18/11/2007

Voltaire

Letters and Miscellanies

Table of Contents

Publication Information:

Letters

Correspondence: Frederick the Great

Correspondence with Various People

Business Letters.

Some English Letters

Letters on his Plays

Correspondence with Rousseau

Miscellaneous Papers.

On Spinoza.

On The Existence Of God.

Summary Of The Reasons In Favour Of The Existence Of God.

The Families Of Calas And Sirven.

Fanaticism.

Evil Jurisprudence.

Free Toleration.

Anti-Toleration.

Foreign Causes of Anti-Toleration

Party Spirit And Fanaticism.

Notes On Some Of The Writers Who Lived In The Age Of Louis XIV.

Publication Information:

Extracted from Voltaire, The Works of Voltaire: A Contemporary Version.

Volume: 38.

Translated by William F. Fleming et al.

Publisher: E. R. DuMont. Place of Publication: Paris.

Publication Year: 1901

François-Marie Arouet de Voltaire:

Letters and Miscellanies

Letters

[The formal and familiar letters of Voltaire exhibit the graces of style which characterize the most versatile as also the most lucid of French writers. Some of the subtler nuances of expression elude the best translators, through the more rigid forms of the English language. The selected letters here given are from Smollett, Franklin, Parton, and our editorial staff. They reflect the play of the ever-alert mind and catch the happy turns of wit and pithy expression that brighten every page of the records of Voltaire’s life-long intercourse with his multitude of friends, from humble dependents to personages of state who sought the honour of his acquaintance.]

Correspondence: Frederick the Great

The Prince Royal of Prussia To M. de Voltaire.

August 8, 1736.

Sir. Though I have not the honour of being personally acquainted with you, I have long known you in your works. They are treasures of genius, if I may be allowed the expression, pieces wrought with so much taste, that we discover new beauties in them at every reading. I think I have discovered in them the character of their ingenious author, who does an honour to our age and to human nature. The great men among the moderns will one day be obliged to you, and to you alone, for turning the balance in their favour, in case the controversy concerning the preference due to the ancients or moderns should be revived.

To the quality of excellent poet, you add many different sorts of knowledge, which, though they have some affinity with poetry, were never superadded to it but by your pen. No poet before you could give cadence to metaphysical thoughts; this honour was reserved to you. It is the taste for philosophy that you display in your works which has made me send you my translation of “The Accusation and Defence of Wolfius,” the most celebrated philosopher of our age, who, for having diffused light over the darkest parts of metaphysics, and treated the most abstruse points in a manner equally sublime, elegant, and exact, has been cruelly accused of irreligion and atheism. Such is the fate of great men; they are constantly exposed by their superior genius to the envenomed darts of calumny and envy.

I have caused the same author’s treatise upon “God, the Soul, and the World” to be translated. I shall send it to you, sir, as soon as ever it is finished; and I am sure that you will be struck with the force of evidence in all its propositions; they follow geometrically, and are connected together like the links of a chain.

The tenderness which you show for all those who devote themselves to the arts and sciences makes me hope that you will not exclude me from the number of those whom you think worthy of your instruction. I consider your literary correspondence as a source of information that must be profitable to every thinking being. I might even venture to affirm that in the whole world there are none that would not be benefited by becoming your scholars. Without lavishing an incense unworthy to be offered you, I can say with the utmost sincerity that I discover innumerable beauties in your works. Your “Henriade” charms me; it triumphs over the injudicious criticism launched against it. The tragedy of “Caesar” presents us with characters admirably supported. The sentiments in it are all noble and grand, and it is easy to perceive that Brutus is either a Roman, or an Englishman; Alzira adds to the graces of novelty, the happy contrast between the manners of the savage Americans and the Europeans. You show, in the character of Gusman, that Christianity, misunderstood and directed by false zeal, makes men more barbarous and cruel than Paganism itself.

Corneille, the great Corneille, the wonder of his age, if he were revived in our days, would see with astonishment, and perhaps with envy, that the tragic muse has lavished upon you those graces of which she was so sparing to him. What may not be expected from the author of so many masterly compositions? What new wonders may not come from the pen of him who delineated, in so lively and admirable a manner, “The Temple of Taste”?

This is what has made me so ardently desire to be possessed of all your works. I beg, sir, you would be so good as to send them to me, and communicate them all without reserve. If, among your manuscripts, there should be any which a necessary circumspection should induce you to conceal from the public, I promise to make it a profound secret, and content myself with admiring it in private. I am not ignorant that the faith of princes is not thought very respectable in these days; but I hope you will not let yourself be prepossessed by vulgar prejudices, and that you will make an exception in my favour.

I shall think myself more rich in possessing your works than I could ever be made by all the transitory favours of fortune, of which we are deprived by the same chance that bestows them on us. The first I mean your works we may make our own by the assistance of memory, and they last as long as our memory lasts. As I know the weakness of mine, I hesitate a long time upon the choice of things worthy to be deposited in it.

If poetry were still upon the same footing as formerly, that is to say, if poets were capable only of composing insipid idylliums, eclogues eternally written upon the same plan, trifling stanzas, or elegiac strains, I should renounce the art forever; but you ennoble it, you point out new paths, paths unknown to… and to… Your poetry has qualities which make it respectable, and worthy to be the study and admiration of all men of taste: they comprise a complete course of morality, by which men are taught both to act and to think; virtue is therein painted in its most beautiful colours: the idea of true glory is ascertained, and inspires us with the love of virtue in a manner so delicate, that whoever has read your works is fired with an ambition to tread in your footsteps. How many times have I said to myself: “Wretch, lay down a burden which thou art unable to bear; no man can imitate Voltaire without having abilities equal to his.” In those moments I perceived that the advantages of birth are of no consequence; they are distinctions foreign to ourselves, and adorn only the outside. How much preferable to them are the talents of the mind! How much are we indebted to those whom nature has endowed with extraordinary qualifications! She takes pleasure in giving to some men all the capacity necessary to make progress in the sciences, and it is the duty of princes to reward their labours. Why does not glory make choice of me to crown your success? I should fear nothing but that the country here should not produce as many laurels as your works deserve. If fate does not favour me so far as to make me constantly happy in your company, I at least hope one day to see him whom I admire at a distance, and to assure you in person that I am, with all the esteem due to those who, following the light of truth, consecrate their works to the good of the public,

Your affectionate friend,

FREDERICK, Prince Royal of Prussia.

M. de Voltaire’s Answer To The Prince Royal of Prussia.

Paris, August 26, 1736.

Sir: I must be insensible if I was not highly pleased with the letter with which your royal highness honoured me; my self-love received high satisfaction from it; but the love of humankind, which always animated my heart, and which I will presume to say is my distinguishing characteristic, gave me a much purer delight when I saw that there is in the world a prince who thinks like a man, a philosophical prince born to make the human species happy.

Give me leave to tell you, that there is not a man living, who is not in duty bound to thank you for the care you take to improve by sound philosophy a soul by nature framed for government. Depend upon it, there never were any kings who really deserved the name of good, but those who, like you, began by endeavouring to acquire knowledge, to study human nature, to love truth, and to detest persecution and superstition. Any prince who thinks in this manner, may revive the golden age in his dominions. Why do so few kings seek such happiness? Your royal highness must be sensible that it is because most of them think more of royalty than of humanity; you observe the very reverse of this conduct. Depend upon it, if the hurry of business and the malice of men do not spoil so fine a character, you will be one day adored by your people, and beloved by the whole world; all those who deserve the name of philosophers will repair to your dominions; and as celebrated artists crowd to countries where their respective arts are encouraged, your throne will be surrounded by men who think.

The renowned Queen Christina quitted her dominions, in order to go in quest of the arts. Reign, my lord, and let the arts come in quest of you.

May you never be disgusted with the sciences on account of the dissensions of learned men. You see, my lord, by what you have yourself informed me, that the learned are only men like courtiers themselves; they are sometimes as rapacious, as much addicted to intrigue; and all the difference between the plagues of the court and the plagues of the school, is, that the latter are more ridiculous. It is afflicting to humanity that those who call themselves the publishers of the divine commandments, the interpreters of the deity, in a word, the divines, should be more dangerous than all the rest; that some of them should be as troublesome to society, as confused in their ideas; and their souls are swelled with gall and pride, in proportion as they are void of ideas. Such men would disturb the peace of the whole earth for the sake of a sophism, and engage kings to assert, by sword and fire, the honour of an argument, in ferio or in barbara. Every thinking being who differs from them in opinion is branded as an atheist; and every king who does not favour their party is consigned to damnation. You are well aware, my lord, that the best way is to leave these pretended preceptors and real enemies of society to themselves. Their words, when overlooked and neglected, mix with the air like wind; but, if authority adds its weight to them, that wind acquires a strength which is sometimes able to shake the throne.

I see, my lord, with the joy of a heart inspired by zeal for the welfare of mankind, the great difference you make between those who peaceably investigate the truth, and those who war for words they do not understand. I perceive that the Newtons, the Leibnitzes, the Bayles, and the Lockes, those souls so sublime and so humane, give yours its spiritual nourishment, and that you reject the pretended ailments of the others, which you would find poisoned, and void of substance.

I can not make sufficient acknowledgments to your highness for having sent me the little book concerning Mr. Wolf; his metaphysical ideas reflect an honour on the human understanding; they resemble flashes of lightning in the darkest night; nothing further can, in my opinion, be expected from metaphysics. It does not seem probable that the first principles of things will ever be thoroughly understood. The rats, who occupy a few holes in a great building, know not whether the building is eternal; who is the architect, nor why that architect has built; they exert themselves to the utmost to preserve their lives, to people their holes, and to evade the destructive animals who pursue them. We are the rats, and the divine architect who built this edifice of the universe has not, as I know, hitherto disclosed his scent to any of us. If any man may flatter himself with having guessed right, it is Mr. Wolf. Though we may sometimes combat his opinions, we must always esteem him: his philosophy is by no means pernicious. What can be more beautiful and more true than his axiom, that men ought to be just, even if they had the misfortune of being atheists?

You were so good, my lord, as to promise to send me “The Treatise On God, the Soul and the World.” What a present this! How extraordinary a commerce! The heir to a monarchy, in his palace, condescends to send instructions to a recluse! My lord, deign to make me this present; my great love for the truth renders me worthy of it; most princes fear to hear the truth, you undertake to teach it. With regard to the verses which you mention, you think as judiciously upon that as upon every other article; such verses as do not teach men new and interesting truths do not deserve to be read; you are sensible that nothing can be more contemptible than to pass away one’s life in reducing to rhyme such trite, commonplace topics as do not deserve the name of thoughts. If anything can be lower than this, it is to be a satirist alone, and to write only in order to depreciate others. Such poets are in Parnassus what those doctors are in the schools who know nothing but words, and cabal against those who are acquainted with things.

If your royal highness has not been displeased with the “Henriade,” I should thank that love of truth, that horror of faction, persecution, superstition, tyrants and rebels, which breathe through my poem. It is the work of a virtuous man, and should of consequence meet with a favourable reception from a philosophical prince.

You command me to send you my other works. I shall obey you, my lord: I shall submit them to your judgment; you will to me supply the place of the public. I will submit to you whatever I have advanced in philosophy; your information shall be my recompense; it is a recompense which few sovereigns have to give. I may depend upon your secrecy; your virtue must equal your knowledge.

I should look upon it as a singular happiness to have it in my power to come and pay my court to your royal highness. Travellers go to Rome to see churches, pictures, and bas relievos. Such a prince as you is much more deserving of a traveller’s attention; a prince of such merit is a much more uncommon sight. But friendship, which detains me in my present retreat, will not permit me to quit it. You appear to me to be more a man than a prince, and you will, without doubt, permit me, my lord, to prefer my friends even to kings.

In whatever corner of the world I end my life, be assured, my lord, I will always offer up my best wishes for you, that is, for the happiness of a whole nation. My soul will be always in the number of your subjects; your glory will be always dear to me. It shall be my constant prayer that you may always be like yourself, and that other kings may be like you. I am, with the profoundest respect, Your royal highness’s humble servant,

VOLTAIRE.

To The Prince Royal Of Prussia.

Cirey, December 21, 1741.

Sun who in winter sad darts feeble fire,

Sun who art of this world believed the fire,

Inventor deemed of the poetic trade,

Though such sad verses every day are made:

Say, Sun, what rigorous destiny ordains,

That whilst so little of the year remains

You should so distant from famed Berlin roll,

Which lies toward the frozen northern pole?

There dwells the chief whose breast celestial fire,

In his climes wanting, ever does inspire;

The hero who a host undaunted led,

And conquered Neisse when from our climes you fled.

Your course why do you to the Antarctic steer?

Do negroes lovely to your eyes appear?

From that sad climate quickly back retire,

And like my hero yield celestial fire.

In terms like these, royal Sir, did I this morning address your brother, the sun, who is likewise the soul of a part of this world. I should have said a great deal more concerning your majesty if I had that talent for writing verse with ease, which I have lost, and which you possess. I have received some here which you composed at Neisse, with as much ease as you took the town. This little anecdote, together with the verses, which you were so kind as to send me immediately after the victory of Molwitz, will one day furnish extraordinary materials for history.

Louis XIV. took Franche-Comté in winter, but he fought no battle and composed no verses at the camp before Dole or Besançon. Those composed by your majesty at Neisse, resemble those which Solomon composed in all his glory, when, after having known all things by experience, he acknowledged that “all is vanity.” It is true, the good man spoke thus in the midst of three hundred wives, and seven hundred concubines, and without having ever fought a battle or besieged a town. But, royal Sir, no offence to Solomon or you, or to you and Solomon; there is certainly some reality in this world.

Silesia’s regions to lay waste,

Then crowned with laurels home to haste,

To hear all bards your worth proclaim,

And consecrate the hero’s fame;

The fair and brave each night to call

To opera, comedy, or ball;

Yourself to see both loved and feared,

Admired by all men, and revered,

Seated on glory’s lap to know

The pleasures that from friendship flow;

A joy to those but rarely known

Who shine in fields or on the throne;

With taste to read the learned lays

Composed by bards of ancient days;

Sometimes to labour happy rhymes,

Which shall be read in latest times;

Such a life must your bliss secure,

And pleasure must be real, sure.

Your majesty has achieved many great things in a short time. I am positive there is not that person living who is employed in a greater variety of affairs; but with this active genius that comprehends so many things in its sphere, you will always preserve that superiority of genius which raises you above all your employments.

All I apprehend is, that you may at last conceive too great a contempt for mankind. Millions of animals with two feet and no feathers are removed to a vast distance from you, as well by the meanness of their understanding as of their condition. This thought has been beautifully expressed by Milton: “Amongst unequals no society.”

There is another misfortune to be dreaded, and that is that, as your majesty so admirably delineates the noble courage of politicians, the interested attachment of courtiers, etc., you may at last distrust all demonstrations of affection whatever, and look upon it as a self-evident proposition that no king is loved for his own sake. Let me in my turn, Sir, offer an argument of my own. Is it not true that no man can avoid loving, for his own sake, a person of a superior genius, who has a variety of talents, and to those talents joins the art of pleasing? Now if by ill luck this superior genius should happen to be a king, should his condition for that reason be the worse, and would he be the less beloved because of his wearing a crown? For my part, I do not find that the last circumstance inspires me with any coldness.

I am, Sir, etc.,

The Prince Royal of Prussia To M. de Voltaire.

Selowitz, March 23, 1742.

Dear Voltaire: I am afraid to write to you, for I have no other news to tell you but such as you are quite indifferent about, or such as you abhor. If I were to tell you, for example, that the inhabitants of two different countries of Germany left their habitations in order to cut the throats of another people, of whose very name they were ignorant, and of whom they went in quest to a very remote country, and for no other reason than because their master had made an agreement with another prince, and because they intended to join in order to cut the throat of a third, you would tell me that such people were fools and mad to second in that manner the caprice and barbarity of their master.

Were I to tell you that we are preparing, with great care and expense, to demolish certain walls raised at an immense outlay; that we reap where we have not sown, and are masters where no body is strong enough to resist us; you would cry out: “O barbarians, robbers, inhuman wretches! the unjust shall not inherit the kingdom of heaven,” according to St. Matthew, xii 124.

Since I foresee what you would say to me upon these subjects, I shall talk to you no more about them; I shall content myself with informing you that a man whom you have heard spoken of under the name of the King of Prussia, hearing that the dominions of his ally the Emperor were ruined by the Queen of Hungary, flew to his assistance; that he joined his troops to those of the King of Poland, in order to make a diversion in Lower Austria; and that he has been so successful that he expects in a short time to engage the principal forces of the Queen of Hungary in order to serve his ally. This is generosity, you will say; this is heroism. Yet, dear Voltaire, this is exactly the same with the first picture; it may be compared to the same woman appearing in her night-cap when she divests herself of her charms, and afterward showing herself with her paint, her false teeth, and her trinkets. In how many different points of view may the same object be seen? How much do men’s judgments vary!

Men condemn in the evening what they approved in the morning; the sun which pleased them at its rising displeases them when it sets; hence it is that reputations are established, that they sink, and that they are re-established; and yet we are weak enough to be solicitous about reputation during the whole course of our lives. How is it possible that men can be imposed upon by this false coin ever since it was first current? Etc.

The King of Prussia To M. de Voltaire.

If all histories were written like that which you sent me, we would be better acquainted with the manners of all ages, and less imposed upon by historians. The longer I know you, the more I admire your abilities. No style can, in my opinion, be finer than that in which the History of Louis XIV. is written. I read every paragraph three or four times over, to such a degree do I admire it; every sentence is striking, it everywhere abounds with admirable reflections; there is not a false thought in it; there is nothing in it in anyway puerile and its impartiality is unexceptionable. When I have read the work through, I shall send you a few remarks upon it, among the rest, upon the German names which you have a little disfigured. This might render the work somewhat obscure, as some of them are so disguised that we are puzzled to guess at them.

I wish every work capable of conveying instruction was to come from your pen. We should then be sure of being improved by the books we read.

Correspondence with Various People

To Cardinal Quirini.

Berlin, December 12, 1751.

The temple would you have me sing,

To which you various offerings bring?

But yet though I your worth admire,

I cannot do what you require.

How can I, on the banks of Spree,

Where Roman laws no more bear sway,

My voice before all mankind raise,

And utter forth a prelate’s praise?

From Sion, distant and forlorn,

Like a good Catholic, I mourn.

My prince by heresy’s infected,

Religion’s not by him respected.

It fills my soul with poignant woe,

To think that in the shades below

He shall, with ancients, have his place,

Ancients who were quite void of grace;

We know those heroes, thrice renowned,

Are punished in the abyss profound;

With them he must be damned, because

He in this world lived by their laws.

But still I’m much more grieved to find

A shocking vice infects his mind;

A vice, by men called toleration,

Which bears the opinions of each nation:

I’m shocked to think the Turkish crew,

The Quaker and the Lutheran too,

The Protestant and Papist find

Alike, with him, reception kind,

If they can by their actions claim

Of honest men the glorious name.

But, crime more shocking to reveal,

He laughs at sanguinary zeal;

That hate which bigots fills with rage,

Which gentle pity can’t assauge,

But which the Free-thinker, professed,

Profanely turns into a jest:

What can your Eminence then hope

From me, who don’t revere the Pope?

From me, who am the chamberlain

Of a prince obdurate in sin?

You, whose predestinated front

Bears double marks of honour on’t.

Whose scarlet hat, with laurels bound,

Shows you for poetry renowned;

Who Horace and St. Austin’s lore,

With equal genius could explore,

Who equally dost know to rise

To Pindus top, and paradise,

Convert that genius; you can please,

And teach mankind with equal ease;

Of Jesus Christ, the grace divine,

Does often through your writings shine,

And in them often we admire

Both Homer’s grace and Homer’s fire.

To The Marquis of Issarts, Ambassador of France at The Court of Dresden.

Versailles, April 7, 1747.

Sir: The kind letter with which you favoured me, gives me at once pleasure and regret; at the same time that it delights me, it makes me sensible of the loss I have sustained. I might have been present at the very moment when your Excellency signed the treaty by which France was made happy. I might have seen the court of Dresden, but I never saw it. I was not born to be happy; but your happiness, Sir, you will own even to equal your merit. What you left at Versailles, is restored to you at Dresden; you have there met with a king beloved by his subjects.

One day you’ll make us a report

Which king has the most brilliant court,

Whether Louis or Augustus’ name

To glory has the better claim.

A point like this might well confound

Sagacity the most profound,

You’ll find e’en ten years’ labour vain

This difficulty to explain.

Nothing can better prove how hard a matter it is to discover truth in this world; and then, Sir, those who know it best are the last to divulge it. For example, can those who have had the honour of being admitted to the presence of the three princesses with whom the Queen of Poland has blessed France, Naples, and Munich ever determine which of the three nations is happiest?

Should we even of the queen inquire

Which daughter we should most admire;

Which of the three does most excel,

She’d sure be much perplexed to tell:

But if you should of me inquire

Which gratitude should most inspire,

Which the most hope should entertain,

In doubt I should not long remain.

When I see the Dauphin and Dauphiness, I think of Psyche, and recollect that Psyche had two sisters:

Both filled the gazers with delight,

The Courts of both alike were bright;

Both were with tender spouses wedded,

But Psyche was with Cupid bedded.

But perhaps, Sir, an end might be put to this dispute, and Paris would, upon such an occasion, cut his apple into three pieces.

The prize of beauty should adorn

Her to whom first a daughter’s born,

In whom we shall with transport trace

The beauty of her royal race.

You see, Sir, that, though I am not a politician, I can contrive means to accommodate matters, and I do not doubt but you will approve of my sentiments.

I have the honour of being, with the utmost respect,

Your Excellency’s most humble servant.

To Cardinal Du Bois

[1]

Camera Y, July, 1722.

Rupelmonde for her charms renowned,

With whom I rove the world around,

Whom the young loves in crowds attend,

To whose commands all mortals bend,

Desires I’d write to you; my muse

Can nothing to the fair refuse.

By hopes to please her I’m excited,

And with the given talk delighted.

