The story of how Voltaire came to England is worth the telling, as it
illustrates the condition of things in France in the early part of last
century. Voltaire left France for England, which his acquaintance with
Lord Bolingbroke induced him to desire to visit. It was his Hegira,
whence he returned a full-fledged Prophet of the French. He went a poet,
he returned a philosopher. Dining at the Duke of Sully's table he
presumed to differ from the Chevalier de Rohan--Chabot, a relative of
Cardinal Rohan. The aristocrat asked, "Who is that young fellow who
talks so loudly?" "Monsieur le Chevalier," replied Voltaire, "it is a
man who does not bear a great name but who knows how to honor the name
he does bear."(1) It was insufferable that the son of a bourgeois should
thus speak his mind to a Rohan. A few days afterwards, when again dining
with the Duke, he was called out by a false message, and seized and
caned by ruffians until a voice cried "Enough." That word was a fresh
blow, for the young poet recognised the voice of the Chevalier. He
returned to the Duke and asked him to assist in obtaining redress. His
grace shrugged his shoulders and took no further notice of this insult
to his guest. Voltaire never visited the Duke again, and, it is said,
erased his ancestor's name from the _Henriade_. He was equally
unsuccessful in seeking redress from the Regent. "You are a poet, and
you have had a good thrashing; what can be more natural?" He retired, to
study English and fencing; and reappeared with a challenge to the
Chevalier, who accepted it, but informed his relations. It was against
the law for a commoner to challenge a nobleman. Next morning, instead of
meeting de Rohan, he met officers armed with a _lettre de cachet_
consigning him to the Bastille. After nearly a month's incarceration he
was liberated on condition that he left the country. Having no wish to
spend a second year in prison, he had himself applied for permission to
visit England. Voltaire felt keenly the indignity to which he had been
subjected. In a letter of instruction written from England to his agent
he says: "If my debtors profit by my misfortune and absence to refuse
payment, you must not trouble to bring them to reason: 'tis but a
trifle." Yet a book has been written on Voltaire's avarice.
1. Some of the accounts say that Voltaire said, "You, my lord,
are the last of your house; I am the first of mine."
Voltaire was conducted to Calais and arrived in England on Whit-Monday,
1726. He landed near Greenwich and witnessed the Fair. All seemed
bright. The park and river were full of animation. Here there was no
Bastille, no fear of the persecution of the great or the spies of the
police. He had excellent introductions. Bolingbroke he had met in exile
at La Source in 1721, and he had learnt to regard the illustrious
Englishman who possessed "all the learning of his country and all the
politeness of ours." Voltaire, like Pope, may be said to have been, at
any rate for a time, an eager disciple of the exiled English statesman.
Now Voltaire was the exile; Bolingbroke, for a while, the host, at
Dawley, near Uxbridge. But he had other English friends, notably Mr.
(afterwards Sir Everard) Falkener, an English merchant trading in the
Levant, from whose house at Wandsworth most of his letters are dated.
For Sir Everard, Voltaire always retained the warmest feelings of
friendship, and forty years later returned hospitality to his sons.
Voltaire spent two years and eight months in England, living during part
of the time in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, and during another part at
Wandsworth. This visit was probably the most important event in his
life. It was here he lit the torch of Freethought with which he fired
the continent. Here he mastered the arguments of the English deists,
Bolingbroke, Toland, Tindal, Shaftesbury, Chubb, Collins, and Woolston,
which he afterwards used with such effect. Here he saw the benefits of
parliamentary government. Here he imbibed the philosophy of Locke and
the science of Newton. Indeed it may be said there is hardly one of
Voltaire's important works but bears traces of his visit to our country.
Yet of this momentous epoch of his life the records are scanty. When he
grew famous every letter and anecdote was preserved, but in 1727
Voltaire was but a young man of promise. Carlyle, in the tenth book of
his _Frederick the Great_, says: "But mere inanity and darkness visible
reign in all his Biographies over this period of his life, which was
above all others worth investigating." Messrs. J. C. Collins and A.
