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VOLTAIRE, FRANCOIS MARIE AROUET DE (1...
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See also:VOLTAIRE, See also:FRANCOIS See also:MARIE AROUET DE (1694–1778) , See also:French philosopher, historian, dramatist and See also:man of letters, whose real name was Francois Marie Arouet simply, was See also:born on the gist of See also:November 1694 at See also:Paris, and was baptized the next See also:day. His See also:father was Francois Arouet, a See also:notary; his See also:mother was Marie See also:Marguerite Daumart or D'Aumard. Both father and mother were of Poitevin extraction, but the Arouets had been for two generations established in Paris, the See also:grand-father being a prosperous tradesman. The See also:family appear to have always belonged to the See also:yeoman-tradesman class; their See also:special See also:home was the See also:town of See also:Saint-Loup. Voltaire was the fifth See also:child of his parents—twin boys (of whom one survived), a girl, Marguerite See also:Catherine, and another boy who died See also:young, having preceded him. Not very much is known of the mother, who died when Voltaire was but seven years old. She See also:pretty certainly was the See also:chief cause of his See also:early introduction to See also:good society, the See also:abbe de See also:Chateauneuf (his See also:sponsor in more ways than one) having been her friend. The father appears to have been somewhat See also:peremptory in See also:temper, but neither inhospitable nor tyrannical. Marguerite Arouet, of whom her younger See also:brother was very fond, married early, her See also:husband's name being See also:Mignot; the See also:eider brother, Armand, was a strong Jansenist, and there never was any See also:kind of sympathy between him and Francois.
The abbe de Chateauneuf instructed him early in belles-lettres and See also:deism, and he showed when a child the unsurpassed See also:faculty for facile See also:verse-making which always distinguished him. At the See also:age of ten he was sent to the See also:College See also: Nor can there be much doubt that the See also:great See also:attention bestowed on acting—the Jesuits kept up the See also:Renaissance practice of turning See also:schools into theatres for the performance of plays both in Latin and in the See also:vernacular—had much to do with Voltaire's lifelong devotion to the See also:stage. It must have been in his very earliest school years that the celebrated presentation of him by his godfather to Ninon de See also:Lenclos took, See also:place, for Ninon died in 1705. She See also:left him two thousand francs " to buy books with." He worked fairly, played fairly, lived comfortably, made good and lasting See also:friends. Some curious traits are recorded of this See also:life—one being that in the terrible See also:famine See also:year of See also:Malplaquet a See also:hundred francs a year were added to the usual boarding expenses, and yet the boys had to eat See also:pain bis. In _August 1711, at the age of seventeen, he came home, and the usual See also:battle followed between a son who desired no profession but literature and a father who refused to considerliterature a profession at all. For a See also:time Voltaire submitted, and read See also:law at least nominally. The abbe de Chateauneuf died before his godson left school, but he had already introduced him to the famous and dissipated coterie of the See also:Temple, of which the grand See also:prior See also:Vendome was the See also:head, and the poets See also:Chaulieu and La Fare the chief literary stars. It does not appear that Voltaire got into any great scrapes; but his father tried to break him off from such society by sending him first to See also:Caen and then, in the See also:suite of the See also:marquis de Chateauneuf, the abbe's brother, to the See also:Hague. Here he met a certain Olympe Dunoyer (" Pimpette "), a girl apparently of respect-able See also:character and not See also:bad connexions, but a See also:Protestant, penniless, and daughter of a literary See also:lady whose literary reputation was not spotless. The mother discouraged the affair, and, though Voltaire tried to avail himself of the See also:mania for proselytizing which then distinguished See also:France, his father stopped any See also:idea of a match by procuring a lettre de cachet, which, however, he did not use. Voltaire, who had been sent home, submitted, and for a time pretended to See also:work in a Parisian lawyer's See also:office; but he again manifested a faculty for getting into trouble—this time in the still more dangerous way of See also:writing libellous poems—so that his father was glad to send him to stay for nearly a year (1714–15) with Louis de Caumartin, marquis de Saint-Ange, in the See also:country. Here he was still supposed to study law, but devoted himself in part to literary essays, in part to storing up his immense treasure of gossiping See also:history. Almost exactly at the time of the See also:death of Louis XIV. he returned to Paris, to fall once more into literary and Templar society, and to make the tragedy of ,(Edipe, which he had already written, privately known. He was now introduced to a less questionable and even more distinguished coterie than Vendome's, to the famous " See also:court of Sceaux," the circle of the beautiful and ambitious duchesse du See also:Maine. It seems that Voltaire See also:lent himself to the duchess's frantic hatred of the See also:regent See also: But in the See also:spring of next year the See also:production of See also:Lagrange-See also:Chancel's libels, entitled the Philippiques, again brought suspicion on him. He was in-formally exiled, and spent much time with See also:Marshal See also:Villars, again increasing his See also:store of " reminiscences." He returned to Paris in the See also:winter, and his second See also:play, .Artemire, was produced in See also:February 1720. It was a failure, and though it was recast with some success Voltaire never published it as a whole, and used parts of it in other work. He again spent much of
his time with Villars, listening to the marshal's stories and making harmless love to the duchess. In See also:December 1721 his father died, leaving him See also:property (rather more than four thousand livres a year), which was soon increased by a See also:pension of See also:half the amount from the regent. In return for this, or in hopes of more, he offered himself as a spy—or at any rate as a See also:secret diplomatist—to See also:Dubois. But See also:meeting his old enemy Beauregard in one of the See also:minister's rooms and making an offensive remark, he was waylaid by Beauregard some time after in a less privileged place and soundly beaten.
