THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
New York, 1796), a work which called forth many replies; La Loi naturelle (1793; Eng. transl., The Law of Nature, or Principles of Morality Deduced from the Physical Constitution of Mankind and the Universe, Philadelphia and London, 1796); and Histoire de Samuel, inventeur du sacre des rois (4th ed., 1822). His Gwvres completes in 8 vols. appeared Paris, 1821, and Gwores choisies in 6 vols., in 1827. BrstiograpHy: Brief Sketch of the Life of C. F. Volney,
London, 1840; , Lichtenberger, HSR, xii. 419-420.
VOLTAIRE, vol’tar’, FRANCOIS MARIE AROUET DE: French writer and deist; b. in Paris Nov. 21, 1694; d. there May 30, 1778. He was educated by the Jesuits in Collége Louis-le-Grand in Paris, where he learnt ‘“‘ nothing but Latin and nonsense.”’ His father intended him for the law, but his natural talent, no less than the levity of his disposition, drew him with irresistible force into literary life—the theater, the pamphlet, the salons, where the efforts were short, and the triumphs rapid. He had wit, taste, a wonderful talent for turning everything into verse, and a still more wonderful talent for dropping innuendoes, malicious or lewd, according to circumstances. He wrote small poems, satirical or complimentary, and said smart things at the supper-tables of dukes and abbés. In 1713 he obtained a diplomatic position as secretary to the French ambassador to Holland. But at The Hague he was most ridiculously taken in by a lady of semi-standing—a certain Madame du Noyer, whose daughter he fell in love with and tried to allure into an elopement. He was discharged, and sent back to Paris; and Madame du Noyer repaid herself for her troubles by publishing his love-letters. In 1714 he competed for the prize of the academy, but failed to obtain it. In 1716 some vicious lampoons on the regent and the Duchess of Berri were generally ascribed to him, and brought him to the Bastile, where, in the study of Homer and Vergil, and the preparation of his first tragedy, @dipe, he spent eleven months. Soon after his release, the tragedy was brought on the stage with great success; and the success was followed up with still greater energy. The Henriade, a large epic on Henry IV., which he had begun in the Bastile, he printed, though he had not succeeded in obtaining the approbation of the royal censor, and it at once made his fame and his fortune. But Voltaire’s ambition was always a little ahead of his powers: Artémise failed completely; Mariamne, partially. The Chevalier de Rohan, in order to avenge himself for some insolent repartee, had him beaten in the street by his footmen. Voltaire challenged him; but later was put in the Bastile, and released only on the condition that he immediately leave for England.
From 1726 to 1729 he resided in London; and acquaintance with English character and institutions, English literature and philosophy, exercised
a profound influence on him. It so-
Maturity. bered his temper a little; it gave him
a taste for science and its methods of research; and it developed his sense of the social value of truth. He was much struck by Newton’s great discovery as expounded to him by Dr. Samuel Clark in 1726; and by the effect on the English
Earlier Life.
mind of Newton’s death the following year. Later by his Elémens de la philosophie de Newton (1738), and La métaphysique de Newton (1740), he contributed much to make the views of Newton accepted, not only in France, but onthe continent in general. From Locke he derived his whole psychology; from the English Deists (see Drtsm), he learned how to attack the traditional, supernaturalistic, dogmatic claims of the pfeyailing beliefs, and he used the weapons of the Deistic writers in his onslaught upon the credulity and abuses of the Roman Catholic Church; from English history and institutions he gained his social and political ideas. There is a direct and demonstrable connection between the revolution of 1789 and his Letters Concerning the English Nation (London, 1733, Fr. eds. later), one of the brightest and most characteristic of his polemical writings. He also made a painstaking study of Shakespeare and Milton and the other great English writers. On his return to France in 1729, he soon found out that Paris was still unsafe for him. In 1734 his Lettres were publicly burnt by order of the parliament as subversive to the State, the Church, and public morality. From that time until 1749 he made his home chiefly at Cirey, in the house of Madame du ChAatelet, a lady for whose mathematical and philosophical talent he felt great respect. Whatever may be said of their personal relations in other respects, she stimulated and held him up to his highest capacity for literary production. During this period he wrote some of his best tragedies—Zaire, Alzire, Mahomet, Mérope; completed Charles XII. and began Siécle de Lowis XIV.; and sent out a score or more of polemical pamphlets, witty, malicious, indecent to an incredible degree, and an astonishing number of letters to all the most prominent persons in Europe. At the middle of the eighteenth century he stood as the greatest literary celebrity which the European civilization had ever produced, far exceeding Erasmus both in fame and power. And when, in 1750, he set out for Berlin, on the invitation of Frederick II., it was not a pensioner threading his way to the table of his patron, but the king of the pen coming to visit the king of the sword. Voltaire and Frederick admired each other. But Voltaire admired in Frederick only the general, and Frederick wanted to be admired as a poet; while, in Voltaire, Frederick admired only the poet, and Voltaire wanted to be admired as a statesman. Ludicrous conflicts arose, almost from the hour of their first meeting; and soon the conflicts grew into a continuous warfare. At last in 1752 the climax was reached when, under an assumed name, Voltaire held up to ridicule the president of the Berlin Academy. In March of the following year he was permitted to leave the city only to be arrested, by command of the irate king, at Frankfort, where he underwent irritating humiliations, which indeed he had provoked, for which also he took ample vengeance in a scurrilous lampoon on Frederick’s private life. Thus ended the strange friendship which on account of the idiosyncrasies of the two concerned contained all the elements of a comic tragedy.
The last part of his life Voltaire spent at Ferney, an estate he bought in the county of Gex (1758),