Several incidents combined to direct Voltaire's attention to clericalism
as the enemy of progress and humanity. Soon after his return to France,
the famous actress, Adrienne Lecouvreur, for whom he had a high esteem,
and who had represented the heroines of his plays, died. The clergy of
Paris refused her Christian burial because of her profession, and her
corpse was put in a ditch in a cattle-field on the banks of the Seine.
Voltaire, who regarded the theatre as one of the most potent instruments
of culture and civilisation, at once avenged and consecrated her memory
in a fine ode, burning with the fire of a deep pathos, in which he takes
occasion to contrast the treatment in England of Mrs. Oldfield, the
actress, who was buried in Westminster Abbey. Mr. Lecky says: "The man
who did more than any other to remove the stigma that rested upon actors
was unquestionably Voltaire. There is, indeed, something singularly
noble in the untiring zeal with which he directs poetry and eloquence,
the keenest wit, and the closest reasoning to the defence of those who
had so long been friendless and despised."
When Voltaire published his _Letters on the English Nation_ the copies
were seized by the Government and the publisher was thrown into the
Bastille. The author would have again tasted the discomforts of that
abode if he had not had timely warning from his friend D'Argental, and
taken refuge in Lorraine, and afterwards on the Rhine, while his book
was torn to pieces and burned in Paris by the public executioner, as
offensive to religion, good morals, and respect for authority. Voltaire
had apparently good reason to apprehend treatment of unusual rigor if he
had obeyed the summons to give himself up into custody, as he took good
care not to do. "I have a mortal aversion to prison," he wrote to
D'Argental. "I am ill; a confined air would have killed me, and I should
probably have been thrust into a dungeon."
Voltaire's _Letters on the English_ reads at the present day as so mild
a production that it is hard to understand its suppression. Yet it was a
true instinct which detected that the work was directed against the
principle of authority. The introduction of English thought was destined
to become an explosive element shattering the feudalism of Europe. There
were, moreover, some hard hits at the state of things in France. "The
English nation," says Voltaire, "is the only one which has succeeded in
restricting the power of kings by resisting it." Again: "How I love the
English boldness, how I love men who say what they think!"
Voltaire gives a peculiar reason for the non-appreciation by the English
of Moliere's _Tartuffe_, the original of Mawworm if not of Uriah Heep.
He says they are not pleased with the portrayal of characters they do
not know. "One there hardly knows the name of devotee, but they know
well that of honest man. One does not see there imbeciles who put their
souls into others' hands, nor those petty ambitious men who establish a
despotic sway over women formerly wanton and always weak, and over men
yet more weak and contemptible." We fancy Voltaire must have seen
society mainly as found among the Freethinkers. Could he give so
favorable a verdict did he visit us now? The same remark applies to his
statement that there was "no privilege of hunting in the grounds of a
citizen, who, at the same time, is not permitted to fire a gun in his
own field." But this, as well as the more important passage that "no one
is exempted from taxation for being a nobleman or priest," was probably
intended exclusively for the benefit of his compatriots. He was,
however, not without a little touch of ridicule at the incongruities he
detected in our countrymen. Thus he notes in one of his letters: "They
learn Vanini and translate Lucretius for Monsieur le Dauphin to get by
heart, and then, while they deride the polytheism of the ancients, they
worship the Congregation of the Saints."
Those educated in the current delusion that Voltaire was a mere mocker
will be surprised to find the temperate way in which he speaks of the
Quakers. Here, where there was such excellent opportunity for raillery,
Voltaire shows he had a genuine admiration for their simplicity of life,
the courage of their convictions, their freedom from priestcraft, and
their distaste for warfare. In these _Letters,_ as in all his writings,
he proves how far he was the embodiment of the new era by his boldly
expressed preference for industrial over military pursuits.
In his remarks on the Church of England, Voltaire, however, gives an
unmistakable touch of his quality: "One cannot have public employment in
England or Ireland, without being of the number of faithful Anglicans.
This reason, which is an excellent proof, has converted so many
Nonconformists that not a twentieth part of the nation is out of the
pale of the dominant church."
After alluding to the "holy zeal" of ministers against dissenters, and
of the lower House of Convocation, who "from time to time burnt impious
books, that is, books against themselves," he says: "When they learn
that, in France, young fellows noted only for debauchery and raised to
the prelacy by female intrigue, openly pursue their amours, compose
love-songs, give every day elaborate delicate suppers, then go to
implore the illumination of the Holy Spirit, boldly calling themselves
the successors of the Apostles--they thank God they are Protestants. But
they are abominable heretics, to be burnt by all the devils, as Master
Francois Rabelais says; and that is why I do not meddle with their
affairs."
The Presbyterians fare little better, for Voltaire relates that, when
King Charles surrendered to the Scots, they made that unfortunate
monarch undergo four sermons a day. To them it is owing that only
genteel people play cards on Sunday: "the rest of the nation go either
to church, to the tavern, or to see their mistresses."
His admiration for English philosophy was startling to the French mind.
Locke's Essay became his philosophical gospel. "For thirty years," he
writes in 1768, "I have been persecuted by a crowd of fanatics because I
said that Locke is the Hercules of Metaphysics, who has fixed the
boundaries of the human mind."