Very different, indeed, was the opinion entertained by the great supporter of absolute monarchy and of the Roman Catholic Church. “Paris,” wrote Count Joseph de Maistre, “crowned him; Sodom would have banished him.... How am I to picture to you what he makes me[{274}] feel? When I think of what he might have done and what he did, his inimitable talents inspire me with a sort of holy rage for which there is no name. Midway between admiration and horror, I sometimes wish to see a statue erected to him—by the hand of the executioner.”
It must be remembered, however, that in Voltaire’s time there was no such thing in France as either political or religious liberty, and that he took the part of the persecuted whenever he had an opportunity of doing so. “His life,” says M. Arsène Houssaye, “is a comedy in five acts, in which, through French genius, shines human reason. The first act takes place in Paris, among distinguished noblemen and popular actresses; beginning with the entertainments of the Prince de Conti and ending with the death of Adrienne Lecouvreur, whose hurried secret burial by torch-light inspired Voltaire with so much indignation. This was the period of the Bastille and of banishment. The second act takes place at the castle of Cirey and at the court of King Stanislas; this second act might be called the love of science and the science of love. The third act takes place at the court of Frederick II., at Berlin, Potsdam, and Sans-Souci. The fourth act is that of Ferney, where he builds a church (with ‘Deo erexit Voltaire’ inscribed over the portal), gives a dowry to Corneille’s niece, defends the family of the persecuted Calas, pleads for Admiral Byng, for Montbailly, for La Barre, for all who are in need of an advocate. The fifth act takes place at Paris, like the first; but the man who at the beginning of the drama was a prisoner and a proscript has come back as a conqueror. All Paris rises to salute him. The Academy believes that Homer, Socrates, and Aristophanes are to be found again in Voltaire; the Théâtre Français crowns him with immortal laurels. But the poet has reached the last point of greatness; Paris smothers in its embraces this ruler of opinions, who with his last breath proclaims the rights of man.”
Born in 1694, this powerful writer was so weak as a child that it was not thought safe to baptise him until he was nine months old. His father was treasurer in the Exchequer Chamber, and he had for godfather the Abbé de Château-Neuf, one of those sceptical abbés who help to give a character of its own to the eighteenth century. As a youth he was in the good graces of Ninon de L’Enclos, the celebrated beauty, who, living to a prodigious age, is said to have preserved her charms to the last. She recognised Voltaire’s precocious talents as he, on his side, was delighted by her personal fascinations. She left him by will 2,000 francs for the purchase of books. The Abbé de Château-Neuf introduced him meanwhile into the most brilliant society of Paris. This did not suit the views of his father, who wished his son to enter the magistracy. He accordingly separated him from the Abbé de Château-Neuf to attach him as page to the Marquis of the same name, who took the young Voltaire or Arouet, to call him by his proper name, in his suite to Holland. Returning to Paris, the youthful Arouet began to write, when he adopted, for literary purposes, the name of Voltaire, which will be recognised as an anagram of Arouet l. j. (le jeune). According to most historians the name of Voltaire was borrowed by the youthful Arouet from an estate belonging to his mother; but there seems to be no authority for this supposition, and the anagrammatic or quasi-anagrammatic explanation is probably the true one.
Voltaire had not long exercised his pen when he was thrown into the Bastille as the author of a satire which he had not written. Here he sketched out the plan of his “Henriade” and of his “Siècle de Louis XIV.,” both suggested to him, it is said, by the Marquis de Château-Neuf. The true author of the satire having been discovered, Voltaire was set at liberty, and, according to the custom of the time, received a money indemnity from the Regent, whom he thanked for providing him with food, while expressing a hope that he would not in future furnish him with a lodging. Besides making notes for his historical work and for his epic poem, Voltaire had written in the Bastille a tragedy on the subject of Œdipus, which in 1718, when the author had just attained his twenty-fourth year, was produced at the Théâtre Français with a success which no other tragedy had obtained since the days of Corneille and Racine.
