The visit of Voltaire to England marks a turning-point in the history of
civilisation. It was the first step in a long process of
interaction--big with momentous consequences--between the French and
English cultures. For centuries the combined forces of mutual ignorance
and political hostility had kept the two nations apart: Voltaire planted
a small seed of friendship which, in spite of a thousand hostile
influences, grew and flourished mightily. The seed, no doubt, fell on
good ground, and no doubt, if Voltaire had never left his native
country, some chance wind would have carried it over the narrow seas, so
that history in the main would have been unaltered. But actually his was
the hand which did the work.
It is unfortunate that our knowledge of so important a period in
Voltaire's life should be extremely incomplete. Carlyle, who gave a
hasty glance at it in his life of Frederick, declared that he could find
nothing but 'mere inanity and darkness visible'; and since Carlyle's day
the progress has been small. A short chapter in Desnoiresterres' long
Biography and an essay by Churton Collins did something to co-ordinate
the few known facts. Another step was taken a few years ago with the
publication of M. Lanson's elaborate and exhaustive edition of the
_Lettres Philosophiques_, the work in which Voltaire gave to the world
the distilled essence of his English experiences. And now M. Lucien
Foulet has brought together all the extant letters concerning the
period, which he has collated with scrupulous exactitude and to which he
has added a series of valuable appendices upon various obscure and
disputed points. M. Lanson's great attainments are well known, and to
say that M. Foulet's work may fitly rank as a supplementary volume to
the edition of the _Lettres Philosophiques_ is simply to say that he is
a worthy follower of that noble tradition of profound research and
perfect lucidity which has made French scholarship one of the glories of
European culture.
Upon the events in particular which led up to Voltaire's departure for
England, M. Foulet has been able to throw considerable light. The story,
as revealed by the letters of contemporary observers and the official
documents of the police, is an instructive and curious one. In the early
days of January 1726 Voltaire, who was thirty-one years of age, occupied
a position which, so far as could be seen upon the surface, could hardly
have been more fortunate. He was recognised everywhere as the rising
poet of the day; he was a successful dramatist; he was a friend of
Madame de Prie, who was all-powerful at Court, and his talents had been
rewarded by a pension from the royal purse. His brilliance, his gaiety,
his extraordinary capacity for being agreeable had made him the pet of
the narrow and aristocratic circle which dominated France. Dropping his
middle-class antecedents as completely as he had dropped his
middle-class name, young Arouet, the notary's offspring, floated at his
ease through the palaces of dukes and princes, with whose sons he drank
and jested, and for whose wives--it was _de rigueur_ in those days--he
expressed all the ardours of a passionate and polite devotion. Such was
his roseate situation when, all at once, the catastrophe came. One night
at the Opéra the Chevalier de Rohan-Chabot, of the famous and powerful
family of the Rohans, a man of forty-three, quarrelsome, blustering,
whose reputation for courage left something to be desired, began to
taunt the poet upon his birth--'Monsieur Arouet, Monsieur Voltaire--what
_is_ your name?' To which the retort came quickly--'Whatever my name may
be, I know how to preserve the honour of it.' The Chevalier muttered
something and went off, but the incident was not ended. Voltaire had let
his high spirits and his sharp tongue carry him too far, and he was to
pay the penalty. It was not an age in which it was safe to be too witty
with lords. 'Now mind, Dancourt,' said one of those _grands seigneurs_
to the leading actor of the day, 'if you're more amusing than I am at
dinner to-night, _je te donnerai cent coups de bâtons._' It was
dangerous enough to show one's wits at all in the company of such
privileged persons, but to do so at their expense----! A few days later
Voltaire and the Chevalier met again, at the Comédie, in Adrienne
Lecouvreur's dressing-room. Rohan repeated his sneering question, and
'the Chevalier has had his answer' was Voltaire's reply. Furious, Rohan
lifted his stick, but at that moment Adrienne very properly fainted, and
the company dispersed. A few days more and Rohan had perfected the
arrangements for his revenge. Voltaire, dining at the Duc de Sully's,
where, we are told, he was on the footing of a son of the house,
