of delight, and quitted it in agonies of rage and shame, the most
remarkable was Voltaire. Many circumstances had made him desirous of
finding a home at a distance from his country. His fame had {194}raised
him up enemies. His sensibility gave them a formidable advantage over
him. They were, indeed, contemptible assailants. Of all that they wrote
against him, nothing has survived except what he has himself preserved.
But the constitution of his mind resembled the constitution of those
bodies in which the slightest scratch of a bramble, or the bite of a
gnat, never fails to fester. Though his reputation was rather raised
than lowered by the abuse of such writers as Fréron and Desfontaines,
though the vengeance which he took on Fréron and Desfontaines was such,
that scourging branding, pillorying, would have been a trifle to it,
there is reason to believe that they gave him far more pain than he ever
gave them. Though he enjoyed during his own lifetime the reputation of
a classic, though he was extolled by his contemporaries above all poets,
philosophers, and historians, though his works were read with as much
delight and admiration at Moscow and Westminster, at Florence and
Stockholm, as at Paris itself, he was yet tormented by that restless
jealousy which should seem to belong only to minds burning with the
desire of fame, and yet conscious of impotence. To men of letters who
could by no possibility be his rivals, he was, if they behaved well to
him, not merely just, not merely courteous, but often a hearty friend
and a munificent benefactor. But to every writer who rose to a celebrity
approaching his own, he became either a disguised or an avowed enemy. He
slily depreciated Montesquieu and Buffon. He publicly, and with violent
outrage, made war on Rousseau. Nor had he the art of hiding his feelings
under the semblance of good humour or of contempt. With all his great
talents, and all his long experience of the world, he had no more
self-command than a petted {195}child or a hysterical woman. Whenever
he was mortified, he exhausted the whole rhetoric of anger and sorrow
to express his mortification. His torrents of bitter words, his stamping
and cursing, his grimaces and his tears of rage, were a rich feast
to those abject natures, whose delight is in the agonies of powerful
spirits and in the abasement of immortal names. These creatures had now
found out a way of galling him to the very quick. In one walk, at
least, it had been admitted by envy itself that he was without, a living
competitor. Since Racine had been laid among the great men whose dust
made the holy precinct of Port Royal holier, no tragic poet had appeared
who could contest the palm with the author of Zaire, of Alzire, and of
Merope. At length a rival was announced. Old Crébillon, who, many years
before, had obtained some theatrical success, and who had long been
forgotten, came forth from his garret in one of the meanest lanes near
the Rue St. Antoine, and was welcomed by the acclamations of envious men
of letters, and of a capricious populace. A thing called Catiline, which
He had written in his retirement, was acted with boundless applause. Of
this execrable piece it is sufficient to say, that the plot turns on a
love affair, carried on in all the forms of Scudery, between Catiline,
whose confidant is the Prætor Lentulus, and Tullia, the daughter of
Cicero. The theatre resounded with acclamations. The king pensioned the
successful poet; and the coffeehouses pronounced that Voltaire was a
clever man, but that the real tragic inspiration, the celestial fire
which had glowed in Corneille and Racine, was to be found in Crébillon
alone.
The blow went to Voltaire’s heart. Had his wisdom and fortitude been in
proportion to the fertility of his {196}intellect, and to the brilliancy
of his wit, he would have seen that it was out of the power of all the
puffers and detractors in Europe to put Catiline above Zaire; but he
had none of the magnanimous patience with which Milton and Bentley left
their claims to the unerring judgment of time. He eagerly engaged in an
undignified competition with Crebillon, and produced a series of plays
on the same subjects which his rival had treated. These pieces were
coolly received. Angry with the court, angry with the capital, Voltaire
began to find pleasure in the prospect of exile. His attachment for
Madame du Châtelet long prevented him from executing his purpose. Her
death set him at liberty; and he determined to take refuge at Berlin.
To Berlin he was invited by a series of letters, couched in terms of
the most enthusiastic friendship and admiration. For once the rigid
parsimony of Frederic seemed to have relaxed. Orders, honourable
offices, a liberal pension, a well-served table, stately apartments
under a royal roof, were offered in return for the pleasure and honour
which were expected from the society of the first wit of the age.
