Able and witty, but without any principle of mo-
rality, the regent laid himself open to criticism of the sharpest kind;
and young Arouet was not the most merciful of his judges.
rality, the regent laid himself open to criticism of the sharpest kind;
and young Arouet was not the most merciful of his judges.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v26 - Tur to Wat
]
“Lo where decked in a conqueror's spoils Marcellus, my son,
Strides from the war! How he towers o'er all of the warrior train!
## p. 15438 (#388) ##########################################
15438
VIRGIL
«When Rome reels with the shock of the wild invaders' alarm,
He shall sustain her state. From his war-steed's saddle his arm
Carthage and rebel Gaul shall destroy, and the arms of the slain
Victor a third time hang in his father Quirinus's fane. ”
Then Æneas,- for near him a youth seemed ever to pace,
Fair, of an aspect princely, with armor of glittering grace,
Yet was his forehead joyless, his eye cast down as in grief, —
“Who can it be, my father, that walks at the side of the chief ?
Is it his son, or perchance some child of his glorious race
Born from remote generations? And hark, how ringing a cheer
Breaks from his comrades round! What a noble presence is here!
Though dark night with her shadow of woe floats over his face! »
Answer again Anchises began with a gathering tear:-
“Ask me not, O my son, of thy children's infinite pain!
Fate one glimpse of the boy to the world will grant, and again
Take him from life. Too puissant methinks to immortals on high
Rome's great children had seemed, if a gift like this from the sky
Longer had been vouchsafed! What wailing of warriors bold
Shall from the funeral plain to the War-god's city be rolled!
What sad pomp thine eyes will discern, what pageant of woe,
When by his new-made tomb thy waters, Tiber, shall now!
Never again such hopes shall a youth of thy lineage, Troy,
Rouse in his great forefathers of Latium! Never a boy
Nobler pride shall inspire in the ancient Romulus-land!
Ah, for his filial love! for his old-world faith! for his hand
Matchless in battle! Unharmed what foemen had offered to stand
Forth in his path, when charging on foot for the enemy's ranks,
Or when plunging the spur in his foam-flecked courser's flanks!
Child of a nation's sorrow! if thou canst baffle the Fates'
Bitter decrees; and break for a while their barrier gates,
Thine to become Marcellus! I pray thee, bring me anon
Handfuls of lilies, that I bright flowers may strew on my son,
Heap on the shade of the boy unborn these gifts at the least,
Doing the dead, though vainly, the last sad service. ”
Translation of Sir Charles Bowen.
## p. 15439 (#389) ##########################################
15439
MELCHIOR DE VOGUÉ
(1848-)
BY GRACE KING
-
He Vicomte Eugène Melchior de Vogüé, born at Nice, February
25th, 1848, is the leader, to characterize him in the most
summary way, in the reactionary movement which has been
the historic event of French literature during the last quarter of the
century. He was the precursor of the movement, the evangelist of
it, before it found official expression in literature; when, in the day
of national misfortune and national need, the eyes of serious French-
men were opened to the slough of sensuality, which, draining through
their literature and art into their life and manners, had diseased
their inorality and enervated their will. Various names, when the
reaction first stirred thought, were essayed to define or describe the
movement, — such as Neo-Christian, and Spiritualization of Thought;
it has been called Fiesolist, and likened to the Pre-Raphaelite move-
ment in England: but as time progresses, any sectarian class or
period appellation seems to be too narrow for what is essentially a
national evolution, a patriotic as well as a literary renaissance. More
than any other man in French literature, M. de Vogüé has been the
medium to express the broad nationality and Catholicity of the new
birth; and it would be hardly too much praise to say that in the
clear-sighted conservation of religion and politics, in his life and
works, he typified it.
On the first of January, 1890, in an open New-Year's letter « To
Those who are Twenty Years Old,” — that is, to those who were born
during the Franco-Prussian war,— he gives the keynote of his life
and works: «All who are capable of it owe to our country mental,
more imperiously even than military, service. ” Twenty years before,
he, a young soldier, in that crucial period just past his majority, was
enduring the moral and physical suffering of defeat, the humiliation
of prospective national and political annihilation. But he relates how
the light shone before him on his road to Damascus:
«It is now nearly twenty years ago that the truth made itself known in
a food to the one who writes these lines, as to many others,— to all those
who were being carried along the road to Germany on the night of the first
and second of September, 1870. The miserable procession was descending
the slopes that lay between Bazeilles and Douzy. Below us the bivouac fires
of the conquerors starred the valley of the Meuse. From the field of blood
where were camped the hundred thousand men whom we thought sleeping,
## p. 15440 (#390) ##########################################
15440
MELCHIOR DE VOGUÉ
worn out with their victory, there arose upon the air one strong, one single
voice from the hundred thousand breasts. They sang he hymn of Luther.
The solemn prayer spread over the whole horizon, it filled the heavens,
as far as there were fires -- Germans. Far along in the night we heard it:
it was so grand, so majestic, that not one of us could help thrilling with awe;
even those, who, crushed by suffering and fatigue, were being driven out of
what had been France,-- even they forgot their grief for a moment in the
unwelcome emotion. More than one of us, young as we were, and unripened
by reflection, saw clearly in that moment what power it was that had van-
quished us: it was not the girdle of steel cannon, nor the weight of regiments;
it was the one superior soul, made up of all those different souls, steeped in
one Divine national faith, firmly convinced that behind their cannon,
God was
marching with them at the side of their old King. ”
« Methods of instruction and military training,” he exclaims, «Krupp can-
non and Mauser guns - nothing but accidents, all those things! Accidental
also the sagacity of a Moltke, and of his lieutenants. What made these in-
struments terrible? The serious submissive soul of the people who used them!
((
((
From military service and imprisonment, Vogüé passed into what
was intended as his career, — diplomacy; and was made attaché to the
French embassy at Constantinople. Traveling through the East -
Palestine, Syria, Egypt -- among the aged monuments of human effort,
the echoes of a vanished civilization, truth again came to him in a
flood of new ideas: “History appeared to him not as a corpse to be
dissected, a tomb of the Past to be explored, but as humanity itself, —
alive, present, vital; a drama to be seen with one's own eyes, felt in
one's own veins; . a thing of himself, of his brothers, of his
country. ” Picturesqueness of aspect, memories recalled of distant
ages, visions, intuitions, dreams,— these are the things of greatest
interest to me,” he says frankly; in other words, the predominance of
idea over fact, of the soul of the race over the soul of the individual.
His letters written in the first glow of these illuminations from the
East, and published in the Revue des Deux Mondes, made Vogüé's
name known in the literary world of the day. From Constantinople
he was transferred to St. Petersburg, where he remained several
years; years of fruitful literary activity, his labors — Russian stories,
and studies of Russian life - enriching not merely the thought and lit-
erature of his own country, but of Europe and America. The door of
Russian literature, opened by Mérimée, had swung to again. Vogüé
has propped it open; and the great stream of what he calls “the
new realism pleading the cause of humanity,” that poured through
its pages upon the arid mockery and materialism of French letters,
was a divine irrigation upon desiccated seed. In the light of the har-
vest that arose therefrom in the literature of the world, it would seem
impossible to do full justice to the importance of this one benefit
conferred by Vogüé upon his fellow-men, without accepting his own
belief that literature is a mission, not a profession.
## p. 15441 (#391) ##########################################
MELCHIOR DE VOGUÉ
15441
a
con-
The Exhibition of 1889 has been generally adopted as
venient date for the manifestation the literary reaction in France,
and Vogüé's eloquent article upon it as its manifesto. For him the
Exhibition was before all a problem of moral significance, an awak-
enment of 'energies in a people restored to their consciousness of
self. “Let us hope,” he concludes, that science will one day reveal
the Central Motor, the motor whence are derived the sometimes
conflicting applications of power. We shall then learn that there is
.
not found the transmission of the sovereign energy,—that there the
principle itself stands condemned. The laws of the outward universe
are but the reflex of the moral world within; and the universal force
once adequately distributed in its proper channel will inspire the
human heart for all the purposes of human life. In this new order
of things, Force must regain its ancient name; with us, as with the
Romans, it must be called Virtue. We may find at last, that in truth
all metamorphoses of Force are but the transmutations of Virtue. ”
The following extract from an article on the Neo-Christian move-
ment in France, written by M. de Vogüé for Harper's Magazine, is
the most authentic word upon it and his connection with it:-
“Whatever may be the effective result of the Neo-Christian crises, they
will require a long time to come to a head; and when the religious idea has
conquered the cultivated classes, it will have to reconquer by a slow process
of infiltration the people at large, whom M. Taine has shown as returning to
paganism. Popular beliefs have persisted obstinately beneath the unbelief
of higher spheres, and yielded only gradually to the preaching of incredulity.
They will be born again with the same slowness, as a consequence of preach-
ing in the opposite sense.
We are in the presence of a nebula which
is forming and wandering in the celestial space. The Creator always knows
the hour and the place which he has marked for the condensation of this
nebula into the solidity and brightness of an organized world. However
imperfect and vague the nebula may be, men of good will prefer it to the
gloom from which we are issuing. They are of opinion that the search after
the ideal is a great sign of the raising up of France, where everything was
on the point of sinking into gross realism,- both characters and minds, both
public morality and intellectual productions. Those who have been the arti-
sans of the present movement have the right to think that they have not
lost their day's work; and since the writer of these pages has been often
mocked for the part he has taken in the movement, may he be here allowed
to claim openly his share in it. ”
XXVI–966
Grace Tug
## p. 15442 (#392) ##########################################
15442
MELCHIOR DE VOGUÉ
DEATH OF WILLIAM I. OF GERMANY
W".
Let us
milliAM I. lies beneath the dome in the centre of the cold
bare edifice in which the Lutherans of Prussia pray. In
the empty temple there is only death and God- unless
those four statues with fixed gaze, as rigid beneath their armor,
as immovable as he over whom they watch, be men.
suppose -- the impossible - a stranger ignorant of the whole his-
tory of our times; he visits this monument, raises the military
cloak, and asks who is this officer who sleeps here in the uniform
of the First Regiment of the Grenadier Guards. Let us suppose
-again the impossible — that one of these fixities should open
his mouth in reply, and simply repeat what his schoolmaster
had taught him of the Emperor's life. The ignorant visitor would
smile at these fantastic words: he would think the sergeant was
reciting some marvelous fable of old Germany. For the real of
to-day will become the marvelous of to-morrow; future ages will
be found admiring but incredulous, as we now are for that which
was the real in the olden times: for we do not know how to
look at the dream moment in which fate makes us live; habit
and the use of each day blind our moral sight.
That which the soldier would have said to the stranger has
been repeated to satiety for a week past. The history of Will-
iam I. has been given in summary in all the papers, given in de-
tail in books which are in everybody's hands. There is nothing
for us to add; and if there were, should we have the power to
do it? To dwell upon certain pages, the most necessary, the hand
would tremble and the eye no longer see with clearness. A few
words will suffice to recall the events of that long life, before we
essay to judge it. Born in the decline of the other century,-
days already so far distant from us that they are already the days
of our ancestors,- a little cadet in a little State, this child of
feeble health grew up on the steps of a crumbling throne. His
eyes opened to see increasing upon the country and upon the
world the oppressive shadow of Napoleon; they learned to weep
over his country cut into pieces, over the agony of a mother a
fugitive and mendicant in her own domains; his cradle is tossed
about among the baggage of defeated armies: upon leaving this
cradle he is dressed in the clothes of a soldier, to replace those
whom the incessant war around him has mowed down; hussar,
## p. 15443 (#393) ##########################################
MELCHIOR DE VOGUÉ
15443
Uhlan, cornet, his little uniforms change as do the swaddling-
clothes of other children; as soon as he can hold a weapon, at
fifteen
years
of
age, he is thrown into the conflict: and this is
at the hour of fortune's turn against us; the reflux of Europe
throws him upon France with the pack of kings and princes
called together for the quarry: he fights — this living one of a
week ago - amid those phantoms vanished into the depths of
history; at the side of Blücher, Schwartzenberg, Barclay; against
Oudinot and Victor: he enters Paris, and he probably dreams
one of those foolish dreams of first youth, as did every officer
of Napoleon's time; he sees himself — the Prussian captain, sud-
denly promoted generalissimo — taking as his share the glorious
city, deciding upon the fate of the captive Emperor: and no
doubt he laughs over his dream on waking; for the world is
tired of war,- universal peace condemns the soldier to repose.
