42 VOLTAIRE. 



Of Ambition : 



" Sanglante, inquiete, egaree, 



De trones, de tombeaux, d'esclaves entouree." 



" Restless, bloodstain'd, all perils wildly braves, 

 Stalks among thrones, and sepulchres, and slaves." 



Of Hypocrisy : 



"La tendre Hypocrisie aux yeux pleins de douceur : 

 Le ciel est dans ses yeux, 1'enfer est dans son cceur." 



" The tender creature's eyes with sweetness swell : 

 Heaven 's in those eyes, and in her heart is hell." 



Nor is the song of these furies, on seeing Henry 

 approach their impious troop, without the highest 

 merit : 



" Quel mortel, disent-ils, par ce juste conduite, 

 Vient nous persecuter dans 1'eternelle nuit ?" 



These are passages of true poetry ; they even approach 

 the seventh Canto to the sixth book of the ' ^Eneid/ 

 It may be questioned if the ideas of making Envy 

 " triste amante des morts" Feebleness "tyran qui 

 cede aux crimes et detruit les vertus" and Hypocrisy 

 " tendre," are equalled by any of Virgil's moral pictures. 

 Certainly to all in the eleventh book of the ' Odyssey ' it 

 is beyond doubt immeasurably superior, as indeed is 

 the sixth ^Eneid. Nor can we hesitate to affirm that, 

 had the rest of the e Henriade' been composed in the 

 same poetic spirit, we should not have been suffered 

 with impunity to consider it an elegant history. 



In the year 1730 Voltaire wrote part of another 

 poern, which he finished at intervals during the seven 

 or eight years following his too famous mock-heroic, 

 the * Pucelle d'Orleans.' It is painful and humiliating 

 to human genius to confess, what yet is without any 



