to have been a very good type of the French gentleman of quality. An
interesting story told by Sainte-Beuve reveals, if true, a side at once
attractive and repellent of his personal character. Montesquieu at
Marseilles employed a young boatman, whose manner and speech indicated
more cultivation than was to have been looked for in one plying his
vocation. The philosopher learned his history. The youth's father was at
the time a captive in one of the Barbary States, and this son of his was
now working to earn money for his ransom. The stranger listened
apparently unmoved, and went his way. Some months later, home came the
father, released he knew not how, to his surprised and overjoyed family.
The son guessed the secret, and, meeting Montesquieu a year or so after
in Marseilles, threw himself in grateful tears at his feet, begged the
generous benefactor to reveal his name and to come and see the family he
had blessed. Montesquieu, calmly expressing himself ignorant of the
whole business, actually shook the young fellow off, and turned away
without betraying the least emotion. It was not till after the
cold-blooded philanthropist's death that the fact came out.
A tranquil, happy temperament was Montesquieu's. He would seem to have
come as near as any one ever did to being the natural master of his part
in life. But the world was too much for him, as it is for all--at last.
Witness the contrast of these two different sets of expressions from his
pen. In earlier manhood he says:--
Study has been for me the sovereign remedy for all the
dissatisfactions of life, having never had a sense of chagrin that
an hour's reading would not dissipate. I wake in the morning with a
secret joy to behold the light. I behold the light with a kind of
ravishment, and all the rest of the day I am happy.
Within a few years of his death, the brave, cheerful tone had declined
to this:--
I am broken down with fatigue; I must repose for the rest of my
life.
Then further to this:--
I have expected to kill myself for the last three months, finishing
an addition to my work on the origin and changes of the French
civil law. It will take only three hours to read it; but, I assure
you, it has been such a labor to me, that my hair has turned white
under it all.
Finally it touches nadir:--
It [his work] has almost cost me my life; I must rest; I can work
no more.
My candles are all burned out; I have set off all my cartridges.
When Montesquieu died, only Diderot, among Parisian men of letters,
followed him to his tomb.
XV.
VOLTAIRE.
1694-1778.
By the volume and the variety, joined to the unfailing brilliancy, of
his production; by his prodigious effectiveness; and by his universal
fame,--Voltaire is undoubtedly entitled to rank first, with no fellow,
among the eighteenth-century literary men, not merely of France, but of
the world. He was not a great man,--he produced no single great
work,--but he must nevertheless be pronounced a great writer. There is
hardly any species of composition to which, in the long course of his
activity, he did not turn his talent. It cannot be said that he
succeeded splendidly in all; but in some he succeeded splendidly, and he
failed abjectly in none. There is not a great thought, and there is not
a flat expression, in the whole bulk of his multitudinous and
multifarious works. Read him wherever you will, in the ninety-seven
volumes (equivalent, probably, in the aggregate, to three hundred
volumes like the present) which, in one leading edition, collect his
productions,--you may often find him superficial, you may often find him
untrustworthy, you will certainly often find him flippant, but not less
certainly you will never find him obscure, and you will never find him
dull. The clearness, the vivacity, of this man's mind were something
almost preternatural. So, too, were his readiness, his versatility, his
audacity. He had no distrust of himself, no awe of his fellow-men, no
reverence for God, to deter him from any attempt with his pen, however
presuming. If a state ode were required, it should be ready to order at
twelve to-morrow; if an epic poem--to be classed with the "Iliad" and
the "AEneid"--the "Henriade" was promptly forthcoming, to answer the
demand. He did not shrink from flouting a national idol, by freely
finding fault with Corneille; and he lightly undertook to extinguish a
venerable form of Christianity, simply with pricks, innumerably
repeated, of his tormenting pen.
A very large part of the volume of Voltaire's production consists of
letters, written by him to correspondents perhaps more numerous, and
more various in rank, from kings on the throne down to scribblers in the
garret, than ever, in any other case, exchanged such communications with
a literary man. Another considerable proportion of his work in
literature took the form of pamphlets, either anonymously or
pseudonymously published, in which this master-spirit of intellectual
disturbance and ferment found it convenient, or advantageous, or safe,
to promulge and propagate his ideas. A shower of such publications was
incessantly escaping from Voltaire's pen. More formal and regular, more
confessedly ambitious, literary essays of his, were poems in every
kind,--heroic, mock-heroic, lyric, elegiac, comic, tragic,
satiric,--historical and biographical monographs, and tales or novels of
a peculiar class.
