As a contrast to the views of Dr. Johnson and De Maistre, which for
generations represented the current opinion of Protestants and
Catholics, I bring together a few independent testimonies. As time goes
on his admirers increase in volume, while his detractors now are mainly
those who have an interest in or secret sympathy with the abuses he
destroyed. And first, I will give the testimony of Goldsmith who had met
him. It was written while Voltaire was alive, but when a false report of
his death had been received in England. "Should you look for the
character of Voltaire among the journalists and illiterate writers of
the age, you will find him there characterised as a monster, with a head
turned to wisdom, and a heart inclining to vice--the powers of his mind
and the baseness of his principles forming a detestable contrast. But
seek for his character among writers like himself, and you will find him
very differently described. You perceive him, in their accounts,
possessed of good nature, humanity, greatness of soul, fortitude, and
almost every virtue: in this description those who might be supposed
best acquainted with his character are unanimous. The royal Prussian,
D'Argens, Diderot, D'Alembert, and Fontenelle conspire in drawing the
picture, in describing the friend of man, and the patron of every rising
genius."
Lord Byron's lines on Voltaire and Gibbon (_Childe Harold_, iii.,
105-107) are well known. He says:
They were gigantic minds, and their steep aim
Was, Titan-like, on daring doubts to pile
Thoughts which should call down thunder, and the flame
Of Heaven again assail'd, if Heaven the while
On man and man's research could deign do more than smile.
The one was fire and fickleness, a child
Most mutable in wishes, but in mind
A wit as various,--gay, grave, sage, or wild,--
Historian, bard, philosopher, combined;
He multiplied himself among mankind,
The Proteus of their talents:
But his own
Breathed most in ridicule,--which, as the wind,
Blew where it listed, laying all things prone,--
Now to o'erthrow a fool, and now to shake a throne.
The other, deep and slow, exhausting thought,
And having wisdom with each studious year,
In meditation dwelt, with learning wrought,
And shaped his weapon with an edge severe,
Sapping a solemn creed with solemn sneer;
The lord of iron,--that master-spell,
Which stung his foes to wrath, which grew from fear,
And doom'd him to the zealot's ready Hell,
Which answers to all doubts so eloquently well.
Warton, the learned critic and author of a _History of Poetry_
(Dissertation I.) remarked: "Voltaire, a writer of much deeper research
than is imagined, and the first who has displayed the literature and
customs of the dark ages with any degree of penetration and
comprehension." Robertson, the historian, similarly observed that, had
Voltaire only given his authorities, "many of his readers who only
consider him as an entertaining and lively writer would have found that
he is a learned and well informed historian."
Lord Holland wrote, in his account of the _Life and Writings of Lope de
Vega_: "Till Voltaire appeared there was no nation more ignorant of its
neighbors' literature than the French. He first exposed and then
corrected this neglect in his countrymen. There is no writer to whom the
authors of other nations, especially of England, are so indebted for the
extension of their fame in France, and, through France, in Europe. There
is no critic who has employed more time, wit, ingenuity, and diligence
in promoting the literary intercourse between country and country, and
in celebrating in one language the triumphs of another. His enemies
would fain persuade us that such exuberance of wit implies a want of
information; but they only succeed in showing that a want of wit by no
means implies an exuberance of information."
Goethe said: "Voltaire will ever be regarded as the greatest name in
literature in modern times, and perhaps even in all ages, as the most
astonishing creation of nature, in which she united, in one frail human
organisation, all the varieties of talent, all the glories of genius,
all the potencies of thought. If you wish depth, genius, imagination,
taste, reason, sensibility, philosophy, elevation, originality, nature,
intellect, fancy, rectitude, facility, flexibility, precision, art,
abundance, variety, fertility, warmth, magic, charm, grace, force, an
eagle sweep of vision, vast understanding, instruction rich, tone
excellent, urbanity, suavity, delicacy, correctness, purity, cleanness,
eloquence, harmony, brilliancy, rapidity, gaiety, pathos, sublimity and
universality--perfection indeed--behold Voltaire."