William re-enters obscurity for a long time; his life disappears
like those long rivers whose course we ignore between their
source and their mouth, where they change name: he reappears
a half-century later; at the moment where all generally ends
with old men, he takes up the crown from the altar of Königs-
berg, and finding it too narrow for his head, he reforges it by
sword-strokes over the fire of battles for seven prodigious years;
he extends his kingdom as quickly and as far as the tenfold
increased reach of his shells; he makes of his puny hereditary
guard-house the vastest barracks that exist on the globe. After
trying his strength on a defenseless neighbor, he fells with one
hand the Holy Roman Empire, with the other the French power.
He no longer counts his victories,- armies taken in nets, kings
swept away before him: a second Napoleon, prisoner at the door
of his tent, recalls to him the fall of the first which happened
under his eye; and the old dream of the young captain is sur-
passed, when, encamped before a Paris surrounded by his troops
and bombarded by his cannon, in the palace of Louis XIV. , where
his camp bed is placed, the princes of Germany bring the impe-
rial crown to the new Cæsar. It would seem that this septuage-
narian needs only to end in this apotheosis. But long days of
glory and happiness are still reserved for him; while below him
all other thrones change occupants, he remains incontestably the
chief and patriarch of all kings, dictating to them his wishes,
calling them by a nod to his court. His gorged eagle soars
tranquilly above all reach; God protects him, he is invulnerable;
-
## p. 15444 (#394) ##########################################
15444
MELCHIOR DE VOGÜÉ
4
twice assassins strike and twice he is healed, at an age when a
mere nothing kills. People grow accustomed to think him im-
mortal, like his predecessor Barbarossa. Death grows impatient
and prowls timidly about his chamber, but dares not strike; each
morning is seen again the familiar head straight and smiling at
the historic window, where he is interrogated to know whether
nations will be permitted to live that day in peace. He is said
to be ill: the following morning he holds a review; convokes a
congress; goes to his frontiers to preside at an interview of
sovereigns: he is said to be dead, and the world, told of his end,
refuses to believe it. It is hardly longer ago than yesterday that
the people were convinced that the Emperor of Germany, van-
quished at last, slowly overcome by the eternal sleep, had finally
submitted to the common law and consented to die.
At this hour the judgments of men are indifferent to him.
Their praise is worth just so much as those brilliant orders
pinned to the tunic of death; just so much as the wax, the flow-
ers, that die on his coffin. The Emperor is before his God. He
meets accusing witnesses, many and redoubtable. It would be
presumption to seek to divine the sentence of the Sole Judge,
who alone has the right to pronounce it. Let us hope for him
who sued for grace yesterday, as well as for all of us, that man
not
mean that there are many. There is but one: but being infi-
nite intelligence, he manifests himself under different aspects as
diverse as our needs; he measures himself to the extent of our
vision; being infinite justice and mercy, he holds a soul to ac-
count only for the manifestation made.
The Emperor has gone forth through the Brandenburg
gate; kings and princes have abandoned him, the people have
è
dispersed, his escort has broken ranks. The Emperor continues
alone through the Alley of Victory. He passes along the foot
of a tower. We know of what it is made, - this fateful tower of
bronze; the cannon still show their mute mouths jutting forth
over the periphery in symmetric crowns; their souls are prisoners
in the melted
They have waited long, these servitors
of death, for William; they knew that death loved to change his
trophies: they watch him as he passes. The horses hurry their
steps toward Charlottenburg. Do they fear that in the solitary
alleys of the forest, in the mournful fog of the winter's day,
another cortége will form to replace the princely escort which no
Armenia
mass.
## p. 15445 (#395) ##########################################
MELCHIOR DE VOGUÉ
15445
longer follows the car ? A cortège of phantoms waits its chance
in the shadow of the heavy pyramid from which it has come
forth. Innumerable spectres: young men mutilated, mothers in
mourning, every form of suffering and misery; and princes too,
but despoiled, without diadems, led by an old blind king, who
has gathered them up on all the roads of exile to come, the last
to testify — the last of all, on the edge of the imperial tomb-
to the other side of this glorious history. But why should we
call up imaginary phantoms? There was one only too real that
awaited the Emperor on the threshold of the mausoleum of Char-
lottenburg: destiny never devised a meeting more tragic. For
one instant he appeared behind the window-panes of the pal-
ace: for the first. and last time he saluted from afar the mortal
body of his father; his eyes followed it as it went to the bed
of rest of the Hohenzollerns. Then all vanished, - the fugitive
apparition which had reaped empire as it passed, and the dead
who slipped from the hands of his guards into the deep vault.
One last salvo from all the cannon around, dogs barking after
their masters, and the noise of his little day is finished.
Translated for 'A Library of the World's Best Literature,' by Grace King.
REALISTIC LITERATURE AND THE RUSSIAN NOVEL
City, in the great transports of passion; as the protagonist
, ;
in some very noble and very simple drama, in which the
actors divided among themselves certain rôles of virtue and
wickedness, happiness and suffering, - conformable to ideal and
absolute conceptions about a superior life, in which the soul of
man worked always to one end. In short, the classical man
was the one hero whom all primitive literatures considered alone
worthy of their attention. The action of this hero corresponded
to a group of ideas,— religious, monarchical, social, and moral,-
that furnished the foundation upon which the human family has
rested since its earliest attempts at organization. In magnifying
his hero for good or for evil, the classical poet was proposing a
model of what should or should not be, rather than an example of
what really existed. For a century, other views have insensibly
come to prevail: they have resulted in an art of observation more
## p. 15446 (#396) ##########################################
15446
MELCHIOR DE VOGUÉ
than of imagination,- an art which is supposed to represent life
as it is, in its entirety and in its complexity, and with the least
possible prejudice on the part of the artist. It takes man in the
ordinary conditions of life, characters from every-day routine,
small and changeable. Jealous of the rigorous logic of scientific
processes, the artists propose to inform us by a perpetual analy-
sis of sentiments and acts, much more than to move us by the
intrigue and spectacle of passions. Classical art imitated a being
who governs, punishes, rewards, chooses his favorites from a select
aristocracy, and imposes upon them his elegant conventions of
morality and language. The new art seeks to imitate nature in
its unconscious ableness, its moral indifferences, its absence of
choice; the triumph of the general over the individual, of the
crowd over the hero, of the relative over the absolute. It has
been called realistic, naturalistic; but would not democratic suffice
to define it ?
No: a view which stopped at this apparent literary root would
be too short-sighted. The change in political order (political
change) is only an episode in the universal and prodigious change
that is being accomplished in the whole world about us. Observe
for a century the work of the human mind in all its applications:
one would say that a legion of workmen had been busy in turn-
ing over, to replace upon its base, some enormous pyramid which
was leaning upon its apex. Man has begun again from the bot-
tom to explain the universe; and he perceives that the existence
of this universe, its greatness and its ills, proceed from an inces-
sant labor of the infinitely small. While institutions were return-
ing the government of the States to the multitude, science was
referring the government of the world to atoms. Everywhere
in the analysis of physical and moral phenomena, ancient causes
have been decomposed, or so to speak crumbled away: for the
simple sudden agents proceeding with great blows of power,
which once explained for us the revolutions of the globe, of his-
tory, of the soul, has been substituted the continual evolution of
infinitesimal and obscure life.
Is it necessary to insist
upon the application of these tendencies to practical life? Level-
ing of the classes, division of fortunes, universal suffrage, liber-
ties and servitudes on an equal footing before the judge, in the
barracks, at the school,- all the consequences of the principle are
summed up in this word Democracy, which is the watchword of
the times.
Literature, that written confession of society,
## p. 15447 (#397) ##########################################
MELCHIOR DE VOGUÉ
15447
could not remain a stranger to the general change of direction;
instinctively at first, then consciously, doctrinally, she adapted
her materials and her ideas to the new spirit. Her first essays
at reformation were uncertain and awkward: romanticism (we
must now acknowledge it) was a bastard production; it breathed
revolt. In reaction from the classical hero, it sought its sub-
jects by preference in the social depths: but, permeated still by
the classical spirit, the monsters it invented were its old heroes
turned wrong side out; its convicts, courtesans, beggars, were
even hollower windbags than the kings and princesses of earlier
times. The declamatory thesis had changed, but not the decla-
mation. The public soon grew tired of it. Writers were asked
for representations of the world more sincere, and more in con-
formity with the teachings of positive science, which was gaining
ground day by day: readers wanted to find some sentiment of
the complexity of life; beings, ideas, and the spirit of rationality
which in our day has replaced the taste for the absolute. Thus
realism was born.
Moral inspiration alone can make us
pardon realism for the hardness of its processes. When it studies
life with rigorous precision, when it unravels down to the mi-
nutest rootlets of our actions in the fatalities that cause them, it
responds to one of the exactions of our reason. But it deceives
our surest instinct when it voluntarily ignores that mystery which
subsists above and beyond rational explanation: the possible qual-
ity of the divine. I am willing that the realist should affirm
nothing of the unknown, but at least he should always tremble
on its threshold. Since he prides himself upon observing phe-
nomena without suggesting arbitrary interpretations of them, he
should accept this evident fact: the latent fermentation of the
evangelical spirit in the modern world. More than to any other
form of art the religious sentiment is indispensable to realism;
the sentiment that communicates to it the charity which it needs.
As realism does not recoil from the ugliness and misery of the
world, it should render them endurable by a perpetual pity.
Realism becomes odious the moment it ceases to be charitable.
Oh, I know that in assigning a moral end to the art of
writing I shall cause a smile among the adepts of the honor-
able doctrine of art for art's sake; I must confess that I do not
understand that doctrine.
To summarize my ideas of what realism should be: I seek
some general formula to express both its method and its power
## p. 15448 (#398) ##########################################
15448
MELCHIOR DE VOGUÉ
(
of creation. I find only one: it is very old, but I do not know
a better or a more scientific one, or one that comes closer to the
secret of all creation: “God made man out of the dust of the
ground. ” See how just the word is, how significant,--the dust!
Without prejudgment or contradiction of detail, it contains all
that we guess about the origin of life; it shows us those first
thrills of humid matter in which was formed and perfected the
slow series of organisms. Made out of the dust of the earth:
that is all that experimental science can know.
Yes, but
there is something else than experimental science; the dust of the
ground does not suffice to account for the mystery of life;
the formula must be completed to account for the duality of our
being: therefore the text adds, "And he breathed into him the
breath of life, and man became a living being. This breath,”
” “
drawn from the source of universal life, is the mind, spirit, the
sure and impenetrable element that moves us, infolds us, frus-
trates all our explanations, and without which they are insuffi-
cient. The dust of the earth: that is the positive knowledge that
we can obtain in a laboratory, in a clinic, about the universe,
about a man; it goes very far, but so long as the breath does
not intervene, a living soul cannot be created, for life begins only
where we cease to comprehend.
C
Translated for (A Library of the World's Best Literature) by Grace King.
## p. 15449 (#399) ##########################################
15449
VOLTAIRE
(1694-1778)
BY ADOLPHE COHN
OLTAIRE, whose real name was François Marie Arouet, is cer-
tainly the most influential of the numerous writers that
have been produced by France. He was born in Paris on
November 21st, 1694, and died in the same city on May 30th, 1778.
At the time of his birth Louis XIV. was still the absolute ruler of
France; no one dared to question his divine right to the crown, or to
resist his clearly expressed will. When he died, public opinion had
become so irresistible a power that King Louis XVI. had been com-
pelled, much gainst his desire, to assist the revolted colonies of North
America in their struggle against the English King; and that eleven
years later the French also determined to begin a revolution, the
object of which was to establish free and equal government over the
ruins of the old system. Of the transformation which had taken
place between the dates of 1694 and 1778, Voltaire had been the chief
artisan.