Voltaire's poetry does not count for very much now. Still, its first
success was so great that it will always remain an important topic in
literary history. Besides this, it really is, in some of its kinds,
remarkable work. Voltaire's epic verse is almost an exception, needful
to be made, from our assertion that this author is nowhere dull. "The
Henriade" comes dangerously near that mark. It is a tasteless
reproduction of Lucan's faults, with little reproduction of Lucan's
virtues. Voltaire's comedies are bright and witty, but they are not
laughter-provoking; and they do not possess the elemental and creative
character of Shakspeare's or Moliere's work. His tragedies are better;
but they do not avoid that cast of mechanical which seems necessarily to
belong to poetry produced by talent, however consummate, unaccompanied
with genius. Voltaire's histories are luminous and readable narratives,
but they cannot claim either the merit of critical accuracy or of
philosophic breadth and insight. His letters would have to be read in
considerable volume in order to furnish a full satisfactory idea of the
author. His tales, finally, afford the most available, and, on the
whole, likewise, the best, means of coming shortly and easily at a
knowledge of Voltaire.
Among Voltaire's tales, doubtless the one most eligible for use, to
serve our present purpose, is his "Candide." This is a nondescript piece
of fiction, the design of which is, by means of a narrative of travel
and adventure, constructed without much regard to the probability of
particular incidents, to set forth, in the characteristic mocking vein
of Voltaire, the vanity and misery of mankind. The author's invention is
often whimsical enough; but it is constantly so ready, so reckless, and
so abundant, that the reader never tires, as he is hurried ceaselessly
forward from change to change of scene and circumstance. The play of wit
is incessant. The style is limpidity itself. Your sympathies are never
painfully engaged, even in recitals of experience that ought to be the
most heart-rending. There is never a touch of noble moral sentiment, to
relieve the monotony of mockery that lightly laughs at you, and
tantalizes you, page after page, from the beginning to the end of the
book. The banter is not good-natured; though, on the other hand, it
cannot justly be pronounced ill-natured; and it is, in final effect upon
the reader's mind, bewildering and depressing in the extreme. Vanity of
vanities, all is vanity,--such is the comfortless doctrine of the book.
The apples are the apples of Sodom, everywhere in the world. There is no
virtue anywhere, no good, no happiness. Life is a cheat, the love of
life is a cruelty, and beyond life there is nothing. At least, there is
no glimpse given of any compensating future reserved for men, a future
to redress the balance of good and ill experienced here and now. Faith
and hope, those two eyes of the soul, are smilingly quenched in their
sockets; and you are left blind, in a whirling world of darkness, with a
whirling world of darkness before you.
Such is "Candide." We select a single passage for specimen. The passage
we select is more nearly free than almost any other passage as long, in
this extraordinary romance, would probably be found, from impure
implications. It is, besides, more nearly serious in apparent motive,
than is the general tenor of the production. Here, however, as
elsewhere, the writer keeps carefully down his mocking-mask. At least,
you are left tantalizingly uncertain all the time how much the grin you
face is the grin of the man, and how much the grin of a visor that he
wears.
Candide, the hero, is a young fellow of ingenuous character, brought
successively under the lead of several different persons wise in the
ways of the world, who act toward him, each in his turn, the part of
"guide, philosopher, and friend." Candide, with such a mentor bearing
the name Martin, has now arrived at Venice. Candide speaks:--
"I have heard great talk of the Senator Pococurante, who lives in
that fine house at the Brenta, where they say he entertains
foreigners in the most polite manner. They pretend this man is a
perfect stranger to uneasiness."--"I should be glad to see so
extraordinary a being," said Martin. Candide thereupon sent a
messenger to Signor Pococurante, desiring permission to wait on him
the next day.
Candide and his friend Martin went into a gondola on the Brenta,
and arrived at the palace of the noble Pococurante: the gardens
were laid out in elegant taste, and adorned with fine marble
statues; his palace was built after the most approved rules of
architecture. The master of the house, who was a man of sixty, and
very rich, received our two travellers with great politeness, but
without much ceremony, which somewhat disconcerted Candide, but was
not at all displeasing to Martin.
