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We think it more than probable that ¡ champagne. Madame de Grafigny, who Voltaire referred to Madame du Chatelet's, was allowed during her visit to remain for him mortifying, and to herself fatal, after the bon homme, alias the cocher--alias affair with St. Lambert. To allude to the husband--had withdrawn--says these mere conjugal infidelity as a faiblesse in readings sent her to her chamber as mad the lamented esprit fort, would have been as a young man.' Lord Brougham's critiextremely unpolite in Voltaire writing to cism on the chef-d'œuvre of this innocent Madame du Deffand. seclusion, is in these words:

A note at p. 98 seems also notable:

'It was the fate of many writings left by Voltaire at Cirey to be burnt by the base fanaticism or low jealousy of the Marquis's brother, after Madame du Chatelet's death.'

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genius to confess, what yet is without any 'It is painful and humiliating to human doubt true, that this is of all his poetical works, the most perfect, showing most wit, most spirit, most of the resources of a great What in the Condorcet dialect was poet, though of course the nature of the subcalled fanaticism, may have led to the or the sublime; but in brilliant imagery-in ject forbids all attempts at either the pathetic destruction of some valuable MSS. of Mé- picturesque description-in point and epigram langes Historiques.' We think it probable, in boundless fertility of fancy-in variety of also, that the Marquis du Chatelet's broth- striking and vigorous satire-all clothed in er considered it his duty to obliterate, verse as natural as Swift's, and far more as far as he could, the records and monu- however naturally raised by the moral faults varied as well as harmonious-no prejudice, ments of a connection disgraceful to the of the work, can prevent us from regarding it head of his house-to the name of his as the great masterpiece of his poetical genius. noble family. But we should like to know Here of course the panegyric must close, and whether this low, base, jealous burning it must give way to indignation at such a perof papers is thought by Lord Brougham to version of such divine talents. The indecencountenance the notion that Voltaire's inti-cy, often amounting to absolute obscenity, macy with the lady of Cirey was regarded as one of pure friendship by the contemporary society of France.

which pervades nearly the whole composition, witty licentiousness, instead of one which excannot be excused on the plea that it is only a cites the passions; still less can it be palliated At Cirey, Voltaire divided his mornings by citing had precedents, least of all by referbetween studying Newton under the tutor- ring to such writers as Ariosto, who more ship of his charming hostess, and the com- rarely violates the laws of decorum; whereas position of the Pucelle, in which also she is Voltaire is ready to commit this offence at supposed to have given him great assistance. every moment, and seems ever to take the She was in her 24th year when the affair self to licentious allusions. But this is not all. view of each subject that most easily lends itbegan, he in his 36th. The amiable Mar- The "Pucelle" is one continued sneer at quis (who was in embarrassed circum- all that men do hold, and all that they ought stances) had allowed Voltaire to add a to hold, sacred, from the highest to the least wing to his ancient and naked château. important subjects, in a moral view-from On the ground floor of this wing the the greatest to the most indifferent, even in Platonic man of letters had his apartment and its professors-virtue, especially the vira critical view. Religion and its ministers -three or four rooms en suite splendidly tues of a prudential cast-the feelings of furnished. He had also decorated an humanity-the sense of beauty-the rules of upper apartment for the lady-all one poetical composition-the very walks of literblaze of luxury. Into these bowers of ature in which Voltaire had most striven bliss the Marquis, when he happened to be to excel-are all made the constant subjects of at home, was admitted twice a day--half sneering contempt, or of ribald laughter; somean hour at noon for breakfast, and at sup-ly by the broad grins of mere gross buffoonery. times by wit, sometimes by humor, not rareper-till he had eaten his fill--when he It is a sad thing to reflect that the three masimmediately retired, and the reading and terpieces of three such men as Voltaire, polishing of the new stanzas of the Pucelle Rousseau, Byron, should all be the most commenced with due accompaniment of immoral of their compositions.'

* Let any reader turn to our articles on Madame de Grafigny (Quart. Rev., vol. xxiii.), on Grimm's Memoirs (Quart. Rev., vols. ix and

xi.), and on Miss Berry's Life and Correspondence of Madame du Deffand (Quart. Rev. vol.

▼.).

