George Saintsbury

“ Before the English visit Voltaire had been an elegant trifler, an adept in the forms of literature popular in French society, a sort of superior Dorat or Boufflers of earlier growth. He returned from that visit one of the foremost literary men in Europe, with views, if not profound or accurate, yet wide and acute on all les grands sujets, and with a solid stock of money. ”

“ But Voltaire's conduct was from the first Voltairian. He insisted on the consent of his own king, which was given without delay. But Frenchmen, always touchy on such a point, regarded Voltaire as something of a deserter; and it was not long before he bitterly repented his desertion, though his residence in Prussia lasted nearly three years. It was quite impossible that Voltaire and Frederick should get on together for long. Voltaire was not humble enough to be a mere butt, as many of Frederick's led poets were; he was not enough of a gentleman to hold his own place with dignity and discretion ”

“ Voltaire never dwells too long on this point, stays to laugh at what he has said, elucidates or comments on his own jokes, guffaws over them or exaggerates their form. The famous “pour encourager les autres” (that the shooting of Byng did “encourage the others” very much is not to the point) is a typical example, and indeed the whole of Candide shows the style at its perfection.
The fourth division of Voltaire's work, the historical, is the bulkiest of all except his correspondence, and some parts of it are or have been among the most read, but it is far from being even among the best. ”

“ In person Voltaire was not engaging, even as a young man. His extraordinary thinness is commemorated, among other things, by the very poor but well-known epigram attributed to Young, and identifying him at once with “Satan, Death and Sin.” In old age he was a mere skeleton, with a long nose and eyes of preternatural brilliancy peering out of his wig. He never seems to have been addicted to any manly sport, and took little exercise. ”

“ Vast and various as the work of Voltaire is, its vastness and variety are of the essence of its writer's peculiar quality. The divisions of it have long been recognized, and may be treated regularly.
The first of these divisions in order, not the least in bulk, and, though not the first in merit, inferior to none in the amount of congenial labour spent on it, is the theatre. ”

“ The Henriade was at last licensed in France; Brutus, a play which he had printed in England, was accepted for performance, but kept back for a time by the author; and he began the celebrated poem of the Pucelle, the amusement and the torment of great part of his life. But he had great difficulties with two of his chief works which were ready to appear, Charles XII. and the Lettres sur les Anglais. With both he took all imaginable pains to avoid offending the censorship; for Voltaire had, more than any other man who ever lived, the ability and the willingness to stoop to conquer. ”

“ Nowhere, perhaps, except when he is dealing with religion, are Voltaire's defects felt more than here. He was quite unacquainted with the history of his own language and literature, and more here than anywhere else he showed the extraordinarily limited and conventional spirit which accompanied the revolt of the French 18th century against limits and conventions in theological, ethical and political matters. ”

“ His peculiar fashion of attacking the popular beliefs of his time has also failed to secure the approval of some who had very little sympathy with those beliefs. The only excuse made for the alternate cringing and insult, the alternate abuse and lying, which marked his course in this matter, has been the very weak plea that a man cannot fight with a system—a plea which is sufficiently answered by the retort that a great many men have so fought and have won. ”

“ These defects are an almost total absence of any comprehension of what has since been called the philosophy of history, the constant presence of gross prejudice, frequent inaccuracy of detail, and, above all, a complete incapacity to look at anything except from the narrow standpoint of a half-pessimist and half self-satisfied philosophe of the 18th century.
His work in physics concerns us less than any other here; it is, however, not inconsiderable in bulk, and is said by experts to give proof of aptitude.
To his own age Voltaire was pre-eminently a poet and a philosopher ”

“ Above all, he now, being comparatively secure in position, engaged much more strongly in public controversies, and resorted less to his old labyrinthine tricks of disavowal, garbled publication and private libel. ”