received a message that he was wanted outside in the street. He went
out, was seized by a gang of lackeys, and beaten before the eyes of
Rohan, who directed operations from a cab. 'Epargnez la tête,' he
shouted, 'elle est encore bonne pour faire rire le public'; upon which,
according to one account, there were exclamations from the crowd which
had gathered round of 'Ah! le bon seigneur!' The sequel is known to
everyone: how Voltaire rushed back, dishevelled and agonised, into
Sully's dining-room, how he poured out his story in an agitated flood of
words, and how that high-born company, with whom he had been living up
to that moment on terms of the closest intimacy, now only displayed the
signs of a frigid indifference. The caste-feeling had suddenly asserted
itself. Poets, no doubt, were all very well in their way, but really, if
they began squabbling with noblemen, what could they expect? And then
the callous and stupid convention of that still half-barbarous age--the
convention which made misfortune the proper object of ridicule--came
into play no less powerfully. One might take a poet seriously,
perhaps--until he was whipped; then, of course, one could only laugh at
him. For the next few days, wherever Voltaire went he was received with
icy looks, covert smiles, or exaggerated politeness. The Prince de
Conti, who, a month or two before, had written an ode in which he placed
the author of _Oedipe_ side by side with the authors of _Le Cid_ and
_Phèdre_, now remarked, with a shrug of the shoulders, that 'ces coups
de bâtons étaient bien reçus et mal donnés.' 'Nous serions bien
malheureux,' said another well-bred personage, as he took a pinch of
snuff, 'si les poètes n'avaient pas des épaules.' Such friends as
remained faithful were helpless. Even Madame de Prie could do nothing.
'Le pauvre Voltaire me fait grande pitié,' she said; 'dans le fond il a
raison.' But the influence of the Rohan family was too much for her, and
she could only advise him to disappear for a little into the country,
lest worse should befall. Disappear he did, remaining for the next two
months concealed in the outskirts of Paris, where he practised
swordsmanship against his next meeting with his enemy. The situation was
cynically topsy-turvy. As M. Foulet points out, Rohan had legally
rendered himself liable, under the edict against duelling, to a long
term of imprisonment, if not to the penalty of death. Yet the law did
not move, and Voltaire was left to take the only course open in those
days to a man of honour in such circumstances--to avenge the insult by a
challenge and a fight. But now the law, which had winked at Rohan, began
to act against Voltaire. The police were instructed to arrest him so
soon as he should show any sign of an intention to break the peace. One
day he suddenly appeared at Versailles, evidently on the lookout for
Rohan, and then as suddenly vanished. A few weeks later, the police
reported that he was in Paris, lodging with a fencing-master, and making
no concealment of his desire to 'insulter incessamment et avec éclat M.
le chevalier de Rohan.' This decided the authorities, and accordingly on
the night of the 17th of April, as we learn from the _Police Gazette_,
'le sieur Arrouët de Voltaire, fameux poète,' was arrested, and
conducted 'par ordre du Roi' to the Bastille.
A letter, written by Voltaire to his friend Madame de Bernières while he
was still in hiding, reveals the effect which these events had produced
upon his mind. It is the first letter in the series of his collected
correspondence which is not all Epicurean elegance and caressing wit.
The wit, the elegance, the finely turned phrase, the shifting
smile--these things are still visible there no doubt, but they are
informed and overmastered by a new, an almost ominous spirit: Voltaire,
for the first time in his life, is serious.
J'ai été à l'extrémité; je n'attends que ma convalescence pour
abandonner à jamais ce pays-ci. Souvenez-vous de l'amitié tendre
que vous avez eue pour moi; au nom de cette amitié informez-moi par
un mot de votre main de ce qui se passe, ou parlez à l'homme que je
vous envoi, en qui vous pouvez prendre une entière confiance.
Présentez mes respects à Madame du Deffand; dites à Thieriot que je
veux absolument qu'il m'aime, ou quand je serai mort, ou quand je
serai heureux; jusque-là, je lui pardonne son indifférence. Dites à
M. le chevalier des Alleurs que je n'oublierai jamais la générosité
de ses procédés pour moi. Comptez que tout détrompé que je suis de
la vanité des amitiés humaines, la vôtre me sera à jamais
précieuse. Je ne souhaite de revenir à Paris que pour vous voir,
vous embrasser encore une fois, et vous faire voir ma constance
dans mon amitié et dans mes malheurs.