His visiting espionage, as unkind critics put it—his secret See also:diplomatic See also:mission, as he would have liked to have it put himself--began in the summer of 1722, and he set out for it in See also:company with a certain Madame de Rupelmonde, to whom he as usual made love, taught deism and served as an amusing travelling See also:companion. He stayed at See also:Cambrai for some time, where See also:European diplomatists were still in full session, journeyed to See also:Brussels, where he met and quarrelled with See also:jean See also:Baptiste See also: In November he caught smallpox and was very seriously See also:ill, so that the See also:book was not given to the See also:world till the spring of 1724 (and then of course, as it had no privilege, appeared privately). Almost at the same time, the 4th of See also: He returned from that visit one of the foremost literary men in Europe, with views, if not profound or accurate, yet wide and acute on all See also:les grands sujets, and with a solid stock of See also:money. The visit lasted about three years, from 1726 to 1729; and, as ifto make the visitor's See also:luck certain, See also:George I. died and George II. succeeded soon after his arrival. The new See also: At the end of 1730 Brutus did actually get acted. Then in the spring of the next year he went to Rouen to get Charles XII. surreptitiously printed, which he accomplished. In 1732 another tragedy, Eriphile, appeared, with the same kind of halting success which had distinguished the See also:appearance of its See also:elder sisters since CEdipe. But at last, on the 13th of See also:August 1732, he produced See also:Zaire, the best (with See also:Merope) of all his plays, and one of the ten or twelve best plays of the whole French classical school. Its See also:motive was borrowed to some extent from Othello, but that matters little. In the following winter the death of the comtesse de See also:Fontaine-Martel, whose guest he had been, turned him out of a comfortable abode. He then took lodgings with an See also:agent of his, one Demoulin, in an out-of-the-way part of Paris, and was, for some time at least, as much occupied with contracts, speculation and all sorts of means of gaining money as with literature.
In the See also:middle of this period, however, in 1733, two important books, the Lettres philosophiques sur les Anglais and the Temple du See also:goat appeared. Both were likely to make bad See also:blood, for the latter was, under the See also:mask of easy verse, a See also:satire on See also:con-temporary French literature, especially on J. B. Rousseau, and the former was, in the See also:guise of a See also:criticism or rather See also:panegyric of English ways, an attack on everything established in the See also: The book was condemned (See also:June loth, 1734), the copies seized and burnt, a See also:warrant issued against the author and his dwelling searched. He himself was safe in the See also:independent duchy of See also:Lorraine with Emilie de See also:Breteuil, marquise du See also:Chatelet.,1 with whom he began to be intimate in 1733; he had now taken up his abode with her at the See also:chateau of Cirey. If the English visit may be regarded as having finished 1 Gabrielle Emilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, marquise du Chatelet (1706-1749), was the daughter of the See also:baron de Breteuil, and married the marquis du Chatelet-Lomont in 1725. She was an accomplished linguist, musician and mathematician, and deeply interested in See also:metaphysics. When she first became intimate with Voltaire she was practically separated from her husband, though he occasionally visited Cirey. She is only important from her connexion with Voltaire, though an See also:attempt has been made to treat her as an See also:original thinker; see F. Hamel, An Eighteenth See also:Century Marquise (1910). She wrote Institutions de physique (1740), Dissertation sur la nature et la See also:propagation du See also:feu (1744), Doutes sur les religions reculees (1792), and in 1756 published a See also:translation of See also:Newton's Principle. Voltaire's education, the Cirey See also:residence may be justly said to be the first stage of his literary manhood. He had written important and characteristic work before; but he had always been in a kind of literary lVanderjahre. He now obtained a settled home for many years and, taught. by his numerous brushes with the authorities, he began and successfully carried out that See also:system of keeping out of personal harm's way, and of at once denying any awkard responsibility, which made him for nearly half a century at once the chief and the most prosperous of European heretics in regard to all established ideas. It was not till the summer of 1734 that Cirey, a half-dismantled country house on the See also:borders of See also:Champagne and Lorraine, was fitted up with Voltaire's money and became the head-quarters of himself, of his hostess, and now and then of her accommodating husband. Many pictures of the life here, some of them not a little malicious, survive. It was not entirely a See also:bed of See also:roses, for the "respectable Emily's" temper was violent, and after a time she sought lovers who were not so much See also:des cerebraux as Voltaire. But it provided him with a safe and comfortable See also:retreat, and with every opportunity for literary work. In March 1735 the See also:bar} was formally taken off him, and he was at See also:liberty to return to Paris, a liberty of which he availed himself sparingly. At Cirey he wrote indefatigably and did not neglect business. The See also:principal literary results of his early years here were the Discours en vers sur l'homme, the play of Alzire and L'Enfant prodigue (1736), and a long See also:treatise on the Newtonian system which he and Madame du Chatelet wrote together. But, as usual, Voltaire's extraordinary literary See also:industry was shown rather in a vast amount of fugitive writings than in substantive works, though for the whole space of his Cirey residence he was engaged in writing, adding to, and altering the Puce/le. In the very first days of his sojourn he had written a pamphlet with the imposing See also:title of Treatise on Metaphysics. Of metaphysics proper Voltaire neither then nor at any other time understood anything, and the subject, like every other, merely served him as a pretext for laughing at See also:religion with the usual See also:reservation of a tolerably affirmative deism. In March 17 36 he received his first See also:letter from See also:Frederick of See also:Prussia, then See also:crown prince only. He was soon again in trouble, this time for the poem of Le Mondain, and he at once crossed the frontier and then made for Brussels. He spent about three months in the See also:Low Countries, and in March 1737 returned to Cirey. and continued