His family, like that of most of the great writers of France, be-
longed to the ranks of the middle class. His father had, as a notary
and as the confidential legal adviser of numerous influential families,
amassed a comfortable fortune; and occupied late in life an hon-
orable official position, which connected him with the highest court
of law in France, – the Parliament of Paris. His mother, Catherine
Daumars, was connected with several families of the nobility. He
received the best education which a French bourgeois could then
give to his son. His chief educators were the Jesuit Fathers,— in
whose best college, the College Louis-le-Grand, he received all his
early schooling - and a certain Abbé de Châteauneuf, a worldly abbé
of aristocratic birth, to whose care he had been intrusted by his
mother, whom he lost when only seven years of age. The abbé
made it his business to introduce his young charge into the most
aristocratic and witty, but withal, dissolute circles of French society.
The young man's wit and inborn charm of manners, his ease in com-
posing pleasing and light verses, his close attention whenever older
people spoke of whatever important events they had acted in or wit-
nessed, made him at once a very great favorite.
## p. 15450 (#400) ##########################################
15450
VOLTAIRE
Louis XIV. died in 1715, when young Arouet was just coming of
age. He had not published anything yet, but had already determined
to make a name for himself as a man of letters, and not simply to
increase the family's fortune as a law practitioner, according to his
father's desire. He already possessed more worldly experience than
a great many older men. A journey in Holland, which he had made
as secretary to the French ambassador there, Marquis de Château-
neuf,— and which had come abruptly to an end on account of a
somewhat pathetic love affair with a Protestant maiden, Mademoiselle
Olympe Dunoyer,— had enabled him to acquire a knowledge of what
was perhaps most interesting in Europe at that time: the republican
government of the Netherlands, and the society of Huguenot refugees
who had left France twenty or thirty years before rather than aban-
don their faith.
He was then ready to present to the public whatever ideas of his
he deemed sufficiently matured for publication. But he was soon to
discover, at his own expense, what is the meaning of absolute power,
and what a disturbing force it becomes in the hands of incompetent
rulers. The duties of royalty were then performed by the Duke
of Orleans, regent of France during the minority of his child cousin,
King Louis XV.
Able and witty, but without any principle of mo-
rality, the regent laid himself open to criticism of the sharpest kind;
and young Arouet was not the most merciful of his judges. Twice
the young man, on account of his freedom of utterance, received
peremptory orders to leave Paris and reside at some spot designated
by the government; a third time, for a Latin inscription which he
had written, and some French verses, the authorship of which he
was erroneously credited with, he was arrested and sent as a State
prisoner to the Bastille, where he remained nearly a year (1717-18).
A few months after the end of his imprisonment he suddenly became
famous. His tragedy of Edipus' had been performed with the great-
est success, and he was hailed as the legitimate syccessor of Corneille
and Racine (1718).
Several years followed of intense literary activity, during which
he gave a number of plays and composed numerous poems, two
of which for the first time presented some of the ideas with which
his name has become identified, — the 'Epistle to Urania,' which sets
forth some of the principles of natural religion, and the epic poem
which later, when more developed, became the Henriade. ' The lat-
ter work, of which King Henry IV. of France is the hero, is from
beginning to end an eloquent plea for religious toleration, and a no
less eloquent denunciation of religious fanaticism. Its most celebrated
passage is the narrative of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew's
night, related by Henry of Navarre to Queen Elizabeth.
>
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one
9
He was
soon sent to the Bastille again (1726), on account of a
quarrel with a disreputable young nobleman, the Chevalier de Rohan,
who had had Voltaire beaten almost to death by his servants. He
was released, however, a few days later, on a promise that he would
at once set out for England, where he resided a little over two years
(1726–28). These were for him years of study. He managed to
acquaint himself with the language, literature, institutions, and social
life of England, as few travelers have ever done in so short a time.
Before he left the country he succeeded in writing English very
creditably; as is shown by two essays that he published while there,
on the civil wars of France, the other on epic poetry. Their
object was to prepare the English public for the issuing of a new
and enlarged edition of his poem on Henry IV. , which was dedicated
to the Queen of England.
He carried back to France a small volume, the effect of which on
the reading public of continental Europe, but especially of France,
cannot be overestimated. It is a collection of twenty-four letters,
which were first published in an English translation with the title of
(Letters concerning the English Nation, and afterwards in France
under a different title, — Philosophical Letters. His object in this
work was to show to his countrymen that national peace, happiness,
and power, were not dependent upon the existence of such a gov-
ernment as they were living under. The main points to which he
called their attention were individual liberty, as protected by the
habeas corpus act; political liberty, as secured by the Magna Charta;
religious toleration, as demonstrated by the existence in the country
of numerous Christian denominations, living at peace with each other;
respect for men of letters, as shown by the high positions filled in
the State by such men as Joseph Addison and Matthew Prior; the
existence of an English literature, then all-but unknown in France,
which heard from him for the first tim the name of Shakespeare;
the existence of English philosophy with Locke, and of English
science with Sir Isaac Newton, whose theory of universal attraction
he popularized through years of untiring efforts; etc. No wonder
such a book was not very acceptable to the autocratic government of
France. Its publication was not authorized; an unauthorized edition
however appeared in 1734, and Voltaire, as the writer had come to
call himself since the performance of Edipus,' came near being sent
to the Bastille for the third time.
He was then a rich man. Influential friends had helped him to
invest his share of his father's estate partly in speculative ventures,
partly in military contracts. He lived in a somewhat grand style in
the château of Cirey, in Lorraine; which was the property of a great
admirer of his, the Marquise du Châtelet, who translated Newton's
Principia into French. He composed there a number of plays.
## p. 15452 (#402) ##########################################
15452
VOLTAIRE
(
(
He had already had, however, his greatest dramatic triumph with
(Zaire); a play in which, even more than in his Brutus,' we can dis-
cern the influence of Shakespeare. Among the plays that followed,
the most remarkable were Mahomet,' a plea against fanaticism,
which he dedicated to Pope Benedict XIV. ; and Alzire,' a new plea
for religious toleration, hardly less eloquent than the Henriade. He
had also published his first historical work, a history of Charles XII.
of Sweden; a marvelous piece of narrative, in which the philosophi-
cal historian already appears in many a reflection upon the folly of
war and the sufferings it entails upon the people. The ideas he
stood for were more clearly expressed, however, in such works as his
philosophical poems; Discourses upon Man,' an imitation of Pope's
Essay on Man’; and his Elements of the Philosophy of Newton. '
His increasing popularity compelled even the court to grant him
recognition. In 1745 he was appointed historiographer of France, in
1746 he was elected a member of the French Academy, and in the
same year made by the King a gentleman of his bedchamber. This
constituted him a member of the nobility.
His favor at court lasted but a short time, however. He had soon
to hide in the residence of his friend, the Duchesse du Maine, where
he wrote his first philosophical tales, Zadig' and Micromegas);
new vehicles for the ideas that had already been expressed in the
(Henriade,' the Philosophical Letters,' the Charles XII. ,' etc.
Madame du Châtelet's death (1749) brought about a great change
in his life. After a short stay in Paris he accepted an invitation
from King Frederick II. of Prussia, who had since 1736 been one of
his regular correspondents, and who had for years begged him to
take up his residence at the Prussian court. Voltaire lived at Berlin
and Potsdain about three years, the most important event in which
was his publication of the Age of Louis XIV. ? ; a historical work
which he had been perfecting for upwards of twenty years, and
which was received by the public as no historical work had ever
been. Even to-day it retains its rank as one of the most interest-
ing and one of the broadest books of history ever written. To his
contemporaries, who knew only the dreariest compilations of literary
hacks and pedants, it was a revelation of what history could be.
Voltaire did not simply narrate, he passed judgment; though un-
doubtedly prejudiced in favor of Louis XIV. , he severely censured
his love of war and expenditure and his terrible religious fanaticism.
His information, which he had collected with the utmost industry,
and made use of with the greatest candor, was extensive and remark-
ably accurate for the time.
Had he done nothing else in Berlin, he and Frederick might have
remained good friends. But he mercilessly ridiculed another French-
man, the learned Maupertuis, whom Frederick had made president of
## p. 15453 (#403) ##########################################
VOLTAIRE
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>
-
the Berlin Academy; and this, joined to several transactions in which
Voltaire showed himself remarkably indiscreet, and also more rapa-
cious than was consistent with self-respect, led to an estrangement
between the two men, who had originally met as the warmest of
friends. In regard to Maupertuis, however, it must be said that Vol-
taire was entirely in the right; for his pamphlet against his compa-
triot, the Diatribe of Doctor Akakia,' was simply one of the writings
in which he defended a young Swiss servant named Koenig against
an unjust persecution, of which Maupertuis was the sole author.
He left Berlin in 1753, and returned to France. On his way there
he had been arrested in Frankfort, at the request of Frederick, and
made to undergo without cause the most humiliating treatment. In
France he spent nearly two years a homeless wanderer. King Louis
XV. would not allow him in Paris. He saw safety nowhere else than
in Switzerland, and finally settled there, near the lake of Geneva. A
few years later (1758) he acquired the domains of Ferney and Tour-
nay,-- situated in France, but very near Geneva,— which he made a
kind of little kingdom of his own, and where he spent the last twenty
years of his life (1758–1778).
There he was soon acknowledged the intellectual centre of Eu-
rope. He was untiring in his activity; and feeling better protected
against the blows of autocracy, he displayed more energy than ever
in his fight for human freedom. The most important works belong-
ing to the last period of his life are his “Essay on Manners,' - a work
on Universal History, especially from the death of Charlemagne (814)
to the accession of Louis XIV. (1643); and the Philosophical Dic-
tionary,' a collection of short articles written by him on all sorts of
subjects of a philosophical nature. It is in the latter work that are
found the passages in which Voltaire, in spite of the opinion held of
him by many people who declare him to have been an atheist, most
strongly expressed his faith in the existence of a God, Father of all
men; and used every argument at his disposal against atheism.
Literary activity did not fill all Voltaire's time at Ferney. His
fight against tyranny and fanaticism often took a different shape.
The best known incident of his life at that time relates to the Calas
family. It was a Protestant family, living at Toulouse in the south
of France. One of the young men of the family, Marc Antony Calas,
was one day found hanging dead from a beam in the ceiling. He
had committed suicide. But the fanatical mob at once accused his
father of having murdered him to prevent his becoming a Catholic.
The whole family was arrested; and the old man was quickly sen-
tenced to death, and executed with the utmost cruelty, while the
family property was confiscated to the State, and the daughters put
in a convent. The rest took refuge in the Protestant city of Geneva.
## p. 15454 (#404) ##########################################
15454
VOLTAIRE
When Voltaire heard of the case, he first thought, like the whole of
France, that old Calas was guilty. The idea that a full bench of
judges (there was no jury then in France) had caused an innocent
man to be put to death, found no lodgment in his mind. But after
he had heard the true story from the lips of young Donald Calas,
he determined to spare no effort to have the iniquitous judgment
reversed. He set to work at once, placing his large fortune at the
disposal of the unfortunate family, engaging lawyers, preparing briefs
for them, writing to men of power or influence, stirring public opin-
ion by the publication of pamphlets and broadsides of all forms and
descriptions, — such, for instance, as his (Treatise on Toleration,' the
most important of his writings on that subject. This campaign of
his lasted no less than two years; during which, he said, he never
smiled once without blaming himself for it. But success at last
rewarded his efforts. Public indignation rose to such a height that
the government of Louis XV. had to compel the Toulouse judges to
reopen the case; with the result that Calas's memory was fully exon-
erated, and his family indemnified for the tortures it had undergone.
In other cases - those of Sieven, of La Barre, of Count de Lally-
Tollendal, of Count de Morangier, of the serf peasantry of the Abbey
of Saint Claude in the Jura mountains – Voltaire displayed the same
energy on behalf of the victims of tyranny, not always but often with
the same success. Moreover, he never allowed the public to rest.
His short writings, most of them dealing with this great question of
human liberty, are numbered during that period by the hundred. It
must be added that in his struggle against fanaticism he was often
carried too far; and that a great many of the pamphlets he at that
time issued under assumed names, assail with unpardonable scurrility
all the creeds in which he did not believe. His attacks against
the Bible, and most of the dogmas of the Christian faith, nearly all
belong to these years. Of Jesus himself he always spoke with sympa-
thy and veneration.
