104 VOLTAIRE. 



in relating the conduct of Luther and Calvin, in de- 

 scribing Leo X. and the other Popes ; yet full justice 

 is rendered to the character and the accomplishments of 

 Leo, as well as to his coarse and repulsive antagonists : 

 and with all the natural prejudice against a tyrannical 

 Pontiff, a fiery zealot, and a gloomy religious perse- 

 cutor, we find him praising the attractive parts of the 

 Pope's character, the amiable qualities of the apostle's, 

 and the rigid disinterestedness of the intolerant re- 

 former's, as warmly as if the former had never domi- 

 neered in the Vatican, and the latter had not out- 

 raged, the one all taste and decorum by his language, 

 the other all humanity by his cruelty. 



But it is a merit of as high an order, and one which 

 distinguishes all Voltaire's historical writings, that he 

 exercises an unremitting caution in receiving impro- 

 bable relations, whether supported by the authority of 

 particular historians or vouched by the general belief 

 of mankind. Here his sagacity never fails him here 

 his scepticism is never hurtful. The admirable tract 

 in which he assembled a large body of his critical 

 doubts under the appropriate title of 4 Le Pyrrhonisme 

 de 1'Histoire,' is only a concentrated sample of the 

 bold spirit in which he examined all the startling nar- 

 ratives to which our assent is so frequently asked, and 

 which used, before the age of Voltaire, to be as unthink- 

 ingly yielded. In the article ' History' of the ' Encyclo- 

 pedic,' we find much of what is now the general faith 

 upon the early history of Rome, but in those days was 

 never dreamt of. The same unflinching boldness and 

 the same unfailing acuteness pervade all the work of 

 which we have now been discoursing. We may safely 



