AND WORKS ***




Produced by David Widger.




               *VOLTAIRE: A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE AND WORKS*

                  _WITH SELECTIONS FROM HIS WRITINGS_

                                  _By_

                     *J. M. Wheeler & G. W. Foote.*


                                _London_

                                 _1891_




CONTENTS


    INTRODUCTION
    PREFACE
    EARLY LIFE
    HEGIRA TO ENGLAND
    EXAMPLES FROM ENGLAND
    AT CIREY
    "CANDIDE"
    THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA
    LAST DAYS
    HIS CHARACTER AND SERVICES
    TRIBUTES TO VOLTAIRE
    SELECTIONS FROM VOLTAIRE'S WORKS
    History
    Wars
    Politics
    The Population Question
    Nature's Way
    Prayer
    Doubt and Speculation
    Dr. Pangloss and the Dervish
    Motives for Conduct
    Self-Love
    Go From Your Village
    Religious Prejudices
    Sacred History
    Dupe And Rogue
    "Delenda Est Carthago"
    Jesus and Mohammed
    How Faiths Spread
    Superstition
    The Bible
    Transubstantiation
    Dreams and Ghosts
    Mortifying the Flesh
    Heaven
    Magic
    DETACHED THOUGHTS




INTRODUCTION


My share in this little book on Voltaire is a very minor one. My old
friend and colleague, Mr. J. M. Wheeler, had written the greater part of
the following pages before he brought the enterprise to my attention. I
went through his copy with him, and assisted him in making some
alterations and additions. I also read the printer's proofs, and
suggested some further improvements--if I may call them so without
egotism. This is all I have done. The credit for all the rest belongs to
him. My name is placed on the title-page for two reasons. The first is,
that I may now, as on other occasions, be associated with a dear friend
and colleague in this tribute to Voltaire. The second is, that whatever
influence I possess may be used in helping this volume to the
circulation it deserves.

  G. W. FOOTE.

November, 1891




PREFACE


He would be a bold person who should attempt to say something entirely
new on Voltaire. His life has often been written, and many are the
disquisitions on his character and influence. This little book, which at
the bicentenary of his birth I offer as a Freethinker's tribute to the
memory of the great liberator, has no other pretension than that of
being a compilation seeking to display in brief compass something of the
man's work and influence. But it has its own point of view. It is as a
Freethinker, a reformer, and an apostle of reason and universal
toleration that I esteem Voltaire, and I have considered him mainly
under this aspect. For the sketch of the salient points of his career I
am indebted to many sources, including Condorcet, Duvernet,
Desnoisterres, Parton, Espinasse, Collins, and Saintsbury, to whom the
reader, desirous of fuller information, is referred. Mr. John Morley's
able work and Col. Hamley's sketch may also be recommended.

That we are this year celebrating the bicentenary of Voltaire's birth
should remind us of how far our age has advanced from his, and also of
how much we owe to our predecessors. The spread of democracy and the
advance of science which distinguish our time both owe very-much to the
brilliant iconoclasts of the last century, of whom Voltaire was the
chief. In judging the work of the laughing sage of France we must
remember that in his day the feudal laws still obtained in France, and a
man might be clapped in prison for life without any trial. The poor were
held to be born into the world for the service of the rich, and it was
their duty to be subject to their masters, not only to the good and
gentle, but also to the froward. Justice was as easily bought as jewels.
The Church was omnipotent and freethought a crime. If Voltaire's
influence is no longer what it was, it is because he has altered that.
We can no longer keenly feel the evils against which he contended. His
work is, however, by no means fully accomplished. While any remnant of
superstition, intolerance, and oppression remains, his unremitting
warfare against _l'infame_ should be an inspiration to all who are
fighting for the liberation and progress of humanity.

Nov. 1894. J. M. WHEELER.




EARLY LIFE


Two hundred years ago, on November 21st, 1604, a child emerged on the
world at Paris. The baptismal register on the following day gave the
name Francois Marie Arouet, and the youth afterwards christened himself
Voltaire.(1) The flesh was so weakly that the babe was _ondovc_ (the
term employed for informal sprinkling with water at home), lest there
might be no time for the ecclesiastical rite.

    1.  He was a younger son. The name Voltaire is, perhaps, an
    anagram of the Arouet 1. j. (le jeune) the u being converted
    into r, and the j into r. In like manner, an old college- tutor
    of his, Pere Thoulie, transformed himself, by a similar
    anagrammatic process, into the Abbe Olivet-- omitting the
    unnecessary h from his original name. This method of reforming a
    plebeian name into one more distinguished-looking seems not to
    have been uncommon in those times, as Jean Baptiste Pocquelin
    took the name of Moliere, and Charles Secondat that of
    Montesquieu.

