44 VOLTAIRE. 



whereas Voltaire is" ready to commit this offence at every 

 moment, and seems ever to take the view of each sub- 

 ject that most easily lends itself to licentious allusions. 

 But this is not all. The ' Pucelle' is one continued 

 sneer at all that men do hold, and all that they ought 

 to hold, sacred, from the highest to the least important 

 subjects, in a moral view from the greatest to the most 

 indifferent, even in a critical view. Religion and its 

 ministers and its professors virtue, especially the 

 virtues of a prudential cast the feelings of humanity 

 the sense of beauty the rules of poetical compo- 

 sition the very walks of literature in which Voltaire 

 had most striven to excel are all made the constant 

 subjects of sneering contempt, or of ribald laughter ; 

 sometimes by wit, sometimes by humour, not rarely 

 by the broad grins of mere gross buffoonery. It is 

 a sad thing to reflect that the three masterpieces of 

 three such men as Voltaire, Rousseau, Byron, should 

 all be the most immoral of their compositions. It 

 seems as if their prurient nature had been affected by a 

 bad but criminal excitement to make them exceed 

 themselves. Assuredly if such was not Voltaire's case, 

 he well merits the blame ; for he scrupled not to read 

 his ' Pucelle' to his niece, then a young woman.* 



And 



Avrap ywv tuc)oi/ui napa ^pvfftri A^po&r?/. (viii. 342.) 



So when describing in the llth Odyssey Neptune's rape of Pyro, the 

 old bard only says 



Av<rc a TtapQtviriv favrjv, Kara. Vvirvov ex^cv. (xi. 244.) 

 Correspondance Generate, iii. 454. 



