When Martin Sherlock was at Ferney in 1776 he observed that the English preferred Corneille to Racine. “That,” said Voltaire, “is because the English do not know enough of the French language to feel the beauties of Racine’s style or the harmony of his versification. Corneille pleases them better because he is more striking; but Racine for the French because he has more delicacy and tenderness.”
When the Commentary was finished it numbered many volumes, and “served to marry two girls, which never before happened to a Commentary,” said the Commentator, “and never will again.”
By a peculiarly delicate thought, poor literary men received copies as gifts.
The autumn of 1761 was not dull at Ferney. Among the visitors were Abbé Coyer and Lauraguais, wit and playwright, and one of those highly unsatisfactory clever people who can do everything, and do nothing.
Besides the visitors, the autumn was marked by the progress of the quarrel with de Brosses, from whom Voltaire had bought Tourney, and with whom he was still deeply engaged in a lawsuit for “fourteen cords of firewood.”
The man who gave a home to d’Aumard, to Marie Corneille, and to Father Adam, and who pensioned his poor relations without in the least accounting it to himself for righteousness, was incredibly sharp and mean over this firewood with de Brosses, and wasted his time and his talents in the fight. The details of the quarrel are long, uninteresting, and profitless. But it must in justice be said that it shows Voltaire “at his very worst: insolent, undignified, low-minded, and untruthful.” Besides quarrelling with de Brosses, with Ancian, and Rousseau, editing Corneille, writing “Peter the Great,” revising the “Essay on the Manners and Mind of Nations,” and looking after three estates, this wonderful man also found time in 1761 for his usual gigantic correspondence, and to write two plays. The correspondence alone comprises letters to a king and cardinals, prime ministers, and actresses, savants and salonières, besides letters to old friends like Panpan and Madame de Champbonin; letters in English and Italian, and in rhyme; and letters from people he had never seen. In this July a burgomaster of Middleton had written to inquire of him if there is a God; if, supposing there be one, He troubles about man; if Matter is eternal; if it can think; and if the soul is immortal. The burgomaster added that he would like an answer by return of post. “I receive such letters every week,” Voltaire wrote to Madame du Deffand. “I have a pleasant life.”
From 1760 until 1768 he was also writing constantly to that Damilaville who was so steady a foe of l’infâme, and who took Theriot’s place as Voltaire’s Parisian correspondent. Theriot had long sunk into a good-natured parasite of any rich man who would give him a good dinner and an idle life; while Damilaville, if he was heavy and mannerless, as Grimm said, was a patient and tireless disciple; who ran all Voltaire’s errands in Paris for him; despatched to Ferney constant packets of books, manuscripts, and news; and, in brief, loved and worked for Voltaire as sincerely as he loathed, and worked against, l’infâme.
On October 20, 1761, Voltaire wrote to tell his Angels that the fever took him on Sunday and did not leave him till Saturday—which, being interpreted, meant that at sixty-seven years old he had composed in six days the tragedy of “Olympie.”
But even in a Voltaire—a Voltaire of whom Joubert justly said that “his mind was ripe twenty years sooner than other men’s and that he kept it, in all its powers, thirty years later”—such quick work could not mean his best work.
The Angels recommended revision.