Ballantyne have since done much to elucidate this noteworthy period.
Pope was one of the persons Voltaire desired to see. He had already
described him as "the most elegant, most correct, and most harmonious
poet they ever had in England." Pope could only speak French with
difficulty, and Voltaire could not make himself understood. The result
being unsatisfactory, Voltaire did not seek further company until he had
acquired the language. An anecdote in Chetworth's _History of the Stage_
relates that he was in the habit of attending the theatre with the play
in his hand. By this method he obtained more proficiency in the language
in a week than he could otherwise have obtained in a month. Madame de
Genlis had the audacity to assert that Voltaire never knew English, yet
it is certain he could, before he was many months in this country, both
speak and write it with facility. By Nov. 16, 1726, he wrote to Pope,
after that poet's accident while driving near Bolingbroke's estate at
Dawley. In writing to his friend Thieriot, in France, he sometimes used
English, for the same reason, he said, that Boileau wrote in Latin--not
to be understood by too curious people. Voltaire is said to have once
found his knowledge of English of practical use. The French were
unpopular, and in one of his rambles he was menaced by a mob. He said:
"Brave Englishmen, am I not already unhappy enough in not having been
born among you?" His eloquence had such success that, according to
Longchamp and Wagniere, the people wished to carry him on their
shoulders to his house.
While in this country he wrote in English a portion of his tragedy
_Brutus_, inspired by and dedicated to Bolingbroke,
and two essays, one on the Civil Wars of France, and one on Epic Poetry.
In the introduction to the essays he expresses his conception of his own
position as a man of letters in a foreign country. As these essays,
although popular at the time, are now rare, I transcribe a paragraph or
two from them:
"The true aim of a relation is to instruct men, not to gratify their
malice. We should be busied chiefly in giving a faithful account of all
the useful things and extraordinary persons, whom to know, and to
imitate, would be a benefit to our country. A traveller who writes in
that spirit is a merchant of a nobler kind, who imports into his native
country the arts and virtues of other nations."
In his _Essay on Epic Poetry_ Voltaire shows he had made a study of
Milton, though his criticism can scarcely, be considered an advance upon
that of Addison. He displays constant admiration for Tasso, to whom he
was perhaps attracted by his sufferings at the hands of an ignoble
nobility. He says:
"The taste of the English and of the French, though averse to any
machinery grounded upon enchantment, must forgive, nay commend, that of
Armida, since it is the source of so many beauties. Besides, she is a
Mahometan, and the Christian religion allows us to believe that those
infidels are under the immediate influence of the devil." In this essay
appears the first mention of the story of Newton and the apple tree.
Voltaire closely studied all branches of English literature. He read
Shakespeare, and admired his "genius" while censuring his
"irregularity." He was the first to introduce him to his countrymen,
though he subsequently sought to lessen what he considered their
exorbitantly high opinion. The works of Dryden, Waller, Prior, Congreve,
Wycherley, Vanbrugh, Rochester and Addison were all devoured, and he
took an especial interest in Butler's witty _Hudibras_. He was
acquainted with the popular sermons of Archbishop Tillotson and the
speculations of Berkeley. He had read the works of Shaftesbury, Tindal,
Chubb, Garth, Mandeville and Woolston.
Voltaire became acquainted with most of the celebrities in England. He
visited the witty Congreve, who begged his guest to consider him not as
an author but as a gentleman. Voltaire answered with spirit: "If you had
the misfortune to be merely a gentleman, I should never have come to see
you." He knew James Thomson of _The Seasons_, and "discovered in him a
great genius and a great simplicity." With didactic Young, of the _Night
Thoughts_, who glorified God with his "egoism turned heavenward," he
formed a friendship which remained unbroken despite their differences of
opinion on religion. He pushed among his English friends the
subscription list for the _Henriade_, which proved a great
success--although King George II. was not fond of "boetry"--reaching
three editions in a short period. The money thus obtained formed the
foundation of the fortune which Voltaire accumulated, not by his
writings, but by his ability in finance. At that time, in France, as our
author remarked, "to make the smallest fortune it was better to say four
words to the mistress of a king than to write a hundred volumes." His
sojourn in England may be said to have secured him both independence of
mind and independence of fortune.
