447 



VOLTAIRE, FRANCOIS-MARIE. 



VOLTERRA, DANIELE DL 



443 



prior, by which he forbade the interment. The order came too late, 

 for the funeral was over ; but the prior lost his place. The letter of 

 the prior, in reply to the bishop, states all the circumstances of the 

 funeral, and the grounds on which he considered the body entitled to 

 Christian burial. The bones of Voltaire remained undisturbed till 

 the Revolution, when they were brought back to Paris and interred in 

 the Pantheon. 



The works of Voltaire are thus arranged in the edition of Lequien, 

 Paris, 70 volumes, 8vo, 1820, of which the last volume consists of a 

 copious index. ' Vie de Voltaire, par le Marquis de Condorcet, 

 Mdmoirea,' &c.; vol. L; 'Theatre,' vols. ii.-ix., containing his tragedies 

 and comedies ; ' Discours sur la Tragddie,' addressed to Lord Boling- 

 broke; the translation of Shakspere's 'Julius Csesar,' &c. ; 'La Hen- 

 riade,' vol. x., with the prefaces of the King of Prussia and Marmontel; 

 ' Pucelle,' vol. xi. ; ' Poesies,' vols. xii.-xiv., containing his odes and his 

 miscellaneous poems, which are very numerous ; ' Essais sur les 

 Moeurs,' vols. xv.-xviiL; 'Siecle de Louis XIV.' vols. xix. xx. ; 'Siecle 

 de Louis XV.' vol. xxi.; 'Histoire de Charles XII., vol. xxii. ; ' Histoire 

 de Russie,' vol. xxiii. ; ' Annales de 1'Empire,' vol. xxiv. ; ' Histoire du 

 Parlement,' vol. xxv. ; ' Melanges Historiques,' vols. xxvi., xxvii. ; 

 'Politiques et Legislation,' vols. xxviii. xxix., of which tbe latter 

 contains a full account of the affair of Calas; 'Physique,' vol. 

 xxx., which contains his physical writings, which were composed 

 during his intimacy with Madame du Chastellet. Among these is his 

 Kir turns de la Philosophie do Newton/ dedicated to Madame du 

 Chastellet. At the time when this work was written almost all the 

 French philosophers were Cartesians ; Maupertuis and Clairaut, both 

 of whom were then very young, were exceptions ; ' Philosophie,' vols. 

 xxxi.-xxxiv., containing his metaphysical writings; 'La Bible expli- 

 qude,' &c. His attacks on Christianity are not expressed with decency, 

 and he is guilty of gross perversion of facts. His judgment of the 

 philosophical writings of others is neither exact nor profound. He 

 calls Spinosa an atheist, which he was not. Voltaire, though a deist, 

 professed a great horror of atheism : and in reading all his philoso- 

 phical and anti-religious works, it is necessary to bear this in mind. 

 It is a great mistake to confound him with the professed atheists of 

 his day, whom he hated, or at least affected to hate, and who viewed 

 his deism with contempt. ' Dialogues,' vol. xxxv. ; ' Dictionnaire Phi- 

 losophique,' vols. xxxvi.-xlii., a work which shows his extensive and 

 discursive reading, his fertility of invention, and his inveterate pre- 

 judices; 'Romans,' xliii. xliv., which are among his most amusing 

 works, though in many respects far from being unexceptionable; 

 ' Face"ties,' vol. xlv., containing among other things, ' Les Questions 

 sur les Miracles,' in letters, the first of which appeared in 1765, and 

 after the essay of Hume. There is nothing new in the objections of 

 Voltaire, which are in substance that God governs by unchangeable 

 laws, and that we cannot suppose that he permits any deviations from 

 them. ' Melanges Littcraires,' vols. xlvi., xlvii. ; ' Commentairea sur 

 Corncille,' vols. xlviii., xlix. ; ' Correspondance avec le Roi de Prusse,' 

 vols. l.-lii. ; the first letter is from the Prince-Royal, dated Berlin, 8th 

 August 1736; the last in this collection is from Voltaire, dated Paris, 

 1st of April 1778, about two months before his death. ' Correspon- 

 dance avec 1'Imperatrice de Russie Catherine II.,' vol. liii. ; ' Corre- 

 spondance avec D'Alembert,' vols. liv. lv. : these three volumes are 

 perhaps the most amusing part of his correspondence. ' Correspon- 

 dance Ge'ne'rale,' vols. IvL-lxix. ; containing letters to and from a great 

 number of persons of rank and literary distinction. 