But the people saw in him simply the great antagonist of tyran-
nical government and unequal privileges. They wanted to be allowed
to pay him honor. They wanted him in Paris. The government of
Louis XVI. had to allow him to visit the capital. He left Ferney on
February 6th, 1778, reaching Paris on the roth of the same month.
His arrival in the city took all the proportions of a triumph. Wher-
ever he went- in the streets, in the theatres, at the opera, at the
Academy — he was the recipient of the most enthusiastic ovations.
Everybody called on him. Benjamin Franklin brought to him his
grandson, asking for the boy the old man's blessing: “God and Lib-
erty, Voltaire said, in placing his hand over the head of the great
American's grandson.
(
## p. 15455 (#405) ##########################################
VOLTAIRE
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All this was too much excitement for a man who was over eighty-
three years old. It finally told on him. He had to take to his bed;
and he died on the 30th of May, not quite four months after leaving
Ferney.
As a writer, it is somewhat difficult to-day to assign to Voltaire
his exact rank. He was primarily a man of action. He wrote with
a purpose. He wished to effect a transformation of the public mind;
and the high value of what he wrote, its adaptation to the end he
had in view, is shown by the results which were achieved by him.
His greatest gifts were clearness of statement and vividness of illus-
tration. His many-sidedness has never been surpassed. It must be
recognized, however, that he succeeded in prose work better than in
1
!
verse.
His complete works are perhaps more bulky than those of any
other writer. This is what made him say, "A man does not ride to
immortality with a load of one hundred volumes. ” Some of the
editions of his works indeed number as many as ninety-two volumes.
The most authoritative ones, though, — those of Kehl (1784-89), of
Benchot (Paris: 1829-1839), and Moland (Paris: 1875–1884), — number
respectively seventy-two, seventy-two, and fifty-two volumes.
Poetry fills many of these. There are first his dramatic works:
about twenty tragedies and a dozen comedies. Strange to say, witty
as he was, he never wrote an entertaining comedy.
But he was
highly gifted in tragedy. In Brutus,' in Zaïre,' in Alzire,' in Ma-
homet,' in Mérope,' in “Tancrède,' are to be found pathetic scenes
which justify the great applause with which they were received.
Voltaire, however, cannot be considered one of the great dramatists
of the world. He lacked power of concentration; he lacked the art
of forgetting himself and living out, in his mind, the life of his char-
acters: so that his dramas always present to us something artificial.
And besides, he did not dare to free himself from the tyranny of the
rules of classical tragedy as they had been stated in the preceding
century.
His epic poem, the “Henriade,' is a fine piece of narrative, but
on the whole somewhat cold. Still, for fully a hundred years it was
considered in France a great epic. Every educated Frenchman could
recite from memory hundreds of its lines. The people were
ried away by the generous sentiments of the work, which appealed
a good deal less to posterity after the victory for which Voltaire had
fought had been finally secured by the triumph of the French Revo-
lution.
In light verse Voltaire excelled, and his philosophical poems also
deserve high esteem. Among the latter must be especially mentioned
the (Discourses upon Man’; the Poem on the Disaster at Lisbon,'
car-
## p. 15456 (#406) ##########################################
15456
VOLTAIRE
on the occasion of an earthquake which destroyed thousands of lives;
and the Poem on Natural Law,' a eulogy on Natural Religion.
Once at least, unhappily, Voltaire put his powers of verse compo-
sition to a use wholly unworthy of his genius, and even disgraceful.
This was in his poem on Joan of Arc, — a scurrilous and decidedly dull
production, in which, in trying to ridicule the idea that the pseudo
mystics of his time entertained of the heroic Maid of Orléans, he
allowed himself to befoul even the chaste heroine of patriotism her-
self.
His chief glory as a writer, though, rests upon his prose works, of
which this first must be said: that every line in them may be quoted
as a model of perfect, clear, lucid, quick French style. His clearness
of thought, and, thanks to his knowledge of the exi. -t value of words,
his precision of statement, cannot be surpassed.
In historical writing, his three master works — the History of
Charles XII. , King of Sweden, The Age of Louis XIV. ,' and the
(Essay on Manners'-effected a revolution. They taught readers that
other things were worth knowing of our ancestors' lives besides wars,
battles, sieges, diplomatic negotiations, and feuds of royalty. He
called their attention to the lives of the common people, and to the
philosophical meaning of historical events. He thus made history a
vehicle of his ideas relating to the improvement in the condition of
mankind.
He did the same thing in his tales, which are delightful reading
when they are not too licentious, as is sometimes the case. Of
course Candide' is no fit reading, except for people whose taste
and morals have been strengthened against the danger of corruption.
Others, like (Zadig,' (Micromégas,' (The Man with Forty Coins,'
Jeannot and Colin,' are little gems that are unsurpassed in their
kind.
For his views of philosophy and sociology the reader must turn
to the Philosophical Letters and the Philosophical Dictionary
There, as well as in hundreds of shorter productions, which are col-
lected in his works under the comprehensive title of Miscellanies,'
the real Voltaire appears, more than anywhere else. There we dis-
cover the weapons which he so effectively used for the performance
of his life work. A great deal of what is found in these collections
would no doubt, in an age like ours, have appeared in daily, weekly,
or monthly periodicals. But there was no free press, or any press
at all deserving of the name, in France in the eighteenth century.
There was — Voltaire knew it by his own experience no freedom
of utterance, under penalty of imprisonment in the Bastille. This
is why most of these works, whatever their size, were published
under assumed names and as separate publications. Combined with
## p. 15457 (#407) ##########################################
VOLTAIRE
15457
Voltaire's masterly strategy in the Calas and other similar affairs;
and with what we know of his wonderful eloquence in conversation,
they show that under another system of government Voltaire would
have been wonderful as a journalist, parliamentary orator, and polit-
ical leader. But he might not have achieved such great results for
mankind as he did, having to fight for freedom when freedom was
not yet in existence.
No one who wishes to know Voltaire should fail to acquaint him-
self with his correspondence. As a letter-writer he is unsurpassed,
and his correspondence covers a period of over sixty years, of the
most interesting in the history of mankind. We possess over ten
thousand letters, written either by or to him; and this represents,
very likely, only a small part of the epistolary activity of this ex-
traordinary man.
Adoljihre Whu
THE IRREPRESSIBLE KING
From the History of Charles XII. , King of Sweden)
T°
COMPLETE the misfortunes of Sweden, her King persisted in
remaining at Demotica, and still lived on the hope of aid
from Turkey which he was never to receive.
Ibrahim-Molla, the haughty vizier who decreed the war against
the Muscovites, against the wish of the sultan's favorite, was suf-
focated between two doors. The place of vizier had become so
dangerous that no one dared fill it; it remained vacant for six
months: at last the favorite, Ali Coumourgi, took the title. Then
all the hopes of the King of Sweden were dashed: he knew
Coumourgi the better because that schemer had served him when
their interests accorded with his own.
He had been eleven months at Demotica, buried in idleness
and neglect; this extreme inertia, following the most violent exer-
tions, had at last given him the malady that he feigned. All
Europe believed him dead; the council of regency at Stockholm
heard no news of him. The senate came in a body to entreat
his sister, Princess Ulrica Eleonora, to assume the regency during
his prolonged absence. She accepted it; but when she saw that
the senate would constrain her to make peace with the Czar
Peter the Great, and with the King of Denmark, who were
XXV1-967
## p. 15458 (#408) ##########################################
15458
VOLTAIRE
a
attacking Sweden on all sides, she, rightly thinking that her
brother would never consent, resigned her office, and sent to
Turkey a detailed account of the affair.
The King received the packet from his sister at Demotica.
His inborn spirit of despotism made him forget that formerly
Sweden had been free, and that the senate had governed the
realm conjointly with the kings. He regarded this body as a
troop of servants who aspired to rule the house in their master's
absence; and wrote them that if they pretended to govern, he
would send them one of his boots to convey his orders!
To forestall therefore these supposed attempts to defy his
authority in Sweden, and to defend his country, -as he hoped
nothing further from the Ottoman Porte, and could count only
on himself,- he informed the grand vizier that he wished to
depart, and to return home by way of Germany.
M. Désaleurs, the French ambassador, who had taken the
affairs of Sweden in hand, made the request in his own person.
“Very good,” said the vizier to Count Désaleurs: did I not
rightly say that before the year was out, the King of Sweden
would ask leave to depart? Tell him to go or stay, as he
chooses; but let him come to a decision, and fix the day of his
departure, lest he plunge us a second time into the embarrass-
ment he caused us at Bender. ”
Count Désaleurs softened this harsh message to the King.
The day was set; but Charles wished, before leaving Turkey,
to display the pomp of a great king, although he lived in the
squalor of a fugitive. He gave to Grothusen the title of ambas-
sador extraordinary, and sent him to take leave in due form at
Constantinople, followed by eighty persons all superbly attired.
The secret springs which he touched to obtain the money for
this outlay were more humiliating than the embassy was mag-
nificent. Count Désaleurs lent the King forty thousand pieces;
Grothusen had agents in Constantinople, who borrowed of a Jew
at fifty per cent. interest a thousand pieces, a hundred thousand
pieces of an English merchant, a thousand francs of a Turk.
Thus were brought together the means of playing before the
divan the brilliant comedy of the Swedish embassy. Grothusen
received all the honors that the Porte is wont to show ambassa-
dors extraordinary on their day of audience. The purpose of all
this performance was to obtain money from the grand vizier;.
but that minister was inexorable.
## p. 15459 (#409) ##########################################
VOLTAIRE
15459
Grothusen proposed to borrow a million from the Porte: the
vizier answered dryly that his master knew how to give when
he pleased, and that it was beneath his dignity to lend; that the
King would be abundantly furnished with whatever was neces-
sary for his journey, in a manner worthy of the giver; perhaps
the Porte would even make him some present in uncoined gold,
but he must not count upon it.
At last, on the ist of October, 1714, the King of Sweden
started on his journey: a grand chamberlain with six Turkish
officers came to escort him from the castle of Demirtash, where
he had passed several days; he was presented in the name of
the Sultan with a large tent of scarlet embroidered in gold, a
sabre with precious stones set in the hilt, and eight perfect Arab
steeds, with superb saddles and spurs of massive silver. Let
history condescend to observe that the Arab groom in charge
related their genealogy to the King: this is a long-established
custom with these people, who seem to pay far more attention
to the high breeding of horses than of men; and perhaps not
altogether without reason, since animals that receive care and are
without mixture never degenerate.
Sixty chariots filled with all sorts of provisions, and three
hundred horses, formed the procession. The Turks, to show
greater regard for their guest, made him advance by brief
stages; but this respectful rate of speed exasperated the King.
He rose during the journey at three o'clock in the morning,
according to his custom; as soon as he was dressed he himself
awoke the chamberlain and the officers, and ordered the march
resumed in complete darkness. Turkish conventionality was dis-
turbed by this new way of traveling; but the King enjoyed the
discomfort of the Turks, and said that he was avenging in a
measure the affair of Bender.
Arrived on the borders of Germany, the King of Sweden
learned that the Emperor had ordered him to be received with
suitable magnificence in all lands under his authority; the towns
and villages where the sergeants had marked out his route in
advance made preparations to receive him. All these people
looked forward with impatience to seeing the extraordinary man
whose victories and misfortunes, whose least actions and very
repose, had made such a stir in Europe and in Asia. But Charles
had no wish to wade through all this pomp, nor to furnish a spec-
tacle as the prisoner of Bender; he had even determined never
## p. 15460 (#410) ##########################################
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VOLTAIRE
to re-enter Stockholm without bringing better fortunes. “I have
left,” he remarked to his intimates, “my dressing-gown and slip-
pers at Stockholm; I wish to buy no others till I return there. "
When he reached Tergowitz on the Transylvanian frontier,
after bidding farewell to his Turkish escort he assembled his
suite in a barn; and told them all to take no trouble for his per-
son, but to make their way to Stralsund in Pomerania, on the
Baltic Sea, about three hundred leagues from the place where
they were.