We have just arrived at your eminence’s metropolis, which, I think, all the ambassadors and all the cooks in Europe have chosen as their place of rendezvous. The German ambassadors seem to have nothing to do at Cambray but drink the emperor’s health. As for the ambassadors of Spain, one hears two masses a day, and the other superintends the company of comedians. The English ministers send several couriers to Champagne, and very few to London. Nobody expects to see your eminence; it is not apprehended that you will quit your royal palace in order to visit your pulpit. It would be a great mortification to us, as well as to you, if you were obliged to quit the ministry in order to turn apostle.

May gentlemen of deep design,

Who at the congress drink good wine,

Find means upon foundation sure,

The peace of Europe to secure,

May you your city love, but ne’er

Think it worth while to visit there.

I know you homilies can make,

In hand the bishop’s crosier take,

Can mass upon occasion say,

And in a voice sonorous pray.

Rather teach princes how to shine,

Prudence with lively wit combine;

Let Europe’s general voice proclaim

Your mighty deeds, resound your fame;

Blessed by all virtuous Frenchmen live,

Do not at Cambray blessings give.

Sometimes, my lord, remember a man who regrets nothing so much as not having it in his power to converse with your eminence as often as he could wish, and who considers the honour of your company as the greatest favour you can confer on him.

[1] This epistle was written in 1722. It has been printed several times, but never before from the original. Madame de Rupelmonde was a daughter of Marshal D’Alegre, wife of a Flemish nobleman, and mother of the Marquis of Rupelmonde, who was killed in Bavaria.

Cardinal de Fleury To M. de Voltaire.

Issi, November 14, 1740.

Sir: I have just received your second letter, and answer it without losing a moment, for fear the Marquis of Beauvau should have quitted Berlin. I cannot but approve of your journey thither; and you are attached to the King of Prussia by ties so just and so strong, that you cannot refuse him this mark of your respect and gratitude. The Queen of Sheba’s motive alone would have been sufficient to induce you to agree to it.

I did not know that the valuable present of “Anti-Machiavel,” which was made me by the Marchioness of Châtelet, came from you; it is the more dear to me upon that account, and I return you my hearty thanks. As I have little leisure to bestow upon my amusements, I have not hitherto been able to read above forty pages of it, and I shall endeavour to read it through in this place, which I improperly call my retreat, as there is too much perplexity and trouble in it to allow me much repose.

Whoever be the author of this work, if he is not a prince, he deserves to be one, and the small part of it which I have read is so wise, so reasonable, and contains such admirable principles, that he who composed it would deserve to govern all other men, if he had the courage to carry them into execution; if he was born a prince, he enters into a solemn engagement with the public. The Emperor Antoninus would never have acquired that immortal glory which he will preserve forever, if he had not by the justice of his government enforced the admirable system of morality, of which he had given such instructive lessons to all sovereigns.

You say so many obliging things of me, that I am afraid I should not give credit to them all; but they give me, however, high satisfaction, as they are at least tokens of your friendship. I should be greatly pleased if the King of Prussia could find in my conduct any conformity to his principles; for I assure you, I look upon them as the model of the most perfect and most glorious government.

I, unknown to myself, deviate into political reflections, and shall conclude, by assuring you that I will do my utmost to deserve the good opinion which his Prussian majesty has of me. The quality of prince, is in him superfluous; if he was only a private individual, everybody would think it an honour to be connected with him. I envy you that happiness, sir, and felicitate you upon it the more, as you are indebted for it only to your talents and your virtues.

M. de Voltaire’s Answer to Cardinal de Fleury.

Berlin, November 26, 1740.

My Lord: I received your letter of the fourteenth, which was conveyed to me by the Marquis of Beauvau. I have obeyed the orders which your eminence did not think proper to give me in express terms. I have shown your letter to the King of Prussia; he is the more sensible of your praises, as he deserves them, and he appears to me disposed to deserve those of all the nations of Europe. It were to be wished, for their happiness, or at least for that of a great part of them, that the King of France and the King of Prussia were friends. This concerns you; my business is to offer up my best wishes, and be always devoted to you with the most profound respect.

Cardinal Alberoni To M. de Voltaire.

Rome, February 10, 1735.

Sir: It was long before your life of the late King of Sweden came to my knowledge, which obliged me to defer returning you my thanks for that part of it which concerned me. Your prepossession in my favour has carried you a great way, since you have in your sublime style said more of me in two words, than Pliny has said of Trajan in his whole panegyric. Happy the princes who can find means to interest you in their exploits, your pen insures their immortality. With regard to myself, I assure you of the warmest sentiments of gratitude, and that no one living loves, esteems and honours you more than Cardinal Alberoni.

M. de Voltaire’s Answer.

My Lord: The letter with which your eminence has honoured me is as acceptable a record of my works as the esteem of Europe can be of your actions. I was not entitled to your thanks, my lord; I was only the organ of the public when I spoke of you. Liberty and truth, which have always guided my pen, secured me your suffrage. Those two characters are sure to please such a genius as yours. Whoever does not love them, may become a powerful, but can never be a great, man; I should be glad to have an opportunity of admiring from a nearer viewpoint him to whom I have done justice at a distance. I do not flatter myself that I shall ever be so happy as to see your eminence. But if Rome understands her interests enough even to desire to re-establish arts and commerce, and restore splendour to a country which was once mistress of the world, I hope I shall then write to you by a different title from that of your eminence, of whom I have the honour to subscribe myself with the most profound respect.

Business Letters.

In the correspondence between Voltaire and Abbé Moussinot we see the leading dramatic writer of his period as the sagacious man of affairs, interested in every detail affecting his position as capitalist, scientific investigator, and country gentleman. The abbé was the business man of the local clerics, with a shrewd judgment in financial matters and an eye to the main chance in picture-buying. He acted for Voltaire during eight years, with mutual satisfaction. The first letter, dated March, 1736, sets forth their relations:

“My DEAR ABBE: I love your strong-box a thousand times better than that of a notary; there is no one in the world whom I trust as I do you; you are as intelligent as you are virtuous. You were made to be the solicitor-general of the order of the Jansenists, for you know that they call their union ‘the Order’; it is their cant; every community, every society, has its cant. Consider, then, if you are willing to take charge of the funds of a man who is not devout, and to do from friendship for that undevout man what you do for your chapter as a duty. You will be able in this way to make some good bargains in buying pictures; you will borrow from me some of the money in your strong-box. My affairs, as you know, are very easy and very simple; you will be my superintendent wherever I may be myself; you will speak for me, and in your own name, to the Villars, to the Richelieus, to the d’Estaings, to the Guises, to the Guebriants, to the d’Auneuils, to the Lezeaux, and to other illustrious debtors of your friend. When a man speaks for his friend he asks justice; when it is I who solicit that justice, I have the air of asking a favour, and it is this that I wish to avoid. This is not all: you will act as my plenipotentiary, whether for my pensions payable by M. Paris-Duverney, by M. Tannevot, first clerk of the finances, or for the interest due me from the hôtel-de-Ville, from Arouet, my brother, as well as for the bonds and money which I have at different notaries. You will have, my dear abbé, carte blanche for all that which concerns me, and everything will be conducted in the greatest secrecy. Write me word if this charge is agreeable to you. Meanwhile, I pray you to send your frotteur to find a young man named Baculard d’Arnaud: he is a student in philosophy at the College of Harcourt; he lives in the Rue Mouffetard. Give him, I beg you, this little manuscript (the ‘Epistle upon Calumny’), and make him from me a little present of twelve francs. I entreat you not to neglect this small favour which I ask you; this manuscript will be sold for his advantage. I embrace you with all my heart; love me always, and, especially, let us bind the bonds of our friendship closer by mutual confidence and reciprocal services.”

Again in May he writes: “To punish you, my dear friend, for not having sent to find the young Baculard d’Arnaud, student in philosophy at the College of Harcourt, and living with M. Delacroix, Rue Mouffetard to punish you, I say, for not having given him the ‘Epistle upon Calumny’ and twelve francs, I condemn you to give him a louis d’or, and to exhort him from me to learn to write, which will contribute to his fortune. This is a little work of charity which, whether Christian or mundane, must not be neglected I expect news from you with impatience, and I embrace you with all my heart. I write to this young d’Arnaud. Instead of twenty-four francs, give him thirty livres when he comes to see you. I am going to seal my letter quick for fear that I augment the sum. Received thirty livres. Signed, Baculard d’Arnaud.” Here is a “Henriade” item: “Thirty-five thousand francs for tapestries of the ‘Henriade’! That is much, my dear treasurer. It would be necessary, before all, to know how much the tapestry of Don Quixote sold for; it would be necessary, especially before commencing that M. de Richelieu should pay me my fifty thousand francs. Let us suspend, then, every project of tapestry, and let M. Oudri do nothing without more ample information. Buy for me, my dear abbé, a little table which may serve at once as screen and writing-desk, and send it in my name to the house of Madame de Winterfield, Rue Platrière. Still another pleasure. There is a Chevalier de Mouhi, who lives at the Hotel Dauphin, Rue des Orties; this chevalier wishes to borrow of me a hundred pistoles, and I am very willing to lend them to him. Whether he comes to your house, or whether you go to his, I pray you to say to him that I take pleasure in obliging literary men when I can, but that I am actually very much embarrassed in my affairs; that nevertheless you will do all you can to find this money, and that you hope the reimbursement will be secured in such a way that there will be nothing to risk; after which you will have the goodness to inform me who this chevalier is, as well as the result of these preliminaries. Eighteen francs to the little d’Arnaud. Tell him I am sick and cannot write. Pardon all these trifles. I am a very tedious dabbler, but I love you with all my heart.”

Voltaire always drew a line between the legitimately expensive and the extravagant. See the shrewd mot on buying in the letter of November,

“Oudri, my dear abbé, appears to me expensive; but if he makes two sets of hangings, can we not have them a little cheaper? I might be able even to have three of them made. If M. de Richelieu pays me, it will be well for me to invest my money in that way. The countenance of Henry IV. and that of Gabrielle d’Estrées in tapestry will succeed very well. Good Frenchmen will wish to have some Gabrielles and Henrys, especially if the good Frenchmen are rich. We are not very rich ourselves just now; but the holy time of Christmas will give us, I hope, some consolation. Cannot Chevalier come to Cirey to execute under my own eyes designs from the ‘Henriade’? Does he know enough of his art for that? They speak well of him, but he has not yet sufficient reputation to be unteachable. It is said there is at Paris a man who draws portraits to be worn in rings in a perfect manner. I have seen a face of Louis XV. of his doing, which was an excellent likeness. Have the goodness, my dear abbé, to disinter this man. You will find it impertinent that the same hand should paint the king and poor me; but friendship wishes it, and I obey friendship. The Chevalier de Mouhi, then, will send twice a week to Cirey the gossip of Paris. Enjoin it upon him to be infinitely secret; give him a hundred crowns, and promise him a payment once a month, or every three months, as he prefers. I treat you, my dear friend, as I beg you will treat me. I should be glad to be so happy as to receive some orders from you.”

In October he writes: “I could wish, my dear and faithful treasurer, to have, under the greatest secrecy, some ready money deposited with a discreet and faithful notary, which he could place at interest for a time, and which, if necessary, I could get back without delay. The sum would be fifty thousand francs, and perhaps more. Are you not acquainted with a notary in whom you could confide? The whole would be in your name. I am very much discontented with M. Ferret; he has two excellent qualities for a public man, he is brutal and indiscreet… Have the goodness to give another louis d’or to d’Arnaud. Tell him then to have himself called simply d’Arnaud; that is a fine Jansenist name; Baculard is ridiculous.”

Voltaire had perfect confidence in the abbé’s discretion. “I find myself, my dear treasurer, in the situation of always having before me a large sum of money to dispose of. Your letters will be henceforth addressed to Madame d’Azilli, at Cirey. Put nothing in them too clearly which might reveal that it is I to whom you write. I find my obscurity convenient. I wish to have no correspondence with any one; I pretend to be ignored of all the world except you, whom I love with all my heart, and whom I beg very earnestly to find me a literary correspondent who will give me news with exactness, and whom you will leave in ignorance of my retreat.”

“The principal of the debt of M. de Richelieu is 46,417 livres; date, May 5, 1735.”

This bears date March, 1737. “I am very glad, my dear correspondent, that M. Berger thinks I am in England. I am there for all the world except you. Send, I pray you, a hundred louis d’or to M. the Marquis du Châtelet, who will bring them to me. Now, my dear abbé, are you willing that I should speak to you frankly? It is necessary for you to do me the favour of accepting every year a little honorarium, merely as a mark of my friendship. Let us not beat about the bush. You have a small salary from your canons; treat me as a chapter; take twice as much every year from your friend, the poet-philosopher, as your cloister gives you; this without prejudice to the gratitude which I shall always cherish. Arrange this and love me.”

Later: “I repeat to you, my tender friend, my urgent request not to speak of my affairs to any one, and especially to say that I am in England. I have the very strongest reasons for that. In the present critical situation of my affairs, it would be very imprudent for me to embark in the commerce with Pinega a large sum, which would be too long in yielding returns. Therefore, let us not invest in that commerce more than four or five thousand francs for our amusement; a like sum in pictures, which will amuse you still more. The paper of the farmers-general brings in six per cent, a year; it is the surest investment of money. Amuse yourself again in that. Buy some bonds. That merchandise will fall in a short time; at least, I think so; that is another honest recreation for a canon; and I leave to your intelligence everything mat relates to those amusements. Besides, let us put into the hands of M. Michel, whose probity and fortune you know, one-half of our ready money at five per cent., and not more; were it only for six months, that would produce something. In the matter of interest nothing must be neglected, and in investing our money we must always conform to the law of the prince. Let all that, like my other affairs, be a profound secret. Still eighteen francs to d’Arnaud, and two ‘Henriades.’ I see that I give you more trouble than all your chapter, but I shall not be so ungrateful.”

“M. the Abbé de Breteuil has come here. He is in quest of some engravings for his rooms; if I have still half a dozen pretty enough, you will do me, my dear friend, the favour to send them. You will have the goodness to send with them a word or two, in the way of a note, to the effect that, having recommended that the engravings of mine which are left should be presented to him, you have but these, and he is requested to accept them. Besides the two thousand four hundred francs which you are to give to the Marquis du Châtelet, it is necessary to give him fifty livres. It is necessary also, my dear abbé, to find a man who will give us at Cirey twice a week a letter of news. I ask a thousand pardons, my generous correspondent, for the tiresome details of my commissions, but you must have pity upon country people, by whom you are tenderly loved.”

Certain affairs have gone wrong. Writing in May, Voltaire shows his capacity for business. “You are going, then, to Rouen, my dear treasurer? See, I pray you, the Marquis de Lezeau. Speak to him of the poverty of our cash box. I am confident that you will induce him to pay; you have the gift of persuasion. It is, my dear abbé, of absolute necessity that I should know how it is that I have forgotten having given a receipt to M. the President d’Auneuil. It must be some one else who has given this receipt, and who has received the money for me; it is from the mouth of Demoulin that you can know whether this money has been received or not. Mesnil, the notary, delivered it; Demoulin ought to have received it. This man, who robbed me of twenty thousand francs, and who is an ingrate, could he have pilfered also that half year’s payment? It is necessary to address ourselves to those two individuals in order to know the truth; and if neither of them remember the facts it will be well that M. d’Auneuil should be informed that I know no more of the matter than they. In matters of interest and money we cannot be too careful and exact; we should foresee everything and guard against everything. M. de Richelieu owes only for one year; it is not proper to demand that year’s interest at a time when he is paying me forty-three thousand two hundred francs. I would not hinder him, however, from giving me some ready money, if he wishes to do so; but I shall be very content with a good assignment, as well for the two thousand nine hundred livres of arrears which I am still to receive from him as for the annuity of four thousand francs which he pays me every year. In that case he would be importuned no more, and our affairs would be more according to rule and easier to manage. You can, my dear abbé, send by the coach, in perfect safety, three hundred louis well packed, without saying what they are and without expense, provided the box be well and duly registered as containing valuables; that will suffice. Besides these three hundred louis, I must have a draft for two thousand four hundred francs; the receiver-general of Champagne will give you this draft for your money. Any banker will tell you the name and residence of the receiver-general. I am ashamed of all the trouble I give you, and I am obliged to avow, my dear friend, that you were made to manage greater affairs than the treasury of a chapter of Saint Merri and the revenue of a philosopher who embraces you with all his heart. In this world one is rarely what he ought to be.” The poet-philosopher becomes an employer of expert labour. “This man who has the secret of spinning brass is not the only one; but I believe that only a little of it can be spun, and that it easily breaks. Sound this man of brass; we might be able to have him here, and give him a chamber, a laboratory, his board, and a salary of a hundred crowns. It would be in his power to make some experiments, and to try and make steel, which assuredly is much easier than to make gold. If he has the misfortune to seek the philosopher’s stone, I am not surprised that from six thousand francs a year he is reduced to nothing. A philosopher who has six thousand francs a year has the philosopher’s stone. That stone brings us, very naturally, to speak of affairs of interest. Here is the certificate which you ask for. I repeat to you my prayers that M. de Guise, M. de Lezeau, and others may be written to without delay; that you see M. Paris-Duverney, and let him know that he will give me great pleasure if he permits me to enjoy the pension from the queen and from the royal treasury, of which I am in very great need, and for which I shall be much obliged. Be willing also, my dear abbé, to arrange, in some amiable way, my annuity, my capital overdue, and the arrears, with the steward of M. de Richelieu; the whole without betraying an unbecoming distrust. That should have been done more than a month ago. An assurance of regular payment would spare the duke disagreeable details, would deliver his steward from great embarrassment, would spare you, my dear friend, many useless steps, many fatiguing and unfruitful labours. We shall say more of this another time, for I am afraid of forgetting to ask you for a very good air-pump, which is hard to find; a good reflecting telescope, which is at least as rare; the volumes of pieces which have been crowned at the Academy. Such are the learned things which my little learned mind has very urgent need of. I have, my dear abbé, neither the time nor the strength to continue, nor even to thank you for the chemist whom you sent me. As yet, I have scarcely seen him, except at mass; he loves solitude; he ought to be content. I shall not be able to work with him in chemical matters until an apartment which I am building is finished; till then we must each of us study apart, and you must love me always.”

“It is necessary, my dear friend, to ask, to ask again, to press, to see, to importune, and not persecute my debtors for my annuities and arrears. A letter costs nothing; two are only a very trifling embarrassment, and serve the purpose that a debtor cannot complain if I am obliged to avail myself of legal means of redress. After two letters to the farmers at an interval of a month, and a little word of excuse to the masters, it will be necessary to issue formal demands to the farmers of the lands upon which my annuities are secured. I will send you the list of them. For the rest of my life it will be with the farmers that I shall have to do. That will be a much better plan. Pinga says everywhere that he is selling my effects, and that has a much worse effect than all I sell. I flatter myself, my dear friend, that you will keep much better the.secret of all my affairs. You have, God be thanked, all the good qualities.”

“Great thanks, my dear abbé, for the present given to La Mare, and the more because it is the last which my affairs permit me to accord him. If ever he comes to importune you, do not let him take up your time. Reply that you have nothing to do with my business; that cuts the matter short. Ascertain if it is true that this little gentleman, whom I have overwhelmed with benefits, rails also against me. Speak to Demoulin gently. He should indeed blush at his conduct toward me; he has deprived me of twenty thousand francs, and wishes to dishonour me. In losing twenty thousand francs I need not acquire an enemy. Another request, my dear abbé. A friend, who asks of me an inviolable secrecy, charges me to ascertain what is the subject of the prize essay announced this year by the Academy of Sciences. I know no man more secret than you: it will be you, then, my dear friend, who will render us this service. If I were to write to some member of the Academy, he would think, perhaps, that I wished to compete for the prize; that would suit neither my age nor my defective knowledge.”

Here we have the experimental philosopher in his laboratory. “Arm yourself with courage, my dear and amiable agent, for to-day I am going to be exceedingly troublesome. Here is a learned negotiation, in which it is necessary, if you please, that you succeed, and that I be not found out. A visit to M. de Fontenelle, and a long explanation upon what is understood by the propagation of fire. Disputants, among whom I sometimes take a fancy to thrust myself, discuss the question whether fire has or has not weight. M. Lemeri, whose ‘Chemistry’ you sent me, asserts that, after having calcined twenty pounds of lead, he found it increased in weight five pounds; he does not say whether he weighed the earthen vessel in which the calcination was made, to ascertain if any carbon had joined itself to the lead; he supposes simply, or rather boldly, that the lead has absorbed some particles of fire, which have augmented its weight. Five- pounds of fire! Five pounds of light! That is admirable, and so admirable that I do not believe it. Other scientific men have made experiments with a view to ascertain the weight of fire. They have put filings of copper and filings of tin into glass retorts hermetically sealed; they have calcined these filings, and they have found them increased in weight: an ounce of copper has acquired forty-nine grains, and an ounce of tin four grains. Antimony calcined by the rays of the sun, by means of the burning-glass, has also increased in weight in the hands of the chemist, Homberg. I wish that all those statements may be true; I wish that the matter in which the metals were held during calcination may not have contributed to increase the weight of those metals; but I who speak to you have weighed more than a thousand pounds of red-hot iron, and I have afterward weighed it cold. I have not found a grain of difference. Now it would be very curious that twenty pounds of lead, calcined, should gain five pounds in weight, and that a thousand pounds of red-hot iron should not weigh one grain the heavier. Such, my dear abbé, are the difficulties which for a month past have wearied the head of your friend, little accustomed to physical investigations, and rendered him uncertain in chemistry, just as other difficulties of a different order render him shaky upon some points little important of scholastic theology. In every science we seek the truth in good faith, and when we think we have found it, we are often embracing only an error. Now for the favour which I ask of you. Go to your neighbour, M. Geoffroy, apothecary to the Academy of Sciences; get into conversation with him by means of half a pound of quinquina, which you will buy and send to me. Ask him respecting the experiments of Lemeri, of Homberg, and mine. You are a very skilful negotiator; you will easily find out what M. Geoffroy thinks of all that, and you will tell me what he says the whole without committing me. I am, as you see, my dear friend, much occupied with physical matters; but I do not forget that superfluity which they name the necessary. I hope that Hebert will not delay to finish it, and that he will spare nothing in rendering it elegant and magnificent.”