A thousand louis were remitted for the charges of the journey. No
ambassador setting out from Berlin for a court of the first rank, had
ever been more amply supplied. But Voltaire was not satisfied. At a
later period, when he possessed an ample fortune, he was one of the most
liberal of men; but till his means had become equal to his wishes, his
greediness for lucre was unrestrained either by justice or by shame. He
had the effrontery to ask for a thousand louis more, in order to enable
him to bring his niece, Madame Denis, the ugliest of coquettes, in his
company. The indelicate rapacity of {197}the poet produced its natural
effect on the severe and frugal King. The answer was a dry refusal. “I
did not,” said his Majesty, “solicit the honour of the lady’s society.”
On this, Voltaire went off into a paroxysm of childish rage. “Was
there ever such avarice? He has hundreds of tubs full of dollars in his
vaults, and haggles with me about a poor thousand louis.” It seemed that
the negotiation would be broken off; but Frederic, with great dexterity,
affected indifference, and seemed inclined to transfer his idolatry to
Baculard D’Arnaud. His Majesty even wrote some bad verses, of which
the sense was, that Voltaire was a setting sun, and that D’Arnaud was
rising. Good-natured friends soon carried the lines to Voltaire. He was
in his bed. He jumped out in his shirt, danced about the room with rage,
and sent for his passport and his post-horses. It was not difficult to
foresee the end of a connection which had such a beginning.
It was in the year 1750 that Voltaire left the great capital, which
he was not to see again till, after the lapse of near thirty years,
he returned, bowed down by extreme old age, to die in the midst of a
splendid and ghastly triumph. His reception in Prussia was such as might
well have elated a less vain and excitable mind. He wrote to his friends
at Paris, that the kindness and the attention with which he had been
welcomed surpassed description, that the King was the most amiable
of men, that Potsdam was the paradise of philosophers. He was created
chamberlain, and received, together with his gold key, the cross of an
order, and a patent ensuring to him a pension of eight hundred pounds
sterling a year for life. A hundred and sixty pounds a year were
promised to his niece if she survived him. The royal cooks and coachmen
were put {198}at his disposal. He was lodged in the same apartments in
which Saxe had lived, when, at the height of power and glory, he visited
Prussia. Frederic, indeed, stooped for a time even to use the language
of adulation. He pressed to his lips the meagre hand of the little
grinning skeleton, whom he regarded as the dispenser of immortal renown.
He would add, he said, to the titles which he owed to his ancestors
and his sword, another title, derived from his last and proudest
acquisition. His style should run thus:--Frederic, King of Prussia,
Margrave of Brandenburg, Sovereign Duke of Silesia, Possessor of
Voltaire. But even amidst the delights of the honeymoon, Voltaire’s
sensitive vanity began to take alarm. A few days after his arrival, he
could not help telling his niece that the amiable King had a trick of
giving a sly scratch with one hand, while patting and stroking with the
other. Soon came hints not the less alarming, because mysterious. “The
supper parties are delicious. The King is the life of the company.
But--I have operas and comedies, reviews and concerts, my studies and
books. But--but--Berlin is fine, the princesses charming, the maids of
honour handsome. But----”
This eccentric friendship was fast cooling. Never had there met two
persons so exquisitely fitted to plague each other. Each of them had
exactly the fault of which the other was most impatient; and they were,
in different ways, the most impatient of mankind. Frederic was frugal,
almost niggardly. When he had secured his plaything he began to think
that he had bought it too dear. Voltaire, on the other hand, was greedy,
even to the extent of impudence and knavery: and conceived that the
favourite of a monarch who had barrels full of gold and silver laid up
in cellars {199}ought to make a fortune which a receiver-general might
envy. They soon discovered each other’s feelings. Both were angry; and
a war began, in which Frederic stooped to the part of Harpagon, and
Voltaire to that of Scapin. It is humiliating to relate, that the great
warrior and statesman gave orders that his guest’s allowance of sugar
and chocolate should be curtailed.