'Présentez mes respects à Madame du Deffand!' Strange indeed are the
whirligigs of Time! Madame de Bernières was then living in none other
than that famous house at the corner of the Rue de Beaune and the Quai
des Théatins (now Quai Voltaire) where, more than half a century later,
the writer of those lines was to come, bowed down under the weight of an
enormous celebrity, to look for the last time upon Paris and the world;
where, too, Madame du Deffand herself, decrepit, blind, and bitter with
the disillusionments of a strange lifetime, was to listen once more to
the mellifluous enchantments of that extraordinary intelligence,
which--so it seemed to her as she sat entranced--could never, never grow
old.[4]
Voltaire was not kept long in the Bastille. For some time he had
entertained a vague intention of visiting England, and he now begged for
permission to leave the country. The authorities, whose one object was
to prevent an unpleasant _fracas_, were ready enough to substitute exile
for imprisonment; and thus, after a fortnight's detention, the 'fameux
poète' was released on condition that he should depart forthwith, and
remain, until further permission, at a distance of at least fifty
leagues from Versailles.
It is from this point onwards that our information grows scanty and
confused. We know that Voltaire was in Calais early in May, and it is
generally agreed that he crossed over to England shortly afterwards. His
subsequent movements are uncertain. We find him established at
Wandsworth in the middle of October, but it is probable that in the
interval he had made a secret journey to Paris with the object--in which
he did not succeed--of challenging the Chevalier de Rohan to a duel.
Where he lived during these months is unknown, but apparently it was not
in London. The date of his final departure from England is equally in
doubt; M. Foulet adduces some reasons for supposing that he returned
secretly to France in November 1728, and in that case the total length
of the English visit was just two and a half years. Churton Collins,
however, prolongs it until March 1729. A similar obscurity hangs over
all the details of Voltaire's stay. Not only are his own extant letters
during this period unusually few, but allusions to him in contemporary
English correspondences are almost entirely absent. We have to depend
upon scattered hints, uncertain inferences, and conflicting rumours. We
know that he stayed for some time at Wandsworth with a certain Everard
Falkener in circumstances which he described to Thieriot in a letter in
English--an English quaintly flavoured with the gay impetuosity of
another race. 'At my coming to London,' he wrote, 'I found my damned Jew
was broken.' (He had depended upon some bills of exchange drawn upon a
Jewish broker.)
I was without a penny, sick to dye of a violent ague, stranger,
alone, helpless, in the midst of a city wherein I was known to
nobody; my Lord and Lady Bolingbroke were into the country; I could
not make bold to see our ambassadour in so wretched a condition. I
had never undergone such distress; but I am born to run through all
the misfortunes of life. In these circumstances my star, that among
all its direful influences pours allways on me some kind
refreshment, sent to me an English gentleman unknown to me, who
forced me to receive some money that I wanted. Another London
citisen that I had seen but once at Paris, carried me to his own
country house, wherein I lead an obscure and charming life since
that time, without going to London, and quite given over to the
pleasures of indolence and friendshipp. The true and generous
affection of this man who soothes the bitterness of my life brings
me to love you more and more. All the instances of friendshipp
indear my friend Tiriot to me. I have seen often mylord and mylady
Bolinbroke; I have found their affection still the same, even
increased in proportion to my unhappiness; they offered me all,
their money, their house; but I have refused all, because they are
lords, and I have accepted all from Mr. Faulknear because he is a
single gentleman.
We know that the friendship thus begun continued for many years, but as
to who or what Everard Falkener was--besides the fact that he was a
'single gentleman'--we have only just information enough to make us wish
for more.
'I am here,' he wrote after Voltaire had gone, 'just as you left me,
neither merrier nor sadder, nor richer nor poorer, enjoying perfect
health, having everything that makes life agreeable, without love,
without avarice, without ambition, and without envy; and as long as all
this lasts I shall take the liberty to call myself a very happy man.'
