EPITAPH ON VOLTAIRE.
I send you two versions of the epitaph on Voltaire given in Vol. iv., p. 73., not for their intrinsic merit, but as illustrations of a curious physiological trait, as to the nature and power, or powerlessness, of memory:
"Plus bel esprit que grand génie,
Sans loi, sans mœurs, et sans vertu,
Il est mort, comme il a vécu,
Couvert de gloire et d'infamie."
Version No. 1.:
"With far less intellect than wit,
Lawless, immoral, and debased;
His life and death each other fit,
At once applauded and disgraced."
Version No. 2.:
"Much more a wit, than man of mind;
Alike to law, truth, morals blind!
Consistent as he lived he died,
His age's scandal, and its pride."
These are not offered as competing in excellence, for they are both the productions of the same mind, but for the purpose of recording the following remarkable fact respecting their composition. No. 2. was written down immediately on reading your Number in July last (1851); having composed it, I took from my library shelf Lord Brougham's Life of Voltaire, in which I knew the lines were, for the purpose of pencilling in my rendering of them. You may conceive my surprise at finding already there the version No. 1. with the date 1848, which I had made in that year, but of which I had so totally lost all remembrance, that not a single turn of thought or expression in one resembles the other. I perfectly remember the mental process of hammering out No. 2., and can confidently affirm that, during the time, no recollection whatever of No. 1., or anything about it, ever crossed my thought. I fear such a total obliteration is a token of failure in a faculty once powerful and accurate, but, perhaps, unduly tasked; yet I offer it to be recorded as a singular fact connected with this wonderful function of mind.
A. B. R.
Belmont.