After the death of Madame du Châtelet, Longchamp, Voltaire’s secretary, rescued from the flames in which many of her papers were burning, a number of letters in a very small handwriting. They were the “Treatise on Metaphysics.” Voltaire dedicated them to her in a quatrain which is as graceful in the original as it is clumsy in the translation.
He, who wrote these metaphysics
Which he gives you as your own,
Should die for them, as a traitor,
But he dies for you alone.
They were intended only for her eye. They contain the whole Voltairian creed in brief, but in every essential. They were indeed, in the opinion of that day, fit matter for the hangman, and to bring their author to the Bastille.
The title is not alluring, it must be confessed. But the matter has that witchery of style which Voltaire’s writings never missed. There is no thinking man but must some time or other have asked himself such questions on God and the soul, free-will, liberty, vice, and virtue, as Voltaire here proposes and answers. Like his hero Newton, he knows how to doubt. He passionately seeks truth and pursues that quest even when he has found the truth is not what he wishes it to be. No man ever made a more clear, logical, and honest statement of his religion, as far as it had then progressed, than Voltaire in the “Treatise on Metaphysics”: and no student of his works or character can afford to pass it by.
The “Discourses on Man” form seven epistles in easy verse: and may be said to be founded on Pope’s “Essay on Man” in much the same way as the ribald “Pucelle” was founded on the “Maid of Orleans” of the dull and respectable Chapelain. Their sentiments certainly differ widely from the comfortable optimism and orthodox theology of Mr. Pope. In this work, as in all his others, Voltaire was not so much the enemy of religion, as of a religion: and less the foe of Christianity than of that form of it called Roman Catholicism. The Epistles are upon the Nature of Pleasure, the Nature of Man, True Virtue, Liberty, the writer’s favourite subjects. They are easy reading—light, graceful, delicate, witty. In brief, they are Voltaire.
On January 27, 1736, was produced in Paris Voltaire’s Peruvian comedy “Alzire.” “My Americans” he called it usually. It was a brilliant success, and ran for twenty consecutive nights. Voltaire gave all the proceeds to the actors. He had no great opinion of it. “As for comedy, I will have nothing to do with it: I am only a tragic animal,” said he: and again, “You must be a good poet to write a good tragedy, a good comedy only requires a certain talent for versemaking.” He was right—with regard to himself at least. His comedies are all sprightly and vivacious, but not much else. Between the lines, indeed, even of “Alzire”—which the author, with a twinkle in his eye, called “a very Christian piece ... which should reconcile me with some of the devout”—may be read the most characteristic of the Voltairian opinions. But he was too true an artist to allow those opinions to override his play, and never forgot to disguise the powder in a great deal of jam. It was twice performed at Court.
He was living quietly at Cirey when it was pleasing the popular taste of Paris. One is not surprised that overtaxed Nature had her revenge at last. By February, he was thoroughly ill. Madame du Châtelet sat on the end of his bed and read aloud Cicero in Latin and Pope in English. They were not wasting their time anyhow! One of them, at least, considered it nothing short of “a degradation” to allow bodily ill-health to stop mental industry.
In March, he wrote that he was “overwhelmed by maladies and occupations.” By April, he was well enough to be plunged into a quarrel with the faithless Jore, bookseller of Rouen.
If Voltaire was a very good friend, he was also a very good enemy. A more hot-headed, energetic, pugnacious foe certainly never existed. While he hated, he hated well. He lashed his enemy with such brilliant invective, such delicate gibes, such rollicking sarcasms, that one must needs pity the poor wretch if he deserved his fate ever so fully. Did he get up and retaliate, Voltaire was at him again in a moment, dancing round him, goading him to madness with the daintiest whip flicked with mots and jests and little cunning allusions, which looked so innocent, and always caught the victim on the raw. Diatribe, gaiety, quip, mockery,—this man had all the weapons. He never used one where another would have done better. He had a dreadful instinct for finding out the weak place in his adversary’s armour and logic. “God make my enemies ridiculous!” was one of his few prayers. It was granted in full measure.
But if he was a dangerous and an untiring foe, he was not an ungenerous one. In this case, Jore was certainly the aggressor. He had played Voltaire false in the matter of the “English Letters.” He had endangered the author’s safety and condemned him to exile. He wrote now from the Bastille saying that if Voltaire would avow himself the author of the book, he, Jore, would be released. Voltaire was as quick to compassion as he was quick to anger. If he had hated a pigmy like Jore with a fierceness he should have kept for a worthier foe, the moment the man was fallen, his enemy became his friend. He wrote the letter asked of him, declaring himself to be the writer of the abominable thing. Then Jore demanded fourteen hundred francs, the cost of the confiscated edition. On April 15th Voltaire hurried up to Paris. There he saw Jore, and, though denying that he had any claim upon him, offered him half the sum he had demanded. Jore refused it: brought a lawsuit against Voltaire, and published a defamatory account of him. Voltaire’s quick passions were up in arms in a moment. He was as much agog to get at his enemy as a terrier is agog for a rat. He would have shaken the wretched little bookseller in just such a terrier fashion, if he could have got hold of him. But all Voltaire’s friends advised compromise with such insistence that he at last yielded. He spent twelve breathless indignant weeks in the capital. He had to pay Jore five hundred francs, in lieu of the fourteen hundred he had demanded. “I sign my shame,” he wrote. But he signed and paid all the same. He returned to Cirey in July sick in mind and body, baffled, bitter, and sore. In a year or two Jore professed penitence, and lived for the rest of his life on a small pension allowed him—by Voltaire.