ing the many animadversions which have j gle branch of his pursuits he has been, attended his hero's name. even in his own country, surpassed; yet no individual of all his rivals holds anything like such a position in the world and the age. Few people read his works nowadays, but still fewer ignore his reputation. The mass of volumes which compose his Voltairism may stand for the name of the Renaissance of the eighteenth century, for that name takes in all the serious haltings and shortcomings of this strange movement, as well as its terrible fire, swiftness, sincerity, and strength. The rays from Voltaire's burning and far shin-pedestal are overrun with moss and closed ing spirit no sooner struck upon the genius of with the ivies and clinging tendrils of the the time, seated dark and dead like the black past, but the figure above them, with all its stone of Memnon's statue, than the clang of the defects and meannesses - heaven knows, breaking chord was heard through Europe, and as poor a figure of a man as ever was men awoke in new day and more spacious air. mounted on that eminence - holds its The sentimentalist has proclaimed him a mere place still, though the general mind does mocker. To the critics of the schools ever ready not quite know why. with compendious label, he is the revolutionary destructive. To each alike of the countless orthodox sects, his name is the symbol for the prevailing of the gates of hell. Erudition figures him as shallow and a trifler: culture condemns him for pushing his hatred of spiritual falsehood much too seriously: Christian charity feels constrained to unmask a demon from the depths of the pit. The plain men of the earth, who are apt to measure the merits of a philosopher by the strength of his sympathy with existing sources of comfort, would generally approve the saying of Dr. Johnson, that he would sooner sign a sentence for Rousseau's transportation than that of any felon who had gone from the Old Bailey for many years, and that the them with latent turns for humour, must now and then have stirred a kind of reacting sympathy. The rank vocabulary of malice and hate, noisome fringe of the history of opinion, has received many of its most fulminant terms from critics of Voltaire, along with some from Voltaire himself, who unwisely did not refuse to follow an adversary's bad example. for some reason or other, which none of François Marie Arouet, calling himself, his biographers seem quite able to make out, Voltaire, was born in February 1694,in Paris. His father was well off, and of respectable condition, holding an employment in the public service; and he was educated, as a child in his circumstances brought up by parents who meant him to rise in the world naturally would be, at a college taught by the Jesuits. Even at this early age the child must have shown a a freedom from national prejudices and spiritual necessities greater than ordinary, for one of the reverend fathers prophesied of him that he would yet be the Coryphée du Deisme in France. He was launched into the world at an early age, and under the most "heureuses circonstances," as his difference between him and Voltaire was 80 slight that it would be difficult to settle the proportions of iniquity between them.' Those of all schools and professious who have the temperament which mistakes strong expressions for strong judgment, and violent phrase for ground-biographer, Condorcet, assures us, under ed conviction, have been stimulated by antipa- the special patronage of several of those churchthy against Voltaire to a degree that, in any of brilliant and delightful abbés men whose only ecclesiastical habit was their soutane, and who did not pretend to the smallest shred either of faith or morals who abound in all the memoirs of the period. One of the protectors of his youth was the famous Ninon, who left him a legacy to buy books, and approved greatly of the lad. With such instructors his mind developed rapidly. The tide had turned, by that time, of the Grand Monarque's splendour and popularity. That false but gorgeous culmination of success and magnificence was over, and the terrible chaos which followed began to rise darkly — not yet apparent — with all its tragic disorders yet undeveloped, the dim beginnings of something new preparing for the death "Yet Voltaire was the very eye of modern illumination." Thus applauded on one side and assailed on the other, worshipped, abused, flattered, and menaced, with an extravagance and intensity of feeling unknown to common men, the character of Voltaire can be no ordinary one. He was a poet, a historian, a philosopher, and a critic. In every sin struggle with the old world, which no grave, upon the scoffer who defied him. one as yet foresaw.. The Court was under The two opposite sides acted upon each the sway of Madan e de Maintenon, and other as they always do. Lawless wit had become fictitiously good and religious and mockery on one hand, produced as it had once been fictitiously joyous and what could they else?-fierce, hysterical, popular; and Paris and its society, which and often foolish zeal on the other. The was not growing old like Louis, went, as wicked world had so much the best of it was not unnatural, into violent opposition, in every way, to all appearance, that it is and "out of disgust for the severities of hard to blame a depressed and languid Versailles, carried freedom and pleasure Church, partaking but too much of the to the extent of licence." Nothing could spiritual deadness of the time, for having be more gay, more brilliant, more attrac- had recourse God, or perhaps rather the tive than that cleverest and wickedest cli- devils, knew how to those wild outmax of good company; and young Vol- bursts of miracle which it is so impossible taire, whose petites epigrammes seem to to understand, and which, while powerless date back to a very early period in his ex- and meaningless for any good, give the adistence, was the true child of his time, at versary