writing, making experiments in physics (he had at this time a large laboratory), and busying himself with See also:iron-See also:founding, the chief industry of the See also:district. The best-known accounts of Cirey life, those of Madame de Grafigny, date from the winter of 1738–39; they are somewhat spiteful but very amusing, depicting the frequent quarrels between Madame du Chatelet and Voltaire, his intense suffering under criticism, his See also:constant dread of the surreptitious publication of the Pucelle (which nevertheless he could not keep his hands from writing or his tongue from reciting to his visitors), and so forth. The chief and most galling of his critics at this time was the Abbe See also:Desfontaines, and the chief of Desfontaines's attacks was entitled La Voltairomanie, in reply to a See also:libel of Voltaire's called Le Preservatif. Both combatants had., according to the absurd habit of the time, to disown their works, Desfontaines's disavowal being formal and procured by the exertion of all Voltaire's own influence both at home and abroad. For he had as little notion of tolerance towards others as of dignity in himself. In April 1739 a journey was made to Brussels, to Paris, and then again to Brussels, which was the headquarters for a considerable time, owing to some law affairs, of the Du Chatelets. Frederick, now king of Prussia, made not a few efforts to get Voltaire away from Madame du Chatelet, but unsuccessfully, and the king earned the lady's cordial hatred by persistently refusing or omitting to invite her. At last, in See also:September 1740, See also:master and See also:pupil met for the first time at See also:Cleves, an interview followed three months later by a longer visit. Brussels was again the headquarters in 1741, by which time Voltaire had finished the best and the secondor third best of his plays, Merope and See also:Mahomet. Mahomet was played first at See also:Lille in that year; it did not appear in Paris till August next year, and Merope not till 1743. This last was, and deserved to be, the most successful of its author's whole theatre. It was in this same year that he received the singular diplomatic mission to Frederick which nobody seems to have taken seriously, and after his return the oscillation between Brussels, Cirey and Paris was resumed. During these years much of the Essai sur les mceurs and the Siecle de Louis XIV. was composed. He also returned, not too well-advisedly, to the business of courtiership, which he had given up since the death of the regent. He was much employed, owing to Richelieu's influence, in the fetes of the dauphin's See also:marriage, and was rewarded through the influence of Madame de See also:Pompadour on New Year's Day 1745 by the See also:appointment to the See also:post of historiographer-royal, once jointly held by See also:Racine and Boileau. The situation itself and its accompanying privileges were what Voltaire chiefly aimed at, but there was a See also:salary of two thousand livres attached, and he had the year before come in for three times as much by the death of his brother. In the same year he wrote a poem on See also:Fontenoy, he received medals from the pope and dedicated Mahomet to him, and he wrote court divertissements and other things to admiration. But he was not a thoroughly skilful courtier, and one of the best known of Voltairiana is the contempt or at least silence with which Louis XV.—a sensualist but no See also:fool—received the maladroit and almost insolent inquiry See also:Trajan est-il content? addressed in his See also:hearing to Richelieu at the close of a piece in which the See also:emperor had appeared with a transparent reference to the king. All this assentation had at least one effect. He, who had been for years admittedly the first writer in France, had been repeatedly passed over in elections to the See also:Academy. He was at last elected in the spring of 1746, and received on the 9th of May. Then the See also:tide began to turn. His favour at court had naturally exasperated his enemies; it had not secured him any real friends, and even a gentlemanship of the chamber was no solid benefit, except from the money point of view. He did not indeed hold it very long, but was permitted to sell it for a large sum, retaining the See also:rank and privileges. He had various proofs of the instability of his hold on the king during 1747 and in 1748. He once See also:lay in hiding for two months with the duchesse du Maine at Sceaux, where were produced the comedietta of La Prude and the tragedy of See also:Rome sauvee, and afterwards for a time lived chiefly at See also:Luneville; here Madame du Chatelet had established herself at the court of King See also:Stanislaus, and carried on a liaison with Saint-See also:Lambert, an officer in the king's guard. In September 1749 she died after the See also:birth of a child. The death of Madame du Chatelet is another turning-point in the history of Voltaire. He was fifty-five, but he had nearly See also:thirty years more to live, and he had learnt much during what may be called his Cirey cohabitation. For some time, however, after Madame du Chatelet's death he was in a state of pitiable unsettlement. At first, after removing his goods from Cirey, he hired the greater part of the Chatelet town house, and then the whole. He had some idea of settling down in Paris, and might perhaps have done so if See also:mischief had not been the very breath of his nostrils. He went on writing satiric tales like Zadig. He engaged in a foolish and undignified struggle with See also:Crebillon pere (not fils), a See also:rival set up against him by Madame de Pompadour, but a dramatist who, in part of one play, Rhadamiste et Zenobie, has struck a note of tragedy in the grand Cornelian See also:strain, which Voltaire could never See also:hope to See also:echo. Semirame (1748), Oreste (1750) and Rome sauvee itself were all products of this rivalry. He used the most extraordinary efforts to make himself more popular than he was, but he could not help being uncomfortable. All this time Frederick of Prussia had been continuing his invitations. Voltaire left Paris on the 15th of June 1751, and reached See also:Berlin on the loth of See also:July. This Berlin visit is more or less See also:familiar to English readers from the two great essays of See also:Macaulay and See also:Carlyle as well as from the Frederick of the latter. But these two masters of English were not perhaps the best qualified to relate the See also:story. Both were unjust to Voltaire, and Macaulay was unjust to Frederick as well. It is certain that at first the king behaved altogether like a king to his guest. He pressed him to remain; he gave him (the words are Voltaire's own) one of his orders, twenty thousand francs a year, and four thousand additional for his niece, Madame See also:Denis, in See also:case she would