A common admiration for Locke and Newton cemented his attachment to the
Marquise du Chatelet, a lady distinguished from others of her age by her
love of the sciences. With her Voltaire lived for over fifteen years at
the Chateau of Cirey, in Campagne, "far from the madding crowd's ignoble
strife," and, as Voltaire phrased it, "nine miles from a lemon."
Voltaire was at the outset forty and Madame twenty-seven, neither
handsome nor well-formed, yet pleasing. She united learning with a zest
for pleasure, and with the handsome fortune which Voltaire brought to
the establishment was enabled to satisfy both tastes. Life at Cirey was
varied by jaunts to Paris, Brussels and Sceaux, at which last place he
wrote _Zadig_, one of his lightest and most characteristic burlesque
stories.
Madame du Chatelet has been much laughed at; but in the days when ladies
take prizes in mathematics, that should be a thing of the past. Hard
intellectual labor rather than the pursuit of pleasure characterised
life at Cirey, or rather its inmates found their pleasure in their work.
Madame would be translating Newton or studying Leibnitz. Her
mathematical tutor worked at physical science in a gallery which had
been built expressly for him. Voltaire would be aiding each in turn, or,
ever faithful to his first love the drama, occupied with the writing or
production of a tragedy or comedy for the theatre also attached to the
premises. His production was as ever incessant. At the time of his first
settlement there, Pope's _Essay on Man_ had been published. It suggested
a _Discourse on Man_, in which he sought not to justify the ways of God
to man, but to make man contented with his lot, not vainly inquiring
into the why and wherefore of things. With Madame he wrote _Elements of
the Newtonian Philosophy_, a work highly praised by Lord Brougham, who
says: "The power of explaining an abstract subject in easy and accurate
language, language not in any way beneath the dignity of science, though
quite suited to the comprehension of uninformed persons, is
unquestionably shown in a manner which only makes it a matter of regret
that the singularly gifted author did not carry his torch into all the
recesses of natural philosophy." The French Government, despite the
influence of aristocratic friends, refused to print a work opposed to
the system of Descartes, and the volume had to be printed in Holland.
For Madame, who despised the "old almanack" histories then current, in
place of which Voltaire aimed at producing something more profitable to
the readers, he wrote his _Essay on the Manners and Spirit of Nations_,
in which for the first time in modern literature he applied philosophy
to the teaching of history. He dissipated the dull dreams and deceits of
the monks, and fixed attention on the real condition of things. With
Voltaire, the commonest invention which improves the human lot is of
more importance than battles and sieges. He gives importance to the
physical and intellectual improvement of man. Brougham remarks that
Voltaire's Philosophy of History was written as a prelude to the Essay
on the Spirit of Nations, but the whole work deserves that title. Buckle
classes him with Bolingbroke and Montesquieu, the fathers of modern
history, and all sceptics; and even now, says Lecky, no historian can
read him without profit. Other contributions to history were the
_History of Charles XII._, a masterpiece of vivid and vigorous
narrative, and _The Age of Louis XIV_. It was here he wrote his too
famous _Pucelle_, which he afterwards described as "piggery," as well as
some of the most famous of his plays, including. _Ilzire, Zuline,
L'Enfant Prodigue, Mahomet and Merope_, the best of his tragedies. With
that impish spirit in which he ever delighted, he induced the Pope to
accept the dedication of his play of _Mahomet_, and then laughed at his
infallible Holiness for being unable to see that the shafts supposed to
be directed at the impostor of Arabia were really aimed at fanaticism in
another quarter.
To his first and last love, the French theatre, Voltaire contributed
nearly sixty pieces, the majority of which are tragedies. _Zaire_ and
_Merope_ suffice to show the excellence he obtained in the classic
drama. The first-named was written in three weeks, a wonderful _tour de
force. Olympic_--written in old age--occupied but six days, though in
this we must agree with the friend who told the author that he should
not have rested on the seventh day. Voltaire's plays indeed contain
occasional fine passages, but they have not the rich delineation of
character necessary for works of the first rank. It has been well
remarked that in his dramas, as in history, he sought to portray not so
much individuals as epochs. In _Mahomet_ his subject is a great
fanaticism; in _Alzire_, the conquest of America; in _Brutus_, the
formation of the Roman power; in the _Death of Coesar_, the rise of the
empire or the ruin of that power. It is noteworthy that, despite his
excess of comic talent, Voltaire preferred to devote his mind to tragedy
rather than to comedy, in which one might have fancied he would have
excelled. In truth, his desire to support the dignity of the stage stood
in the way of his shining in comedy. Voltaire also at this period wrote
a _Life of Moliere_, in which he mingled criticism with biography.
Madame de Grafigny, who visited at Cirey, says he was so greedy of his
time, so intent upon his work, that it was sometimes necessary to tear
him from his desk for supper. "But when at table, he always has
something to tell, very facetious, very odd, very droll, which would
often not sound well except in his mouth, and which shows him still as
he has painted himself for us--
_Toujours un pied dans le cercueil,_
_De l'autre faisant des gambades."(1)_