We must also, in justification of some of our previous remark, extract the paragraph which immediately follows this eloquent description of the 'Pucelle d'Or

léans.'

rical treatise was ever given to the world more full of solid and useful instruction. That there should have crept into the execution of so vast a design, perhaps the most magnificent that ever was conceived, errors of detail, is of no consequence whatever to its inequalities on the surface of a mirror are sufficient to destroy its reflecting, and, if concave, its magnifying power; because we read the book not for its minute details, but for its

'But here it would be unjust to forget that the same genius which underwent this unworthy prostitution, was also enlisted by its versatile possessor in the service of virtue and of moral truth. There may be some doubt if his moral essays, the "Discours sur l'Homme," may not be placed at the head of his serious poetry-general usefulness, any more than the petty none whatever that it is a performance of the highest merit. As the subject is didactic, his talents, turned towards grave reasoning and moral painting, adapted rather to satisfy the understanding than to touch the heart, and ad-general views, and are not injured by these dressing themselves more to the learned and polite than to the bulk of mankind, occupied here their appointed province, and had their full scope. Pope's moral essays gave the first hint of these beautiful compositions; but there is nothing borrowed in them from that great moral poet, and there is no inferiority in the execution of the plan. A strict regard to modesty, with the exception of a line or two, reigns throughout, and the object is to inculcate the purest principles of humanity, of tolerance, and of virtue. None but a Romanist bigot could ever have discovered the lurking attack upon religion in the noble verses against substituting vain ceremonies for good works, and attempting to honor the Deity by ascetic abstinence from the enjoyments which he has kindly provided for our happiness. Nay, the first panegyric on the ministry of Christ is to be found mingled with the same just reprehensions of those who pervert and degrade his doctrines (Disc. vii.).—p. 48.

We protest once more against being trifled with in this manner. We ask if it be possible that Lord Brougham can really expect any man to read with a grave face about the finest panegyric on the ministry of Christ' from the author of the Pucelle d'Orléans' and the 'Dictionnaire Philosophique'--the man whose motto was Ecrasez l'infame?'

We own we were not less startled by some sentences in the account of Voltaire's 'Essai sur les Mœurs :'

race.

'This work has thus become the true history of human society, indeed of the human To this work was prefixed a treatise on the "Philosophy of History," but the whole book might justly be designated by that name. The execution is marked by the peculiar felicity of the author; . but it is also to be remarked that in the two great qualities of the historian he eminently excels-his diligence and his impartiality. ... Voltaire, in no part of his work, disguises his peculiar opinions, but in none can he fairly be charged with making his representation of the facts bend to them. To take an example of the former, it would not be easy to find a more accurate account of the Council of Trent than in the 172nd chapter. We may safely affirm that no histo

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faults any more than the astronomer is by the irregularities of the speculum which might impede the course of an insect, as these inaccuracies might the study of one who was groping for details when he should have been looking for great principles. But whoever has studied history as it ought to be studied, will confess his obligations to this work, holding himself indebted to it for the lamp by which the annals of the world are to be viewed.'-pp. 104, 105.

When Lord Brougham remarks that a Treatise on the Philosophy of History is prefixed, but the whole book might justly be designated by that name,' some hasty reader may be apt to understand him as meaning to say-not that the Treatise is improperly designated, but that the whole book might be so designated with equal justice as the Introduction; for the 'Treatise' of Lord Brougham is, in Voltaire, the Introduction' to the Essai sur les Mœurs.' But Lord Brougham can have no such meaning: for this Treatise, bearing the impudent title of Philosophie de l'Histoire,' is neither more nor less than a condensed summary of infidelity, drawn up in the first instance, for Madame du Chatelet's edification, in which the history of the Bible is scoffed at, chapter after chapter, page after page, precisely in the grave historical style of the Dictionnaire Philosophique.' There is no devise of anti-Christian insolence and malice which does not lend its bitterness to this as well as to the other consommé of Voltairism. His Lordship, by the way, barely alludes to the existence of the famous Dictionnaire.'