come and keep house for her See also:uncle. But Voltaire's conduct was from the first Voltairian. He insisted on the consent of his own king, which was given without delay. But Frenchmen, always touchy on such a point, regarded Voltaire as something of a deserter; and it was not long before he bitterly repented his See also:desertion, though his residence in Prussia lasted nearly three years. It was quite impossible that Voltaire and Frederick should get on together fvr long. Voltaire was not humble enough to be a See also:mere See also:butt. as many of Frederick's led poets were; he was not enough of a See also:gentleman to hold his own place with dignity and discretion; he was constantly jealous both of his equals in age and reputation, such as See also:Maupertuis, and of his juniors and inferiors, such as Baculard D'See also:Arnaud. He was greedy, restless, and in a way Bohemian. Frederick, though his love of teasing for teasing's See also:sake has been exaggerated by Macaulay, was a See also:martinet of the first See also:water, had a See also:sharp though one-sided idea of See also:justice, and had not the slightest intention of allowing Voltaire to insult or to tyrannize over his other guests and servants. If he is to be blamed in this particular See also:matter, the blame must be chiefly confined to his imprudence in inviting Voltaire at the beginning and to the brutality of his conduct at the end. Within Voltaire there was always a mischievous and ill-behaved child; and he was never more mischievous, more ill-behaved and more childish than in these years. He tried to get D'Arnaud exiled, and succeeded. He got into a quite unnecessary See also:quarrel with Lensing. He had not been in the country six months before he engaged in a discreditable piece of financial gambling with See also:Hirsch, the See also:Dresden See also:Jew. He was accused of something like downright See also:forgery—that is to say, of altering a See also:paper signed by Hirsch after he had signed it. The king's disgust at this affair (which came to an open See also:scandal before the tribunals) was so great that he was on the point of ordering Voltaire out of Prussia, and Darget the secretary had no small trouble in arranging the matter (February 1751). Then it was Voltaire's turn to be disgusted with an occupation he had undertaken himself—the occupation of " buckwashing " the king's French verses. However, he succeeded in See also:finishing and See also:printing the Siecle de Louis XIV., while the Diclionnaire pltilosophique is said to have been devised and begun at See also:Potsdam. But Voltaire's restless temper was See also:brewing up for another See also:storm. In the early autumn of 1751 La Alettrie, one of the king's parasites, and a man of much more See also:talent than is generally allowed, horrified Voltaire by telling him that Frederick had in conversation applied to him (Voltaire) a See also:proverb about " sucking the See also:orange and flinging away its skin," and about the same time the dispute with Maupertuis, which had more than anything else to do with his exclusion from Prussia, came to a head. Maupertuis got into a dispute with one See also:Konig. The king took his See also:president's part; Voltaire took Konig's. But Maupertuis must needs write his Letters, and thereupon (1752) appeared one of Voltaire's most famous, though perhaps not one of his most read works, the See also:Diet- ibc du Docteur Akakia. Even Voltaire did not venture to publish this See also:lampoon on a great See also:official of a prince so touchy as the king of Prussia without some permission, and if all tales are true he obtained this by another piece of something like forgery—getting the king to endorse a totally different pamphlet on its last See also:leaf, and affixing that last leaf to Akakia. Of this Frederick was not aware; but he did get some See also:wind of the Diatribe itself, sent for the author, heard it read to his own great amusement, and either actually burned the MS. or believed that it was burnt. In a few days printed copies appeared. Frederick did not like disobedience, but he still less liked being made a fool of, and he put Voltaire under See also:arrest. But again the affair blew over, the king believing that the edition of Akakia confiscated in Prussia was the only one. Alas! Voltaire had sent copies away; others had been printed abroad; and the thing was irrecoverable. It could not be proved that he had ordered the printing, and all Frederick could do was to have the pamphlet burnt by the hangman. Things were now See also:drawing to a crisis. One day Voltaire sent his orders, &c., back; the next Frederick returned them, but Voltaire had quite made up his mind to See also:fly. A kind of reconciliation occurred in March, and after some days of good-fellowship Voltaire at last obtained the long-sought leave of See also:absence and left Potsdam on the 26th of the See also:month (1753). It was nearly three months afterwards that the famous, ludicrous and brutal arrest was made at See also:Frankfort, on the persons of himself and his niece, who had met him meanwhile. There was some faint excuse for Frederick's wrath. In the first place, the poet See also:chose to linger at See also:Leipzig. In the second place, in See also:direct disregard of a promise given to Frederick, a supplement to Akakia appeared, more offensive than the See also:main See also:text. From Leipzig, after a month's stay, Voltaire moved to See also:Gotha. Once more, on the 25th of May, he moved on to Frankfort. Frankfort, nominally a See also:free See also:city, but with a Prussian See also:resident who did very much what he pleased, was not like Gotha and Leipzig. An excuse was provided in the fact that the poet had a copy of some unpublished poems of Frederick's, and as soon as Voltaire arrived hands were laid on him, at first with See also:courtesy enough. The resident, See also:Freytag, was not a very See also:wise See also:person (though he probably did not, as Voltaire would have it, spell " poesie " " poeshie "); constant references to Frederick were necessary; and the affair was prolonged so that Madame Denis had time to join her uncle. At last Voltaire tried to steal away. He was followed, arrested, his niece seized separately, and sent to join him in custody; and the two, with the secretary Collini, were kept close prisoners at an See also:inn called the Goat. This situation was at last put an end to by the city authorities, who probably See also:felt that they were not playing a very creditable part. Voltaire left Frankfort on the 7th of July, travelled safely to See also:Mainz, and thence to See also:Mannheim, See also:Strassburg and See also:Colmar. The last-named place he reached (after a leisurely journey and many honours at the little courts just mentioned) at the beginning of See also:October, and here he See also:pro-posed to stay