A month later: “Are you willing, my dear friend, to pay a visit, long or short as you like, to M. Boulduc, a learned chemist? I am informed that he has made some experiments which tend to prove that fire does not augment the weight of bodies! The point is to have a conversation with him on that subject. There is also a M. Grosse, who lives in the same building. He is also a chemist, very intelligent and very laborious. I pray you to ask both of these gentlemen what they think of the experiments of the lead calcined by ordinary fire, and of the metals calcined by the rays of the sun concentrated through the burning-glass. They will feel it a pleasure to speak to you, to instruct you, and you will send me a statement of their philosophic instructions. This, my dear correspondent, is a commission much more amusing than to arrange a composition with the creditors of the Prince de Guise. That prince has always concealed from me the appointment of a commission for the liquidation of his debts. A life annuity ought to be sacred; he owes me three years’ income. A commission established by the king is not established for the purpose of frustrating the creditors. Life annuities ought certainly to be expected from the operation of the laws most favourable to debtors of dishonest intentions. Speak of this, I pray you, to M. de Machault; and after having represented to him my right and the injury which I suffer, you will act as he will direct. It is essential for us to avail ourselves of legal methods, and it is proper to do so with all the consideration possible. Do not trust the positive promise of the Prince de Guise. The positive promises of princes are trifles, and his are worse.”

Once more, next day’s postscript, June 30.— “Another little visit, my dear friend, to M. Geoffrey. Send him back, by means of some ounces of quinquina, or of senna, or of manna, or of anything else which you may be pleased to buy for your own health or for mine send him back, I tell you, to the chapter of lead and the regulus of antimony increased in weight by calcination. He has told you, and it is true, that those substances lose the increase of weight after becoming cold again; but that is not enough. It is necessary to know if that weight is lost when the calcined body becomes simply cold again, or if it is lost when the calcined body has been afterward melted. Lemeri, who reports that twenty pounds of calcined lead weigh twenty-five pounds, adds that this lead re-melted only weighs nineteen pounds. MM. Duclos and Homberg report that the regulus of iron and that of antimony calcined by the burning-glass increased in weight; but that upon being melted afterward by the same glass they lost both the weight which they had acquired and a little of their own. It is then not after having become cold that these bodies lose the weight added to their substance by the action of the fire. It would be necessary also to know if M. Geoffroy thinks that the igneous matter alone has caused this increase of weight; if the iron ladle with which they stirred during the operation, or if the vessel which contained the metal, did not increase the weight of that metal by transfusing into it some of its own substance. Ascertain, my dear friend, the opinion of the apothecary upon all these points, and send it to me quickly. You are very capable of making this chemist talk, and all the chemists of the Academy, and of understanding them well. I count upon your friendship and discretion.”

Note the admirable tact of these instructions on rather dry business. “It is a pleasure, my dear friend, to give you learned commissions, so well do you acquit yourself of them. No one could render service better or more promptly. I have just performed the experiment upon iron which the learned charcoal-burner, M. Grosse, advises. I weighed a piece of two pounds, which I made red-hot upon a tile in the open air. I weighed it red, I weighed it cold; it always weighed the same. I have been weighing every day lately, iron and melted iron, flaming hot; I have weighed from two pounds to a thousand. So far from finding the weight of red-hot iron greater, I have found it much smaller, which I attribute to the furnace, prodigiously hot, which consumed some particles of iron. It is this which I pray you to communicate to M. Grosse when you see him; visit, then, promptly this gnome, and, with your usual precaution, consult him anew. He is a man well informed upon these subjects. Ascertain, then:

1, if he believes that fire has weight;

2, if the experiments made by M. Homberg and others ought to prevail over that of the iron red and iron cooled, which always weigh the same. We are surrounded, my dear abbé, with uncertainties of all possible kinds. The least truth gives us infinite pains to discover.

3. Ask him if the burning-glass of the Palais-Royal has the same effect upon matter exposed to the air as in the vacuum of the air-pump. Upon this point you must make him talk a long time. Ask him the effect of the rays of the sun in that vacuum upon gunpowder, upon iron, upon liquors, upon metals, and make a little note of all the answers of this learned man. 4. Ask him if the phosphorus of Boyle, the burning phosphorus, takes fire in a vacuum. Finally, ask if he has seen any good Persian naphtha, and if it is true that this naphtha burns in water. There you are, my dear abbé, a finished natural philosopher. I pester you terribly, for I still add that I am in a hurry for this information. I abuse your complaisance excessively, but in atonement I love you excessively.”

Again; “Every day, my dear friend, brings you, then, new importunity from me. Tell me, will it not be abusing your patience to pray you to see M. Grosse again, and to have with that celebrated chemist a new scientific conversation? See him, then, and have the goodness to ask that learned charcoal-burner if he has ever performed the experiment of plunging his thermometer in spirits of wine, in spirits of nitre, to see if the mercury rises in those liquors. I am, my dear abbé, always ashamed of my importunities; but spare neither carriages nor messengers, and always transact the affairs of your friend entirely at your ease.”

October brings a change to finance. “Is M. de Brézé quite solid? What do you think of it, my prudent friend? This article of interest having been maturely examined, take twenty thousand francs from M. Michel and give them to M. Brézé, at ten per cent. This investment will be the more agreeable, as we shall be paid easily and regularly upon the proceeds of his houses in Paris. Arrange this affair for the best; and, once arranged, if the estate of Spoix can be bought for fifty thousand francs, we shall find the money toward the month of April. We shall sell some bonds. We shall borrow at five per cent., which will not be difficult either to you or to me. Life is short; Solomon tells us we must enjoy it; I think to enjoy, and for that reason I feel within me a grand vocation to be gardener, ploughman, and vine-dresser. Perhaps even I shall succeed better in planting trees, in digging the earth, and in making it fruitful than in composing tragedies, experimenting in chemistry, writing epic poems, and other sublime follies which make implacable foes. Give ‘L’Enfant Prodigue’ (The Prodigal) to Prault for fifty louis d’or six hundred francs down, and a note for the other six hundred francs, payable when this unhappy Enfant shall see the light. This money will be employed in some good work. I do not rebel against my destiny, which is to have a little glory and some hisses.”

Here is a letter which, as to style, none but Voltaire could have written. It is dated November, I 737— “Your patience, my dear abbé, is going to be put to a severe proof; I tremble lest you may be unable to sustain it. I hope everything from your friendship. Affairs temporal, affairs spiritual, these are the two great subjects of the long babble with which I am about to trouble you. M. de Lezeau owes me three years; it is necessary to press him without too much importunity. A letter to the Prince de Guise; that costs nothing, and advances matters. The Villars and the d’Auneuils owe two years; it is necessary politely and nicely to remonstrate with those gentlemen touching their duties to their creditors. It is necessary also to finish with M. de Richelieu, and to consent to what he wishes. I should have some great objections to make upon what he proposes; but I love better a conclusion than an objection. Conclude, then, my dear friend; I trust myself blindly to your discretion, which is always very useful to me. Prault ought to. give fifty francs to monsieur, your brother. I wish him to do so. It is a trifling bonus, a bagatelle, which is part of my bargain; and when that bagatelle shall be paid, monsieur, your brother, will scold for me the negligent Prault, who in the parcels of books which I order always makes delays that try my patience cruelly; nothing that he sends me arrives at the time appointed. Monsieur, your brother, will then inquire of that book-seller, or of any other that he wishes, for a Puffendorf; for the chemistry of Boerhaave, the most complete edition; for a ‘Letter upon the Divisibility of Matter’ published by Jomvert; for the ‘Index of the Thirty-First Volume of the History of the Academy of Sciences’; for Marriotte upon the ‘Nature of the Air’; the same author upon ‘Cold and Heat’; for Boyle ‘De Ratione inter Ignem ei Flammam,’ difficult to find; that is the affair of monsieur, your brother. Other commissions: two reams of foolscap, the same of letter paper the whole of Holland, twelve sticks of Spanish sealing-wax for spirits of wine; a Copernican sphere; a burning-glass of the largest size; my engravings of the Luxembourg; two globes mounted; two thermometers; two barometers (the longest are the best); two scales, well graduated; some crucibles; some retorts. In making purchases, my friend, always prefer the handsome and excellent, if a little dear, to a common article less costly.

“So much for the literary man who seeks to instruct himself after the Fontenelles, the Boyles, the Boerhaaves, and other learned men. What follows is for the material man, who digests very ill, who has need to take, as they tell him, plenty of exercise; and who beside this need, of necessity has also some other needs of society. I pray you, in consequence, to buy for him a good fowling-piece; a pretty game-bag with appurtenances; a gun-hammer; a draw-charge; large diamond shoe-buckles; other diamond garter-buckles; twenty pounds of hair powder; ten pounds of smelling powder; a bottle of essence of jasmin; two enormous pots of orange pomatum; two powder puffs; a very good knife; three fine sponges; three dusters; four bundles of quills; two pairs of toilet pincers, very nice; a pair of very good pocket scissors; two floor brushes; finally, three pairs of slippers, well furred; and, besides I remember nothing more. Of all these make a parcel; two, if necessary; three, even, if necessary: your packer is excellent. Send the whole by way of Joinville; not to my address, for I am in England I beg you to remember that but to the address of Madame de Champbonin. All that costs money, you will tell me; and where to get the money? Where you wish, my dear abbé. We have some bonds; we can convert them. We should never neglect anything for our pleasure, since life is short. I shall be entirely yours during that short life.”

This December letter gives a glimpse of Voltaire’s friendlier relations with the booksellers. “Instead of money which Prault owes me, my dear abbé, I have ordered some books of him. You tell me he is dissatisfied; I am surprised at it; he ought to know that an author never deprives himself of the right of foreign editions. As soon as a book is printed at Paris with privilege, the publishers of Holland seize it, and the first who prints it has the exclusive privilege in that country; and to have this right of printing it first it suffices to announce the work in the gazettes. It is an established usage, which holds the place of law. Now, when I wish to favour a publisher in Holland, I advise him of the work which I am printing in France, and I endeavour to let him have the first copy, in order that he may get beforehand with the trade. I have then promised a Holland publisher that I will immediately send him a copy of the work in question, and I have promised him this little favour to indemnify him for the delay in finishing the elements of the philosophy of Newton, which he began to print nearly a year ago. The point is to hurry on Prault, in order at the same time to hasten the little advantage which will indemnify the Holland publisher, for whom I have an affection, and who is a very honest man. M. Prault knows very well that this is the point. His privilege is for France, and not for Holland. He has never done business except upon this footing, and on condition that the work should be printed at Paris and at Amsterdam simultaneously. To prevent all difficulty, send him this note, and let him put in it his reply. These are the facts, and I ask your pardon for this verbiage. Prault still owes fifty francs to monsieur, your brother; I wish him to pay them. This is a new bonus which I beg your brother to accept. I pray him also to send me the old tragedy of ‘Cresphonte,’ and all the old books which I have noted upon the catalogue which he sent me.”

This letter, also of December, is dated as from England. “I am very glad, my dear natural philosopher, that M. de Fontenelle has explained himself touching the propagation of fire. As the light of the sun is the most powerful fire we know, it was natural to have some ideas a little clear upon that elementary fire. It was the affair of a philosopher; the rest is a blacksmith’s business. I am in the midst of forges, and the subject suits me well enough. I hope that Bronod will explain himself as clearly respecting the fifty louis of which you speak as M. de Fontenelle upon light. If Bronod does not pay this money, I believe it will be necessary to sell a bond. I see no great harm in that; one never loses his dividend. It is true that the price varies toward the time of their payment, that is to say, every six months; but that amounts to little; and, besides, it is better to sacrifice some pistoles than give you the trouble of calling again upon M. Bronod. The three louis which you gave finally to M. Robert were doubtless for the advances he has made. I cannot imagine that a solicitor has taken it into his head to incur expense for me, since I have had no law business, unless I have had a suit without knowing it. M. Michel wishes, then, to keep my money until the first of March? Be it so. Let him have it; it will be always two months’ interest gained. Let us not disdain such pickings. Make, I pray you, if you think it necessary, a little present to the steward of M. de Richelieu; but before doing so we must have good security for my arrears, and security that henceforth I receive regularly four thousand francs a year. A louis d’or to d’Arnaud, without telling him either where I am or what I am doing; neither him nor any one else. I am at Cirey for you alone, and in Cochin China for all the Parisians; or, which will be more probable, confined in some province of England.”

Highly amusing is this on his own portrait, a face in every aspect as striking as his pen-work. “The picture of myself drawn in pastel, my dear abbé, is horrible and wretched, whatever the engraver thinks; little do I care. I shall not take the part of my countenance, which I do not know too well; but, my dear friend, can they not make me less ugly? I leave that to your care; especially, do not speak of it to Madame du Châtelet. Let us come to the affair of this lady. See, as soon as possible, Hebert, and recommend to him the greatest diligence. You have given him fifty louis; give him fifty more if he demands them, and assure him that at the instant of delivery the whole shall be exactly paid. If, in accordance with my last letter, you have sold a bond, you have done well; if you have not sold one, still you have done well. I approve you in everything, because all that you do is always well done, and you deserve that I thank you and that I embrace you heartily.”

This bears date July, 1740. “I received your letter of the 9th, in which you inform me of the general bankruptcy of the Receiver-General named Michel. A sufficiently large portion of my property is involved 40,000 francs. The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord. To suffer my ills in patience has been my lot for forty years; and one can submit to Providence without being a devotee. I confess that I did not expect this failure, and I do not understand how a receiver-general of the finances of his Most Christian Majesty, a very rich man, too, could fail so awkwardly, unless it is because he wished to be richer. In that case, M. Michel is doubly wrong. I could find it in my heart to cry:

Michel, an nom de l’Eternel,

Met jadis le diable en dérouté;

Mais après cette banqueroute,

Que le diable emporte Michel.

In God’s name, good St. Michael

Once made the devil flee;

But after this smash, Michael,

May the devil fly off with thee!

“But this would be a poor jest, and I do not wish to make light either of M. Michel’s losses or of my own. Nevertheless, my dear abbé, you will find the result to be that M. Michel’s children will remain very rich, very well placed… Have the goodness to speak to Michel’s cashier; endeavour to get from him how we should proceed so as not to lose all… Good-night; I embrace you with all my soul. Console yourself for the rout of Michel; your friendship consoles me for my loss.” V.

December, 1737: “You speak to me, my dear abbé, of a good chemist, and I hear you with pleasure. Then you propose that I should take him into my service; I ask nothing better. He will enjoy here complete liberty, be not ill lodged, be well nourished, have great convenience for cultivating at his ease his talent as a chemist; but it is indispensable that he should know how to say mass on Sundays and festivals in the chapel of the chateau. This mass is a condition without which I could not engage him. I will give him a hundred crowns [écus] a year, but I can do nothing more. He must also be informed that we take our meals very rarely with the Marquise du Châtelet, whose mealtimes are not very regular; but there is a table for the Count du Châtelet, her son, and his tutor, a man of understanding, served regularly at noon and at eight in the evening. M. du Châtelet, the elder, often eats at that table, and occasionally we all sup together. Besides, we enjoy here perfect liberty. For the present we can only give him a chamber with an antechamber. If he accepts my propositions, he can come and bring all his apparatus with him. If he is in need of money you can advance him a quarter, on condition that he starts at once. If he delays his departure, do not delay, my dear treasurer, to send me some money by the coach. Instead of two hundred and fifty louis, send boldly three hundred of them, with the books and the bagatelles I have asked for. For the rest, my dear friend, I take it for granted that your chemist is a man of sense, since you propose him. Tell me his name, for, really, I must know how he calls himself. If he makes Fahrenheit thermometers, he will make some here, and render service to natural philosophy. Are those thermometers of the same scale as Reaumur’s? These instruments do not accord unless they sound the same octave.”

Some English Letters

Voltaire’s “English Letters” appear in another volume. He quickly learned to speak and write the language with remarkable fluency. His first efforts were necessarily crude, and we may indulge a smile at this early specimen of English composition without disrespect to the writer. The letter appears to have found its way into the columns of an English provincial paper in 1824, whence it was rescued in 1868 by Notes and Queries. It must have been written within a few months of his arrival in England, in May, 1726.

“Sir, i wish you good health, a quick sale of yr burgundy, much latin, and greeke to one of yr children, much Law, much of cooke and littjeton, to the other, quiet and joy to mistress brinsden, money to all. when you’ll drink yr burgundy with mr furneze, pray tell him i’ll never forget his favours.

“But dear John be so kind as to let me know how does my lady Bollingbroke, as to my lord i left him so well i dont doubt he is so still, but i am very uneasie about my lady. If she might have as much health as she has spirit & witt, Sure she would be the Strongest body in england. Pray dear sr write me Something of her, of my lord, and of you. direct yr letter by the penny post at mr Cavalier, Belitery square by the R Exchange, i am sincerely & heartily yr most humble most obedient rambling friend

VOLTAIRE.

“John Brinsden, esq.

durham’s yard

by charing cross.”

How thoroughly Voltaire had mastered the English tongue is shown in these letters to his old friend and host, Sir Everard Falkener, of London, who had been appointed ambassador to the Sublime Porte:

Dated July 27, 1751: “Dear Sir: Fortune that hurries us to and fro in this transient world, attached you to a great prince, and carried me to the court of a great king. But, in these various tossings, my head will never prove giddy enough to forget your friendship. I hope you preserve some kindness for me, and I dare rely upon your good heart. I must tell you I have written a History of Louis XIV. You may presume it is written with truth, and not without liberty or freedom. I have been obliged to print it in Berlin at my own expense. I presume four or five hundred copies could sell off well in your country; the two things I have at heart, truth and liberty, being still dear to your countrymen, raise in me that expectation. I dare apply, my dear sir, to your kindness and friendship of old. You may perhaps recommend this business to some honest man, and even to a bookseller, who would be honest enough to merit your favour. I would direct the cargo to him, and he should take a reasonable salary for his trouble. If I can by your favour find any such man, I shall be most obliged to you. I hope you are a happy husband and a happy father, as you are a worthy Englishman.”

This and the letters which follow appear to have had a good effect, as a subscription edition of Voltaire’s works was duly announced. He strenuously objected to the publication without his revision.

Dated January 27, 1752: “My ‘Louis XIV.’ is on the Elbe, about a month ago. I don’t know whether the grand monarch has yet put to sea, to invade Great Britain. But booksellers are greater politicians than Louis; and I think it is very likely they have got the start of me, by sending my book to London by the way of Rotterdam, while my bale of printed tales is on the Elbe; and so they will reap all the benefit of my labours, according to the noble way of the world. My book is prohibited among my dear countrymen, because I have spoken the truth; and the delays of cargoes, and the jarring of winds, hinder it from pursuing its journey to England. So, I have to fight with, or against the sea, and earth, and hell, for booksellers are the hell of writers. Be what it will, receive, my dear sir, my cargo of printed sheets, when wind and tide will permit. Do what you please with them; I am resigned. I had rather be read than be sold; truth is above trade, and reputation above money!” March 27: “My dear and beneficent friend, I send to you, by the way of Hamburg, two enormous bales of the scribbling trade. I direct them to our envoy at Hamburg, who will dispatch them to you, and put my wares to sea, instead of throwing them into the fire; which might be the case in France, or at Rome. My dear friend, I have recourse to your free and generous soul. Some French, good patriots, who have read the book, raise a noble clamour against me, for having praised Marlborough and Eugene; and some good churchmen damn me for having turned a little into ridicule our jansenisme and molinisme. If our prejudiced people are fools, booksellers and printers or book-jobbers are rogues. I am like to be damned in France, and cheated by the Dutch; the old German honesty is gone. Booksellers of all religions are the same. I shall lose all the fruits of my labours and expenses; but I rely on your kindness. You may cause some books to be bound, and choose an honest man, who will give them to the chief-readers of your nation. I entreat you to present His Royal Highness with one of these volumes, and to give some exemplaires or copies to those of your friends you will think fit. The bookseller you will choose may do what he pleases with the remainder, and sell them as best as he can, provided he sells them not before Easter; it is all I require of him.”

The next is dated November 28: “I hope, my dear and worthy friend, my worthy Englishman, you have received my Lord Bolingbroke’s vindication against priests, whom I have hated, hate, and I shall hate till doomsday. You will receive, my dear sir, in a very short time, as exemplaire of ‘Louis XIV.,’ a new edition, more accurate and correct a great deal, more copious and curious. I desire you would be so kind as to answer two letters which I wrote to you long ago. Let me not be altogether in the dark about the good or bad success of my book in England. Two editions of it have been published this year in Europe, and two new ones are just now come out. But your approbation would flatter me more than all that eagerness of the book-mongers. Tully relied more on the testimony of Cato than on the huzzas of the multitude. If you have any news of my book’s fate, let me know something of it after a whole year. If you have given the volumes to a bookseller, be so good as to tell me whether this bookseller has anything to remit to me, or not.”

January 16, 1753: “I have reaped benefit enough, since I have pleased you, and not displeased your nation. I return you my most tender thanks. I hope to come over myself, in order to print my true works, and to be buried in the land of freedom. I require no subscription; I desire no benefit. If my. works are neatly printed, and cheaply sold, I am satisfied.”

February 1, 1754: “I have written to you already, and sent my letter to Sir Hanbury Williams, the British envoy at the court of Dresden. But I could not tell you enough about the desire I have to see England again before my death. I did inform you of my desire to print my works in London, without benefit, without subscription, and merely in order to give a true edition of the works of a Frenchman, who thinks like a Briton. I send this letter to Dresden. I must tell you, my dear sir, that I have taken the liberty to draw upon you for the ninety-four pounds. I return you again ninety-four thousand thanks.”

Letters on his Plays

Voltaire’s commentaries on his plays will be found in the volumes containing the dramatic works and in various papers among the essays and short studies. These passages, from his letters to his friends, Cideville and Formont, in 1732, refer to the tragedy “Zaire,” on which he was then engaged:

“This play will be made for the heart, as much as ‘Eriphile’ was for the imagination. The scene is to be laid in a very singular place, and the action will pass between Turks and Christians. I shall depict their manners to the utmost of my ability, and I shall try to throw into the work all that.the Christian religion has of most pathetic and most interesting, and all that love knows of most tender and cruel. Here is work for six months.”