“ Almost exactly at the time of the death of Louis XIV. he returned to Paris, to fall once more into literary and Templar society, and to make the tragedy of Œdipe, which he had already written, privately known. He was now introduced to a less questionable and even more distinguished coterie than Vendôme's, to the famous “court of Sceaux,” the circle of the beautiful and ambitious duchesse du Maine. It seems that Voltaire lent himself to the duchess's frantic hatred of the regent Orleans, and helped to compose lampoons on that prince. ”

“ Conversation and literature were, again as in Johnson's case, the sole gods of his idolatry. As for his moral character, the wholly intellectual cast of mind just referred to makes it difficult to judge that. His beliefs or absence of beliefs emancipated him from conventional scruples; and he is not a good subject for those who maintain that a nice morality may exist independently of religion. ”

“ He kept open house for visitors; he had printers close at hand in Geneva; he fitted up a private theatre in which he could enjoy what was perhaps the greatest pleasure of his whole life—acting in a play of his own, stage-managed by himself. His residence at Geneva brought him into correspondence (at first quite amicable) with the most famous of her citizens, J. J. Rousseau. His Orphelin de la Chine, performed at Paris in 1755, was very well received; the notorious La Pucelle appeared in the same year. ”

“ Permission to establish himself in France was now absolutely refused. Nor did an extremely offensive performance of Voltaire's—the solemn partaking of the Eucharist at Colmar after due confession—at all mollify his enemies. His exclusion from France, however, was chiefly metaphorical, and really meant exclusion from Paris and its neighbourhood. In the summer he went to Plombières, and after returning to Colmar for some time journeyed in the beginning of winter to Lyons, and thence in the middle of December to Geneva. ”

“ All this time Frederick of Prussia had been continuing his invitations. Voltaire left Paris on the 15th of June 1751, and reached Berlin on the 10th of July. This Berlin visit is more or less familiar to English readers from the two great essays of Macaulay and Carlyle as well as from the Frederick of the latter. But these two masters of English were not perhaps the best qualified to relate the story. Both were unjust to Voltaire, and Macaulay was unjust to Frederick as well. It is certain that at first the king behaved altogether like a king to his guest. He pressed him to remain ”

“ For he had as little notion of tolerance towards others as of dignity in himself. In April 1739 a journey was made to Brussels, to Paris, and then again to Brussels, which was the headquarters for a considerable time, owing to some law affairs, of the Du Châtelets. Frederick, now king of Prussia, made not a few efforts to get Voltaire away from Madame du Châtelet, but unsuccessfully, and the king earned the lady's cordial hatred by persistently refusing or omitting to invite her. ”

“ The best edition of the works is that by Louis Moland in 52 volumes (Paris, Gamier) ; the handiest and most compact is that issued in 13 volumes royal octavo by Furne, and kept in print by the house of Didot. Of the earlier editions, though their bulk is an objection, several are interesting and valuable. Especially may be noticed the so-called edition of Kehl, in which Voltaire himself, and later Beaumarchais, were concerned (70 vols., 1785-89) ; those of Dalibon and Baudouin. each in 97 volumes (from which “the hundred volumes of Voltaire” have become a not infrequent figure of speech) ”

“ The principal detailed life in English is that of an American writer, James Parton (1881) , which gives the facts with very considerable detail and fair accuracy, but with little power of criticism. That of Mr S. G. Tallentyre (London, 1903, 2 vols.) is gossiping and popular. Francis Espinasse's Voltaire (1882) , which contains a useful bibliography, J. Churton Collins's Voltaire in England (1886) , and J. R. Lounsbury's Shakespeare and Voltaire (1902) may also be specified. (G. Sa.) ”

“ In politics proper he seems indeed to have had few or no constructive ideas, and to have been entirely ignorant or quite reckless of the fact that his attacks were destroying a state of things for which as a whole he neither had nor apparently wished to have any substitute. ”

“ She was an accomplished linguist, musician and mathematician, and deeply interested in metaphysics. When she first became intimate with Voltaire she was practically separated from her husband, though he occasionally visited Cirey. She is only important from her connexion with Voltaire, though an attempt has been made to treat her as an original thinker ”