the winter, finish his See also:Annals of the See also:Empire and look about him. Voltaire's second stage was now over. Even now, however, in his sixtieth year, it required some more See also:external pressure to induce him to make himself independent. He had been, in the first blush of his Frankfort disaster, refused, or at least not granted, permission even to enter France proper. At Colmar he was not safe, especially when in See also:January 17 J4 a pirated edition of the Essai sur les mceurs, written long before, appeared. Permission to establish himself in France was now absolutely refused. Nor did an extremely offensive performance of Voltaire's—the See also:solemn partaking of the See also:Eucharist at Colmar after due confession—at all mollify his enemies. His exclusion from France, however, was chiefly metaphorical, and really meant exclusion from Paris and its neighbourhood. In the summer he went to Plombieres, and after returning to Colmar for some time journeyed in the beginning of winter to See also:Lyons, and thence in the middle of December to See also:Geneva. Voltaire had no purpose of remaining in the city, and almost immediately bought a country house just outside the See also:gates, to which he gave the name of Les Daces. He was here practically at the meeting-point of four distinct jurisdictions—Geneva, the See also:canton See also:Vaud, See also:Sardinia and France, while other cantons were within easy reach; and he bought other houses dotted about these territories, so as never to be without a See also:refuge close at See also:hand in case of sudden storms. At Les Delices he set up a considerable See also:establishment, which his great See also:wealth made him able easily to afford. He kept open house for visitors; he had printers close at hand in Geneva; he fitted up a private theatre in which he could enjoy what was perhaps the greatest See also:pleasure of his whole life—acting in a play of his own, stage-managed by himself. His residence at Geneva brought. him into See also:correspondence (at first quite amicable) with the most famous of her citizens, J. J. Rousseau. His Orphelin de la Chine, performed at Paris in 1955, was very well received; the notorious La Pucelle appeared in the same year. The See also:earthquake at See also:Lisbon, which appalled other people, gave Voltaire an excellent opportunity for ridiculing the beliefs of the orthodox, first in verse (1756) and later in the (from a literary point of view) unsurpassable See also:tale of Candide (1759)• All was, however, not yet quite smooth with him. Geneva had a law expressly forbidding theatrical performances in any circumstances whatever. Voltaire had infringed this law already as far as private performances went, and he had thought of See also:building a See also:regular theatre, not indeed at Geneva but at See also:Lausanne. In July 1755 a very polite and, as far as Voltaire was concerned, indirect See also:resolution of the See also:Consistory declared that in consequence of these proceedings of the Sieur de Voltaire the pastors should notify their flocks to abstain, and that the chief See also:syndic should be informed of the Consistory's perfect confidence that the edicts would be carried out. Voltaire obeyed this hint as far as Les Deices was concerned, and consoled himself by having the performances in his Lausanne house. But he never was the man to take opposition to his wishes either quietly or without See also:retaliation. He undoubtedly instigated D'See also:Alembert to include a censure of the See also:prohibition in his Encyclopedia See also:article on " Geneva," a proceeding which provoked Rousseau's celebrated Lettre d D'Alembert sur les See also:spectacles. As for himself, he looked about for a place where he could combine the social liberty of France with the See also:political liberty of Geneva, and he found one. At the end of 1758 he bought the considerable property of Ferney, on the See also:shore of the See also:lake, about four See also:miles from Geneva, and on French See also:soil. At Les Deices (which he sold in 1765) he had become a householder on no small See also:scale; at Ferney (which he increased by other purchases and leases) he became a complete country gentleman, and was henceforward known to all Europe as See also:squire of Ferney. Many of the most celebrated men of Europe visited him there, and large-parts of his usual See also:biographies are composed of extracts from their accounts of Ferney. His new occupations by no means quenched his literary activity. He did not make himself a slave to his visitors, but reserved much time for work and for his immense correspondence, which had for a long time once more included Frederick, the two getting on very well when they were not in contact. Above all, he now, being comparatively secure in position, engaged much more strongly in public controversies, and resorted less to his old labyrinthine tricks of disavowal, garbled publication and private libel. The suppression of the Encyclopedia, to which he had been a considerable contributor, and whose conductors were his intimate friends, See also:drew from him a shower of lampoons directed now at " l'infame " (see infra) generally, now at literary victirns, such as Le See also:Franc de See also:Pompignan (who had written one piece of verse so much better than anything serious of Voltaire's that he could not be forgiven), or Palissot (who in his play Les Philosophes had boldly gibbeted most of the persons so termed, but had not included Voltaire), now at See also:Freron, an excellent critic and a dangerous writer, who had attacked Voltaire from the conservative See also:side, and at whom the See also:patriarch of Ferney, as he now began to be called, levelled in return the very inferior See also:farce-lampoon of L'Ecossaise, of the first See also:night of which Freron himself did an admirably humorous criticism. How he built a church and got into trouble in so doing at Ferney, how he put " Deo erexit Voltaire " on it (176o-6r) and obtained a relic from the pope for his new building, how he entertained a grand-niece of See also:Corneille, and for her benefit wrote his well-known " commentary " on that poet, are matters of See also:interest, hut to be passed over briefly. Here, too, he began that series of interferences on behalf of the oppressed and the ill-treated which, whatever mixture of motives may have prompted it, is an See also:honour to his memory. Volumes and almost See also:libraries have been written on the See also:Calas affair, andwe can but refer here to the only less famous cases of Sirven (very similar to that of Calas, though no judicial See also:murder was actually committed), Espinasse (who had been sentenced to the galleys for harbouring a Protestant minister), See also:Lally (the son of the unjustly treated but not blameless Irish-French See also:commander in See