“Every one here reproaches me that I do not put more love into my pieces. There shall be love enough this time I swear to you, and not gallantry either. My desire is that there may be nothing so Turkish, so Christian, so amorous, so tender, so infuriate, as that which I am now putting into verse for the pleasure of the public. I have the honour already to have done an act of it. Either I am much deceived, or this will be the most peculiar piece we have upon our stage. The names of Montmorency, of Saint Louis, of Saladin, of Jesus, of Mahomet, will be in it. There will be mention of the Seine and of Jordan, of Paris and of Jerusalem. We shall love, we shall baptize, we shall kill, and I will send you the outline as soon as it is done… Don’t ask me for news of the parliament. I know, and wish to know, only les belles-lettres”

June 25: “Hearty thanks, my dear friend, for the good advice you give me upon the plan of a tragedy; but it came too late. The tragedy was done. It cost me but twenty-two days. Never have I worked with such swiftness. The subject drew me on, and the piece made itself… At present I am having it copied; as soon as I have a copy ready, it shall start for Rouen, and go to Messieurs de Formont and Cideville. Scarcely had I written the last verse of my Turco-Christian piece than I took up ‘Eriphile’ again.”

June 27: “A man just finishing a new tragedy has not time to write long letters, my amiable Cideville; but every scene of the piece was a letter which I wrote to you, and I said to myself continually, ‘Will my tender and susceptible friend Cideville approve this situation or this sentiment? Shall I make him shed tears?’ At length, after having rapidly written my work, in order the sooner to send it to you, I read it to the actors.”

August 25: “My dear and amiable critics, I wish that you could be witnesses of the success of ‘Zaire’; you would see that your advice was not useless, and that there was very little of it which I did not profit by. Permit me, my dear Cideville, to express to you freely the pleasure I enjoy in seeing the success of a work which you approved. My satisfaction increases in communicating it to you. Never piece was so well played as ‘Zaire’ at the fourth representation. I wished you there; you would have seen that the public did not hate your friend. I appeared in a box, and the whole pit clapped me. I blushed, I hid myself; but I should be a hypocrite if I did not confess to you that I was sensibly touched. It is sweet not to be without honour in one’s own country: I am sure you will love me the more for the avowal. But, messieurs, send me back ‘Eriphile,’ which I cannot do without, and which is going to be played at Fontainebleau. Mon Dieu! what a thing it is to choose an interesting subject! ‘Eriphile’ is far better written than ‘Zaire’; but all the ornaments, all the spirit and all the force of poetry are not worth so people say one touch of sentiment.”

By his tragedies, poems in various moods, a comedy, and general repute as a wit, Voltaire had established his fame before the close of 1725. He was a favourite at court, a circumstance he turned to good account, and received a modest pension. With success such as this it might be supposed that a man but little past thirty would have been contented, if not completely happy. His letters at this time show that the courtier’s life was not really congenial. Parton selects a few passages from the correspondence, dated just before the marriage of Louis XV.

“Every one here pays court to Madame de Beseuval, who is a distant relation of the queen. This lady, who has some esprit, receives with much modesty the marks of baseness which are given her. I saw her yesterday at the house of Marshal de Villars. Some one asked her what relation she was to the queen. She replied that queens have no relations. These nuptials of Louis XV. are an injury to poor Voltaire. They talk of not paying the pensions, and even of not preserving them; but in recompense a new tax is to be imposed, to buy laces and fabrics for Mademoiselle Leczinska. This is like the marriage of the sun, which made the frogs murmur. I have been but three days at Versailles, and already I wish myself out of it.”

From Fontainebleau, September 17, after the marriage: “Two noblemen died to-night. Assuredly, both of them took their time ill; for in the midst of all the hullabaloo of the king’s marriage, their deaths made not the least sensation… Every one here is enchanted with the queen’s goodness and politeness. The first thing she did after her marriage was to distribute among the princesses and ladies of the palace all the magnificent trifles which they call her casket, consisting of jewels of every kind except diamonds. When she saw the casket wherein they were placed she said, This is the first time in my life that I have been able to make presents.’ She had on a little rouge on her wedding-day as much as was necessary to keep her from looking pale. She fainted a moment in the chapel, but only for form’s sake. There was comedy the same day. I had prepared a little divertissement, which M. de Mortemart [first gentleman] was not willing to have executed. They gave in its place ‘Amphitryon’ and Molière’s ‘Le Médecin Malgré Lui,’ which did not seem too suitable. After supper there were fireworks of very little ingenuity or variety… For the rest, there is a confusion here, a pressure, a tumult, that are frightful. During these first days of hubbub I shall avoid having myself presented to the queen. I shall wait until the crowd has subsided, and her majesty has recovered a little from the bewilderment caused by all this sabbat. Then I shall try to have ‘Oedipe’ and ‘Mariamne’ played before her. I shall dedicate both to her; and she has already sent me word that she would be very willing I should take that liberty. The King and Queen of Poland for here we no more recognize King Augustus have sent to ask me for the poem of ‘Henry IV.,’ which the queen has already heard spoken of with eulogium. But nothing must be pressed.”

Writing to Madame de Bernières on October 8, he says: “I have not a moment to myself. We have had to perform ‘Oedipe’ ‘Mariamne,’ and ‘L’Indiscret.’ I have been some time at Belebat with Madame de Prie. Besides that, I have been almost always in agitation, cursing the life of a courtier, vainly chasing a little good fortune which seemed to present itself to me, and which fled as soon as I thought I had it; in ill-humour, and not daring to show it; seeing many ridiculous things, and not daring to speak of them; not ill with the queen; much in favour with Madame de Prie and all that doing nothing for me, except making me lose my time and keeping me from you… Oh, madame, I am not in my element here. Have pity upon a poor man who has abandoned his country for a foreign land. Insensate that I am! In two days I set out to see King Stanislaus; for there is no folly of which I am incapable.”

To his friend Thieriot, a week later: “I have had the folly to abandon my talents and my friends for the illusions of the court, for expectations purely imaginary… I have been very well received here by the queen. She has shed tears at the performance of ‘Mariamne,’ and she has laughed at ‘L’Indiscret’ She speaks to me frequently; she calls me ‘My poor Voltaire.’ A fool would be content with all that; but unfortunately I have sense enough to feel that praise is of small account, that the role of a poet at court has always something in it a little ridiculous, and that it is not permitted to any one to be in this country of ours without some kind of status. Every day they give me hopes, which yield me little nourishment. You would hardly believe, my dear Thieriot, how tired I am of my court life. Henry IV. is very foolishly sacrificed to the court of Louis XV. I mourn the moments which I take away from him. The poor child already ought to have appeared in quarto, on fine paper, with a fair margin and handsome type. That will surely be done this winter, whatever happens. Epic poetry is my forte, or I am much deceived All the poets in the world, I believe, have come together at Fontainebleau. The queen is every day assassinated with Pindaric odes, sonnets, epistles, and marriage songs. I imagine she takes the poets for the court fools; and if so she is very right, for it is a great folly for a man of letters to be here, where he neither gives nor receives pleasure.”

The fluctuating relations between Frederick the Great and Voltaire have been described. Here are one or two letters written in the first flush of enthusiasm. This is to his friend Count d’Argental, dated September, 1750:

“I find a port after thirty years of storms. I find the protection of a king, the conversation of a philosopher, the agreeable qualities of an amiable man, all united in one who for sixteen years has wished to console me for my misfortunes, and put me in security against my enemies. Everything is to be feared for me in Paris as long as I live, notwithstanding my places and the goodness even of the king. Here, I am sure of a destiny forever tranquil. If one can be sure of anything, it is of the character of the King of Prussia. I was formerly much put out with him on account of a French officer, condemned cruelly by the king’s father, whose pardon I had asked. I did not know that this favour had been accorded. The King of Prussia does very noble actions without notifying his people. He has just sent fifty thousand francs in a very pretty little casket to an old lady of the court, whom his father had condemned to a punishment entirely in the Turkish style. This ancient despotic wrong of the late king was spoken of again some time ago; he was unwilling either to show disrespect to the memory of his father or to allow the injustice to remain. He chose an estate of that lady as the scene of a sham-fight of ten thousand troops a kind of spectacle worthy of the conqueror of Austria. He pretended that during the exercises a hedge had been cut down on the land of the lady in question. Not a twig of it had been laid low; but he persisted in saying that damage had been done, and sent the fifty thousand francs to repair it My dear and honoured friend, how then are great men constituted, if this man is not one?”

A week or two later he writes to his niece: “He is as amiable as you are. He is a king, I grant; but it is a passion of sixteen years; he has turned my head. I have had the insolence to think that nature made me for him. I have found a conformity so singular between all his tastes and mine that I have forgotten he is sovereign of one half of Germany, while the other trembles at his name; that he has gained five battles; that he is the greatest general in Europe; that he is surrounded by big devils of heroes six feet high… You other Parisians think that I am in Lapland; know that we have had a summer as warm as yours, that we have eaten good peaches and good muscat pears, and that for three or four degrees of the sun, more or less, you must not look down upon people.”

Correspondence with Rousseau

Jean Jacques Rousseau had come into prominence by his essay on the question, “Has the Restoration of the Sciences Contributed to Purify or to Corrupt Manners?” This he followed up with a “Discourse on the Origin of Inequality,” in which he advocated the return to nature, and he sent a copy to Voltaire. The following interesting correspondence resulted. The first letter is from Voltaire, August 30, 1755:

“I have received, monsieur, your new book against the human race. I thank you for it. You will please men, to whom you tell truths which concern them, but you will not correct them. One could not paint in stronger colours the horrors of human society, from which our ignorance and our weakness expect so many consolations. No one has ever employed so much intellect in the attempt to prove us beasts. A desire seizes us to walk on four paws when we read your work. Nevertheless, as it is more than sixty years since I lost the habit, I feel, unfortunately, that it is impossible for me to resume it, and I leave that natural mode of walking to those who are more worthy of it than you and I. Nor can I embark to go among the savages of Canada: first, because the maladies with which I am afflicted retain me near the greatest physician in Europe, and I should not find the same succours among the Missouris; secondly, because war has broken out in that country, and the example of our nations has rendered the savages almost as wicked as we are. I limit myself to be a peaceful savage in the solitude which I have chosen in your country, where you ought to be.

“I agree with you that literature and the sciences have sometimes been the cause of much evil. The enemies of Tasso rendered his life a tissue of misfortunes; those of Galileo made him groan in prison at the age of seventy years for having known the motion of the earth, and, what was more shameful, they compelled him to retract. No sooner had your friends begun the ‘Dictionaire Encyclopedique’ than those who presumed to be their rivals called them deists, atheists, and even Jansenists.

“If I dared to reckon myself among those whose labours have been recompensed by persecution alone, I could show you men in a rage to destroy me, from the day that I gave the tragedy of ‘Oedipe’; I should show you a library of ridiculous calumnies printed against me; an ex-Jesuit priest, whom I saved from capital punishment, paying me by defamatory libels for the service which I had rendered him; I should show you a man, still more culpable, printing my own work upon the ‘Age of Louis XIV.,’ with notes, in which the most brutal ignorance poured forth the most infamous impostures;… I should show you society infected with this kind of men, unknown to all antiquity, who, not being able to embrace an honest calling, whether that of workman or of lackey, and knowing, unfortunately, how to read and write, become courtiers of literature, live upon our works, steal manuscripts, disfigure them, and sell them;… I should paint you ingratitude, imposture, and rapine pursuing me for forty years, even to the foot of the Alps, even to the brink of my tomb: But what shall I conclude from all those tribulations? That I ought not to complain; that Pope, Descartes, Bayle, Camoens, and a hundred others have experienced the same injustice, and greater; that this destiny is that of almost all those whom the love of letters has too powerfully influenced.

“Confess, monsieur, that these are trifling private misfortunes, which the community scarcely perceives. What does it matter to the human race that some hornets pillage the honey of some bees? Men of letters make a great noise about all these little quarrels; the rest of the world does not know them, or laughs at them.

“Of all the bitternesses spread over human life these are the least fatal. The thorns attached to literature and to the reputation which it gives are nothing but flowers compared with other evils which, in all times, have overwhelmed the earth. Admit that neither Cicero, nor Varro, nor Lucretius, nor Virgil, nor Horace had the least share in the proscriptions. Marius was an ignorant man; the barbarous Sulla, the debauched Antony, the imbecile Lepidus, read little of Plato and Socrates; and as to that tyrant without courage, Octavius Cepias, surnamed so unworthily Augustus, he was a detestable assassin only while he was deprived of the society of men of letters.

“Confess that Petrarch and Boccaccio did not cause the intestine troubles of Italy; confess that the badinage of Marot did not cause the massacres of St. Bartholomew, nor the tragedy of ‘The Cid’ the troubles of the Fronde. Great crimes have seldom been committed except by celebrated ignoramuses. That which makes, and will always make, of this world a vale of tears is the insatiable cupidity and the indomitable pride of men, from Thamas Kouli-khan, who did not know how to read, to a clerk of the tax office, who knows only how to cipher. Literature nourishes the soul, rectifies it, consoles it; it was of service to you, monsieur, at the time when you wrote against it. You are like Achilles, who inveighed against glory, and like Father Malebranche, whose brilliant imagination wrote against imagination.

“If any one ought to complain of literature, it is myself, since at all times and in all places it has served to persecute me; but we must love it, despite the abuse which is made of it, as we must love society, the agreeableness of which is corrupted by so many wicked men; as we must love our country, whatever injustice we suffer in it; as we must love and serve the Supreme Being, notwithstanding the superstitions and the fanaticism which so often dishonour His worship.

“M. Chappuis informs me that your health is very bad; you should come to re-establish it in your native air, to enjoy liberty, to drink with me the milk of our cows, and browse our herbs. I am very philosophically, and with the most tender esteem,” etc.

Rousseau’s reply is dated September 10, 1755:

“It is for me to thank you, monsieur, in all regards. In offering you the draught of my sad reveries, I did not think to make you a present worthy of you, but to acquit myself of a duty, and to render you an act of homage which we all owe you as our chief. Sensible, also, of the honour which you do my country, I share the gratitude of my fellow-citizens; and I hope that it will be only augmented when they shall have profited by the instructions you can give them. Adorn the asylum which you have chosen; enlighten a people worthy of your lessons; and you, who know so well how to paint virtue and liberty, teach us to cherish them within our walls, as we do in your writings. All that approaches you ought to learn from you the path to glory.

“You see that I do not aspire to make men return to the condition of beasts, although I regret much, for my part, the little I have lost of that condition. With regard to you, monsieur, such a return would be a miracle, at once so great and so injurious that it would belong to God alone to perform it and to the devil alone to desire it. Do not try, then, to fall upon four paws; no one in the world would less succeed in the attempt than you. You set us up too well upon our two feet for you to cease to stand upon yours.

“I admit all the infamies which pursue men celebrated in literature; I even admit all the evils attached to humanity, which seem independent of our vain knowledge. Men have opened upon themselves so many sources of misery that when chance diverts some one of them they are scarcely less inundated. There are, besides, in the progress of things, some concealed chains of cause and effect which people in general do not perceive, but which will not escape the eye of the sage who is willing to reflect upon them. It was neither Terence, nor Cicero, nor Seneca, nor Virgil, nor Tacitus, it was neither the men of learning nor the poets, who produced the misfortunes of Rome and the crimes of the Romans; but without the poison, slow and secret, which corrupted, little by little, the most vigorous government of which history makes mention, neither Cicero, nor Lucretius, nor Sallust would have existed; or, if they had existed, they would not have written. The amiable age of Lelius and Terence was the remote origin of the brilliant ages of Augustus and Horace, and, at last, of the horrible ages of Seneca and Nero, of Domitian and Martial. The taste for literature and the arts springs in a people from an inward vice which that taste augments. And if it is true that all kinds of human progress are pernicious in their own way, those of the mind and knowledge, which increase our pride and multiply our errors, directly promote our unhappiness. But there comes a time when the unhappiness of man is such that the very causes which have created it are necessary to prevent its increase: the sword must be left in the wound, lest the wounded man expire in drawing it out.

“As to myself, if I had followed my first vocation, and if I had neither read nor written, I should doubtless have been happier. Nevertheless, if letters were now annihilated, I should be deprived of the only pleasure which remains to me. It is in the bosom of literature that I find consolation for all my ills; it is among those who cultivate it that I taste the sweets of friendship, and learn to enjoy life without fearing death. I owe to it the little that I am; I owe to it even the honour of being known to you. But let us consult our interests in our business, and truth in our writings. Although philosophers, historians, scholars, are necessary to enlighten the world and lead its blind inhabitants, if the sage ‘Memnon’ has told me the truth, I know nothing so silly as a people of sages.

… “If we explore the original source of the disorders of society, we shall find that all the evils from which men suffer come to them through error much more than through ignorance, and that what we do not know at all injures us much less than what we think we know. Now, what surer means of running from error to error than the rage to know everything? If men had not supposed they knew that the earth did not revolve, they would not have punished Galileo for having said it revolved. If philosophers alone had claimed the title of philosopher, the Encyclopedia would have had no persecutor. If a hundred myrmidons did not aspire to glory, you would enjoy yours in peace; or, at least, you would have only rivals worthy of you.

“Do not then be surprised to feel some thorns inseparable from the flowers which crown great talents. The assaults of your enemies are the satirical acclamations which follow triumphal processions. It is the eagerness of the public for all your writings which produces the thefts of which you complain; but it- is not easy to interpolate them, for neither iron nor lead will blend with gold. Permit me to say to you, from the interest which I take in your repose and in our instruction: despise the vain clamours by which it is less sought to do you harm than to prevent your doing good. The more you are criticised the more reason you should give us to admire you. A good book is a terrible response to printed attacks; and who will dare to attribute to you works you did not write, as long as you write only inimitable ones?

“I am grateful for your invitation, and if this winter leaves me in a condition to go in the spring to dwell in my native land, I shall avail myself of your goodness; but I should like better to drink the water of your fountain than the milk of your cows; and, as to the herbs of your garden, I believe I should find in it only the lotus, which is not the food of beasts, and the moly, [l] which prevents men from becoming beasts.”

[l] The herb given to Ulysses to save him from enchantment by Circe.

Miscellaneous Papers.

On Spinoza.

TO HIS HIGHNESS, MONSEIGNEUR, PRINCE OF —

Monseigneur: It seems to me that often the personality of Spinoza has been as badly judged as his works. Here is what is said of him in two historical dictionaries:

“Spinoza had such a desire to immortalize himself that he would willingly have sacrificed to his glory the present life, had it been necessary to be cut to pieces by an enraged mob. The absurdities of Spinozism have been thoroughly refuted by Jean Bredembourg, a citizen of Rotterdam.”

In this there are as many mistakes as words. Spinoza was exactly the contrary of the portrait which has been drawn of him. One must detest his atheism, but one should not lie in regard to his personality. Never was a man farther removed in every sense from vainglory, it must be owned; let us not calumniate him in condemning him. Minister Colerus, who lived a long time in the very room where Spinoza died, affirms with all his contemporaries that Spinoza always lived in profound retirement, seeking to withdraw himself from the world and eschewing all superfluity, modest in conversation, careless in dress, working with his hands and never putting his name to any of his works. This is not the character of a man ambitious of glory. With regard to Bredembourg, far from refuting Spinoza very well, I venture to believe that he refuted him very badly. I have read his work and I leave the judgment of it to whoever, like me, may have the patience to read it. Bredembourg was so far from simply overwhelming Spinoza that he was himself frightened by the weakness of his rejoinders and became the disciple of him whom he had assailed: a notable example of the wretchedness and of the inconstancy of the human mind. The life of Spinoza has been written in sufficient detail, and is well enough known for me not to relate any of it here. This Jew, still young, was ill-treated by the synagogue. Accused by two young persons of his age of not believing in Moses, they began, in order to bring him back into the proper road, by stabbing him with a knife as he was leaving the theatre; some say, as he was leaving the synagogue, which latter is more probable.

After having missed his body, they did not want to miss his soul. They proceeded to the major excommunication, to the grand anathema, to the chammata. Spinoza claimed that the Jews were not empowered to exercise this kind of jurisdiction in Amsterdam. The city council referred the decision in this matter to the consistory of pastors and these latter concluded that, if the synagogue had this right, the consistory would possess it in a still higher degree: this consistory decided in favour of the synagogue.

Spinoza was proscribed then by the Jews with grand ceremony. The Jewish cantor intoned the words of execration. Horns were sounded, inverted black candles were melted drop by drop into a tub full of blood. Benedict Spinoza was devoted to Beelzebub, Satan, and to Astaroth, and all the synagogue cried “Amen.” It is strange that this assertion of jurisdiction, which resembled rather a witch’s Sabbath than a regular trial, was ever permitted. It may be believed that but for the knife-thrusts and the black candles extinguished in blood, Spinoza never would have written against Moses and against God. Persecution irritates, it emboldens whoever feels genius. It renders irreconcilable him whom indulgence would have checked. Spinoza renounced Judaism but without ever becoming a Christian. He did not publish till 1670, about eight years after his excommunication, his “Treatise on Superstitious Ceremonies,” otherwise called “Tractatus Theologico-Politicus.” It has been claimed that in this book will be found the seeds of his atheism, in the same way that one always finds an evil physiognomy in a man who has done a base deed. This book is so far removed from atheism that in it Jesus Christ is spoken of as one sent from God. The work is very profound and the best one he ever wrote. I condemn without doubt his sentiments, but I cannot refrain from esteeming his erudition. It was he, it seems to me, who first remarked that the Hebrew word ruhag, which we translate soul, signified to the Jews “wind,” “breath” in its natural sense; that all that is great bore the divine name: the cedar trees of God; the winds of God; the melancholy of Saul, the bad spirit of God; upright men, as the children of God, etc.

He was the first who developed the dangerous theory of Aben-Ezra that the Pentateuch was not written by Moses, nor the book of Joshua by Joshua, and it was not till after him that Leclerc, the celebrated Newton and various Dutch theologians embraced this view. Newton differed from him only in this: that he attributed Moses’ book to Samuel, whereas Spinoza made Ezra the author. In the eighth, ninth, and tenth chapters can be seen all the reasons which Spinoza gives for his system. The chronology there has been found to be very exact; great knowledge of the history, speech, and the customs of his people; more method and reason than in all the rabbins together. It seems to me that few writers before him had proved clearly that the Jews recognized prophets among the Gentiles. In a word, he made a culpable use of his information, but he made a very great one. In the ancient philosophers it is necessary to search for atheism. It is not found clearly revealed except in the posthumous works of Spinoza. His “Treatise on Atheism” not being under this title and having been written in obscure Latin and in very dry style, Count Boulainvilliers translated it into French under the title of “Spinoza’s Refutation.” We have only the venom. Boulainvilliers apparently had not the time to give the antidote.

