.

But the essay of Voltaire will ever remain, [Page 112] to men of reason, a work delightful by the choice of its materials, by the rapidity of its style, by that love of truth and humanity which is conspicuous in every page, and by the art of presenting contrasted pictures, and unexpected similarities, without ceasing to be easy and na­tural; as well as by deducing, in language ever simple, grand consequences, and making profound reflexions The author has not given the history of ages, but that which we wish to remember of history; that which the mind de­lights to recollect.

Few books would be more useful, in a ra­tional plan of education. While we read the the facts, we here are taught the art of judg­ing them truly, of exercising the native inde­pendence of the mind, without which man is but the servile instrument of prejudice, and of contemning superstition, fearing fanaticism, de­testing intolerance, and hating tyranny, with­out ceasing to love peace, and that mildness of manners which is as necessary to the happi­ness of mankind as is the wisdom of legislation itself.

Hitherto, in private or public education, which alike are guided by prejudice, youth have studied history as disfigured by vile or su­perstitious compilers; and though, since the publication of the essay of Voltaire, two men, the Abbé de Condillac and the Abbé Millot, have merited not to be numbered in this class, yet, restrained by their situation, they have [Page 113] left the reader too much to divine: in order to understand them, we ought not to have any need of their instruction.

This work placed Voltaire in the class of original historians; and he has the honour of having effected a revolution in the manner of writing history, by which England indeed has hitherto only profited. Hume, Robertson, Gibbon, and Watson, may, in some respects, be considered as his scholars. The history of Voltaire has another advantage: which is, that it may be taught in England as well as in Rus­sia, and in Virginia as consistently as at Bern or Venice. He has inserted none but such truths as every species of government may adopt. He only requires that human reason should have the right of improving itself; that the citizen should enjoy his natural freedom; and that the laws should be mild and the religion tole­rant. He addresses himself to all mankind, and says nothing which nay not enlighten them all, without offence to any of those opinions which are so connected with the constitution and in­dividual interest of a country as not to yield to reason, till such, time as the destruction of more general error shall have rendered the ap­proach of truth less difficult.

In this edition, Voltaire had prefixed to his f [...]gitive pieces of poetry an epistle addressed to his house of the Delices; or, rather, it was an ode to liberty, and sufficed to answer those who, in the height of their aristocratic zeal, [Page 114] had accused him of being the enemy of liberty. In these pieces, in which refined gaiety, deli­cate feeling, and gallantry successively appear, Voltaire sought not to be a poet; yet every species of poetic beauty flowed from his pen when he thought not of them; he did not en­deavour to display philosophy, yet throughout the whole is to be found whatever is suited to the subject, to the situation, and the charac­ters. In such poetic effusions, as in romances, the philosophy of the work should appear less extensive than the philosophy of the author. It is with these writings as with elementary books which cannot be well written if the author's knowledge does not embrace more than that which they contain; and therefore, although these works are regarded as frivolous, those of them which stand in the first rank are pro­duced only by men of superior minds.

This same year was the epoch of a reconci­liation between Voltaire and his royal disciple; the Austrians, already in the heart of Silesia, were on the point of completing the conquest of it; a French army was on the frontiers of Brandenbourgh: the Russians, masters of Prus­sia, threatened to overrun Pomerania and the Marches. The Prussian monarchy seemed to be annihilated; and the prince, who had been the author of its splendour, appeared to have no other resource than to inter himself beneath its ruins, and to preserve his glory by perish­ing in the moment of a victory.

[Page 115]The Margravess of Bareith tenderly loved her brother, the destruction of her house afflict­ed her, she saw how greatly France opposed her own interests while she lavished her blood and treasures to secure the sovereignty of Ger­many to the house of Austria; but the French minister had suffered from a verse of the King of Prussia, nor could the Marchioness de Pom­padour pardon his having feigned an ignorance of her political existence, and care had been taken to send to her also some verses which had fallen into the hand of the minister of the Elector of Saxony, through the treachery of a person employed to copy them. However there was a necessity of negociating with ene­mies, imbitt [...]red by personal insults, and at the very moment in which they thought them­selves secure of an easy victory. The Margra­vess had recourse to Voltaire, who addressed himself to the Cardinal de Tençin, knowing that this minister, forgotten since the death of Fleury who employed while he despised him, had preserved a private correspondence with the king. Tençin wrote; but the only answer he receieved was the order of the minister for foreign affairs to reject the negociation by a letter, of which they had even sent him a co­py. The aged politician, who would not for­merly invite Voltaire to his table in deference to the court, could not banish his chagrin when he found that he had offended the court by his complaisance to Voltaire; and it shortened his [Page 116] days. In his youth, more perilous adventures had only served to animate his talent for in­trigue, because then hope sustained him, and he was among the number of men who find in power and rank a consolation for shame; but, in this affair, he beheld the last thread destroy­ed which connected him with royal power.

Voltaire commenced another negociation, through the medium of the Marechal de Riche­lieu, but it was equally fruitless. A third, some years later, was so far successful as to obtain the consent of M. de Choiseul to receive a secret envoy from the King of Prussia. This envoy was discovered by the agents of the em­press queen, and either through the inconstan­cy of the French minister, or that M. de Choi­seul had acted without consulting Madame de Pompadour, he was arrested and his papers searched: a violation of the law of nations which is forgotten in the multitude of inferior crimes which politicians commit without re­morse.

During this period, so dangerous and so glo­rious to the King of Prussia, Voltaire appear­ed at one time to reassume his former influence over the monarch, at another to preserve no­thing but the remembrance of the affair of Frankfort; and it was then that he wrote those remarkable memoirs ^* in which neither good humour nor justice are lost in the lively recol­lection [Page 117] of a just resentment. Voltaire had no­bly condemned them to oblivion: chance preserved them to avenge genius for the out­rages of power.

The Margravess of Bareith died in the midst of the war. The King of Prussia wrote to Voltaire, and requested him to confer an im­mortality on the name of his sister, of which her mild and amiable virtues, her soul equally superior to prejudices, to grandeur, and mis­fortune, had rendered her worthy. The ode, which Voltaire consecrated to her memory, breathes a soft sensibility, and a simple in­teresting philosophy. This species of compo­sition is one of those in which he was the least successful, because it requires a degree of per­fection which he could never resolve to aim at in trifling works, and because his reason could not yield at pleasure to that enthusiasm which is said to be the characteristic of the ode. The odes of Voltaire are only fugitive pieces, in which we find the great and philosophic poet, but in which we perceive him embarassed and constrained by a form which ill agreed with the fire of his genius. However, it must be owned that his verses addressed to a p [...]ncess on gaming, and, still more, the charming stanzas on old age: ‘Si vous voulez que j'aime encore, &c ^*.’ are Anacreontic odes, much superior to those [Page 118] of Horace, who nevertheless has, at least in the opinion of people of a somewhat modern taste, surpassed his model.

France, so superior to other nations in tra­gedy and comedy, has not been equally happy in lyric poets. The odes of Rousseau scarcely present us with any thing more than a seductive and harmonious poetry, which is void of idea or filled with false thoughts. La Motte, more ingenious, was yet a stranger to the harmony and the graces of style; and we scarcely cite the verses of any other poet.

Voltaire was still at Berlin when Diderot an [...] d'Alembert formed the design of writing the Encyclopedia, and published the first volume of it. A work whose object it was to include the truths of all the sciences, and to trace th [...] lines of communication between them, under taken by two men who joined much wit and a free daring philosophy to extensive and profound knowledge, appeared to the penetrating eye of Voltaire the most formidable strok [...] that could be aimed at ignorance and prejudice. The En [...]yclopedia became the book o [...] all men who wished to instruct themselves, bu [...] particularly of those who, without being habitually employed in cultivating their minds yet are desirous of the power of acquiring a ready information on every object which ex­cites in them either a transient or durable interest. It was a mass to which those, who ha [...] not time to form ideas for themselves, migh [...] [Page 119] have recourse for the ideas of the most en­lightened and celebrated writers; in which, in short, the errors, that are respected by prejudice, would either be betrayed by the weakness of their proofs, or shaken by the near neighbourhood of truths which sap their foun­dations.

Voltaire, having retired to Ferney, gave a small number of literary articles to the Ency­clopedia; he prepared some of those on philo­sophic subjects, but with less zeal, because he felt that the editors had less need of his assist­ance there, and because that, in general, though his great works in verse had been form­ed to constitute his glory, he had scarcely ever written in prose but with views of universal utility. Mean while, the same reasons which interested Voltaire for the progress of the Encyclopedia raised that work innumerable enemies. Composed or applauded by the greatest men of the nation, it became a spe­cies of line which separated the most distin­guished literati, and those who had the honour of being their disciples or their friends, from that crowd of obscure and jealous writers, who, in the sorrowful incapacity of giving either new truths or new pleasures to the world, hate and calumniate men to whom nature has been more bountiful.

A work in which it was necessary to treat freely and boldly of divinity, of morality, of jurisprudence, of legislation, and of public [Page 120] economy, could not but terrify all religious or political parties, and all the subordinate pow­ers which feared to see their pretensions and utility discussed. The insurrection was general, The journal of Trévoux, the ecclesiastic ga­zette, the satiric journals, the Jesuists and Jan­senists, the clergy, the parliaments, all, with­out ceasing to hate or oppose each other, united against the Encyclopedia, and it fell. The editors were obliged to finish and to print, in secret this work, to whose perfection liber­ty and publicity were so essential; and one of the noblest undertakings which the human mind has ever conceived, would have remained un­finished but for the courage of Diderot, and the zeal of a great number of men of distinguished learning, whom persecution could not deter.

Happily, the honour of having given the Encyclopedia to Europe, compensated France for the shame of having opposed its progress. It was, with justice, regarded as the work of the nation, and its persecution as that of a policy and jealousy equally despicable.

But the contests which the Encyclopedia had occasioned did not cease with the proscription of that work. Its principal authors and their friends, marked by the name of philosophers and Encyclopedists, which was designed as an opprobrium by the enemies of reason, were compelled to unite even by this very persecu­tion, and Voltaire naturally became their lead­er by his age, his celebrity, his zeal, and his [Page 121] genius. He had long before enjoyed some friends and a great number of admirers; at that period, he had a party. The persecution rallied, under his standard all the men of merit, whom, perhaps, his superiority would have kept at a distance from him, as it had banish­ed their predecessors; and enthusiasm took the place of former injustice.

It was in the year 1760 that this literary war was most violent. Le Franc de Pompig­nan, an estimable man of letters but an indif­ferent poet, of whose works there remain a fine stanza, and a feeble tragedy in which the combined genius of Virgil and Metastasio could not yield him sufficient support, was elected one of the French academy. Cloathed with the honours of magistracy, he thought that his dignity, as well as his works, exempted him from all gratitude; in the discourse, which he delivered at his admission, he permitted himself to insult the men whose names did the greatest honour to the society that condescended to receive him; and, clearly pointing out Vol­taire accused him of infidelity and falsehood. Soon after, Palissot, the venal instrument of the rancour of a woman, exhibited the philo­sophers on the stage. The laws, which pro­hibit the ridiculing individuals at the theatre, were silent. The magistrates betrayed their duty, and saw, with a malignant joy, men, whose knowledge and influence on public opin­ion they dreaded, immolated in the scene, [Page 122] without recollecting that while they opened the way to satire they exposed themselves to its shafts. Crébillon disgraced his old age, by approving the piece. The Duke de Choi­seul, then the favourite minister, countenanc­ed this indignity, through a weak complaisance to the same woman, of whose resentment Pa­lissot was the instrument. The journals re­peated the insults of the theatre. Still Voltaire combated all. The Poor Devil, the Russian at Paris, Vanity, a croud of humourous pieces in prose succeeded each other with astonishing rapidity.

Le Franc de Pompignan complained to the king, and to the academy, and beheld, with an impotent grief, that his own name was ob­scured by the splendour of that of Voltaire. Each step he took did but increase the satire, which every tongue repeated, and the verses in which he is consigned to eternal ridicule. He made a formal proposal to an august patron, to break a promise which he had made to this patron himself, by returning to the academy, to vote for a man. in whose behalf the prince was interested. He received, in return for this sacrifice, a polite refusal, and had the mortification to hear his patron himself repeat, as he withdrew, the lines so terrible to him: ‘Et I' ami Pompignan pense être quelque chose! ^*:’ [Page 123] and he retired to bury his humbled pride and deceived ambition in the country: a fearful, but salutary, example of the power of genius and the dangers of literary hypocrisy.

Fréron, an ex-jesuit as well as Desfontains, had succeeded the latter in the trade of flat­tering, by periodical satires, the jealousy of the enemies of virtue, of reason, and of ta­lents. He distinguished himself in the war against the philosophers. Voltaire, who had long supported his outrages, at length did ju­stice, and avenged his friends. In the comedy of l' Ecossaise (the Scotch-woman) he intro­duced a depraved journalist, whose character was formed of venality and rancour. The pit, in the character, recognized Fréron, who, delivered over to public disdain in a piece which could not fail to be preserved to the theatre by interesting scenes, and the original and forcible character of the worthy blunt Freeport, was condemned to bear, during the remainder of his life, a ridiculous and dis­graced name. Fréron, in applauding the in­sult offered to the philosophers, had forfeited his right of complaining; and his protectors chose rather to abandon him than to avow a partiality which might have involved their own discredit.

Other enemies, less virulent, had been either corrected or punished; and Voltaire, triumph­ing in the midst of these victims sacrificed to reason and to his glory, sent to the theatre, [Page 124] at the age of sixty-six, the chef-d'oeuvre of Tancred. That tragedy was dedicated to the Marchioness de Pompadour. It was the fruit of the address with which Voltaire could, with­out wounding the Duke de Choiseul, support the cause of the philosophers, whose adversa­ries had obtained a flight protection from that minister. This dedication taught his enemies that their calumnies were not more injurious to his security than their criticisms to his fame: it completed his vengeance.