He took with him only Düring, and gayly left all his suite
plunged in astonishment, terror, and sadness. He used a black
perruque for a disguise, as he always wore his own hair, put on
a hat embroidered with gold, a rough gray coat and a blue cloak,
took the name of a German officer, and made a rapid journey on
horseback with his traveling companion.
“Lo where decked in a conqueror's spoils Marcellus, my son,
Strides from the war! How he towers o'er all of the warrior train!
## p. 15438 (#388) ##########################################
15438
VIRGIL
«When Rome reels with the shock of the wild invaders' alarm,
He shall sustain her state. From his war-steed's saddle his arm
Carthage and rebel Gaul shall destroy, and the arms of the slain
Victor a third time hang in his father Quirinus's fane. ”
Then Æneas,- for near him a youth seemed ever to pace,
Fair, of an aspect princely, with armor of glittering grace,
Yet was his forehead joyless, his eye cast down as in grief, —
“Who can it be, my father, that walks at the side of the chief ?
Is it his son, or perchance some child of his glorious race
Born from remote generations? And hark, how ringing a cheer
Breaks from his comrades round! What a noble presence is here!
Though dark night with her shadow of woe floats over his face! »
Answer again Anchises began with a gathering tear:-
“Ask me not, O my son, of thy children's infinite pain!
Fate one glimpse of the boy to the world will grant, and again
Take him from life. Too puissant methinks to immortals on high
Rome's great children had seemed, if a gift like this from the sky
Longer had been vouchsafed! What wailing of warriors bold
Shall from the funeral plain to the War-god's city be rolled!
What sad pomp thine eyes will discern, what pageant of woe,
When by his new-made tomb thy waters, Tiber, shall now!
Never again such hopes shall a youth of thy lineage, Troy,
Rouse in his great forefathers of Latium! Never a boy
Nobler pride shall inspire in the ancient Romulus-land!
Ah, for his filial love! for his old-world faith! for his hand
Matchless in battle! Unharmed what foemen had offered to stand
Forth in his path, when charging on foot for the enemy's ranks,
Or when plunging the spur in his foam-flecked courser's flanks!
Child of a nation's sorrow! if thou canst baffle the Fates'
Bitter decrees; and break for a while their barrier gates,
Thine to become Marcellus! I pray thee, bring me anon
Handfuls of lilies, that I bright flowers may strew on my son,
Heap on the shade of the boy unborn these gifts at the least,
Doing the dead, though vainly, the last sad service. ”
Translation of Sir Charles Bowen.
## p. 15439 (#389) ##########################################
15439
MELCHIOR DE VOGUÉ
(1848-)
BY GRACE KING
-
He Vicomte Eugène Melchior de Vogüé, born at Nice, February
25th, 1848, is the leader, to characterize him in the most
summary way, in the reactionary movement which has been
the historic event of French literature during the last quarter of the
century. He was the precursor of the movement, the evangelist of
it, before it found official expression in literature; when, in the day
of national misfortune and national need, the eyes of serious French-
men were opened to the slough of sensuality, which, draining through
their literature and art into their life and manners, had diseased
their inorality and enervated their will. Various names, when the
reaction first stirred thought, were essayed to define or describe the
movement, — such as Neo-Christian, and Spiritualization of Thought;
it has been called Fiesolist, and likened to the Pre-Raphaelite move-
ment in England: but as time progresses, any sectarian class or
period appellation seems to be too narrow for what is essentially a
national evolution, a patriotic as well as a literary renaissance. More
than any other man in French literature, M. de Vogüé has been the
medium to express the broad nationality and Catholicity of the new
birth; and it would be hardly too much praise to say that in the
clear-sighted conservation of religion and politics, in his life and
works, he typified it.
On the first of January, 1890, in an open New-Year's letter « To
Those who are Twenty Years Old,” — that is, to those who were born
during the Franco-Prussian war,— he gives the keynote of his life
and works: «All who are capable of it owe to our country mental,
more imperiously even than military, service. ” Twenty years before,
he, a young soldier, in that crucial period just past his majority, was
enduring the moral and physical suffering of defeat, the humiliation
of prospective national and political annihilation. But he relates how
the light shone before him on his road to Damascus:
«It is now nearly twenty years ago that the truth made itself known in
a food to the one who writes these lines, as to many others,— to all those
who were being carried along the road to Germany on the night of the first
and second of September, 1870. The miserable procession was descending
the slopes that lay between Bazeilles and Douzy. Below us the bivouac fires
of the conquerors starred the valley of the Meuse. From the field of blood
where were camped the hundred thousand men whom we thought sleeping,
## p. 15440 (#390) ##########################################
15440
MELCHIOR DE VOGUÉ
worn out with their victory, there arose upon the air one strong, one single
voice from the hundred thousand breasts. They sang he hymn of Luther.
The solemn prayer spread over the whole horizon, it filled the heavens,
as far as there were fires -- Germans. Far along in the night we heard it:
it was so grand, so majestic, that not one of us could help thrilling with awe;
even those, who, crushed by suffering and fatigue, were being driven out of
what had been France,-- even they forgot their grief for a moment in the
unwelcome emotion. More than one of us, young as we were, and unripened
by reflection, saw clearly in that moment what power it was that had van-
quished us: it was not the girdle of steel cannon, nor the weight of regiments;
it was the one superior soul, made up of all those different souls, steeped in
one Divine national faith, firmly convinced that behind their cannon,
God was
marching with them at the side of their old King. ”
« Methods of instruction and military training,” he exclaims, «Krupp can-
non and Mauser guns - nothing but accidents, all those things! Accidental
also the sagacity of a Moltke, and of his lieutenants. What made these in-
struments terrible? The serious submissive soul of the people who used them!
((
((
From military service and imprisonment, Vogüé passed into what
was intended as his career, — diplomacy; and was made attaché to the
French embassy at Constantinople. Traveling through the East -
Palestine, Syria, Egypt -- among the aged monuments of human effort,
the echoes of a vanished civilization, truth again came to him in a
flood of new ideas: “History appeared to him not as a corpse to be
dissected, a tomb of the Past to be explored, but as humanity itself, —
alive, present, vital; a drama to be seen with one's own eyes, felt in
one's own veins; . a thing of himself, of his brothers, of his
country. ” Picturesqueness of aspect, memories recalled of distant
ages, visions, intuitions, dreams,— these are the things of greatest
interest to me,” he says frankly; in other words, the predominance of
idea over fact, of the soul of the race over the soul of the individual.
His letters written in the first glow of these illuminations from the
East, and published in the Revue des Deux Mondes, made Vogüé's
name known in the literary world of the day. From Constantinople
he was transferred to St. Petersburg, where he remained several
years; years of fruitful literary activity, his labors — Russian stories,
and studies of Russian life - enriching not merely the thought and lit-
erature of his own country, but of Europe and America. The door of
Russian literature, opened by Mérimée, had swung to again. Vogüé
has propped it open; and the great stream of what he calls “the
new realism pleading the cause of humanity,” that poured through
its pages upon the arid mockery and materialism of French letters,
was a divine irrigation upon desiccated seed. In the light of the har-
vest that arose therefrom in the literature of the world, it would seem
impossible to do full justice to the importance of this one benefit
conferred by Vogüé upon his fellow-men, without accepting his own
belief that literature is a mission, not a profession.
## p. 15441 (#391) ##########################################
MELCHIOR DE VOGUÉ
15441
a
con-
The Exhibition of 1889 has been generally adopted as
venient date for the manifestation the literary reaction in France,
and Vogüé's eloquent article upon it as its manifesto. For him the
Exhibition was before all a problem of moral significance, an awak-
enment of 'energies in a people restored to their consciousness of
self. “Let us hope,” he concludes, that science will one day reveal
the Central Motor, the motor whence are derived the sometimes
conflicting applications of power. We shall then learn that there is
.
not found the transmission of the sovereign energy,—that there the
principle itself stands condemned. The laws of the outward universe
are but the reflex of the moral world within; and the universal force
once adequately distributed in its proper channel will inspire the
human heart for all the purposes of human life. In this new order
of things, Force must regain its ancient name; with us, as with the
Romans, it must be called Virtue. We may find at last, that in truth
all metamorphoses of Force are but the transmutations of Virtue. ”
The following extract from an article on the Neo-Christian move-
ment in France, written by M. de Vogüé for Harper's Magazine, is
the most authentic word upon it and his connection with it:-
“Whatever may be the effective result of the Neo-Christian crises, they
will require a long time to come to a head; and when the religious idea has
conquered the cultivated classes, it will have to reconquer by a slow process
of infiltration the people at large, whom M. Taine has shown as returning to
paganism. Popular beliefs have persisted obstinately beneath the unbelief
of higher spheres, and yielded only gradually to the preaching of incredulity.
They will be born again with the same slowness, as a consequence of preach-
ing in the opposite sense.
We are in the presence of a nebula which
is forming and wandering in the celestial space. The Creator always knows
the hour and the place which he has marked for the condensation of this
nebula into the solidity and brightness of an organized world. However
imperfect and vague the nebula may be, men of good will prefer it to the
gloom from which we are issuing. They are of opinion that the search after
the ideal is a great sign of the raising up of France, where everything was
on the point of sinking into gross realism,- both characters and minds, both
public morality and intellectual productions. Those who have been the arti-
sans of the present movement have the right to think that they have not
lost their day's work; and since the writer of these pages has been often
mocked for the part he has taken in the movement, may he be here allowed
to claim openly his share in it. ”
XXVI–966
Grace Tug
## p. 15442 (#392) ##########################################
15442
MELCHIOR DE VOGUÉ
DEATH OF WILLIAM I. OF GERMANY
W".
Let us
milliAM I. lies beneath the dome in the centre of the cold
bare edifice in which the Lutherans of Prussia pray. In
the empty temple there is only death and God- unless
those four statues with fixed gaze, as rigid beneath their armor,
as immovable as he over whom they watch, be men.
suppose -- the impossible - a stranger ignorant of the whole his-
tory of our times; he visits this monument, raises the military
cloak, and asks who is this officer who sleeps here in the uniform
of the First Regiment of the Grenadier Guards. Let us suppose
-again the impossible — that one of these fixities should open
his mouth in reply, and simply repeat what his schoolmaster
had taught him of the Emperor's life. The ignorant visitor would
smile at these fantastic words: he would think the sergeant was
reciting some marvelous fable of old Germany. For the real of
to-day will become the marvelous of to-morrow; future ages will
be found admiring but incredulous, as we now are for that which
was the real in the olden times: for we do not know how to
look at the dream moment in which fate makes us live; habit
and the use of each day blind our moral sight.
That which the soldier would have said to the stranger has
been repeated to satiety for a week past. The history of Will-
iam I. has been given in summary in all the papers, given in de-
tail in books which are in everybody's hands. There is nothing
for us to add; and if there were, should we have the power to
do it? To dwell upon certain pages, the most necessary, the hand
would tremble and the eye no longer see with clearness. A few
words will suffice to recall the events of that long life, before we
essay to judge it. Born in the decline of the other century,-
days already so far distant from us that they are already the days
of our ancestors,- a little cadet in a little State, this child of
feeble health grew up on the steps of a crumbling throne. His
eyes opened to see increasing upon the country and upon the
world the oppressive shadow of Napoleon; they learned to weep
over his country cut into pieces, over the agony of a mother a
fugitive and mendicant in her own domains; his cradle is tossed
about among the baggage of defeated armies: upon leaving this
cradle he is dressed in the clothes of a soldier, to replace those
whom the incessant war around him has mowed down; hussar,
## p. 15443 (#393) ##########################################
MELCHIOR DE VOGUÉ
15443
Uhlan, cornet, his little uniforms change as do the swaddling-
clothes of other children; as soon as he can hold a weapon, at
fifteen
years
of
age, he is thrown into the conflict: and this is
at the hour of fortune's turn against us; the reflux of Europe
throws him upon France with the pack of kings and princes
called together for the quarry: he fights — this living one of a
week ago - amid those phantoms vanished into the depths of
history; at the side of Blücher, Schwartzenberg, Barclay; against
Oudinot and Victor: he enters Paris, and he probably dreams
one of those foolish dreams of first youth, as did every officer
of Napoleon's time; he sees himself — the Prussian captain, sud-
denly promoted generalissimo — taking as his share the glorious
city, deciding upon the fate of the captive Emperor: and no
doubt he laughs over his dream on waking; for the world is
tired of war,- universal peace condemns the soldier to repose.