Few people have remarked that Spinoza in his dire book speaks of an infinite and supreme being. He announces God while he wishes to destroy Him. The arguments with which Bayle overwhelms him would appear to me irrefragable if Spinoza actually admitted a God; for this God, being only the immensity of things, at the same time both matter and thought, it is absurd, as Bayle has very well proved, to suppose that God is at the same time the actor and the receiver, cause and effect, doing evil and suffering it, loving Himself, hating- Himself, killing Himself, consuming Himself. A good spirit, adds Bayle, would prefer to cultivate the earth with his teeth and nails to cultivating an hypothesis so shocking and absurd, for, according to Spinoza, those who say “the Germans have killed 10,000 Turks” speak badly and falsely; they should say “God, under the form of 10,000 Germans, has killed God, appearing under the form of 10,000 Turks.”

Bayle is very right if Spinoza acknowledges a God, but the fact is that he does not acknowledge one at all, and that he has only made use of this sacred word in order not to frighten men too much. Influenced by Descartes, he makes improper use of Descartes’ equally celebrated and senseless expression: “Give me motion and matter and I will form a world.” Possessed further by the incomprehensible and antiphysical idea that everything is complete, he has imagined that there can exist only a single substance, a sole power which reasons in men, feels and remembers in the case of animals, sparkles in the fire, flows in the water, is borne along with the wind, rumbles in the thunder, vegetates on earth and extends throughout all space. According to him, everything is necessary; everything is eternal. Creation is impossible; no design in the structure of the universe, in the permanence of species, in the sensation of individuals. The ears are not made to hear, the eyes to see, the heart to receive and put in motion the blood, the stomach to digest, the brain to think, the organs of generation to give life, and the divine intentions are nothing but the effects of a blind necessity. This, in brief, is the system of Spinoza. Here, I think, are the points at which his citadel must be attacked a citadel built, if I am not mistaken, on ignorance of physics and on the most monstrous abuse of metaphysics.

It seems, and one must flatter himself with the fact, that there are to-day few atheists. The author of “La Henriade” has said that a catechism announces God to children and Newton demonstrates Him to sages. The more nature is known the more its author is adored. Atheism cannot benefit morality and may do it a good deal of harm. It is almost as dangerous as fanaticism. You are, Monseigneur, equally removed from both, and that is what authorizes the liberty which I have taken to place the truth before your gaze without any disguise. I have replied to all your questions, extending from the learned buffoon, Rabelais, to the rash metaphysician, Spinoza. I might have been able to add to this list a large number of little books which are scarcely known except to librarians, but I have feared that in multiplying the number of culpable ones, I might seem to diminish their iniquity. I hope that the little I have said will strengthen your highness in your sympathy for our dogmas and our writings, and that you will see that they have not been combated except by stubborn stoics, by savants puffed up with their science, by the worldly minded who only know their vain reasoning, by jesters who take witticism for arguments; by theologians, in short, who, instead of walking in the ways of God, allow themselves to wander off into their own ways. Once more, allow me to say that what must console a mind as noble as yours is the fact that atheism which ruins to-day so many souls can never hurt either the peace of states or the polish of society. Controversy has everywhere caused blood to flow and atheism has staunched it. It is a bad remedy, I avow it, but it has healed the most cruel wounds. It is excellent for this life; it is detestable for the life to come. It surely condemns its believer, but it renders him peaceable. Your country was formerly aflame for arguments; atheism brought it harmony. It is clear that if Poltrot, Jacques Clement, Jaurigni, Balthazar Gerard, Jean Chatel, Damiens, the Jesuit Malagrida, and others, had been atheists, there would have been fewer princes assassinated. God forbid that I should be willing to prefer atheism to the sacred religion of the Ravaillacs, the Damiens, the Malagridas, which they have ignored, and I say only that it is more agreeable to live with the atheists than with the Ravaillacs and the Brinvilliers who go to confession, and if your highness is not of my opinion, I am wrong.

On The Existence Of God.

We have to examine into that which is called the faculty of thinking in the different species of mankind. We are to investigate how their ideas come, whether there is a soul distinct from the body, whether this soul is immortal, whether it is free, has virtues, vices, etc., but most of these ideas have a dependence on the existence or the non-existence of a God. It is necessary, I believe, to commence by sounding the depth of this great principle. Let us divest ourselves here more than ever of all passion and prejudice, and in good faith let us see what our reason can teach us regarding this question: Is there a God or not? In the first place, I remark that there are peoples who have no knowledge of a Creator; these, in truth, are barbarians and few in number; still, they are men, and if the knowledge of God is necessary to human nature, the wild Hottentots would have as sublime an idea as we of a Supreme Being. Furthermore, there is not, among civilized peoples, any child which has the least conception of a God. Such an idea is inculcated with difficulty. Children pronounce the word “God” often throughout their lives without attaching to it any fixed notion; you see, moreover, that ideas of God differ as much among men as their religions and their laws, and hereupon I cannot refrain from indulging in this reflection: is it possible that the knowledge of a God, our creator, our preserver, our all, is less necessary to man than a nose and five fingers? All men are born with a nose and five fingers, but no one is born with a knowledge of God. Whether that is deplorable or not, such is certainly the condition of humanity. Let us see if we acquire in time the knowledge of God just as we arrive at mathematical notions and some metaphysical conceptions. What can we do better, in a research so important, than to weigh what can be said pro and contra; than to decide in favour of what appears to us more conformable to our reason?

Summary Of The Reasons In Favour Of The Existence Of God.

There are two ways of arriving at a notion of a being who presides over the universe. The most natural, the most perfect for common capacities is to consider not only the order which is in the universe, but also the end to which each thing seems to correspond. Many stout volumes have been composed on this single idea and all these stout volumes together contain nothing more than this argument: When I see a watch whose hand marks the hours, I conclude that an intelligent being has arranged the springs of this machine in order that the hand may mark the hour. Thus, when I see the springs of the human body, I conclude that an intelligent being has arranged these organs in order that they may be received and nourished nine months in the womb; that the eyes are given for seeing, the hands for seizing, etc., but from this sole argument I cannot conclude anything further than that it is probable that an intelligent and superior being has skilfully prepared and fashioned the matter. I cannot conclude from that alone that this being has made matter out of nothing and that he is infinite in every sense. In vain do I seek in my mind the connection of these ideas: it is probable that I am the work of a being more powerful than I; therefore, this being has existed from all eternity; has created everything, is infinite, etc. I do not see the chain which leads straight to this conclusion. I see only that there is something more powerful than I, and beyond this, nothing.

The second argument is more metaphysical, less likely to be seized by coarse minds, and leads to much vaster conceptions. Here is a synopsis of them:

I exist, hence something exists. If something exists, then something has existed from all eternity, for that which exists either exists of itself or has received its being from another. If it exists through itself, it exists necessarily; it has always existed necessarily and this is God. If it has received its being from another, and this second one from a third, that from which this last has received its being must necessarily be God. For you cannot conceive that one being gives being to another if he has not the power to create. Furthermore, if you say that a thing receives its existence (I do not say form) from another thing, and that other thing from a third, this third from another yet, and thus going back even to infinity, you state an absurdity. All these beings, then, would have no cause of their existence. Taken altogether they have no external cause for their existence; each taken in particular, they have no internal cause: that is to say, taken altogether, they owe their existence to nothing; taken each one in particular, no one exists through itself; then no one can exist necessarily. I am, then, reduced to avowing that there is a being which has existed necessarily through himself from all eternity and who has originated all other beings. Hence, it follows, essentially that this being is infinite in duration, immensity and power, for who can bound him? “But,” you will say to me, “the material world is precisely this being which we are looking for.” Let us investigate in good faith if the thing is possible. If this material world is existent through itself from an absolute necessity, it is a contradiction in terms to suppose that the least part of this universe can exist otherwise than of itself, for if it exists at this moment from an absolute necessity, this word alone excludes every other manner of existence. For certainly this table on which I am writing, this pen which I am using have not always been what they are; these thoughts which I trace on the paper did not even exist a moment ago; therefore, they do not exist of necessity. Now, if each part does not exist from absolute necessity, it is impossible that the whole exists of itself. I produce motion; hence, the motion was not in existence before; hence, the motion is not essential to matter and the matter received it from without, and there is a God which gave it. Likewise, intelligence is not essential to matter, for a rock or a grain of wheat does not think. From whom, then, is it likely that these parts of matter which think and feel have received sensation and thought? It cannot be from themselves, since they feel in spite of themselves; it cannot be from matter in general, since thought and sensation are not essential to matter. They have, therefore, received these gifts from the hand of a Supreme Being, intelligent, infinite and the originating cause of all beings.

The foregoing are in substance the proofs of the existence of a God and the synopsis of several volumes a synopsis which each reader can amplify as he wishes.

The following, with the same brevity, are the objections which can be raised to this system:

1. If God is not this material world, He created it or He gave to some other being the power to create it, which amounts to the same thing, but in making this world He either produced it from nothing or from His own divine nature. He cannot have made it out of mere nothing. He cannot have produced it from Himself since this world in this case would be essentially part of the divine essence; therefore I must not admit creation.

2. God might have made this world either from necessity or from choice. If He made it from necessity, He must have always been under the obligation of making it, for this necessity is eternal; therefore, in this case, the world would be eternal and created, which involves a contradiction. If God made it freely from pure choice without any antecedent reason, that is another contradiction, for it is contradictory to suppose a being infinitely wise making everything without any determining reason, and a being infinitely powerful having existed through eternity without making the least use of his power.

3. If it appears to most men that an intelligent being has impressed the seal of his wisdom on all nature and that each thing seems to be made for a certain end, it is still more true in the eyes of philosophers that everything is created in nature by the eternal, independent, and immutable laws of mathematics; the construction and the duration of the human body are the result of the equilibrium of fluids and of the force of levers. The more we learn of the structure of the universe, the more closely we see it is in conformity with the laws of mathematics, from the stars to the smallest mote. It is, therefore, permissible to believe that these laws having operated by their nature, the results are necessary effects which are taken for the arbitrary determinations of an intelligent power. For example, a field produces grass because such is the nature of its soil moistened by the rain, and not because there are horses which have need of hay.

4. If the arrangement of this world’s parts and all that takes place among the beings which have sentient life if all this proves the existence of a creator and a master it would more strongly prove the rule of a barbarous being; for the admission of final causes will compel one to say that God, infinitely wise and infinitely good, has given life to all creatures in order that they may be devoured by one another. In fact, if we consider all the animals, it will be seen that each species has an irresistible instinct which forces it to destroy another species.

In regard to human miseries, there is room to reproach the divinity throughout our lives. It is no answer to say that the wisdom and goodness of God are not fashioned like ours: this argument would have no weight in the minds of many people who reply that they can only judge of justice by the idea which they assume God has given them of it; that one can only measure with the measure which He has furnished, and that it is as impossible for us not to regard as barbarous, a being who would conduct himself as a barbarous man, as it is impossible for us to believe that no being whatsoever is six feet high, when we have measured one and found it to be that height.

If we are told that our measure is faulty, we shall be told a thing which seems to involve contradiction, for it is God Himself who gave us this false idea; therefore, God will have made us only in order to deceive us. Now, this is saying that a being who is absolute perfection plunges his creatures into error which is, strictly speaking, the sole imperfection: this is plainly a contradiction. Finally, the materialists will conclude by saying: “We have fewer absurdities to swallow in the system of atheism than in that of deism, for on the one hand, it is necessary to the truth that we conceive as eternal and infinite this world which we can see, but on the other, it is necessary for us to imagine a being infinite and eternal and that we add to it the creation of which we can have no conception. It is, therefore, easier for us, they will conclude, “not to believe in a God than it is to believe in Him.”

The Families Of Calas And Sirven.

An Address To The Public Upon The Parricides Imputed To Them.

Here, then, on account of religion, in one year in France are two accusations of parricide and two families legally sacrificed by fanaticism.

The same fanaticism that stretched Calas upon the wheel at Toulouse dragged to the gallows the whole family of Sirven, in a jurisdiction of the same province; and the same defender of innocence, M. Elias de Beaumont, advocate of the Parliament of Paris, who justified Calas, has also justified the Sirvens, by a memorial signed by several advocates a memorial which demonstrates that the sentence pronounced against the Sirvens is still more absurd than the arrêt against the Calas family.

This, in a few words, is the fact, the recital of which may serve to instruct those who cannot obtain a copy of the eloquent address of M. de Beaumont.

In the year one thousand seven hundred and sixty-one, at the very time that the Protestant family of Calas were in fetters, accused with having assassinated Marc Antony Calas, who it was supposed, was desirous of embracing the Catholic religion, it happened that a daughter of the said Paul Sirven, commissary at Terrier, in the country of Castres, was presented to the bishop of Castres by a woman, who had the management of his house. The bishop, being informed that this girl was of a Calvinist family, shut her up in a kind of convent at Castres, called the house of the Regents. This young girl was flogged into a knowledge of the Catholic religion, and this discipline was so severely bestowed upon her, that she became insane. Having escaped from her confinement, she threw herself into a well, in the middle of the country, at a great distance from her father’s house, near a village called Mazamet. Hereupon the village justice reasoned thus: “At Toulouse, Calas will be broken upon the wheel, and his wife burned, who have doubtless destroyed their son, to prevent his going to mass: I should therefore, according to the example of my superiors, do as much upon this occasion to the Sirvens, who have, doubtless, drowned their daughter for the same cause.

“It is true I have no proof that the father, mother, and two sisters of this girl have assassinated her; but I have heard that there is no more proof against Calas and his family, so I run no risk. It would, perhaps, be too much for a country justice to break people upon the wheel and burn them; but I shall, at least, have the pleasure of arresting a whole Huguenot family, and shall be paid for my trouble out of the confiscated effects.”

For his greater security, this religious fanatic had the corpse examined by a doctor as ignorant of medicine as he was of jurisprudence. The doctor, quite astonished at not finding the girl’s stomach filled with water, and not being aware that it is impossible for water to enter a body from which the air cannot issue, concluded that the girl had been knocked on the head, and afterwards thrown into the well.

A devotee in the neighbourhood affirmed that this was the practice in all Protestant families.

At length, after many proceedings, as irregular as the reasoning was absurd, the justice decreed that the father, mother, and sisters of the deceased should be apprehended.

At this news Sirven convenes his friends. They are all convinced of his innocence; but the affair of Calas filled the whole province with terror. They advise Sirven not to expose himself to the madness of fanaticism. He flies with his wife and daughters at an inclement season. This unhappy band are compelled to cross on foot mountains covered with snow; one of the daughters of Sirven, who had been married about a year, is brought to-bed upon the ice. Dying as she is, she is forced to carry her expiring infant in her arms.

The first news that at length reaches this family upon their arrival in a place of safety is, that the father and mother are condemned to death, and the two sisters, declared equally culpable, to perpetual banishment; that their estate is confiscated; and that they have nothing left in this world but opprobrium and misery.

This may be seen more at length in the excellent report of M. de Beaumont, which contains complete proofs of the purest innocence and of the most detestable injustice.

Providence, which allowed that the first attempts which produced the justification of Calas, who died upon the wheel in Languedoc, should come from the extremity of the mountains and neighbouring parts of Switzerland, hath again been pleased that the vindication of the Sirvens should issue from the same solitude.

The children of Calas took refuge there, the family of Sirven there sought an asylum at the same time. Sympathizing and truly religious men, who have had the consolation of serving these two unfortunate families, and who pitied their disasters and respected their virtues, could not then present petitions for the Sirvens, as they could for the others, because the criminal prosecutions against the Sirvens proceeded more slowly, and continued longer.

And, afterwards, how could a wandering family, four hundred miles distant from their country, recover the necessary proofs for their justification?

What was to be done by a father overwhelmed with misery, a dying wife, whose grief had, in fact, nearly destroyed her, and two daughters, as unfortunate as their father and mother?

It was necessary to legally require a copy of the proceedings against them. Forms, perhaps necessary, but whose effect is often to oppress the innocent and wretched, would not allow it. Their intimidated relatives did not dare write to them. All that this family could learn in a foreign country was, that they were condemned to death at home. Were it known with what care and difficulty some judicial proofs were extracted in their favour, it would be pitiful.

By what kind of fatality has it become so easy to oppress, and so difficult to succour?

The same forms of justice could not be used for the Sirvens which had been employed by the family of Calas, because the latter had been condemned by a parliament, and the Sirvens had been tried only by subordinate judges, from whom an appeal lay to the same parliament.

We shall not repeat anything that has been said by the eloquent and generous M. de Beaumont; but having considered how closely these two occurrences are united with the interests of mankind, we believe it is for the same interest to attack at its source the fanaticism which produced them.

In the present instance, the subjects are only two obscure families; but when the most unknown creature dies of a contagion which hath long desolated the earth, it is a declaration to the world that the fatal disorder still exists. All men should therefore be upon their guard; and skilled physicians should be employed to discover remedies for abating the devastating pestilence.

Perhaps the forms or jurisprudence may not allow the petition of the Sirvens to gain access to the King of France or his council but it has been received by the people and the people the judge of all judges will render a just decision.

Fanaticism.

Human nature hath ever been susceptible of errors; but these have not constantly been homicides. We may have been ignorant that the earth revolved around the sun; we may have believed in fortune-tellers; we may have given credit to the prognostics of birds; have thought that serpents were enchanted; that parti-coloured animals might by produced by displaying to the mothers objects of different hues; we may have been persuaded that in the declension of the moon the marrow of the bones diminishes; that corn must rot to grow, etc. But such kinds of folly have not, at least, produced persecution, discord, or murders.

Other species of madness have disturbed the earth, and given vent to a deluge of blood. We are not sufficiently acquainted, for instance, with the number of wretches that have been delivered up to the executioner by ignorant judges, who quietly and without scruple condemned them to the flames upon an accusation of sorcery.

There has not been a single tribunal in Christendom, that has not often been polluted with such judicial assassinations during the last fifteen hundred centuries; and when I assert that there have been amongst the Christians upwards of one hundred thousand victims to this idiotic and barbarous jurisprudence, and that the greater part of them were innocent girls and women, I do not charge the account high enough.

Libraries are crammed with books relative to the laws of witchcraft; all the decisions of these judges are founded upon the examples of the magicians of Pharaoh, the witch of Endor, persons possessed, who are mentioned in the Evangelists, and the apostles expressly sent to exorcise people possessed of devils.

No one dared aver that God, through pity for the human race, might formerly have suffered possessions and sorcery, and not allow them at present. Such a distinction would have appeared to them criminal victims were absolutely necessary. Christianity was always defiled with such absurd barbarity.

All the fathers of the church believed in magic. Upwards of fifty councils pronounced anathemas against those who made devils enter into men’s bodies by virtue of words.

The universal error was sacred. Statesmen, who might have disabused the people, did not think it necessary. They were too much immersed in the torrent of business, and were afraid of the power of prejudice.

They saw that this fanaticism sprang from the bosom of religion itself, and they did not dare strike this unnatural child for fear of wounding its ancient mother they rather chose to expose themselves to the slavery of popular error than to bravely combat it.

Princes and kings have paid dearly for deceiving the people and encouraging the superstition of the vulgar. Were not the people of Paris taught to believe that King Henry III. used sorcery in his devotions? and were not magical operations long in use to rob him of his unhappy life, whose thread was more surely cut by the knife of a Jacobin, than if all the satanic powers had been conjured up by sorcery?

Did not fanatics wish to conduct Martha Brossier, who was possessed, to Rome, to accuse Henry IV. in the name of the devil, of not being a good Catholic? Each year, in those half-savage times we are speaking of, was chequered with such adventures.

Did not all that remained of the League at Paris promulgate the rumour that the devil had wrung the handsome Gabrielle d’Estrées’ neck?

We should not, it is now said, bring forth to view these histories, so shocking to human nature; and I say, that we should repeat them a thousand times, that they may be constantly present to the public mind.

We should remember that the unfortunate priest Urban Grandier was condemned to the flames by ignorant judges, to gratify a blood-thirsty minister.

Grandier’s innocence was evident; but some nuns declared he had bewitched them, and this was enough. God was forgotten to speak only of the devil.

It necessarily happened that the commerce between men and devils being by the priests made articles of faith, and the judges considering this imaginary crime as real and frequent as theft, we found among us more sorcerers than robbers.

Evil Jurisprudence.

Our rituals and jurisprudence, founded upon the decree of Gratian, were what, in fact, laid the ground-work of magic. A weak people give the alarm, our fathers excommunicated and exorcised those who entered into compacts with the devil, and our judges burned them. It is, therefore, very certain that bargains may be made with the devil.

Now, if these bargains are secretly made, and Beelzebub keeps his word with us, we may be enriched in a single night. It is only necessary for us to go to the nocturnal meeting; and the fear of being discovered should not preponderate over our hopes of the infinite good the devil can do us. Besides, Beelzebub, being more powerful than our justices, he may secure us against them.

Thus reasoned these wretches, and the more fagots that were lighted by fanatical judges, the more idiots were found to brave them.

But there were besides more accusers than criminals. Was a girl with child without her lover being known, it was the devil that had seduced her. Did some husbandmen obtain by their industry a more plentiful harvest than their neighbours, it was because they were sorcerers; and the inquisition burned them, and sold their estates for its emolument.

The Pope delegated throughout all Germany and elsewhere judges who gave up innocent victims to the secular power, so that laymen were for a long time only catch polls and executioners for the priests. It is still the same in Portugal and Spain.

In proportion as a ruler remained ignorant and barbarous, the dominion of the devil was acknowledged. We have a collection of the arrêts that were issued in Franche-Comté, against the sorcerers, which was published in 1607, by a chief judge of St. Claude, named Boguet, with the approbation of several bishops.

If a man were to write such a book at present, he would be sent to Bedlam: but at that time all the other judges were equally cruel and ignorant. Each province had a like register.

In a word, when philosophy began to dawn among men, the persecution of witches ceased; and they are no longer visible upon the earth.

Free Toleration.

What a dreadful passion is that pride which would force men to think like ourselves! But is it not the height of folly to think of bringing them to our dogmas by making them continually revolt at the most atrocious calumnies by persecutions dragging them to the galleys, to the gibbet, to the wheel, and to the flaming pile?