In this same year he learned that a young niece of Corneille languished in a condition unworthy of his name; "It is the duty of a soldier" he cried, "to succour the niece of his general." Mademoiselle Corneille was invited to Ferney; and she there received an education suitable to the rank that her birth had marked for her in society. Voltaire even carried his delicacy so far as not to suffer the establishment of Mademoiselle Corneille to ap­pear as his benefaction. He wished that she should owe that to the works of her uncle, and he undertook to publish an edition of them with notes. The creator of the French Theatre commented on by the writer who had con­ducted that theatre to it's perfection, a man of genius, born at a time when taste was not yet formed, judged by a rival who joined to ge­nius the gift, almost as rare, of a taste that was penetrating without severity, delicate without timidity, and enlightened by a long [Page 125] and happy experience of the art, these are the beauties presented in that work. Voltaire speaks in it of Corneille's defects with frank­ness, of his beauties with enthusiasm. Never has Corneille been examined with such rigour, never has he been praised with a feeling more profound and true. Resolved to instruct both the French youth and the youth of other coun­tries who cultivate the French literature, he did not pardon the vices of language, the ex­travagance, nor the offences committed against delicacy and good taste, which are found in Corneille; but, at the same time, he taught them to know the progress which the art owes to that writer, the uncommon elevation of his mind, the almost inimitable beauty of his po­etry in the morsels dictated by his genius, and those vast, sublime, words which spring sud­denly from the necessity of the occasion, and paint great characters with a single stroke.

The herd of writers reproached him, never­theless, with a design of degrading Corneille, from motives of mean jealousy; whereas, throughout the whole of his commentary, he seizes, he even seems to seek, occasion to pro­claim his admiration of Racine; a more dan­gerous rival, whom he has surpassed only in some parts of the tragic art, and whose prodi­gious excellence he might well envy in the height of his glory.

Voltaire, tranquil in his retreat, employed in continuing the happy war which he had de­clared [Page 126] against prejudice, saw the arrival of an unfortunate family, the father of which had been conducted to the wheel by fanatic judges; the instruments of the ferocious passions of a superstitious people. He learnt that Calas, an infirm old man, had been accused of having hanged his young and vigorous son, in the midst of his family, and in the presence of a catho­lic servant; that he had been urged to com­mit this crime by the fear of seeing this son em­brace the catholic religion, this son who spent his life in dissipation, and of whom no one in the midst of the universal effervescence could ever cite a single word, or point to a single ac­tion which announced such a design, while ano­ther son of Calas, already converted to the ca­tholic faith, enjoyed a pension from the bounty this father, who was far from possessing afflu­ence. Never, in an event of such a nature, had circumstances so concurred to banish the suspicion of a crime in the father, or to strength­en the reasons to ascribe suicide to the son. The young man's conduct, his character, the kind of reading in which he indulged, all con­firmed this idea. Yet a magistrate, whose weak mind was intoxicated with superstition, and whose hatred to the protestants did not hesitate to impute crimes to them, caused the whole family to be imprisoned. The catholic populace became enflamed, and the young man was declared a martyr. The fraternity of the penitents, which, to the disgrace of the nation, [Page 127] still exists at Thoulouse, performed a solemn mass for him, during which they bore his effi­gies, holding the palm of martyrdom in one hand, and in the other the pen with which he was to have signed his abjuration.

It was soon reported that the protestant re­ligion commanded fathers to assassinate their children, when they designed to abjure it; and that, for greater security, they elected, in their secret assemblies the butcher of the sect. The inferior tribunal, led by the furious M. David, pronounced the unfortunate Calas guilty; and the parliament confirmed the sentence by that very small majority which is unhappily regard­ed as sufficient by our absurd jurisprudence. Condemned to the torture and the wheel, this miserable father died protesting his innocence; and the judges absolved his family, the neces­sary accomplices of the guilt, or the innocence of its head.

This family, ruined and stained by preju­dice, went to seek, among men of their own persuasion, a retreat, assistance, but, above all, consolation. They took up their residence near Geneva. Voltaire, whose compassion was mov­ed, and whose indignation was roused, informed himself of the horrible particulars; and, assured of the innocence of the unfortunate Calas, he dared to conceive the hope of obtaining justice. The zeal of the advocates was excited, and their courage sustained by his letters. He in­terested, in the cause of humanity, the natu­rally [Page 128] susceptible mind of the Duke de Choiseul. The reputation of Tronchin had brought to Geneva the Duchess d' Enville, the great grand­daughter of the author of the Maxims. Su­perior to superstition, both by her native feelings and by her acquired knowledge, in­formed how to produce the welfare of mankind by equal activity and courage, and embellish­ing by a genuine modesty the energy of her virtues, her hatred of fanaticism and oppression insured to Calas a protectress, whose zeal could not be abated by obstacles or delays. The process was commenced. To the memorials of the advocates, too profuse and declamatory, Voltaire added more nervous writings, the style of which was seductive, and calculated in some places to excite pity, and in others to awaken the public indignation, so prone to sleep among a people, at that time, too much a stranger to their own interests. Pleading for Calas, he supported the cause of toleration; which word it was then daring to pronounce, and which is even now rejected with contempt by men who recognize the right of enslaving thought and conscience. Letters, abounding with that subtle praise which he could distribute with such delicacy, animated the zeal of the de­fenders of the cause, of its protectors, and of the judges. It was, while he promised im­mortality, that he demanded justice.

The sentence of Thoulouse was annulled. The Duke de Choiseul had the wisdom and the [Page 129] courage to order a tribunal of Masters of Re­quests to revise this cause, in defending which the parliaments were all interested, whose pre­judices and spirit of mutual defence left little hope of an equitable decision. In fine, Calas was declared innocent; dishonour was remov­ed from his memory; and a generous minister caused the public treasury to repair the wrongs that the injustice of the judges had done to the fortune of this family, which was as respecta­ble as it was unhappy. But he did not proceed so far as to compel the parliament of Langue­doc to acknowledge the arret which overturn­ed an act of its injustice. That tribunal pre­ferred the miserable vanity of persevering in its error, to the honour of lamenting, and re­pairing, the injury.

Mean while, the applauses of France and of Europe were heard at Thoulouse, and the un­happy M. David, sinking beneath the weight of remorse and of shame, soon lost his reason and his life. This affair, so great in itself, so important in its consequences, since it turned the attention not only of France but of other nations to the crimes of intolerance and the necessity of preventing them, this affair occu­pied the soul of Voltaire, during more than three years.— "In all this time," said he, "a smile has not escaped me, for which I have not reproached myself, as for a crime." His name, which had long been dear to the enlightened friends of humanity as that of its most zealous, [Page 130] most indefatigable defender, this name was then blest by that multitude of citizens who, devoted to persecution during eighty years, at length heard a voice raised in their defence. Having returned to Paris in 1778, one day that the people surrounded him on the Pont Royal, a poor woman was asked who that man was who thus drew the crowd after him—"Know you not," said she, "that he is the saviour of Calas?" He was informed of this answer, and, surrounded as he was by the marks of admira­tion which were lavished on him, it was this by which he was most sensibly affected.

Shortly after the unfortunate death of Ca­las, a young woman of the same province, who, according to a barbarous custom, had been taken from her parents and shut up in a con­vent with a design of aiding saying grace by human means, wearied of the ill treatment that she endured, escaped, and her body was dis­covered in a well. The priest who had soli­cited the Lettre de Cachet, the sisterhood who had used with barbarity the power which it gave them over this unfortunate young wo­man, doubtless merited punishment; but it was on the family of this victim that fanaticism wish­ed punishment to fall. The injurious reproach which had conducted Calas to the wheel was revived with a new fury. Sirven, fortunately, had time to fly; and, condemned to death for contumacy, he sought an assylum with the pro­tector of Calas. But his wife, who accompa­nied [Page 131] him, fell a prey to her grief and to the fatigue of a journey, undertaken on foot, over tracts of snow.

Judicial forms required Sirven to present himself before the same parliament who had shed the blood of Calas. Voltaire endeavour­ed to obtain other judges. The Duke de Choiseul at that time thought it necessary to respect the opinion of the parliaments who, after the decay of his influence over the Marchioness de Pompadour, and again after her death, were become useful to him, at times to free him from an enemy, and at others to afford the means of rendering himself necessary by the art with which he could appease their commoti­ons, which he himself frequently excited.

Sirven, then, was compelled to yield to ne­cessity, and to appear before the tribunal of Thoulouse; but Voltaire knew how to provide for his security, and to prepare for his success. He had disciples in the parliament; some able advocates of Thoulouse wished to partake of the glory which those of Paris had acquired by defending Calas; the friends of toleration were become powerful even in this very city: with­in a few years Voltaire's works had changed the minds of men; they had only pitied Calas with a silent horror, Sirven found declared pro­tectors, for which he was indebted to the elo­quence of Voltaire, to the talent of opportune­ly infusing truth, mingled with approbation, into the feelings of those whom he designed to [Page 132] work his purposes. The friends of truth tri­umphed over the abettors of the penitents, and Sirven was saved.

The Jesuits had usurped the possessions of a well descended family, who, by their poverty, were prevented from recovering their rights. Voltaire gave them the means of accomplish­ing that; and oppressors of every kind, who, long had feared his writings, now learnt to dread his activity, his generosity, and his cou­rage.

This last event almost immediately preceded the destruction of the Jesuits. Voltaire, edu­cated among them, had maintained a corre­spondence with his former masters. While they were living they restrained the fury of the fraternity from any open attack, and Vol­taire was respectful to the Jesuits, both in de­ference to the connexions of his youth, and al­so to preserve allies in the party which at that time governed the devotees, But, after the death of these friends, wearied by the clamours of the Journal de Trévoux, which, by unceas­ing accusations of impiety seemed to call down persecutions on his head, he no longer preserv­ed the same respect for the Jesuits, nor did his zeal for the defence of the oppressed extend to them, when they, in their turn, became op­pressed.

He exulted in the destruction of an order, the friend of letters but the enemy of reason, which was desirous of destroying all talents or [Page 133] of drawing them into its bosom, to corrupt them, by employing them to serve its designs, and to hold the human race in infancy, in or­der to govern them. Yet he pitied individuals treated with barbarity by the hatred of the Jansenists; and he gave an assylum, in his own house, to a Jesuit, to point out to the devo­tees that true humanity knows only misfortune and forgets opinions. Father Adam, to whom a sort of celebrity was given by his abode at Ferney, was not absolutely useless to his host. He played with him at chess, and he played the game with sufficient address sometimes to conceal his superiority. He also spared Vol­taire labour in his learned researches; he even served him as an almoner, for Voltaire wished to oppose his fidelity in fulfilling the exterior duties of the Romish religion to the accusati­on, which were brought against him, of im­piety.

At this period a great revolution was en­gendering in the human mind. Since the revival of philosophy, religion, exclusively esta­blished throughout Europe, had been attacked only in England. Leibnitz, Fontenelle, and other less celebrated philosophers, accused of free thinking, had respected religion in their writings. Bayle, himself, by a precaution that was necessary to his safety, while he indulged himself in all objections, assumed the air of wish­ing to prove that revelation alone could re­solve them, and of having formed the project [Page 134] of exalting faith by humiliating reason. In England, these attacks had little success or ef­fect. The most powerful party in that nation judged it useful to themselves to leave the peo­ple in darkness, probably because the habit of adoring the mysteries of the Bible strengthened their faith in those of the constitution; and they honoured the established religion as a spe­cies of social advantage. Besides, in a coun­try where the House of Commons alone led to fortune, and where the members of that house were tumultuously elected by the people, an apparent respect for their opinions must ne­cessarily be erected into a virtue by all the ambitious.

In France, there had appeared some bold writers, but the blows which they aimed were still indirect. Even the work of Helvetius de l' Esprit (on the understanding) was only an at­tack on religious principles in general; it ques­tioned the foundations of all religions, and left the reader to draw consequences and make ap­plications. Emilius appeared; the Savoyard vicar's Profession of Faith contained nothing relative to the utility, toward morals, of the belief of a God, and the inutility of revelation, which is not to be found in the poem of Na­tural Law; but the attack was open and the persons attacked were brought upon the stage under their proper name and character, and not under that of the priests of India or of Thi­bet. This boldness astonished Voltaire and ex­cited his emulation. The success of Emilius [Page 135] encouraged him, nor was he terrified by the fear of persecution. Rousseau had not been persecuted at Paris had he not put his name to the work, nor at Geneva had he not maintain­ed in another part of Emilius that the people possessed not the power of renouncing the right of reforming a depraved government. This doctrine authorised the citizens of that repub­lic to overthrow the aristocracy which its ma­gistrates had established, and which secured an hereditary authority to certain rich families.

Voltaire believed that he could securely shun persecution by concealing his name; and, by a deference to government while he direct­ed all his force against religion, could interest even the civil power to weaken its empire. A multiplicity of works, in which he successively employed argument and humour, were disper­sed throughout Europe, under the various forms which could be invented by the necessity of veiling truth, or of rendering it engaging. His zeal against religion, which he viewed as the cause of the fanatacism that had desolated Europe from the moment of its birth, the cause of the superstition that had degraded it, and as the source of the evils, which the enemies of men still continued to inflict on them, seem­ed to increase his activity and his powers. "I am wearied," said he one day, "of hearing it repeated that twelve men were sufficient to establish Christianity, and I wish to prove there needs but one to destroy it."

[Page 136]An examination of works, which Christians regarded as proceeding from inspiration, the analyzation of dogmas, which have been suc­cessively introduced since the origin of that re­ligion, the history of the ridiculous or bloody quarrels which have been excited by those, the miracles, prophecies, tales scattered through legends and ecclesiastical histories, the religi­ous wars, the massacres ordained in the name of God, the butchers and scaffolds which, at the voice of priests covered Europe, the blood of kings flowing from the steel of assassins, and the fanaticism which unpeopled America, all these were incessantly repeated in his works under a thousand varied forms. He excited indignation, he wrung tears from the heart, he exhausted the springs of ridicule. Men trembled at an attrocious action, they laughed at an absurdity. Voltaire did not fear fre­quently to place the same objects before his readers, to urge the same reasonings to them. "They tell me that I repeat the same things," he said in one of his writings, "true: I shall repeat them till I see men reformed."

These works, rigorously prohibited in France, in Italy, at Vienna, in Portugal, and in Spain, could not be speedily circulated; all of them could not reach every reader; but there was not an obscure corner in the provinces, there was not any nation in foreign countries, suffering under the yoke of intolerance, which [Page 137] did not feel the influence of some of these wri­tings.

Men of liberal minds, who existed before only in some cities where science was cultiva­ted, or among the learned and the great, were, by his voice, multiplied in all classes of society as well as in all countries. Soon perceiving their number and their strength they ventured to show themselves, and Europe was astonish­ed to find itself a country of Deists.

