VOLTAIRE.
THE YOUTH OF VOLTAIRE.
CHAPTER I.
HIS BOYHOOD.
In his own time, the idea of Voltaire which had possession of the English mind was formed chiefly from the attacks that he directed against religion. He was regarded as a malignant spirit, subversive and destructive; a mocker at things sacred, things serious, and generally all things good. Johnson, in a conversation with Boswell, probably did not much exaggerate the prejudice against him. "Rousseau, sir, is a very bad man. I would sooner sign a sentence for his transportation than that of any felon who has gone from the Old Bailey these many years. Yes, I should like to have him work in the plantations." "Sir, do you think him as bad a man as Voltaire?" inquired Boswell. "Why, sir," returned the Doctor, "it is difficult to settle the proportion of iniquity between them." Sir Joshua, in an allegorical portrait of Dr Beattie, introduced Voltaire as the personification of Sophistry. He was the helot of innumerable homilies, and served to point innumerable morals. When the Revolution came, Voltaire—considered as having been a main cause of the state of public feeling in France which produced that infinite convulsion—was also, though then many years in his grave, held responsible for its excesses and its crimes. Thus it is that what memory of him was left among us till within this last generation, was the reflection of the fleering, shallow scoffer, the literary Mephistopheles, whom our fathers had learned to detest.
But all this time his reputation in his own country (except with his enemies the clergy) was of a kind altogether different. The works which first made him famous were, if not orthodox, far from irreligious; and any signs of hostility to the authority either of Church or State which might be found in them, were such as Englishmen might be expected to sympathise with, for the objects of that hostility were superstition, fanaticism, and tyranny. The state of things, however, against which he contended, did not exist in England. With the degree of freedom of thought to which we had then attained, and which contented the nation, we, all through George III.'s reign, feared tyranny less than licence, and superstition less than free-thinking. Deism was in disgrace: it threw a dark shadow on the repute of writers of the highest rank, such as Hume and Gibbon; and to lesser men the imputation of it was extinction. In these days opinion, far more tolerant, would probably not be very severe on Voltaire; for while his theistic views in some measure anticipated those of Mr Mill, he went by no means so far as that philosopher in doubt and denial. But as time went on, and his hostility to the priesthood became more and more strongly pronounced, his mode of impressing and reiterating his opinions was such as to render them specially obnoxious; and in this country he was, and has continued to be, chiefly a name of evil import.
The prejudice thus created extended to all the works of Voltaire. Few of his multifarious writings have been translated into English; and none of these, as a translation, has become much known among us. But in France he was famous not only as the most extraordinary man of letters that the nation could boast, of a versatility absolutely unbounded, a miracle of productiveness, and unrivalled in expression; beyond all this, he was regarded, with a gratitude which cast a reflected lustre on his writings, as the champion of freedom of thought. That thought had come to need a liberator was owing to the peculiar conditions of the French monarchy. With the accession of Louis XIV., the disputes between Crown and Parliament, and the power of that assembly, had come to an end. The young king did not forget the humiliations and privations to which it had compelled him to submit in the days of the Fronde. On the first occasion when, after his consecration, the Parliament attempted to discuss some of his edicts, he appeared before it in hunting-dress with a whip in his hand, and ordered the debate to cease. Henceforward the business of the Parliament was to register his decrees. He was absolute—the liberty and lives of the highest dignitaries of the kingdom were at his disposal; it was no idle boast when he said, "The State!—I am the State." For a long time his autocracy went on amidst the applause of the nation. He began his reign with the advantage of succeeding, as a native prince, to a foreign queen who was governed by a foreign minister. His magnificence delighted the Parisians—his successes in war gratified the people—he carried the art of royalty to an extreme of elaboration never reached before or since; while, to give solidity to these elements of popularity, he possessed a talent for public business, for choosing able ministers and generals, for conferring favours with majestic benignity, and for giving splendid encouragement to literature and art. All these circumstances combined to hedge him with a divinity beyond that of an ordinary king. The loyalty which had been evinced for his illustrious grandfather by such men as Sully, Mornay, and Crillon, became for him the most abject servility. The French Academy submitted for his approval as the subject of its prize essay, "Which of all the king's virtues is the one that deserves the preference?" The greatest nobles of the kingdom intrigued and quarrelled for the honour of attending his going to bed and his rising, of handing the royal shirt and the royal periwig. The sultana of the period was an enormous power in the State. The most eloquent preachers suspended for him their code of morality. Thus it was not only without opposition, but with abject acquiescence, that the nation looked on while he set up and pulled down ministers of state, made war and conducted foreign relations for his personal objects, taxed the people for his magnificent expenses, and disposed at will of the public revenues.