Something may have been wrong with the performance of the sacred
ceremony, since the child certainly grew up to think more of "the world,
the flesh, and the devil" than of the other trinity of Father, Son, and
Holy Ghost. His father was a respectable attorney, and his mother came
of noble family. His godfather and early preceptor was the Abbe de
Chateauneuf, who made no pietist of him, but introduced him to his
friend, the famous Ninon l'Enclos, the antiquated Aspasia who is said to
have inspired a passion in the l'Abbe Gedouin at the age of eighty, and
who was sufficiently struck with young Voltaire to leave him a legacy of
two thousand francs, wherewith to provide himself a library.

Voltaire showed when quite a child an unsurpassed facility for
verse-making. He was educated at a Jesuit college, and the followers of
Jesus have ever since reproached him with Jesuitism. Possibly he did
imbibe some of their "policy" in the propaganda of his ideas. Certainly
he saw sufficient of the hypocrisy and immorality of religious
professors to disgust him with the black business, and he said in
after-life that the Jesuits had taught him nothing worth learning.

He learnt a certain amount of Latin and a parcel of stupidities. But,
indifferent as this education was, it served to encourage his already
marked literary tendency. Voltaire is said to have told his father when
he left college, at the age of fifteen, "I wish to be a man of letters,
and nothing else." "That," M. Arouet is reported to have replied, "is
the profession of a man who wishes to be a burden to his family and to
die of starvation." He would have no such nonsense. Francois must study
law; and to Paris he went with that intent. For three years he was
supposed to do so, but he bestowed more attention on the gay society of
the Temple, to which his godfather introduced him, "the most amusing
fellow in the world," and which was presided over by the Abbe de
Chaulieu. The time which he was compelled to spend in law studies, and
at the desk of a _procureur_, was by no means lost to his future
fortunes, whether in the pursuit of fame or wealth. During that hated
apprenticeship he doubtless caught up some knowledge of law and
business, which stood him in good stead in after years. He tells us that
his father thought him lost, because he mixed with good society and
wrote verses. For these he got sufficient reputation to be first exiled
to Tulle, then to Sully, and finally thrown into the Bastille on
suspicion of having written lampoons on the government. The current
story tells how the Regent, walking one day in the Palais Royal, met
Voltaire, and accosted him by offering to bet that he would show him
what he had never seen before. "What is that?" asked Voltaire. "The
Bastille." "Ah, monseigneur! I will take the Bastille as seen." On the
next morning, in May, 1717, Voltaire was arrested in his bedroom and
lodged in the Bastille.

After nearly a year's imprisonment, during which he gave the finishing
touches to his tragedy of _OEdipus_, and sketched the epic _Henriade_,
in which he depicts the massacre of Bartholomew, the horrors of
religious bigotry, and the triumph of toleration under Henry IV., he was
released and conducted to the Regent. While Voltaire awaited audience
there was a thunderstorm. "Things could not go on worse," he said aloud,
"if there was a Regency above." His conductor, introducing him to the
Regent, said, repeating the remark, "I bring you a young man whom your
Highness has just released from the Bastille, and whom you should send
back again." The Regent laughed, and promised, if he behaved well, to
provide for him. "I thank your Highness for taking charge of my board,"
returned Voltaire, "but I beseech you not to trouble yourself any more
about my lodging."

In his first play, _OEdipe_, appeared the celebrated couplet:

    _"Nos pretres ne sont pas ce qu'un vain peuple pense!_

    _Notre credulite fait toute leur science." (1)_

    1. "Our priests are not what foolish people suppose; all their
    science is derived from our credulity."

These lines were afterwards noted by Condorcet as "the first signal of a
war, which not even the death of Voltaire could extinguish." It was at
this period that he first took the name of Arouet de Voltaire. He
produced two more tragedies, _Artemire_ and _Mariamne_; a comedy, _The
Babbler_; and prepared his world-famous _Henriade._ A portrait, painted
by Largilliere at about this period, has often been engraved. It
exhibits a handsome young gentleman, full of grace and spirit, with a
smiling mouth, animated eyes, intellectual forehead, and a fine hand in
a fine ruffle.




