that fine house at the Brenta, where they say he entertains foreigners
in the most polite manner. They pretend this man is a perfect stranger
to uneasiness." "I should be glad to see so extraordinary a being,"
said Martin. Candide thereupon sent a messenger to Signor Pococurante
desiring permission to wait on him the next day.
Candide and his friend Martin went into a gondola on the Brenta, and
arrived at the palace of the noble Pococurante: the gardens were laid
out in elegant taste and adorned with fine marble statues; his palace
was built after the most approved rules of architecture. The master of
the house, who was a man of sixty, and very rich, received our two
travelers with great politeness, but without much ceremony, which
somewhat disconcerted Candide, but was not at all displeasing to
Martin.
As soon as they were seated two very pretty girls, neatly dressed,
brought in chocolate, which was extremely well frothed. Candide could
not help making encomiums upon their beauty and graceful carriage.
"The creatures are well enough," said the senator. "I make them my
companions, for I am heartily tired of the ladies of the town, their
coquetry, their jealousy, their quarrels, their humors, their
meannesses, their pride, and their folly. I am weary of making
sonnets, or of paying for sonnets to be made, on them; but, after all,
these two girls begin to grow very indifferent to me."
After having refreshed himself, Candide walked into a large gallery,
where he was struck with the sight of a fine collection of paintings.
"Pray," said Candide, "by what master are the two first of these?"
"They are Raphael's," answered the senator. "I gave a great deal of
money for them seven years ago, purely out of curiosity, as they were
said to be the finest pieces in Italy: but I cannot say they please
me; the coloring is dark and heavy; the figures do not swell nor come
out enough, and the drapery is very bad. In short, notwithstanding the
encomiums lavished upon them, they are not, in my opinion, a true
representation of nature. I approve of no paintings but where I think
I behold Nature herself; and there are very few, if any, of that kind
to be met with. I have what is called a fine collection, but I take no
manner of delight in them."
While dinner was getting ready Pococurante ordered a concert. Candide
praised the music to the skies. "This noise," said the noble Venetian,
"may amuse one for a little time; but if it was to last above half an
hour it would grow tiresome to everybody, though perhaps no one would
care to own it. Music is become the art of executing what is
difficult; now, whatever is difficult cannot be long pleasing.
"I believe I might take more pleasure in an opera, if they had not
made such a monster of that species of dramatic entertainment as
perfectly shocks me; and I am amazed how people can bear to see
wretched tragedies set to music, where the scenes are contrived for
no other purpose than to lug in, as it were by the ears, three or four
ridiculous songs, to give a favorite actress an opportunity of
exhibiting her pipe. Let who will or can die away in raptures at the
trills of a eunuch quavering the majestic part of Caesar or Cato, and
strutting in a foolish manner upon the stage. For my part, I have long
ago renounced these paltry entertainments, which constitute the glory
of modern Italy, and are so dearly purchased by crowned heads."
Candide opposed these sentiments, but he did it in a discreet manner.
As for Martin, he was entirely of the old senator's opinion.
Dinner being served up, they sat down to table, and after a very
hearty repast, returned to the library. Candide, observing Homer
richly bound, commended the noble Venetian's taste. "This," said he,
"is a book that was once the delight of the great Pangloss, the best
philosopher in Germany." "Homer is no favorite of mine," answered
Pococurante very coolly. "I was made to believe once that I took a
pleasure in reading him; but his continual repetitions of battles must
have all such a resemblance with each other; his gods that are forever
in a hurry and bustle, without ever doing any thing; his Helen, that
is the cause of the war, and yet hardly acts in the whole performance;
his Troy, that holds out so long without being taken; in short, all
these things together make the poem very insipid to me. I have asked
some learned men whether they are not in reality as much tired as
myself with reading this poet. Those who spoke ingenuously assured me
that he had made them fall asleep, and yet that they could not well
avoid giving him a place in their libraries; but that it was merely as
they would do an antique, or those rusty medals which are kept only
for curiosity, and are of no manner of use in commerce."
