THE “ESSAY ON THE MANNERS AND MIND OF NATIONS”
The arrival of Voltaire at Mayence rang down the curtain upon the
greatest act of one of the most famous dramas of friendship in the
world. It left Frederick enraged: first of all with himself; secondly,
with blundering Freytag, whose blunders the King ostensibly approved,
according to his principle, in a formal document written for that
purpose; and only thirdly with Voltaire. With his muse taught by that
Voltaire, Frederick abused the teacher in spiteful epigrams, and then
dealt him a blow which shook Voltaire’s whole life, as a lover will kill
the mistress who has been false to him not because he has loved her too
little, but too much.
As for Voltaire, he was both angry and sorry. In that mean, world-famous
story of their quarrel he must have known well enough that he had been
too often most aggravating, _méchant_, and irrepressible. Yet that
letter he wrote on July 9th from Mayence to Madame Denis, seen and meant
to be seen by Frederick, gave a view of the situation not wholly false.
The King “might have remembered that for fifteen years he wooed me with
tender favours; that in my old age he drew me from my country; that for
two years I worked with him to perfect his talents; that I have served
him well and failed him in nothing; that it is infinitely below his rank
and glory to take part in an academical quarrel and to end as my reward
by demanding his poems from me at the hands of his soldiers.”
Adoring and quarrelling, passionately admiring and yearning for each
other when they were apart, admiring and fighting each other when they
were together--that is the history of the friendship of Frederick and
Voltaire. If it be true that the great are no mates for common people,
still less are they mates for each other. Even in fabled Olympus, gods
could not live in peace with gods.
It is not unworthy of remark that their connection conferred far greater
benefits on the King than on the commoner. Voltaire _had_ consistently
trained and taught the royal intellect from that first letter written in
August, 1736, to the Prussian heir-apparent. He had been such a master
as kings do not often find--and his royal pupil had gained from him such
advantages as kings are seldom wise enough to use.
But for Voltaire himself--for the most fruitful literary producer of any
age--those three years in Prussia were comparatively barren and
unprofitable. True, in 1751, “The Century of Louis XIV.” had appeared;
but all the materials for it had been collected, and by far the greater
part of the book written, before Voltaire came to Prussia at all. The
“Poem on Natural Law” (not published till 1756), a few improvements to
“Rome Sauvée,” the beginnings of that “magnificent dream,” “The
Philosophical Dictionary,” were, as has been seen (except “Akakia”), his
only other works written in Prussia. For a while the author of the
“Henriade” and the “English Letters” was chiefly famous as the enemy of
d’Arnaud, Hirsch, and Maupertuis; as the hero of the low comedy of
Frankfort; and as the guest “who put his host’s candle-ends into his
pockets.”
If without Voltaire the glory of Frederick would have been something
less glorious, without Frederick the great Voltaire would have been
greater still.
Flourishing Mayence, with its Rhine river flowing through it, its fine
castles, its fine company, its indifference to the opinion of Frederick,
and its warm enthusiasm for Frederick’s guest, friend, enemy, might well
have seemed Paradise to Voltaire. He was free. His social French soul
was delighted with many visitors. He worked hard too. He spent three
weeks in “drying his clothes after the shipwreck,” as he phrased it
himself. But for one fear, he would have been happy. It was not only in
Prussia that Frederick was Frederick the Great. His name was everywhere
a power and terror. Why should prudent France embroil herself with the
greatest of European sovereigns for the sake of clasping to her breast
an upstart genius who was always making mischief whether he was at home
or abroad, and who had been punished for his abominable, free, daring,
unpalatable opinions a hundred times without changing them?
Voltaire had arrived in Mayence on July 7, 1753. On July 9th he was
writing to Madame Denis that letter for the public eye in which he gave
_his_ account of the affair with Frederick; and went on to prove that he
had never been a Prussian subject, or anything but a Frenchman to the
bottom of his soul, which was true enough; and to assert, the truth of
which he felt to be very doubtful, that Frederick would be the first to
ask of the King my master (I am still Gentleman-in-Ordinary, you will be
pleased to remember) that I may be allowed to end my days in my native
land. Madame Denis was working hard to attain that same end in Paris:
and thought herself likely to succeed. Her sufferings in Frankfort had
been such that the emotional lady had to be bled four times in a week,
she said. She still hoped, in italics, that her old prophecy that the
King of Prussia would be the death of Uncle Voltaire would not be
fulfilled after all; and recalled Frankfort in terms so agitating that
there was no wonder her uncle--who greatly overestimated his niece’s
goodness in coming to him there--harped on the treatment she had
received, on Freytag, Fredersdorff, and the “Goat,” in every letter he
wrote. In one at least, written at this period, he ominously signed
himself Gentleman of the Chamber of the King of France. Voltaire was
coming home.