The zeal of Voltaire created him enemies in all those who had obtained, and all who ex­pected to obtain, affluence or even subsistence from religion. Yet that party no longer possess­ed such men as Bossuet, Arnaud, and Nicole; those who replaced them by their talents and their acquaintance with philosophy and letters had ranged themselves with the contrary party; and the members of the clergy who approach­ed nearest to them in ability, yielding to the desire of not debasing themselves in the opini­on of enlightened men, stood aloof, or content­ed themselves with maintaining the politcal use of a belief which they would have blushed to have partaken with the people, and substi­tuted for the credulous superstition of their predecessors a species of religious Machiavel­ism.

Defamatory writings and attacks sprung up profusely; but Voltaire, by answering alone, preserved the name of these works, which were read by none but those to whom they were use­less, [Page 138] and who were unwilling or unable to un­derstand either the objections or the answers.

To the clamours of fanaticism, Voltaire op­posed the protection of monarchs. The Em­press of Russia, the Kings of Poland, Denmark, Sweden, and Prussia, interested themselves in his labours, perused his works, sought to de­serve his approbation, and sometimes seconded his zeal for the welfare of mankind. In eve­ry country the powerful, and such ministers as sought reputation and were intent on spread­ing their fame through Europe, were ambitious to enjoy the suffrage of the philosopher of Fer­ney, confided to him their hopes and fears for the progress of reason, and their projects for the increase of knowledge and the ruin of fa­naticism. He had formed a league which in­cluded all the great men of Europe, of which he was the soul, and whose cry was, "Reason and toleration." Did any striking injustice arise in a nation, did Voltaire hear of any act of bigotry, any insult offered to human nature, his pen exposed the guilty to Europe: and who knows how often the fear of this sure and terrible vengeance has withheld the oppress­or's arm?

But it was in France, more especially, that he exercised this dominion of reason. Since the affair of Calas, every victim, unjustly sa­crificed or pursued by the sword of the law, found in him a protector, or an avenger.

The execution of the Count de Lally excited [Page 139] his indignation. The lawyers of Paris, sitting in judgment on the conduct of a general in In­dia, a sentence of death passed without proof of a single determinate crime, nay mere suspici­on produced as the gra [...]est accusation, a judg­ment pronounced on the testimony of declared enemies, on the memorial of a Jesuit who had composed two of them contradictory to each other, uncertain whether he should accuse the general or his enemies, not knowing which he hated most, or which it would be most conve­nient to ruin; such proceedings and such a sen­tence could not but rouze the feelings of every friend of justice, although the calumnies heap­ed on the head of the unfortunate general, and the horrid barbarity of dragging him to death with a gag in his mouth, should not have sha­ken every fibre in every heart which the habit of disposing of the lives of men had not turn­ed to stone.

Yet, Voltaire during a long time spoke sin­gly against this enormity. The vast number of persons employed by the East-India compa­ny who were interested in throwing the fatal consequences of their conduct on a man who no longer existed, the powerful tribunal which had condemned the general, all those whom that body included in its suite whose voice was sold to it, the other corps, who, united with that by the same name, by common functions and like interests, regarded its cause as their own, in fine, the administration, ashamed of [Page 140] the weakness or the cruel policy which sacrifi­ced the Count de Lally to the hope of conceal­ing in his tomb the faults which had lost India, all seemed to oppose a tardy justice. But Vol­taire, by reiterated attacks on the same object, triumphed over prejudice and the interests of such as are attentive to preserve and extend its empire. Just minds needed only to be inform­ed of the circumstances; others, he hurried along with him; and when the son of the Count de Lally, since so celebrated by his eloquence and courage, had attained an age at which he could demand justice, the minds of men were prepared to applaud the attempt and to solicit its execution. Voltaire was dying, when, twelve years afterward, this unjust sentence was reversed; he heard the intelligence; his powers sprang back to life, and he wrote—"I die content; I see the king loves justice." The last words which were traced by that hand which had so long maintained the cause of hu­manity and justice.

In the same year, 1766, another arret asto­nished Europe; which, while it read the works of our philosophers, concluded that knowledge was disseminated throug [...] France, or at least through those classes of society whose particu­lar duty it was to inform themselves; and thought that, after a period of near fifteen years, the brethren of Montesquieu might have had time to comprehend his principles.

The Crucifix of wood, placed on the Bridge [Page 141] of Abbeville, was insulted, during the night. The indignation of the people was heightened and kept in action by the ridiculous ceremony of doing penance. The bishop of Amiens, go­verned in his old age by fanatics, and no long­er capable of foreseeing the consequences of this religions farce, added to its solemnity by his presence. Mean time, the malice of a townsman of Abbeville directed the suspicions of the people to the Chevalier de la Barré, a young officer whose relations were of the long robe and members of the chief magistracy, and who at that time lived with his kinswoman the Abbess de Villancourt, near the gates of Ab­beville. A process was commenced, and the judges of Abbeville condemned to tortures, whose horror would dismay the imagination of a canibal, the Chevalier de la Barré and d' Etal­londe his friend, who had taken the precaution to fly. The Chevalier de la Barré had awaited the issue of the trial; he had more to lose than the other by quitting France; and relied on the protection of his relations who filled the first employments in the parliaments and in the council. His hopes were deceived; the fa­mily feared to attract the police of the public toward his prosecution, instead of endeavour­ing to [...]e [...]k support from the general opinion; and, at the age of nearly seventeen, the Che­valier de la Barré was condemned, by a ma­jority of two votes, to be beheaded, after hav­ing his tongue cut out, and having undergone the torture.

[Page 142]This horrible sentence was executed and yet the accusations were as ridiculous as the punish­ment was attrocious. He was only vehement­ly suspected to have taken a part in the adven­ture of the crucifix; but he was declared to be convicted of having sung, [...]n parties of con­viviality, some of those songs which are half ob­scene, half religious, and which notwithstanding their grossness amuse the imagination in the first years of youth, by the contra [...] which they form, with the scrupulous respect which edu­cation inspires towards the same objects: of hav­ing recited an ode whose author was perfectly known and at that time enjoyed a pension from the king's privy purse: of having made some genuslexions to certain libertine works which were written to the taste of a time in which men, led astray by religious austerity, could not distinguish between pleasure and debauch­ery; and in sine, he was reproached with hav­ing spoken in a language worthy of those songs and those books.

These accusations were all supported by the testimony of low people who had served these young men in their parties of pleasure, and by the Tourrières ^* of convents, who easily find cause of offence.

This sentence revolted the minds of all men; no law existed which ordained sentence of death either for the breaking of imag [...]s or for that species of blasphemy of which the Cheva­lier [Page 143] de la Barré had been accused; thus the judges had exceeded even the penalties de­creed by laws, which no enlightened man can still see sullying our criminal code without horror. There was no father of a family who had not reason to tremble, since there are few young men who escape such like indiscretions; and the judges had condemned the unfortu­nate victim to a cruel death for language, in which the greatest part of them had indulged, in their youth, in which, perhaps, they still indulged, and whose children were as culpable as he whom they had condemned.

While Voltaire's indignation was reused, his apprehensions were strongly excited. The Philosophical Dictionary had been artfully pla­ced among the number of books before which it was said the Chevalier de la Barré had pro­strated himself. His enemies wished it to be understood that the reading of Voltaire's works had been the cause of these indiscretions, which had been construed into acts of impiety. Still the danger did not prevent Voltaire from un­dertaking the defence of these victims of fanati­cism. D'Ettallonde, then a refugee at Wezel, obtained, through his recommendation, a com­mission in a Prussian regiment. The circum­stances of the affair of Abbeville were unfolded to Europe in several publications; and the judges trembled, on their very seats, at the terrible judgment which they had passed, and which dragged them from their obscurity to devote them to a disgraceful immortality.

[Page 144]The reporting judge of Count de Lally's trial, accused of having contributed to the death of the Chevalier de la Barré, compelled to acknowledge the influence of that power which is independent of rank or situation, and which nature has given to genius for the con­solation and defence of the human race, wrote a letter in which, actuated alternately by shame and pride, he attempted to excuse himself and suffer menaces to escape him. Voltaire repli­ed by the following historical trait:—"I for­bid you," said an Emperor of China to the chief mandarin of the historians, "to mention me, henceforward, in your works." The mandarin, on this, took up his pen. "What do you now?" said the Emperor: "I write the order which your majesty has just given me."

During twelve years, that Voltaire survived this act of inju [...]tice, he never lost sight of the hope of obtaining reparation for it, but he had not the consolation of success. The fear of offending the parliament of Paris still bore down the love of justice; and, at a time when the leaders of administration had a contrary interest, t [...]ey were restrained by the fear of displeasing the clergy. Governments do not sufficiently know how much real importance they acquire, how with the people whom they govern and with foreign nations, by such illu­strious acts of individual justice, and how much more sure the support of public opinion is than [Page 145] the deference paid them by certain bodies of men, rarely capable of gratitude, and part of whose authority over the vulgar mind it would be more politic to take away by these great examples than to augment, by proving, in the respect which they themselves pay to them, the fears which such bodies inspire.

Voltaire did not, meantime, neglect the means of avoiding the storm; he diminished his domestic establishment; and secured some property which he could dispose of at pleasure, with which he might procure a new place of refuge. Such had ever been his secret design, in all the arrangements which he had made of his fortune, and it would have required a league among the powers of Europe, to have deprived him of independence, and to have reduced him to want. Princes and nobles were among his debtors, who do not indeed pay with much punctuality, but he had calculated the degrees of human corruption, and he knew that these same men, though they act with lit­tle delicacy in such affairs, would find means to reimburse him during the moment of per­secution, when their negligence would other­wise render them the objects of the horror and disdain of Europe, indignant to behold such a man oppressed.

This persecution appeared for a time ready to burst forth. Ferney is situated in the dio­ces of Geneva, the titular bishop of which re­sides in the small town of Annecy. François [Page 146] de Salles, who has been raised to the rank of Saints, having formerly been the bishop, in order that the heretics might not find cause of scandal in their own metropolis, it had been thought most proper to confide this see to none but a man who would not incur the reproach of pride, luxury, and effeminacy, of which the ca­tholic prelates are accused by the protestants.

But it had long been difficult to discover saints, who, possessing understanding or birth, would condescend to accept so small a dio­cese. He who filled the see of Annecy, in 1767, was a man of low extraction, educated in a seminary at Paris, where he was no otherwise distinguished than by austere manners, trifling devotion, and ignorant fanaticism. He wrote to the Count de St. Florentine, to induce him to banish Voltaire out of his diocese, and con­sequently out of the kingdom, though the poet had then built a church at his own expence, and spread abundance through a country which the persecutions against the protestants had laid waste. But the bishop pretended that the Lord of Ferney had given a moral exhor­tation against theft in the church after mass, and that the workmen who were employed by him in erecting this church had not removed an old cross with sufficient veneration; these indeed were grave inducements to drive from his country an old man who was the glory of that country, and to rob him of an asylum to which the kingdoms of Europe hastened to [Page 147] bear him the tribute of admiration. The mi­ster, had it been only from motives of policy, could not be tempted to gratify the bishop; he therefore advised Voltaire to guard against these accusations, which the union of the bi­shop of Annecy with the French prelates who possessed more influence might render dan­gerous.

It was at this time that he conceived the idea of solemnly receiving the sacrament, which was followed by a public declaration of his re­spect for the church, and his disdain of his de­tractors; a fruitless step, which spoke weak­ness rather than policy, and which the pleasure of compelling his pastor to administer the com­munion through fear of the secular judges, and of legally insulting the bishop of Annecy, could not excuse in the eyes of the free and intrepid man who appreciates coolly the rights of truth, and perceives that which prudence requires when laws contrary to natural justice render truth dangerous and prudence neces­sary.

The priest suffered the small advantage to escape which they might have drawn from this singular scene, by falsifying the declaration which Voltaire had made.

He had no longer a retreat near Geneva. He had connected himself, on his arrival there, with the families whose education, opinions, inclinations, and fortune, were most congenial to his own; and these families had at that time [Page 148] formed the design of establishing a species of aristocracy. In a city which pos [...]ssed no ter­ritory, where the strength of the citizens could be united with as much facility and prompti­tude as that of the government, such a project would have been absurd had not the rich citi­zens entertained the hope of engaging a fo­reign influence in their favour.

The cabinets of Versailles and Turin were easily seduced. The senate of Berne, whose interest it was to banish the picture of repub­lican equality from the eyes of their subjects, made it their constant policy to protect every enterprizing aristocracy around them: and, throughout the whole of Switzerland, such ma­gistrates as became tyrants were sure of find­ing, at Bern, an ardent and faithful protector. Thus the wretched pride of obtaining an odi­ous authority in a small city, and of being ha­ted without being respected, deprived the citi­zens of Geneva of their liberty, and the re­public of its independence. The chiefs of the popular party employed the weapons of fana­ticism, for they had read enough to know the influence which religion had formerly obtained in political dissensions, but they did not suffi­ciently understand the spirit of their own age to feel how much reason, aided by ridicule, had weakened this formerly so dangerous wea­pon.

It was proposed, therefore, to put in force the laws which prohibited catholics from pos­sessing [Page 149] property in the territory of Geneva. The magistrates were censured for their con­nections with Voltaire, who had dared to raise his voice against the barbarous assassina­tion of Servet, which had been commanded by Calvin in the name of God to the cowardly and superstitious senators of Geneva. Voltaire was obliged to renounce his house of the Delices.

Soon after, Rousseau advanced, in his Emi­lius, principles which developed to the citizens of Geneva all the extent of their rights, and which founded these rights on simple truths that all men could feel and all must adopt. The aristocracy wished to punish him for the publication, but it was necessary they should have a pretext; they took that of religion, and united themselves with the priests, who, in every country, indifferent to the form of its constitution and the liberty of man, promise the assistance of Heaven to the party which most favours intolerance, and who become, as their interest directs, sometimes the support of the tyranny of a bigotted prince or of a superstitious senate, sometimes the defenders of the liberty of a fanatic people.

Alternately exposed to the attacks of the two parties, Voltaire observed a neutrality, but he remained faithful to his detestation of oppressors. He favoured the cause of the citi­zens against the magistrates, and that of the common people who possessed no privileges [Page 150] against the citizens; for these people, con­demned [...]o be ever excluded from the rights of the citizens, found themselves more oppress­ed since the latter, better informed of the pri­vileges which are granted by the present system of polity, but less enlightened respecting the natural rights of man, considering themselves as sovereigns, of whom the people were no more than subjects, and whom they thought they had authority to reduce to subjection, by the same arbitrary power, for assuming which they deemed their magistrates so culpable.