This stoical Englishman was a merchant who eventually so far overcame
his distaste both for ambition and for love, as to become first
Ambassador at Constantinople and then Postmaster-General--has anyone,
before or since, ever held such a singular succession of offices?--and
to wind up by marrying, as we are intriguingly told, at the age of
sixty-three, 'the illegitimate daughter of General Churchill.'
We have another glimpse of Voltaire at Wandsworth in a curious document
brought to light by M. Lanson. Edward Higginson, an assistant master at
a Quaker's school there, remembered how the excitable Frenchman used to
argue with him for hours in Latin on the subject of 'water-baptism,'
until at last Higginson produced a text from St. Paul which seemed
conclusive.
Some time after, Voltaire being at the Earl Temple's seat in
Fulham, with Pope and others such, in their conversation fell on
the subject of water-baptism. Voltaire assumed the part of a
quaker, and at length came to mention that assertion of Paul. They
questioned there being such an assertion in all his writings; on
which was a large wager laid, as near as I remember of £500: and
Voltaire, not retaining where it was, had one of the Earl's horses,
and came over the ferry from Fulham to Putney.... When I came he
desired me to give him in writing the place where Paul said, _he
was not sent to baptize_; which I presently did. Then courteously
taking his leave, he mounted and rode back--
and, we must suppose, won his wager.
He seemed so taken with me (adds Higginson) as to offer to buy out
the remainder of my time. I told him I expected my master would be
very exorbitant in his demand. He said, let his demand be what it
might, he would give it on condition I would yield to be his
companion, keeping the same company, and I should always, in every
respect, fare as he fared, wearing my clothes like his and of equal
value: telling me then plainly, he was a Deist; adding, so were
most of the noblemen in France and in England; deriding the account
given by the four Evangelists concerning the birth of Christ, and
his miracles, etc., so far that I desired him to desist: for I
could not bear to hear my Saviour so reviled and spoken against.
Whereupon he seemed under a disappointment, and left me with some
reluctance.
In London itself we catch fleeting visions of the eager gesticulating
figure, hurrying out from his lodgings in Billiter Square--'Belitery
Square' he calls it--or at the sign of the 'White Whigg' in Maiden Lane,
Covent Garden, to go off to the funeral of Sir Isaac Newton in
Westminster Abbey, or to pay a call on Congreve, or to attend a
Quaker's Meeting. One would like to know in which street it was that he
found himself surrounded by an insulting crowd, whose jeers at the
'French dog' he turned to enthusiasm by jumping upon a milestone, and
delivering a harangue beginning--'Brave Englishmen! Am I not
sufficiently unhappy in not having been born among you?' Then there are
one or two stories of him in the great country houses--at Bubb
Dodington's where he met Dr. Young and disputed with him upon the
episode of Sin and Death in _Paradise Lost_ with such vigour that at
last Young burst out with the couplet:
You are so witty, profligate, and thin,
At once we think you Milton, Death, and Sin;
and at Blenheim, where the old Duchess of Marlborough hoped to lure him
into helping her with her decocted memoirs, until she found that he had
scruples, when in a fury she snatched the papers out of his hands. 'I
thought,' she cried, 'the man had sense; but I find him at bottom either
a fool or a philosopher.'
It is peculiarly tantalising that our knowledge should be almost at its
scantiest in the very direction in which we should like to know most,
and in which there was most reason to hope that our curiosity might have
been gratified. Of Voltaire's relations with the circle of Pope, Swift,
and Bolingbroke only the most meagre details have reached us. His
correspondence with Bolingbroke, whom he had known in France and whose
presence in London was one of his principal inducements in coming to
England--a correspondence which must have been considerable--has
completely disappeared. Nor, in the numerous published letters which
passed about between the members of that distinguished group, is there
any reference to Voltaire's name. Now and then some chance remark raises
our expectations, only to make our disappointment more acute. Many years
later, for instance, in 1765, a certain Major Broome paid a visit to
Ferney, and made the following entry in his diary:
Dined with Mons. Voltaire, who behaved very politely. He is very
old, was dressed in a robe-de-chambre of blue sattan and gold spots
on it, with a sort of blue sattan cap and tassle of gold. He spoke
all the time in English.... His house is not very fine, but
genteel, and stands upon a mount close to the mountains. He is tall
and very thin, has a very piercing eye, and a look singularly
vivacious. He told me of his acquaintance with Pope, Swift (with
whom he lived for three months at Lord Peterborough's) and Gay, who
first showed him the _Beggar's Opera_ before it was acted. He says
he admires Swift, and loved Gay vastly. He said that Swift had a
great deal of the ridiculum acre.