What pleased him most in England was liberty of discussion. In the year
in which he came over, Elwall was acquitted on a charge of blasphemy,
the collected works of Toland were published, and also Collins's _Scheme
of Literal Prophecy_, and the First Discourse of Woolston on Miracles.
The success of this last work, which boldly applied wit and ridicule to
the Gospel narrative, struck him with admiration. In the very month,
however, when Voltaire left England (March 1729) Woolston was tried and
sentenced to a year's imprisonment and a fine of L100. Voltaire
volunteered a third of the sum, but the brave prisoner refused to give
an assurance that he would not offend again, and died in prison in 1733.
Voltaire always spoke of Woolston with the greatest respect.
Voltaire retained his esteem for England and the English to the last.
Oliver Goldsmith relates that he was in his company one evening when one
of the party undertook to revile the English language and literature.
Diderot defended them, but not brilliantly. Voltaire listened awhile in
silence, which was, as Goldsmith remarks, surprising, for it was one of
his favorite topics. However, about midnight, "Voltaire appeared at last
roused from his reverie. His whole frame seemed animated. He began his
defence with the utmost elegance mixed with spirit, and now and then he
let fall his finest strokes of raillery upon his antagonist; and his
harangue lasted until three in the morning. I must confess that, whether
from national partiality or from the elegant sensibility of his manner,
I never was more charmed, nor did I ever remember so absolute a victory
as he gained in this dispute."
Voltaire corresponded with English friends to the latest period of his
life. Among his correspondents were Lord and Lady Bolingbroke, Sir E.
Falkener, Swift, Hume, Robertson, Horace Walpole, George Colman and Lord
Chatham. We find him asking Falkener to send him the _London Magazine_
for the past three years. To the same friend he wrote from Potsdam in
1752, hoping that his _Vindication of Bolingbroke_ was translated, as it
would annoy the priests, "whom I have hated, hate, and shall hate till
doomsday." In the next year, writing from Berlin, he says: "I hope to
come over myself, in order to print my true works, and to be buried in
the land of freedom. I require no subscription, I desire no benefit. If
my works are neatly printed, and cheaply sold, I am satisfied."
To Thieriot he said: "Had I not been obliged to look after my affairs in
France, depend upon it I would have spent the rest of my days in
London." Long afterwards he wrote to his friend Keate: "Had I not fixed
the seat of my retreat in the free corner of Geneva, I would certainly
live in the free corner of England; I have been for thirty years the
disciple of your ways of thinking." At the age of seventy he translated
Shakespeare's _Julius Coesar_. Mr. Collins says: "The kindness and
hospitality which he received he never forgot, and he took every
opportunity of repaying it. To be an Englishman was always a certain
passport to his courteous consideration." He compared the English to
their own beer, "the froth atop, dregs at bottom, but the bulk
excellent." When Martin Sherlock visited him at Ferney in 1776, he found
the old man, then in his eighty-third year, still full of his visit to
England. His gardens were laid out in English fashion, his favorite
books were the English classics, the subject to which he persistently
directed conversation was the English nation.
The memory of Voltaire has been but scurvily treated in the land he
loved so well. For over a century, calumny and obloquy were poured upon
him. Johnson said of Rousseau: "I would sooner sign a sentence for his
transportation than that of any felon who has gone from the Old Bailey
these many years." _Boswell_: "Sir, do you think him as bad a man as
Voltaire?" _Johnson_: "Why, sir, it is difficult to settle the
proportion of iniquity between them." And this represents an opinion
which long endured among the religious classes. But it is at length
being recognised that, with all his imperfections, which were after all
those of the age in which he lived, he devoted his brilliant genius to
the cause of truth and the progress of humanity. He made his exile in
England an occasion for accumulating those stores of intelligence with
which he so successfully combated the prejudices of the past and
promulgated the principles of freedom, and justified his being ranked
foremost among the liberators of the human mind.