Voltaire’s literary life in Paris was cut short by a painful incident. In an animated discussion he had taken the liberty of contradicting the Chevalier de Rohan, who was cowardly enough to lay a trap for his antagonist; and getting him to leave the room, subjected him to violent maltreatment at the hands of his servants. Voltaire challenged the Chevalier, who, however, not only refused him satisfaction, but had him shut up in the Bastille for six months and then banished from France. Taking refuge in England, he studied the language, literature, and especially the philosophy of the country. After a residence of three years he was able to make known to his[{275}] countrymen, through a volume entitled “Lettres sur les Anglais,” the philosophy of Bolingbroke and of Locke, the scientific theories of Newton, the poetry of Shakespeare, and the prose of Addison. It was during his residence in England that he wrote the tragedies of Brutus, The Death of Cæsar, Zaïre, &c., which, however un-Shakespearian, were evidently the outcome of a study of Shakespeare’s plays. Voltaire’s position in regard to Shakespeare has been somewhat misunderstood. He did not fully appreciate Shakespeare, he even undervalued the great dramatist. But he saw that genius was in him; which is more than can be said of some of our own writers of the eighteenth century, not excluding Addison, who, in The Spectator, points to “Shakespeare and Lee” for examples of the “false sublime.”
During his stay in England Voltaire mixed freely in literary society, and made the acquaintance of some of our best writers. Johnson, it will be remembered, thinking only of his irreligion, would not shake hands with him; though afterwards, when he heard that Voltaire had praised his “Rasselas,” he said that there was “some good in the dog, after all.” When Voltaire was introduced to Congreve, the brilliant dramatist explained that he wished to be looked upon, not as a writer of comedies, but as an English gentleman; to which Voltaire replied that if the latter had been his only character, he should never have taken the trouble to seek his acquaintance. Voltaire for long enjoyed the credit of having acquired sufficient knowledge of the English language to be able to express himself gracefully and correctly in English verse, but it has been conclusively proved that the productions were corrected and revised by an English friend.
Returning to Paris, he lived there tranquilly for some time; but on the death of Adrienne Lecouvreur, to whom he was much attached, and to whose remains Christian burial had been refused, he wrote some indignant verses, which, after they had been put in circulation, filled him with alarm as to the notice that would probably be taken of them by the authorities. He now escaped to Rouen, where he printed his “History of Charles X.” and “Philosophical Letters.” The latter work was burned by the hangman, a fate reserved for more than one of Voltaire’s subsequent works. His ingenious remark has elsewhere been cited, to the effect that the public executioner, were he presented with a copy of every book he had to burn, would soon possess one of the finest libraries in France. Another production of his, the “Epistle to Urania,” which expressed theological views of a most unorthodox kind, was soon to get him into fresh trouble, though by a well-known artifice of those tyrannical days he disavowed the work. He thought it prudent, all the same, to keep out of the way for a time, and he now accepted the hospitality offered to him by Mme. du Châtelet at Cirey. He here gave himself up for a time, in common with his hostess, to mathematical and scientific studies. He published one after the other, with astonishing rapidity, “Newtonian Elements,” “Mahomet,” Mérope, “The Discourse on Man,” and other works, besides going on with his “Century of Louis XIV.” and his essay on morals.
Voltaire’s reputation was now European; and the Prince Royal of Prussia, afterwards Frederick the Great, one of his most fervent admirers, wrote to him begging him to undertake the publication of his “Anti-Machiavel,” though as Miçkievicz the Polish poet says in reference to this work, it was Machiavellism itself that Frederick II. both practised and professed. In the midst of his success, Voltaire, as irritable as he was kind-hearted, suffered much from the attacks of pamphleteers, whose favourite accusation was that, writing on many different subjects, he was not master of one. To these attacks he replied in the most impetuous style, though he would have done better to preserve the silence of profound disdain. Voltaire, however, reminds one, in this respect, of that horseman who, riding through a forest, was so exasperated by the chirping of myriads of grasshoppers, that he leaped at last from his saddle, and, drawing his sword, set about the vain task of exterminating the offensive insects, although nightfall was at hand and they would shortly have grown silent of their own accord. The pamphleteer and poetaster, Jean Fréron, was a favourite object of Voltaire’s detestation; he it was for whom Voltaire took the trouble to make an adaptation of a quatrain originally belonging to the Greek Anthology. Here are Voltaire’s lines—
“Un jour loin du sacré vallon
Un serpent mordit Jean Fréron:
Songez ce qui en arriva:
Ce fut le serpent qui creva.”
It was surety these lines which inspired Goldsmith with the idea of his “Elegy on a mad dog.”