"But your excellency does not surely form the same opinion of Virgil?"
said Candide. "Why, I grant," replied Pococurante, "that the second,
third, fourth, and sixth books of his 'AEneid' are excellent; but as
for his pious AEneas, his strong Cloanthus, his friendly Achates, his
boy Ascanius, his silly King Latinus, his ill-bred Amata, his insipid
Lavinia, and some other characters much in the same strain, I think
there cannot in nature be anything more flat and disagreeable. I must
confess I prefer Tasso far beyond him; nay, even that sleepy
tale-teller Ariosto."
"May I take the liberty to ask if you do not receive great pleasure
from reading Horace?" said Candide. "There are maxims in this writer,"
replied Pococurante, "from whence a man of the world may reap some
benefit; and the short measure of the verse makes them more easily to
be retained in the memory. But I see nothing extraordinary in his
journey to Brundusium, and his account of his bad dinner; nor in his
dirty, low quarrel between one Rupilius, whose words, as he expresses
it, were full of poisonous filth; and another, whose language was
dipped in vinegar. His indelicate verses against old women and
witches have frequently given me great offense; nor can I discover the
great merit of his telling his friend Maecenas, that, if he will but
rank him in the class of lyric poets, his lofty head shall touch the
stars. Ignorant readers are apt to advance everything by the lump in a
writer of reputation. For my part, I read only to please myself. I
like nothing but what makes for my purpose." Candide, who had been
brought up with a notion of never making use of his own judgment, was
astonished at what he heard; but Martin found there was a good deal of
reason in the senator's remarks.
"Oh, here is a Tully!" said Candide; "this great man, I fancy, you are
never tired of reading." "Indeed, I never read him at all," replied
Pococurante. "What the deuce is it to me whether he pleads for
Rabirius or Cluentius? I try causes enough myself. I had once some
liking to his philosophical works; but when I found he doubted of
everything, I thought I knew as much as himself, and had no need of a
guide to learn ignorance."
"Ha!" cried Martin, "here are fourscore volumes of the 'Memoirs of the
Academy of Sciences,' perhaps there may be something curious and
valuable in this collection." "Yes," answered Pococurante; "so there
might, if any one of these compilers of this rubbish had only invented
the art of pin-making. But all these volumes are filled with mere
chimerical systems, without one single article conducive to real
utility."
"I see a prodigious number of plays," said Candide, "in Italian,
Spanish, and French." "Yes," replied the Venetian; "there are, I
think, three thousand, and not three dozen of them good for anything.
As to those huge volumes of divinity, and those enormous collections
of sermons, they are not all together worth one single page of Seneca;
and I fancy you will readily believe that neither myself nor any one
else ever looks into them."
Martin, perceiving some shelves filled with English books, said to the
senator: "I fancy that a republican must be highly delighted with
those books, which are most of them written with a noble spirit of
freedom." "It is noble to write as we think," said Pococurante; "it is
the privilege of humanity. Throughout Italy we write only what we do
not think; and the present inhabitants of the country of the Caesars
and Antoninuses dare not acquire a single idea without the permission
of a father Dominican. I should be enamored of the spirit of the
English nation did it not utterly frustrate the good effects it would
produce by passion and the spirit of party."
Candide, seeing a Milton, asked the senator if he did not think that
author a great man. "Who?" said Pococurante sharply. "That barbarian,
who writes a tedious commentary, in ten books of rambling verse, on
the first chapter of Genesis! That slovenly imitator of the Greeks,
who disfigures the creation by making the Messiah take a pair of
compasses from heaven's armory to plan the world; whereas Moses
represented the Deity as producing the whole universe by his fiat! Can
I think you have any esteem for a writer who has spoiled Tasso's hell
and the devil; who transforms Lucifer, sometimes into a toad, and at
others into a pigmy; who makes him say the same thing over again a
hundred times; who metamorphoses him into a school-divine; and who, by
an absurdly serious imitation of Ariosto's comic invention of
fire-arms, represents the devils and angels cannonading each other in
heaven! Neither I, nor any other Italian, can possibly take pleasure
in such melancholy reveries. But the marriage of Sin and Death, and
snakes issuing from the womb of the former, are enough to make any
person sick that is not lost to all sense of delicacy. This obscene,
whimsical, and disagreeable poem met with the neglect that it deserved
at its first publication; and I only treat the author now as he was
treated in his own country by his contemporaries."