It is, if possible, a still more humiliating fact, that Voltaire
indemnified himself by pocketing the wax-candles in the royal
antechamber. Disputes about money, however, were not the most serious
disputes of these extraordinary associates. The sarcasms of the King
soon galled the sensitive temper of the poet. D’Arnaud and D’Argens,
Guichard and La Metric, might, for the sake of a morsel of bread, be
willing to bear the insolence of a master; but Voltaire was of another
order. He knew that he was a potentate as well as Frederic, that his
European reputation, and his incomparable power of covering whatever he
hated with ridicule, made him an object of dread even to the leaders
of armies and the rulers of nations. 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. Principles
unassailable by reason, principles which had withstood the fiercest
attacks of power, the most valuable truths, the most generous
sentiments, the noblest and most graceful images, the purest
reputations, the most august institutions, began to look mean and
loathsome as soon as that withering smile was turned upon them. To every
opponent, however strong in his cause and his talents, in his station
and his character, who ventured to encounter {200}the great scoffer,
might be addressed the caution which was given of old to the Archangel:
“I forewarn thee, shun
His deadly arrow; neither vainly hope
To be invulnerable in those bright arms
Though tempered heavenly; for that fatal dint,
Save Him who reigns above, none can resist.”
We cannot pause to recount how often that rare talent was exercised
against rivals worthy of esteem; how often it was used to crush
and torture enemies worthy only of silent disdain; how often it was
perverted to the more noxious purpose of destroying the last solace of
earthly misery, and the last restraint on earthly power. Neither can we
pause to tell how often it was used to vindicate justice, humanity, and
toleration, the principles of sound philosophy, the principles of free
government. This is not the place for a full character of Voltaire.
Causes of quarrel multiplied fast. Voltaire, who, partly from love
of money, and partly from love of excitement, was always fond of
stockjobbing, became implicated in transactions of at least a dubious
character. The King was delighted at having such an opportunity to
humble his guest; and bitter reproaches and complaints were exchanged.
Voltaire, too, was soon at war with the other men of letters who
surrounded the King; and this irritated Frederic, who, however, had
himself chiefly to blame: for, from that love of tormenting which was
in him a ruling passion, he perpetually lavished extravagant praises
on small men and bad books, merely in order that he might enjoy the
mortification and rage which on such occasions Voltaire took no pains to
conceal. His majesty, however, soon had reason to regret the pains which
he had taken to kindle jealousy among the members of his {201}household.
The whole palace was in a ferment with literary intrigues and cabals.
It was to no purpose that the imperial voice, which kept a hundred and
sixty thousand soldiers in order, was raised to quiet the contention of
the exasperated wits. It was far easier to stir up such a storm than to
lull it. Nor was Frederic, in his capacity of wit, by any means without
his own share of vexations. He had sent a large quantity of verses
to Voltaire, and requested that they might be returned with marks and
corrections. “See,” exclaimed Voltaire, “what a quantity of his dirty
linen the King has sent me to wash!” Talebearers were not wanting to
carry the sarcasm to the royal ear; and Frederic was as much incensed as
a Grub Street writer who had found his name in the Dunciad.
This could not last. A circumstance which, when the mutual regard of
the friends was in its first glow, would merely have been matter for
laughter, produced a violent explosion. Maupertuis enjoyed as much of
Frederic’s good will as any man of letters. He was President of the
Academy of Berlin; and he stood second to Voltaire, though at an immense
distance, in the literary society which had been assembled at the
Prussian court. Frederic had, by playing for his own amusement on the
feelings of the two jealous and vainglorious Frenchmen, succeeded in
producing a bitter enmity between them. Voltaire resolved to set his
mark, a mark never to be effaced, on the forehead of Maupertuis, and
wrote the exquisitely ludicrous Diatribe of Doctor Akakia. He showed
this little piece to Frederic, who had too much taste and too much
malice not to relish such delicious pleasantry. In truth, even at this
time of day, it is not easy for any person who has the least perception
of the ridiculous to read {202}the jokes of the Latin city, the
Patagonians, and the hole to the centre of the earth, without laughing
till he cries. But though Frederic was diverted by this charming
pasquinade, he was unwilling that it should get abroad. His self-love
was interested. He had selected Maupertuis to fill the chair of his
Academy. If all Europe were taught to laugh at Maupertuis, would not
the reputation of the Academy, would not even the dignity of its royal
patron, be in some degree compromised? The King, therefore, begged
Voltaire to suppress this performance. Voltaire promised to do so, and
broke his word. The Diatribe was published, and received with shouts of
merriment and applause by all who could read the French language. The
King stormed. Voltaire, with his usual disregard of truth, asserted his
innocence, and made up some lie about a printer or an amanuensis. The
King was not to be so imposed upon. He ordered the pamphlet to be
burned by the common hangman, and insisted upon having an apology from
Voltaire, couched in the most abject terms. Voltaire sent back to the
King his cross, his key, and the patent of his pension. After this burst
of rage, the strange pair began to be ashamed of their violence,
and went through the forms of reconciliation. But the breach was
irreparable; and Voltaire took his leave of Frederic for ever. They
parted with cold civility; but their hearts were big with resentment.