Voltaire, therefore, wrote a poem, every part of which was impregnated with satire, and on which was no reproach can be laid, except that of containing some verses against Rous­seau, which were dictated by a degree of an­ger, whose excess and expressions could not be excused by the justice of the motives which inspired them. But when, in a tumult, the citizens had slain some of the people, he was eager to receive at Ferney the families which these troubles compelled to abandon Geneva; and, in the very instant in which the bankruptcy of the Abbé Terrai, which had not even the excuse of necessity, but was occasion­ed only by shameful expences, had deprived him of part of his fortune, he was seen to give assistance to those who had no property left; and to build houses which he sold to others at a low price to be paid him in annuities; while he solicited the good offices of the government in [Page 151] their behalf, and employed his influence with sovereigns, ministers, and the leading men of all nations, to procure a sale for the clocks and watches of this infant manufactory, which soon became famous throughout Europe.

In the mean time, the government was em­ployed in opening an asylum for the Genevese at Versoy, on the borders of the lake. There it was designed to have established a city, in which industry and commerce would have been free, and in which a protestant temple would have risen by the side of a catholic church. Voltaire had caused this plan to be adopted, but the minister did not possess sufficient credit to obtain a law for the protection of religious li­berty, a secret toleration, limited to the time of his own administration, was all that he could offer, and with that Versoy could not exist.

The year 1771 was one of the most embar­rassing periods of Voltaire's life. The chan­cellor Maupeou and the Duke d'Aiguillon saw themselves obliged to attack the parliaments, to whom they both were objects of hatred; that they might not become their victims. The one could not obtain a part in the administration, nor the other preserve himself in the office which he held there, without procuring the dis­grace of the Duke de Choiseul. Acting in concert with Madame du Barry, whom that minister had been imprudent enough to make his irreconcilable enemy, they persuaded the king that his contemned authority could never [Page 152] be restored to its vigour, that the state, inces­santly agitated since the peace by parliament­ary contentions, could not regain its tran­quility, if he did not by an act of vigour place limits to the pretensions of the judicial bodies, which they would not venture to infringe, and if a term was not fixed beyond which they would not dare longer to oppose resistance to the royal will.

The Duke de Choiseul could not adopt this project without offending the public opinion, which had a long time been inimicable to him, but which was then his sole support; while his forced submission to the will of the people had removed him still further from the confidence of the monarch, whose affections were alienat­ed from him. It was probable, then, that his connexions with the parliaments would com­plete his disgrace, and that it would be easy to persuade the monarch either that his re­maining in power would be the greatest obsta­cle to the success of the new measures of the government, or that he would endeavour to involve the nation in war, to preserve his situation in despight of the kings pleasure.

The attack made on the parliaments was directed with equal address. Whatever could alarm the nation was carefully avoided. The king appeared only to vindicate the plenitude of the legislative power, a power which would be transferred not to the nation but to the par­liaments, by admitting the doctrine that the [Page 153] parliaments had the right of registering edicts according to their pleasure. It was easily per­ceived that this power, united to the most ex­tensive judicial authority, which was divided among the twelve perpetual tribunals, would tend to establish a tyranic aristocracy in France, more dangerous, than monarchy, to the secu­rity, the liberty, and the property of the citi­zens. The enemies of those tribunals might therefore rely on the suffrages of enlightened minds, and on that of men of letters, whom the parliament of Paris had wounded by its in­solence and persecution, by its attachment to prejudices, and by its pertinacity in rejecting every improvement calculated for the happi­ness of men.

But is less difficult to form a political in­trigue w [...]h address, than to execute with wis­dom a plan of reform. The more alarming to liberty are the principles which the govern­ing power would establish, the more necessary is it to display gentleness and indulgence to individuals. Yet, at that time, rigour was, in the minutest circumstances, carried to a pu­erile refinement. A monarch appears cruel, who, in the punishments which he inflicts, does not scrupulously respect, consistently with that punishment, whatever can be injurious to the health, the convenience, or even the natural feelings of those whom he punishes, or those who are connected with them; but, on this oc­casion, all these considerations were disregard­ed. [Page 154] They refused permission to a son to em­brace his dying father; they confined a man in an unhealthful place, where his family could not approach him without being exposed to partake of his dangers, and a sick person could scarcely obtain leave to seek in the capital the assistance which that alone could give him. When an absolute government betrays fear, it proclaims either distrust of its strength, the in­decision of the monarch, or the instability of the administration, and this gives encourage­ment to resistance; but this fear was displayed in making the recal of some exiles depend on a consent useless even in the opinion of those who demanded that consent.

A salutary operation does not change its na­ture though it be executed with wanton seve­rity; but then the feeling and enlightened man who approves, does not defend it, should he think his duty calls on him to give the mea­sure his support, without regret; his disgust­ed mind no longer acts with either zeal or af­fection for a cause which is dishonoured by its leaders.

Those whose minds are uninformed pass from a hatred of the minister to aversion to measures which he maintains by oppression; and the public voice condemns that which, left to itself, it had perhaps approved.

The great number of magistrates who were by this revolution deprived of their offices, the merit and virtues of some of them, the crowd [Page 155] of subordinate ministers of justice who were connected with their fate by honour and by in­terest, that natural propensity which leads men to join the cause of those who suffer, the hatred of power not less natural, all necessarily co-operated to render the measures of the mini­ster odious, and to place obstacles in his way when, compelled to replace the tribunals which he wished to destroy, force became useless and confidence necessary.

However, the barbarity of the criminal law, the disgusting defects of the civil jurisprudence, presented to the authors of the revolution sure means to regain the public opinion, and to give those who should consent to replace the for­mer parliaments an excuse which honour and patriotism might have been proud to avow. Ministers disdained these means. The parlia­ment had rendered itself obnoxious to all en­lightened men by the obstacles which it op­posed to the liberty of the press, and by its fanaticism, of which the recent execution of the Chevalier de la Barré had give an example to all Europe. Yet, irritated by libels pub­lished against himself, alarmed by works in which his principles had been attacked, and, in short, desirous of gaining a support in the clergy, the chancellor thought proper to lay new restrictions on the press. The stain was not removed from the memory of the Cheva­lier de la Barré, nor could Voltaire obtain a revision of the sentence which would have co­vered [Page 156] those with disgrace whom it was so par­ticularly the interest of the chancellor to de­prive of the public favour. The criminal code existed in all its horror, although [...]ght days would have sufficed to have formed a [...]aw which would have suppressed the punishment of death so wantonly inflicted, would have abolished every species of torture, and would have prohibited excess in corporal punishment; which would have granted the accused the as­sistance of a counsel, would have permitted him to make a certain number of challenges without alledging his motives, would have giv­en him the right to present evidence and to display facts in his favour, and would have made a very considerable majority of the judges ne­cessary to his condemnation; which, in fine, would have insured him the power of knowing and examining all the proceedings. The na­tion, all Europe would have applauded the reform; the displaced magistrates would alone have been the enemies of these salutary inno­vations; and their fall the epoch, in which the sovereign had recovered the liberty of yielding to his just and humane purposes.

In truth the sale of judicial offices was sup­pressed; yet, the judges being still named by the court, nothing was seen in this change but the facility of placing on the seat of justice men without fortune and more easy to be se­duced.

The bounds of the most extensive jurisdic­tions [Page 157] were circumscribed, but the new courts were not erected into parliaments; they were not permitted to register atrets, and this dif­ference between those and the former tribu­nals was the sure presage of their destruction. In fine, the fees of the judges were abolished and replaced by stated salaries; and this regu­lation, among all that were adopted, was the only one which reason could entirely approve.

The authors of this revolution at length be­held its accomplishment, notwithstanding an almost universal discontent. The Duke de Choiseul, accused of secretly fomenting the re­sistance, unsteady as it was, of the parliament of Paris, and of having retarded the conclusion of peace between England and Spain, was ex­iled to his estates. The parliament, whose gratitude obliged them to assume firmness, was soon dispersed. The Duke d'Aiguillon became minister, and the parliament was succeeded by a new tribunal. In some of the provinces the parliaments experienced the fate of that of Paris, while others consented to remain and sacrifice several of their members. All was silent before authority; and nothing was want­ing to the success of the ministers but the ap­probation of the public whom they scorned, and who, some years after, wrought their dis­grace.

Voltaire despised the parliament of Paris, and loved the Duke de Choiseul; he beheld in one an ancient persecutor who had not been [Page 157] disarmed but further incensed by his fame, in the other a friend and a protector. He was constant in his gratitude and immoveable in his principles. All his letters expressed his regard for the Duke de Choiseul with freedom and energy, and he was not ignorant that his let­ters, in consequence of the infamous custom of violating public faith, were read by the ene­mies of the exiled minister. A pleasant tale, entitled Barmécide ^*, which he wrote, is the only durable monument of the concern which this disgrace had excited. The injustice with which the friends and partizans of the Duke de Choiseul accused Voltaire of ingratitude was, therefore, one of the severest afflictions which he had ever endured; and it was the more poignant as the Duke himself partook of the injustice. Ineffectually did Voltaire en­deavour to undeceive him, ineffectually did he appeal to the proofs he had given of his attachment and his sorrow: ‘Je l'ai dit à la terre, au ciel, à Gusman même ^†:’ he wrote in his grief, but he was not under­stood.

The great and people in office have inter­ests, but rarely opinions. To oppose those who agree with their present designs is, in [Page 159] their eyes, to declare themselves. That at­tachment of truth which is one of the strong­est passions of exalted and independent minds, appears romantic to them. They suppose that a philosopher has, like themselves, no opin­ions but those of the moment, and consequent­ly that he must change his professions accord­ing to the temporary interests of their friends or patrons. They consider him as a man made to defend the cause which they have embraced and not to support his own principles; to serve under them and not to examine the justice of the war. Thus the Duke de Choiseul appeared to imagine that Voltaire, in deference to him, ought either to have betrayed or concealed his opinions on questions of public right. An important anecdote, which proves how easily the pride of power and birth destroys the re­collection of the natural independence of the human soul, and which displays the inequality of men's minds, which is much more real than that of their rank or situation.

Voltaire beheld, with pleasure, the prac­tice of selling judicial offices abolished, the fees of the judges suppressed, and the immense jurisdiction of the parliament of Paris con­tracted within narrower limits: abuses which he had combated, for more than forty years, with the weapons of reason and ridicule. He pre­ferred a single master to many; a sovereign whose prejudices are alone to be feared to a troop of despots whose prejudices are greater [Page 160] but whose partial interests and little passions are more fatal to mankind, and who, more formidable to the unprotected, are especially so to men whose knowledge alarms them and whose glory irritates them. He was wont to say: "I have a stubborn back; I can make a single how well enough, but a hundred bows in succession are too fatiguing."

He therefore applauded the regulations which had been adopted, and, among men of congenial minds, he expressed his approbation. Doubtless, he perceived with what contracted views this happy opportunity of reforming the legislation, of unshackling the mind and re­storing to man the rights of men, of at once proscribing intolerance and barbarity, and, in fine, of dating from this moment, the epoch of a revolution propitious to the nation, glo­rious to the prince and his ministers, had been neglected and lost. But Voltaire had also too much penetration not to feel that though the laws were the same the magistrates were chang­ed; that if even these should inherit the spirit of their predecessors neither their credit not their insolence could descend to them, that the innovation, by depriving them of the blind respect which the vulgar entertained for all that bears the rust of antiquity, had deprived them of much of their power, that the public voice could alone restore their influence, and to obtain its suffrage there remained no other means than that of listening to reason and of [Page 161] uniting themselves to the enemies of prejudice, and to the friends of the human race.

The approbation which Voltaire gave to the measures of the Chancellor Maupeou, was at least serviceable to the oppressed. Though he could not procure justice to be done to the memory of the unfortunate la Barré, though he could not restore the young d'Etallonde to his country, though the ministers pusillanimous respect for the clergy concealed from him the true interest of his glory, still Voltaire had the happiness to save the wife of Mountbailli. This unhappy man, accused of parricide, had per­ished on the wheel; his wife was also condemn­ed to death; but she was supposed to be preg­nant, and was fortunate enough to obtain a respite.

The tribunals had just rejected a provident law which, placing an interval between judg­ment and execution in which the truth might be discovered and innocence displayed, would have prevented almost all their unjust decisions; and they had refused it with an intemperance which sufficed to prove its necessity. ^* Women alone, by declaring themselves pregnant, could [Page 162] escape the danger of these precipitate execu­tions. In the space of less than twenty years the lives of three innocent persons, who had attracted the public curiosity by some particu­lar circumstances, had been saved by this pri­vilege; another proof of the utility of that law which was opposed only by a barbarous pride, and which ought to exist till experience shall have proved that the new legislation (which doubtless will soon replace the old code) no longer exposes innocence to any danger.

The trial of the wife of Mountbailli was revised; the council of Artois, by which she had been condemned, declared her innocence; and, more noble or less presumptuous than the par­liament of Thoulouse, they lamented the irre­parable misfortune of having caused an in­nocent person to perish, and they imposed on themselves the duty of providing for the re­maining days of the unfortunate woman whose happiness they had destroyed.

Had Voltaire expressed his zeal against such acts of injustice only as were connected with public events or the cause of toleration, he might have been accused of vanity; but this zeal was equally ardent in that obscure cause, to which his name alone has given celebrity.

We have since seen, in like manner, a ma­gistrate ^*, too soon snatched away from his friends and the unfortunate, interest Europe [Page 163] in the cause of three peasants of Champagne; and obtained, by his eloquence and perseve­rance, a splendid and lasting fame, the reward of zeal which humanity and the love of justice alone had inspired. Men incapable of these actions never fail to attribute them to a desire of renown; they know not what anguish the spectacle of an unjust act inflicts on a noble and feeling mind, to what degree it torments memory and thought, and how greatly it cau­ses the imperious desire of preventing or re­pairing a crime to be felt; they are ignorant of that emotion, that involuntary horror, which is excited in all the senses by the sight, even by the mere idea, of an oppressor escaping with triumph or impunity; and we must pity those who could think that the author of Al­zier and Brutus needed the glory attendant on a good action, to incite him to defend in­nocence and to rise up against tyranny.

