XV.

Study has been for me the sovereign remedy for all the dissatisfactions of life, having never had a sense of chagrin that an hour's reading would not dissipate. I wake in the morning with a secret joy to behold the light. I behold the light with a kind of ravishment, and all the rest of the day I am happy.

Within a few years of his death, the brave, cheerful tone had declined to this:—

I am broken down with fatigue; I must repose for the rest of my life.

Then further to this:—

I have expected to kill myself for the last three months, finishing an addition to my work on the origin and changes of the French civil law. It will take only three hours to read it; but, I assure you, it has been such a labor to me, that my hair has turned white under it all.

Finally it touches nadir:—

It [his work] has almost cost me my life; I must rest; I can work no more.My candles are all burned out; I have set off all my cartridges.

It [his work] has almost cost me my life; I must rest; I can work no more.

My candles are all burned out; I have set off all my cartridges.

When Montesquieu died, only Diderot, among Parisian men of letters, followed him to his tomb.

VOLTAIRE.

1694-1778.

By the volume and the variety, joined to the unfailing brilliancy, of his production; by his prodigious effectiveness; and by his universal fame,—Voltaire is undoubtedly entitled to rank first, with no fellow, among the eighteenth-century literary men, not merely of France, but of the world. He was not a great man,—he produced no single great work,—but he must nevertheless be pronounced a great writer. There is hardly any species of composition to which, in the long course of his activity, he did not turn his talent. It cannot be said that he succeeded splendidly in all; but in some he succeeded splendidly, and he failed abjectly in none. There is not a great thought, and there is not a flat expression, in the whole bulk of his multitudinous and multifarious works. Read him wherever you will, in the ninety-seven volumes (equivalent, probably, in the aggregate, to three hundred volumes like the present) which, in one leading edition, collect his productions,—you may often find him superficial, you may often find him untrustworthy, you will certainly often find him flippant, but not less certainly youwill never find him obscure, and you will never find him dull. The clearness, the vivacity, of this man's mind were something almost preternatural. So, too, were his readiness, his versatility, his audacity. He had no distrust of himself, no awe of his fellow-men, no reverence for God, to deter him from any attempt with his pen, however presuming. If a state ode were required, it should be ready to order at twelve to-morrow; if an epic poem—to be classed with the "Iliad" and the "Æneid"—the "Henriade" was promptly forthcoming, to answer the demand. He did not shrink from flouting a national idol, by freely finding fault with Corneille; and he lightly undertook to extinguish a venerable form of Christianity, simply with pricks, innumerably repeated, of his tormenting pen.

A very large part of the volume of Voltaire's production consists of letters, written by him to correspondents perhaps more numerous, and more various in rank, from kings on the throne down to scribblers in the garret, than ever, in any other case, exchanged such communications with a literary man. Another considerable proportion of his work in literature took the form of pamphlets, either anonymously or pseudonymously published, in which this master-spirit of intellectual disturbance and ferment found it convenient, or advantageous, or safe, to promulge and propagate his ideas. A shower of such publications was incessantly escaping from Voltaire's pen. More formal and regular, more confessedly ambitious, literary essays of his, were poems in every kind,—heroic, mock-heroic, lyric, elegiac, comic, tragic, satiric,—historical and biographical monographs, and tales or novels of a peculiar class.

Voltaire's poetry does not count for very much now. Still, its first success was so great that it will always remain an important topic in literary history. Besides this, it really is, in some of its kinds, remarkable work. Voltaire's epic verse is almost an exception, needful to be made, from our assertion that this author is nowhere dull. "The Henriade" comes dangerously near that mark. It is a tasteless reproduction of Lucan's faults, with little reproduction of Lucan's virtues. Voltaire's comedies are bright and witty, but they are not laughter-provoking; and they do not possess the elemental and creative character of Shakspeare's or Molière's work. His tragedies are better; but they do not avoid that cast of mechanical which seems necessarily to belong to poetry produced by talent, however consummate, unaccompanied with genius. Voltaire's histories are luminous and readable narratives, but they cannot claim either the merit of critical accuracy or of philosophic breadth and insight. His letters would have to be read in considerable volume in order to furnish a full satisfactory idea of the author. His tales, finally, afford the most available, and, on the whole, likewise, the best, means of coming shortly and easily at a knowledge of Voltaire.

Among Voltaire's tales, doubtless the one most eligible for use, to serve our present purpose, is his "Candide." This is a nondescript piece of fiction, the design of which is, by means of a narrative of travel and adventure, constructed without much regard to the probability of particular incidents, to set forth, in the characteristic mocking vein of Voltaire, the vanity and misery of mankind. The author's invention is often whimsical enough; but it is constantly so ready, so reckless, and so abundant, that the reader never tires, as he is hurried ceaselessly forward from change to change of scene and circumstance. The play of wit is incessant. The style is limpidity itself. Your sympathies are never painfully engaged, even in recitals of experience that ought to be the most heart-rending. There is never a touch of noble moral sentiment, to relieve the monotony of mockery that lightly laughs at you, and tantalizes you, page after page, from the beginning to the end of the book. The banter is not good-natured; though, on the other hand, it cannot justly be pronounced ill-natured; and it is, in final effect upon the reader's mind, bewildering and depressing in the extreme. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity,—such is the comfortless doctrine of the book. The apples are the apples of Sodom, everywhere in the world. There is no virtue anywhere, no good, no happiness. Life is a cheat, the love of life is a cruelty, and beyond life there is nothing. At least, there is no glimpse given of any compensating future reserved for men, a future to redress the balance of good and ill experienced here and now. Faith and hope, those two eyes of the soul, are smilingly quenched in their sockets; and you are left blind, in a whirling world of darkness, with a whirling world of darkness before you.

Such is "Candide." We select a single passage for specimen. The passage we select is more nearly free than almost any other passage as long, in this extraordinary romance, would probably be found, from impure implications. It is, besides, more nearly serious in apparent motive, than is the general tenor of the production. Here, however, as elsewhere, the writer keeps carefully down his mocking-mask. At least, you are left tantalizingly uncertain all the time how much the grin you face is the grin of the man, and how much the grin of a visor that he wears.