always a double occasion to blasonce its best representative and its crown-pheme. The only alternative known by ing production. That was not the age of Voltaire to his own giddy, merry, agreerevolution. Nearly a century had to come able, and unprincipled society was this and go ere the grim practical seriousness austere, disagreeable, pleasure-condemnof the national soul, driven frantic by mis-ing, miracle-producing Church. It was unery, had to take up the coarser work, and derstood that this gloomy apparition was make all the persiflage and all the witti-seated at the portals which led out of life, cisms into a tremendous reality, at which and that in mockery or in terror it was the gayest society ceased to laugh. In the well to conciliate and make terms with mean time petites epigrammes were what her, as soon as these portals were apthe world lived for, and other things proached; but up to that disagreeable equally petites. It was the age of petites moment, which no one cared to look formaisons, petits soupers, and many more ward to, Superstition, which was her name, charming indulgences-opposed to all of was the fairest and the foremost object which stood a black-cowled frowning for all the gibes and pleasantries of an Church, of which in their secret souls most audacious society - the cause of inextinpeople were a little afraid, which set its guishable laughter, when not of indignaface against everything opinions, epi- tion. Except this visible and not pleasant grams, pleasant little vices, all that Paris embodiment of the Church, he and his held most dear. The Church was not, contemporaries seem to have had no idea let us allow, attractive at that period. of anything representing a higher life than It was one of her dark days, when the their own. This is their distinguishing flesh had gained upon her largely, and peculiarity among the ages. Other genwhen her faithful regiments who stood erations have disputed and opposed as firm had grown morose, and even cruel, hotly and more effectually the sway of at sight of the temptations around, which Rome - have stigmatized and abused, and other people yielded to, which they had even satirized and laughed at her; but themselves the virtue to resist, but not these generations were always more or the virtue to hate. Half-a-dozen gay abbés, less officered and inspired by men with a leading lives a trifle wickeder and more creed which they believed to be more pure, luxurious than those of their lay compan- and a higher ideal of life than that which ions, naturally produced at least one they assailed. The age of Voltaire was gloomy priest, who being but a man of his embarrassed with no such idealism. If the time like them, was exasperated and acer- Church was never less attractive than in bated by his own goodness, and only too that unhappy age, the world was never glad, when he had the chance, to shut the more distinct. It did not even profess gates, not of heaven only, but even of the that code of primitive morality, natural right and wrong, which modern unbeliev- | perfectly harmonious. On one hand, hellers often embellish by lives which are al- fire and all its flames, and, if occasion of most saintly; no such ideas existed in the fered, legal fire of a still more undesirable lively brain of the eighteenth century. Mr. Morley, who belongs to the nineteenth candidly, and without any difficulty, allows this. For instance, the most fundamental of all natural virtues, that upon which society is built, and the value of which, on its lowest ground, even savage nations have an appreciation of, was not only ignored, but ridiculed by the age. Personal purity was a weakness, a folly, almost a vice in its eyes, and chiefly for the reason that it had been partially deified by the Church. On this subject Mr. Morley speaks as follows: kind, fagots in the market-place, and other such indisputable arguments; and on the other a pleasant, partially-legalized, frankly-acknowledged vileness on principle, for which, perhaps, the fagots were the only reasonable medicine. Little reason enough there was between them, heaven knows miserable fleshly vengeance on the one hand, miserable fleshly wantonness made into a creed on the other. Such were the two forces which Voltaire saw partaking the world between them when he burst into it, in all the glory and ardour of that youth of genius which is the most heavenly or the most devilish of all powers under the sun. "The peculiarity of the licence of France in the middle of the eighteenth century is, that it We cannot follow his youthful career in was looked upon with complacency by the great detail; twice over he managed to get himintellectual leaders of opinion. It took its place self into the Bastille in that period when in the progressive formula. What austerity was to other forward movements, licence was to this, lettres de cachets rained from the official It is not difficult to perceive how so extraordinary skies of France. The first time, his offence a circumstance came to pass. Chastity was the or supposed offence was political. It was supreme virtue in the eyes of the Church, the immediately after the death of Louis XIV., mystic key to the Christian holiness. Conti- when, amid a shower of other satires and nence was one of the most sacred of the preten- execrations, there was published a very sions by which the organized preachers of super-clever and indeed powerful set of verses stition claimed the reverence of men and women entitled "Les j'ai vu." These are printed It was identified, therefore, in a particular man-in some editions of his works, as ner with that Infamous against which the main bués faussement" to Voltaire, but this deassault of the times was directed. So men con- nial is very vague, and they are sufficiently tended, more or less expressly-first, that continence was no commanding chief among vir- striking to warrant the idea that they were tues; then that it was a very superficial and his. After a melancholy