As soon as they were seated, two very pretty girls, neatly dressed,
brought in chocolate, which was extremely well frothed. Candide
could not help making encomiums upon their beauty and graceful
carriage. "The creatures are well enough," said the senator. "I
make them my companions, for I am heartily tired of the ladies of
the town, their coquetry, their jealousy, their quarrels, their
humors, their meannesses, their pride, and their folly. I am weary
of making sonnets, or of paying for sonnets to be made, on them;
but, after all, these two girls begin to grow very indifferent to
me."
After having refreshed himself, Candide walked into a large
gallery, where he was struck with the sight of a fine collection of
paintings. "Pray," said Candide, "by what master are the two first
of these?"--"They are Raphael's," answered the senator. "I gave a
great deal of money for them seven years ago, purely out of
curiosity, as they were said to be the finest pieces in Italy: but
I cannot say they please me; the coloring is dark and heavy; the
figures do not swell nor come out enough; and the drapery is very
bad. In short, notwithstanding the encomiums lavished upon them,
they are not, in my opinion, a true representation of nature. I
approve of no paintings but where I think I behold Nature herself;
and there are very few, if any, of that kind to be met with. I have
what is called a fine collection, but I take no manner of delight
in them."
While dinner was getting ready, Pococurante ordered a concert.
Candide praised the music to the skies. "This noise," said the
noble Venetian, "may amuse one for a little time; but if it was to
last above half an hour, it would grow tiresome to everybody,
though perhaps no one would care to own it. Music is become the art
of executing what is difficult; now, whatever is difficult cannot
be long pleasing.
"I believe I might take more pleasure in an opera, if they had not
made such a monster of that species of dramatic entertainment as
perfectly shocks me; and I am amazed how people can bear to see
wretched tragedies set to music, where the scenes are contrived for
no other purpose than to lug in, as it were by the ears, three or
four ridiculous songs, to give a favorite actress an opportunity of
exhibiting her pipe. Let who will or can die away in raptures at
the trills of a eunuch quavering the majestic part of Caesar or
Cato, and strutting in a foolish manner upon the stage. For my
part, I have long ago renounced these paltry entertainments, which
constitute the glory of modern Italy, and are so dearly purchased
by crowned heads." Candide opposed these sentiments, but he did it
in a discreet manner. As for Martin, he was entirely of the old
senator's opinion.
Dinner being served up, they sat down to table, and after a very
hearty repast, returned to the library. Candide, observing Homer
richly bound, commended the noble Venetian's taste. "This," said
he, "is a book that was once the delight of the great Pangloss, the
best philosopher in Germany."--"Homer is no favorite of mine,"
answered Pococurante very coolly. "I was made to believe once that
I took a pleasure in reading him; but his continual repetitions of
battles must have all such a resemblance with each other; his gods
that are forever in a hurry and bustle, without ever doing any
thing; his Helen, that is the cause of the war, and yet hardly acts
in the whole performance; his Troy, that holds out so long without
being taken; in short, all these things together make the poem very
insipid to me. I have asked some learned men whether they are not
in reality as much tired as myself with reading this poet. Those
who spoke ingenuously assured me that he had made them fall asleep,
and yet that they could not well avoid giving him a place in their
libraries; but that it was merely as they would do an antique, or
those rusty medals which are kept only for curiosity, and are of no
manner of use in commerce."
"But your excellency does not surely form the same opinion of
Virgil?" said Candide. "Why, I grant," replied Pococurante, "that
the second, third, fourth, and sixth books of his 'AEneid' are
excellent; but as for his pious AEneas, his strong Cloanthus, his
friendly Achates, his boy Ascanius, his silly King Latinus, his
ill-bred Amata, his insipid Lavinia, and some other characters much
in the same strain, I think there cannot in nature be any thing
more flat and disagreeable. I must confess I prefer Tasso far
beyond him; nay, even that sleepy tale-teller Ariosto."