To estimate the character of Voltaire correctly, and his influence on 

 the age in which he lived, would furnish materials for a large volume. 

 He has been the subject of almost unqualified panegyric and of 

 unqualified abuse, but he deserves neither. Education, temperament, 

 and circumstances placed him in opposition to established institutions; 

 his labours were directed to destroy, not to reform or rebuild. No 

 man saw more clearly the vicious and absurd parts of existing insti- 

 tutions ; but he could not appreciate the value of that which had been 

 tested by experience. He had no veneration for antiquity. His habit 

 of viewing the ridiculous side of things became so strong as to close 

 his eyes to palpable truths. He was the great Coryphaeus of deism, 

 and he fulfilled the prophecy of his preceptor. It is not true, as it has 

 been sometimes said, that his object was solely to root out super- 

 stition and to annihilate the power of the church. His panegyrist 

 Condorcet distinctly states that his avowed object was to destroy 

 Christianity, and his sceptical writings render such avowal unneces- 

 sary : this is their manifest design. He had no deep convictions, 

 except we allow to be such his belief that a man could not perpetrate 

 the crime that Calas was charged with, and a vague indefinite notion 

 that human nature was better than priests and bigots supposed it to 

 be. He had not the simplicity and sincerity of character that belong 

 to truly great minds, and he was apparently incapable of friendship 

 or of strong attachment, though some instances are alleged in which 

 he retained his friendships to the close of his life. His moral character 

 partook of the vices of the age to which he belonged ; his intellectual 

 was above it. The faults of his character pervade his writings. As a 

 poet, he fails to move the passions strongly, nor does he touch the 

 more delicate sympathies of our nature. His dramatic writings are 

 defective as dramas, if we measure them by our standard of excellence. 

 He had studied Shakspere, and he allowed him some merit, but he 

 preferred Corneille ; and some of the most undoubted characteristics 



of Shakspere's great dramatic art appeared to the poet of the age of 

 Louis XV. merely the traits of a barbaric age. Yet his dramatic con- 

 ception is often just and vigorous; many of his scenes have great 

 artistic merit, and he abounds in lofty truths and generous sentiments. 

 But an affectation of philosophy is the fault of all his writings ; he 

 would always be inculcating what he considered to be great truths, 

 and thus we have Voltaire always before us. It is an essential of 

 dramatic art, that the author shall never appear ; but in all his writings 

 Voltaire is always apparent. 



The ' Henriade ' of Voltaire is still the only French epic. The sub- 

 ject is the siege of Paris, which was commenced by Henri III. and 

 Henri of Navarre, afterwards Henri IV., who finally entered the city. 

 The action is confined to Paris and the field of Ivry, which decided 

 the fortunes of Henri IV. It has accordingly an historical basis, and 

 the main events are made conformable to historic truth ; its poetic 

 part consists of fictions intended to aid the development of the action, 

 and of allegories, which are feeble aids, such as the journey of Discord 

 to Rome, and the Temple of Love. Its machinery is neither original 

 nor grand, and it is deficient in striking events. It contains a love 

 episode, the amours of Henri and La Belle Gabrielle, which might as 

 well have been a separate poem for any connection it has with the 

 main subject. The 'Henriade' has been variously judged even by 

 French critics, and the rest of Europe has pronounced on the whole 

 an unfavourable opinion. The author worked much and long upon it ; 

 for he had the ambition of .raising a monument which should stand 

 by the side of the epic poems of Greece and Italy. To deny it all 

 merit would be absurd ; it contains many fine and vigorous passages, 

 but of all the longer works of Voltaire it is perhaps that which, to a 

 foreigner at least, is the most tedious, except the ' Guerre Civile de 

 Geneve,' the dullest of all his productions. 