Candide, the hero, is a young fellow of ingenuous character, brought successively under the lead of several different persons wise in the ways of the world, who act toward him, each in his turn, the part of "guide, philosopher, and friend." Candide, with such a mentor bearing the name Martin, has now arrived at Venice. Candide speaks:—

"I have heard great talk of the Senator Pococuranté, who lives in that fine house at the Brenta, where they say he entertains foreigners in the most polite manner. They pretend this man is a perfect stranger to uneasiness."—"I should be glad to see so extraordinary a being," said Martin.Candide thereupon sent a messenger to Signor Pococuranté, desiring permission to wait on him the next day.Candide and his friend Martin went into a gondola on the Brenta, and arrived at the palace of the noble Pococuranté: the gardens were laid out in elegant taste, and adorned with fine marble statues; his palace was built after the most approved rules of architecture. The master of the house, who was a man of sixty, and very rich, received our two travellers with great politeness, but without much ceremony, which somewhat disconcerted Candide, but was not at all displeasing to Martin.As soon as they were seated, two very pretty girls, neatly dressed, brought in chocolate, which was extremely well frothed. Candide could not help making encomiums upon their beauty and graceful carriage. "The creatures are well enough," said the senator. "I make them my companions, for I am heartily tired of the ladies of the town, their coquetry, their jealousy, their quarrels, their humors, their meannesses, their pride, and their folly. I am weary of making sonnets, or of paying for sonnets to be made, on them; but, after all, these two girls begin to grow very indifferent to me."After having refreshed himself, Candide walked into a large gallery, where he was struck with the sight of a fine collection of paintings. "Pray," said Candide, "by what master are the two first of these?"—"They are Raphael's," answered the senator. "I gave a great deal of money for them seven years ago, purely out of curiosity, as they were said to be the finest pieces in Italy: but I cannot say they please me; the coloring is dark and heavy; the figures do not swell nor come out enough; and the drapery is very bad. In short, notwithstanding the encomiums lavished upon them, they are not, in my opinion, a true representation of nature. I approve of no paintings but where I think I behold Nature herself; and there are very few, if any, of that kind to be met with. I have what is called a fine collection, but I take no manner of delight in them."While dinner was getting ready, Pococuranté ordered a concert. Candide praised the music to the skies. "This noise," said the noble Venetian, "may amuse one for a little time; but if it was to last above half an hour, it would grow tiresome to everybody, though perhaps no one would care to own it. Music is become the art of executing what is difficult; now, whatever is difficult cannot be long pleasing."I believe I might take more pleasure in an opera, if they had not made such a monster of that species of dramatic entertainment as perfectly shocks me; and I am amazed how people can bear to see wretched tragedies set to music, where the scenes are contrived for no other purpose than to lug in, as it were by the ears, three or four ridiculous songs, to give a favorite actress an opportunity of exhibiting her pipe. Let who will or can die away in raptures at the trills of a eunuch quavering the majestic part of Cæsar or Cato, and strutting in a foolish manner upon the stage. For my part, I have long ago renounced these paltry entertainments, which constitute the glory of modern Italy, and are so dearly purchased by crowned heads." Candide opposed these sentiments, but he did it in a discreet manner. As for Martin, he was entirely of the old senator's opinion.Dinner being served up, they sat down to table, and after a very hearty repast, returned to the library. Candide, observing Homer richly bound, commended the noble Venetian's taste. "This," said he, "is a book that was once the delight of the great Pangloss, the best philosopher in Germany."—"Homer is no favorite of mine," answered Pococuranté very coolly. "I was made to believe once that I took a pleasure in reading him; but his continual repetitions of battles must have all such a resemblance with each other; his gods that are forever in a hurry and bustle, without ever doing any thing; his Helen, that is the cause of the war, and yet hardly acts in the whole performance; his Troy,that holds out so long without being taken; in short, all these things together make the poem very insipid to me. I have asked some learned men whether they are not in reality as much tired as myself with reading this poet. Those who spoke ingenuously assured me that he had made them fall asleep, and yet that they could not well avoid giving him a place in their libraries; but that it was merely as they would do an antique, or those rusty medals which are kept only for curiosity, and are of no manner of use in commerce.""But your excellency does not surely form the same opinion of Virgil?" said Candide. "Why, I grant," replied Pococuranté, "that the second, third, fourth, and sixth books of his 'Æneid' are excellent; but as for his pious Æneas, his strong Cloanthus, his friendly Achates, his boy Ascanius, his silly King Latinus, his ill-bred Amata, his insipid Lavinia, and some other characters much in the same strain, I think there cannot in nature be any thing more flat and disagreeable. I must confess I prefer Tasso far beyond him; nay, even that sleepy tale-teller Ariosto.""May I take the liberty to ask if you do not receive great pleasure from reading Horace?" said Candide. "There are maxims in this writer," replied Pococuranté, "from whence a man of the world may reap some benefit; and the short measure of the verse makes them more easily to be retained in the memory. But I see nothing extraordinary in his journey to Brundusium, and his account of his bad dinner; nor in his dirty, low quarrel between one Rupilius, whose words, as he expresses it, were full of poisonous filth; and another, whose language was dipped in vinegar. His indelicate verses against old women and witches have frequently given me great offence; nor can I discover the great merit of his telling his friend Mæcenas, that, if he will but rank him in the class of lyric poets, his lofty head shall touch the stars. Ignorant readers are apt to advance every thing by the lump in a writer of reputation. For my part, I read only to please myself. I like nothing but what makesfor my purpose." Candide, who had been brought up with a notion of never making use of his own judgment, was astonished at what he heard; but Martin found there was a good deal of reason in the senator's remarks."Oh, here is a Tully!" said Candide; "this great man, I fancy, you are never tired of reading."—"Indeed, I never read him at all," replied Pococuranté. "What a deuce is it to me whether he pleads for Rabirius or Cluentius? I try causes enough myself. I had once some liking to his philosophical works; but when I found he doubted of every thing, I thought I knew as much as himself, and had no need of a guide to learn ignorance.""Ha!" cried Martin, "here are fourscore volumes of the 'Memoirs of the Academy of Sciences;' perhaps there may be something curious and valuable in this collection."—"Yes," answered Pococuranté; "so there might, if any one of these compilers of this rubbish had only invented the art of pin-making. But all these volumes are filled with mere chimerical systems, without one single article conducive to real utility.""I see a prodigious number of plays," said Candide, "in Italian, Spanish, and French."—"Yes," replied the Venetian; "there are, I think, three thousand, and not three dozen of them good for any thing. As to those huge volumes of divinity, and those enormous collections of sermons, they are not all together worth one single page of Seneca; and I fancy you will readily believe that neither myself nor any one else ever looks into them."Martin, perceiving some shelves filled with English books, said to the senator, "I fancy that a republican must be highly delighted with those books, which are most of them written with a noble spirit of freedom."—"It is noble to write as we think," said Pococuranté; "it is the privilege of humanity. Throughout Italy we write only what we do not think; and the present inhabitants of the country of the Cæsars and Antoninuses dare not acquire a single ideawithout the permission of a father Dominican. I should be enamoured of the spirit of the English nation did it not utterly frustrate the good effects it would produce by passion and the spirit of party."Candide, seeing a Milton, asked the senator if he did not think that author a great man. "Who!" said Pococuranté sharply. "That barbarian, who writes a tedious commentary, in ten books of rambling verse, on the first chapter of Genesis! That slovenly imitator of the Greeks, who disfigures the creation by making the Messiah take a pair of compasses from heaven's armory to plan the world; whereas Moses represented the Deity as producing the whole universe by his fiat! Can I think you have any esteem for a writer who has spoiled Tasso's hell and the devil; who transforms Lucifer, sometimes into a toad, and at others into a pygmy; who makes him say the same thing over again a hundred times; who metamorphoses him into a school-divine; and who, by an absurdly serious imitation of Ariosto's comic invention of fire-arms, represents the devils and angels cannonading each other in heaven! Neither I, nor any other Italian, can possibly take pleasure in such melancholy reveries. But the marriage of Sin and Death, and snakes issuing from the womb of the former, are enough to make any person sick that is not lost to all sense of delicacy. This obscene, whimsical, and disagreeable poem met with the neglect that it deserved at its first publication; and I only treat the author now as he was treated in his own country by his contemporaries."Candide was sensibly grieved at this speech, as he had a great respect for Homer, and was very fond of Milton. "Alas!" said he softly to Martin, "I am afraid this man holds our German poets in great contempt."—"There would be no such great harm in that," said Martin.—"Oh, what a surprising man!" said Candide to himself. "What a prodigious genius is this Pococuranté! Nothing can please him."After finishing their survey of the library they went down into the garden, when Candide commended the several beauties that offered themselves to his view. "I know nothing upon earth laid out in such bad taste," said Pococuranté; "every thing about it is childish and trifling; but I shall have another laid out to-morrow upon a nobler plan."As soon as our two travellers had taken leave of his excellency, "Well," said Candide to Martin, "I hope you will own that this man is the happiest of all mortals, for he is above every thing he possesses."—"But do you not see," answered Martin, "that he likewise dislikes every thing he possesses? It was an observation of Plato long since, that those are not the best stomachs that reject, without distinction, all sorts of aliments."—"True," said Candide; "but still, there must certainly be a pleasure in criticising every thing, and in perceiving faults where others think they see beauties."—"That is," replied Martin, "there is a pleasure in having no pleasure."—"Well, well," said Candide, "I find that I shall be the only happy man at last, when I am blessed with the sight of my dear Cunegund."—"It is good to hope," said Martin.

