preparing, in the face of the great court comedy, the tragedy which was to be enacted. About all this Voltaire himself has written, not indeed as a man of the time, but as a man of the world, half philosopher and half courtier; but as his mind and character developed during his career, stimulated by the enormities and incongruities with which he was surrounded, he declared battle with his age, and set to work to make it brighter and healthier, to dissipate its darkness and evaporate its miasma. Young Arouet's earliest patron was Minon de L'Enclos, that peculiarly French figure, of whom her admirers said that she united the soul of Epicurus and Cato; and his chief instructor the Abbe Delafontain, the author of the Atheistical Mosaiad, which his pupil knew by heart, we are told, when he was but three years old. The mothers of the time were accustomed to send their sons to Ninon's saloons, to have their manners formed; and Ninon, who took a fancy to young Arouet, whose fair locks she used to kiss when a child, and who left him a legacy to buy books, is stated to have declared, while listening to the wild logic of the brilliant sceptical lad, that he was destined to become the rebel angel of the eighteenth century. After leaving the college of Louis le Grand, where he was educated by the Jesuits, the young wit appears figuring among the court circle, the associate of the Prince of Conte, Duke de Vendome, Marquis de la Farre, Duke of Sully, the Abbes Chaulean and Chuteauneuf. Once looking round on the company of which he was a member, he remarked, "We are all here either princes or poets." "Puisque les titres sont coronus, je prend mon rang," he used to say. Throughout his career he exhibited the kingly consciousness of intellectual power. Once when Madame la Pompadour, remarked to him, "Les rois sont joujours les demidieux." Voltaire replied, "Madame la Marquise, c'est les poetes qui a crée les demi-dieux."

Perhaps Voltaire's genius has displayed more original power in his histories than in any other class of serious composition. His first work, Charles XII., is unique in its way, and exhibits a greater vigour and animation of style than he afterwards ob

tained. The great charm of this epic narrative, the materials of which Voltaire gathered from several of the friends of the Swedish monarch, is, that it is written in the rapid impetuous spirit with which the hero acted, and has an air of freshness and force such as might have attached to the descriptions of those who were eyewitnesses of the events it depicts. While it reads like a romance, there is no reason to question its historic truth-the latter, indeed, has been warranted by the testimony of the ex-king of Poland, Stanislaus, the companion of the modern Alexander in many of his expeditions--excepting, perhaps, the account of the death of Charles, which late researches tend to indicate as the result of a conspiracy, not an accident.

Nothing can exceed the verve, lightness, and animation of the narrative faculty displayed in this unrivalled historiette. It is a masterpiece of narrative art. Much more important, however, is "The Essay on the Spirit of Nations." Before this work, which was written for the instruction of Madame de Chastellet, appeared, modern history was com piled without judicious selection of materials, or extended views, critical or philosophical, and was, indeed, little more than a dull almanac of wars, conjurations; its horizon being limited to the acts of kings and politicians, to the battle-field and cabinet. Among such works as the dry annals of Mezeray, De Thou, Davilla, &c., whose only merit is a sombre accuracy, Duclos' Louis XI. was the one solitary exception since Tacitus, in which an attempt had been made to paint character, or analyze the cause of events with penetration.

Voltaire was the first who illuminated Europe as to the method in which history ought to be written. Instead of depicting like other writers the lives and acts of a few individuals, for whom, judging from the tenor of past history, humanity appeared to have been created, he has traced the spirit of peoples in the march from barbarism to civilization, thrown a light on their condition, painted their manners, customs, the gradual advance in civil life, their material and political progress. His general practice is to select the striking points in an age and to let facts

speak; the absurd incidents which have marked the course of humanity indeed presented a constant source of amusement to the wit of history, who exposes them to laughter in his usual way, that of lightly assuming their defence with a gay but trenchant irony. But though he cannot help amusing, his great object is to instruct; and hence he has scattered through his work an abundance of enlarged principles, and of penetrant and just reflections, which constitute, apart from the admirable spirit evinced in the selection of its matter, its chief merit. Never was so vast a subject so lucidly and strikingly condensed. With his accustomed tact, also, Voltaire, in this work, has refrained from giving offence to governments, thus to insure a larger public reception, with the object of facilitating his great object, namely, that of creating a detestation of tyranny, intolerance, fanaticism, superstition, and war. With Voltaire the commonest invention which ameliorates the condition of man, is of more importance than the most tremendous scene of human slaughter; hence the prominence he has given to those chapters in which the progress of manners, of physical and intellectual improvement are detailed.