An Irish priest has lately stated in a pamphlet he has written, but which has remained unknown, that he has heard others assert that we have come a hundred years too late to raise our voices against the want of toleration that barbarity has taken the place of gentleness, and that this is not the time to complain.

I shall reply to those who speak in this manner: Observe what passes under your own eyes, and if you have a human heart, you will join your compassion to ours.

Eight unhappy preachers have been hanged in France since the year 1745. The bills of confession have excited infinite trouble; and at length an unhappy fanatic [Damiens], from the dregs of the people, having attempted to assassinate the king in 1757, he answered before the parliament upon his interrogation, l that he had undertaken this parricide through a principle of religion; and he added these fatal words: “He that does no good but to himself is good for nothing.”

By whom was he taught this language? Who could teach a sweeper in a college, a mere valet, to talk thus? He maintained when put to the torture, not only that this assassination was a meritorious deed, but that he had heard all the priests in the great hall of the palace, where justice is administered, say the same.

The contagion of fanaticism then still exists. The virus is so little eradicated, that a priest [The Abbé de Ceiverac] in the country of Calas and Sirven, printed a few years ago, an “Apology for the Massacre of St. Bartholomew.” Another priest [The Abbé de la Menardaye] has published the “Justification of the Murderers of the Curate Grandier”; and when that useful and humane “Treatise on Toleration” appeared in France, it could not be allowed a public sale.

This “Treatise” has indeed done some good it has dissipated some prejudices it has inspired a horror for persecutions and fanaticism; but in this picture of religious barbarities, the author has omitted certain features that would have rendered the picture more terrible and the instruction more striking.

The author has been reproached with going too far, when, in order to display how detestable and fanatical is persecution, he introduces a relative of Ravaillac proposing to the Jesuit Letellier the confinement of all the Jansenists.

This fiction might, indeed, appear somewhat outré to those who are unacquainted with the silly rage of fanaticism. It will appear very surprising, when it is known, that what is a fiction in the “Treatise on Toleration” is now an historical fact.

We, in effect, find in the “History of the Reformation in Switzerland,” that in order to prevent the great change that was ready to burst, some priests in Geneva, in 1536, corrupted a servant maid to poison three of the principal actors in the reformation; and the poison administered not having been strong enough, they put some that was more violent in the bread and wine of the public communion, in order to exterminate all those of the reformed religion in a single morning, and to make the Church of God triumph.

The author of the “Treatise on Toleration” has not mentioned the shocking executions wherein so many unhappy victims perished in the valleys of Piedmont. He has passed over in silence the massacre of six hundred inhabitants of Valencia, men, women, and children, who were murdered by the Catholics on a Sunday in the month of September, 1620. I will not say it was with the consent and assistance of the archbishop of Milan, Charles Borromeo, who was made a saint.

Some passionate writers have averred this fact, which I am very far from believing but I say, there is scarce any city or borough in Europe, where blood has not been spilled for religious quarrels I say, that the human species has sensibly diminished, because women and girls were massacred as well as men I say, that Europe would have been one-third better peopled, if there had been no theological disputes. And lastly, I say, that so far from forgetting these abominable times, we should frequently take a view of them; and that it is for our age to make reparation by toleration, for this long series of crimes, which has taken place through the want of toleration, during sixteen barbarous ages.

Let it not then be said, that there are no traces left of that shocking fanaticism of the want of toleration. Fanatics still abound, and are everywhere to be met with, even in those countries that are esteemed the most humane.

The Lutheran and Calvinist preachers, were they masters, would probably be as little inclined to pity, as obdurate, and as intolerant as they upbraid their antagonists with being. The barbarous law, whereby any Roman Catholic is forbidden to reside more than three days in certain countries is not revoked. An Italian, a Frenchman, or an Austrian, cannot occupy a house, or possess an acre of land in their territories; whilst an unknown citizen of Geneva, or Schaffhausen, is at least allowed to purchase manors in France.

If a Frenchman, on the contrary, wanted to purchase an estate in the Protestant republics of which I am speaking, and if the government wisely winked at it, there would still be some souls formed of such clods, as to rise up against this spirit of toleration.

Anti-Toleration.

One of the causes of the continuance of the revengeful hatred of citizens against their fellow countrymen of another faith, is that unhappy custom of perpetuating divisions by monuments and festivals. Such is the annual procession at Toulouse, wherein thanks are yearly returned to God for four thousand murders. It has been forbidden by several royal ordinances, but has not yet been abolished. Religion and the throne are annually insulted by this barbarous ceremony; and at the end of a century, the insult is doubly increased with the solemnity.

After the secular games have been celebrated, the City asks a plenary indulgence of the Pope in favour of the Procession. It doubtless stands in great need of indulgence, but cannot deserve it whilst eternizing fanaticism.

The last secular ceremony was observed in 1762, at the very time that Calas was expiring upon the wheel. God was praised on the one hand, and innocence massacred on the other. Will posterity believe to what a height superstition was carried in our time upon this unhappy solemnity?

At first, the cobblers appeared in ceremonial costume carrying the head of the first bishop of Toulouse, and prince of Peloponnesus, who incontestably held the see of Toulouse before the death of Jesus Christ. Then come the tilers, laden with the bones of all the children that Herod put to death one thousand six hundred and fifty-six years ago; and although these children were buried at Ephesus, like the eleven thousand virgins at Cologne, as all the world can testify, they are nevertheless interred at Toulouse.

The dealers in old clothes display a bit of the virgin’s gown, which they take great care of, and which they purchased of a female Jew dealer at the fair of Beaumaire.

The relics of St. Peter and St. Paul are carried by the fraternity of tailors. These probably were the dresses made for them by the habit-maker Dorcas. As to their bodies, it is certain they are at Rome, with their keys.

Thirty dead bodies next pass in review. If these mummeries only were considered, they would be ridiculous and disgusting. But piety deceived is nevertheless piety. The credulous people may, at all events fulfil their duty (especially when the police are vigilant) though they carry in procession the bones of four thousand children, who were put to death by the command of Herod in Bethlehem. But so many dead bodies which upon this occasion serve only to create a remembrance of four hundred citizens who were put to death in 1562, can make but a sad impression upon the minds of the living. Add to this the black and white penitents, who march in this procession, with a cloth mask over their faces, resembling ghosts, and who greatly increase the horror of this doleful spectacle.

The people retire from the exhibition with their heads full of phantoms, their hearts inspired with the spirit of fanaticism, and filled with hatred against their brethren who were insulted by this procession.

In this manner people formerly came from the Chamber of Meditations amongst the Jesuits. The imagination is inflamed at these objects, and the soul becomes atrocious and implacable.

Unhappy mortals! let your festivals soften your manners, sway you to clemency, gentleness and charity. Celebrate the day of Fontenoy, when all the wounded enemies were carried with our own in the same houses, in the same hospitals where they were treated with the same care and attention. Celebrate the generosity of the English, who raised a subscription in favour of our prisoners in the last war. Celebrate the benefactions which Louis XV. heaped upon the family of Calas; and let this festival be an eternal reparation to injustice. Celebrate the beneficent and useful institutions of the Invalids, of the young ladies of St. Cyr, of the gentlemen of the military school.

Let your festivals commemorate virtuous actions, and not hatred, discord, brutality, bloodshed, and carnage.

Foreign Causes of Anti-Toleration

I suppose that all these things were related to a Chinese, or an Indian of good sense, and that he had the patience to listen to them; I suppose that he wishes to learn the cause of the many persecutions in Europe, why such inveterate animosities still burst forth, whence arose so many reciprocal anathemas, so many pastoral instructions, which are no other than defamatory libels, lettres de cachet, which under Louis XIV. filled the prisons and deserts: an answer must be given to him.

We must, blushing, tell him, the one believe in versatile grace, the other in effectual grace. In Avignon they say, that Jesus died for all, and in the suburbs of Paris, that He died for several. There it is averred that marriage is a visible sign of an invisible thing; here it is maintained, there is nothing invisible in this union. There are cities where the appearances of matter may subsist without the apparent matter existing, and where a body may be in fifty different places. There are other cities where matter is thought to be penetrable; and, in fine, to complete the whole, there are in these cities, great edifices where one thing is taught, and other edifices where a quite opposite thing must be believed.

The method of disputation varies with the colour of the gowns, so that the disputants dressed in white, gray, and black, never agree one person’s being muffled up in a cloak, and another with a chasuble, will not have the same effect.

These are the causes of this reciprocal anti-toleration, which makes the subjects of the same state at eternal enmity; and by an unaccountable mental disorder, these seeds of discord are still allowed to subsist.

The Indian or Chinese certainly would not be able to comprehend that people should have persecuted one another, and cut one another’s throats so long, for such reasons. He would immediately think that such horrid butchery could have no other source than the direct opposite of moral principles. He would be greatly surprised, when informed that our morals are all alike, the same as were professed at all times in China, and in India, the same as those by which all people have been governed.

How justly he might pity and despise us, when he found that this uniform and eternal morality could neither unite us, nor make us gentle, and that scholastic subtlety has made monsters of those who, by simply adhering to this same morality, would have been brothers.

What I have here said with respect to the Calases and Sirvens should have been repeated these fifteen hundred years past, from the times of the quarrels of Athanasius and Arius, which the Emperor Constantine immediately treated as senseless, to those of the Jesuit Letellier, and the Jansenist Quesnel, and the bills of confession.

No, there is not a single theological dispute which has not been attended with fatal consequences. Twenty volumes might be compiled from them; but I shall conclude with that of the Cordeliers and Jacobins, who paved the way for the reformation of the powerful republic of Berne. This, amongst a thousand histories, is the most horrible, the most sacrilegious, and, at the same time, the best attested.

Party Spirit And Fanaticism.

If a simple monastic dispute could produce such strange and abominable crimes, let us not be astonished at the immense number, which the spirit of party has originated between so many conflicting sects. Let us ever dread the excesses to which fanaticism leads us. Let us not leave this monster at liberty let us not cease to cut his talons and destroy his teeth.

Let not reason, so often persecuted, remain silent, or we shall again see the same horrid acts repeated, that have so often disgraced the ages that are passed. The principle, the seed, the contagion of persecution still exists, and if it be not eradicated it will spread over the entire earth.

Judge then, at length, intelligent readers, which is best, to adore with reason and simplicity, to fulfil all the duties of society without originating questions equally fatal and incomprehensible, to be just and beneficent without joining any faction, or to give yourself up to fantastic opinions, which lead weak souls to destructive enthusiasm, and to the commission of crimes detestable and atrocious?

I do not think that I have swerved from my subject, in relating all these examples in recommending to men that religion which unites them, and not that which divides them that religion which is of no party, which forms virtuous citizens, and not impotent scholars that religion which says that the whole law consists in loving God and one’s neighbour, and not that which makes a tyrant of God and of one’s neighbours so many victims.

Let us not make religion resemble those nymphs in the fable who associated with beasts and brought forth monsters.

Men have been perverted principally by monks. The wise and profound Leibnitz has evidently proved it. He has shown that the tenth century, which is called the iron age, was far less barbarous than the thirteenth and those succeeding, which produced that herd of beggars, who made vows of living at the expense of laymen, and of tormenting them.

Being enemies to the human species enemies to themselves as well as to others incapable of appreciating the benefits of society, they necessarily detested it. They display amongst them a rigor under which they all groaned, and which they all helped to increase.

Every monk shakes off the chain which he forged for himself, strikes his brother with it, and is struck in his turn. Miserable in their sacred retreats, they want to make others miserable also. Their cloisters are the abode of repentance, discord, and hatred. Their secret jurisdiction is that of Morocco and Algiers. They bury for life in dungeons those of their brethren who may accuse them. In a word, they have established the Inquisition.

I know that in the multitude of these wretches who infest the half of Europe, and whom seduction, ignorance and poverty have precipitated into cloisters at fifteen years of age, there have been men of singular spirit, who have risen superior to their condition, and have been serviceable to their country. But I may venture to say, that all such great men, whose merit has pervaded both the cloister and the world, have invariably been persecuted by their jealous brethren. Every learned man, every man of genius, endures more insolence, is attacked with more envy in these seminaries, than he would have experienced in the outside world. The ignoramus and the fanatic, who maintain the interest of the wallet, have more deference paid them than the greatest genius in Europe would receive.

The horror which reigns in these caverns seldom meets the secular eye; and when it bursts forth, it is with the explosion of horrible crimes. We have seen in the month of May of this very year (1766) eight of these unhappy men called Capuchins, accused of having murdered their superior in Paris.

Nevertheless, by a strange fatality, fathers, mothers, sons and daughters, on their bended knees reveal the inmost secrets of their hearts to these men the refuse of nature who, polluted with all crimes, boast of remitting the sins of mankind, in the name of that God whom they themselves create, and whom they claim to worship and adore.

How often have they inspired those they call their penitents, with all the atrocity of their own characters? They have been the principal fomenters of the religious animosities which embitter life. The judges who condemned the Calases and the Sirvens confessed to monks they gave Calas two monks to accompany him to the scaffold. These two men, less barbarous than their brethren, at first acknowledged that Calas, expiring upon the wheel, called upon God with the resignation of innocence. But when they were required to give an attestation of this fact, they refused to do it, dreading to be punished by their superiors for having told the truth.

In fine, who would credit it, after the solemn verdict given in favour of the Calases, that there should be an Irish Jesuit, who, in the most insipid of all pamphlets, has dared to say that the defenders of the Calases and the masters of the requests, who did justice to their innocence, were enemies to religion?

The Catholics reply to these reproaches, that the Protestants are susceptible to the like reproaches. The murders of Servel and Barnwell, they say, are at least upon a par with the assassination of the counsellor Du Bourg. The death of Charles I. may be put in competition with that of Henry III. The gloomy rage of the English Presbyterians, and the fury of the cannibals of the Cevennes, are equal to the horrors of St. Bartholomew.

Compare sects, compare times, you will everywhere find, for one thousand six hundred years, nearly an equal proportion of absurdity and horror everywhere, among a race of blind men, who are destroying each other in the obscurity which surrounds them.

What book of controversy is ever written without gall? What theological dogma has not been the cause of spilling human blood?

This was the necessary effect of those unfortunate words:

“Whosoever listens not to the Church, shall be looked upon as a pagan and a publican.”

Each party pretended to be the Church each party has therefore constantly said “We abhor the officers of the customs, and we are enjoined to treat whoever differs with us in opinions as the smugglers treat the officers of the customs, whenever they have the superiority.”

Thus, the first dogma everywhere established was hatred.

When the King of Prussia entered for the first -time into Silesia, deputies from a little Protestant borough, jealous of a Catholic village, came humbly to beg the king’s permission for putting all the inhabitants of that village to the sword.

The king replied to the deputies: “If the people of that village came to ask my permission to cut your throats would you think me right to grant it to them?”

“Oh, gracious sovereign,” replied the deputies, “the case is quite different; we are the true Church.”

Notes On Some Of The Writers Who Lived In The Age Of Louis XIV.

[These graphic sketches relate to the more interesting of the many referred to by Voltaire.]

Of the French writers who flourished in the age of Louis XIV.:

Abadie, James, was born in Beam in 1658. He was celebrated for his “Treatise upon the Christian Religion”; but he afterward hurt the reputation of that work by another, called the “Opening of the Seven Seals.” He died in Ireland in 1727.

Abadie, or Labadie, John, was born in the province of Guienne in 1610. He was first a Jesuit, then a Jansenist, and afterward a Protestant; and at last wanted to form a sect of his own, and unite with La Bourignon, who told him that every one had his particular share of the Holy Spirit, and that hers was greatly superior to his. He has left thirty-one volumes of fanatical writings. I have given him a place here only as an example of the weakness of human understanding. He was not, however, without his disciples. He died at Altena in 1674.

Amelot de la Houssaye, Nicholas, was born at Orleans in 1634. His translation, with political notes, and his historical writings, are greatly sought after; but his alphabetical “Memoirs” are very faulty. He was the first who ever furnished a true idea of the Venetian government. The senate took umbrage at his history, being still prepossessed with the old mistaken notion that there are certain political mysteries which should not be revealed. Since then, however, it has been discovered that there are no such mysteries, and that true policy consists in being rich, and keeping good armies on foot. Amelot translated and commented upon Machiavelli’s “Prince,” a work which was long the favourite of petty lords, who disputed for ill-governed territories; but became useless at the time that so many mighty princes, always in arms, suppressed the ambitious views of the weaker. Amelot thought himself the greatest politician in Europe; but he could never rise above a middle station, and at length died extremely poor: the reason was, that he was a politician in genius only, and not in character. He died in 1706.

Anselm, an Augustine monk. He was the first to compile a genealogical history of the great officers of the crown, which has been continued and augmented by Du Fourni, auditor of accounts. We have but a very confused notion of what constitutes the great officers of the crown. It is generally thought they are those who bear the title of “great,” in virtue of their office; as grand master of the horse, and grand cup-bearer: but the constables, the marshals, and the chancellors, are great officers, though they do not bear the title of great; and there are others who do bear this title, and yet are not reckoned great officers. The captain of the guards, and the first gentleman of the bedchamber, are, in fact, great officers, though they are not reckoned such by Father Anselm. However, there is nothing certain on this head; and there is as great confusion and uncertainty in regard to all the rights and titles in France, as there is order and regulation in the administration. He died in 1694. Arnauld, Anthony, a doctor of the Sorbonne, born in 1612, and the twentieth son of that Arnauld who pleaded against the Jesuits. He is universally known for his eloquence, his erudition, and his disputes, which acquired him so much reputation, and made him at the same time so unfortunate, according to our ordinary ideas of things, which place exile and poverty in the number of misfortunes, without reflecting that glory, friends, and a healthy age, were the portion of this famous man. It is said, in the supplement to Moreri, that Arnauld, in 1689, in order to ingratiate himself with the court, composed a libel against King William, under the title of “A True Picture of William Henry of Nassau, the Modern Absalom, Herod, Cromwell, and Nero.” This style, which resembles that of Father Garaffe, is very unlike Arnauld’s. Besides, he never entertained a notion of flattering the court. A book with so gross a title would have met with a very bad reception from Louis XIV. and those who ascribe this work, and the view in which it was written, to the famous Arnauld, are ignorant that writing books was no kind of introduction to that court. This great man died at Brussels in 1694.

Arnauld d’Andilly, Robert, elder brother to the former, was born in 1588. He was one of the great writers of Port-Royal. His translation of Josephus, which is the most esteemed of all his works, was presented by him to Louis XIV. at the age of 85. He was father of Simon Arnauld, Marquis of Pompone and minister of state, who, notwithstanding his high character and interest, was unable to prevent the disgrace which befell his uncle, the doctor of the Sorbonne, on account of his disputes. He died in 1674.

D’Auvrigni, the Jesuit. He is author of “A new Method of writing History.” We have his “Chronological Annals from the Year 1601 to 1715,” in which everything of importance that passed in Europe, during that space of time, is accurately and concisely related. He is very exact in the dates of his transactions. No writer has ever made a juster distinction between truth, falsehood, and uncertainty. He has likewise composed “Ecclesiastical Memoirs”; but unhappily they are tainted with a party spirit. Marcel and he have both been eclipsed by President Renault in his “Chronological History of France,” which is the most concise, and at the same time the most complete, work of the kind ever published, and the most convenient for the reader.

Bayle, Peter, was born at Carlat, in the county of Foix, in 1647. He retired into Holland rather as a philosopher than a Calvinist. He was persecuted during life by Jurieu, and after his death by the enemies to philosophy. Could he have foreseen how universally his dictionary would be read, he would have made it still more useful, by retrenching obscure and increasing the illustrious names. He is more esteemed for his excellent manner of reasoning than for his style, that being frequently too prolix, loose, and incorrect; and sometimes so familiar as to sink into a degree of lowness: he was rather a great logician than a profound philosopher: he understood scarcely anything of natural philosophy, and was wholly unacquainted with the discoveries of the great Newton. Almost all his philosophical articles take for granted, or else contradict a Cartesian theory which has no longer any existence; he knew no other definition of matter than extent: its other acknowledged or supposed properties have at length given birth to true philosophy. There have been new demonstrations and new doubts, so that the sceptical Bayle is in several places not enough of the sceptic: he lived and died like a wise man. Desmaiseux has written his life, of which he has made a large volume, whereas it should not have exceeded six pages. The life of a sedentary writer is to be found in his works. He died in 1706.

Beaumont de Péréfixe, Hardouin, was preceptor of Louis XIV., and archbishop of Paris. His “History of Henry IV.,” which is only an abridgment, inspires us with a love for that great prince, and is well calculated to form a good king. He composed it for the use of his royal pupil. It was thought that Mezeray had a share in writing it: there is indeed a good deal of his manner in it; but Mezeray was not master of that affecting style in many places so worthy of the prince whose life Péréfixe wrote, and of him to whom he addressed it. Those excellent counsels for governing alone were not inserted until the second edition, after the death of Cardinal Mazarin. We can form a much juster idea of Henry IV. from a perusal of this history, than from that of Daniel, which is written in a dry manner, and has too much about Father Cotton, and too little concerning the great qualities of Henry IV. and the particulars of the life of this excellent king. Péréfixe affects every sensible heart, and makes us adore the memory of this prince, whose weaknesses were only those of an amiable man, and whose virtues were those of a great one. He died in 1670.

Beausobre, Isaac de, was born at Niort in 1659, of a family distinguished in the profession of arms. He was one of those who have done honour to their country, which they have been obliged to quit. His “History of Manichaeanism” is one of the most learned, curious, and best written pieces extant: here we find clearly explained the philosophical religion of the Manes, which was formed upon the dogmas of the ancient Zoroaster and Hermes, which for a long time seduced St. Augustine himself. This history is enriched with many curious things in antiquity; but after all, this, like so many other excellent works, is only a collection of human errors. He died at Berlin in 1738.

Boileau-Despreaux, Nicholas, of the Academy. He was born in the village of Crosne, in the neighbourhood of Paris, in 1636: he made his first essay at the bar, and afterward entered into the college of the Sorbonne: but alike displeased with the tricks of both, he gave himself up entirely to the impulse of his genius, and became the honour of France. His works have been already so much commented upon that any panegyric here would be superfluous. He died in 1711.