Candide and his friend Martin went into a gondola on the Brenta, and arrived at the palace of the noble Pococuranté: the gardens were laid out in elegant taste, and adorned with fine marble statues; his palace was built after the most approved rules of architecture. The master of the house, who was a man of sixty, and very rich, received our two travellers with great politeness, but without much ceremony, which somewhat disconcerted Candide, but was not at all displeasing to Martin.

As soon as they were seated, two very pretty girls, neatly dressed, brought in chocolate, which was extremely well frothed. Candide could not help making encomiums upon their beauty and graceful carriage. "The creatures are well enough," said the senator. "I make them my companions, for I am heartily tired of the ladies of the town, their coquetry, their jealousy, their quarrels, their humors, their meannesses, their pride, and their folly. I am weary of making sonnets, or of paying for sonnets to be made, on them; but, after all, these two girls begin to grow very indifferent to me."

After having refreshed himself, Candide walked into a large gallery, where he was struck with the sight of a fine collection of paintings. "Pray," said Candide, "by what master are the two first of these?"—"They are Raphael's," answered the senator. "I gave a great deal of money for them seven years ago, purely out of curiosity, as they were said to be the finest pieces in Italy: but I cannot say they please me; the coloring is dark and heavy; the figures do not swell nor come out enough; and the drapery is very bad. In short, notwithstanding the encomiums lavished upon them, they are not, in my opinion, a true representation of nature. I approve of no paintings but where I think I behold Nature herself; and there are very few, if any, of that kind to be met with. I have what is called a fine collection, but I take no manner of delight in them."

While dinner was getting ready, Pococuranté ordered a concert. Candide praised the music to the skies. "This noise," said the noble Venetian, "may amuse one for a little time; but if it was to last above half an hour, it would grow tiresome to everybody, though perhaps no one would care to own it. Music is become the art of executing what is difficult; now, whatever is difficult cannot be long pleasing.

"I believe I might take more pleasure in an opera, if they had not made such a monster of that species of dramatic entertainment as perfectly shocks me; and I am amazed how people can bear to see wretched tragedies set to music, where the scenes are contrived for no other purpose than to lug in, as it were by the ears, three or four ridiculous songs, to give a favorite actress an opportunity of exhibiting her pipe. Let who will or can die away in raptures at the trills of a eunuch quavering the majestic part of Cæsar or Cato, and strutting in a foolish manner upon the stage. For my part, I have long ago renounced these paltry entertainments, which constitute the glory of modern Italy, and are so dearly purchased by crowned heads." Candide opposed these sentiments, but he did it in a discreet manner. As for Martin, he was entirely of the old senator's opinion.