Candide was sensibly grieved at this speech, as he had a great respect
for Homer, and was very fond of Milton. "Alas!" said he softly to
Martin, "I am afraid this man holds our German poets in great
contempt." "There would be no such great harm in that," said Martin.
"Oh, what a surprising man!" said Candide to himself. "What a
prodigious genius is this Pococurante! Nothing can please him!"
After finishing their survey of the library they went down into the
garden, when Candide commended the several beauties that offered
themselves to his view. "I know nothing upon earth laid out in such
bad taste," said Pococurante; "everything about it is childish and
trifling; but I shall have another laid out to-morrow upon a nobler
plan."
As soon as our two travelers had taken leave of his excellency,
"Well," said Candide to Martin, "I hope you will own that this man is
the happiest of all mortals, for he is above everything he possesses."
"But do you not see," answered Martin, "that he likewise dislikes
everything he possesses? It was an observation of Plato long since,
that those are not the best stomachs that reject, without distinction,
all sorts of aliments." "True," said Candide; "but still, there must
certainly be a pleasure in criticising everything, and in perceiving
faults where others think they see beauties." "That is," replied
Martin, "there is a pleasure in having no pleasure." "Well, well,"
said Candide. "I find that I shall be the only happy man at last, when
I am blessed with the sight of my dear Cunegund." "It is good to
hope," said Martin.
The single citation preceding sufficiently exemplifies, at their best,
though at their worst not, the style and the spirit of Voltaire's
"Candide;" as his "Candide" sufficiently exemplifies the style and the
spirit of the most characteristic of Voltaire's writings in general.
"Pococurantism" is a word, now not uncommon in English, contributed by
Voltaire to the vocabulary of literature. To readers of the foregoing
extract, the sense of the term will not need to be explained. We
respectfully suggest to our dictionary-makers, that the fact stated of
its origin in the "Candide" of Voltaire would be interesting and
instructive to many. Voltaire coined the name, to suit the character of
his Venetian gentleman, from two Italian words which mean together
"little-caring." Signor Pococurante is the immortal type of men that
have worn out their capacity of fresh sensation and enjoyment.
Mr. John Morley's elaborate monograph on Voltaire claims the attention
of readers desirous of exhaustive acquaintance with its subject. This
author writes in sympathy with Voltaire, so far as Voltaire was an enemy
of the Christian religion; but in antipathy to him, so far as Voltaire
fell short of being an atheist. A similar sympathy, limited by a similar
antipathy, is observable in the same author's still more extended
monograph on Rousseau. The sympathy works without the antipathy to limit
it, in Mr. Morley's two volumes on "Diderot and the Encyclopaedists"--for
Diderot and his closest fellows were good thorough-going atheists.
Even in Voltaire and Rousseau, but particularly in Voltaire, Mr. Morley,
though his sympathy with these writers is, as we have said, not
complete, finds far more to praise than to blame. To this eager apostle
of atheism, Voltaire was at least on the right road, although he did,
unfortunately, stop short of the goal. His influence was potent against
Christianity, and potent it certainly was not against atheism. Voltaire
might freely be lauded as on the whole a mighty and a beneficent
liberalizer of thought.