Bossuet, James Benignus, of Dijon, was born in 1627; he was bishop of Condom, and afterwards of Meaux. We have fifty-one different pieces of his writing; but his “Funeral Orations,” and his “Discourse on Universal History,” are the works that have immortalized his name. It has been several times asserted in print, that this bishop was married, and that St. Hyacinthus, who was famous for the share he had in the little joke of Matanasius, passed for his son; but there never was any proof of this. A family of eminence in Paris, which has produced several persons of distinguished merit, affirm, that there was a private contract of marriage between Bossuet, when very young, and one Mademoiselle des Vieux; that this lady made a sacrifice of her passions and hopes to the interest of her lover, whose eloquence bade fair to procure him considerable advancement in the church, and consented to give up the contract, as the marriage had not been consummated; that Bossuet, released from his engagements, entered into holy orders; and that after his death this family had the settling of this affair, and declare that the lady never made an ill use of the dangerous secrets she was mistress of; she always lived in a chaste and respectful friendship with the bishop of Meaux, who enabled her to purchase the little estate of Maulion, about five leagues distant from Paris, of which she took the title, and lived to almost the age of a hundred. It is moreover pretended that this great man’s sentiments as a philosopher were different from what he taught as a divine, like a learned magistrate, who at the same time that he gives sentence, according to the letter of the law, may in private rise superior to it by the force of his genius. He died in 1704.

Bouhours, Dominic, a Jesuit, was born at Paris in 1628. The French language and good taste are much indebted to him: he was author of several very good pieces, which gave birth to some excellent criticisms: ex privettis odiis respublica crescit. His “Life of St. Ignatius de Loyola” did not greatly please the generality of readers; and that of St. Francis Xavier underwent some strictures; but his remarks on language, and above all his “Method of Judging Rightly of Works of Genius,” will be always of use to young people, who are desirous of forming their taste; he teaches them to avoid bombast, obscurity, far-fetched and false thoughts. If he passes sentence somewhat too severely upon certain passages of Tasso, and other Italian authors, he as often condemns them justly; his style is pure and pleasing. The little tract above mentioned greatly offended the Italians, and brought on a kind of national quarrel. It was thought, that the opinion of Father Bouhours, which was strengthened by that of Boileau, might come to be a kind of law. The Marquis d’Orsi, and some others, composed two very large volumes in defence of some of Tasso’s verses: but here let it be remarked, that Father Bouhours would have had very little right to reproach the Italian writers with their false thoughts, who himself compares Ignatius Loyola to Caesar, and Francis Xavier to Alexander, only that he was very seldom guilty of these faults.

Boulainvilliers, Count, of the house of Crouy: the most learned gentleman of the kingdom in history, and the most capable of writing that of France, had he not been too systematic. He calls the ancient feudal government the “Masterpiece of Human Genius”: he regrets those times in which the people, enslaved by ignorant and brutal petty tyrants, were without industry, commerce, or property; and is of opinion, that a hundred lords, the oppressors of the earth, and the enemies of their prince, composed the most perfect of all governments. Notwithstanding this wild hypothesis he was an excellent citizen, as, notwithstanding his weakness for judicial astrology, he was an able philosopher, so far as it is the part of a philosopher to hold life as nothing, and despise death. There is printed at the end of his works, a large scheme for rendering the King of France richer than all the other monarchs of the world. But it is plain that this piece was not written by the Count de Boulainvilliers. He died about 1720.

Bourdaloue was born at Bourges in 1632; he was a Jesuit, and the chief model for all good preachers in Europe. He died in 1704.

Breteuil, Gabrielle Emilie, Marchioness du Châtelet, was born in 1706. She illustrated the writings of Leibnitz, and translated Newton with comments a merit which was of little use to her at court, but which gained her the veneration of every nation that had a love for learning, who admired her depth of genius and eloquence. Of all the women who have adorned France, she had the greatest share of true understanding, and affected the least to be thought a wit. She died in 1749.

De Bruis, the abbé, was born in Languedoc in 1639. Although the author of ten volumes of controversy, his name would have been buried in oblivion, but for his work called “The Grumbler,” which is far superior to any of Molière’s farces, and the “Advocate Patelin,” an ancient monument of the true Gaulish simplicity revived by him, will make him known as long as there is a stage in France. He was assisted by Palaprat in these two pretty pieces. These are the only works of genius that were ever composed by two authors jointly. He died in 1723.

Calprenede, Gauthier de la, was born at Cahors, about 1612. He was one of the gentlemen in ordinary to the king: he was the first who brought long romances into fashion. The merit of these consisted in a number of adventures, the intrigue of which was artfully enough conducted, and, though incredible, not altogether impossible. Boyardo, Ariosto, and Tasso, on the contrary, loaded their poetic romances with fictions entirely unnatural; but the charms of their versification, the innumerable beauties of the detail, and the admirable allegories, especially those of Ariosto, altogether, have made their poems immortal; while the works of La Calprenede, like most other great romance-writers, have fallen in estimation. What has chiefly contributed to their fall is the great perfection the stage is arrived at. In a good tragedy, or a good opera, we meet with a much greater number of sentiments than are to be found in all these enormous volumes: these sentiments are at the same time much better expressed, and there appears a much clearer knowledge of the human heart. Thus Racine and Quinault, who have given a little into the style of these romances, have contributed to obliterate them by speaking more truly to the heart, and in a manner more tender and harmonious. He died in 1663.

Cassini, John Dominick, was born in the county of Nice in 1625, and was invited to France by Colbert in 1666. He was the first astronomer of his age; but he began, like all others, by the study of astrology. As he was naturalized in France, and married and had children there, and died in Paris, he may justly be accounted in the number of Frenchmen. He has rendered his name immortal by his meridional clock of St. Petrona at Boulogne, which shows the variations in the swiftness of the earth’s motion round the sun. He was the first who demonstrated, by the parallax of the planet Mars, that the sun is at least thirty-three millions of miles distant from the earth. He foretold the path described by the comet of 1664; he also discovered the five satellites of Saturn, of which Huygens had seen only one; and this discovery of Cassini’s was celebrated in a historical medal of Louis XIV. He died in 1712.

Chapelain, John, was born in 1595. Had it not been for his “Pucelle” or “Maid of Orleans,” he would have had some reputation in the literary world: he got more, however, by that wretched poem than Homer did by his “Iliad.” Chapelain was nevertheless of some use by his learning. It was he who corrected Racine’s first poetical attempts. At this first setting out, he was the oracle of all poets, and at length became their disgrace; he died in 1674.

La Chapelle, receiver-general of the finances, was author of some tragedies, which had success in their time. He was one of those who endeavoured to imitate Racine; for this great writer, like the great masters in painting, formed a school without knowing it. This Raphael in poetry did not, however, form a Julio Romano; and yet some of his first disciples wrote with tolerable purity of language; whereas, in the decline which followed, we have seen, even in our time, whole tragedies in which there are not four lines together without some gross faults.

Choisy, Francis de, was born at Rouen in 1644; he was envoy at Siam, and has left us an account of that embassy: he composed several historical pieces, and a translation of the “Imitation of Jesus Christ,” dedicated to Madame de Maintenon, with this motto: “Concupiscet rex decorum tuum”; as also the “Memoirs of the Countess des Barres,” which countess is himself; he having worn the dress, and lived as a woman for several years: he made a purchase of an estate near Tours, under the name of the Countess des Barres. In these “Memoirs” he relates freely the many mistresses he had under this disguise. Whilst he led this life he wrote the “History of the Church.” In his “Memoirs of the Court” we meet with several facts, of which some are true, some false, and many taken upon trust; they are written in rather too familiar a style.

Corneille, Peter, was born at Rouen in 1606. Though at present only six or seven of his pieces are played, yet he will always be the father of the stage. He is the first who raised the genius of the nation, and that is sufficient to gain pardon for about twenty of his pieces, which, except in a very few places, are the worst that we have, both for style, barrenness of intrigue, and insipid and misplaced amours; and by a heap of wire-drawn conversations, which are the reverse of true tragedy. But we are to judge of a great man only by his excellencies, and not by his faults. It is said that his translation of the “Imitation of Christ” went through thirty-two editions; this however is as difficult to believe as it is to read one of them. He received a gratification from the king in his last illness; he died in 1684.

It is said in several printed collections of anecdotes, that he had a particular place set apart for him at the play-house, and that, whenever he came in, everybody rose and received him with a clap. Unhappily, mankind are not so ready to do justice to merit. The real truth is, that the king’s comedians refused to play his last eight pieces, and he was obliged to give them to another company.

Corneille, Thomas, was born at Rouen in 1625. He would have gained great reputation, if he had not had a brother. There are thirty-four dramatic pieces by him. He died poor, in the year 1709.

Daniel, Gabriel, a Jesuit. He was historiographer of France, and has rectified the mistakes of Mezeray, concerning the first and second races of our kings. It is alleged against him, that his diction is not always sufficiently pure; that his style is poor and uninteresting; that he is not lively in his descriptions; that he has not given sufficient insight into customs, manners, and laws; and that his history is a tedious detail of military operations in which a historian of his character is almost always mistaken.

The Count of Boulainvilliers, in his memoirs on the French government, says, that Daniel is guilty of a thousand errors. This is saying a great deal; but luckily those errors are of as little consequence as the real truths would have been in their room; for, of what importance is it to know whether it was the right or the left wing that gave way at the battle of Montlhery, or by what way Louis the Fat entered the ruins of Puiset? A member of society is desirous of knowing by what steps the government came to change its form, what were the several privileges and encroachments of the different bodies, what was done by the general estates, what was the spirit of the nation, etc. Father Daniel’s history, with all its faults, is still the best that is to be found, at least till the reign of Louis XI. He asserts, in his preface, that the early periods of the history of France are more interesting than those of Rome, because Clovis and Dagobert possessed larger territories than Romulus and Tarquin. He was not aware, that the weak beginnings of all great things are interesting to mankind; we are fond of beholding the trifling reign of a nation, to which France was but a province, and which extended its empire to the Elbe, the Euphrates, and the Niger. It might be acknowledged that our history and that of other nations, from the fifth century to the fifteenth, is only a chaos of barbarous adventures, under barbarous names.

Descartes, René, born at Touraine in 1596, was son of a counsellor of the Parliament of Brittany. He was the greatest mathematician of his time, but a philosopher who knew the least of nature, when compared with those who came after him. He passed the greater part of his life out of France, that he might pursue his philosophical studies more at liberty, in imitation of Saumaise, who took a similar step; but he was disappointed of the quiet he thought to find in a retirement in Holland. Two professors of the balderdash school divinity, taught at that time, the one named Voet, and the other Shockius, brought the ridiculous charge of atheism against him, with which almost every philosopher has been branded by contemptible writers. It availed him nothing that he had exhausted his genius in collecting proofs of the existence of a God, and in searching for new ones. His enemies compared him to Vanini, in one of the pieces they published against him; not that Vanini was really an atheist the contrary has been demonstrated but he was burned as such, and they could not have made a more shocking comparison. Descartes found it difficult to obtain a very slight satisfaction, by a decree of the Academy of Groningen. His “Meditations,” his “Discourse on Method,” are still in esteem; his natural philosophy is entirely fallen, being founded neither on geometry nor experiments. He was a long time in possession of so prodigious a reputation that La Fontaine, who knew nothing of the matter, indeed, but was the echo of public voice, said of him,

Descartes, in ages past, had been

Adored as God. He ranked between

Pure soul and man immured in cloister,

As human brutes ‘twixt man and oyster.

The abbé Genet, a writer of the present century, has unfortunately been at the pains to translate Descartes’s natural philosophy into French verse.

It is only since 1730 that France has begun to recover from the errors of that chimerical philosophy, and since that experimental philosophy and geometry have been cultivated. Descartes has had the same fate in natural philosophy, as Ronsard had in poetry. He died at Stockholm, in 1650.

Duché was valet de chambre to Louis XIV. He made some tragedies for the court, taken from holy writ, like Racine, but not with equal success. His opera of “Iphigenia at Tauris” is his best piece. It is written in the sublime taste; and, though it is but an opera, it affords a strong idea of the best things in the Greek tragedies. This taste did not last long, and soon after we were reduced to simple ballets, consisting of detached acts, made solely for the sake of introducing the dances; thus, even the opera began to degenerate, at the time that almost every other theatrical production was upon the decline.

Madame de Maintenon made the fortune of this author, by recommending him in such strong terms to Monsieur de Pontchartrain, secretary of state, that, supposing him to be a person of some consideration, the minister went to pay him a visit. When Duché, who at that time lived very obscurely, saw a secretary of state enter his house, he thought it was to carry him to the Bastille.

Fénelon, Francis de Salignac, archbishop of Cambray, was born in Périgord, in 1651. We have fifty-five different productions of his, all of which seem to come from a heart full of virtue, but his “Telemachus” especially inspires that virtue: he has been in vain condemned by Guéudeville and the abbé Faidit: he died at Cambray, in 1715.

After the death of Fénelon, Louis XIV. burned, with his own hand, all the manuscripts which the Duke of Burgundy had preserved of his preceptor’s. Ramsay, who was brought up under this celebrated prelate, wrote to me in these words: “Had he been born in England, his genius would have discovered itself more strongly; and he would, without fear, have given full scope to his principles, which no one was acquainted with.”

Lefèvre, Anne, Madame Dacier. She was born in the Calvinist faith, at Saumur, in 1651, and is famous for her great learning. The Duke of Montausier employed her on one of those books which were called the Dauphin’s, for the education of that prince. “Florus,” with Latin notes, is hers: her translations of Terence and Homer have brought her immortal honour: her only fault was a too great fondness for her own translations. La Motte attacked her with wit, and she replied with erudition. She died at the Louvre in 1720.

La Fontaine, John, was born at Chateau-Thierry in 1621. He was the most plain and simple man living, but admirable in his way, though negligent and unequal. He was the only good writer of his time who did not partake of the bounties of Louis XIV., though entitled to them by his merit and his poverty. His “Fables” are for the most part infinitely superior to any that have been written before or since, in any language whatsoever. In the tales which he imitated from Ariosto, he lacks that writer’s elegance and purity; he falls far short of him in his descriptions, which defect escaped Boileau in his “Dissertation on Joconde,” because he did not understand Italian: but in those tales which he has taken from Boccaccio, La Fontaine is superior, as having a much greater share of wit, elegance, and art, than the Italian, whose only merit is simplicity, perspicuity, and exactness of language, but La Fontaine corrupted the French. He died in 1695.

Fontenelle, Bernard le Bovier de. Though he was living in 1756, yet he must be an exception to the rule we have laid down for ourselves of not admitting any living person into this catalogue, his great age, being near a hundred when he died, seems to demand this distinction. He is at present equally above panegyric and criticism. He may be considered as the most universal genius that the age of Louis XIV. produced, and may be compared to a soil that from its happy situation bears every kind of fruit. He was not twenty years of age, when he composed the greatest part of the tragic opera “Bellerophon”; after which he wrote his opera of “Thetis and Peleus,” in which he has greatly imitated Quinault. It was performed with great success; but his “Aeneas and Lavinia” was not so well received. He tried his powers in tragedy, and assisted Mademoiselle Bernard in some of her pieces. He composed two, one of which was played in 1680, but never printed. This piece drew upon him for a long time very unjust reproaches; for he had merit enough to be sensible, that notwithstanding his extensive genius, he was not possessed of the talents of his uncle, Peter Corneille, for tragedy. He wrote several detached pieces, in which there appeared a depth of knowledge and ingenuity, that plainly discover a man superior to his own works. In his “Dialogues of the Dead” and in his verses we may remark the spirit of Voiture, but much more extensive and philosophical. His “Plurality of Worlds” was a performance singular in its kind. He had the art of making an agreeable book of the “Oracles of Vandale.” The delicate subjects which are touched upon in that work subjected him to some underhand persecutions, which, however, he had the good fortune to get the better of. He perceived how dangerous it is to be in the right in those things where men of power and interest are in the wrong. He then applied himself to geometry and natural philosophy, in which he succeeded with as much ease as he had done in the more pleasing arts. Being appointed perpetual secretary to the Academy of Sciences, he occupied that office for more than forty years, with universal approbation. In his history of that academy, he frequently throws a strong light upon the most obscure memoirs. He it was who introduced that elegant manner of treating the sciences. If he is in some places too flowery, we should consider them as rich harvests wherein flowers naturally grow up with the corn.

His “History of the Academy of Sciences” would be as useful as it is judiciously executed, if his only task had been to give an account of truths brought to light; but he was obliged to explain different opinions that contradicted one another, and which are for the most part destroyed.

The elogiums which he pronounced on the deceased members of the academy have the singular merit of rendering the sciences respectable, and of establishing the merit of the author. In vain have the abbé Desfontaines, and others of his stamp, attempted to obscure his reputation; it is the property of great men to have contemptible enemies. Notwithstanding his having lately published a few indifferent comedies, and an “Apology for the Vortices of Descartes,” we will readily pardon the faults in his dramatic pieces, on account of his great age; and his Cartesian principles, in consideration of those ancient opinions having been when he was young the generally received ones of all Europe.

In a word, he is considered as the head of those who have the pleasing art of throwing new lights and graces upon the abstract sciences. He has also great merit in every other work which he has undertaken. These great talents were supported by a knowledge of languages and history; and he was without contradiction superior to all the learned men who have not had the gift of invention.

Gassendi, Peter, was born in Provence, in 1592. He was the restorer of part of the Epicurean system of natural philosophy. He perceived the necessity of atoms, and of a vacuum; and what he affirmed, Newton and others have since demonstrated. He was not considered so great as Descartes, because he was more rational, and no inventor of hypotheses: nevertheless he was accused of atheism, as well as Descartes. Some imagined that he who would, with Epicurus, admit a vacuum, would, like him, deny the existence of a God. This is the way of reasoning of all detractors and calumniators. In Provence, where there was no one jealous of him, Gassendi was called the holy priest. At Paris, the voice of envy gave him the title of atheist. It is true that he was a sceptic, and that philosophy had taught him to doubt of everything, but not of the existence of a supreme being. He died in 1656.

Godeau, Anthony. He was one of those who helped to establish the French Academy: he was a poet, an orator, and a historian. It is well known that for the sake of a pun, and in reward for his having rendered the “Benedicite” into verse, Cardinal Richelieu gave him the bishopric of Grasse; his “Ecclesiastical History” in prose is more valued than his poem on the “Church Calendar”; he was greatly deceived in thinking to equal the “Fasti” of Ovid; neither his subject nor his genius being sufficient for it. It is a great mistake to think subjects of Christianity as fit for poetry as those of Paganism, whose mythology, as pleasing as it was false, animated all nature. He died in 1672.

Duhalde, the Jesuit, without stirring out of Paris, or having ever seen China, has, from the memoirs of his fraternity, given the best and most ample description of the Chinese empire that has ever appeared. He died in 1743.

Our insatiable curiosity for knowing every minute particular relating to the religion, laws, and manners of the Chinese, is not yet satisfied: a burgomaster of Middleburg, named Hudde, a man of great fortune, guided wholly by his curiosity, took a voyage to China, in the year 1700, where he laid out the greater part of his fortune in informing himself of everything. He became so proficient in the Chinese language that he was taken for a native of that country: luckily for him his face favoured the mistake. After some time he found means to be raised to the rank of a mandarin, in which quality he travelled through all the provinces, and at length returned to Europe, with a collection of forty years’ observations. Unhappily, the ship they were on board was cast away, which was the greatest loss that ever befell the republic of letters.

Huet, Peter Daniel, was born at Caen in 1630; he was a man of universal learning, and retained the same ardour for study till the age of ninety-one: he was invited to Stockholm by Queen Christina, and was one of those illustrious personages who assisted in the education of the dauphin, than whom no prince had ever greater masters. Huet turned priest when he was forty years of age, and had the bishopric of Avranche given him, which he afterward resigned, that he might be more at leisure to pursue his studies in retirement. Of all his productions, “The Commerce and Navigation of the Ancients,” and the “Origin of Romances,” are the most read. His treatise on “The Weakness of the Human Understanding” made a great noise, and seemed to contradict his “Evangelical Demonstrations”; he died in 1721.

Longepierre, Hilary-Bernard, Baron of. He was born in Burgundy in 1658: he was master of all the beauties of the Greek language; a very rare degree of merit in his time. We have some translations by him in verse of “Anacreon,” “Sappho,” “Bion,” and “Moschus”; his tragedy of “Medea,” though unequally written, and too full of declamations, is far superior to that of Peter Corneille: but Corneille’s “Medea” was written before he was at the height of his reputation. Longepierre composed several other tragedies upon the model of the Greek poets, whom he has happily imitated in not blending love with subjects of terror and cruelty; but at the same time he has copied them in the tediousness of their commonplaces, and in the barrenness of action and intrigue, and not equalled them in beauty of elocution, which constitutes the greatest merit of a poet. Though he wrote several other tragedies in the Greek taste, he gave only “Medea” and “Electra” to the stage. He died in 1727.

Maintenon, Frances d’Aubigné, Scarron, Marchioness of. She was an author as well as Madame de Sevigné, because her letters have been printed after her death. Both of these ladies write with a great deal of spirit, but of a very different kind. The “Letters of Madame de Sevigné” are dictated by the heart and the imagination, and are more sprightly and free. Those of Madame de Maintenon are more constrained, and seem as if she had foreseen they would one day be made public. Madame de Sevigné, in writing to her daughter, wrote only for that daughter. There are several anecdotes to be found in both these collections. We may perceive in those of Madame de Maintenon, that she was married to Louis XIV.; that she had considerable influence in State affairs, but that she did not direct them; that she did not hasten the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and its consequences, neither did she oppose it; that she sided with the Molinists at first, because Louis XIV. did so, and that at length she became seriously attached to that party; that Louis XIV. in the latter part of his life, used to carry relics about him; with several other private anecdotes. But the little knowledge that may be gained from this collection is too dearly bought by the number of useless letters it contains; a fault which is common to all collections of this kind. If nothing was to be printed but what is useful, there would not be a hundredth part so many bad books. She died at St. Cyr in 1719.