A new occasion of avenging insulted human­ity was presented to Voltaire. Vassalage solem­nity abolished in France by Louis Hutin (the boisterous,) again existed under Louis XV. in many provinces. In vain had a project of abolishing it been more than once formed. Avarice and pride had silenced justice, by a resistance which had fatigued the indolence of government; and the superior tribunals, com­posed of nobles, had favoured the pretensions of the proprietors of these seignories.

This enormity tyrannised over Franche [Page 164] Comté, and particularly over the territories of St. Claude, the secular monks of which, in 1742, owned the greatest part of their lands, held in Mort-Main, to nothing better than false titles; and exercised their rights with a rigour which reduced to misery an un­informed but good and industrious people. At the death of each possessor, if his children had not constantly inhabited the paternal house, the fruit of his labours appertained to the monks; the widow and her offspring, without furniture, without cloaths, and without dwell­ing, passed from the competence procured by labour, to all the horrors of want. Should a stranger die after having dwelt a year on this species of land, strucken with the feudal ana­thema, his property also became that of the monks; nor did a son succeed to the inheri­tance of his father, if it could be proved that he passed the night of his nuptials out of the paternal house.

These people suffer without daring to com­plain, and beheld, with mute grief, the fruits of their economy, which should have furnish­ed useful capitals to industry and the culture of the land, become the prey of the monks. Hap­pily, the construction of a great road opened a communication between them and the neigh­bouring cantons. They learnt that, at the foot of mount Jura, there existed a man whose intre­pid voice had more than once caused the very palaces of kings to resound with the complaints [Page 165] of the oppressed, and at whose name sacerdo­tal tyranny turned pale. To him they related their griefs, and in him they found a protector.

These usurpations, this inexhorable cruelty of hypocritical priests, who dared to call them­selves the disciples of an humble master yet wished to hold men in slavery, were proclaim­ed, not only to France but to all Europe. Yet, after soliciting relief for many years, nothing could be obtained from the timid successor of M. de Maupeau, except an arret of council, which forbade this base violation of the rights of mankind. His fear of disobliging the par­liament of Besançon would not permit him to withdraw, from its jurisdiction, a cause which could not be regarded as an ordinary suit without shamefully acknowledging the legiti­macy of the feudal slavery. The vassals of St. Claude were sent back to a tribunal, whose members, the lords of the lands subject to this tyranny, took a barbarous pleasure in riveting the chains of those poor people; who still con­tinue enslaved.

All they have obtained was the liberty, gran­ted them in 1778, of abandoning their home and their country to escape from the domini­on of the monks; but another article of that same law more than [...]t balanced this benefaction, so ineffectual to unfortunate men, whom pover­ty rather than the law has confined to the spot of their birth. In this very edict the sovereign has, for the first time, given the name and sa­cred [Page 166] character of property to the detestable rights which, even in the midst of the ignorance and barbarity of the thirteenth century, were considered as usurpations which neither time nor titles can render legitimate; and an hy­pocritical minister has made the liberty of the peasant depend, not on the justice of laws, but on the will of his tyrants.

Who that reads these details would suppose that he reads the life of a great poet, of a pro­lisic and indefatigable writer? We forget his literary fame, as he himself lost sight of it. He seemed no longer to pursue any object of fame, but that of avenging the human race, and of snatching victims from oppression.

His genius, however, incapable of inactivi­ty, cultivated every species of literature on which it had ev [...]r exercised its powers, and even dared to essay new subjects. He published some tragedies, which we may doubtless re­proach with feebleness, and which could no lon­ger force the applauses of an audience whom he himself had rendered difficult, but in which the man of letters may gratify his taste by beau­tiful verses, and his judgment by profound, en­lightened ideas, while he who is ambitious to write for the theatre may in them study the secrets of his art; he wrote tales, in which that species of composition, till then employed only to reflect pleasing and voluptious images, which amuse the imagination or awaken gaiety, as­sumed a more philosophic character, and be­came, [Page 168] like the apologue, a school of morality and reason, he wrote epistles, which if compa­red with his first works, will be found less cor­rect, less uniformly animated, and less poetical; but, in return, possessed of more simplicity and variety, a more general and free spirit of philosophy, and a greater number of those accute and deep remarks whi [...]h are the pro­duct of experience. To these he added satires, in which prejudice and its patrons are ridiculed under a thousand varying forms.

About the same time, in his Philosophy of History, he gave lessons to historians, while he provoked the enmity of pedants, by unvei [...]ing their dulness, credulity and invidious admira­tion of antiquity; he finished his Essay on the Manners and Spirit of Nations, his Age of Louis XIV. to which he added the Age of Lou­is XV. an incomplete but faithful history, the only one by which we can form an adequ [...]te idea of the events of that reign, and in which we find all the truth that can be expected in a cotemporary history, which is neither a libel nor an eulogium.

New romances, works sometimes serious and sometimes humorous, and dictated by cir­cumstances, did not add to his reputation, but they continued to render it ever present with the public, to sustain the interest of his parti­sans, and to humiliate that herd of secret en­emies, who assumed the mask of austerity, that the might withhold that admiration which the example of Europe commanded them to give.

[Page 168]In sine, he und [...]rtook to assemble, in the form of a dictionary, all the ideas which pre­sented themselves to his mind on the various objects of his reflections; that is to say, on almost all that is comprised in the circle of human knowledge. In this collection, modestly entitled, Questions to the Lovers of Science respecting the Encyclopedia, he treats succes­sively of theology, grammar, natural philoso­phy, and literature. At one time, he discusses the subjects of antiquity; at others, questions of policy, legislation, and public economy. His style ever animated and seductive, clothed these various objects with a charm hitherto known to himself only; and which chiefly springs from the licence with which, yielding to his successive emotions, adapting his style less to his subject than to the momentary disposi­tion of his mind, sometimes he spreads ridi­cule on objects which seem capable of inspiring only horror, and, almost instantaneously hurried away by the energy and sensibility of his soul, he vehemently and eloquently exclaims against abuses which he has just before treated with mockery. His anger is excited by false taste; he quickly perceives that his indignation ought to be reserved for interests which are more important; and he finishes by laughing in his usual way. Sometimes, he abruptly leaves a moral or political discussion for a literary cri­ticism; and, in the midst of a lesson on taste, he pronounces abstract maxims of the pro­foundest [Page 169] philosophy, or makes a sudden and terrible attack on fanaticism and tyranny.

The constant interest which Voltaire took in the success of Russia against the Turks de­serves to be noticed. Highly distinguished by the favours of the empress, doubtless gratitude animated his zeal; but we should be deceived did we imagine his zeal had no other cause. Superior to those politics of the counting-house, which take the interest of merchants known to financiers for the interests of commerce, and the interests of commerce for that of the human race, not less superior to those vain ideas of the balance of Europe so valuable to political compilers, he beheld, in the destruc­tion of the Ottoman empire, millions of men at least assured of shunning under the despot­ism of a sovereign the intolerable despotism of a whole people; he hoped to see the imperi­ous manners of the East which condemned women to a disgraceful slavery banished into the unhappy climates that gave them birth. Immence countries situated under a propitious heaven, destined by nature to be clothed with all the productions most useful to mankind, would have been restored to the industry of their inhabitants; these countries, the first in which man discovered genius, would have be­held, again springing up in their bosom, the arts of which they gave the most perfect mo­dels, and the sciences, whose foundations were laid by them.

[Page 170]The usual speculations of some merchants would without doubt have been deranged, and their profits diminished; but the real welfare of all people would have been augmented, because it is not possible to extend the space on the globe in which agriculture flourishes, com­merce is secure, and industry active, without increasing for the use of all men the mass of enjoyments and resourses. Can it be desirable that a philosopher should prefer the riches of some nations to the liberty of an entire peo­ple, and the commerce of a few cities to the progress of agriculture and of the arts in a great empire? Far from us be those despica­ble reasoners who would still hold Greece in in Turkish chains, in order that they may seize on the persons of men, sell them as herds of cattle, compel them, by the dread of punish­ment, to furnish food for their insatiable ava­rice; and who gravely calculate the pretended wealth which it produced, by these outrages on nature.

That men should every where be free, and that each country should enjoy the advantages given it by nature, would be the common in­terests of all people, as well of those who have reassumed their rights as of those in which cer­tain individuals, and not the community, have been benefited by the distress of others. Op­posed to objects so grand and to that eternal good which would arise out of a revolution so vast, of what importance would the ruin of a [Page 171] few avaricious men be; and of men too, whose wealth originated in the tears and the blood of their fellow citizens!

Thus thought M. Turgot; and thus Vol­taire could not but think.

Men have declaimed against the injustice of a war against the Turks: can we be unjust toward a hoard of robbers, who hold a people in sla­very, and whose avidious ferocity overwhelms these people with outrages? Let them return to those deserts which the imbecility of Europe permitted them to quit, since, in their brutal pride, they have continued to produce a race of tyrants! At length, let the country of those to whom we owe our knowledge, our arts, and even our virtues, cease to be dishonoured by the presence of a people who unite the despicable vices of effeminacy to the ferocity of savages!

Fears are entertained for the balance of Europe, as though such conquests would not diminish, instead of increasing the power of the conquerors; as though Asia must not long offer an easy prey to the ambitious, which would give them a distaste for the hazardous conquests which might be obtained in Europe. It is not the policy of princes, it is the wisdom of a civilised people, which must forever pre­serve the peace of Europe; and the more civilization shall extend over the earth, the more shall we behold war and conquests, as well as slavery and misery, disappear.

[Page 172]Louis the XVth died. This prince, who had long in his conduct contemned the precepts of the moral christian, was not, however, supe­rior to superstitious terrors. The menaces of religion assumed new vigour to terrify him on the appearance of the least danger; but he imagined that a promise of continence so easily made on a death-bed, and certain words from the mouth of a priest, could expiate the errors of a reign of sixty years. Even more ti­mid than superstitious, accustomed by the Car­dinal de Fleury to consider liberty of thought as a cause of disorder in states, or at least of embarrassment to governments, it was never­theless in despight of himself that under his reign human reason made a rapid progress in France. He who laboured for its advancement with most success and splendour was become the object of his hatred. Yet he respected in Voltaire the glory of France; and could not view, without pride, the admiration of Europe place one of his subjects in the first rank of illustrious characters.

His death made no change in Voltaire's situation. To the prejudices of Cardinal de Fleury, M. Maurepas joined a still more im­placable hatred of all those who rose superior to the ordinary class of men.

Voltaire had been profuse of his exaggerat­ed praise of Louis XV. till the time of his visit to the court of Prussia, but without being able to disarm the king's unjust dislike of him. He [Page 173] had observed an almost absolute silence from the period in which the errors and misfortunes of this reign would have rendered eulogy ab­ject. But after the death of that monarch he dared to be just to his memory, at the instant in which nearly the whole nation seemed hap­py in wounding his name. It has been remark­ed that the philosophers, whom Louis XV. did not patronize, were at that time the only per­sons who observed some impartiality; while the priests, laden with his benefactions, in­sulted his weakness.

The new reign soon presented to Voltaire hopes which he had not dared to form. M. Turgot was called to the administration. Vol­taire knew him to be a man of profound ge­nius, who, in every species of science, had created sure and determinate principles on which he had founded all his opinions, and according to which he directed the whole of his conduct; a glory that no other statesman has been worthy of partaking with him. He knew that, to a soul zealous for the truth and for the happiness of man, M. Turgot united fortitude that was above all fear, and gran­deur of character superior to all dissimulation; that in his eyes the most important situation was but the means of executing his salutary views; and appeared to him no more than a vile slavery when that hope should be lost. In fine, Voltaire knew that, free from all preju­dices and detesting, in those prejudices, the [Page 174] most dangerous enemies of the human race, M. Turgot regarded the liberty of thought and of the press as the right of each citizen, and the right of entire nations, whose happi­ness the progress of reason alone can establish on an immoveable basis.

In the nomination of M. Turgot, Voltaire saw the dawn of the reign of reason; so long disavowed and much longer persecuted; he dared to look for the rapid fall of prejudices, and for the destruction of that cowardly and tyrannic policy which, to flatter the pride or indolence of men in place, had condemned the people to humiliation and misery.

Yet his attempts in favour of the vassals of Mount Jura were ineffectual; and in vain he endeavoured to obtain for d'Etallonde, and for the memory of the Chevalier de la Barré, that distinguished justice which humanity and the national honour equally required. These ob­jects were foreign to the department of the finances; and that superiority of information, of character, and of virtue, which M. Turgot could not conceal, had created him, in the other ministers and in the intriguing subalterns of office, too many enemies; who, finding neither ambition nor personal projects to op­pose in him, bent themselves against all that they believed consonant with his just and be­neficent designs

Beside, liberty could not be restored to the vassals of mount Jura without offending the [Page 175] parliament of Befançon; the revision of the process of Abbeville had humiliated that of Paris; and an unwise policy had re-established the parliaments without taking advantage of their temporary overthrow, and the little cre­dit of those who had replaced them, to intro­duce into the laws and tribunals an entire re­form, the necessity of which was felt by all enlightened men. But an administration which was feeble, and the enemy of reformation, did not dare or did not wish to seize this occasion, in which the public good had found still less obstacles than in the instance which was so shamefully neglected by the Chancellor Mau­peou.

Thus also, through complaisance to the prejudices of the parliaments, ministers suf­fered the advantages for the reform of edu­cation to be lost, which was offered to them by the destruction of the Jesuits. They did not even, in 1774, take any precaution to prevent the renewal of the contentions which, in 1770, had led to the ruin of the magistracy. They had pursued but a single object, the ad­vantage of securing a personal gratitude, which gave to the authors of the change a means of employing a credit of the corps, whose re-establishment was their work, with success against the rivals of their power.

Hence the only advantage which Voltaire could obtain, from the administration of M. Turgot, was to withdraw the little country of [Page 176] Gex from the tyranny of the farms. Separat­ed from France by mountains, having an easy communication with Geneva and Switzerland, this unfortunate country could not be subject­ed to the revenue laws without becoming the theatre of perpetual war between the servants of the revenue and the inhabitants, nor with­out paying expences for the collection still more burdensome than the imposts themselves. The little importance of this regulation should have rendered it easy; yet, it was long soli­cited, in vain, by M. de Voltaire.