"May I take the liberty to ask if you do not receive great pleasure
from reading Horace?" said Candide. "There are maxims in this
writer," replied Pococurante, "from whence a man of the world may
reap some benefit; and the short measure of the verse makes them
more easily to be retained in the memory. But I see nothing
extraordinary in his journey to Brundusium, and his account of his
bad dinner; nor in his dirty, low quarrel between one Rupilius,
whose words, as he expresses it, were full of poisonous filth; and
another, whose language was dipped in vinegar. His indelicate
verses against old women and witches have frequently given me great
offence; nor can I discover the great merit of his telling his
friend Maecenas, that, if he will but rank him in the class of lyric
poets, his lofty head shall touch the stars. Ignorant readers are
apt to advance every thing by the lump in a writer of reputation.
For my part, I read only to please myself. I like nothing but what
makes for my purpose." Candide, who had been brought up with a
notion of never making use of his own judgment, was astonished at
what he heard; but Martin found there was a good deal of reason in
the senator's remarks.
"Oh, here is a Tully!" said Candide; "this great man, I fancy, you
are never tired of reading."--"Indeed, I never read him at all,"
replied Pococurante. "What a deuce is it to me whether he pleads
for Rabirius or Cluentius? I try causes enough myself. I had once
some liking to his philosophical works; but when I found he doubted
of every thing, I thought I knew as much as himself, and had no
need of a guide to learn ignorance."
"Ha!" cried Martin, "here are fourscore volumes of the 'Memoirs of
the Academy of Sciences;' perhaps there may be something curious
and valuable in this collection."--"Yes," answered Pococurante; "so
there might, if any one of these compilers of this rubbish had only
invented the art of pin-making. But all these volumes are filled
with mere chimerical systems, without one single article conducive
to real utility."
"I see a prodigious number of plays," said Candide, "in Italian,
Spanish, and French."--"Yes," replied the Venetian; "there are, I
think, three thousand, and not three dozen of them good for any
thing. As to those huge volumes of divinity, and those enormous
collections of sermons, they are not all together worth one single
page of Seneca; and I fancy you will readily believe that neither
myself nor any one else ever looks into them."
Martin, perceiving some shelves filled with English books, said to
the senator, "I fancy that a republican must be highly delighted
with those books, which are most of them written with a noble
spirit of freedom."--"It is noble to write as we think," said
Pococurante; "it is the privilege of humanity. Throughout Italy we
write only what we do not think; and the present inhabitants of the
country of the Caesars and Antoninuses dare not acquire a single
idea without the permission of a father Dominican. I should be
enamoured of the spirit of the English nation did it not utterly
frustrate the good effects it would produce by passion and the
spirit of party."
Candide, seeing a Milton, asked the senator if he did not think
that author a great man. "Who!" said Pococurante sharply. "That
barbarian, who writes a tedious commentary, in ten books of
rambling verse, on the first chapter of Genesis! That slovenly
imitator of the Greeks, who disfigures the creation by making the
Messiah take a pair of compasses from heaven's armory to plan the
world; whereas Moses represented the Deity as producing the whole
universe by his fiat! Can I think you have any esteem for a writer
who has spoiled Tasso's hell and the devil; who transforms Lucifer,
sometimes into a toad, and at others into a pygmy; who makes him
say the same thing over again a hundred times; who metamorphoses
him into a school-divine; and who, by an absurdly serious imitation
of Ariosto's comic invention of fire-arms, represents the devils
and angels cannonading each other in heaven! Neither I, nor any
other Italian, can possibly take pleasure in such melancholy
reveries. But the marriage of Sin and Death, and snakes issuing
from the womb of the former, are enough to make any person sick
that is not lost to all sense of delicacy. This obscene, whimsical,
and disagreeable poem met with the neglect that it deserved at its
first publication; and I only treat the author now as he was
treated in his own country by his contemporaries."
Candide was sensibly grieved at this speech, as he had a great
respect for Homer, and was very fond of Milton. "Alas!" said he
softly to Martin, "I am afraid this man holds our German poets in
great contempt."--"There would be no such great harm in that," said
Martin.--"Oh, what a surprising man!" said Candide to himself.
"What a prodigious genius is this Pococurante! Nothing can please
him."
After finishing their survey of the library they went down into the
garden, when Candide commended the several beauties that offered
themselves to his view. "I know nothing upon earth laid out in such
bad taste," said Pococurante; "every thing about it is childish and
trifling; but I shall have another laid out to-morrow upon a nobler
plan."