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We have perhaps dwelt too long on this subject; but our error, if error it be, has proceeded from our sense of the importance attached to Lord Brougham's name and authority-from our deep regret that by writing currente calamo, and as we have

are to be viewed.' The lamp is a dark lantern, and the only side of it that is glass is colored glass. The whole book is in the spirit of the Introduction. The origin of Christianity-the spread of it-every feature in its subsequent annals and influence-all is seen through this one narrow no doubt without having recently read and false medium. Is this all pervading assumption a mere 'error of detail,'-to be detected only by gropers for trifles-no more interfering with the general value of the true history of the human race' than the value of Lord Rosse's monster-mirror is affected by the trivial 'irregularity' that might impede the course of an insect?' Lord Brougham desires us to admire the impartial chapter on the Council of Trent. Dominican dogma and Franciscan dogma, Spanish party and Italian party, were much the same to him: why should he have troubled his head to misrepresent one side more than the other? But can any man deny that in this accurate account' it is implied throughout that the Church of Christ is an institution founded on imposture?

Lord Brougham calls on us to admire more especially his impartiality in regard to Leo X., Luther, and Calvin :

many of the works he is writing about, he should expose himself to the danger of being considered, for a moment, as not fully alive to the wicked injustice of the whole of Voltaire's Philosophy of History,' and of the leading doctrine and sentiment of his Essai sur les Mœurs des Nations.' We are sure he meant to exclude both from his eulogy; but his language seems to us to require a stern revision. What he says in his Appendix of Condorcet's 'unbalanced eulogy' will not save the text.

Much of the criticism embraced in this Life,' more especially that of Voltaire's plays and romances, is so masterly that the author should spare no pains in bringing the whole piece up to the same high mark. We confess that we think he rather exaggerates the merit of the tragedian, though. we will except the case of the 'Zaïre;' but Voltaire's method in the romans was never perhaps so happily characterized as in this essay. He plays Candide' at the head of all his works-in genius the most perfect :'

'Full justice is rendered to the character and the accomplishments of Leo, as well as to his coarse and repulsive antagonists; and with all the natural prejudice against a tyrannical Pontiff, a fiery zealot, and a gloomy reliance; and while it has such a charm that its gious persecutor, we find him praising the attractive parts of the Pope's character, the amiable qualities of the apostle's, and the rigid disinterestedness of the intolerant reformer's, as warmly as if the former had never domineered in the Vatican, and the latter had not outraged, the one all taste and decorum by his language, the other all humanity by his /cruelty.'-p. 104.

'It is indeed a most extraordinary performrepeated perusal never wearies, we are left in doubt whether most to admire the plain sound sense, above all cant, of some parts, or the rich fancy of others; the singular felicity of the design for the purposes it is intended to serve, or the natural yet striking graces of the execution. The lightness of the touch with which all the effects are produced-the constant affluence of the most playful wit-the humor, What wonder that Voltaire should sym- overdone-the truth and accuracy of each wherever it is wanted, abundant, and never pathize on one side with Leo-the patron of blow that falls, always on the head of the right literature and the arts-the voluptuary-nail-the quickness and yet the ease of the the infidel Pope-whose 'gravest occupa- transitions-the lucid clearness of the lantions never interfered with the delicacy of guage, pure, simple, entirely natural-the perhis pleasures?' What wonder that he fect conciseness of diction as well as brevity should have some sympathy, on the other of composition, so that there is not a line, or even a word, that seems ever to be superfluhand, even with Luther and Calvin, seeing ous; and a point, a single phrase, sometimes that, though they had the folly to be Chris- a single word, produces the whole effect intians, they yet set the first examples of suc- tended: these are qualities that we shall in cessful rebellion against the sacerdotal pow-vain look for in any other work of the same er? What wonder, at any rate, that the description, perhaps in any other work of fancleverest of men should avoid the monstrous cy. That there is a caricature throughout no folly of attempting to represent, without any admixture of truth, three as well understood characters as could have been selected from the whole history of mankind? VOL. VI.-No I.

3

one denies; but the design is to caricature, and the doctrines ridiculed are themselves a gross and intolerable exaggeration. That there occur here and there irreverent expressions is equally true; but that there is any

thing irreligious in the ridicule of a doctrine which is in itself directly at variance with all religion, at least with all the hopes of a future state, the most valuable portion of every religious system, may most confidently be denied.' -pp. 108, 109.