Part of the provinces of France have, through various causes escaped the yoke of the Farm-general, or have only borne half of its weight; but the farmers-general have incessantly in­creased their limits, and envelloped in their chains detached cantons which had long been protected by feudal privileges. They believed that their God Terminus, like that of the Ro­mans, ought never to recede; and that the first step he should retreat would be the pre­sage of destruction to the empire. Their op­position, however, could not induce M. Tur­got to abandon a just and beneficent operation, which without injury to the revenue, would lessen the burden of the inhabitants, diminish the burden of crimes and oppressions, and re­store prosperity and peace to a district pillag­ed by despotism.

The country of Gex, then, was delivered from the yoke, on condition of raising thirty [Page 177] thousand livres; and Voltaire had the pleasure of writing to his friends, in a parody of a verse of Mithridates; ‘Et mes derniers regards ont vu fuir les commis ^*.’

Voltaire's respect for M. Turgot would have been augmented by the edicts of 1776 had not he already known that minister's genius, and comprehended his views. This great states­man had perceived that, placed at the head of the finances at a moment in which he was em­barrassed by the mass of the public debt, and by obstacles which the courtiers and the first minister opposed to every great reform in ad­ministration and to all important economy, he could not diminish the imposts; but he wished, at least, to give some consolation to the people, and some indemnity to the proprietors of lands by restoring to them rights of which they had been deprived by oppressive regulations.

The remains of feudal slavery which spread desolation through the country, which com­pelled the poor to labour without hire, and de­prived agriculture of the husbandmen's cattle, were changed into an impost, paid only by the proprietors of land. Through all the cities, ridiculous corporations obliged a part of the inhabitants to purchase the right of labouring; those who subsisted by commerce or their own industry were compelled to live under the vas­salage [Page 178] of a certain number of privileged peo­ple, or to pay a tribute to these bodies; this absurd institution disappeared, and the right of freely employing their time and strength was restored to the citizens.

The proprietors of grain and of wine, the first harrassed by popular prejudices, the other by despotic privileges, which had been extorted by particular cities, were relieved from those oppressions; and these wise laws could not fall to accelerate the progress of agriculture, and multiply the national wealth, by insuring the subsistence of the people.

But these beneficent edicts were the sig­nal of that minister's fall who had the boldness to conceive them. They excited the opposition of the parliaments who were interested in sup­porting the Jurandes ^* the fertile source of lu­crative law suits, who were not less attached to the old regulations which furnished them with the means of acting on the minds of the people, who were irritated to see the burthen of mak­ing roads laid on the oppulent owners of land, and were without any hope that an unworthy condescension would continue to lighten the weight of their individual taxes, but who were more particularly alarmed at the influ­ence which seemed to be acquired by a minister whose benevolent spirit menaced the over­throw of their power.

[Page 179]The intrigues of the enemies of M. Turgot were strengthened by this league of the parlia­ments; and it was then perceived how service­able to their secret and pernicious designs was the manner in which the tribunals had been re-established; it was then seen how dangerous it is to a minister to design the welfare of the people; and, perhaps, were we to mount up to the cause of events, we should find that the fall even of vicious ministers has originated in the good which they wished to do, and not in the evil which they have produced.

In the calamities of France, Voltaire beheld the destruction of hopes which he had entertain­ed for the advancement of the human mind. He had imagined that intolerance, superstition, and the monsterous prejudices which infected every branch of legislation, every department of power, and all conditions of society, would have fled before a minister who was the friend of justice, of liberty and reason. Such as have accused Voltaire of base adulation, such as have bitterly reproached him with the use which he made of praise, perhaps too fr [...]quent­ly, to influence the minds of powered men and to compel them to be just and humane, may compare those praises to his eulogy of M. Turgot, and to his Epistle to a Man which he addressed to that minister at the moment of his disgrace. They will then distinguish the ad­miration which is the result of feeling, from a compliment; and the esteem which arises in [Page 180] the soul, from the play of imagination; and they will perceive that Voltaire committed no other crime than that of treating courtiers as women: nearly the same protestations are be­stowed on the whole sex, and it is the tone alone that distinguishes the praise which is felt from that which is given to politeness.

Voltaire, offering incense to the kings and ministers to engage them on the side of truth, and Voltaire, celebrating genious and virtue, speaks not the same language. Did he wish only to flatter, he was prodigal of the charms of his brilliant imagination, he multiplied these ingenious ideas which were ever ready at his call; but did he wish to render an homage ac­knowledged by his heart, it was his soul which escaped him, it was his reason which spoke. During his visit to Paris his admiration of M. Turgot was infused through all his discourse. M. Turgot was the man whom he opposed to all who complained of the depravity of our age; and to him his mind gave his intire approbati­on. I have seen him take his hands, bathe them with his tears, kiss them in despight of M. Tur­got's resistance, and cry with a voice interrupt­ed by sobs: "Let me kiss the hand which would seal the happiness of the people."

Voltaire had long desired to revisit his coun­try, and to enjoy his reputation in the midst of the same people who had been the witness of his first success and too often the accomplice of his enemies. M. de Villette had lately, at [Page 181] Ferne, espoused Mademoiselle de Varicour, a lady descended from a noble family in the coun­try of Gex, whom her relations had confided to the care of Madame Denis. Voltaire ac­companied them to Paris, partly led by the de­sire of seeing the representation of the trage­dy of Irene, which he had shortly before finish­ed. It had been kept a profound secret; and malice had not time to prepare her poison, nor would the public enthusiasm have permitted its operation. A croud of men and women of every rank and condition, from whom his verses had drawn the tears of humanity, who had so fre­quently admired his genius at the theatre and in reading his works, who were indebted to him for their improvement, whole prejudices he had destroyed, and to whom he had impart­ed a spark of that zeal against fanaticism by whose flame he was devoured, were eager to behold him. Jealousy was silent before a glo­ry which it was impossible to extinguish, be­fore the benefit which he had conferred on mankind. Ministers, and proud prelates, were obliged to respect the idol of the nation. This enthusiasm was even spread through the com­mon ranks of the people; they crowded round his windows, and passed whole hours there with the hope of seeing him for one moment. His carriage, which could scarcely proceed along the streets, was surrounded by a numer­ous multitude, who blessed him and celebrated his works.

[Page 182]The French academy, which had not adopt­ed him till the age of fifty-two, lavished ho­nours on him, and received him rather as sovereign of the empire of letters than as an equal. The children of those haughty cour­tiers, whose pride had been wounded to see him live in their society without meanness, and who had wished to humiliate in his person the superiority of genius and talents, contend­ed for the honour of being presented to him, and of an opportunity to boast that they had seen Voltaire.

But it was at the theatre, where he had so long reigned, that he had the greatest honours to expect. He went to the third representa­tion of Irene; which was, indeed, but a fee­ble tragedy; which, however, possessed many beauties, and in which the wrinkles of age could not conceal the sacred impression of ge­nius. He alone drew the attention of a people, eager to distinguish his features, to observe his gestures, to pursue the direction of his eyes. His bust was crowned on the stage in the midst of applause, cries of joy, and tears of enthusi­asm. To quit the theatre he must pass through the multitude that crouded round him; feeble, scarce able to support himself, the guards, which were designed to protect him from the eagerness of zeal, became useless at his ap­proach, each retired with a respectful atten­tion, or disputed the honour of supporting him a moment on the stares; each step offer­ed [Page 183] him new aid, nor was any one permitted to arrogate too long the right of giving him assistance.

The spectators followed him to his apart­ment, and the air was filled with the cries of "Long live Voltaire! Long live the Henriade! Long live Mahomet!" numbers fell at his feet, and numbers kissed his garment. Never has man been received with more interesting marks of admiration and of public affection, nor ever has genius been honoured by a more flattering homage; and this homage was addressed, not to his power, but to the happiness which he had conferred on man. An illustrious poet would have been received only with plaudits: tears flowed before the philosopher, who had destroyed the fetters of reason, and avenged the cause of humanity.

The sublime and impassioned soul of Vol­taire was moved with these tributes of respect and zeal: "They wished me to die with plea­sure," he said; but it was the voice of sensi­bility, and not the artifice of self-love. In the midst of the honours paid him by the French academy, he was particularly struck by the possibility of introducing into that place a more daring philosophy: "They treat me with more attention than I merit," he said to me, one day; "do you know that I do not despair of causing the eulogium of Coligny to be spoken there?"

During the run of Irene, he was employed [Page 184] in revising his essay on the Manners and the spirit of Nations; and to give, in that world some new wounds to fanaticism. He had with secret pleasure observed, at the theatre, that the lines which were received with the great­est acclamations were those in which he at­tacked superstition and the names the had long rendered sacred; and it was to this object to ascribed all the glory he had acquired. He beheld, in that general admiration, the em­pire which he had exercised over the mind, and the destruction of prejudices which he had accomplished.

At this same time, Paris boasted, also, the presence of the celebrated Franklin, who, in another hemisphere, had been the apostle of philosophy and toleration. Like Voltaire, he had often employed the weapon of humour which corrects the absurdities of men, and had displayed their perverseness as a folly more fatal, but also worthy of pity. He had joined to the science of metaphysics the genius of practical philosophy; as Voltaire, that of poetry. Franklin had delivered the vast countries of America from the yoke of Europe; and Vol­taire had freed Europe from the yoke of the ancient theocracy of Asia. Franklin was ea­ger to see a man whose reputation had long been spread over both worlds; Voltaire, al­though he had lost the habit of speaking En­glish, endeavoured to support the conversation in that language; and, afterwards reassuming [Page 185] the French, he said: "Je n'ai pu résister au desit de parler un moment la langue de M. Franklin ^*."

The American philosopher presented his grandson to Voltaire, with a request that he would give him his benediction. "God and liberty!" said Voltaire: "it is the only bene­diction which can be given to the grandson of Franklin." They went together to a public assembly of the academy of sciences, and the public at the same time beheld with emotion these two men, born in different quarters of the globe, respectable by their years, their glory, the employment of their lives, and both enjoyed the influence which they had exercised over the age in which they lived. They em­braced each other in the midst of public accla­mations, and it was said to be Solon who em­braced Sophocles. But the French Sophocles had trampled on error and advanced the reign of reason; and the Solon of Philadelphia, hav­ing placed the constitution of his country on the immoveable foundation of the rights of men, had no fear of seeing his uncertain laws, even during his own life, open the way to tyranny and prepare fetters for his country.

Age had not enfeebled the activity of Vol­taire, and the transports with which he was received by his fellow citizens seemed to renew his vigour. He formed the design of [Page 186] refuting whatever the Duke de St. Simon, in his memoirs, then unpublished, had written under the influence of hatred and prejudice, lest these memoirs, which might derive some authority from the known probity of the author and from his rank and title of cotemporary, should appear at a time in which men would be too far removed from the events of which he speaks, to detect error and defend the truth.

He had also induced the French academy to adopt the design of forming its dictionary on a new plan. They were to have deduced the history of each word from the period in which it had appeared in the language, to give the various meanings which it assumed in different ages, and the various acceptations it had received, and to employ, in order to display these varied shades, not capricious phrases, but examples selected from authors of the greatest authority. Then would have been seen the true literary and grammatical dictionary of the language, and not only fo­reigners but even Frenchmen might, in that work, have acquired a knowledge of all its delicacy.

This dictionary would have presented in­structive pages to men of letters, would have contributed to form the national taste, and arrested the progress of corruption. Each ac­ademician was to have explained a letter of the alphabet. Voltaire undertook the letter A; and, to excite the industry of his brethren, [Page 187] and to banish the difficulty of executing this plan, he was desirous to finish, within a few months, that part of the work which he had assumed.

His strength was wasted by such excessive application; and he had been much reduced by a spitting of blood, caused by his efforts during the representation of Irene. Yet, the activity of his mind subdued all; and conceal­ed from him the real weakness of his constitu­tion. At length, deprived of sleep by an irri­tation produced by too intense labour, he wished to procure some hours repose, that he might be in a condition to lead the academy irrevocably to engage in the new dictionary, against which some objections had arisen; and he resolved to take opium. His imagination possessed all its vivacity, his soul was equally restless and impetuous, his character abated not of its gaiety and vigour, when he took the opi­ate which he judged to be necessary. During the same evening, his friends had heard him express his detestation of prejudices with his usual eloquence; and soon after beheld him viewing them only on the ridiculous side, and deriding them with that peculiar grace and aptness which characterised his sallies of wit. But he took the opiate at several doses, and was deceived as to the quantity, probably in the species of intoxication which the first had produced. The same accident happened to him about thirty before, and then placed his [Page 188] life in danger. Unhappily, this time, his wast­ed powers were unable to contend with the poison. He had long been subject to a com­plaint in the bladder, and in the general de­cay of his organs, that soon contracted an in­curable disease.

Scarcely could he, during the long interval between this fatal accident and his death, pre­serve his recollection for a few successive mo­ments, or disengage himself from the lethargy in which he was plunged. To the young Count de Lalli, however, who was even then celebrated for his courage, and who has since deserved celebrity by his eloquence and patri­otism, he wrote, in one of these intervals, those lines, the last which were traced by his hand, in which he applauds the royal authority whose justice had lately annulled one of the attroci­ous acts of parliamentary despotism. At length he expired on the 30th of May, 1778.

The arrival of Voltaire at Paris had re-kin­dled the fury of the fanatics, and wounded the pride of the chiefs of the hierarchy; but it had also inspired some priests with an idea of building their reputation and their fortune on the conversion of this illustrious enemy. Cer­tainly, they could not flatter themselves with the hope of subduing him, but they did not des­pair of inducing him to dissemble. Voltaire, who wished to remain at Paris without being tormented by sacerdotal accusations, and who, from a habit acquired in his youth, thought it [Page 189] beneficial to the interests even of the friends of reason, that certain scenes of intolerance should not succeed his last moments, had sent in the beginning of his malady for an almoner of the incurables, and who had boasted of having re­stored to the bosom of the church the Abbé de L'Attaignant, known by offences of another kind.

The Abbé Gauthier confessed Voltaire, and received a profession of faith from him, by which he declared that he died in the catholic religi­on, in which he was born.

When this circumstance was known, which offended enlightened men rather more than it edified the devotees, the curate of Saint Sulpice ran to his parishoner, who received him with politeness, and gave him according to usage a handsome offering for his poor peo­ple. But, mortified that the Abbé Gauthier had anticipated him, he discovered that the almoner of the incurables had been too easily satisfied with his penitent, and that he ought to have required a more particular profession faith, and an express disavowal of all the doc­trines, contrary to orthodoxy, which Voltaire tad been accused of maitaining. The Abbé Gauthiers pretended that, by requiring every thing, all would have been lost. During this dispute, Voltaire recovered, Irene was play­ed, and the conversion was forgotten. But, in the moment of the relapse, the curate re­turned to Voltaire, absolutely resolved not to [Page 190] inter him, if he could not obtain the desired recantation of his errors.