HEGIRA TO ENGLAND


The story of how Voltaire came to England is worth the telling, as it
illustrates the condition of things in France in the early part of last
century. Voltaire left France for England, which his acquaintance with
Lord Bolingbroke induced him to desire to visit. It was his Hegira,
whence he returned a full-fledged Prophet of the French. He went a poet,
he returned a philosopher. Dining at the Duke of Sully's table he
presumed to differ from the Chevalier de Rohan--Chabot, a relative of
Cardinal Rohan. The aristocrat asked, "Who is that young fellow who
talks so loudly?" "Monsieur le Chevalier," replied Voltaire, "it is a
man who does not bear a great name but who knows how to honor the name
he does bear."(1) It was insufferable that the son of a bourgeois should
thus speak his mind to a Rohan. A few days afterwards, when again dining
with the Duke, he was called out by a false message, and seized and
caned by ruffians until a voice cried "Enough." That word was a fresh
blow, for the young poet recognised the voice of the Chevalier. He
returned to the Duke and asked him to assist in obtaining redress. His
grace shrugged his shoulders and took no further notice of this insult
to his guest. Voltaire never visited the Duke again, and, it is said,
erased his ancestor's name from the _Henriade_. He was equally
unsuccessful in seeking redress from the Regent. "You are a poet, and
you have had a good thrashing; what can be more natural?" He retired, to
study English and fencing; and reappeared with a challenge to the
Chevalier, who accepted it, but informed his relations. It was against
the law for a commoner to challenge a nobleman. Next morning, instead of
meeting de Rohan, he met officers armed with a _lettre de cachet_
consigning him to the Bastille. After nearly a month's incarceration he
was liberated on condition that he left the country. Having no wish to
spend a second year in prison, he had himself applied for permission to
visit England. Voltaire felt keenly the indignity to which he had been
subjected. In a letter of instruction written from England to his agent
he says: "If my debtors profit by my misfortune and absence to refuse
payment, you must not trouble to bring them to reason: 'tis but a
trifle." Yet a book has been written on Voltaire's avarice.

    1.  Some of the accounts say that Voltaire said, "You, my lord,
    are the last of your house; I am the first of mine."

Voltaire was conducted to Calais and arrived in England on Whit-Monday,
1726. He landed near Greenwich and witnessed the Fair. All seemed
bright. The park and river were full of animation. Here there was no
Bastille, no fear of the persecution of the great or the spies of the
police. He had excellent introductions. Bolingbroke he had met in exile
at La Source in 1721, and he had learnt to regard the illustrious
Englishman who possessed "all the learning of his country and all the
politeness of ours." Voltaire, like Pope, may be said to have been, at
any rate for a time, an eager disciple of the exiled English statesman.
Now Voltaire was the exile; Bolingbroke, for a while, the host, at
Dawley, near Uxbridge. But he had other English friends, notably Mr.
(afterwards Sir Everard) Falkener, an English merchant trading in the
Levant, from whose house at Wandsworth most of his letters are dated.
For Sir Everard, Voltaire always retained the warmest feelings of
friendship, and forty years later returned hospitality to his sons.

Voltaire spent two years and eight months in England, living during part
of the time in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, and during another part at
Wandsworth. This visit was probably the most important event in his
life. It was here he lit the torch of Freethought with which he fired
the continent. Here he mastered the arguments of the English deists,
Bolingbroke, Toland, Tindal, Shaftesbury, Chubb, Collins, and Woolston,
which he afterwards used with such effect. Here he saw the benefits of
parliamentary government. Here he imbibed the philosophy of Locke and
the science of Newton. Indeed it may be said there is hardly one of
Voltaire's important works but bears traces of his visit to our country.
Yet of this momentous epoch of his life the records are scanty. When he
grew famous every letter and anecdote was preserved, but in 1727
Voltaire was but a young man of promise. Carlyle, in the tenth book of
his _Frederick the Great_, says: "But mere inanity and darkness visible
reign in all his Biographies over this period of his life, which was
above all others worth investigating." Messrs. J. C. Collins and A.
Ballantyne have since done much to elucidate this noteworthy period.