Voltaire had in his keeping a volume of the King’s poetry, and forgot to
return it. This was, we believe, merely one of the oversights which
men setting out upon a journey often commit. That Voltaire could
have meditated plagiarism is quite incredible. He would not, we are
confident, for the half of Frederic’s kingdom, have consented to father
Frederic’s verses. {203}The King, however, who rated his own writings
much above their value, and who was inclined to see all Voltaire’s
actions in the worst light, was enraged to think that his favourite
compositions were in the hands of an enemy, as thievish as a daw and as
mischievous as a monkey. In the anger excited by this thought, he lost
sight of reason and decency, and determined on committing an outrage at
once odious and ridiculous.
Voltaire had reached Frankfort. His niece, Madam! Denis, came thither to
meet him. He conceived himself secure from the power of his late master,
when he was arrested by order of the Prussian resident. The precious
volume was delivered up. But the Prussian agents had, no doubt, been
instructed not to let Voltaire escape without some gross indignity.
He was confined twelve days in a wretched hovel. Sentinels with fixed
bayonets kept guard over him. His niece was dragged through the mire
by the soldiers. Sixteen hundred dollars were extorted from him by his
insolent gaolers. It is absurd to say that this outrage is not to be
attributed to the King. Was anybody punished for it? Was anybody called
in question for it? Was it not consistent with Frederic’s character? Was
it not of a piece with his conduct on other similar occasions? Is it not
notorious that he repeatedly gave private directions to his officers to
pillage and demolish the houses of persons against whom he had a grudge,
charging them at the same time to take their measures in such a way that
his name might not be compromised? He acted thus towards Count Bruhl in
the Seven Years’ War. Why should we believe that he would have been more
scrupulous with regard to Voltaire? {204}When at length the illustrious
prisoner regained his liberty, the prospect before him was but dreary.
He was an exile both from the country of his birth and from the country
of his adoption. The French government had taken offence at his journey
to Prussia, and would not permit him to return to Paris; and in the
vicinity of Prussia it was not safe for him to remain.
He took refuge on the beautiful shores of Lake Leman. There, loosed from
every tie which had hitherto restrained him, and having little to hope
or to fear from courts and churches, he began his long war against all
that, whether for good or evil, had authority over man; for what Burke
said of the Constituent Assembly, was eminently true of this its great
forerunner: Voltaire could not build: he could only pull down: he
was the very Vitruvius of ruin. He has bequeathed to us not a single
doctrine to be called by his name, not a single addition to the stock
of our positive knowledge. But no human teacher ever left behind him so
vast and terrible a wreck of truths and falsehoods, of things noble and
things base, of things useful and things pernicious. From the time when
his sojourn beneath the Alps commenced, the dramatist, the wit, the
historian, was merged in a more important character. He was now the
patriarch, the founder of a sect, the chief of a conspiracy, the prince
of a wide intellectual commonwealth. He often enjoyed a pleasure dear
to the better part of his nature, the pleasure of vindicating innocence
which had no other helper, of repairing cruel wrongs, of punishing
tyranny in high places. He had also the satisfaction, not less
acceptable to his ravenous vanity, of hearing terrified Capuchins call
him the Antichrist. But whether employed in works {205}of benevolence,
or in works of mischief, he never forgot Potsdam and Frankfort; and he
listened anxiously to every murmur which indicated that a tempest was
gathering in Europe, and that his vengeance was at hand.