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'Anciennement et jusqu'à la fin du règne de Louis XIV. il y avoit des rapports plus fréquents qu'il n'y en a eu depuis entre le Roi et ses sujets de toutes les classes: les motifs d'exclusion se multiplièrent ensuite. Dans un récit des fêtes données à la cour lors de la naissance du premier fils de Louis XIV. il est dit: Lieutenante Civile et Mad. la Présidente Tambonneau." Ce fait auroit paru extraordinaire sous le règne de son successeur.'-Mélanges, 1817, p. 248.

In point of conception, and not less of A la table tenue par le Roi étaient Mad. la execution, Candide' seems to us the first of all Voltaire's prose writings. Its language, among other merits, is more easy, has fewer marks of the endeavor to be 'In 1760, Louis XV. made a rule that no brilliant, than we see in any other of the one should be presented who could not prove romances or in any but the very earliest nobility as far back as 1400. The Maréchal of the historical works. Whether it is in Duc d'Etrées found he could not present his genius' the first of all Voltaire's perform-niece, yet for one hundred years that family ances, may be more doubtful. The ques-had been in the highest positions of the state tion, however, lies only between it and the and court. 'Pucelle.'

Connected with Voltaire's name are several subjects on which we could have wished to say something, but we really have not room. The great share that personal vanity had in every movement of the man is one; but here we can only observe that, pitiable as his vanity was, it is impossible now to look back and see what things sometimes wounded it and envenomed the marking genius of the century, without a melancholy thought for the short-sighted folly of the ruling powers who owed their ultimate ruin mainly to Voltaire. Nothing angered him more than the exclusiveness of the French court, as contrasted with the homage which he commanded from the greatest of foreign monarchs. Hear, under this head, Madame du Hausset, first lady of the bed-chamber to Queen Pompadour

:

'Le Roi (Louis XV.) étoit flatté qu'il y eût sous son siècle un Voltaire: mais il le craignoit et ne l'estimoit pas. Il ne put s'empêcher de dire: "Je lui ai donné une charge de gentilhomme ordinaire et des pensions. C'est ne pas ma faute s'il a fait des sottises et s'il a la prétension d'être chambellan, d'avior une croix, et de souper avec un roi. C'est ne pas la mode en France"-et puis il compta sur ses doigts," Maupertuis, Fontenelle, Voltaire, Montesquieu ""Votre majesté oublie," dit "D'Alembert et l'Abbé Prévôt "-" bien," dit le Roi, "depuis vingt-cinq ans tout cela auroit diné ou soupé avec MOI!"-Journal de Mad. du Hausset, p. 359.

on,

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Louis made an exception in his favor; but, as he observed, "l'exception même étoit une humiliation."—ibid. p. 251.

We must conclude our remarks on this

Essay with another complaint of Lord
Brougham's rashness. He tells us that
Voltaire was annoyed with sleeplessness,
and he took opium in too considerable
doses. Condorcet says that a servant mis-
took one of the doses, and that the mistake
was the immediate cause of his death.'
Now Condorcet has not a syllable about ‘a
servant mistaking one of the doses.'
would have been happy to say that, if he
durst; but his words are these: Il (Vol-
taire) prit de l'opium à plusieurs reprises,
et se tromba sur les doses, vraisemblablement
hans l'espèce d'ivresse que les premières
avaient produite.'-Vie de Voltaire, p. 155.

He

Voltaire is followed by Rousseau-and this no doubt much easier subject is treated, we think, with far greater success. The character is brought out in a rapid but clear and pithy analysis of his history-and of his works, which, in spite of great natural genius, have already paid in large measure the usual penalties of affected sentimentality, and a taste as vulgarly false as his vices were grossly and meanly odious. We transcribe the general estimate of the 'Nouvelle Héloïse :'

'To deny the great merit of this work would be absurd; the degree in which it has been overrated, owing chiefly to its immorality, and in part also to its vices of taste, not unnaturally leads to its depreciation when the critic soberly and calmly exercises his stern and ungrateful office. But the conception of the piece is, for its simplicity and nature, happy, with the exception which may be taken especially to the unnatural situations of the lovers on meeting after Julie's marriage, to the extravagant as well as dull deathbed scene, and to the episode, the adventures of the English