record of all the easily practised virtue; finally, that it was no wrongs which "j'ai vu," the verses termivirtue at all, but, if sometimes a convenience, nate as follow:generally an impediment to free human happi "J'ai vu un hypocrite honoré, 66 attri J'ai vu, c'est tout dire, un jesuite adoré, We have no desire to misrepresent either the age or the hero. This is Mr. Morley's statement of the question. That which is of all other restrictions the one most vitally important to society, was thus "He was a little more than twenty-two," abolished by society itself, because it was says Condorcet," and the police looked held in special esteem by "Superstition." upon that conformity of age as a sufficient It is therefore evident that this age did proof to deprive him of his liberty." His not dream of opposing to "Superstition second imprisonment was occasioned by a any purer idealism, but that its law of na- little incident still more characteristic of ture was the simple law of the animal the period. The young homme d'esprit, who world, and that it was content to place its was nobody, made a saucy answer to no rebellion on the lowest and most distinct less a personage than a Rohan at some one ground: no complications, no nuances, were of the convivial meetings which he has in this straightforward profession of faith; described with gay vanity as made up of and to do the men justice, they lived up to princes and poets. The Rohan, too splentheir creed. did to descend to personal means of punThis, however, makes a broad distinc-ishment, had the daring young plebeian tion between the unbelief of Voltaire's cudgelled by his lackeys at the very door age and those kinds of unbelief with which of the house of the Duc de Sulli where the we are more familiar. The two sides were bon-mot had been said. Young Voltaire perfectly distinct, and at the same time" would have taken means," says Condor cet, cautiously," to avenge his outraged cannot help doubting whether the sharphonour - means authorized by the man-sighted Frenchman could have felt much ners of modern nations, but condemned by envy for these seeming splendid appointtheir laws;" in other words, Mr. Morley ments. He himself executed important tells us, he tried to induce his princely insulter to fight him. But that would have been too great an honour for a poet, and the Rohan sent him to the Bastille instead. This, which would have disgusted many a man with fine society, and which no doubt was one instance of the many insulting indignities which at last drove France mad, and gave her some kind of wild excuse for the awful retribution she exacted, had no such imbittering effect upon Voltaire. He grinned and bore it, no doubt, with literal exactitude; and on his liberation from prison in six months found himself banished from Paris, and made the best of his fate by going to England, which, so far as his personal success went, was undoubtedly by much the best thing that could have befallen him. missions in after-times, but he had the wisdom not often belonging to his race to make himself independent, and to trust his provision to no one-a circumstance which, in all countries, smooths matters immensely for the man of literature. But there has never perhaps been a time when the English republic of letters so much resembled the French in its tone, and laws, and manners. Unique among the ages, that period of literature submitted itself, as none in England had done before or has done since, to those rules of correct art which have always reigned on the other side of the Channel. Whatever new principles Voltaire drew from it, its love for the unities, its terror for the barbarisms of genius, its ideas of grace and melody in style, were like his own. And so to a There is, however, one little incident of great extent was its moral attitude, — an this preface of his life which, though tri- attitude almost equally profane, but not fling enough, is worth quoting. During his polemically immoral. for the simple reason first imprisonment he finished and pre- that "Superstition"-i.e., the Church pared for the stage "Edipus," his first did not possess the same power in England tragedy. At one of its earliest repetitions as in France, and could not enforce the an intruder suddenly appeared upon the same penalties. It was a thing which stage, holding up the train of the high could be good-humouredly ignored, laughpriest, and mimicking his high-tragic step ed at, or patronized with contemptuous and bearing. The Maréchale de Villars, complaisance, without any breach of recogwho was present, asked who was the young nized good manners or public scandal. man who evidently was trying to ruin the This curious and delightful freedom from piece? She was told it was the author! all obtrusive claims must have struck him This curious piece of juvenile cynicism and at once, as every difference which lies on mockery even of himself, procured for him the surface strikes a stranger; and the the acquaintance of the lady, for whom he careless Protestant ease of men never reimmediately conceived a profound and un- quired to doff a hat before a passing cross, requited passion- the first and most seri- or bend a knee to any sacramentary proous of his life. Perhaps there was a cer- cession, no doubt impressed him with a tain poetic justice in this result of his sense of absolute freedom from all the étourderie: it made him lose a great deal troublesome circumstances of religion. of time which he afterwards mourned over, And then, of course, the England of his but no doubt, which would be a consola- experience was the class which received tion, extended his connection still further him, as it is to all strangers. The real with the society he loved. heart of the country, which has always been kept sound by unostentatious piety and reverential feeling, was as much out of his reach as Kamschatka; but be knew the wits, who never before or since have had things so much their own way on the gay surface of