Pope was one of the persons Voltaire desired to see. He had already
described him as "the most elegant, most correct, and most harmonious
poet they ever had in England." Pope could only speak French with
difficulty, and Voltaire could not make himself understood. The result
being unsatisfactory, Voltaire did not seek further company until he had
acquired the language. An anecdote in Chetworth's _History of the Stage_
relates that he was in the habit of attending the theatre with the play
in his hand. By this method he obtained more proficiency in the language
in a week than he could otherwise have obtained in a month. Madame de
Genlis had the audacity to assert that Voltaire never knew English, yet
it is certain he could, before he was many months in this country, both
speak and write it with facility. By Nov. 16, 1726, he wrote to Pope,
after that poet's accident while driving near Bolingbroke's estate at
Dawley. In writing to his friend Thieriot, in France, he sometimes used
English, for the same reason, he said, that Boileau wrote in Latin--not
to be understood by too curious people. Voltaire is said to have once
found his knowledge of English of practical use. The French were
unpopular, and in one of his rambles he was menaced by a mob. He said:
"Brave Englishmen, am I not already unhappy enough in not having been
born among you?" His eloquence had such success that, according to
Longchamp and Wagniere, the people wished to carry him on their
shoulders to his house.

While in this country he wrote in English a portion of his tragedy
_Brutus_, inspired by and dedicated to Bolingbroke,

and two essays, one on the Civil Wars of France, and one on Epic Poetry.
In the introduction to the essays he expresses his conception of his own
position as a man of letters in a foreign country. As these essays,
although popular at the time, are now rare, I transcribe a paragraph or
two from them:

"The true aim of a relation is to instruct men, not to gratify their
malice. We should be busied chiefly in giving a faithful account of all
the useful things and extraordinary persons, whom to know, and to
imitate, would be a benefit to our country. A traveller who writes in
that spirit is a merchant of a nobler kind, who imports into his native
country the arts and virtues of other nations."

In his _Essay on Epic Poetry_ Voltaire shows he had made a study of
Milton, though his criticism can scarcely, be considered an advance upon
that of Addison. He displays constant admiration for Tasso, to whom he
was perhaps attracted by his sufferings at the hands of an ignoble
nobility. He says:

"The taste of the English and of the French, though averse to any
machinery grounded upon enchantment, must forgive, nay commend, that of
Armida, since it is the source of so many beauties. Besides, she is a
Mahometan, and the Christian religion allows us to believe that those
infidels are under the immediate influence of the devil." In this essay
appears the first mention of the story of Newton and the apple tree.

Voltaire closely studied all branches of English literature. He read
Shakespeare, and admired his "genius" while censuring his
"irregularity." He was the first to introduce him to his countrymen,
though he subsequently sought to lessen what he considered their
exorbitantly high opinion. The works of Dryden, Waller, Prior, Congreve,
Wycherley, Vanbrugh, Rochester and Addison were all devoured, and he
took an especial interest in Butler's witty _Hudibras_. He was
acquainted with the popular sermons of Archbishop Tillotson and the
speculations of Berkeley. He had read the works of Shaftesbury, Tindal,
Chubb, Garth, Mandeville and Woolston.

Voltaire became acquainted with most of the celebrities in England. He
visited the witty Congreve, who begged his guest to consider him not as
an author but as a gentleman. Voltaire answered with spirit: "If you had
the misfortune to be merely a gentleman, I should never have come to see
you." He knew James Thomson of _The Seasons_, and "discovered in him a
great genius and a great simplicity." With didactic Young, of the _Night
Thoughts_, who glorified God with his "egoism turned heavenward," he
formed a friendship which remained unbroken despite their differences of
opinion on religion. He pushed among his English friends the
subscription list for the _Henriade_, which proved a great
success--although King George II. was not fond of "boetry"--reaching
three editions in a short period. The money thus obtained formed the
foundation of the fortune which Voltaire accumulated, not by his
writings, but by his ability in finance. At that time, in France, as our
author remarked, "to make the smallest fortune it was better to say four
words to the mistress of a king than to write a hundred volumes." His
sojourn in England may be said to have secured him both independence of
mind and independence of fortune.

What pleased him most in England was liberty of discussion. In the year
in which he came over, Elwall was acquitted on a charge of blasphemy,
the collected works of Toland were published, and also Collins's _Scheme
of Literal Prophecy_, and the First Discourse of Woolston on Miracles.
The success of this last work, which boldly applied wit and ridicule to
the Gospel narrative, struck him with admiration. In the very month,
however, when Voltaire left England (March 1729) Woolston was tried and
sentenced to a year's imprisonment and a fine of L100. Voltaire
volunteered a third of the sum, but the brave prisoner refused to give
an assurance that he would not offend again, and died in prison in 1733.
Voltaire always spoke of Woolston with the greatest respect.

