Voltaire’s first literary conceptions were formed in the Bastile, that infamous representative of despotic caprice, to which some verses of which he was the reputed author, satirising the licentious extravagance of the Court of the late king, Louis XIV., had consigned him at the age of twenty. Soon afterwards appeared the tragedy of Ædipe (founded upon the well-known dramas of Sophocles), the first modern drama in which the universal and traditional love scenes were discarded. This contempt for the conventionalities, however, excited the indignation of the play-goers, and the Ædipe was, at its first representation, hissed off the stage. The author found himself forced to sacrifice to the popular tastes, and his tragedy was received with applause. Two memorable verses indicated the bias of the future antagonist of ecclesiastical orthodoxy, and naturally provoked the hostility of the profession which he had dared so openly to assail:—
“Nos prêtres ne sont pas ce qu’un vain peuple pense:
Notre credulité fait toute leur science.”
It was during this imprisonment, too, that he formed the first idea of the Henriade (or The League, as it was originally called), the only epic poem worthy of the name in the French language. A chance quarrel with an insolent courtier was the cause of Voltaire’s second incarceration in the Bastile with, at the end of six months, a peremptory order to absent himself from the capital. These experiences of despotic caprice and of sophisticated society he long afterwards embodied in two of his best romances, L’Ingénu and Micro-mégas (the “Little-Big Man”), one of the most exquisite productions of Satire.
The youthful victim of these malicious persecutions determined upon seeking refuge in England, whose freer air had already inspired Newton, Locke, Shaftesbury, and other eminent leaders of Thought. A flattering welcome awaited him—and subscriptions to the Henriade, better received here than in France, gratified his pride and filled his purse. During his sojourn of three years in this country, he made the most of his time in studying its best literature, and cultivating the acquaintance of its most eminent living writers. His tragedy of Brutus was followed by La Mort de César which, from its taint of liberalism, was not allowed to be printed in France. Upon his return to Paris he published his Zaïre—finished in eighteen days—the first tragedy in which, deserting the footsteps of Corneille and Racine, he ventured to follow the bent of his own genius. The plan of Zaïre has been pronounced to be one of the most perfect ever contrived for the stage.
More important, by its influence upon contemporary thought, was his famous Letters on the English—a work designed to inform his countrymen generally of the literature, thought, and political and theological parties of the rival nation, and, more especially, of the discoveries of Newton and Locke. Descartes, at this moment supreme in France, had succeeded to the vacant throne of the so-called Aristotelian Schoolmen. His system, a great advance upon the old, broached some errors in physics, amongst others the theory of “Vortices” to explain the planetary movements. A much more pernicious and reprehensible error was his absurd denial of conscious feeling and intelligence to the lower races, which was admirably exposed by Voltaire in his Elémens de Newton and elsewhere. In England, Newton’s extraordinary discoveries had already made Descartes obsolete, as far as the savans were concerned at least, but the French scientific world still clung, for the most part, to the Cartesian principles. As for Locke, he had overturned the orthodox creed of “innate ideas,” supplying instead sensation and reflection. This advocacy of the new philosophy, added to the success of his tragedies for the theatre,
“Drew [says Voltaire in his Mémoires] a whole library of pamphlets down upon me, in which they proved I was a bad poet, an atheist, and the son of a peasant. A history of my life was printed in which this genealogy was inserted. An industrious German took care to collect all the tales of that kind which had been crammed into the libel, they had published against me. They imputed adventures to me with persons I never knew, and with others who never existed. I have found while writing this a letter from the Maréchal de Richelieu which informed me of an impudent lampoon where it was proved his wife had given me an elegant couch, with something else, at a time when he had no wife. At first I took some pleasure in making collections of these calumnies, but they multiplied to such a degree I was obliged to leave off. Such are the fruits I gathered from my labours. I, however, easily consoled myself, sometimes in my retreat at Cirey, and at other times in mixing with the best society.”
Amongst other subjects the Lettres (a masterpiece of criticism and sort of essays, since often imitated but seldom or never, perhaps, equalled in their kind) contains an admirable essay upon the Quakers, to whom he did justice. He introduces one of them in conversation with him, thus apologising for his eccentricities:
“Confess that thou hast had some trouble to prevent thyself from laughing when I answered all thy civilities with my hat upon my head and with thouing and thee-ing thee (en te tutoyant). Yet thou seemest to me too well informed to be ignorant that, in the time of Christ, no nation fell into the ridiculousness of substituting the plural for the singular. They used to say to Cæsar-Augustus: ‘I love thee,’ ‘I pray thee,’ ‘I thank thee.’ He would not allow himself to be called ‘Monsieur’ (dominus). It was only a long time after him that men thought of causing themselves to be addressed as you in place of thou, as though they were double, and of usurping impertinent titles of grandeur, of eminence, of holiness, of divinity even, which earthworms give to other earthworms, while assuring them with a profound respect (and with an infamous falseness), they are their very humble and very obedient servants. It is in order to be upon our guard against this unworthy commerce of lies and of flatteries that we ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ equally kings and kitchen-maids: that we give the ordinary compliments to no one, having for men only charity, and reserving our respect for the laws. We wear a dress a little different from other men, in order that it may be for us a continual warning not to resemble them. Others wear marks of their dignities, we those of Christian humility. We never use oaths, not even in law courts: we think that the name of the Most High ought not to be pronounced in the miserable debates of men. When we are forced to appear before the magistrates on others’ business (for we never have law suits ourselves), we affirm the truth by a ‘yes’ or a ‘no,’ and the judges believe us upon our simple word, while so many other Christians perjure themselves upon the Gospel. We never go to war. It is not that we fear death, but it is because we are neither tigers, nor wolves, nor dogs, but men, but Christians. Our God, who has told us to love our enemies and to suffer without a murmur, doubtless would not have us cross the sea to go and cut the throats of our brothers, because assassins, clothed in red and in hats of two feet high, enrol citizens to the accompaniment of a noise produced by two little sticks upon the dried skin of an ass. And when, after battles won, all London is brilliant with illuminations, when the sky is in flames with musket shots, when the air re-echoes with sounds of thanksgiving, with bells, with organs, with cannons, we groan in silence over the murders which cause the public light-heartedness.” (Lettre II.)