As soon as our two travellers had taken leave of his excellency,
"Well," said Candide to Martin, "I hope you will own that this man
is the happiest of all mortals, for he is above every thing he
possesses."--"But do you not see," answered Martin, "that he
likewise dislikes every thing he possesses? It was an observation
of Plato long since, that those are not the best stomachs that
reject, without distinction, all sorts of aliments."--"True," said
Candide; "but still, there must certainly be a pleasure in
criticising every thing, and in perceiving faults where others
think they see beauties."--"That is," replied Martin, "there is a
pleasure in having no pleasure."--"Well, well," said Candide, "I
find that I shall be the only happy man at last, when I am blessed
with the sight of my dear Cunegund."--"It is good to hope," said
Martin.
The single citation preceding sufficiently exemplifies, at their best,
though at their worst, not, the style and the spirit of Voltaire's
"Candide;" as his "Candide" sufficiently exemplifies the style and the
spirit of the most characteristic of Voltaire's writings in general.
"Pococurantism" is a word, now not uncommon in English, contributed by
Voltaire to the vocabulary of literature. To readers of the foregoing
extract, the sense of the term will not need to be explained. We
respectfully suggest to our dictionary-makers, that the fact stated of
its origin in the "Candide" of Voltaire would be interesting and
instructive to many. Voltaire coined the name, to suit the character of
his Venetian gentleman, from two Italian words which mean together
"little-caring." Signor Pococurante is the immortal type of men that
have worn out their capacity of fresh sensation and enjoyment.
It was a happy editorial thought of Mr. Henry Morley, in his cheap
library, now issuing, of standard books for the people, to bind up
Johnson's "Rasselas" in one volume with Voltaire's "Candide." The two
stories, nearly contemporaneous in their production, offer a stimulating
contrast in treatment, at the hands of two sharply contrasted writers,
of much the same subject,--the unsatisfactoriness of the world.
Mr. John Morley, a very different writer and a very different man from
his namesake just mentioned, has an elaborate monograph on Voltaire in a
volume perhaps twice as large as the present. This work claims the
attention of all students desirous of exhaustive acquaintance with its
subject. Mr. John Morley writes in sympathy with Voltaire, so far as
Voltaire was an enemy of the Christian religion; but in antipathy to
him, so far as Voltaire fell short of being an atheist. A similar
sympathy, limited by a similar antipathy, is observable in the same
author's still more extended monograph on Rousseau. It is only in his
two volumes on "Diderot and the Encyclopaedists," that Mr. Morley finds
himself able to write without reserve in full moral accord with the men
whom he describes. Of course, in all these books the biographer and
critic feels, as Englishman, obliged to concede much to his English
audience, in the way of condemning impurities in his authors. The
concession thus made is made with great adroitness of manner, the
writer's aim evidently being to imply that his infidels and atheists, if
they are somewhat vicious in taste, had the countenance of good
Christian example or parallel for all the lapses they show. Mr. Morley
wishes to be fair, but his atheist zeal overcomes him. This is
especially evident in his work on "Diderot and the Encyclopaedists,"
where his propagandist desire to clear the character of his hero bribes
him once and again to unconscious false dealing. In his "Voltaire," and
in his "Rousseau," Mr. Morley is so lofty in tone, expressing himself
against the moral obliquities of the men with whom he is dealing, that
often you feel the ethic atmosphere of the books to be pure and bracing,
almost beyond the standard of biblical and Christian. But in his
"Diderot and the Encyclopaedists," such fine severity is conspicuously
absent. Mr. Morley is so deeply convinced that atheism is what we all
most need just now, that when he has--not halting mere infidels, like
Voltaire and Rousseau--but good thorough-going atheists, like Diderot
and his fellows, to exhibit, he can hardly bring himself to injure their
exemplary influence with his readers, by allowing to exist any damaging
flaws in their character.
Even in Voltaire and Rousseau, but particularly in Voltaire, Mr. Morley,
though his sympathy with these writers is, as we have said, not
complete, finds far more to praise than to blame. To this eager apostle
of atheism, Voltaire was at least on the right road, although he did,
unfortunately, stop short of the goal. His influence was potent against
Christianity, and potent it certainly was not against atheism. Voltaire
might freely be lauded as on the whole a mighty and a beneficent
liberalizer of thought.