And then Major Broome goes on to describe the 'handsome new church' at
Ferney, and the 'very neat water-works' at Geneva. But what a vision has
he opened out for us, and, in that very moment, shut away for ever from
our gaze in that brief parenthesis--'with whom he lived for three months
at Lord Peterborough's'! What would we not give now for no more than one
or two of the bright intoxicating drops from that noble river of talk
which flowed then with such a careless abundance!--that prodigal stream,
swirling away, so swiftly and so happily, into the empty spaces of
forgetfulness and the long night of Time!
So complete, indeed, is the lack of precise and well-authenticated
information upon this, by far the most obviously interesting side of
Voltaire's life in England, that some writers have been led to adopt a
very different theory from that which is usually accepted, and to
suppose that his relations with Pope's circle were in reality of a
purely superficial, or even of an actually disreputable, kind. Voltaire
himself, no doubt, was anxious to appear as the intimate friend of the
great writers of England; but what reason is there to believe that he
was not embroidering upon the facts, and that his true position was not
that of a mere literary hanger-on, eager simply for money and _réclame_,
with, perhaps, no particular scruples as to his means of getting hold of
those desirable ends? The objection to this theory is that there is even
less evidence to support it than there is to support Voltaire's own
story. There are a few rumours and anecdotes; but that is all. Voltaire
was probably the best-hated man in the eighteenth century, and it is
only natural that, out of the enormous mass of mud that was thrown at
him, some handfuls should have been particularly aimed at his life in
England. Accordingly, we learn that somebody was told by somebody
else--'avec des détails que je ne rapporterai point'--that 'M. de
Voltaire se conduisit très-irrégulièrement en Angleterre: qu'il s'y est
fait beaucoup d'ennemis, par des procédés qui n'accordaient pas avec les
principes d'une morale exacte.' And we are told that he left England
'under a cloud'; that before he went he was 'cudgelled' by an infuriated
publisher; that he swindled Lord Peterborough out of large sums of
money, and that the outraged nobleman drew his sword upon the miscreant,
who only escaped with his life by a midnight flight. A more
circumstantial story has been given currency by Dr. Johnson. Voltaire,
it appears, was a spy in the pay of Walpole, and was in the habit of
betraying Bolingbroke's political secrets to the Government. The tale
first appears in a third-rate life of Pope by Owen Ruffhead, who had it
from Warburton, who had it from Pope himself. Oddly enough Churton
Collins apparently believed it, partly from the evidence afforded by the
'fulsome flattery' and 'exaggerated compliments' to be found in
Voltaire's correspondence, which, he says, reveal a man in whom
'falsehood and hypocrisy are of the very essence of his composition.
There is nothing, however base, to which he will not stoop: there is no
law in the code of social honour which he is not capable of violating.'
Such an extreme and sweeping conclusion, following from such shadowy
premises, seems to show that some of the mud thrown in the eighteenth
century was still sticking in the twentieth. M. Foulet, however, has
examined Ruffhead's charge in a very different spirit, with
conscientious minuteness, and has concluded that it is utterly without
foundation.