Lord Brougham, in his _Lives of Men of Letters and Science who
flourished in the time of George III_., devotes a considerable section
to Voltaire. After censuring "the manner in which he devoted himself to
crying down the sacred things of his country," he continues: "But,
though it would be exceedingly wrong to pass over this great and
prevailing fault without severe reprobation, it would be equally unjust,
nay, ungrateful, ever to forget the immense obligations under which
Voltaire has laid mankind by his writings, the pleasure derived from his
fancy and his wit, the amusement which his singular and original humor
bestows, even the copious instruction with which his historical works
are pregnant, and the vast improvement in the manner of writing history
which we owe to him. Yet, great as these services are--among the
greatest that can be rendered by a man of letters--they are really of
far inferior value to the benefits which have resulted from his long and
arduous struggle against oppression, especially against tyranny in the
worst form which it can assume, the persecution of opinion, the
infraction of the sacred right to exercise the reason upon all subjects,
unfettered by prejudice, uncontrolled by authority, whether of great
names or of temporal power."
Macaulay, in his _Essay on Frederick the Great_, observes: "In truth, of
all the intellectual weapons which have ever been wielded by man, the
most terrible was the mockery of Voltaire. Bigots and tyrants, who had
never been moved by the wailing and cursing of millions, turned pale at
his name."
Carlyle, in his depreciatory essay, acknowledged: "Perhaps there is no
writer, not a mere compiler, but writing from his own invention or
elaboration, who has left so many volumes behind him; and if to the
merely arithmetical we add a critical estimate, the singularity is still
greater; for these volumes are not written without an appearance of due
care and preparation; perhaps there is not one altogether feeble and
confused treatise, nay, one feeble and confused sentence to be found in
them." And at the end he admits: "He gave the death-stab to modern
Superstition! _That_ horrid incubus, which dwelt in darkness, shunning
the light, is passing away; with all its racks and poison chalices, and
foul sleeping-draughts, is passing away without return. It was a most
weighty service."
One of the strangest of tributes to Voltaire is that from Ruskin, the
disciple of Carlyle. In his _Fors Clavigera_ (vol. viii., p. 76) he
says: "There are few stronger adversaries to St. George than Voltaire.
But my scholars are welcome to read as much of Voltaire as they like.
His voice is mighty among the ages."
Dr. D. F. Strauss wrote: "Voltaire's historical significance has been
illustrated by the observation of Goethe that, as in families whose
existence has been of long duration, Nature sometimes at length produces
an individual who sums up in himself the collective qualities of all his
ancestors, so it happens also with nations, whose collective merits (and
demerits) sometimes appear epitomised in one individual person. Thus in
Louis XIV. stood forth the highest figure of a French monarch. Thus, in
Voltaire, the highest conceivable and congenial representative of French
authorship. We may extend the observation farther, if, instead of the
French nation only, we take into view the whole European generation on
which Voltaire's influence was exercised. From this point of view we may
call Voltaire emphatically the representative writer of the eighteenth
century, as Goethe called him, in the highest sense, the representative
writer of France."
Victor Hugo, in the magnificent oration which he pronounced on the
centenary of Voltaire's death, said: "Voltaire waged the splendid kind
of warfare, the war of one alone against all--that is to say, the grand
warfare; the war of thought against matter; the war of reason against
prejudice; the war of the just against the unjust; the war of the
oppressed against the oppressor; the war of goodness; the war of
kindness. He had the tenderness of a woman and the wrath of a hero. He
was a great mind and an immense heart. He conquered the old code and the
old dogma. He conquered the feudal lord, the Gothic judge, the Roman
priest. He raised the populace to the dignity of people. He taught,
pacified, and civilised. He fought for Sirven and Montbailly, as for
Calas and La Barre. He accepted all the menaces, all the persecutions,
calumny, and exile. He was indefatigable and immovable. He conquered
violence by a smile, despotism by sarcasm, infallibility by irony,
obstinacy by perseverance, ignorance by truth."
Buckle, in his _History of Civilisation_ (vol. ii., p. 304) says: "It
would be impossible to relate all the original remarks of Voltaire,
which, when he made them, were attacked as dangerous paradoxes, and are
now valued as sober truths. He was the first historian who recommended
universal freedom of trade; and although he expresses himself with great
caution, still, the mere announcement of the idea is a popular history
forms an epoch in the progress of the French mind. He is the originator
of that important distinction between the increase of population and the
increase of food, to which political economy has been greatly indebted,
a principle adopted several years later by Townsend, and then used by
Malthus as the basis of his celebrated work. He has, moreover, the merit
of being the first who dispelled the childish admiration with which the
Middle Ages had been hitherto regarded. In his works the Middle Ages are
for the first time represented as what they really were--a period of
ignorance, ferocity, and licentiousness; a period when injuries were
unredressed, crime unpunished, and superstition unrebuked." Again (page
308): "No one reasoned more closely than Voltaire when reasoning suited
his purpose. But he had to deal with men impervious to argument; men
whose inordinate reverence for antiquity had only left them two ideas,
namely, that everything old is right, and that everything new is wrong.