also:India), D'Etalonde (the companion of La See also:Barre). Montbailli and others. In 1768 he entered into controversy with the See also:bishop of the See also:diocese; he had See also:differences with the superior landlord of part of his See also:estate, the president De See also:Brasses; and he engaged in a long and tedious return match with the See also:republic of Geneva. But the general events of this Forney life are somewhat of that happy kind which are no events. In this way Voltaire, who had been an old man when he established himself at Ferney, became a very old one almost without noticing it. The death of Louis XV. and the See also:accession of Louis XVI. excited even in his aged See also:breast the hope of re-entering Paris, but he did not at once receive any encouragement, despite the reforming See also:ministry of See also:Turgot. A much more solid gain to his happiness was the See also:adoption, or See also:practical adoption, in 1776 of Reine Philiberte de Varicourt, a young girl of See also:noble but poor family, whom Voltaire rescued from the See also:convent, installed in his house as an adopted daughter, and married to the marquis de See also:Villette. Her pet name was " Belle et Bonne," and nobody had more to do with the happiness of the last years of the " patriarch " than she had. It is doubtful whether his last and fatal visit to Paris was due to his own wish or to the instigation of his niece, Madame Denis; but this lady—a woman of disagreeable temper, especially to her inferiors—appears to have been rather hardly treated by Voltaire's earlier, and sometimes by his later, biographers. The See also:suggestion which has been made that the success of See also:Beaumarchais piqued him has nothing impossible in it. At any rate he had, at the end of 1779 and the beginning of 1778, been carefully finishing a new tragedy—See also:Irene-for production in the See also:capital. He started on the 5th of February, and five days later arrived at the city which he had not seen for eightand-twenty years. He was received with immense rejoicings, not indeed directly by the court, but by the Academy, by society and by all the more important See also:foreign visitors. About a fortnight after his arrival, age and fatigue made him seriously ill, and a See also:confessor was sent for. But he recovered, scoffed at himself as usual, and prepared more eagerly than ever for the first performance of Irene, on the 16th of March. At the end of the month he was able to attend a performance of it, which was a kind of See also:apotheosis. He was crowned with See also:laurel in his See also:box, amid the plaudits of the audience, and did not seem to be the worse for it. He even began or proceeded with another tragedy—Agathocle—and attended several See also:Academic meetings. But such proceedings in the case of a man of eighty-four were impossible. To keep himself up, he exceeded even his usual excess in See also:coffee, and about the middle of May he became very ill. On the 3oth of May the priests were once more sent for —to wit, his See also:nephew, the abbe Mignot, the.abbe Gaultier, who had officiated on the former occasion, and the See also:parish See also:priest,. the cure of St Sulpice. He was, however, in a state of half-insensibility, and petulantly motioned them away, dying in the course of the. night. The legends about his death in a state of terror and despair arc certainly false; but it must be regarded as singular and unfortunate that he, who had more than once gone out of his way to conform ostentatiously and with his tongue in his cheek, should have neglected or missed this last opportunity. The result was a difficulty as to See also:burial, which was compromised by hurried interment at the See also:abbey of Scellieres in Champagne, anticipating the See also:interdict of the bishop of the diocese by an See also:hour or two. On the loth of July 1791 the See also:body was transferred to the See also:Pantheon, but duffing the Hundred Days it was once more, it is said, disentombed, and stowed away in a piece of See also:waste ground. His See also:heart, taken from the body when it was embalmed, and given to Madame Denis and by her to Madame de Villette, was preserved in a See also:silver case, and when it was proposed (in 1864) to restore it to
the other remains, the See also:sarcophagus at Sainte See also:Genevieve (the
Pantheon) was opened and found to be empty.
In person Voltaire was not engaging, even as a young man.
His extraordinary thinness is commemorated, among other things, by the very poor but well-known See also:epigram attributed to Young, and identifying him at once with " Satan, Death and See also:Sin." In old age he was a mere See also:skeleton, with a long See also:nose and eyes of preternatural brilliancy peering out of his See also:wig. He never seems to have been addicted to any manly See also:sport, and took little exercise. He was sober enough (for his day and society) in eating and drinking generally; but drank coffee, as his contemporary, counterpart and enemy, See also: He was good-natured when not crossed, generous to dependents who made themselves useful to him, and indefatigable in defending the cause of those who were oppressed by the systems with which he was at See also:war. But he was inordinately vain, and totally unscrupulous in gaining money, in attacking an enemy, or in protecting himself when he. was threatened with danger. His See also:peculiar See also:fashion of attacking the popular beliefs of his time has also failed to secure the approval of some who had very little sympathy with those beliefs. The only excuse made for the alternate cringing and insult, the alternate abuse and lying, which marked his course in this matter, has been the very weak plea that a man cannot fight with a system—a plea which is sufficiently answered by the See also:retort that a great many men have so fought and have won. Voltaire's works, and especially his private letters, constantly contain the word " l'infame " and the expression (in full or abbreviated) " ecrasez I'infame." This has been misunderstood in many ways—the See also:mistake going so far as in some cases to suppose that Voltaire meant See also:Christ by this opprobrious expression. No careful and competent student of his works has ever failed to correct this See also:gross misapprehension. " L'infame " is not See also:God; it is not Christ; it is not See also:Christianity; it is not even Catholicism. Its briefest See also:equivalent may be given as " persecuting and privileged orthodoxy " in general, and, more particularly, it is the particular system which Voltaire saw around him, of which he had felt the effects in his own exiles and the confiscations of his books, and of which he saw the still worse effects in the hideous sufferings of Calas and La Barre. Vast and various as the work of Voltaire is, its vastness and variety are