He and Collini left Mayence on July 28th for Mannheim, where Charles
Theodore, the Elector Palatine, had invited Voltaire to stay with him.
They passed a night at Worms _en route_. Voltaire’s spirits were light
enough for him to pretend to be an Italian for the benefit of the Worms
innkeeper, and make the supper what his secretary called “very
diverting.” At Mannheim, the Elector Palatine’s Court being in the
country, Voltaire spent a short time putting money matters in order, and
changing his German money into French. He was nearly in his “patrie”; no
wonder he was lighthearted. In a few days the Elector fetched him to
Schwetzingen, his country house, where was held the gayest and most
charming of little Courts. Voltaire always dined with the Elector, and
after dinner read aloud to him one of his works. There were _fêtes_ and
concerts. The court theatrical company came to visit the author of
“Zaire” and “Alzire,” of “Mahomet” and “Mérope.” Four of his own plays
were acted. He was only too delighted to show the actors how to render
this passage, and give to that character its true weight and
significance. He began here (“like an old fool,” he said) a new love
drama called “The Orphan of China.” If liberty was the passion of his
life, the drama was the pet child of his leisure. An agreeable fortnight
passed away. The distinguished guest was taken to see the Elector’s
library at Mannheim and presented to it the companion volume to that
ill-omened “Poëshie” of the King my master--Frederick’s “Memoirs of the
House of Brandenburg.”
While unconscious Voltaire was still at Schwetzingen, training actors,
or reading the “Annals” to the Elector, d’Argenson, Voltaire’s old
school friend and member of the French Cabinet, recorded in his diary
“Permission to re-enter France is refused to M. de Voltaire ... to
please the King of Prussia.”
On August 16th, Voltaire and Collini reached Strasburg and put up there
at a poor little inn called the “White Bear,” because it was kept by the
father of a waiter at the inn at Mayence; and good-natured Voltaire had
promised to patronise it to oblige him. He moved shortly to a little
house outside the city gate, and received there everyone of note in
Strasburg.
He was still hard at work on the “Annals.” He spent the evening
sometimes with the agreeable Countess de Lutzelburg, who lived near. He
took counsel about his “Annals” with Schoepflin, the German historian.
Altogether he would have passed a couple of months quite after his
heart--if--if--Madame Denis had been able to tell him that it was safe
for him to proceed further into France. Alsace was the borderline. On it
was written, it seemed, “Thus far shalt thou come, but no further.” But
still--patience, patience! Voltaire did not yet despair. He knew
nothing of that entry in d’Argenson’s diary. But much bitter experience
had taught him that discretion is the better part of valour. On October
2d he left Strasburg, and arrived the same evening at Colmar.
Colmar was a well-chosen spot for several reasons. One was that
Schoepflin’s brother, who was a printer, was going to print Voltaire’s
“Annals” for him there. Another was that Colmar had plenty of agreeable
literary society. And a third--and most important--it was very
conveniently situated for the receipt of Madame Denis’s communications.
Within a drive of it was Lunéville. Two days’ journey from it was Cirey.
Its upper classes all spoke French. And though the Jesuits were no small
power in it, Voltaire seems to have forgotten that unpleasant little
fact, when he came. He went into modest rooms; and was his own
housekeeper, with a young peasant girl called Babet, whose gaiety,
simplicity, and volubility much entertained him, as cook. He played
chess after dinner with Collini. His way of life delighted tastes always
modest; and his health improved rapidly. He drew plans for his “Orphan.”
With a brilliant play he had successfully defied his enemies before. Why
not again? But the dramatic muse required much wooing this time; and the
most versatile writer in the world began compiling articles for the
“Encyclopædia” instead.
In this October Voltaire buried himself in the village of Luttenbach,
near Colmar, for a fortnight, where he was happy enough proof-correcting
his “Annals” and still hoping for good news from France. On October
28th, he came back to Colmar, had a fit of the gout, and, as usual,
gaily bemoaned his ill-health in all his letters.
He still liked Colmar. He still thought he was creeping home. Prussia
was behind him; and, though he was nearly sixty years old and always
talked of himself as dying, he knew there was still a world before.