To argue against these opinions would be idle indeed; the only other
resource was to make them ridiculous, and weaken their influence by
holding up their authors to contempt. This was one of the tasks Voltaire
set himself to perform; and he did it well. He therefore used ridicule,
not as the test of truth, but as the scourge of folly. And with such
effect was the punishment administered that not only did the pedants and
theologians of his own time wince under the lash, but even their
successors feel their ears tingle when they read his biting words; and
they revenge themselves by reviling the memory of the great writer whose
works are as a thorn in their side, and whose very name they hold in
undisguised abhorrence."
Mr. Lecky, in his _History of Rationalism in Europe_ (vol. ii., p. 66)
says: "Voltaire was at all times the unflinching opponent of
persecution. No matter how powerful was the persecutor, no matter how
insignificant was the victim, the same scathing eloquence was launched
against the crime, and the indignation of Europe was soon concentrated
upon the oppressor. The fearful storm of sarcasm and invective that
avenged the murder of Calas, the magnificent dream in the _Philosophical
Dictionary_ reviewing the history of persecution from the slaughtered
Canaanites to the latest victim who had perished at the stake, the
indelible stigma branded upon the persecutors of every age and of every
creed, all attested the intense and passionate earnestness with which
Voltaire addressed himself to his task. On other subjects a jest or a
caprice could often turn him aside. When attacking intolerance he
employed, indeed, every weapon; but he employed them all with the
concentrated energy of a profound conviction. His success was equal to
his zeal; the spirit of intolerance sank blasted beneath his genius.
Wherever his influence passed, the arm of the inquisitor was palsied,
the chain of the captive riven, the prison door flung open. Beneath his
withering irony, persecution appeared not only criminal but loathsome,
and since his time it has ever shrunk from observation and masked its
features under other names. He died, leaving a reputation that is indeed
far from spotless, but having done more to destroy the greatest of human
curses than any other of the sons of men."
Mr. Lecky, in his _History of England in the Eighteenth Century_ (v.,
312), observes: "No previous writer can compare with him in the wideness
and justness of his conceptions of history, and even now no historian
can read without profit his essays on the subject. No one before had so
strongly urged that history should not be treated as a collection of
pictures or anecdotes relating to courts or battles, but should be made
a record and explanation of the true development of nations, of the
causes of their growth and decay, of their characteristic virtues and
vices, of the changes that pass over their laws, customs, opinions,
social and economical conditions, and over the relative importance and
well-being of their different classes... (p. 315). Untiring industry, an
extraordinary variety of interests and aptitudes, a judgment at once
sound, moderate, and independent, a rare power of seizing in every
subject the essential argument or facts, a disposition to take no old
opinions on trust and to leave no new opinions unexamined, combined in
him with the most extraordinary literary talent. Never, perhaps, was
there an intellect at once so luminous, versatile, and flexible, which
produced so much, which could deal with such a vast range of difficult
subjects without being ever obscure, tangled, or dull."
Colonel Hamley wrote: "But after the winnowings of generations, a wide
and deep repute still remains to him; nor will any diminution which it
may have suffered be without compensation, for, with the fading of old
prejudices, and with better knowledge, his name will be regarded with
increased liking and respect. Yet it must not be supposed that he is
here held up as a pattern man. He was, indeed, an infinitely better one
than the religious bigots of that time. He believed, with far better
effect on his practice than they could boast, in a Supreme Ruler. He was
the untiring and eloquent advocate at the bar of the universe of the
rights of humanity."
Mr. Swinburne has well expressed this characteristic. "Voltaire's great
work," he says, "was to have done more than any other man on record to
make the instinct of cruelty not only detestable, but ludicrous; and so
to accomplish what the holiest and the wisest of saints and philosophers
had failed to achieve: to attack the most hideous and pernicious of
human vices with a more effective weapon than preaching and
denunciation: to make tyrants and torturers look not merely horrible and
hateful, but pitiful and ridiculous."
Edgar Quinet, in his lectures on the Church, says: "I watch for forty
years the reign of one man who is himself the spiritual direction, not
of his country, but of his age. From the corner of his chamber he
governs the realm of mind. Everyday intellects are regulated by his; one
word written by his hand traverses Europe. Princes love and kings fear
him. Nations repeat the words that fall from his pen. Who exercises this
incredible power which has nowhere been seen since the Middle Ages? Is
he another Gregory VII? Is he a Pope? No--Voltaire."