of the essence of its writer's peculiar quality. The divisions of it have long been recognized, and may be treated regularly. The first of these divisions in See also:order, not the least in bulk, and, though not the first in merit, inferior to none in the amount of congenial labour spent on it, is the theatre. Between fifty and sixty different pieces (including a few which exist only in fragments or sketches) are included in his writings, and they See also:cover his literary life. It is at first sight remarkable that Voltaire, whose comic See also:power was undoubtedly far in excess of his tragic, should have written many tragedies of no small excellence in their way, but only one See also:fair second-class comedy, Nanine. His other efforts in this latter direction are either slight and almost insignificant in See also:scope, or, as in the case of the somewhat famous Ecossaise, deriving all their interest from being personal libels. His tragedies, on the other hand, are works of extraordinary merit in their own way. Although Voltaire had neither the perfect versification of Racine nor the noble See also:poetry of Corneille, he surpassed the latter certainly, and the former in the opinion of some not incompetent judges, inplaying the difficult and artificial game of the French tragedy. Zaire, among those where love is admitted as a principal motive, and Merope, among those where this motive is excluded and kept in subordination, yield to no plays of their classe in such interest as is possible on the See also:model, in stage effect and in See also:uniform literary merit. Voltaire knew that the public opinion of his time reserved its highest prizes for a capable and successful dramatist, and he was deter-See also:mined to win these prizes. He therefore set all his wonderful cleverness to the task, going so far as to adopt a little even of that Romantic disobedience to the strict classical theory which he condemned, and no doubt sincerely, in Shakespeare. As regards his poems proper, of which there are two long ones, the Henriade and the Pucelle, besides smaller pieces, of which a See also:bare See also:catalogue fills fourteen royal See also:octavo columns, their value is very unequal. The Henriade has by universal consent been relegated to the position of a school See also:reading book. Constructed and written in alrnost slavish See also:imitation of See also:Virgil, employing for See also:medium a very unsuitable vehicle—the Alexandrine See also:couplet (as reformed and rendered monotonous for dramatic purposes)—and animated neither by See also:enthusiasm for the subject nor by real under-See also:standing thereof, it could not but be an unsatisfactory performance. The Pucelle, if morally inferior, is from a literary point of view of far more value. It is desultory to a degree; it is a See also:base libel on religion and history; it differs from its model See also:Ariosto in being, not, as Ariosto is, a mixture of See also:romance and burlesque, but a sometimes tedious See also:tissue of burlesque pure and See also:simple; and it is exposed to the objection—often and justly urged--that much of its fun depends simply on the fact that there were and are many people who believe enough in Christianity to make its jokes give pain to them and to make their disgust at such jokes piquant to others. Nevertheless, with all the Pucclle's faults, it is amusing. The See also:minor poems are as much above the Pucelle as the Pucelle is above the Henriade. It is true that there is nothing, or hardly anything, that properly deserves the name of poetry in them—no passion, no sense of the beauty of nature, only a narrow " criticism of life, " only a conventional and restricted choice of See also:language, a cramped and monotonous See also:prosody, and none of that indefinite suggestion which has been rightly said to be of the poetic essence. But there is immense wit, a wonderful command of such rnetre and language as the See also:taste of the time allowed to the poet, occasionally a singular if somewhat artificial See also:grace, and a curious felicity of diction and manner.
The third See also:division of Voltaire's works in a rational order consists of his See also:prose romances or tales. These productions—incomparably the most remarkable and most absolutely good See also:fruit of his See also:genius—were usually composed as See also:pamphlets, with a purpose of polemic in religion, politics, or what not. Thus Candide attacks religious and philosophical optimism, L'Homme aux quarante ecus certain social and political ways of the time, Zadig and others the received forms of moral and metaphysical orthodoxy, while some are mere lampoons on the See also:Bible, the unfailing source of Voltaire's wit. But (as always happens in the case of literary work where the See also:form exactly suits the author's genius) the purpose in all the best of them disappears almost entirely. It is in these works more than in any others that the peculiar quality of Voltaire—ironic See also:style without exaggeration—appears. That he learned it partly from Saint Evremond, still more from See also:Anthony See also: The famous " pour encourager les autres " (that the See also:shooting of Byng did " encourage the others " very much is not to the point) is a typical example, and indeed the whole of Candide shows the style at its perfection. The See also:fourth division of Voltaire's work, the See also:historical, is the bulkiest of all except his correspondence, and some parts of it are or have been among the most read, but it is far from being even among the best. The small See also:treatises on Charles XII. and See also:Peter the Great are indeed See also:models of clear narrative and ingenious if some-what superficial grasp and arrangement. The so-called Siccle de Louis XI V. and Siecle de Louis X V. (the latter inferior to the former but still valuable) contain a great See also:miscellany of interesting matter, treated by a man of great acuteness and unsurpassed power of writing, who had also had See also:access to much important private See also:information. But even in these books defects are See also:present, which appear much more strongly in the singular olla podrida entitled Essai sur les incurs, in the Annales de l'enzpire and in the minor historical works. These defects are an almost See also:total absence of any compre hension of what has since been called the See also:philosophy of history, the constant presence of gross See also:prejudice, frequent inaccuracy of detail, and, above all, a complete incapacity to look at anything except from the narrow standpoint of a half-pessimist and half self-satisfied philosophe of the 18th century. His work in physics concerns us less than any other here; it is, however, not inconsiderable in bulk, and is said by experts to give See also:proof of aptitude. To his own age Voltaire was pre-eminently a