Dinner being served up, they sat down to table, and after a very hearty repast, returned to the library. Candide, observing Homer richly bound, commended the noble Venetian's taste. "This," said he, "is a book that was once the delight of the great Pangloss, the best philosopher in Germany."—"Homer is no favorite of mine," answered Pococuranté very coolly. "I was made to believe once that I took a pleasure in reading him; but his continual repetitions of battles must have all such a resemblance with each other; his gods that are forever in a hurry and bustle, without ever doing any thing; his Helen, that is the cause of the war, and yet hardly acts in the whole performance; his Troy,that holds out so long without being taken; in short, all these things together make the poem very insipid to me. I have asked some learned men whether they are not in reality as much tired as myself with reading this poet. Those who spoke ingenuously assured me that he had made them fall asleep, and yet that they could not well avoid giving him a place in their libraries; but that it was merely as they would do an antique, or those rusty medals which are kept only for curiosity, and are of no manner of use in commerce."

"But your excellency does not surely form the same opinion of Virgil?" said Candide. "Why, I grant," replied Pococuranté, "that the second, third, fourth, and sixth books of his 'Æneid' are excellent; but as for his pious Æneas, his strong Cloanthus, his friendly Achates, his boy Ascanius, his silly King Latinus, his ill-bred Amata, his insipid Lavinia, and some other characters much in the same strain, I think there cannot in nature be any thing more flat and disagreeable. I must confess I prefer Tasso far beyond him; nay, even that sleepy tale-teller Ariosto."

"May I take the liberty to ask if you do not receive great pleasure from reading Horace?" said Candide. "There are maxims in this writer," replied Pococuranté, "from whence a man of the world may reap some benefit; and the short measure of the verse makes them more easily to be retained in the memory. But I see nothing extraordinary in his journey to Brundusium, and his account of his bad dinner; nor in his dirty, low quarrel between one Rupilius, whose words, as he expresses it, were full of poisonous filth; and another, whose language was dipped in vinegar. His indelicate verses against old women and witches have frequently given me great offence; nor can I discover the great merit of his telling his friend Mæcenas, that, if he will but rank him in the class of lyric poets, his lofty head shall touch the stars. Ignorant readers are apt to advance every thing by the lump in a writer of reputation. For my part, I read only to please myself. I like nothing but what makesfor my purpose." Candide, who had been brought up with a notion of never making use of his own judgment, was astonished at what he heard; but Martin found there was a good deal of reason in the senator's remarks.

"Oh, here is a Tully!" said Candide; "this great man, I fancy, you are never tired of reading."—"Indeed, I never read him at all," replied Pococuranté. "What a deuce is it to me whether he pleads for Rabirius or Cluentius? I try causes enough myself. I had once some liking to his philosophical works; but when I found he doubted of every thing, I thought I knew as much as himself, and had no need of a guide to learn ignorance."

"Ha!" cried Martin, "here are fourscore volumes of the 'Memoirs of the Academy of Sciences;' perhaps there may be something curious and valuable in this collection."—"Yes," answered Pococuranté; "so there might, if any one of these compilers of this rubbish had only invented the art of pin-making. But all these volumes are filled with mere chimerical systems, without one single article conducive to real utility."

"I see a prodigious number of plays," said Candide, "in Italian, Spanish, and French."—"Yes," replied the Venetian; "there are, I think, three thousand, and not three dozen of them good for any thing. As to those huge volumes of divinity, and those enormous collections of sermons, they are not all together worth one single page of Seneca; and I fancy you will readily believe that neither myself nor any one else ever looks into them."

Martin, perceiving some shelves filled with English books, said to the senator, "I fancy that a republican must be highly delighted with those books, which are most of them written with a noble spirit of freedom."—"It is noble to write as we think," said Pococuranté; "it is the privilege of humanity. Throughout Italy we write only what we do not think; and the present inhabitants of the country of the Cæsars and Antoninuses dare not acquire a single ideawithout the permission of a father Dominican. I should be enamoured of the spirit of the English nation did it not utterly frustrate the good effects it would produce by passion and the spirit of party."

Candide, seeing a Milton, asked the senator if he did not think that author a great man. "Who!" said Pococuranté sharply. "That barbarian, who writes a tedious commentary, in ten books of rambling verse, on the first chapter of Genesis! That slovenly imitator of the Greeks, who disfigures the creation by making the Messiah take a pair of compasses from heaven's armory to plan the world; whereas Moses represented the Deity as producing the whole universe by his fiat! Can I think you have any esteem for a writer who has spoiled Tasso's hell and the devil; who transforms Lucifer, sometimes into a toad, and at others into a pygmy; who makes him say the same thing over again a hundred times; who metamorphoses him into a school-divine; and who, by an absurdly serious imitation of Ariosto's comic invention of fire-arms, represents the devils and angels cannonading each other in heaven! Neither I, nor any other Italian, can possibly take pleasure in such melancholy reveries. But the marriage of Sin and Death, and snakes issuing from the womb of the former, are enough to make any person sick that is not lost to all sense of delicacy. This obscene, whimsical, and disagreeable poem met with the neglect that it deserved at its first publication; and I only treat the author now as he was treated in his own country by his contemporaries."

Candide was sensibly grieved at this speech, as he had a great respect for Homer, and was very fond of Milton. "Alas!" said he softly to Martin, "I am afraid this man holds our German poets in great contempt."—"There would be no such great harm in that," said Martin.—"Oh, what a surprising man!" said Candide to himself. "What a prodigious genius is this Pococuranté! Nothing can please him."

After finishing their survey of the library they went down into the garden, when Candide commended the several beauties that offered themselves to his view. "I know nothing upon earth laid out in such bad taste," said Pococuranté; "every thing about it is childish and trifling; but I shall have another laid out to-morrow upon a nobler plan."

As soon as our two travellers had taken leave of his excellency, "Well," said Candide to Martin, "I hope you will own that this man is the happiest of all mortals, for he is above every thing he possesses."—"But do you not see," answered Martin, "that he likewise dislikes every thing he possesses? It was an observation of Plato long since, that those are not the best stomachs that reject, without distinction, all sorts of aliments."—"True," said Candide; "but still, there must certainly be a pleasure in criticising every thing, and in perceiving faults where others think they see beauties."—"That is," replied Martin, "there is a pleasure in having no pleasure."—"Well, well," said Candide, "I find that I shall be the only happy man at last, when I am blessed with the sight of my dear Cunegund."—"It is good to hope," said Martin.