And Lamartine, in similar strain, remarks: "If we judge of men by what
they have _done_, then Voltaire is incontestibly the greatest writer of
modern Europe. No one has caused, through the powerful influence of his
genius alone and the perseverance of his will, so great a commotion in
the minds of men. His pen aroused a sleeping world, and shook a far
mightier empire than that of Charlemagne, the European empire of a
theocracy. His genius was not _force_, but _light_. Heaven had destined
him not to destroy, but to illuminate; and wherever he trod, light
followed him, for Reason--which is light--had destined him to be, first
her poet, then her apostle, and lastly her idol."
Mr. Alexander A. Knox, writing in the _Nineteenth Century_ (October
1882), says: "That the man's aspirations were in the main noble and
honorable to humanity, I am sure. I am equally so that few men have
exercised so great an influence upon their fellow creatures.... The
wonderful old man! When he was past eighty years of age he set to work,
like another Jeremy Bentham, to abolish the admission of hearsay
evidence into French legal proceedings. But his great work was that by
his wit and irony he broke down the _principle of authority_ which had
been so foully abused in France. Would the most strictly religious man
wish to see religion as it was in France in the eighteenth century?
Would the greatest stickler for authority wish to find a country
governed as France was governed in the days of Voltaire?"
Du Bois-Reymond, the eminent German scientist, remarks: "Voltaire is so
little to us at present because the things he fought for, 'toleration,
spiritual freedom, human dignity, justice,' have become, as it were, the
air we breathe, and do not think of except when we are deprived of it."
Col. R. G. Ingersoll, in his fine _Oration on Voltaire_, observes:
"Voltaire was perfectly equipped for his work. A perfect master of the
French language, knowing all its moods, tenses, and declinations--in
fact and in feeling playing upon it as skilfully as Paganini on his
violin, finding expression for every thought and fancy, writing on the
most serious subjects with the gaiety of a harlequin, plucking jests
from the mouth of death, graceful as the waving of willows, dealing in
double meanings that covered the asp with flowers and flattery, master
of satire and compliment, mingling them often in the same line, always
interested himself, therefore interesting others, handling thoughts,
questions, subjects as a juggler does balls, keeping them in the air
with perfect ease, dressing old words in new meanings, charming,
grotesque, pathetic, mingling mirth with tears, wit and wisdom, and
sometimes wickedness, logic and laughter. With a woman's instinct,
knowing the sensitive nerves--just where to touch--hating arrogance of
place, the stupidity, of the solemn, snatching masks from priest and
king, knowing the springs of action and ambition's ends, perfectly
familiar with the great world, the intimate of kings and their
favorites, sympathising with the oppressed and imprisoned, with the
unfortunate and poor, hating tyranny, despising superstition, and loving
liberty with all his heart. Such was Voltaire, writing _OEdipus_ at
seventeen, _Irene_ at eighty-three, and crowding between these two
tragedies the accomplishment of a thousand lives."
The Right Hon. John Morley testifies: "Voltaire was the very eye of
modern illumination. It was he who conveyed to his generation in a
multitude of forms the consciousness at once of the power and the rights
of human intelligence. Another might well have said of him what he
magnanimously said of his famous contemporary, Montesquieu, that
humanity had lost its title-deeds, and he had recovered them. The
four-score volumes which he wrote are the monument, as they were the
instrument, of a new renascence. They are the fruit and representation
of a spirit of encyclopaedic curiosity and productiveness. Hardly a page
of all these countless leaves is common form. Hardly a sentence is there
which did not come forth alive from Voltaire's own mind, or which was
said because some one else had said it before. Voltaire was a stupendous
power, not only because his expression was incomparably lucid, or even
because his sight was exquisitely keen and clear, but because he saw
many new things, after which the spirits of others were unconsciously
groping and dumbly yearning. Nor was this all. Voltaire was ever in the
front and centre of the fight. His life was not a mere chapter in a
history of literature. He never counted truth a treasure to be
discreetly hidden in a napkin. He made it a perpetual war cry, and
emblazoned it on a banner that was many a time rent, but was never out
of the field." We may fitly conclude with Browning's incisive lines in
_The Two Poets of Croisie_:--
_"Ay, sharpest, shrewdest steel that ever stabbed_
_To death Imposture through the armour joints."_