Voltaire retained his esteem for England and the English to the last.
Oliver Goldsmith relates that he was in his company one evening when one
of the party undertook to revile the English language and literature.
Diderot defended them, but not brilliantly. Voltaire listened awhile in
silence, which was, as Goldsmith remarks, surprising, for it was one of
his favorite topics. However, about midnight, "Voltaire appeared at last
roused from his reverie. His whole frame seemed animated. He began his
defence with the utmost elegance mixed with spirit, and now and then he
let fall his finest strokes of raillery upon his antagonist; and his
harangue lasted until three in the morning. I must confess that, whether
from national partiality or from the elegant sensibility of his manner,
I never was more charmed, nor did I ever remember so absolute a victory
as he gained in this dispute."

Voltaire corresponded with English friends to the latest period of his
life. Among his correspondents were Lord and Lady Bolingbroke, Sir E.
Falkener, Swift, Hume, Robertson, Horace Walpole, George Colman and Lord
Chatham. We find him asking Falkener to send him the _London Magazine_
for the past three years. To the same friend he wrote from Potsdam in
1752, hoping that his _Vindication of Bolingbroke_ was translated, as it
would annoy the priests, "whom I have hated, hate, and shall hate till
doomsday." In the next year, writing from Berlin, he says: "I hope to
come over myself, in order to print my true works, and to be buried in
the land of freedom. I require no subscription, I desire no benefit. If
my works are neatly printed, and cheaply sold, I am satisfied."

To Thieriot he said: "Had I not been obliged to look after my affairs in
France, depend upon it I would have spent the rest of my days in
London." Long afterwards he wrote to his friend Keate: "Had I not fixed
the seat of my retreat in the free corner of Geneva, I would certainly
live in the free corner of England; I have been for thirty years the
disciple of your ways of thinking." At the age of seventy he translated
Shakespeare's _Julius Coesar_. Mr. Collins says: "The kindness and
hospitality which he received he never forgot, and he took every
opportunity of repaying it. To be an Englishman was always a certain
passport to his courteous consideration." He compared the English to
their own beer, "the froth atop, dregs at bottom, but the bulk
excellent." When Martin Sherlock visited him at Ferney in 1776, he found
the old man, then in his eighty-third year, still full of his visit to
England. His gardens were laid out in English fashion, his favorite
books were the English classics, the subject to which he persistently
directed conversation was the English nation.

The memory of Voltaire has been but scurvily treated in the land he
loved so well. For over a century, calumny and obloquy were poured upon
him. Johnson said of Rousseau: "I would sooner sign a sentence for his
transportation than that of any felon who has gone from the Old Bailey
these many years." _Boswell_: "Sir, do you think him as bad a man as
Voltaire?" _Johnson_: "Why, sir, it is difficult to settle the
proportion of iniquity between them." And this represents an opinion
which long endured among the religious classes. But it is at length
being recognised that, with all his imperfections, which were after all
those of the age in which he lived, he devoted his brilliant genius to
the cause of truth and the progress of humanity. He made his exile in
England an occasion for accumulating those stores of intelligence with
which he so successfully combated the prejudices of the past and
promulgated the principles of freedom, and justified his being ranked
foremost among the liberators of the human mind.




EXAMPLES FROM ENGLAND


Several incidents combined to direct Voltaire's attention to clericalism
as the enemy of progress and humanity. Soon after his return to France,
the famous actress, Adrienne Lecouvreur, for whom he had a high esteem,
and who had represented the heroines of his plays, died. The clergy of
Paris refused her Christian burial because of her profession, and her
corpse was put in a ditch in a cattle-field on the banks of the Seine.
Voltaire, who regarded the theatre as one of the most potent instruments
of culture and civilisation, at once avenged and consecrated her memory
in a fine ode, burning with the fire of a deep pathos, in which he takes
occasion to contrast the treatment in England of Mrs. Oldfield, the
actress, who was buried in Westminster Abbey. Mr. Lecky says: "The man
who did more than any other to remove the stigma that rested upon actors
was unquestionably Voltaire. There is, indeed, something singularly
noble in the untiring zeal with which he directs poetry and eloquence,
the keenest wit, and the closest reasoning to the defence of those who
had so long been friendless and despised."