society, and he found himself no doubt in a sort of Paradise in that free-speaking and free-thinking world. ary men. The time of Voltaire's visit to England was one specially favourable for him. Mr. Morley mentions as a surprise and novelty to the visitor, the high place which he found to be occupied in England by liter"The poet," he says "who had been thrown into prison for resenting a whipping from a nobleman's lackeys, found himself in a country where Newton and Voltaire's scepticism, up to this time, as Locke were rewarded with lucrative places Mr. Morley points out, had been but an inin the administration of the country, where stinctive opposition to the Church, its severPrior and Gay acted in important embas-ities and pretensions. But he now discovsies, and where Addison was a secretary ered with delight that philosophy had gone of state." This sounds very fine, but we a great deal further, and that there was 66 scarcely any limit to the length which his taire. Both of them lived long lives, were friends permitted themselves to go. He fully recompensed in this world for all they found these friends pervaded by a deism had done and intended to do, reaped their founded on the philosophy of Shaftes- harvests, finished their work, and really do bury, expounded by Bolingbroke, and em- not seem to have had in their lives, or to bellished by the poetry of Pope." He have left behind them, any wrong unremade acquaintance with the two greater dressed, any advantage unsecured, which shadows of Newton and Locke, which, would make another world necessary. without any will of theirs, dominated, or Perhaps the inquiry would be an audaseemed to dominate, that clever chaos: cious one, but, could we follow it out, and and without in the least entering into the discover in the career of other men of corhigher spirit of these great names, he took responding character the same wonderful up so much of their teaching as was con- completeness and finish of the mortal cycle, genial to him. He learnt that imagination there might be ground; for building a very must be banished from reasoning by the curious theory upon the subject. The insevere laws of induction; that no theory stances, however, are too few to make this must be accepted without being proved; easily practicable. Voltaire was one of and that the understanding can know noth- those singular beings. Without meaning ing that is not communicated to it by the the slightest disrespect, or desiring to use senses. Upon these precious intellectual anything but the most impartial scientific tools he pounced with all the avidity of his language, we know no better way of denature. No doubt it was something like a scribing him than to say that he was a man new gospel which they revealed to him. without a soul. He had no spiritual neFor it must be remembered that this young cessities of his own, and he regarded those genius, the last flower of a most corrupt of others with simple curiosity and wonsociety, trained in what we have ventured der, if not with indignation and contempt. to call polemical immorality, was one of The strange weakness of many human those curious exceptional men born now creatures in this respect their craving and then into the world, without any ap- for unseen fortification, consolation, and parent trace in him of that portion of counsel their attempt to establish relahuman nature commonly called soul. Vo!- tions with the unknown -was to him what taire had an excess of intellect. He had the raptures of a party of musical amateurs something which served him very well for are to a man without an ear. He listens a heart, and which was capable of some to their discussions with surprised and honest and real emotions he had feeling half-curious derision. What do the blockand unquestionable benevolence; but he heads mean? Are these ecstacies put on does not seem to have had any spiritual for a purpose, mere affectations of enthunecessities, or even consciousness that spir- siasm; or are they so besotted as really to itual necessities could be. Mr. Morley com- imagine that they have found beauty and ments upon the weakness of that "form of meaning in the succession of noises which Christian profession which now fascinates convey no sense whatever to him? This many fine and subtle minds," which is example is not at all an uncommon one; founded upon the belief, or rather "assump- and those who have either felt the diffition, that there are certain inborn cravings culty in their own persons, or been made in the human heart, constant, profound, the confidant of others, will know how beand inextinguishable," of which Christian-wildering to all the faculties is this absence ity is the fullest satisfaction. With this of one. Voltaire was in this position in re"graceful development of belief," Voltaire, spect to religion. Many incidents in his he says, had no acquaintance; and he imag-life dispose us to believe that he looked ines how his hero" would have sought the upon it as mere acting; a farce in which, grounds for calling those aspirations universal." On this point we entirely agree with Mr. Morley. We believe that such aspirations are not universal, and that a learned and exhaustive study of the examples of humanity of whom it can be clearly proved that they do not possess anything of the kind, would be one of the most interesting of historical investigations. Voltaire was one of these men; so was Hume, who lived and influenced the same age, and was a very different character from Vol when needful, he was quite ready to play his part, as other men played theirs, in obedience to some grotesque and incomprehensible prejudice. But he was absolutely destitute of the faculty for understanding what the word really meant, and what the great mass of men in all ages have understood by it. When we say this, we feel that we are defending and not assailing his character; his infidelity had no evil intention in it. He thoroughly and honeзtly believed that he was doing the very |