And then, in this December of 1753, Fate struck him one of those
stunning blows she had too often dealt him.
Just as he was hoping for the best, as his friends in Paris were
straining every nerve to smooth the way for his return, as he was
laboriously wooing the histrionic muse that he might captivate the
capital with a comedy; just as he had renounced Frederick and Prussia
and remembered that he was Gentleman-in-Ordinary to his French Majesty
and a Frenchman body and soul, and no Prussian after all, there appeared
at The Hague, in a shamefully incorrect pirated edition, the most
ambitious, the most voluminous, the most characteristic, and the most
daring of all Voltaire’s works, the “Essay on the Manners and Mind of
Nations.”
If Madame du Châtelet “despised history a little,” it had not the less
been her and her lover’s chief employment at Cirey. “The Century of
Louis XIV.” was not enough to occupy such an energy as Voltaire’s. That
cramped him to one time and to one country. And behold! there was the
world to look back upon; the history of all nations to study--the
progress of mankind to regard as a whole.
The “Essay on the Manners and Mind of Nations” is of all Voltaire’s
works the one which has exerted the most powerful influence on the mind
of men. On July 10, 1791, when his body was taken to Paris and placed on
the ruins of the Bastille on the very spot where he himself had been a
prisoner, on the funeral car were written the memorable words, “He gave
the human mind a great impetus: he prepared us for freedom.” That line
might have served as the motto of his great essay. It prepared men for
freedom. It records the history of human progress from Charlemagne to
Louis XIII. It was the first history which dealt not with kings, the
units, but with the great, panting, seething masses they ruled; which
took history to mean the advance of the whole human race--a general view
of the great march of all nations towards light and liberty. It was the
first history which struck out boldly, and hit prejudice and oppression
a staggering blow from which they have not yet recovered. Yet its style
is infinitely frank, gay, and daring. It is such easy reading, so light,
clear, and sarcastic. It is the one book of its kind the frivolous will
finish for pleasure. It has such a jesting manner to hide its weighty
matter. It is infinitely significant; and yet sounds as if it were
simply meant to be amusing. It is said that Voltaire put it into such a
form to overcome Madame du Châtelet’s dislike of history. But it was his
lifelong principle as a writer that to be dull is the greatest of all
errors. He was always wishing that Newton had written vaudevilles; and
praying that his own taste might never be “stifled with study.” What
Frederick the Great called the “effervescence of his genius” bubbles
over in the “Essay on the Manners and Mind of Nations,” as in all his
works. But it must be remembered that easy reading means hard writing;
and that this “picture of the centuries,” this “history of the human
mind,” needed, as its author declared, “the patience of a Benedictine
and the pen of a Bossuet.” When he wrote “Finis” on the last page of the
last edition in 1775, the book numbered six volumes, and was in every
sense the greatest of its author’s works. Parton has justly said that to
it “Grote, Niebuhr, Gibbon, Colenso, and especially Buckle, are all
indebted.” That it is full of mistakes which any fairly well-educated
person of to-day could easily correct does not make it a less
extraordinary production for the age in which it was produced. That it
is now obsolete, only proves how thoroughly it accomplished its aim. The
great new truths for which Voltaire fought with his life in his hand are
the commonplaces and the truisms of to-day.
But then he made them so.
Jean Néaulme, the pirate publisher at The Hague, said he had bought the
manuscript from a servant of Prince Charles of Lorraine--Charles having
obtained it either by persuasion or treachery from Frederick the Great.
Voltaire had given a manuscript copy of the book to his royal friend. In
his present state of mind, it was only natural he should suspect
Frederick of foul play.
However this might be, the thing was printed. It was called, and
miscalled, “An Abridgment of Universal History.” It was filled from end
to end with astounding, and, very often, wilful blunders. It confused
the eighth century with the fourth, and the twelfth with the thirteenth,
and Boniface VIII. with Boniface VII. The unhappy author, with tears in
his eyes, called it “the disgrace of literature.” He had, of course,
never corrected the proofs. Since writing that first
[Illustration: LEKAIN
_From an Engraving after a Painting by S. B. Le Noir_]
manuscript, intrusted to Frederick, he had written other manuscripts
wherein he had not only modified but actually changed his first ideas.
This time at least, when he followed his old plan of loudly disavowing
the work, he had much justification. The “pretended Universal History,”
as he called it, _was_ his “Essay,” but so mauled and disfigured he may
be forgiven for refusing to acknowledge it.