When Voltaire published his _Letters on the English Nation_ the copies
were seized by the Government and the publisher was thrown into the
Bastille. The author would have again tasted the discomforts of that
abode if he had not had timely warning from his friend D'Argental, and
taken refuge in Lorraine, and afterwards on the Rhine, while his book
was torn to pieces and burned in Paris by the public executioner, as
offensive to religion, good morals, and respect for authority. Voltaire
had apparently good reason to apprehend treatment of unusual rigor if he
had obeyed the summons to give himself up into custody, as he took good
care not to do. "I have a mortal aversion to prison," he wrote to
D'Argental. "I am ill; a confined air would have killed me, and I should
probably have been thrust into a dungeon."

Voltaire's _Letters on the English_ reads at the present day as so mild
a production that it is hard to understand its suppression. Yet it was a
true instinct which detected that the work was directed against the
principle of authority. The introduction of English thought was destined
to become an explosive element shattering the feudalism of Europe. There
were, moreover, some hard hits at the state of things in France. "The
English nation," says Voltaire, "is the only one which has succeeded in
restricting the power of kings by resisting it." Again: "How I love the
English boldness, how I love men who say what they think!"

Voltaire gives a peculiar reason for the non-appreciation by the English
of Moliere's _Tartuffe_, the original of Mawworm if not of Uriah Heep.
He says they are not pleased with the portrayal of characters they do
not know. "One there hardly knows the name of devotee, but they know
well that of honest man. One does not see there imbeciles who put their
souls into others' hands, nor those petty ambitious men who establish a
despotic sway over women formerly wanton and always weak, and over men
yet more weak and contemptible." We fancy Voltaire must have seen
society mainly as found among the Freethinkers. Could he give so
favorable a verdict did he visit us now? The same remark applies to his
statement that there was "no privilege of hunting in the grounds of a
citizen, who, at the same time, is not permitted to fire a gun in his
own field." But this, as well as the more important passage that "no one
is exempted from taxation for being a nobleman or priest," was probably
intended exclusively for the benefit of his compatriots. He was,
however, not without a little touch of ridicule at the incongruities he
detected in our countrymen. Thus he notes in one of his letters: "They
learn Vanini and translate Lucretius for Monsieur le Dauphin to get by
heart, and then, while they deride the polytheism of the ancients, they
worship the Congregation of the Saints."

Those educated in the current delusion that Voltaire was a mere mocker
will be surprised to find the temperate way in which he speaks of the
Quakers. Here, where there was such excellent opportunity for raillery,
Voltaire shows he had a genuine admiration for their simplicity of life,
the courage of their convictions, their freedom from priestcraft, and
their distaste for warfare. In these _Letters,_ as in all his writings,
he proves how far he was the embodiment of the new era by his boldly
expressed preference for industrial over military pursuits.

In his remarks on the Church of England, Voltaire, however, gives an
unmistakable touch of his quality: "One cannot have public employment in
England or Ireland, without being of the number of faithful Anglicans.
This reason, which is an excellent proof, has converted so many
Nonconformists that not a twentieth part of the nation is out of the
pale of the dominant church."

After alluding to the "holy zeal" of ministers against dissenters, and
of the lower House of Convocation, who "from time to time burnt impious
books, that is, books against themselves," he says: "When they learn
that, in France, young fellows noted only for debauchery and raised to
the prelacy by female intrigue, openly pursue their amours, compose
love-songs, give every day elaborate delicate suppers, then go to
implore the illumination of the Holy Spirit, boldly calling themselves
the successors of the Apostles--they thank God they are Protestants. But
they are abominable heretics, to be burnt by all the devils, as Master
Francois Rabelais says; and that is why I do not meddle with their
affairs."

The Presbyterians fare little better, for Voltaire relates that, when
King Charles surrendered to the Scots, they made that unfortunate
monarch undergo four sermons a day. To them it is owing that only
genteel people play cards on Sunday: "the rest of the nation go either
to church, to the tavern, or to see their mistresses."

His admiration for English philosophy was startling to the French mind.
Locke's Essay became his philosophical gospel. "For thirty years," he
writes in 1768, "I have been persecuted by a crowd of fanatics because I
said that Locke is the Hercules of Metaphysics, who has fixed the
boundaries of the human mind."




AT CIREY


A common admiration for Locke and Newton cemented his attachment to the
Marquise du Chatelet, a lady distinguished from others of her age by her
love of the sciences. With her Voltaire lived for over fifteen years at
the Chateau of Cirey, in Campagne, "far from the madding crowd's ignoble
strife," and, as Voltaire phrased it, "nine miles from a lemon."
Voltaire was at the outset forty and Madame twenty-seven, neither
handsome nor well-formed, yet pleasing. She united learning with a zest