It is, indeed, certain that Voltaire's acquaintanceship was not limited
to the extremely bitter Opposition circle which centred about the
disappointed and restless figure of Bolingbroke. He had come to London
with letters of introduction from Horace Walpole, the English Ambassador
at Paris, to various eminent persons in the Government. 'Mr. Voltaire, a
poet and a very ingenious one,' was recommended by Walpole to the favour
and protection of the Duke of Newcastle, while Dodington was asked to
support the subscription to 'an excellent poem, called "Henry IV.,"
which, on account of some bold strokes in it against persecution and the
priests, cannot be printed here.' These letters had their effect, and
Voltaire rapidly made friends at Court. When he brought out his London
edition of the _Henriade_, there was hardly a great name in England
which was not on the subscription list. He was allowed to dedicate the
poem to Queen Caroline, and he received a royal gift of £240. Now it is
also certain that just before this time Bolingbroke and Swift were
suspicious of a 'certain pragmatical spy of quality, well known to act
in that capacity by those into whose company he insinuates himself,'
who, they believed, were betraying their plans to the Government. But to
conclude that this detected spy was Voltaire, whose favour at Court was
known to be the reward of treachery to his friends, is, apart from the
inherent improbability of the supposition, rendered almost impossible,
owing to the fact that Bolingbroke and Swift were themselves subscribers
to the _Henriade_--Bolingbroke took no fewer than twenty copies--and
that Swift was not only instrumental in obtaining a large number of
Irish subscriptions, but actually wrote a preface to the Dublin edition
of another of Voltaire's works. What inducement could Bolingbroke have
had for such liberality towards a man who had betrayed him? Who can
conceive of the redoubtable Dean of St. Patrick, then at the very summit
of his fame, dispensing such splendid favours to a wretch whom he knew
to be engaged in the shabbiest of all traffics at the expense of himself
and his friends?
Voltaire's literary activities were as insatiable while he was in
England as during every other period of his career. Besides the edition
of the _Henriade_, which was considerably altered and enlarged--one of
the changes was the silent removal of the name of Sully from its
pages--he brought out a volume of two essays, written in English, upon
the French Civil Wars and upon Epic Poetry, he began an adaptation of
_Julius Caesar_ for the French stage, he wrote the opening acts of his
tragedy of _Brutus_, and he collected a quantity of material for his
History of Charles XII. In addition to all this, he was busily engaged
with the preparations for his _Lettres Philosophiques_. The _Henriade_
met with a great success. Every copy of the magnificent quarto edition
was sold before publication; three octavo editions were exhausted in as
many weeks; and Voltaire made a profit of at least ten thousand francs.
M. Foulet thinks that he left England shortly after this highly
successful transaction, and that he established himself secretly in some
town in Normandy, probably Rouen, where he devoted himself to the
completion of the various works which he had in hand. Be this as it may,
he was certainly in France early in April 1729; a few days later he
applied for permission to return to Paris; this was granted on the 9th
of April, and the remarkable incident which had begun at the Opera more
than three years before came to a close.
It was not until five years later that the _Lettres Philosophiques_
appeared. This epoch-making book was the lens by means of which Voltaire
gathered together the scattered rays of his English impressions into a
focus of brilliant and burning intensity. It so happened that the nation
into whose midst he had plunged, and whose characteristics he had
scrutinised with so avid a curiosity, had just reached one of the
culminating moments in its history. The great achievement of the
Revolution and the splendid triumphs of Marlborough had brought to
England freedom, power, wealth, and that sense of high exhilaration
which springs from victory and self-confidence. Her destiny was in the
hands of an aristocracy which was not only capable and enlightened, like
most successful aristocracies, but which possessed the peculiar
attribute of being deep-rooted in popular traditions and popular
sympathies and of drawing its life-blood from the popular will. The
agitations of the reign of Anne were over; the stagnation of the reign
of Walpole had not yet begun. There was a great outburst of intellectual
activity and aesthetic energy. The amazing discoveries of Newton seemed
to open out boundless possibilities of speculation; and in the meantime
the great nobles were building palaces and reviving the magnificence of
the Augustan Age, while men of letters filled the offices of State.
Never, perhaps, before or since, has England been so thoroughly English;
never have the national qualities of solidity and sense, independence of
judgment and idiosyncrasy of temperament, received a more forcible and
complete expression. It was the England of Walpole and Carteret, of
Butler and Berkeley, of Swift and Pope. The two works which, out of the
whole range of English literature, contain in a supreme degree those
elements of power, breadth, and common sense, which lie at the root of
the national genius--'Gulliver's Travels' and the 'Dunciad'--both
appeared during Voltaire's visit. Nor was it only in the high places of
the nation's consciousness that these signs were manifest; they were
visible everywhere, to every stroller through the London streets--in the
Royal Exchange, where all the world came crowding to pour its gold into
English purses, in the Meeting Houses of the Quakers, where the Holy
Spirit rushed forth untrammelled to clothe itself in the sober garb of
English idiom, and in the taverns of Cheapside, where the brawny
fellow-countrymen of Newton and Shakespeare sat, in an impenetrable
silence, over their English beef and English beer.