But far stronger than any merely literary reasons for denying such a
paternity was the bold, free-spoken character of this son of his genius.
Voltaire knew that no work he had ever written would so bar his way back
to his country as this one. Every line glowed with some truth hateful to
Boyers and to tyranny. There was never any mistaking a Voltaire’s
meaning. Now, more than ever, he had written in luminous words which,
like sunbeams, being much condensed, greatly burnt. His principles were
as lucid as daylight. There was hardly a phrase which would not draw
upon him “the implacable wrath of the clergy.” How could he forget in it
such remarks as the following--“Rome has always decided for the opinion
which most degraded the human mind and most completely annihilated human
reason”?
“Whoso thinks makes others think.”
How could he help remembering that he had taken the Protestant
Reformation as a new tyranny--not an emancipation; that he had degraded
war “from the highest to the lowest place in the historian’s regard”;
and had declared that “Tyrants sacrifice the human race to an
individual”--a dangerous sentence in itself, and which that abominable
pirate publisher had rendered a thousand times more dangerous by
misquoting as “Kings sacrifice the human race to a caprice”? He had
offended every powerful class, and every cherished prejudice. But action
was now, not less than ever, his _forte_. If it could not save him from
his enemies, it could save him from himself--from that worst
combination, idleness with misery.
On December 28, 1753, he wrote to Néaulme, and told M. Jean his candid
opinion about that edition. He also wrote not a little piteously, a very
few days after, to his old friend Madame de Pompadour--the publication
of that “Essay” forcing him to prove, he said, his innocence to his
master the King--of France.
But it was in vain he reminded Louis XV., through her, that he had spent
years of his life in writing the history of Louis’s predecessor; “and
alone of the Academicians had had his panegyric translated into five
languages.” That surly Bourbon, with that intuition which saved his
degraded race a hundred times from earlier and completer ruin, saw in
the genius of Voltaire the fuse which was to set ablaze the gunpowder of
sedition and misery with which his France was undermined. He turned to
Madame de Pompadour and said that he “did not wish” Voltaire to return
to Paris. It is not difficult to imagine the exile’s state of mind. “I
have no comfort but in work and solitude,” he wrote; and to Cideville,
on January 28th of this new year 1754: “My dear Cideville, at our age
one must mock at everything and live for self. This world is a great
shipwreck. _Sauve qui peut!_ but I am far from the shore.”
On what shore would he be allowed to land if he could gain one?
Colmar, he soon discovered, was “a town of Hottentots governed by German
Jesuits.” On February 17th, he wrote a very meek, artful letter to one
of those Jesuits, Father Menou (whom he had known at the Court of
Stanislas and of whom he speaks in his “Memoirs” as “the boldest and
most intriguing priest I ever knew”), pleading his cause with him. He
pleaded it, too, with the Archbishop of Paris through M. de Malesherbes.
But it was all in vain. The Church was as offended as the King.
On February 2Oth, pushed to extremity, and neither able to leave nor to
stay in this wretched Colmar without the sanction of his French Majesty,
the unhappy man asked d’Argenson to “sound the King’s indulgence”--to
know if he might travel.
On February 22d, he called in two notaries, who compared the correct
manuscript of his “Essay” with the two incorrect volumes published at
The Hague; and drew up a formal declaration in which they affirmed that
the Dutch edition was “surreptitious, full of errors, and worthy of all
contempt,” and that the real “Essay” was at least eight times longer
than the false one. But that also was useless. Neither Court nor
Catholic meant to be convinced.
Then, as if her uncle’s cup of misfortune were not brimming over
already, niece Denis’s bad management and extravagance with his money in
Paris forced him to appoint an agent to look after her affairs; and she,
living on his bounty, turned and accused him of avarice. No public
wrongs are so cruel as private ones. Beside Madame Denis’s ingratitude,
excommunication, said Voltaire, would have been a light penalty. He had
given her an ample fortune--a larger one than old Maître Arouet had left
his Voltaire. Her reproaches were the unkindest cut of all.
That they were singularly ill-timed may be gathered from the fact that
sixty thousand francs of Voltaire’s income were derived from annuities
or bonds of the City of Paris, of which at any moment angry Louis might
deprive him, by a line of writing and the royal signature, for ever. Two
kings were now his enemies. Jesuitical Colmar hated him. Prussia and
France were barred to him. Denis had turned upon him. The Pompadour was
helpless. The “Essay,” filled with blunders and pregnant with daring and
danger, was all over Europe. Such was Voltaire’s position in the month
of March, 1754.