lord. The descriptions of natural scenery are admirable-far superior to the moral painting; for Rousseau's taste in landscape was excellent, while with his moral taste, his perverted sentiments, so wide from truth and nature, always interfered. The passions are vividly painted, and as by one who had felt their force, though they are not touched with a delicate pencil. The feelings are ill rendered, partly because they are mixed with the perverted sentiments of the ill-regulated and even diseased mind in which they are hatched into life, partly because they are given in the diction of rhetoric, and not of nature. The love which he plumes himself on exhibiting beyond all his predecessors-nay, as if he first had portrayed, and almost alone had felt it-is a mixture of the sensual and the declamatory, with something of the grossness of the one, much of the other's exaggeration. As this is the main object of the book, therefore, the book must be allowed to be a failure. It charmed many; it enchanted both the Bishops Warburton and Hurd, as we see in their published correspondence; it still holds a high place among the works which prudent mothers withhold from their daughters, and which many daughters contrive to enjoy in secret; it makes a deep impression on hearts as yet little acquainted with real passion, and heads inexperienced in the social relations.'-pp. 161-163.

of the narrative which the fulness of the humiliating confessions at every step attests, and then, and chiefly, by the magical diction,—a diction so idiomatical and yet so classical-so full of nature and yet so refined by art-so exquisitely graphic without any effort, and so accommodated to its subject without any baseness,-that there hardly exists such another example of the miracles which composition can perform. The subject is not only wearisome from its sameness, but, from the absurdities of the author's conduct, and opinions, and feelings, it is revolting; yet on we go, enchained and incapable of leaving it, how often soever we may feel irritated and all but enraged. The subject is not only wearisome generally, revolting frequently, but it is oftentimes low, vulgar, grovelling, fitted to turn us away from the contemplation with aversion, even with disgust; yet the diction of the great magician is our master; he can impart elegance to the most ordinary and mean things, in his description of them; he can elevate the lowest, even the most nasty ideas, into dignity by the witchery of his language. We stand aghast after pausing, when we can take breath, and can see over what filthy ground we have been led, but we feel the extraordinary power of the hand that has led us along. It is one of Homer's great praises, that he ennobles the most low and homely details of the most vulgar life, as when he brings Ulysses into the swineherd's company, and paints the domestic econHere, we venture to say, Lord Broug- omy of that unadorned and ignoble peasant. ham might as well have stopped. He goes No doubt the diction is sweet in which he on to justify his censures by a minute ex-warbles those ordinary strains; yet the subamination of some of the most lauded pasted nature, with no taint of the far more insufject, how humble soever, is pure unsophisticasages, but these are also among the most indecent ones.

The criticism of the Confessions' is a masterpiece. We regret that we can only take one paragraph of it.

There is no work in the French language of which the style is more racy, and indeed more classically pure. But its diction is idiomatical as well as pure. As if he had lived long enough away from Geneva to lose not only all the provincialisms of that place, but also to lose all its pedantry and precision, he writes both with the accuracy and elegance of a Frenchman, and with the freedom of wit and of genius, even of humor and drollery yes, even of humor and drollery; for the picture of the vulgar young man who supplanted him with Madame de Warens shows no mean power of caricature; and the sketches of his own ludicrous situations, as at the concert he gave in the Professor's house at Lausanne, show the impartiality with which he could exert this power at his own proper cost and charge. The subject is often tiresome; it is almost always his own sufferings, and genius, and feelings; always, of course, but of that no complaint can be justly made, of his own adventures; yet we are carried irresistibly along. first of all by the manifest truth and sincerity

ferable pollution derived from vice. Not so Rousseau's subject: he sings of vices, and of vices the most revolting and the most baseof vices which song never before came near to elevate; and he sings of the ludicrous and the sive, yet he sings without impurity, and conoffensive as well as the hateful and the repultrives to entrance us in admiration. No triwork in this respect stands alone; it is reasonumph so great was ever won by diction. The able to wish that it may have no imitators.'— pp. 181-183.

Though Lord Brougham seems to us to have taken a very inadequate measure of Voltaire's vanity, he handles Rousseau's to

a wish.

'His vanity was, perhaps, greater than ever had dominion over a highly gifted mind. That this was the point, as not unfrequently happens, upon which the insanity turned which clouded some of his later years, is certain; but no less certainly may we perceive its malignant influence through the whole of his course. He labored under a great delusion upon this subject; for he actually conceived that he had less vanity than any other person that ever existed; and he has given expression to this notion. The ground of the

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