The single citation preceding sufficiently exemplifies, at their best, though at their worst, not, the style and the spirit of Voltaire's "Candide;" as his "Candide" sufficiently exemplifies the style and the spirit of the most characteristic of Voltaire's writings in general. "Pococurantism" is a word, now not uncommon in English, contributed by Voltaire to the vocabulary of literature. To readers of the foregoing extract, the sense of the term will not need to be explained. We respectfully suggest to our dictionary-makers, that the fact stated of its origin in the "Candide" of Voltaire would be interesting and instructive to many. Voltaire coined the name, to suit the character of his Venetian gentleman, from two Italian words which mean together "little-caring." Signor Pococuranté is the immortal type of men that have worn out their capacity of fresh sensation and enjoyment.

It was a happy editorial thought of Mr. Henry Morley, in his cheap library, now issuing, of standard books for the people, to bind up Johnson's "Rasselas" in one volume with Voltaire's "Candide." The two stories, nearly contemporaneous in their production, offer a stimulating contrast in treatment, at the hands of two sharply contrasted writers, of much the same subject,—the unsatisfactoriness of the world.

Mr. John Morley, a very different writer and a very different man from his namesake just mentioned, has an elaborate monograph on Voltaire in a volume perhaps twice as large as the present. This work claims the attention of all students desirous of exhaustive acquaintance with its subject. Mr. John Morley writes in sympathy with Voltaire, so far as Voltaire was an enemy of the Christian religion; but in antipathy to him, so far as Voltaire fell short of being an atheist. A similar sympathy, limited by a similar antipathy, is observable in the same author's still more extended monograph on Rousseau. It is only in his two volumes on "Diderot and the Encyclopædists," that Mr. Morley finds himself able to write withoutreserve in full moral accord with the men whom he describes. Of course, in all these books the biographer and critic feels, as Englishman, obliged to concede much to his English audience, in the way of condemning impurities in his authors. The concession thus made is made with great adroitness of manner, the writer's aim evidently being to imply that his infidels and atheists, if they are somewhat vicious in taste, had the countenance of good Christian example or parallel for all the lapses they show. Mr. Morley wishes to be fair, but his atheist zeal overcomes him. This is especially evident in his work on "Diderot and the Encyclopædists," where his propagandist desire to clear the character of his hero bribes him once and again to unconscious false dealing. In his "Voltaire," and in his "Rousseau," Mr. Morley is so lofty in tone, expressing himself against the moral obliquities of the men with whom he is dealing, that often you feel the ethic atmosphere of the books to be pure and bracing, almost beyond the standard of biblical and Christian. But in his "Diderot and the Encyclopædists," such fine severity is conspicuously absent. Mr. Morley is so deeply convinced that atheism is what we all most need just now, that when he has—not halting mere infidels, like Voltaire and Rousseau—but good thorough-going atheists, like Diderot and his fellows, to exhibit, he can hardly bring himself to injure their exemplary influence with his readers, by allowing to exist any damaging flaws in their character.

Even in Voltaire and Rousseau, but particularly in Voltaire, Mr. Morley, though his sympathy with these writers is, as we have said, not complete, finds far more to praise than to blame. To this eager apostle of atheism, Voltaire was at least on the right road, although he did, unfortunately, stop short of the goal. His influence was potent against Christianity, and potent it certainly was not against atheism. Voltaire might freely be lauded as on the whole a mighty and a beneficent liberalizer of thought.

And we, we who are neither atheists nor deists—let us not deny to Voltaire his just meed of praise. There were streaks of gold in the base alloy of that character of his. He burned with magnanimous heat against the hideous doctrine and practice of ecclesiastical persecution. Carlyle says of Voltaire, that he "spent his best efforts, and as many still think, successfully, in assaulting the Christian religion." This, true though it be, is liable to be falsely understood. It was not against the Christian religion, as the Christian religion really is, but rather against the Christian religion as the Roman hierarchy misrepresented it, that Voltaire ostensibly directed his efforts. "You are right," wrote he to his henchman D'Alembert, in 1762, "in assuming that I speak of superstition only; for as to the Christian religion, I respect it and love it, as you do." This distinction of Voltaire's, with whatever degree of simple sincerity on his part made, oughtto be remembered in his favor, when his memorable motto, "Écrasez l'Infâme," is interpreted and applied. He did not mean Jesus Christ byl'Infâme; he did not mean the Christian religion by it; he did not even mean the Christian Church by it; he meant the oppressive despotism and the crass obscurantism of the Roman-Catholic hierarchy. At least, this is what he would have said that he meant, what in fact he substantially did say that he meant, when incessantly reiterating, in its various forms, his watchword, "Écrasez l'Infâme," "Écrasons l'Infâme,"—"Crush the wretch!" "Let us crush the wretch!" His blows were aimed, perhaps, at "superstition;" but they really fell, in the full half of their effect, on Christianity itself. Whether Voltaire regretted this, whether he would in his heart have had it otherwise, may well, in spite of any protestation from him of love for Christianity, be doubted. Still, it is never, in judgment of Voltaire, to be forgotten that the organized Christianity which he confronted, was in large part a system justly hateful to the true and wise lover whether of God or of man. That system he did well in fighting. Carnal indeed were the weapons with which he fought it; and his victory over it was a carnal victory, bringing, on the whole, but slender net advantage, if any such advantage at all, to the cause of final truth and light. The French Revolution, with its excesses and its horrors, was perhaps the proper, the legitimate, the necessary, fruit of resistance such as was Voltaire's,in fundamental spirit, to the evils in church and in state against which he conducted so gallantly his life-long campaign.