William re-enters obscurity for a long time; his life disappears
like those long rivers whose course we ignore between their
source and their mouth, where they change name: he reappears
a half-century later; at the moment where all generally ends
with old men, he takes up the crown from the altar of Königs-
berg, and finding it too narrow for his head, he reforges it by
sword-strokes over the fire of battles for seven prodigious years;
he extends his kingdom as quickly and as far as the tenfold
increased reach of his shells; he makes of his puny hereditary
guard-house the vastest barracks that exist on the globe. After
trying his strength on a defenseless neighbor, he fells with one
hand the Holy Roman Empire, with the other the French power.
He no longer counts his victories,- armies taken in nets, kings
swept away before him: a second Napoleon, prisoner at the door
of his tent, recalls to him the fall of the first which happened
under his eye; and the old dream of the young captain is sur-
passed, when, encamped before a Paris surrounded by his troops
and bombarded by his cannon, in the palace of Louis XIV. , where
his camp bed is placed, the princes of Germany bring the impe-
rial crown to the new Cæsar. It would seem that this septuage-
narian needs only to end in this apotheosis. But long days of
glory and happiness are still reserved for him; while below him
all other thrones change occupants, he remains incontestably the
chief and patriarch of all kings, dictating to them his wishes,
calling them by a nod to his court. His gorged eagle soars
tranquilly above all reach; God protects him, he is invulnerable;
-
## p. 15444 (#394) ##########################################
15444
MELCHIOR DE VOGÜÉ
4
twice assassins strike and twice he is healed, at an age when a
mere nothing kills. People grow accustomed to think him im-
mortal, like his predecessor Barbarossa. Death grows impatient
and prowls timidly about his chamber, but dares not strike; each
morning is seen again the familiar head straight and smiling at
the historic window, where he is interrogated to know whether
nations will be permitted to live that day in peace. He is said
to be ill: the following morning he holds a review; convokes a
congress; goes to his frontiers to preside at an interview of
sovereigns: he is said to be dead, and the world, told of his end,
refuses to believe it. It is hardly longer ago than yesterday that
the people were convinced that the Emperor of Germany, van-
quished at last, slowly overcome by the eternal sleep, had finally
submitted to the common law and consented to die.
At this hour the judgments of men are indifferent to him.
Their praise is worth just so much as those brilliant orders
pinned to the tunic of death; just so much as the wax, the flow-
ers, that die on his coffin. The Emperor is before his God. He
meets accusing witnesses, many and redoubtable. It would be
presumption to seek to divine the sentence of the Sole Judge,
who alone has the right to pronounce it. Let us hope for him
who sued for grace yesterday, as well as for all of us, that man
not
mean that there are many. There is but one: but being infi-
nite intelligence, he manifests himself under different aspects as
diverse as our needs; he measures himself to the extent of our
vision; being infinite justice and mercy, he holds a soul to ac-
count only for the manifestation made.
The Emperor has gone forth through the Brandenburg
gate; kings and princes have abandoned him, the people have
è
dispersed, his escort has broken ranks. The Emperor continues
alone through the Alley of Victory. He passes along the foot
of a tower. We know of what it is made, - this fateful tower of
bronze; the cannon still show their mute mouths jutting forth
over the periphery in symmetric crowns; their souls are prisoners
in the melted
They have waited long, these servitors
of death, for William; they knew that death loved to change his
trophies: they watch him as he passes. The horses hurry their
steps toward Charlottenburg. Do they fear that in the solitary
alleys of the forest, in the mournful fog of the winter's day,
another cortége will form to replace the princely escort which no
Armenia
mass.
## p. 15445 (#395) ##########################################
MELCHIOR DE VOGUÉ
15445
longer follows the car ? A cortège of phantoms waits its chance
in the shadow of the heavy pyramid from which it has come
forth. Innumerable spectres: young men mutilated, mothers in
mourning, every form of suffering and misery; and princes too,
but despoiled, without diadems, led by an old blind king, who
has gathered them up on all the roads of exile to come, the last
to testify — the last of all, on the edge of the imperial tomb-
to the other side of this glorious history. But why should we
call up imaginary phantoms? There was one only too real that
awaited the Emperor on the threshold of the mausoleum of Char-
lottenburg: destiny never devised a meeting more tragic. For
one instant he appeared behind the window-panes of the pal-
ace: for the first. and last time he saluted from afar the mortal
body of his father; his eyes followed it as it went to the bed
of rest of the Hohenzollerns. Then all vanished, - the fugitive
apparition which had reaped empire as it passed, and the dead
who slipped from the hands of his guards into the deep vault.
One last salvo from all the cannon around, dogs barking after
their masters, and the noise of his little day is finished.
Translated for 'A Library of the World's Best Literature,' by Grace King.
REALISTIC LITERATURE AND THE RUSSIAN NOVEL
City, in the great transports of passion; as the protagonist
, ;
in some very noble and very simple drama, in which the
actors divided among themselves certain rôles of virtue and
wickedness, happiness and suffering, - conformable to ideal and
absolute conceptions about a superior life, in which the soul of
man worked always to one end. In short, the classical man
was the one hero whom all primitive literatures considered alone
worthy of their attention. The action of this hero corresponded
to a group of ideas,— religious, monarchical, social, and moral,-
that furnished the foundation upon which the human family has
rested since its earliest attempts at organization. In magnifying
his hero for good or for evil, the classical poet was proposing a
model of what should or should not be, rather than an example of
what really existed. For a century, other views have insensibly
come to prevail: they have resulted in an art of observation more
## p. 15446 (#396) ##########################################
15446
MELCHIOR DE VOGUÉ
than of imagination,- an art which is supposed to represent life
as it is, in its entirety and in its complexity, and with the least
possible prejudice on the part of the artist. It takes man in the
ordinary conditions of life, characters from every-day routine,
small and changeable. Jealous of the rigorous logic of scientific
processes, the artists propose to inform us by a perpetual analy-
sis of sentiments and acts, much more than to move us by the
intrigue and spectacle of passions. Classical art imitated a being
who governs, punishes, rewards, chooses his favorites from a select
aristocracy, and imposes upon them his elegant conventions of
morality and language. The new art seeks to imitate nature in
its unconscious ableness, its moral indifferences, its absence of
choice; the triumph of the general over the individual, of the
crowd over the hero, of the relative over the absolute. It has
been called realistic, naturalistic; but would not democratic suffice
to define it ?
No: a view which stopped at this apparent literary root would
be too short-sighted. The change in political order (political
change) is only an episode in the universal and prodigious change
that is being accomplished in the whole world about us. Observe
for a century the work of the human mind in all its applications:
one would say that a legion of workmen had been busy in turn-
ing over, to replace upon its base, some enormous pyramid which
was leaning upon its apex. Man has begun again from the bot-
tom to explain the universe; and he perceives that the existence
of this universe, its greatness and its ills, proceed from an inces-
sant labor of the infinitely small. While institutions were return-
ing the government of the States to the multitude, science was
referring the government of the world to atoms. Everywhere
in the analysis of physical and moral phenomena, ancient causes
have been decomposed, or so to speak crumbled away: for the
simple sudden agents proceeding with great blows of power,
which once explained for us the revolutions of the globe, of his-
tory, of the soul, has been substituted the continual evolution of
infinitesimal and obscure life.
Is it necessary to insist
upon the application of these tendencies to practical life? Level-
ing of the classes, division of fortunes, universal suffrage, liber-
ties and servitudes on an equal footing before the judge, in the
barracks, at the school,- all the consequences of the principle are
summed up in this word Democracy, which is the watchword of
the times.
Literature, that written confession of society,
## p. 15447 (#397) ##########################################
MELCHIOR DE VOGUÉ
15447
could not remain a stranger to the general change of direction;
instinctively at first, then consciously, doctrinally, she adapted
her materials and her ideas to the new spirit. Her first essays
at reformation were uncertain and awkward: romanticism (we
must now acknowledge it) was a bastard production; it breathed
revolt. In reaction from the classical hero, it sought its sub-
jects by preference in the social depths: but, permeated still by
the classical spirit, the monsters it invented were its old heroes
turned wrong side out; its convicts, courtesans, beggars, were
even hollower windbags than the kings and princesses of earlier
times. The declamatory thesis had changed, but not the decla-
mation. The public soon grew tired of it. Writers were asked
for representations of the world more sincere, and more in con-
formity with the teachings of positive science, which was gaining
ground day by day: readers wanted to find some sentiment of
the complexity of life; beings, ideas, and the spirit of rationality
which in our day has replaced the taste for the absolute. Thus
realism was born.
Moral inspiration alone can make us
pardon realism for the hardness of its processes. When it studies
life with rigorous precision, when it unravels down to the mi-
nutest rootlets of our actions in the fatalities that cause them, it
responds to one of the exactions of our reason. But it deceives
our surest instinct when it voluntarily ignores that mystery which
subsists above and beyond rational explanation: the possible qual-
ity of the divine. I am willing that the realist should affirm
nothing of the unknown, but at least he should always tremble
on its threshold. Since he prides himself upon observing phe-
nomena without suggesting arbitrary interpretations of them, he
should accept this evident fact: the latent fermentation of the
evangelical spirit in the modern world. More than to any other
form of art the religious sentiment is indispensable to realism;
the sentiment that communicates to it the charity which it needs.
As realism does not recoil from the ugliness and misery of the
world, it should render them endurable by a perpetual pity.
Realism becomes odious the moment it ceases to be charitable.
Oh, I know that in assigning a moral end to the art of
writing I shall cause a smile among the adepts of the honor-
able doctrine of art for art's sake; I must confess that I do not
understand that doctrine.
To summarize my ideas of what realism should be: I seek
some general formula to express both its method and its power
## p. 15448 (#398) ##########################################
15448
MELCHIOR DE VOGUÉ
(
of creation. I find only one: it is very old, but I do not know
a better or a more scientific one, or one that comes closer to the
secret of all creation: “God made man out of the dust of the
ground. ” See how just the word is, how significant,--the dust!
Without prejudgment or contradiction of detail, it contains all
that we guess about the origin of life; it shows us those first
thrills of humid matter in which was formed and perfected the
slow series of organisms. Made out of the dust of the earth:
that is all that experimental science can know.
Yes, but
there is something else than experimental science; the dust of the
ground does not suffice to account for the mystery of life;
the formula must be completed to account for the duality of our
being: therefore the text adds, "And he breathed into him the
breath of life, and man became a living being. This breath,”
” “
drawn from the source of universal life, is the mind, spirit, the
sure and impenetrable element that moves us, infolds us, frus-
trates all our explanations, and without which they are insuffi-
cient. The dust of the earth: that is the positive knowledge that
we can obtain in a laboratory, in a clinic, about the universe,
about a man; it goes very far, but so long as the breath does
not intervene, a living soul cannot be created, for life begins only
where we cease to comprehend.
C
Translated for (A Library of the World's Best Literature) by Grace King.
## p. 15449 (#399) ##########################################
15449
VOLTAIRE
(1694-1778)
BY ADOLPHE COHN
OLTAIRE, whose real name was François Marie Arouet, is cer-
tainly the most influential of the numerous writers that
have been produced by France. He was born in Paris on
November 21st, 1694, and died in the same city on May 30th, 1778.
At the time of his birth Louis XIV. was still the absolute ruler of
France; no one dared to question his divine right to the crown, or to
resist his clearly expressed will. When he died, public opinion had
become so irresistible a power that King Louis XVI. had been com-
pelled, much gainst his desire, to assist the revolted colonies of North
America in their struggle against the English King; and that eleven
years later the French also determined to begin a revolution, the
object of which was to establish free and equal government over the
ruins of the old system. Of the transformation which had taken
place between the dates of 1694 and 1778, Voltaire had been the chief
artisan.