It was only natural that such a society should act as a powerful
stimulus upon the vivid temperament of Voltaire, who had come to it with
the bitter knowledge fresh in his mind of the medieval futility, the
narrow-minded cynicism of his own country. Yet the book which was the
result is in many ways a surprising one. It is almost as remarkable for
what it does not say as for what it does. In the first place, Voltaire
makes no attempt to give his readers an account of the outward surface,
the social and spectacular aspects of English life. It is impossible not
to regret this, especially since we know, from a delightful fragment
which was not published until after his death, describing his first
impressions on arriving in London, in how brilliant and inimitable a
fashion he would have accomplished the task. A full-length portrait of
Hanoverian England from the personal point of view, by Voltaire, would
have been a priceless possession for posterity; but it was never to be
painted. The first sketch revealing in its perfection the hand of the
master, was lightly drawn, and then thrown aside for ever. And in
reality it is better so. Voltaire decided to aim at something higher and
more important, something more original and more profound. He determined
to write a book which should be, not the sparkling record of an
ingenious traveller, but a work of propaganda and a declaration of
faith. That new mood, which had come upon him first in Sully's
dining-room and is revealed to us in the quivering phrases of the note
to Madame de Bernières, was to grow, in the congenial air of England,
into the dominating passion of his life. Henceforth, whatever quips and
follies, whatever flouts and mockeries might play upon the surface, he
was to be in deadly earnest at heart. He was to live and die a fighter
in the ranks of progress, a champion in the mighty struggle which was
now beginning against the powers of darkness in France. The first great
blow in that struggle had been struck ten years earlier by Montesquieu
in his _Lettres Persanes_; the second was struck by Voltaire in the
_Lettres Philosophiques_. The intellectual freedom, the vigorous
precision, the elegant urbanity which characterise the earlier work
appear in a yet more perfect form in the later one. Voltaire's book, as
its title indicates, is in effect a series of generalised reflections
upon a multitude of important topics, connected together by a common
point of view. A description of the institutions and manners of England
is only an incidental part of the scheme: it is the fulcrum by means of
which the lever of Voltaire's philosophy is brought into operation. The
book is an extremely short one--it fills less than two hundred small
octavo pages; and its tone and style have just that light and airy
gaiety which befits the ostensible form of it--a set of private letters
to a friend. With an extraordinary width of comprehension, an
extraordinary pliability of intelligence, Voltaire touches upon a
hundred subjects of the most varied interest and importance--from the
theory of gravitation to the satires of Lord Rochester, from the effects
of inoculation to the immortality of the soul--and every touch tells. It
is the spirit of Humanism carried to its furthest, its quintessential
point; indeed, at first sight, one is tempted to think that this quality
of rarefied universality has been exaggerated into a defect. The matters
treated of are so many and so vast, they are disposed of and dismissed
so swiftly, so easily, so unemphatically, that one begins to wonder
whether, after all, anything of real significance can have been
expressed. But, in reality, what, in those few small pages, has been
expressed is simply the whole philosophy of Voltaire. He offers one an
exquisite dish of whipped cream; one swallows down the unsubstantial
trifle, and asks impatiently if that is all? At any rate, it is enough.
Into that frothy sweetness his subtle hand has insinuated a single drop
of some strange liquor--is it a poison or is it an elixir of
life?--whose penetrating influence will spread and spread until the
remotest fibres of the system have felt its power. Contemporary French
readers, when they had shut the book, found somehow that they were
looking out upon a new world; that a process of disintegration had begun
among their most intimate beliefs and feelings; that the whole rigid
frame-work of society--of life itself--the hard, dark, narrow,
antiquated structure of their existence--had suddenly, in the twinkling
of an eye, become a faded, shadowy thing.