poet and a philosopher; the unkindness of succeeding ages has sometimes questioned whether he had any title to either name, and especially to the latter. His largest philosophical work, at least so called, is the curious medley entitled Dictionnaire philosophique, which is compounded of the articles contributed by him to the great Encyclopedie and of several minor pieces. No one of Voltaire's works shows his See also:anti-religious or at least anti-ecclesiastical animus more strongly. The various title-words of the several articles are often the merest stalking-horses, under cover of which to shoot at the Bible or the church, the See also:target being now and then shifted to the political institutions of the writer's country. his personal foes, &c., and the whole being largely seasoned with that acute, rather superficial, See also:common-sense, but also See also:commonplace, ethical and social criticism which the 18th century called philosophy. The book ranks perhaps second only to the novels as showing the character, literary and personal, of Voltaire; and despite its form it is nearly as readable. The minor philosophical works are of no very different character. In the brief Tirane de metaphysique the author makes his grand effort, but scarcely succeeds in doing more than show that he had no real conception of what metaphysic is. In general criticism and See also:miscellaneous writing Voltaire is not inferior to himself in any of his other functions. Almost all his more substantive works, whether in verse or prose, are preceded by prefaces of one sort or another, which are models of his own See also:light pungent causerie; and in a vast variety of nondescript pamphlets and writings he shows himself a perfect journalist. In literary criticism pure and simple his principal work is the Commentaire sur Corneille, though he wrote a good See also:deal more of the same kind—sometimes (as in his Life and notices of See also:Moliere) independently sometimes as part of his Siecles. Nowhere, perhaps, except when he is dealing with religion, are Voltaire's defects felt more than here. He was quite unacquainted with the history of his own language and literature, and more here than anywhere else he showed the extraordinarily limited and conventional spirit which accompanied the revolt of the French 18th century against limits and conventions in theological, ethical and political matters. There remains only the huge division of his correspondence, which is constantly being augmented by fresh discoveries, and which, according to Georges Bengesco, has never been fully or correctly printed, even in some of the parts longest known. In this great See also:mass Voltaire's See also:personality is of course best shown, and perhaps his literary qualities not worst. His immense See also:energy and versatility, his adroit and unhesitating flattery when he chose to flatter, his ruthless See also:sarcasm when he chose to be sarcastic, his rather unscrupulous business faculty, his more than rather unscrupulous resolve to See also:double and twist in any fashion so as to See also:escape his enemies, —all these things appear throughout the whole mass of letters. Most j ud gments,'of Voltaire have been unduly coloured by sympathy with or dislike of what may be briefly called his polemical side. When sympathy and dislike are both discarded or allowed for, he remains one of the most astonishing, if not exactly one of the most admirable, figures of letters. That he never, as Carlyle complains, gave utterance to one great thought is strictly true. That his characteristic is for the most part an almost superhuman cleverness rather than See also:positive genius is also true. But that he was merely a mocker, Which Carlyle and others have also said, is not strictly true or fair. In politics proper he seems indeed to have had few or no constructive ideas, and to have been entirely ignorant or quite reckless of the fact that his attacks were destroying a state of things for which as a whole he neither had nor apparently wished to have any substitute. In religion he protested stoutly, and no doubt sincerely, that his own attitude was not purely negative; but here also he seems to have failed altogether to distinguish between pruning and cutting down. Both here and elsewhere his great See also:fault was an inveterate superficiality. But this superficiality was accompanied by such wonderful acuteness within a certain range, by such an absolutely unsurpassed literary aptitude and sense of style in all the lighter and some of the graver modes of literature, by such untiring energy and versatility in enterprise, that he has no parallel among ready writers anywhere. Not the most elaborate work of Voltaire is of much value for matter; but not the very slightest work of Voltaire is devoid of value in form. In literary craftsmanship, at once versatile and accomplished, he has no superior and scarcely a rival. BIBLIoGRAPIY.—The bibliography of Voltaire is a very large subject, and it has been the special occupation of a Rumanian diplomatist of much erudition and judgment, Georges Bengesco, Bibliographic de Voltaire (4 vols., Paris, 1882–90). The best edition of the works is that by Louis Moland in 52 volumes (Paris, See also:Garnier) ; the handiest and most compact is that issued in 13 volumes royal octavo by Furne, and kept in See also:print by the house of See also:Didot. Of the earlier See also:editions, though their bulk is an objection, several are interesting and valuable. Especially may be noticed the so-called edition of See also:Kehl, in which Voltaire himself, and later Beaumarchais, were concerned (70 vols., 1785–89); those of Dalibon and Baudouin. each in 97 volumes (from which " the hundred volumes of Voltaire " have become a not infrequent figure of speech) ; and the excellent edition of Beuchot (1829) in 72 volumes. Editions of See also:separate or selected works are innumerable, and so are books upon Voltaire. There is no really good detailed life of him, with complete examina-tion of his work, in any language, though the works containing materials for such are numerous (the first of importance being that of T. J. Duvernet in 1997), and sometimes (especially in the case of M. Desnoiresterres, Voltaire et la societe francaise, 1867 and others) excellent. In English the essays of Carlyle and See also:Viscount See also:Morley (1872) are both in their way invaluable, and to a great extent correct one another. The principal detailed life in English is that of an See also:American writer, See also: See also:Francis Espinasse's Voltaire (1882), which contains a useful bibliography, J. Churton See also:Collins's Voltaire in England (1886), and J. R. Lounsbury's Shakespeare and Voltaire (1902) may also be specified. (G. Additional information and CommentsThere are no comments yet for this article.
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