The Essay on the Manners and Spirit of Nations" is the earliest sketch of the history of civilization. The most interesting portions of Macaulay's history are those in which he has followed Voltaire's plan; and it is by adopting his method that Buckle, with the manifold resources of a more advanced period of investigation before him, has, though we must peremptorily condemn many of his views, laid in principle the basis of the first philosophical history which England has produced. Of his other works the "History of Louis XIV." holds the highest place. Here, also, while scenes of war and politicial events are dashed off with a masterly pencil, its prevailing interest arises from the importance given to the advance made in the arts and sciences during the reign of the Grand Monarch. His "Peter the Great" evinces as usual his amusing lively narrative faculty, his animated portraiture and illustrative anecdotical method; and the same graces of style predominate in the "History of the War of 1741," in

which we have the most life-like picture of the battle of Fontenoy on record.

His general practice in writing history was to engage some laborious literateur to collect the materials of the edifice of which he purposed to become the philosophical architect. Hence several inaccuracies have slipped into "The Essay on the Spirit of Nations," though the veracity of its facts, in the main, remains. unshaken. This, however, is a defeet which attaches to most laborious, personal investigators, not excepting Macaulay. Voltaire's merit consists in having recognized the true genius of history, in having placed it on a larger basis, and in thereby making it an educational element for humanity at large.

"The Philosophy of History," which is intended to prelude "The Essay on the Spirit of Nations," bears evidence in many of its chapters of the penetrating illuminative glance which Voltaire threw over the domain of antiquity, its empires, systems, races, customs, and religions; the ironical, sceptical animus, however, with which several of the latter are regarded in this brief work, which was designed to neutralize the effect of "Bossuet's Universal History," is manifested much more strongly than in his survey of humanity since the age of Charlemagne. In the ages of barbarism-and in his view they extended well-nigh to the epoch of Louis XIV.-Voltaire's cultivated reason and dominant faculty of wit saw little more than the horrible and ludicrous; and all such passages he paints in a prominent manner, in order to warn mankind against the repetition of those crimes and absurdities which make up the bulk of ancient history. It must be confessed that this tendency of his mind, as evidenced in the famous essay, has not unfrequently led him into extravagance unworthy of the spirit of a philosophic annalist. His occasional inaccuracy and carelessness as to facts is also apparent to any one acquainted with the authorities; nay, he even seems to have invented some of the latter, to add to the agreements of his narrative. In one of the chapters, for instance, devoted to the Second Crusade, he tells us that after the return of the army from Palestine

to Constantinople, the French knights characteristically invited the ladies of that city to a ball and dance, which took place in the church of St. Sophia. On some one asking Voltaire where he found the anecdote, he replied, gaily, "found it ?-nowhere, it was a flash of imagination."

It is perhaps in his comic romances that the characteristic variety of Voltaire's genius is best evidenced; here his romantic inventions, his wit, sense, and satire come into fullest play. Passing over Zadic, L'Ingenu, Micromegas, L'Homme de Cent Ecu, Noire et Blanc, Le Princes de Babylon, Le Blanc Taureau, &c., we come to Candide, which stands at the head of this class of compositions, and indeed of all Voltaire's original works, among which its only rival is La Pucelle. Never was an absurd theory, such as that of the optimism of Leibnitz exploded in such a burst of laughter and light as in this brilliant petit œuvre, while the greatest fancy is displayed in the invention of incidents and adventures to illustrate the theme; the characters, which are artistically contrasted, are all painted with the lightest and most effective pencil. The simplicity of Candide; the astonishing adventures and sufferings through which he and Pangloss perhaps the most ludicrous satiric portrait in literature-pass unshaken in their optimist credo; the portrait of Poeocurante, the great genius whom nothing can please of the Manichean Martin, &c.-the scenes and stories the variety of subjects introduced for satiric comment-all are struck off in most brilliant colours of wit and humour. The moral of this singular exposition of moral and physical evil partakes of the character of Voltaire's wit that of indifference. In the summing up chapter, where Pangloss asks the Turkish dervish if there is not a horrible amount of the satanic element to be found in this best of possible planets, the latter replies briefly, "What matter if there be good or ill; when the Sultan sends a vessel to Egypt, does he trouble himself, think you, whether the rats in the hold are at their ease or not?" "What then are we to do?" asks Pangloss. "Be silent," said the dervish. "I flatter myself," recommenced Pangloss," that I am able to reason a little on causes and effects,

VOL. LXI.-NO. CCCLXI.

on the best of possible worlds, the origin of evil, the nature of the soul, and the pre-established harmony!" At these words the dervish shut the door in their faces.

Of this masterpiece of Voltaire's peculiar and inimitable style Lord Brougham has truly remarked that short as it is, its perusal never tires. It is the surpassing charm of stimulating variety, and the lightness and delicacy of its style which renders it more attractive than Gulliver, despite the superior profundity of Swift's satirical masterpiece. The chapter in which Voltaire has ridiculed Frederick II.'s method of recruiting his army, elicited from the pen of that monarch, the following sarcastic retort on Candide :

"Candide est un petet vaurien,

Qui n' a ni pudeur ni cervelle;
Ah! comme an le reconnait bien

Pour le cadet de la Pucelle."