He soon had his wish. Maria Theresa had never for a moment forgotten the
great wrong which she had received at the hand of Frederic. Young and
delicate, just left an orphan, just about to be a mother, she had been
compelled to fly from the ancient capital of her race; she had seen her
fair inheritance dismembered by robbers, and of those robbers he had
been the foremost. Without a pretext, without a provocation, in defiance
of the most sacred engagements, he had attacked the helpless ally whom
he was bound to defend. The Empress Queen had the faults as well as the
virtues which are connected with quick sensibility and a high spirit.
There was no peril which she was not ready to brave, no calamity which
she was not ready to bring on her subjects, or on the whole human
race, if only she might once taste the sweetness of a complete revenge.
Revenge, too, presented itself, to her narrow and superstitious mind, in
the guise of duty. Silesia had been wrested not only from the House of
Austria, but from the Church of Rome. The conqueror had indeed permitted
his new subjects to worship God after their own fashion; but this
was not enough. To bigotry it seemed an intolerable hardship that the
Catholic Church, having long enjoyed ascendency, should be compelled to
content itself with equality. Nor was this the only circumstance
which led Maria Theresa to regard her enemy as the enemy of God. The
profaneness of Frederic’s writings and conversation, and the frightful
rumours which were circulated {206}respecting the immorality of his
private life, naturally shocked a woman who believed with the firmest
faith all that her confessor told her, and who, though surrounded
by temptations, though young and beautiful, though ardent in all her
passions, though possessed of absolute power, had preserved her fame
unsullied even by the breath of slander.
To recover Silesia, to humble the dynasty of Hohenzollern to the dust,
was the great object of her life. She toiled during many years for this
end, with zeal as indefatigable as that which the poet ascribes to the
stately goddess who tired out her immortal horses in the work of raising
the nations against Troy, and who offered to give up to destruction her
darling Sparta and Mycenæ, if only she might once see the smoke going up
from the palace of Priam. With even such a spirit did the proud Austrian
Juno strive to array against her foe a coalition such as Europe had
never seen. Nothing would content her but that the whole civilised,
world, from the White Sea to the Adriatic, from the Bay of Biscay to the
pastures of the wild horses of the Tanais, should be combined in arms
against one petty state.
She early succeeded by various arts in obtaining the adhesion of Russia.
An ample share of spoil was promised to the King of Poland: and that
prince, governed by his favourite, Count Bruhl, readily promised the
assistance of the Saxon forces. The great difficulty was with France.
That the Houses of Bourbon and of Hapsburg should ever cordially
co-operate in any great scheme of European policy, had long been
thought, to use the strong expression of Frederic, just as impossible
as that fire and water should amalgamate. The whole history of the
Continent, during two centuries {207}and a half, had been the history
of the mutual jealousies and enmities of France and Austria. Since the
administration of Richelieu, above all, it had been considered as the
plain policy of the Most Christian King to thwart on all occasions the
Court of Vienna, and to protect every member of the Germanic body who
stood up against the dictation of the Cæsars. Common sentiments of
religion had been unable to mitigate this strong antipathy. The
rulers of France, even while clothed in the Roman purple, even while
persecuting the heretics of Rochelle and Auvergne, had still looked
with favour on the Lutheran and Calvinistic princes who were struggling
against the chief of the empire. If the French ministers paid any
respect to the traditional rules handed down to them through many
generations, they would have acted towards Frederic as the greatest of
their predecessors acted towards Gustavus Adolphus.
That there was deadly enmity between Prussia and Austria was of itself a
sufficient reason for close friendship between Prussia and France.
With France Frederic could never have any serious controversy. His
territories were so situated that his ambition, greedy and unscrupulous
as it was, could never impel him to attack her of his own accord. He was
more than half a Frenchman: he wrote, spoke, read nothing but French: he
delighted in French society: the admiration of the French he proposed
to himself as the best reward of all his exploits. It seemed incredible
that any French government, however notorious for levity or stupidity,
could spurn away such an ally.