But though we thus bring in doubt the work of Voltaire, both as to the purity of its motive, and as to the value of its fruit, we should wrong our sense of justice to ourselves if we permitted our readers to suppose us blind to the generous things that this arch-infidel did on behalf of the suffering and the oppressed. Voltaire more than once wielded that pen of his, the most dreaded weapon in Europe, like a knight sworn to take on himself the championship of the forlornest of causes. There is the historic case of Jean Calas at Toulouse, Protestant, an old man of near seventy, broken on the wheel, as suspected, without evidence, and against accumulated impossibilities, of murdering his own son, a young man of about thirty, by hanging him. Voltaire took up the case, and pleaded it to the common sense, and to the human feeling, of France, with immense effectiveness. It is, in truth, Voltaire's advocacy of righteousness, in this instance of incredible wrong, that has made the instance itself immortal. His part in the case of Calas, though the most signal, is not the only, example of Voltaire's literary knighthood. He hated oppression, and he loved liberty, for himself and for all men, with a passion as deep and as constant as any passion of which nature had made Voltaire capable. If the liberty that he loved was fundamentally libertyas against God no less than as against men, and if the oppression that he hated was fundamentally the oppression of being put under obligation to obey Christ as lord of life and of thought, this was something of which, probably, Voltaire never had a clear consciousness.

We have now indicated what was most admirable in Voltaire's personal character. On the whole, he was far from being an admirable man. He was vain, he was shallow, he was frivolous, he was deceitful, he was voluptuous, he fawned on the great, he abased himself before them, he licked the dust on which they stood. "Trajan, est-il content?" ("Is Trajan satisfied?")—this, asked, in nauseous adulation, and nauseous self-abasement, by Voltaire of Louis XV., so little like Trajan in character—is monumental. The occasion was the production of a piece of Voltaire's written at the instance of Louis XV.'s mistress, the infamous Madame de Pompadour. The king, for answer, simply gorgonized the poet with a stony Bourbon stare.

But, taken altogether, Voltaire's life was a great success. He got on in the world, was rich, was fortunate, was famous, was gay, if he was not happy. He had his friendship with the great Frederick of Prussia, who filled for his false French flatterer a return cup of sweetness, cunningly mixed with exceeding bitterness. His death was an appropriatecoup de théâtre, a felicity of finish to such a life, quite beyond the reach of art. He came backto Paris, whence he had been an exile, welcomed with a triumph transcending the triumph of a conqueror. They made a great feast for him, a feast of flattery, in the theatre. The old man was drunk with delight. The delight was too much for him. It literally killed him. It was as if a favorite actress should be quite smothered to death on the stage, under flowers thrown in excessive profusion at her feet.

Let Carlyle's sentence be our epigraph on Voltaire:—

"No great Man.... Found always at the top, less by power in swimming than by lightness in floating."

ROUSSEAU.

1712-1778.

There are two Rousseaus in French literature. At least, there was a first, until the second effaced him, and became the only.

We speak, of course, in comparison, and hyperbolically. J. B. Rousseau is still named as a lyric poet of the time of Louis XIV. But when Rousseau, without initials, is spoken of, it is always Jean Jacques Rousseau that is meant.

Jean Jacques Rousseau is perhaps the most squalid, as it certainly is one of the most splendid, among French literary names. The squalor belongs chiefly to the man, but the splendor is wholly the writer's. There is hardly another example in the world's literature of a union so striking of these opposites.

Rousseau's life he has himself told, in the best, the worst, and the most imperishable, of his books, the "Confessions." This book is one to which the adjective charming attaches, in a peculiarly literal sense of the word. The spell, however, is repellent as well as attractive. But the attraction of the style asserts and pronounces itself only the more, in triumph over the much there is in the matter to disgust and revolt. It is quite the most offensive, and it is well-nigh the most fascinating, book that we know.

The "Confessions" begin as follows:—

I purpose an undertaking that never had an example, and whose execution never will have an imitator. I would exhibit to my fellows a man in all the truth of nature, and that man—myself.Myself alone. I know my own heart, and I am acquainted with men. I am made unlike any one I have ever seen,—I dare believe unlike any living being. If no better than, I am at least different from, others. Whether nature did well or ill in breaking the mould wherein I was cast, can be determined only after having read me.Let the last trumpet sound when it will, I will come, with this book in my hand, and present myself before the Sovereign Judge. I will boldly proclaim: Thus have I acted, thus have I thought, such was I. With equal frankness have I disclosed the good and the evil. I have omitted nothing bad, added nothing good; and if I have happened to make use of some unimportant ornament, it has, in every case, been simply for the purpose of filling up a void occasioned by my lack of memory. I may have taken for granted as true what I knew to be possible, never what I knew to be false. Such as I was, I have exhibited myself,—despicable and vile, when so; virtuous, generous, sublime, when so. I have unveiled my interior being, such as Thou, Eternal Existence, hast beheld it. Assemble around me the numberless throng of my fellow-mortals; let them listen to my confessions, let them blush at my depravities, let them shrink appalled at my miseries. Let each of them, in his turn, with equal sincerity, lay bare his heart at the foot of thy throne, and then let a single one tell thee, if he dare,I was better than that man.

I purpose an undertaking that never had an example, and whose execution never will have an imitator. I would exhibit to my fellows a man in all the truth of nature, and that man—myself.

Myself alone. I know my own heart, and I am acquainted with men. I am made unlike any one I have ever seen,—I dare believe unlike any living being. If no better than, I am at least different from, others. Whether nature did well or ill in breaking the mould wherein I was cast, can be determined only after having read me.

Let the last trumpet sound when it will, I will come, with this book in my hand, and present myself before the Sovereign Judge. I will boldly proclaim: Thus have I acted, thus have I thought, such was I. With equal frankness have I disclosed the good and the evil. I have omitted nothing bad, added nothing good; and if I have happened to make use of some unimportant ornament, it has, in every case, been simply for the purpose of filling up a void occasioned by my lack of memory. I may have taken for granted as true what I knew to be possible, never what I knew to be false. Such as I was, I have exhibited myself,—despicable and vile, when so; virtuous, generous, sublime, when so. I have unveiled my interior being, such as Thou, Eternal Existence, hast beheld it. Assemble around me the numberless throng of my fellow-mortals; let them listen to my confessions, let them blush at my depravities, let them shrink appalled at my miseries. Let each of them, in his turn, with equal sincerity, lay bare his heart at the foot of thy throne, and then let a single one tell thee, if he dare,I was better than that man.