Though in the present age the latter has met with the fate which Voltaire said attached to works of a very different character, namely, sacred poetry, "sacred indeed they are, for no one touches them," it cannot be denied that, for sustained and various power, La Pucelle remains the first of mock heroic poems. Compared with it, Tassoni's Rapita Secchia, and Boileau's Lutrin, are but dull parodies; and the only poem of the class which equals it is the "Rape of the Lock;" this poem, however, though perfect, is but a bluette contrasted with the twenty-one brilliant cantos of verse in which Voltaire has displayed an inventive talent so various in its adventures, its allegoric pictures, in the luxuriant fancy expended on its brilliant descriptive passages, in its vigorous strokes of satire and pleasantry, to which add the animated and facile verse in which it is evolved. Allowing its merits, however, as a spontaneous emanation of brilliant talents, it is impossible to reprobate too strongly the character of many of its delineations or its general tone. Condorcet's defence of La Pucelle to the effect that it was merely composed for a few friends and princes, and that its author's object was to render superstition ridiculous among the voluptuous, is a sorry excuse, which gains little support from the remark quoted from Voltaire himself, on Fon

7

taine as regards the counteracting and harmless result produced by mingling humour with licentious depiction. Had Voltaire written his famous comic romance and mock heroic poem with a chaster pen, they would perhaps have been less popular in the France of Louis XV., when the Parc au Cerfs was an institution, and mistresses dominated the government; but in seeking popularity by adapting his genius to a corrupt state of society, he has lost that of all the future ages. Such in a progressive world and social state is the penalty which the greatest writers must pay for mingling license with the brightest intellectual products of satire, truth, beauty even; thus they lose half their fame, and wholly tarnish their immortality. To put divine imagination to such an use is as though some power should constrain an angel to portrait vice in the attractive colours which the conscience of art should lavish on virtue alone.

Voltaire's residence in England produced several important results on his career as a writer, as a dramatist, poet, and philosopher. While there he lived in the most cultivated society of the day, that of the wits, poets, and philosophic freethinkers of Pope, Bolingbroke, Tolland, &c., and made an effective study of its literature and science, the earliest result of which was his Letters on the English Nation, a work in which he first introduced the intellect of England-the systems of Bacon, Lock, and Newton-to the notice of the French people. While intended to amuse and instruct, the ideas and general tone of many of those compositions, are as noble as their purpose. It is that of an avatar of light acquainting one people with the intellectual triumphs of the other; and though his sceptical spirit is occasionally evidenced in his remarks on particular sects, he everywhere evinces the highest admiration for the free institutions of the country.

As an instance of his lively style, take the commencement of the chapter, in which he contrasts the France of Descartes with the contemporary England of Newton :-"A Frenchman," he says, "who arrives in London, will find all things greatly changed here. In the France he has left the world is considered as a plenum, here he finds it a vacuum.

At Paris the universe is composed of vortices, of which the people see nothing in London. In France it is the pressure of the waves which causes the tides; in England the sea gravitates toward the moon; in France the sun exerts no influence whatever on the ebb and flow of the ocean; here it performs a quarter of the work. According to the Cartesian, everything is performed by impulsion, of which we can form no definite conception; according to Newton it is attraction, the cause of which we are equally ignorant, which regulates the motion of the spheres. In Paris the earth is shaped like a melon; here, instead of its figure being oblique, it is flattened and oblate; and while the one believes that light exists in the air, the other demonstrates that it comes to us from the sun in six minutes and a half. Finally, while the chemistry of France is wholly performed by alkalies, acids, and subtle matter, in Great Britain it is attraction only which causes chemical phenomena," &c. &c. In the chapter on the English Nation he euologises the free spirit of that people; and contrasting the empire with that of ancient Rome, points out that while the civil wars of the latter ended in slavery, those of the English terminated in liberty.

The acquaintance which Voltaire gained of the works of Shakspeare during his life in England, produced as marked an effect on his dramatic, as his study of English philosophy, science, and government on his philosophic and political career. Everywhere in his letters, literary miscellanies, and dramatic commentaries, he regards Shakspeare as a surpassing genius; but, in virtue of the only code of criticism with which Europe was then acquainted, that of Boileau --one, of course, of a barbaric order. The proof, however, that he felt an admiration greater than he expressed, is to be found in the fact, that in several of his dramas he has endeavoured to imitate Shakspeare; and, indeed, apart from the leading political and humanitarian principles and spirit which he manifested in his best tragedies, whatever original conceptive vigour they possess, must be exclusively attributed to the imitative spirit referred to.

It was the influence of Shakspeare that attracted his genius from the