Up to a certain period of his reign he and his people remained in this perfect accord. They liked a strong master—they liked to see him magnificent, imperious, patronising arts and letters, and successful in war. But there came a time when, in ceasing to be magnificent and successful, he ceased also to be popular. He fell under the influence of a female devotee and of the priests. His armies were beaten, his conquests were lost, his Court became a scene of fanaticism, hypocrisy, and gloom. The king was getting old; he wished to make peace with heaven, probably for the same reason which induced him to wish to make peace on earth, because he found a difficulty in carrying on the war any longer. His repentance was to a great extent of that vicarious kind which exacts a rigid respect for religion from other people; he became very particular respecting the orthodoxy of his subjects, especially of those about his person—a requirement which by no means tended to render either gaiety or sincerity a distinguishing feature of society at Versailles. Relying much on the faith of others, he trusted to himself for good works, and commenced a system of religious persecution. His minister, Louvois, issued orders for the infliction of "the last rigours" on those who were not "of his Majesty's religion." These were faithfully executed. Fifty thousand Protestant families were driven from France, taking with them much of its prosperity. The Jesuits, under the influence of Madame de Maintenon and of the king's confessors, were all-powerful; and the suppression of heresy, and with it of all freedom of thought, became a chief business of the Government. This state of things was not, of course, pleasing to the French, who, indeed, were in the lowest stage of misery from the enormous taxes, which were the result of constant extravagance and war; but so powerful was the habit of submission, acquired in a reign already of unusual length, and so imposing the authority and the personal bearing of the old monarch, that, though the people manifested a natural if somewhat indecent joy when he died in 1715, he remained to the last every inch a king.
It was in this priest-ridden phase of his reign that Voltaire's boyhood was passed. He was born in 1694, the second son of M. François Arouet, "who," says St Simon, the famous chronicler of the time, "was notary to my father, to whom I have often seen him bring papers to sign." M. Arouet lived in Paris, with a country house at Chatenay, a few miles from the capital. When François Arouet (Voltaire) was about ten he was sent to the College (now Lycée) Louis le Grand, in the Rue St Jacques, where he was educated for the law. The boarders, of whom he was one, numbered among them youths of the best families in the country, and he formed friendships here which proved constant and serviceable. Although the Jesuits took extreme care to select the best men that the Order could produce to conduct the educational course of this the chief of their colleges, yet the training did not satisfy Voltaire, who long afterwards, when the Jesuits were suppressed in France, gave a satirical account of it in the dialogue between an ex-Jesuit and a former pupil. Much more than the needful time was, he says, taken up in learning the classics, because the method was so faulty. Mathematics, history, geography, philosophy, were altogether neglected. Nevertheless, he was taught the classics well; and he omits, in the satirical dialogue, to mention the important fact (which he has recorded elsewhere) that he received a thorough grounding in his own language from the man, of all others, the best qualified to impart it. This was the Abbé d'Olivet, to whose praise he devoted a paragraph of his 'Age of Louis XIV.' He was a member of the French Academy, and its historian. "We owe him," says Voltaire, "the most elegant and faithful translations of Cicero's works, enriched with judicious remarks. He spoke his own tongue with the same purity as Cicero spoke his, and did good service to French grammar by the most refined and accurate comments." François's own tastes in composition at this time led him to make verses, some of which, written at about the age of twelve, were notable enough to be talked of in the drawing-room of the famous Ninon de Lenclos, whose perennial charms had then been worshipped by many generations of lovers. François's godfather was the Abbé de Chateauneuf, who had long been the intimate friend of Ninon: it was he who brought the youthful poet to make his bow to the venerable fair one, then ninety, and her charms, presumably, a little on the wane. She was so pleased with the boy (who possibly made love to her), that, dying soon after, she left him two thousand francs to buy books.
He remained altogether seven years at the college, and in the later period of his residence came under another instructor, Father Porée, whom he considered worthy of a niche in history. "He was," says the notice of him in the 'Age of Louis XIV.,' "one of the few professors who have had repute amongst men of the world—eloquent in the style of Seneca, a poet, and of a very fine intellect. His greatest merit was that he made his disciples love both literature and virtue." "The hours of his lessons," he says elsewhere, "were for us delicious hours; and I could have wished that it had been the custom in Paris, as in Athens, for those of all ages to share such lessons. I should have returned often to hear him." Whatever it may have afterwards pleased Voltaire to say about the college, it is clear that he was exceptionally fortunate in the instructors whom it gave to him. Contact with such minds must have been invaluable to an intellect so eager and so assimilative as his. He left the college at seventeen with a high reputation, especially for his poetic gifts.