This curate was among those men who are a mixture of hypocrisy and imbecility; he spoke with the obstinate persuasion of a mani­ac, and acted with the flexibility of a jesuit; he was humble in his manners even to baseness, arrogant in his sacerdotal pretensions, fawning with the great, and charitable to the populace who are governed by the priests that distribute alms to them, and, in fine, he harrassed the simple citizens, by his imperious fanaticism. He earnestly wished to compel Voltaire at least to acknowledge the divine nature of Jesus Christ; to which he was more attached than any other dogma. He, one day, drew Vol­taire from his lethargy, by shouting in his ear: "Do you believe the Divinity of Jesus Christ?" "In the name of God, sir," replied Voltaire, "speak to me no more of that man; but let me die in peace."

The priest then declared he was compelled to refuse him burial; but he was not authorised in this refusal; for, according to the laws, it ought to have been preceded by a sentence of excommunication, or a secular judgment; and even an appeal might have been made against an excommunication, as a matter of abuse. Voltaire's family, by complaining to the parlia­ment, would have obtained justice; but they feared the fanaticism of that body and the ha­tred of its members to Voltaire, who had so of­ten [Page 191] combated its pretensions and exerted his powers against its injustice. They did not perceive that the parliament could not, with­out disgrace to itself, depart from the princi­ples on which it had acted in favour of the Jan­senist; they did not know that a great num­ber of the young magistrates waited only for an occasion of effacing, by some splendid act, the reproach of fanaticism by which they were degraded, of dignifying themselves, by or­daining a mark of respect to the memory of a man of genius whom they had been unfortu­nate enough to number among their enemies, and of shewing that they chose rather to atone for their injustice, than to yield to any incite­ments of vengeance. The friends of Voltaire did not observe how much power they had ac­quired by that enthusiasm which his name had excited; an enthusiasm which had gained eve­ry class in the nation, and which no authority would venture openly to insult.

They chose rather to negociate with go­vernment. Daring neither to offend public opinion by gratifying the vengeance of the clergy, nor to displease the priests by compell­ing them to obey the laws, fearing to mortify sacerdotal pride, should they erect a public monument to a great man whose ashes were basely disturbed by priests, or should they in­demnify his memory for the loss of ecclesi­astic honours, to which he had so little claim, by civic honours due to his genius and the ser­vices [Page 192] be had done the nation, ministers appro­ved a proposal which was made of removing Voltaire's body to the church of a monastery, of which his, nephew was abbé. It was accor­dingly conducted to Scellières, and the priests agreed not to interrupt the execution of this design. However, two ladies, of distinguish­ed rank and very great devotees, wrote to the bishop of Troyes to engage him, in quality, of diocean bishop, to oppose the burial. But, fortunately for the honour of the bishop, these letters arrived too late, and Voltaire was in­terred.

The French academy had observed a custom of saying mass at the church of the Cordeliers for each of their deceased members. The archbishop of Paris, Beaumont, so well known by his ignorance and fanaticism, prohibited the performance of the ceremony. The Corde­liers obeyed with regret; but they knew that the confessors of the archbishop would pardon his spirit of revenge, and would forbear to re­commend justice to him. The academy, there­fore, resolved to suspend the practice of this ceremony till the insult offered to the most il­lustrious of its members should be repaired. Thus Beaumont became, [...]o despight of him­self, the instrument of d [...]o [...]ing a ridiculous superstition.

Mean while the King of Prussia commanded a solemn mass to be said for Voltaire in the catholic church of Berlins and the academy of [Page 193] Prussia was invited to attend. But that which was more glorious to Voltaire, was, that the king in the field of battle, where, at the head of an hundred and fifty thousand men, he de­fended the rights of the princes of the empire, and imposed laws on the Austrian power, wrote the eulogium of that illustrious man, whose disciple and friend he had been, and who, per­haps, had never pardoned him the unworthy and disgraceful violence which he had endured at Franckfort, but towards whom the monarch was incessantly and involuntarily led by his na­tural taste and his admiration of genius. This eulogium nobly compensated for the mean ven­geance of the priests.

Of all the enormities which, in the times of ignorance and superstition, the priests have obtained the power of committing against hu­man nature with impunity, that which is ex­ercised on the bodies of the deceased is un­questionably the least prejudicial; and, in the eyes of enlightened men, those outrages can appear no other than a title of renown. Yet, respect for the remains of men who have been dear to us is no prejudice; it is an affection inspired by nature herself, who has placed, in the recesses of our hearts, a veneration for ev­ery thing that can recal to our remembrance beings whom friendship or gratitude have ren­dered sacred to our feelings. The liberty of offering a sorrowful homage to their ashes is [Page 194] then a precious right to delicate minds, and the power of choosing that which their sensa­tions shall dictate, cannot, without injustice, be taken away; still less may this consolation be forbidden at the will of an intolerant sect, who have usurped, with an audacity too long endured, the right of controuling the thoughts of men, or of inflicting punishment for them.

Beside, the empire of prejudice over the minds of the populace is not yet destroyed; a Christian deprived of burial, is still in the eyes of inferior people, the object of horror and disdain; and this injustice is extended even to his fami­ly. If, indeed, the hatred of priests would pursue none but men who are immortalized by their works and whose glory embraces all ages, we might pardon their despicable efforts; but their hatred may be attached to victims less il­lustrious; and all men have the same rights.

Government, in some degree ashamed of its feeble conduct, hoped to escape public con­tempt by prohibiting the name of Voltaire in any writings, or in those places where the police was accustomed to violate the freedom of speech, under the pretence of preserving or­der, which it too often confounded with a re­spect paid to established and protected follies.

The public papers were forbidden to speak of his death; and the comedians had orders to perform none of his pieces. Ministers did not discover that means like these, of prevent­ing the anger of the nation against their weak­ness [Page 195] would only serve more fully to provoke it; and to demonstrate that they had neither courage to merit the approbation nor to sup­port the blame of the public.

This simple recital of the incidents of the life of Voltaire has sufficiently developed his character and his mind; the principal features of which were benevolence, indulgence for hu­man foibles, and a hatred of injustice and op­pression. He may be numbered among the ve­ry few men in whom the love of humanity was a real passion; which the noblest of all passions, was known only to modern times, and took rise from the progess of knowledge. Its very existence is sufficient to confound the blind partisans of antiquity, and those who calumni­ate philosophy.

But the happy qualities of Voltaire were oft­en perverted by his natural restlessness, which the writing of tragedy had but increased. In an instant he would change from anger to affec­tion, from indignation to a jest. Born with violent passions, they often hurried him too far; and his restlessness deprived him of the advantages which usually accompany such minds; particularly of that fortitude to which fear is no obsticle, when action becomes a duty, and which is not shaken by the presence of dan­ger foreseen. Often would Voltaire expose himself to the storm with rashness, but rarely did he brave it with constancy; and these in­tervals, of temerity and weakness, have fre­quently [Page 196] afflicted his friends, and afforded un­worthy cause of triumph to his cowardly foes.

His affections were permanent, and his friendship for Génonville, the president de Mai­sons, Formont, Cideville, the Marchioness du Chalelet, d'Argental, and d'Alembert, seldom obscured by passing clouds, ended only with his life. From his works we discover that few men of feeling have so long preserved the remembrance of friends lost in early youth.

He has been reproached with his numerous disputes, but in none of these he was the ag­gressor. His enemies, those at least to whom he was irreconcileable, and whom he devoted to the world's contempt, did not confine them­selves to personal attacks; they were his accu­sers to the fanatics, and wished to bring down the sword of persecution on his head. It is no doubt afflicting to be obliged to place in this list men of real merit; men like the poet Rosseau the two Pompignans ^*, Larcher, and even Ros­seau [Page 197] of Geneva. But it is not more excusable to carry vengeance too far, in self-defence, and to be unjust in the indulgence of anger, the first motive of which is founded in rectitude, than to violate the rights of man, by endangering the freedom and safety of a citizen, to gratify pride, the aims of hypocrisy, or an obstinate attachment to opinion?

Voltaire has been censured, for his attacks on Maupertuis; but were not these attacks confined to the mere act of rendering a man eternally ridiculous, who, by base intrigues, had endeavoured to dishonour and ruin him; and who, to revenge so [...] l [...]sts, had called the power of a king, irritated by his insidious arts, to his aid?

Voltaire, it is said, was envious; which has been answered by the following line, from Tancred: ‘De qui dans l'univers peut-il etre jalouse ^*?’

Yes, he was envious of Buffon. What! could the man whose mighty arm had shaken the antique pillars of the temple of superstition, and who aspired to metamorphose the vile herd which so long had groaned under the sa­cerdotal rod into men, could be envious of the lucky and splendid description of the manners of a few animals or the more or less fortunate combination of some systems, the falsity of which is proved by facts?

[Page 198]He was envious of J. J. Rousseau. The bold­ness of Rousseau did indeed excite that of Vol­taire: but was the philosopher who beheld the progress of knowledge, polishing, eman­cipating, and perfecting the human species, and who enjoyed the revolution as his proper work, was he jealous of the eloquent writer who wished to condemn the mind of man to eternal ignorance; Could the enemy of bi­gotry be jealous of him who, not finding suffi­cient fame in the destruction of its altars, vain­ly endeavoured to rebuild them?

Voltaire did not do justice to the genius of Rousseau, because his mind being equitable, and void of affectation, felt an involuntary re­pugnance, to exaggeration; because a tone of austerity presented to his fancy a tincture of hypocrisy, the smallest shade of which could not but disgust his frank and independent soul; and because, being accustomed himself to treat all subjects with humour, gravity in the little details of passion, or of human life, always appeared to him to partake of the ridiculous. He was unjust, because Rousseau had angered him, by returning injury to offers of service; had accused him of persecution, when he was employed in his defence, and had himself di­rected the hand of persecution toward Voltaire.

He was jealous of Montesquieu. He had cause to complain of the author of the spirit of laws, who affected to treat him with indif­ference, and almost with contempt; partly [Page 199] from foolish pride, and partly from timid poli­cy. Yet the celebrated saying of Voltaire, that, "Humanity had lost its charms, and that Montesquieu found and restored them," is the best eulogium ever pronounced on the spirit of laws, and even exceeds the limits of justice. It is only true relatively to France; since, without mentioning the works of Althusius ^* and some others, the rights of man were re­claimed with more energy and candour in the works of Locke and Sidney, than in those of Montesquieu.

Voltaire often criticised the spirit of laws, but usually with justice. The proof that he was right, in attacking Montesquieu, is that we now perceive the most absurd and fatal prejudices finding support by quoting works of that celebrated man; which, had not the progress of knowledge at length broken the fetters forged by the dogmas of authority, concerning questions which ought only to be submitted to the test of reason, would in the present day have done more mischief to France, than they had done good to Europe. The enthusiastic partisans of Montesquieu have af­firmed that Voltaire was incapable either of judging or of understanding his works. Irri­tated by such assertions, he well might mingle [Page 200] a little ill humour with just remark; in which he would be sanctioned by haughtiness so ri­diculous.

The fashion of taxing Voltaire with envy was so prevalent, that to this passion have been attributed his sage observations on the work of Helvetius; which, from respect to a persecuted philosopher, he had the delicacy not to publish during the life of that writer. Nay, his very anger at the short lived success of some ill wri [...]ten tragedies was called envy; as if anger could not be felt, except relatively to self, at seeing fame usurped, which is so often fatal to the progress of philosophy and the arts. How much has the praise so prodi­gally bestowed on Richelieu, Colbert, and other ministers, impeded the advancement of reason, in the science of politics!

While we read the works of Voltaire, we perceive no man perhaps ever possessed accu­racy of understanding in a Superior degree. This he preserved in the enthusiasm of poetry, as well as in the exuberance of humour; this was ever the guide of his taste and of his opi­nions, and is one of the principal reasons of the inexpressible charms which are discovered, in the perusal of his works. No mind perhaps ever combined more ideas at a time, decided with more rapid sagacity, or displayed more depth, in what ever required a laborious analy­sis or continued meditation. The strength of his eagle-eye often has astonished even those [Page 201] who were indebted to similar means for ideas the most profound, and combinations the most extensive and precise. In conversation he has often been known to select the best of a mul­titude of ideas, to arrange them in the most perspicacious and effectual manner, and to clothe them in the most happy and brilliant language.

Hence the inestimable advantage of being ever clear and unaffected without insipidity and of being read with equal pleasure by the most ignorant, as well as by the most enlightened. Reading his works with reflexion, we find in them a multitude of profoundly philosophic and true maxims; which escaped superficial readers, because they do not enforce atten­tion, nor require any effort to be understood.

If we consider him as a poet, we shall find that, of the various species which he attempt­ed, the ode and comedy were the only ones in which he did not deserve the highest rank. He failed in comedy because, as it has previ­ously been remarked, he had the gift of seiz­ing the ridiculous of opinion, but not of cha­racter, such as could be put in action, and which alone is proper for comedy. Not that, in a country where the mind of man should have freed itself from all its bonds, and in which philosophy should have become popular, absurd and dangerous opinions might not be successfully exhibited on the stage: but this kind of freedom is at present no where to be found.

[Page 202]To him poetry is indebted for the liberty of exercising itself in a field more vast. He has shewn how it may be united with philosophy; so that poetry, without being deprived of any of its charms, rises to new beauties; and phi­losophy, without being dry or inflated, pre­serves its accuracy and depth.

We cannot read his theatrical writings, without observing that to him the tragic art is indebted, for the whole progress which it has made since Racine: nor can ev [...]n those who refuse him superiority, or equality, of poetical talents, without stupidiy or injustice, deny this progress. His latter tragedies prove, that he was far from supposing he had carried this so difficult art to its utmost extent; he was sensible that tragedy might still approach more nearly to nature, without being deprived of its pomp and dignity; that it still addicted itself too much to local manners; that the love of women was a too frequent subject; that their passions ought to be represented on the stage as they exist in life, and their affection first discovered only by the efforts made to conceal it, and not publicly avowed, unless in those moments when excess of danger, or of misfortune, no longer admit of disguise. He thought too that characters void of affectation, great by nature, and strangers to interest and ambition, might afford a source of new beau­ties, and impart to tragedy more variety and truth. But he became too feeble to execute [Page 203] his own conception [...] ▪ and, if we except the father of Irene, we shall find his latter trage­dies rather lessons than models.