His family, like that of most of the great writers of France, be-
longed to the ranks of the middle class. His father had, as a notary
and as the confidential legal adviser of numerous influential families,
amassed a comfortable fortune; and occupied late in life an hon-
orable official position, which connected him with the highest court
of law in France, – the Parliament of Paris. His mother, Catherine
Daumars, was connected with several families of the nobility. He
received the best education which a French bourgeois could then
give to his son. His chief educators were the Jesuit Fathers,— in
whose best college, the College Louis-le-Grand, he received all his
early schooling - and a certain Abbé de Châteauneuf, a worldly abbé
of aristocratic birth, to whose care he had been intrusted by his
mother, whom he lost when only seven years of age. The abbé
made it his business to introduce his young charge into the most
aristocratic and witty, but withal, dissolute circles of French society.
The young man's wit and inborn charm of manners, his ease in com-
posing pleasing and light verses, his close attention whenever older
people spoke of whatever important events they had acted in or wit-
nessed, made him at once a very great favorite.
## p. 15450 (#400) ##########################################
15450
VOLTAIRE
Louis XIV. died in 1715, when young Arouet was just coming of
age. He had not published anything yet, but had already determined
to make a name for himself as a man of letters, and not simply to
increase the family's fortune as a law practitioner, according to his
father's desire. He already possessed more worldly experience than
a great many older men. A journey in Holland, which he had made
as secretary to the French ambassador there, Marquis de Château-
neuf,— and which had come abruptly to an end on account of a
somewhat pathetic love affair with a Protestant maiden, Mademoiselle
Olympe Dunoyer,— had enabled him to acquire a knowledge of what
was perhaps most interesting in Europe at that time: the republican
government of the Netherlands, and the society of Huguenot refugees
who had left France twenty or thirty years before rather than aban-
don their faith.
He was then ready to present to the public whatever ideas of his
he deemed sufficiently matured for publication. But he was soon to
discover, at his own expense, what is the meaning of absolute power,
and what a disturbing force it becomes in the hands of incompetent
rulers. The duties of royalty were then performed by the Duke
of Orleans, regent of France during the minority of his child cousin,
King Louis XV.
Able and witty, but without any principle of mo-
rality, the regent laid himself open to criticism of the sharpest kind;
and young Arouet was not the most merciful of his judges. Twice
the young man, on account of his freedom of utterance, received
peremptory orders to leave Paris and reside at some spot designated
by the government; a third time, for a Latin inscription which he
had written, and some French verses, the authorship of which he
was erroneously credited with, he was arrested and sent as a State
prisoner to the Bastille, where he remained nearly a year (1717-18).
A few months after the end of his imprisonment he suddenly became
famous. His tragedy of Edipus' had been performed with the great-
est success, and he was hailed as the legitimate syccessor of Corneille
and Racine (1718).
Several years followed of intense literary activity, during which
he gave a number of plays and composed numerous poems, two
of which for the first time presented some of the ideas with which
his name has become identified, — the 'Epistle to Urania,' which sets
forth some of the principles of natural religion, and the epic poem
which later, when more developed, became the Henriade. ' The lat-
ter work, of which King Henry IV. of France is the hero, is from
beginning to end an eloquent plea for religious toleration, and a no
less eloquent denunciation of religious fanaticism. Its most celebrated
passage is the narrative of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew's
night, related by Henry of Navarre to Queen Elizabeth.
>
## p. 15451 (#401) ##########################################
VOLTAIRE
15451
one
9
He was
soon sent to the Bastille again (1726), on account of a
quarrel with a disreputable young nobleman, the Chevalier de Rohan,
who had had Voltaire beaten almost to death by his servants. He
was released, however, a few days later, on a promise that he would
at once set out for England, where he resided a little over two years
(1726–28). These were for him years of study. He managed to
acquaint himself with the language, literature, institutions, and social
life of England, as few travelers have ever done in so short a time.
Before he left the country he succeeded in writing English very
creditably; as is shown by two essays that he published while there,
on the civil wars of France, the other on epic poetry. Their
object was to prepare the English public for the issuing of a new
and enlarged edition of his poem on Henry IV. , which was dedicated
to the Queen of England.
He carried back to France a small volume, the effect of which on
the reading public of continental Europe, but especially of France,
cannot be overestimated. It is a collection of twenty-four letters,
which were first published in an English translation with the title of
(Letters concerning the English Nation, and afterwards in France
under a different title, — Philosophical Letters. His object in this
work was to show to his countrymen that national peace, happiness,
and power, were not dependent upon the existence of such a gov-
ernment as they were living under. The main points to which he
called their attention were individual liberty, as protected by the
habeas corpus act; political liberty, as secured by the Magna Charta;
religious toleration, as demonstrated by the existence in the country
of numerous Christian denominations, living at peace with each other;
respect for men of letters, as shown by the high positions filled in
the State by such men as Joseph Addison and Matthew Prior; the
existence of an English literature, then all-but unknown in France,
which heard from him for the first tim the name of Shakespeare;
the existence of English philosophy with Locke, and of English
science with Sir Isaac Newton, whose theory of universal attraction
he popularized through years of untiring efforts; etc. No wonder
such a book was not very acceptable to the autocratic government of
France. Its publication was not authorized; an unauthorized edition
however appeared in 1734, and Voltaire, as the writer had come to
call himself since the performance of Edipus,' came near being sent
to the Bastille for the third time.
He was then a rich man. Influential friends had helped him to
invest his share of his father's estate partly in speculative ventures,
partly in military contracts. He lived in a somewhat grand style in
the château of Cirey, in Lorraine; which was the property of a great
admirer of his, the Marquise du Châtelet, who translated Newton's
Principia into French. He composed there a number of plays.
## p. 15452 (#402) ##########################################
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VOLTAIRE
(
(
He had already had, however, his greatest dramatic triumph with
(Zaire); a play in which, even more than in his Brutus,' we can dis-
cern the influence of Shakespeare. Among the plays that followed,
the most remarkable were Mahomet,' a plea against fanaticism,
which he dedicated to Pope Benedict XIV. ; and Alzire,' a new plea
for religious toleration, hardly less eloquent than the Henriade. He
had also published his first historical work, a history of Charles XII.
of Sweden; a marvelous piece of narrative, in which the philosophi-
cal historian already appears in many a reflection upon the folly of
war and the sufferings it entails upon the people. The ideas he
stood for were more clearly expressed, however, in such works as his
philosophical poems; Discourses upon Man,' an imitation of Pope's
Essay on Man’; and his Elements of the Philosophy of Newton. '
His increasing popularity compelled even the court to grant him
recognition. In 1745 he was appointed historiographer of France, in
1746 he was elected a member of the French Academy, and in the
same year made by the King a gentleman of his bedchamber. This
constituted him a member of the nobility.
His favor at court lasted but a short time, however. He had soon
to hide in the residence of his friend, the Duchesse du Maine, where
he wrote his first philosophical tales, Zadig' and Micromegas);
new vehicles for the ideas that had already been expressed in the
(Henriade,' the Philosophical Letters,' the Charles XII. ,' etc.
Madame du Châtelet's death (1749) brought about a great change
in his life. After a short stay in Paris he accepted an invitation
from King Frederick II. of Prussia, who had since 1736 been one of
his regular correspondents, and who had for years begged him to
take up his residence at the Prussian court. Voltaire lived at Berlin
and Potsdain about three years, the most important event in which
was his publication of the Age of Louis XIV. ? ; a historical work
which he had been perfecting for upwards of twenty years, and
which was received by the public as no historical work had ever
been. Even to-day it retains its rank as one of the most interest-
ing and one of the broadest books of history ever written. To his
contemporaries, who knew only the dreariest compilations of literary
hacks and pedants, it was a revelation of what history could be.
Voltaire did not simply narrate, he passed judgment; though un-
doubtedly prejudiced in favor of Louis XIV. , he severely censured
his love of war and expenditure and his terrible religious fanaticism.
His information, which he had collected with the utmost industry,
and made use of with the greatest candor, was extensive and remark-
ably accurate for the time.
Had he done nothing else in Berlin, he and Frederick might have
remained good friends. But he mercilessly ridiculed another French-
man, the learned Maupertuis, whom Frederick had made president of
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VOLTAIRE
15453
>
-
the Berlin Academy; and this, joined to several transactions in which
Voltaire showed himself remarkably indiscreet, and also more rapa-
cious than was consistent with self-respect, led to an estrangement
between the two men, who had originally met as the warmest of
friends. In regard to Maupertuis, however, it must be said that Vol-
taire was entirely in the right; for his pamphlet against his compa-
triot, the Diatribe of Doctor Akakia,' was simply one of the writings
in which he defended a young Swiss servant named Koenig against
an unjust persecution, of which Maupertuis was the sole author.
He left Berlin in 1753, and returned to France. On his way there
he had been arrested in Frankfort, at the request of Frederick, and
made to undergo without cause the most humiliating treatment. In
France he spent nearly two years a homeless wanderer. King Louis
XV. would not allow him in Paris. He saw safety nowhere else than
in Switzerland, and finally settled there, near the lake of Geneva. A
few years later (1758) he acquired the domains of Ferney and Tour-
nay,-- situated in France, but very near Geneva,— which he made a
kind of little kingdom of his own, and where he spent the last twenty
years of his life (1758–1778).
There he was soon acknowledged the intellectual centre of Eu-
rope. He was untiring in his activity; and feeling better protected
against the blows of autocracy, he displayed more energy than ever
in his fight for human freedom. The most important works belong-
ing to the last period of his life are his “Essay on Manners,' - a work
on Universal History, especially from the death of Charlemagne (814)
to the accession of Louis XIV. (1643); and the Philosophical Dic-
tionary,' a collection of short articles written by him on all sorts of
subjects of a philosophical nature. It is in the latter work that are
found the passages in which Voltaire, in spite of the opinion held of
him by many people who declare him to have been an atheist, most
strongly expressed his faith in the existence of a God, Father of all
men; and used every argument at his disposal against atheism.
Literary activity did not fill all Voltaire's time at Ferney. His
fight against tyranny and fanaticism often took a different shape.
The best known incident of his life at that time relates to the Calas
family. It was a Protestant family, living at Toulouse in the south
of France. One of the young men of the family, Marc Antony Calas,
was one day found hanging dead from a beam in the ceiling. He
had committed suicide. But the fanatical mob at once accused his
father of having murdered him to prevent his becoming a Catholic.
The whole family was arrested; and the old man was quickly sen-
tenced to death, and executed with the utmost cruelty, while the
family property was confiscated to the State, and the daughters put
in a convent. The rest took refuge in the Protestant city of Geneva.
## p. 15454 (#404) ##########################################
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VOLTAIRE
When Voltaire heard of the case, he first thought, like the whole of
France, that old Calas was guilty. The idea that a full bench of
judges (there was no jury then in France) had caused an innocent
man to be put to death, found no lodgment in his mind. But after
he had heard the true story from the lips of young Donald Calas,
he determined to spare no effort to have the iniquitous judgment
reversed. He set to work at once, placing his large fortune at the
disposal of the unfortunate family, engaging lawyers, preparing briefs
for them, writing to men of power or influence, stirring public opin-
ion by the publication of pamphlets and broadsides of all forms and
descriptions, — such, for instance, as his (Treatise on Toleration,' the
most important of his writings on that subject. This campaign of
his lasted no less than two years; during which, he said, he never
smiled once without blaming himself for it. But success at last
rewarded his efforts. Public indignation rose to such a height that
the government of Louis XV. had to compel the Toulouse judges to
reopen the case; with the result that Calas's memory was fully exon-
erated, and his family indemnified for the tortures it had undergone.
In other cases - those of Sieven, of La Barre, of Count de Lally-
Tollendal, of Count de Morangier, of the serf peasantry of the Abbey
of Saint Claude in the Jura mountains – Voltaire displayed the same
energy on behalf of the victims of tyranny, not always but often with
the same success. Moreover, he never allowed the public to rest.
His short writings, most of them dealing with this great question of
human liberty, are numbered during that period by the hundred. It
must be added that in his struggle against fanaticism he was often
carried too far; and that a great many of the pamphlets he at that
time issued under assumed names, assail with unpardonable scurrility
all the creeds in which he did not believe. His attacks against
the Bible, and most of the dogmas of the Christian faith, nearly all
belong to these years. Of Jesus himself he always spoke with sympa-
thy and veneration.