And we, we who are neither atheists nor deists--let us not deny to
Voltaire his just meed of praise. There were streaks of gold in the base
alloy of that character of his. He burned with magnanimous heat against
the hideous doctrine and practice of ecclesiastical persecution. Carlyle
says of Voltaire, that he "spent his best efforts, and as many still
think, successfully, in assaulting the Christian religion." This, true
though it be, is liable to be falsely understood. It was not against the
Christian religion, as the Christian religion really is, but rather
against the Christian religion as the Roman hierarchy misrepresented it,
that Voltaire ostensibly directed his efforts. "You are right," wrote he
to his henchman D'Alembert, in 1762, "in assuming that I speak of
superstition only; for as to the Christian religion, I respect it and
love it, as you do." This distinction of Voltaire's, with whatever
degree of simple sincerity on his part made, ought to be remembered in
his favor, when his memorable motto, "_Ecrasez l'Infame_," is
interpreted and applied. He did not mean Jesus Christ by _l'Infame_; he
did not mean the Christian religion by it; he did not even mean the
Christian Church by it; he meant the oppressive despotism and the crass
obscurantism of the Roman Catholic hierarchy. At least, this is what he
would have said that he meant, what in fact he substantially did say
that he meant, when incessantly reiterating, in its various forms, his
watchword, "_Ecrasez l'Infame_," "_Ecrasons l'Infame_"--"Crush the
wretch!" "Let us crush the wretch!" His blows were aimed, perhaps, at
"superstition;" but they really fell, in the full half of their effect,
on Christianity itself. Whether Voltaire regretted this, whether he
would in his heart have had it otherwise, may well, in spite of any
protestation from him of love for Christianity, be doubted. Still, it is
never, in judgment of Voltaire, to be forgotten that the organized
Christianity which he confronted was in large part a system justly
hateful to the true and wise lover, whether of God or of man. That
system he did well in fighting. Carnal indeed were the weapons with
which he fought it; and his victory over it was a carnal victory,
bringing, on the whole, but slender net advantage, if any such advantage
at all, to the cause of final truth and light. The French Revolution,
with its excesses and its horrors, was perhaps the proper, the
legitimate, the necessary, fruit of resistance such as was Voltaire's,
in fundamental spirit, to the evils in Church and in State against
which he conducted so gallantly his life-long campaign.
But though we thus bring in doubt the work of Voltaire, both as to the
purity of its motive and as to the value of its fruit, we should wrong
our sense of justice to ourselves if we permitted our readers to suppose
us blind to the generous things that this arch-infidel did on behalf of
the suffering and the oppressed. Voltaire more than once wielded that
pen of his, the most dreaded weapon in Europe, like a knight sworn to
take on himself the championship of the forlornest of causes. There is
the historic case of Jean Calas at Toulouse, Protestant, an old man of
near seventy, broken on the wheel, as suspected, without evidence, and
against accumulated impossibilities, of murdering his own son, a young
man of about thirty, by hanging him. Voltaire took up the case and
pleaded it to the common sense, and to the human feeling, of France,
with immense effectiveness. It is, in truth, Voltaire's advocacy of
righteousness, in this instance of incredible wrong, that has made the
instance itself immortal. His part in the case of Calas, though the most
signal, is not the only example of Voltaire's literary knighthood. He
hated oppression, and he loved liberty, for himself and for all men,
with a passion as deep and as constant as any passion of which nature
had made Voltaire capable. If the liberty that he loved was
fundamentally liberty as against God no less than as against men, and if
the oppression that he hated was fundamentally the oppression of being
put under obligation to obey Christ as lord of life and of thought, this
was something of which, probably, Voltaire never had a clear
consciousness.
We have now indicated what was most admirable in Voltaire's personal
character. On the whole, he was far from being an admirable man. He was
vain, he was shallow, he was frivolous, he was deceitful, he was
voluptuous, he fawned on the great, he abased himself before them, he
licked the dust on which they stood. "_Trajan, est-il content?_" ("Is
Trajan satisfied?")--this, asked, in nauseous adulation, and nauseous
self-abasement, by Voltaire of Louis XV., so little like Trajan in
character--is monumental. The occasion was the production of a piece of
Voltaire's written at the instance of Louis XV.'s mistress, the infamous
Madame de Pompadour. The king, for answer, simply gorgonized the poet
with a stony Bourbon stare.
But, taken altogether, Voltaire's life was a great success. He got on in
the world, was rich, was fortunate, was famous, was gay, if he was not
happy. He had his friendship with the great Frederick of Prussia, who
filled for his false French flatterer a return cup of sweetness,
cunningly mixed with exceeding bitterness. His death was an appropriate
_coup de theatre_, a felicity of finish to such a life quite beyond the
reach of art. He came back to Paris, whence he had been an exile,
welcomed with a triumph transcending the triumph of a conqueror. They
made a great feast for him, a feast of flattery, in the theater. The old
man was drunk with delight. The delight was too much for him. It
literally killed him. It was as if a favorite actress should be quite
smothered to death on the stage under flowers thrown in excessive
profusion at her feet.
Let Carlyle's sentence be our epigraph on Voltaire:
"No great Man.... Found always at the top, less by power in swimming
than by lightness in floating."