If, therefore, especially in the arts, the man of genius be he who by enriching them has most extended their limits, who has me­rited this title more than Voltaire? yet has it been refused him by writers, most of whom were, indeed, too destitute of genius them­selves to feel its true characteristics.

To Voltaire we are indebted for having ta­ken a more extensive and useful view of histo­ry than the ancients. It has in his writings become, not a narrative of events, not the picture of the revolutions of a nation, but that of human nature, painted from the life, and the philosophic result of the experience of all people, and of all ages. He first introduced true criticism into history; first shewed that the natural probability of accidents ought to be admitted, as proofs for or against histori­cal authenticity; and that the philosophic his­torian ought, not only to reject miracles, but scrupulously to examine the motives for cre­diting those facts which depart from the com­mon order of nature.

Perhaps he may occasionally have forgotten the sage rule which he himself invented, and which, rigorously adhered to, may demonstate truth. Still to him we are indebted for hav­ing freed history from that croud of extraor­dinary incidents, adopted without proof, which, [Page 204] making the greatest impression on the mind, blinded men to the most natural and the best demonstrated facts. Before his time men knew little of history, except the fables by which it was disfigured. He shewed that the absurdi­ties of politheism had never been the religion of any but the vulgar, among the greatest na­tions; and that the belief of one God, common to all people, had no need of being revealed by supernatural means. He proved that all nations have practised the grand principles of morality, and with encreasing purity in pro­portion as they were more civilized, and bet­ter informed. He taught us that the influence of religion has often corrupted, but never im­proved morality.

As a philosopher, he was the first to afford an example of a private citizen, who, by his wishes and endeavours, embraced the general history of man in every country and in every age, opposing error and oppression of every kind, and defending and promulgating every useful truth.

The history of whatever has been done in Europe, in favour of reason and humanity, is the history of his labours and beneficient acts. If the absurd and dangerous custom of inter­ring the dead within the walls of cities, and even in churches, has been abolished in some countries: if, on the continent of Europe, men, by means of innoculation, have, in part, escaped a disease which threatened life, and [Page 205] often was destructive of happiness; if the ca­tholic clergy have lost their dangerous power, and will soon be deprived of their scandalous wealth; if the liberty of the press be increas­ed; if Sweden, Russia, Poland, Prussia, and the dominions of the house of Austria have be­held the tyranny of intolerance vanish; if even in France, and some of the provinces of Italy, it has suffered attacks; if the shameful re­mains of feudal vassalage has been shaken in Russia, Denmark, Bohemia, and France; if Poland now feels its injustice and danger; if absurd and barbarous laws have been general­ly abolished, or are threatened with approach­ing destruction; if the necessity of reforming the administration of public justice be every where felt; if the continent of Europe has been taught that men possess a right to the use of reason; if religious prejudices have been eradicated from the higher classes of so­ciety, and in part effaced from the hearts of the common people; if their defenders have been reduced to the shameful necessity of main­taining their political utility; if the love of humanity be now the common language of all governments; if wars should become less fre­quent, and if the pride of kings, or claims which the rust of time has concealed, be no longer alledged as the pretence for their commence­ment; if we have beheld the mask stripped from the face of religious sectaries, who were privileged in imposing on the world; and if [Page 206] reason for the first time has begun to shed its clear and uniform light over all Europe; we shall every where discover, in the history of the changes that have been effected, the name of Voltaire; and shall every where find him be­ginning the battle or deciding the victory.

But generally obliged to conceal his inten­tions, and mask his attacks, though his works are in every hand, the principles of his philo­sophy are but little known.

Ignorance and error are the sole cause of the misery of man; and the errors of super­stition are the most fatal, because they corrupt every source of reason; and their destructive enthusiasm teaches their adherents to commit crimes without remorse. That mildness of manners which is compatible with every form of government diminishes evils, the cure of which reason must one day effect, and impedes their progress. Oppression itself, in a humane nation, assumes the character of the people; and is rarely guilty of great barbarity, in a country where arts, and especially literature, are beloved. Freedom of thinking is tolerat­ed out of respect to them, though men want the fortitude to love it for its own sake.

Our endeavours, therefore, should be to in­spire the mild and consolatory virtues, which lead to reason, which all men may practice, which agree with every polished age, and which may teach hypocrisy itself some good. They should particularly be preferred to these au­stere [Page 207] morals which seldom exist, in common minds, without a mixture of unfeeling severi­ty; which are to hypocrisy at once so easy and so dangerous; which often terrify tyrants, but seldom console mankind; and the necessity of which proves the misfortune of those nations whose history they adorn.

By informing mankind, and by rendering them more humane, we best may hope to lead them the surest and easiest road to freedom. But we neither can hope to spread kn [...]wledge nor soften the manners of nations, if frequent wars accustom them to the shedding of blood without remorse, and to contemn the fame which awaits on the arts of peace; or if, oc­cupied in oppression or in self-defence, men should continue to estimate their virtue by the ill they have been able to do, and imagine the art of killing to be the art of most utility.

The more men are enlightened the more they will be free, and the less difficult will be the attainment of freedom. But let us not teach oppressors to form a league against rea­son; let us conceal from them the necessary and firm union which exists between know­ledge and liberty; and let us not too soon in­form them that a nation without prejudice must instantly be free.

If we except theocracies, it is the immedi­ate interest of all governments that the people should be humane and enlightened. Let us not teach them that their most distant interest [Page 208] is to leave men in a state of ignorance. Let us not oblige them to choose between the in­terest of pride and that of repose and fame. To induce them to love reason, she must al­ways appear in a gentle and peaceful form; and, far from terrifying them by imprudent threats, while she asks their support must offer her own. If we attack oppressors before we have taught the oppressed, we shall risk the loss of liberty and the death of reason. Histo­ry affords proofs of this truth. How often, in despite of the generous efforts of the friends of freedom, has a single battle reduced nations to the slavery of ages!

And what is the kind of liberty enjoyed by those nations which have recovered it by force of arms, and not by the force of reason? It has been temporary freedom, and so disturbed by storms that it remained doubtful whether it were or were not an advantage. Have not most of them confounded the forms of repub­licanism with the enjoyment of right, and the despotism of numbers with freedom. How ma­ny unjust laws, contrary to the rights of na­ture, have dishonoured the code of all nations which have recovered their liberty, during those ages in which reason was still in its child­hood!

Why not profit by this fatal experience, and wisely wait the progress of knowledge, in or­der to obtain freedom more effectual more substantial, and more peaceful? Why purchase [Page 209] it by torrents of blood, and inevitable confu­sion, and give that to chance which time must certainly and without bloodshed bestow? In order to be more free and to be ever so, we should wait the time when men, released from their prejudices and guided by reason, will be worthy of freedom, because they will know what are its true claims.

What therefore is the duty of a philosopher? To attack superstition; to point out peace, wealth, and power to governments, as the in­fallible rewards of those laws which secure re­ligious liberty; and to teach them how much they have to fear from priests, whose secret influence will ever m [...]ace the repose of nati­ons in which the lib [...]ty of the press is under the least restraint, For, previous to the in­vention of the art of printing, it was impossible to shake off this shameful and fatal yoke: and till sacerdotal authority shall be entirely anni­hilated by reason, there will be no medium between absolute ignorance and dangerous commotion.

The philosopher will shew that, without freedom of thought, the spirit of the clergy must again produce assassination, tortures, pro­scriptions, and civil wars; and that, by enlight­ening the people only can nations, and kings, be secured from such sacred crimes. He will prove that men who wish for absolute power over the mind, will employ force instead of reason, will oblige conscience to cede to their [Page 210] dogmas, and far from affording morality a more solid basis by combining it with religi­ous notions, will corrupt and destroy it; while they seek not to promulgate virtue, but, to make their adherents the blind instruments of their ambition and avarice. Should he be ask­ed what is to be the sustitute of the prejudices thus destroyed, he would answer—"I have de­livered you from a wild beast, which was de­vouring you, and you ask for a substitute."

Were he to be reproached with repeating the same theme too often, and with too obsti­nately attacking errors in themselves beneath contempt, he will reply—They are not con­temptible while credited by the vulgar. And, though it be less glorious to combat vulgar error than to teach new truths to sages, it is necessary, in order to break the bonds of rea­son and to open a free road to truth, to pre­fer utility to fame.

Instead of proving that superstition is the support of despotism, if he write to people un­der an arbitrary government, he will prove that it is the enemy of kings; and of these two truths he will purposely dwell upon that which may aid the cause of humanity; and not on that by which it may be injured; because lia­ble to be misunderstood.

Instead of declaring war against despotism, before reason should have assembled sufficient powers, and calling nations to the banners of freedom, who neither love it nor understand [Page 211] what freedom is, he will enumerate to them and their governors the various oppressions which are common to them all, and which it is as well the interest of those who command as those who obey to root out. To simplify and humanize the laws, to counteract the op­pression of subordinate tyranny, to break off the shackles with which false policy may have encumbered the industry and liberty of trade, in order that freedom may be the only happi­ness wanting to mankind, and that nations worthy of freedom may be presented to her, such will be his efforts, such his theme.

Such is the result of the philosophy of Vol­taire, and such the spirit which pervades his works.

Let men, who, if he had not written, would still have been the slaves of prejudice, or would have trembled to confess they had shaken off its yoke, accuse Voltaire of having betrayed the interests of freedom, because he defended it without fanaticism and imprudence; let them judge him by those enlightened principles which were ten years posterior to his death and half a century to his philosophy, and which, but for him, had ever remained the secret opinions of sages; let them condemn him for having distinguished between the good, which may exist without liberty, and the happiness to which liberty only gives birth; let them for­bear to perceive that had Voltaire infused into his first writings the principles of freedom of [Page 212] the elder Brutus, or in other words of Ame­rican independence, neither Montesquieu nor Rousseau would have written as they have done; that if, like the author of the Systême de la Nature, he had invited the kings of Eu­rope to support the power of the priests ^*, Europe would still have been superstitious, and would long have remained in bondages; and let them forget that in books, as in beha­viour, we ought to display the courage only which the occasion requires; their injustice will but little injure the glory of Voltaire. Men of genius must be his judges, men who can discover, in a succession of various works, as well from their form and style as from their principles, the secret plan of a philosopher, who in waging continual but bold and artful war on prejudice; rather intent on conquest than renown; too great to be vain of his opi­nions, and too much the friend of the human race not to make their utility the grand ob­ject of his pursuits.

Voltaire has been accused of partiality to monarchical government, but this accusation only can impose on such as have not read his [Page 213] works. It is true he hated, beyond even mo­narchical power, aristocratic despotism, which unites rigour to hypocrisy and tyranny more austere to morals more perverse; nor was he ever the dupe of the parliaments of France, or the nobles of Sweden and Poland, who give the name of freedom to the chains with which they would load their vassals. In this opinion, Voltaire has been joined by all philosophers who have sought the definition of a free state in the nature and mind of man, and not, like the pedant Mably, in examples, drawn from the tyrannical anarchies of Italy and Greece.

He has been blamed for having bestowed too much praise on the pomp of the court of Louis XIV. and accusation was in this instance well founded; it was the only prejudice of his youth which he never shook off, and there are few men who can hope they have vanquished all their errors. It has been asserted, that he supposed celebrated artists, orators, and poets, were all that were necessary to render a peo­ple happy, but never could he entertain such a thought. He supposed indeed, that arts and literature polished the manners of men, and made the road of reason smooth and safe, and that the love of them rendered those who governed beneficent of heart, often prevented them from committing acts of violence and in­justice, and that, under equal circumstances, the most ingenious and polished people would always be the least wretched.

[Page 214]His pious enemies have taxed him with hat­ing assaulted, by wilful misquotation, the re­ligion of his country, and extending incredu­lity even to atheism; both of which charges are equally false. Among a multitude of ob­jections, founded on proofs and on passages cited from books, supposed to have been in­spired by God himself, a very small number of errors only can be discovered; and those cannot be imputed to him as wilful mistakes, because, comparing them to the numerous accurate quotations and facts related with pre­cision, it is evident that nothing could have been of less use to his cause. When contend­ing with his adversaries, his maxim continual­ly was, nothing ought to be credited which is not proved, and every thing should be re­jected which is offensive to reason and proba­bility; and the answer he has continually re­ceived was, whatever cannot be demonstrated an impossibility ought to be adopted and adored.

He constantly appeared to be persuaded of the existance of a Supreme Being, but with­out remaining blind to the strength of the ob­jections opposed to that opinion. While he thought he beheld the regular order of nature, he could not but perceive those striking irre­gularities which he was unable to explain.

This was his persuasion, though it was far from that absolute certainty in the presence of which all difficulties vanish: the work en­titled, [Page 215] Il faut prendre un parti, ou le principe d'action ^*, perhaps contains the strongest proofs of the existance of a Supreme Being, which men have yet been able to collect.

He believed as much of free will as a ra­tional man can believe; that is, he believed man has the power to resist inclination, and to weigh the motives of action.

His incertitude respecting spirit was almost absolute, and even concerning the existence of the soul after the decease of the body; but as he imagined this opinion, as well as that of the existance of a God, was beneficial, he rarely allowed himself to mention his doubts, and generally dwelt rather on the proofs than on the objections.

Such was the philosophy of Voltaire; and we, perhaps, shall find, while we read his life, that he has been more admired than known; that though gaul abounds in some few of his polemical writings, his predominant sensation was active benevolence; that his affection for the unfortunate exceeded his hatred of his enemies; and that the passion of fame in him was ever subordinate to the more noble love of humanity. Superior to the ostentation of vir­tue, or to the concealment of his foibles, which he would sometimes candidly confess, though not proudly proclaim, few men ever existed whose lives have been more honoured by acts [Page 216] of great worth or less sullied by hypocrisy. In fine, let it be remembered that when, on the pinnacle of fame, after having rendered the French stage illustrious by his genius, and while throughout Europe he exercised a de­gree of power over the minds of men hitherto unparalleled, the following pathetic line, ‘J'ai fait un peu de bien, c'est mon meilleur ouvrage ^*’ was the unaffected expression of that habitual benevolence, which had taken possession of his soul.