Notwithstanding our autobiographer's disavowal of debt to example for the idea of his "Confessions," it seems clear that Montaigne here was at least inspiration, if not pattern, to Rousseau. But Rousseau resolved to do what Montaigne had done, more ingenuously and more courageously than Montaigne had done it. This writer will make himself his subject, and then treat his subject with greater frankness than any man before him ever used about himself, or than any man after him would ever use. He undoubtedly succeeded in his attempt. His frankness, in fact, is so forward and eager, that it is probably even inventive of things disgraceful to himself. Montaigne makes great pretence of telling hisown faults, but you observe that he generally chooses rather amiable faults of his own to tell. Rousseau's morbid vulgarity leads him to disclose traits in himself, of character or of behavior, that, despite whatever contrary wishes on your part, compel your contempt of the man. And it is for the man who confesses, almost more than for the man who is guilty, that you feel the contempt.

The "Confessions" proceed:—

I was born at Geneva, in 1712, of Isaac Rousseau and Susannah Bernard, citizens.... I came into the world weak and sickly. I cost my mother her life, and my birth was the first of my misfortunes.I never learned how my father supported his loss, but I know that he remained ever after inconsolable.... When he used to say to me, "Jean Jacques, let us speak of your mother," my usual reply was, "Well, father, we'll cry, then," a reply which would instantly bring the tears to his eyes. "Ah!" he would exclaim with agitation, "give me her back, console me for her loss, fill up the void she has left in my soul. Could I love thee thus wert thou butmyson?" Forty years after having lost her he expired in the arms of a second wife, but with the name of the first on his lips, and her image engraven on his heart.Such were the authors of my being. Of all the gifts Heaven had allotted them, a feeling heart was the only one I had inherited. While, however, this had been the source of their happiness, it became the spring of all my misfortunes.

I was born at Geneva, in 1712, of Isaac Rousseau and Susannah Bernard, citizens.... I came into the world weak and sickly. I cost my mother her life, and my birth was the first of my misfortunes.

I never learned how my father supported his loss, but I know that he remained ever after inconsolable.... When he used to say to me, "Jean Jacques, let us speak of your mother," my usual reply was, "Well, father, we'll cry, then," a reply which would instantly bring the tears to his eyes. "Ah!" he would exclaim with agitation, "give me her back, console me for her loss, fill up the void she has left in my soul. Could I love thee thus wert thou butmyson?" Forty years after having lost her he expired in the arms of a second wife, but with the name of the first on his lips, and her image engraven on his heart.

Such were the authors of my being. Of all the gifts Heaven had allotted them, a feeling heart was the only one I had inherited. While, however, this had been the source of their happiness, it became the spring of all my misfortunes.

"A feeling heart!" That expression tells the literary secret of Rousseau. It is hardly too much to say that Rousseau was the first French writer towrite with his heart; but heart's blood was the ink in which almost every word of Rousseau's was written. This was the spring of his marvellous power. Rousseau:—

My mother had left a number of romances. These father and I betook us to reading during the evenings. At first the sole object was, by means of entertaining books, to improve me in reading; but, ere long, the charm became so potent, that we read turn about without intermission, and passed whole nights in this employment. Never could we break up till the end of the volume. At times my father, hearing the swallows of a morning, would exclaim, quite ashamed of himself, "Come, let's to bed; I'm more of a child than you are!"

The elder Rousseau was right respecting himself. And such a father would almost necessarily have such a child. Jean Jacques Rousseau is to be judged tenderly for his faults. What birth and what breeding were his! The "Confessions" go on:—

I soon acquired, by this dangerous course, not only an extreme facility in reading and understanding, but, for my age, a quite unprecedented acquaintance with the passions. I had not the slightest conception of things themselves, at a time when the whole round of sentiments was already perfectly familiar to me. I had apprehended nothing—I had felt all.

Some hint now of other books read by the boy:—

With the summer of 1719 the romance-reading terminated.... "The History of the Church and Empire" by Lesueur, Bossuet's "Dissertation on Universal History," Plutarch's "Lives," Nani's "History of Venice," Ovid's "Metamorphoses," "La Bruyère," Fontenelle's "Worlds," his "Dialogues of the Dead," and a few volumes of Molière, were transported into my father's shop; and I read them to him every day during his work. For this employment I acquired a rare, and, for my age, perhaps unprecedented, taste. Plutarch especially became my favorite reading. The pleasure which I found in incessantly reperusing him, cured me in some measure of the romance madness; and I soon came to prefer Agesilaus, Brutus, and Aristides, to Orondates, Artemenes, and Juba. From these interesting studies, joined to the conversations to which they gave rise with my father, resulted that free, republican spirit, that haughty and untamable character, fretful of restraint or subjection, which has tormented me my life long, and that in situations the least suitable for giving it play. Incessantly occupied with Rome and Athens, living, so to speak, with their great men, born myself the citizen of a republic [Geneva], the son of a father with whom patriotism was the ruling passion, I caught the flame from him—I imagined myself a Greek or a Roman, and became the personage whose life I was reading.

On such food of reading and of reverie, young Rousseau's imagination and sentiment battened, while his reason and his practical sense starved and died within him. Unconsciously thus in part was formed the dreamer of the "Émile" and of "The Social Contract." Another glimpse of the home-life—if home-life such experience can be called—of this half-orphan, homeless Genevan boy:—

I had a brother, my elder by seven years.... He fell into the ways of debauchery, even before he was old enough to be really a libertine.... I remember once when my father was chastising him severely and in anger, that I impetuously threw myself between them, clasping him tightly. I thus covered him with my body, receiving the blows that were aimed at him; and I held out so persistently in this position, that whether softened by my cries and tears, or fearing that I should get the worst of it, my father was forced to forgive him. In the end my brother turned out so bad that he ran away and disappeared altogether.

It is pathetic—Rousseau's attempted contrast following, between the paternal neglect of his older brother and the paternal indulgence of himself:—

If this poor lad was carelessly brought up, it was quite otherwise with his brother.... My desires were so little excited, and so little crossed, that it never came into my head to have any. I can solemnly aver, that, till the time when I was bound to a master, I never knew what it was to have a whim.

Poor lad! "Never knew what it was to have a whim!" It well might be, however—his boy's life all one whim uncrossed, unchecked; no contrast of saving restraint, to make him know that he was living by whim alone! The "Confessions" truly say:—

Thus commenced the formation or the manifestation in me of that heart at once so haughty and so tender, of that effeminate and yet unconquerable character which, ever vacillating between courage and weakness, between virtueand yielding to temptation, has all along set me in contradiction to myself, and has resulted in my failing both of abstinence and enjoyment, both of prudence and pleasure.