His ' Pucelle d'Orldans ' has been already mentioned. The sub- 

 ject, if one can describe such a subject in a few words, is Jeanne 

 d'Arc, the Maid of Orleans. The poem commences with the loves 

 of King Charles VII. and Agnes Sorel, and the siege of Orleans by 

 the English. Jeanne is armed by St. Dionysius, and goes to King 

 Charles at Tours. The poem concludes, after many adventures, with 

 the triumph of Charles. Voltaire aimed to rival Ariosto, but it is 

 universally agreed that he has not approached him. Even in its pre- 

 sent form the ' Pucelle' is one of the most licentious poems of modern 

 times, for the corrections of the author principally related to the 

 satirical allusions. All things serious and sacred are treated with 

 ridicule. The poet riots hi his licence, and seems to exult in his con- 

 tempt of decencies and religion. Proprieties of time, place, and cir- 

 cumstance all are disregarded ; the ' Pucelle' is the reflection of 

 Voltaire in his most lively and most extravagant mood. The poem 

 has great merits in detail; the versification is easy, and many of the 

 descriptions are beautiful : the exordiums of each canto are justly ad- 

 mired. But the 'Pucelle' has fixed a stain on the moral character of 

 Voltaire, for which all its beauties cannot atone. 



The fertility and facility of Voltaire were unequalled. His great 

 and discursive reading supplied him with an infinite variety of matter, 

 which he moulded into every variety of form. His satire and his sar- 

 casm, and his sneer, were always ready and always effective. He 

 seldom rises to eloquence, because he is not impassioned and sincere. 

 But he never sinks into triviality : he is never tiresome ; he is always 

 lively and amusing. Clearness and precision characterise all his 

 writings. When he is superficial, which is often the case, it is rather 

 for want of taking pains to examine his subject with sufficient care, 

 than from want of power to comprehend it. We must except the 

 cases where his passions were concerned, and where prejudices had 

 become inveterate. Passion filled him with malice and bitterness, and 

 prejudice made him blind. His historical writings and essays have 

 great merit. He sketched with rapidity and force : he selected what 

 was pertinent and characteristic; he omitted what was trivial and 

 useless. He set the example of a better handling of the materials of 

 history : he was judiciously sceptical, though sometimes, from deficient 

 knowledge and prejudice, unwisely incredulous. He had no exact 

 knowledge of antiquity, or even of the Middle Ages ; yet his criticism 

 sometimes sheds a ray of light where the duluess of mere learning 

 has left nothing but darkness. His writings contributed greatly to 

 the amendment of the penal law of France, and to the destruction of 

 many absurd prejudices. That they tended to destroy also many of 

 those notions on which society reposes for its safety, is not and cannot 

 be denied. The prodigious activity and unwearied industry of Vol- 

 taire, his long and brilliant career of literary success, and the influence 

 which he exercised on his own generation and that which immediately 

 followed, have made him one of the most conspicuous personages of 

 the 18th century. He has still many readers, and probably will 

 always have some. His best writings please by the mere charm of 

 form, independent of the matter, and they are stamped with the 

 impress which genius alone can give. The influence of his opinions is 

 probably not great at present. He is not the writer for all ages : he 

 belonged to his own age, and that is passed. 



( Vie de Voltaire, par M. le Marquis de Condorcet ; Memoires pour 

 servir a la Vie de M. de Voltaire, Merits par lui-meme : Eloge de 

 Voltaire, par M. de la Harpe ; Biographic Universelle, art. ' Voltaire ; ' 

 CEuvres Completes de Voltaire, Paris, 1820, 70 vols. 8vo.) 



VOLTERRA, DANIELE DI. [RICCIABELLI, DANIELE.] 