Malebranche, Nicholas, of the Oratory, was born at Paris in 1638. He was one of the deepest meditators that ever wrote. As he abounded with that forcible imagination which makes more disciples than truth, he had his disciples in his time; there were those that went by the name of “Malebranchians.” He has admirably shown the errors of the senses and imagination; but when he attempted to dive into the nature of the soul, he was lost in the abyss, as others had been before him. He was, like Descartes, a great man from whom very little was to be learned. He died in Massillon was born in Provence in 1663. He belonged to the Oratory, and was bishop of Clermont. No preacher had a better acquaintance with the world: he was more flowery and pleasing than Bourdaloue; his eloquence was that of the courtier, the academic, and the man of wit; and what is more, he was a philosopher, moderate in his opinion, and a friend to toleration. He died in 1742.

Molière, John Baptiste, was born at Paris in 1620. He was the best comic poet that any nation ever produced. This article led me to read over the comic poets of antiquity; and it must be confessed, that if we compare the art and regularity of our stage with the loose and unconnected scenes of the ancients, their weak intrigues, and the indelicate custom of making their actors relate, in long, insipid, and improbable soliloquies, either what they had done, or what they were going to do; it must be confessed, I say, that Molière drew comedy from its chaos, as Corneille did tragedy; and that the French are superior, in this respect, to any nation under the sun. Molière, again, had another kind of merit than what either Corneille, Racine, Boileau, or La Fontaine possessed: he was a philosopher, and such both in theory and practice; and yet to this philosopher was it that Harlay, archbishop of Paris, so despised on account of his morals, denied the empty honour of sepulture; and the king himself was obliged to intercede with that prelate to permit Molière to be privately interred in the churchyard of the little chapel of St. Joseph, in the suburbs of Montmartre. He died in 1673.

Montesquieu, Charles, president of the Parliament of Bordeaux. He was born in 1689. At twenty-three years of age he published his “Persian Letters,” a comic work, abounding with strokes that show an understanding more solid than his book. This work is an imitation of the “Siamese” of Dufresny and the “Turkish Spy”; but such an imitation as shows how the originals should have been written. Such performances seldom succeed but by the help of a foreign air; and a satire upon our own nation is better received from the pen of an Asiatic than from that of a countryman, as what is common of itself becomes by this means singular. The genius which reigns in the “Persian Letters” opened the doors of the French Academy to the President Montesquieu, though that Academy had itself been ill-treated in his book; but at the same time, the freedom with which he speaks of the government, and of abuses in religion, incurred the displeasure of Cardinal Fleury, who ordered them to be shut against him again. He fell upon an artful method of making that minister his friend: in a few days’ time he caused a new edition of his book to be printed, in which he retrenched or softened everything that could appear exceptionable to him, either as a cardinal, or a minister of state. Monsieur de Montesquieu then waited upon his eminence in person with his book, who, though not much accustomed to read, perused some part of it. This air of confidence, supported by the good offices of some persons of credit, won over the cardinal, and Montesquieu was admitted into the Academy.

After this he published his treatise on “The Greatness and Fall of the Roman People”; a worn-out subject, but which he made new by very ingenious reflections, and lively descriptions: so that it is a political history of the Roman empire. At length his “Spirit of Laws” made its appearance; a work in which there appears much more genius than either in Puffendorf or Grotius. We cannot read these authors without doing ourselves some kind of violence; but we read the “Spirit of Laws” as much for amusement as instruction. This book is written with as much freedom as the “Persian Letters”; and this freedom did not a little contribute to its success, by drawing upon him enemies, who increased his reputation by the hatred they brought upon themselves. These were a set of men, who, delighting in the obscure factions of ecclesiastical controversy, hold their own opinions as sacred, and those who despise them as impious and sacrilegious. They wrote with great acrimony against Montesquieu, and prevailed on the Sorbonne to examine his book; but the infamy and contempt with which his persecutors were loaded, prevented that college from proceeding any farther. The principal merit of the “Spirit of Laws” is that love for the laws that reigns throughout the whole work, which love is founded on that for mankind. What is most extraordinary is, that the encomiums he gives to the English government pleased most in France. The smart and stinging irony against the Inquisition, which is found in this work, charmed all the world, except the Inquisitors: his reflections, which are almost always profound, he supports by examples drawn from the history of all nations. It is true that he has been reproached with taking his examples too frequently from inconsiderable savage nations, in a manner unknown, and upon the accounts of travellers, whose fidelity there is too much reason to suspect. He is not always very exact in his quotations: for instance, he makes the author of the “Political Testament,” ascribed to Cardinal Richelieu, say: “If there should be found among the people an honest man unfortunate, that man must not be employed”; whereas “The Political Testament,” in the place quoted, only says that it is best to employ men of fortune and education, as the least liable to be corrupted. The continual want of method throughout this work, the singular affectation of putting no more than two or three lines in a chapter, and that frequently, and those lines nothing but a piece of pleasantry, has disgusted many readers, who complain of meeting sometimes with sallies of wit where they expected arguments. This author is also reproached with having advanced too many doubtful ideas for certain ones; but if he does not always instruct his reader, he always sets him thinking, and that is no small degree of merit. His lively and ingenious manner of expression, in which we trace the imagination of his countryman, Montaigne, has, above all, contributed to the great reputation of the “Spirit of Laws”; the same thing said by a man of equal or even superior learning to him would not have been read. In short, there is not any work in which there is more wit, and a greater number of learned ideas and bold things; or where a reader can find more opportunities for instruction, whether he approves or condemns his opinions. We may, with justice, rank this in the number of original works that were an ornament to the age of Louis XIV. and which have no model in antiquity. He died in 1755, like a philosopher, as he had lived.

La Motte-Houdart, Anthony, was born at Paris in 1672. He was famous for his writings, and amiable in his manners: he had many friends, that is to say, people who were pleased with his company; but I was with him in his last moments, and saw him expire without a creature by his bedside. This was in 1731.

Pascal, Blaise. His father was the first intendant that was appointed at Rouen: he was born in 1623, and was a great genius, of the superiority of which he thought of availing himself, in the same manner as kings of their power, that is, to bring everything in subjection to him by main force. What in his “Thoughts” most disgusts some readers is the contemptuous, authoritative air he assumes; but he should first have been sure he had reason on his side. It must be owned that he contributed much to the improvement of our language, and eloquence. His enemies and those of Arnauld found means to prevent any notice being taken of either in Perrault’s book on “Illustrious Men.” This gave occasion to the quoting and applying to them that passage of Tacitus: “Prafulgebant Cassius et Brutus eo ipso quod eorum effigies non visebantur.” He died in 1662.

Petis de la Croix, Francis. He was one of those whose merit the great Colbert encouraged and rewarded. At the age of seventeen, he was sent by Louis XIV. to Turkey and Persia, to learn the Oriental languages; and, what will appear a little extraordinary, he wrote a part of the life of Louia in Arabic, which is read and esteemed in the East: he wrote besides, the “History of Genghis Khan and Tamerlane,” compiled from ancient Arabian authors; and many other valuable tracts. But of all his performances his translation of “A Thousand and One Days,” is the most read.

Quinault, Philip, born at Paris in 1635, was auditor of accounts, and wrote some very beautiful pieces of lyric poetry, notwithstanding Boileau’s satire, which he bore with a great deal of good nature. Quinault was much superior in his way to Lulli. The former will always be read, whereas the latter, setting aside his recitative, cannot even be sung: yet in his own time he was supposed to be indebted to Lulli for his reputation: but time tries all things. He partook, like many other great men, of the bounty of Louis XIV. He died in 1688.

Marquis de Quincy, lieutenant-general of the artillery, was author of the “Military History of Louis XIV.” He is very minute in his details, which may be useful to those who have patience to follow him through the operations of a campaign. Could exactly the same situation be supposed to exist, they would furnish good examples, but that is never the case, neither in business nor war. The difference is always great, and the resemblance imperfect. The conduct of war, like a game in which skill is requisite, is only to be learned by practice and service, and yet the event of a battle, like that of a game of hazard, is often determined by chance.

Racine, John, born at Ferte-Milon in 1639, and educated at Port-Royal. When he wrote the tragedy of “Theagenes,” and presented it to Molière, and that of the “Frères Ennemis” with the subject of which Molière furnished him, he was an ecclesiastic. In the patent to “Andromache,” he is styled prior to Epinay. Louis XIV. was not insensible to his great merit. He made him a gentleman in ordinary, nominated him sometimes on his retinue when he went to Marly, made him lie in his apartment once during a fit of sickness, besides showing many other marks of favour; yet Racine died of chagrin, from an apprehension of his having incurred his displeasure; by which it appears that he was a greater poet than philosopher. The merit of his works was not ascertained till of late. “Mariamne,” says St. Evremond, “Sophonisba,” “Alcionée,” “Andromache,” and “Britannicus” are affecting pieces. Thus was not only Corneille’s “Sophonisba,” a sorry performance, but the absurd “Mariamne” and “Alcionée” set on a level with the other masterpieces. Thus is gold confounded with trash during the lives of ingenious men, but death separates them. He died in 1699.

Regnard, Francis, was born at Paris in 1647. His travels alone were sufficient to render him famous. He was the first Frenchman who visited Lapland, where he left this inscription cut on a rock: “Sistimus hie tandem nobis ubi defuit orbis.” “I have got at last to the extremity of the world.” He was taken in the Mediterranean by a corsair, and carried to Algiers, but was afterward ransomed and made treasurer of France, and lieutenant of the waters and forests. He was a man of pleasure and a philosopher; his genius was sprightly, and truly comic. His comedy called “The Gamester,” is thought not inferior to those of Molière. One must be a great stranger to the genius of the two authors, to suppose that he stole that piece from Dufreni. He dedicated his “Menechmes” to Despreaux, and afterwards wrote against him, because he had not done him justice. Notwithstanding the gayety of his temper, he died of chagrin at the age of 52. It has even been said that he cut short the thread of his days himself. He made his exit in 1658.

La Rochefoucauld, Francis, Duke de, was born in 1613. His memoirs are read, but his thoughts are not only read, but got by heart. He died in 1680.

Rollin, Charles, born at Paris in 1661, was rector of the university, and the first of that body who wrote French with purity and dignity. The last volumes of his “Ancient History” are not equal to the first, as being composed in much greater haste; yet it is one of the best compilations extant in any language, because Rollin was a master of eloquence, which few compilers are. Had he been also a philosopher, it would have greatly enhanced the value of his work. There are a number of ancient histories; but in none of them do we find that philosophical sagacity that distinguishes between truth and falsehood, between probability and fable or fiction, and suppresses what is useless and frivolous. He died in 1741.

Rotrou, John, born in 1609, was the founder of the theatre. The first scene and a part of the fourth act of “Venceslas” are masterpieces. Corneille used to call him his father; but every one will agree that the son greatly surpassed the father. “Venceslas” was not written till after “The Cid.” He died in 1650.

Rousseau, John Baptist, born at Paris, 1669. Fine verses, great errors in conduct, and great sufferings, have conspired to render him famous. We must either suppose him the author of the verses that occasioned his banishment, which, by the bye, are not unlike many that he avowed, or throw a slur upon the two tribunals that condemned him. It is not the first time that two tribunals, and even more numerous bodies, have, with one voice, pronounced very unjust sentences, when party spirit runs high. This much is certain, that the party against Rousseau were full of rancour and resentment. Few men have ever been more universally hated and persecuted. Nothing less would satisfy the public than his banishment; nay, their aversion continued unabated several years afterward. But at last the success of his rival, La Motte, the reception he met with, the reputation which, as they thought, he had unjustly and unfairly acquired, and the artifice by which he had raised himself to a sort of empire in literature, made all the men of letters forsake him, and declare for Rousseau, whom they now no longer dreaded. By their means the public in general was reconciled to him. La Motte now began to appear to them too happy, because he was rich and in vogue, notwithstanding he was blind, and laboured under many infirmities and disorders. On the contrary, Rousseau was viewed in the light of an unhappy exile; and to live at Vienna or Brussels was thought a greater misfortune than to be blind and infirm. But indeed both were very unhappy: only the one was the victim of nature, the other of the unlucky adventure that occasioned his banishment. Both may serve to show what partiality and injustice men are capable of, how much they vary in their judgments, and what folly it is to hunt after popular applause. He died at Brussels in 1740. See the article on “La Motte.”

Le Sage, born in 1667. His romance of “Gil Blas” still keeps its ground, because it is natural. He died in 1747.

St. Evremond, Charles, born in Normandy in 1613. Loose morals, letters written to courtiers, at a time when the word “court” was pronounced with an emphasis everywhere, indifferent verses composed in illustrious societies, and for that reason called “Society Verses,” all concurred, with a good deal of spirit, to raise the reputation of his works. They were printed by one des Maiseux, together with the life of the author, which alone makes one large volume, and yet in the whole there are not four pages that are interesting. It contains scarcely anything but what is to be found in his works. It was an imposition of the booksellers and editors. By such artifices a way has been found to multiply books ad infinitum, and without adding anything to the knowledge of mankind. His exile, his philosophy, and works, are well known. When he was asked on his deathbed, if he would be reconciled to the Church, his answer was: “I wish I could be reconciled to my appetite.” He died in 1703, and was interred at Westminster, with the kings and illustrious men of England.

L’Abbé de Saint-Pierre, Castel, a gentleman of Normandy, who, though his income was not great, yet for some time shared it with the celebrated Fontenelle and Varignon, wrote a great deal on politics. There is no better character of his works in general than that given by Cardinal de Bois: that they were the reveries of a good subject. He was simple enough to inculcate in his works the most trivial moral truths, and to propose for the most part things impracticable; he was continually harping on the scheme of a perpetual peace, and a sort of universal parliament, which he called the Diet of Europe. Part of this chimerical project had been attributed to Henry IV. and the Abbé de Saint-Pierre, the better to recommend his notions, pretended that the European diet had been planned and approved by the dauphin, Duke of Burgundy, and that the scheme was found among his papers after his death. But it was a mere fiction of his own, to make his project the better relished. He honestly published the answer that Cardinal Fleury made to his proposal: “You have forgotten, Monsieur,” says the cardinal, “to propose in the first place to send a company of missionaries to prepare and dispose the hearts of the several princes.” Yet, notwithstanding all this, Abbé de Saint-Pierre did a deal of good. He contributed not a little to deliver France from the hardships of the arbitrary land-tax; with respect to that, and that alone, he wrote and acted like a statesman. He was unanimously excluded from, the French Academy, because he had, during the regency of the Duke of Orleans, a little too harshly opposed in his “Polysinodie” the establishment of councils to the method of governing adopted by Louis XIV., the protector of the Academy. The intrigue for that end was managed by Cardinal de Polignac, and it succeeded. What is a little unaccountable is, that the regent did not prevent it, though Cardinal de Polignac was at that very time plotting against him; and he had given Abbé Saint-Pierre an apartment in the Palais Royal, and had his whole family in his service. However, the abbé did not complain. He continued to live like a philosopher, with those who had excluded him. Boyer, the ancient bishop of Mirepoix, his fellow-member, prevented his elogium from being pronounced at the Academy according to the custom. These fine speeches at the death of an academician add nothing either to his merit or reputation; yet in the present case, the refusal was barbarous. The service he had done his country, his probity, and his gentle disposition entitled him to better treatment. A few days before his death, I asked him what he thought of it. He replied, that he considered it as a journey or jaunt into the country. Of all his performances, that on the future abolition of Mahometanism is the most remarkable. He is positive that the time will come, when reason will be more than a match for superstition everywhere; when men will see and be convinced that, to please God, patience, beneficence, and humanity alone are required.

“It is impossible,” says he, “that a book, in which falsehoods are asserted for truths, absurdities advanced that contradict common sense, and praises bestowed on actions manifestly unjust, should be a revelation from God.” He fancies that in five hundred years, all sorts of persons, even the lowest, will be convinced of the imposture, and that even the mufti and the cadis will find it to their interest to disabuse the people, and to reform their religion, in order to render themselves more necessary and respected.

Sandras, Courtilz de, born at Montargis in 1644, is mentioned for no other reason than to put the French, especially foreigners, on their guard against those forgeries published in Holland. Courtilz was one of the most infamous writers in this respect. He deluged Europe with fictions, under the title of histories. What a scandalous thing was it that a captain of the regiment of Champagne should go to Holland, and support himself by selling lies to the booksellers. He, and such as follow his example, in writing libels against their country, against good princes who scorn, and private persons who have it not in their power to punish them, can be considered only as the most execrable and abandoned wretches. He wrote the “Conduct of France Since the Peace of Nimeguen,” and the answer to it: “The State of France Under Louis XIII. and XIV.”; “The Conduct of Mars in the Dutch Wars”; “The Love Conquests of the Great Alexander”; “The Love Intrigues of France”; “The Life of Turenne and Admiral Coligny”; “The Memoirs of Rochefort, Artagnan, Monbrun, Vordac, and the Marchioness de Fréné”; the “Political Testament” of Colbert, and many other pieces, by which simpletons have been imposed on and abused. The authors of those miserable pamphlets against France, entitled “le Glaneur,” “1’Epilogueur,” are his humble imitators. These pieces, which hunger prompted, and stupidity and falsehood dictated, are read by none but the canaille. He died at Paris in 1712.

Saurin, James, born at Nîmes in 1677. He was esteemed the best preacher among the Protestants. Notwithstanding, his style is said to savour of the refugee. “It can hardly be supposed,” says he, “that those who have foregone their country for the sake of their religion, should speak their native language in its purity.” But in his time, the French spoken in Holland was better than it is at present. Bayle’s style had nothing of the refugee; the only thing that can be objected to it is a familiarity that approaches sometimes to lowness. The defects in the language of the Calvinist preachers, were occasioned chiefly by their copying the incorrect phraseology of the first reformers; besides, almost all of them having been educated at Saumur, in Poitou, in Dauphiny, and in Languedoc, they still retained the vicious provincial modes of expression. The place of minister to the nobility at The Hague was instituted on purpose for Saurin. He was a man of learning and pleasure, and died in 1730. His family was not all related to that of Joseph Saurin, of the Academy of Sciences, who is the author of some extracts from the “Journal des Savants” some mathematical memoirs, and the noted “Factum” against Rousseau. Joseph died in 1737.

Scarron, Paul, the son of a counsellor of the great chamber, was born in 1598. His comedies are rather farces than comedies, and “Virgil Travesti” could be received only as the work of a buffoon. His “Comical Romance” is his only work that is still relished by people of taste, as Boileau predicted. He died in 1660.

Scuderi, Madeleine, was born at Havre in the year 1607. She is better known at the present day by some pretty pieces of poetry, than by the unwieldy romances of “Clélie” and “Cyrus.” Louis XIV. treated her with respect, and settled a pension upon her. She gained the first prize for eloquence bestowed by the academy. Her death occurred in 1701.

Senecai, first valet de chambre to Maria Theresa, was a poet of a singular turn of imagination. His “Tale of Kaimac,” take it altogether, displays great genius. It serves to show that very pretty tales may be told in a manner quite different from that of Fontaine. It is observable that this, though the best he wrote, is the only work not to be found in his collection. His “Travaux d’Apollon” has also peculiar beauties.

Sevigné, Mary de Rabutin, was born in 1626. Her letters, which are full of anecdotes, and written with freedom and spirit, in a lively style, are the best criticism that can be on your studied letters, in which there is a manifest affectation of wit, and still more on these fictitious letters written to imaginary correspondents, and stuffed with absurd sentiments and adventures in a pretended epistolary style. She died in 1696.

De Torcy, John Baptist Colbert, nephew of the great Colbert, minister of state under Louis XIV., left memoirs of the public transactions from the Peace of Ryswick to that of Utrecht. They were published, while this essay on the Age of Louis was in the press, and confirm everything advanced in it. They are very minute, and therefore only fit for those that want to be thoroughly acquainted with the subject of them. The style is better than that of any of the memoir writers who were his predecessors. They display the taste of Louis XIV.’s court. But what stamps the highest value on them is the candour and sincerity of the author, which shines through the whole. He died in 1746.

Tristan l’Hermite, gentleman to Gaston of Orleans, brother of Louis XIII. The long and surprising run which his tragedy of “Mariamne” had was owing to the ignorance of the times. They had then no better; and it even held up its head some time after Corneille made his appearance. In some nations, at this day, very indifferent performances pass for masterpieces, because they have had none better. It is not generally known that Tristan turned the office of the virgin into verse, nor is it at all strange that it is not. He died in 1655. Here follows his epitaph:

A wretched spaniel crouching by his lord,

I still was poor, and pleaded still disaster;

I lived in waiting at proud fortune’s board;

And died upon a bench, in waiting on my master.

Le Vayer, Francis, born at Paris in 1588. He was preceptor to Monsieur, brother of Louis XIV., and, during one year, to Louis himself. He was also historiographer of France, and counsellor of state. His scepticism was well known, and yet did not prevent his being entrusted with the important office of educating these princes. Though his works are too prolix, yet there is a great deal of just reasoning and learning in them. He was certainly the most learned member of the Academy. His scepticism is bolder and more undisguised than that of Bayle, and he is more severe and cynical in his satire. His motto was,

Of all those maxims deemed secure,

The most secure is still to doubt.

As that of Montaigne, “Que sais-je?” “What know I?” He died in 1672.

Veyssière, Mathurin de Lacroze, was born at Nantes in 1661. He was a Benedictine at Paris. Being a free-thinker, and his superior of a quite different character, he resolved to quit both his order and his religion. He was a prodigy both for learning and for memory. Not content with studying and understanding what was useful and agreeable, he must needs study what could not be known, such as the ancient Egyptian language. One piece that he wrote, on the “Christianity of the Indies,” is much esteemed. There is one remarkable thing that we learn from it, and that is, that the Brahmins, notwithstanding the idolatry of the people, believe that there is but one God. Such is the itch for writing, that a life of this man has been published, making a volume as large as that of Alexander. Such an extract as this would have been enough, and too much. He died at Berlin in 1739.

Villedieu, Madame de. Her romances have gained her a reputation. But I would not have the reader think that I set any value upon that inundation of romances with which France has been lately overflowed. Almost all of them, except “Zaid,” are the productions of persons of no genius, who wrote in an easy agreeable style things unworthy the notice of men of sense. Most of them are quite destitute of imagination, and though read and admired by young people, whose taste they spoil, they are not worth, all together, four pages of Ariosto. She died in 1683.

Voiture, Vincent, born at Amiens in 1598, was the first Frenchman who was what is called in France a bel esprit. His writings have little else to recommend them, and yet they are not proper models to form our taste upon; but wit was then a rare thing. He wrote some very pretty bits of poetry, but nothing considerable.

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