VOLTAIRE. 47 



" Ce vil fripier d'ecrits que 1'interet devore, 

 Qui vend au plus offrant son encre et ses fureurs, 

 Meprisable en son gout, detestable en ses mceurs. 

 Medisant, qui se plaint des brocards qu'il essuye, 

 Satirique, ennuyeux, disant que tout 1'ennuye, 

 Criant que le bon gout s'est perdu dans Paris, 

 Et le prouvant tres bien, du moins, par ses ecrits." 



(Disc, iii.) 



" Huckster of printed wares, who barters still 

 The oil or venom of his hireling quill ; 

 Whose taste and morals are alike impure, 

 And none his writings, none his life endure ; 

 A general slanderer, touch him and he roars, 

 Dully, the dulness of the age deplores, 

 Cries that at Paris taste in books there 's none, 

 And proves it if he can but sell his own." 



We have also such wholesome morality as the couplet 

 against asceticism in the tenth : 



" Malgre la saintete de son auguste emploi, 

 C'est n'etre bon a rien de n'etre bon qu'a toi." 



And the noble one in the third against envy 



" La gloire d'un rival s'obstine a t'outrager, 

 C'est en le surpassant que tu dois t'en venger !" 



But some passages have high merit of a more 

 purely poetical cast. There is nothing finer, if any- 

 thing so fine, in Pope, as the close of the fifth, where 

 he compares his own prosecution of his literary labours, 

 while arrested at Francfort, to Pan's continuing to 

 play while Cacus seized his flocks ; and then breaks 

 out in a strain not surpassed by Virgil 



" Heureux qui jusqu'au temps du terme de sa vie, 

 Des beaux arts amoureux, peut cultiver les fruits ! 

 II brave 1'injustice, il calme les ennuis, 

 II pardonne aux humains, il rit de leur delire, 

 Et de sa main mourant il touche encore la lyre." 