The half-orphan becomes orphan entire, not by the death, but by the withdrawing, of the father. That father, having been accused of a misdemeanor, "preferred," Rousseau somewhat vaguely says, "to quit Geneva for the remainder of his life, rather than give up a point wherein honor and liberty appeared to him compromised." Jean Jacques was sent to board with a parson, who taught him Latin, and, along with Latin, supplied, Rousseau scornfully says, "all the accompanying mass of paltry rubbish styled education." He adds:—

The country was so entirely new to me, that I could never grow weary in my enjoyment of it; and I acquired so strong a liking for it, that it has never become extinguished.

Young Jean Jacques was at length apprenticed to an engraver. He describes the contrast of his new situation and the effect of the contrast upon his own character and career:—

I learned to covet in silence, to dissemble, to dissimulate, to lie, and at last to steal,—a propensity for which I had never hitherto had the slightest inclination, and of which I have never since been able quite to cure myself....My first theft was the result of complaisance, but it opened the door to others which had not so laudable a motive.My master had a journeyman named M. Verrat.... [He] took it into his head to rob his mother of some of her early asparagus and sell it, converting the proceeds into some extra good breakfasts. As he did not wish to expose himself, and not being very nimble, he selected me for this expedition.... Long did I stickle, but he persisted. I never could resist kindness, so I consented. I went every morning to the garden, gathered the best of the asparagus, and took it to "the Molard," where some good creature, perceiving that I had just been stealing it, would insinuate that little fact, so as to get it the cheaper. In my terror I took whatever she chose to give me, and carried it to M. Verrat.This little domestic arrangement continued for several days before it came into my head to rob the robber, and tithe M. Verrat for the proceeds of the asparagus.... I thus learned that to steal was, after all, not so very terrible a thing as I had conceived; and ere long I turned this discovery to so good an account, that nothing I had an inclination for could safely be left within my reach....And now, before giving myself over to the fatality of my destiny, let me, for a moment, contemplate what would naturally have been my lot had I fallen into the hands of a better master. Nothing was more agreeable to my tastes, nor better calculated to render me happy, than the calm and obscure condition of a good artisan, more especially in certain lines, such as that of an engraver at Geneva.... In my native country, in the bosom of my religion, of my family, and my friends, I should have led a life gentle and uncheckered as became my character, in the uniformity of a pleasing occupation and among connections dear to my heart. I should have been a good Christian, a good citizen, a good father, a good friend, a good artisan, and a good man in every respect. I should have loved my station; it may be I should have been an honor to it: and after having passed an obscure and simple, though even and happy, life,I should peacefully have departed in the bosom of my kindred. Soon, it may be, forgotten, I should at least have been regretted as long as the remembrance of me survived.Instead of this... what a picture am I about to draw!

My first theft was the result of complaisance, but it opened the door to others which had not so laudable a motive.

My master had a journeyman named M. Verrat.... [He] took it into his head to rob his mother of some of her early asparagus and sell it, converting the proceeds into some extra good breakfasts. As he did not wish to expose himself, and not being very nimble, he selected me for this expedition.... Long did I stickle, but he persisted. I never could resist kindness, so I consented. I went every morning to the garden, gathered the best of the asparagus, and took it to "the Molard," where some good creature, perceiving that I had just been stealing it, would insinuate that little fact, so as to get it the cheaper. In my terror I took whatever she chose to give me, and carried it to M. Verrat.

This little domestic arrangement continued for several days before it came into my head to rob the robber, and tithe M. Verrat for the proceeds of the asparagus.... I thus learned that to steal was, after all, not so very terrible a thing as I had conceived; and ere long I turned this discovery to so good an account, that nothing I had an inclination for could safely be left within my reach....

And now, before giving myself over to the fatality of my destiny, let me, for a moment, contemplate what would naturally have been my lot had I fallen into the hands of a better master. Nothing was more agreeable to my tastes, nor better calculated to render me happy, than the calm and obscure condition of a good artisan, more especially in certain lines, such as that of an engraver at Geneva.... In my native country, in the bosom of my religion, of my family, and my friends, I should have led a life gentle and uncheckered as became my character, in the uniformity of a pleasing occupation and among connections dear to my heart. I should have been a good Christian, a good citizen, a good father, a good friend, a good artisan, and a good man in every respect. I should have loved my station; it may be I should have been an honor to it: and after having passed an obscure and simple, though even and happy, life,I should peacefully have departed in the bosom of my kindred. Soon, it may be, forgotten, I should at least have been regretted as long as the remembrance of me survived.

Instead of this... what a picture am I about to draw!

Thus ends the first book of the "Confessions."

The picture Rousseau is "about to draw" has in it a certain Madame de Warens for a principal figure. (Apprentice Jean Jacques has left his master, and entered on a vagabond life.) This lady is a character very difficult for us Protestant Americans in our contrasted society to conceive as real or as possible. She kept a house of, what shall we call it? detention, for souls doubtfully in the way of being reclaimed from Protestant error into the bosom of the Roman-Catholic Church. She was herself a Roman-Catholic convert from Protestantism. She had forsaken a husband, not loved, and was living on a bounty from King Victor Amadeus of Sardinia. For Annecy, the home of Madame de Warens, our young Jean Jacques, sent thither by a Roman-Catholic curate, sets out on foot. The distance was but one day's walk; which one day's walk, however, the humor of the wanderer stretched into a saunter of three days. The man of fifty-four, become the biographer of his own youth, finds no loathness of self-respect to prevent his detailing the absurd adventures with which he diverted himself on the way. For example:—

Not a country-seat could I see, either to the right or left, without going after the adventure which I was certainawaited me. I could not muster courage to enter the mansion, nor even to knock, for I was excessively timid; but I sang beneath the most inviting window, very much astonished to find, after wasting my breath, that neither lady nor miss made her appearance, attracted by the beauty of my voice, or the spice of my songs,—seeing that I knew some capital ones that my comrades had taught me, and which I sang in the most admirable manner.

Rousseau describes the emotions he experienced in his first meeting with Madame de Warens:—

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