But the people saw in him simply the great antagonist of tyran-
nical government and unequal privileges. They wanted to be allowed
to pay him honor. They wanted him in Paris. The government of
Louis XVI. had to allow him to visit the capital. He left Ferney on
February 6th, 1778, reaching Paris on the roth of the same month.
His arrival in the city took all the proportions of a triumph. Wher-
ever he went- in the streets, in the theatres, at the opera, at the
Academy — he was the recipient of the most enthusiastic ovations.
Everybody called on him. Benjamin Franklin brought to him his
grandson, asking for the boy the old man's blessing: “God and Lib-
erty, Voltaire said, in placing his hand over the head of the great
American's grandson.
(
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VOLTAIRE
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All this was too much excitement for a man who was over eighty-
three years old. It finally told on him. He had to take to his bed;
and he died on the 30th of May, not quite four months after leaving
Ferney.
As a writer, it is somewhat difficult to-day to assign to Voltaire
his exact rank. He was primarily a man of action. He wrote with
a purpose. He wished to effect a transformation of the public mind;
and the high value of what he wrote, its adaptation to the end he
had in view, is shown by the results which were achieved by him.
His greatest gifts were clearness of statement and vividness of illus-
tration. His many-sidedness has never been surpassed. It must be
recognized, however, that he succeeded in prose work better than in
1
!
verse.
His complete works are perhaps more bulky than those of any
other writer. This is what made him say, "A man does not ride to
immortality with a load of one hundred volumes. ” Some of the
editions of his works indeed number as many as ninety-two volumes.
The most authoritative ones, though, — those of Kehl (1784-89), of
Benchot (Paris: 1829-1839), and Moland (Paris: 1875–1884), — number
respectively seventy-two, seventy-two, and fifty-two volumes.
Poetry fills many of these. There are first his dramatic works:
about twenty tragedies and a dozen comedies. Strange to say, witty
as he was, he never wrote an entertaining comedy.
But he was
highly gifted in tragedy. In Brutus,' in Zaïre,' in Alzire,' in Ma-
homet,' in Mérope,' in “Tancrède,' are to be found pathetic scenes
which justify the great applause with which they were received.
Voltaire, however, cannot be considered one of the great dramatists
of the world. He lacked power of concentration; he lacked the art
of forgetting himself and living out, in his mind, the life of his char-
acters: so that his dramas always present to us something artificial.
And besides, he did not dare to free himself from the tyranny of the
rules of classical tragedy as they had been stated in the preceding
century.
His epic poem, the “Henriade,' is a fine piece of narrative, but
on the whole somewhat cold. Still, for fully a hundred years it was
considered in France a great epic. Every educated Frenchman could
recite from memory hundreds of its lines. The people were
ried away by the generous sentiments of the work, which appealed
a good deal less to posterity after the victory for which Voltaire had
fought had been finally secured by the triumph of the French Revo-
lution.
In light verse Voltaire excelled, and his philosophical poems also
deserve high esteem. Among the latter must be especially mentioned
the (Discourses upon Man’; the Poem on the Disaster at Lisbon,'
car-
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VOLTAIRE
on the occasion of an earthquake which destroyed thousands of lives;
and the Poem on Natural Law,' a eulogy on Natural Religion.
Once at least, unhappily, Voltaire put his powers of verse compo-
sition to a use wholly unworthy of his genius, and even disgraceful.
This was in his poem on Joan of Arc, — a scurrilous and decidedly dull
production, in which, in trying to ridicule the idea that the pseudo
mystics of his time entertained of the heroic Maid of Orléans, he
allowed himself to befoul even the chaste heroine of patriotism her-
self.
His chief glory as a writer, though, rests upon his prose works, of
which this first must be said: that every line in them may be quoted
as a model of perfect, clear, lucid, quick French style. His clearness
of thought, and, thanks to his knowledge of the exi. -t value of words,
his precision of statement, cannot be surpassed.
In historical writing, his three master works — the History of
Charles XII. , King of Sweden, The Age of Louis XIV. ,' and the
(Essay on Manners'-effected a revolution. They taught readers that
other things were worth knowing of our ancestors' lives besides wars,
battles, sieges, diplomatic negotiations, and feuds of royalty. He
called their attention to the lives of the common people, and to the
philosophical meaning of historical events. He thus made history a
vehicle of his ideas relating to the improvement in the condition of
mankind.
He did the same thing in his tales, which are delightful reading
when they are not too licentious, as is sometimes the case. Of
course Candide' is no fit reading, except for people whose taste
and morals have been strengthened against the danger of corruption.
Others, like (Zadig,' (Micromégas,' (The Man with Forty Coins,'
Jeannot and Colin,' are little gems that are unsurpassed in their
kind.
For his views of philosophy and sociology the reader must turn
to the Philosophical Letters and the Philosophical Dictionary
There, as well as in hundreds of shorter productions, which are col-
lected in his works under the comprehensive title of Miscellanies,'
the real Voltaire appears, more than anywhere else. There we dis-
cover the weapons which he so effectively used for the performance
of his life work. A great deal of what is found in these collections
would no doubt, in an age like ours, have appeared in daily, weekly,
or monthly periodicals. But there was no free press, or any press
at all deserving of the name, in France in the eighteenth century.
There was — Voltaire knew it by his own experience no freedom
of utterance, under penalty of imprisonment in the Bastille. This
is why most of these works, whatever their size, were published
under assumed names and as separate publications. Combined with
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VOLTAIRE
15457
Voltaire's masterly strategy in the Calas and other similar affairs;
and with what we know of his wonderful eloquence in conversation,
they show that under another system of government Voltaire would
have been wonderful as a journalist, parliamentary orator, and polit-
ical leader. But he might not have achieved such great results for
mankind as he did, having to fight for freedom when freedom was
not yet in existence.
No one who wishes to know Voltaire should fail to acquaint him-
self with his correspondence. As a letter-writer he is unsurpassed,
and his correspondence covers a period of over sixty years, of the
most interesting in the history of mankind. We possess over ten
thousand letters, written either by or to him; and this represents,
very likely, only a small part of the epistolary activity of this ex-
traordinary man.
Adoljihre Whu
THE IRREPRESSIBLE KING
From the History of Charles XII. , King of Sweden)
T°
COMPLETE the misfortunes of Sweden, her King persisted in
remaining at Demotica, and still lived on the hope of aid
from Turkey which he was never to receive.
Ibrahim-Molla, the haughty vizier who decreed the war against
the Muscovites, against the wish of the sultan's favorite, was suf-
focated between two doors. The place of vizier had become so
dangerous that no one dared fill it; it remained vacant for six
months: at last the favorite, Ali Coumourgi, took the title. Then
all the hopes of the King of Sweden were dashed: he knew
Coumourgi the better because that schemer had served him when
their interests accorded with his own.
He had been eleven months at Demotica, buried in idleness
and neglect; this extreme inertia, following the most violent exer-
tions, had at last given him the malady that he feigned. All
Europe believed him dead; the council of regency at Stockholm
heard no news of him. The senate came in a body to entreat
his sister, Princess Ulrica Eleonora, to assume the regency during
his prolonged absence. She accepted it; but when she saw that
the senate would constrain her to make peace with the Czar
Peter the Great, and with the King of Denmark, who were
XXV1-967
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VOLTAIRE
a
attacking Sweden on all sides, she, rightly thinking that her
brother would never consent, resigned her office, and sent to
Turkey a detailed account of the affair.
The King received the packet from his sister at Demotica.
His inborn spirit of despotism made him forget that formerly
Sweden had been free, and that the senate had governed the
realm conjointly with the kings. He regarded this body as a
troop of servants who aspired to rule the house in their master's
absence; and wrote them that if they pretended to govern, he
would send them one of his boots to convey his orders!
To forestall therefore these supposed attempts to defy his
authority in Sweden, and to defend his country, -as he hoped
nothing further from the Ottoman Porte, and could count only
on himself,- he informed the grand vizier that he wished to
depart, and to return home by way of Germany.
M. Désaleurs, the French ambassador, who had taken the
affairs of Sweden in hand, made the request in his own person.
“Very good,” said the vizier to Count Désaleurs: did I not
rightly say that before the year was out, the King of Sweden
would ask leave to depart? Tell him to go or stay, as he
chooses; but let him come to a decision, and fix the day of his
departure, lest he plunge us a second time into the embarrass-
ment he caused us at Bender. ”
Count Désaleurs softened this harsh message to the King.
The day was set; but Charles wished, before leaving Turkey,
to display the pomp of a great king, although he lived in the
squalor of a fugitive. He gave to Grothusen the title of ambas-
sador extraordinary, and sent him to take leave in due form at
Constantinople, followed by eighty persons all superbly attired.
The secret springs which he touched to obtain the money for
this outlay were more humiliating than the embassy was mag-
nificent. Count Désaleurs lent the King forty thousand pieces;
Grothusen had agents in Constantinople, who borrowed of a Jew
at fifty per cent. interest a thousand pieces, a hundred thousand
pieces of an English merchant, a thousand francs of a Turk.
Thus were brought together the means of playing before the
divan the brilliant comedy of the Swedish embassy. Grothusen
received all the honors that the Porte is wont to show ambassa-
dors extraordinary on their day of audience. The purpose of all
this performance was to obtain money from the grand vizier;.
but that minister was inexorable.
## p. 15459 (#409) ##########################################
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15459
Grothusen proposed to borrow a million from the Porte: the
vizier answered dryly that his master knew how to give when
he pleased, and that it was beneath his dignity to lend; that the
King would be abundantly furnished with whatever was neces-
sary for his journey, in a manner worthy of the giver; perhaps
the Porte would even make him some present in uncoined gold,
but he must not count upon it.
At last, on the ist of October, 1714, the King of Sweden
started on his journey: a grand chamberlain with six Turkish
officers came to escort him from the castle of Demirtash, where
he had passed several days; he was presented in the name of
the Sultan with a large tent of scarlet embroidered in gold, a
sabre with precious stones set in the hilt, and eight perfect Arab
steeds, with superb saddles and spurs of massive silver. Let
history condescend to observe that the Arab groom in charge
related their genealogy to the King: this is a long-established
custom with these people, who seem to pay far more attention
to the high breeding of horses than of men; and perhaps not
altogether without reason, since animals that receive care and are
without mixture never degenerate.
Sixty chariots filled with all sorts of provisions, and three
hundred horses, formed the procession. The Turks, to show
greater regard for their guest, made him advance by brief
stages; but this respectful rate of speed exasperated the King.
He rose during the journey at three o'clock in the morning,
according to his custom; as soon as he was dressed he himself
awoke the chamberlain and the officers, and ordered the march
resumed in complete darkness. Turkish conventionality was dis-
turbed by this new way of traveling; but the King enjoyed the
discomfort of the Turks, and said that he was avenging in a
measure the affair of Bender.
Arrived on the borders of Germany, the King of Sweden
learned that the Emperor had ordered him to be received with
suitable magnificence in all lands under his authority; the towns
and villages where the sergeants had marked out his route in
advance made preparations to receive him. All these people
looked forward with impatience to seeing the extraordinary man
whose victories and misfortunes, whose least actions and very
repose, had made such a stir in Europe and in Asia. But Charles
had no wish to wade through all this pomp, nor to furnish a spec-
tacle as the prisoner of Bender; he had even determined never
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VOLTAIRE
to re-enter Stockholm without bringing better fortunes. “I have
left,” he remarked to his intimates, “my dressing-gown and slip-
pers at Stockholm; I wish to buy no others till I return there. "
When he reached Tergowitz on the Transylvanian frontier,
after bidding farewell to his Turkish escort he assembled his
suite in a barn; and told them all to take no trouble for his per-
son, but to make their way to Stralsund in Pomerania, on the
Baltic Sea, about three hundred leagues from the place where
they were.
He took with him only Düring, and gayly left all his suite
plunged in astonishment, terror, and sadness. He used a black
perruque for a disguise, as he always wore his own hair, put on
a hat embroidered with gold, a rough gray coat and a blue cloak,
took the name of a German officer, and made a rapid journey on
horseback with his traveling companion.