It might have been expected that, among the reforms which such a work
would advocate, a prominent place would certainly have been given to
those of a political nature. In England a political revolution had been
crowned with triumph, and all that was best in English life was founded
upon the political institutions which had been then established. The
moral was obvious: one had only to compare the state of England under a
free government with the state of France, disgraced, bankrupt, and
incompetent, under autocratic rule. But the moral is never drawn by
Voltaire. His references to political questions are slight and vague; he
gives a sketch of English history, which reaches Magna Charta, suddenly
mentions Henry VII., and then stops; he has not a word to say upon the
responsibility of Ministers, the independence of the judicature, or even
the freedom of the press. He approves of the English financial system,
whose control by the Commons he mentions, but he fails to indicate the
importance of the fact. As to the underlying principles of the
constitution, the account which he gives of them conveys hardly more to
the reader than the famous lines in the _Henriade_:
Aux murs de Westminster on voit paraître ensemble
Trois pouvoirs étonnés du noeud qui les rassemble.
Apparently Voltaire was aware of these deficiencies, for in the English
edition of the book he caused the following curious excuses to be
inserted in the preface:
Some of his _English_ Readers may perhaps be dissatisfied at his
not expatiating farther on their Constitution and their Laws, which
most of them revere almost to Idolatry; but, this Reservedness is
an effect of _M. de Voltaire's_ Judgment. He contented himself with
giving his opinion of them in general Reflexions, the Cast of which
is entirely new, and which prove that he had made this Part of the
_British_ Polity his particular Study. Besides, how was it possible
for a Foreigner to pierce thro' their Politicks, that gloomy
Labyrinth, in which such of the _English_ themselves as are best
acquainted with it, confess daily that they are bewilder'd and
lost?
Nothing could be more characteristic of the attitude, not only of
Voltaire himself, but of the whole host of his followers in the later
eighteenth century, towards the actual problems of politics. They turned
away in disgust from the 'gloomy labyrinth' of practical fact to take
refuge in those charming 'general Reflexions' so dear to their hearts,
'the Cast of which was entirely new'--and the conclusion of which was
also entirely new, for it was the French Revolution.
It was, indeed, typical of Voltaire and of his age that the _Lettres
Philosophiques_ should have been condemned by the authorities, not for
any political heterodoxy, but for a few remarks which seemed to call in
question the immortality of the soul. His attack upon the _ancien
régime_ was, in the main, a theoretical attack; doubtless its immediate
effectiveness was thereby diminished, but its ultimate force was
increased. And the _ancien régime_ itself was not slow to realise the
danger: to touch the ark of metaphysical orthodoxy was in its eyes the
unforgiveable sin. Voltaire knew well enough that he must be careful.
Il n'y a qu'une lettre touchant M. Loke [he wrote to a friend]. La
seule matière philosophique que j'y traite est la petite bagatelle
de l'immortalité de l'âme; mais la chose a trop de conséquence pour
la traiter sérieusement. Il a fallu l'égorger pour ne pas heurter
de front nos seigneurs les théologiens, gens qui voient si
clairement la spiritualité de l'âme qu'ils feraient brûler, s'ils
pouvaient, les corps de ceux qui en doutent.
Nor was it only 'M. Loke' whom he felt himself obliged to touch so
gingerly; the remarkable movement towards Deism, which was then
beginning in England, Voltaire only dared to allude to in a hardly
perceivable hint. He just mentions, almost in a parenthesis, the names
of Shaftesbury, Collins, and Toland, and then quickly passes on. In this
connexion, it may be noticed that the influence upon Voltaire of the
writers of this group has often been exaggerated. To say, as Lord Morley
says, that 'it was the English onslaught which sowed in him the seed of
the idea ... of a systematic and reasoned attack' upon Christian
theology, is to misjudge the situation. In the first place it is certain
both that Voltaire's opinions upon those matters were fixed, and that
his proselytising habits had begun, long before he came to England.
There is curious evidence of this in an anonymous letter, preserved
among the archives of the Bastille, and addressed to the head of the
police at the time of Voltaire's imprisonment.
Vous venez de mettre à la Bastille [says the writer, who, it is
supposed, was an ecclesiastic] un homme que je souhaitais y voir il
y a plus de 15 années.