XVII
ROUSSEAU: 1712-1778; St. Pierre: 1737-1814.
There are two Rousseaus in French literature. At least there was a
first, until the second effaced him, and became the only.
We speak, of course, in comparison, and hyperbolically. J. B. Rousseau
is still named as a lyric poet of the time of Louis XIV. But when
Rousseau, without initials, is spoken of, it is always Jean Jacques
Rousseau that is meant.
Jean Jacques Rousseau is perhaps the most squalid, as it certainly is
one of the most splendid, among French literary names. The squalor
belongs chiefly to the man, but the splendor is wholly the writer's.
There is hardly another example in the world's literature of a union so
striking of these opposites.
Rousseau's life he has himself told, in the best, the worst, and the
most imperishable of his books, the "Confessions." This book is one to
which the adjective charming attaches, in a peculiarly literal sense of
the word. The spell, however, is repellent as well as attractive. But
the attraction of the style asserts and pronounces itself only the more,
in triumph over the much there is in the matter to disgust and revolt.
It is quite the most offensive, and it is well-nigh the most
fascinating, book that we know.
The "Confessions" begin as follows:
I purpose an undertaking that never had an example, and whose
execution never will have an imitator. I would exhibit to my fellows a
man, in all the truth of nature, and that man--myself.
Myself alone. I know my own heart, and I am acquainted with men. I am
made unlike any one I have ever seen--I dare believe unlike any living
being. If no better than, I am at least different from, others.
Whether nature did well or ill in breaking the mold wherein I was
cast, can be determined only after having read me.
Let the last trumpet sound when it will, I will come, with this book
in my hand, and present myself before the Sovereign Judge. I will
boldly proclaim: Thus have I acted, thus have I thought, such was I.
With equal frankness have I disclosed the good and the evil. I have
omitted nothing bad, added nothing good; and if I have happened to
make use of some unimportant ornament, it has, in every case, been
simply for the purpose of filling up a void occasioned by my lack of
memory. I may have taken for granted as true what I knew to be
possible, never what I knew to be false. Such as I was, I have
exhibited myself--despicable and vile, when so; virtuous, generous,
sublime, when so. I have unveiled my interior being, such as Thou,
Eternal Existence, hast beheld it. Assemble around me the numberless
throng of my fellow-mortals; let them listen to my confessions, let
them blush at my depravities, let them shrink appalled at my miseries.
Let each of them, in his turn, with equal sincerity, lay bare his
heart at the foot of thy throne, and then let a single one tell thee,
if he dare, _I was better than that man_.
Notwithstanding our autobiographer's disavowal of debt to example for
the idea of his "Confessions," it seems clear that Montaigne here was at
least inspiration, if not pattern, to Rousseau. But Rousseau resolved to
do what Montaigne had done, more ingenuously and more courageously than
Montaigne had done it. This writer will make himself his subject, and
then treat his subject with greater frankness than any man before him
ever used about himself, or than any man after him would ever use. He
undoubtedly succeeded in his attempt. His frankness, in fact, is so
forward and eager that it is probably even inventive of things
disgraceful to himself. Montaigne makes great pretense of telling his
own faults, but you observe that he generally chooses rather amiable
faults of his own to tell. Rousseau's morbid vulgarity leads him to
disclose traits in himself of character or of behavior, that, despite
whatever contrary wishes on your part, compel your contempt of the man.
And it is for the man who confesses, almost more than for the man who is
guilty, that you feel the contempt.
The "Confessions" proceed:
I was born at Geneva, in 1712, of Isaac Rousseau and Susannah Bernard,
citizens.... I came into the world weak and sickly. I cost my mother
her life, and my birth was the first of my misfortunes.
I never learned how my father supported his loss, but I know that he
remained ever after inconsolable.... When he used to say to me, "Jean
Jacques, let us speak of your mother," my usual reply was, "Well,
father, we'll cry then," a reply which would instantly bring the tears
to his eyes. "Ah!" he would exclaim with agitation, "give me her back,
console me for her loss, fill up the void she has left in my soul.
Could I love thee thus wert thou but _my_ son?" Forty years after
having lost her he expired in the arms of a second wife, but with the
name of the first on his lips, and her image engraven on his heart.