cluded by expressing her opinion that the different members of her family never had any more knowledge of the mystery of the true authorship of Junius than the public.' The double character, which we have sought to exhibit incarnated in a single person, had a redeeming element equally in its avowed and anonymous manifestations; the element, namely, of public spirit working, with whatever personal obliquities, towards public ends since realised. Freedom of the press,' says Mr. Merivale, and the personal freedom of the subject, owe probably more to the writings of Junius than to the eloquence of Chatham or Burke, the law of Camden and Dunning. It is not too much to say that, after the appearance of those writings, a new tone on these great subjects is found to prevail in our political literature. Doctrines which had previously met with almost general consent became exploded; truths which up to that time had been only timidly propounded were placed, in post-Junian times, on the order of the day.' The same judicious editor observes on the eventual fruits of Francis's stormy and abruptly closed career in India, that -as Junius had laid, by bold generalisation, the foundation of modern doctrines of freedom of the person and the press, when very few were disposed to follow out his theories, except mere demagogues, who could not really understand, and merely abused them,' so 'Francis may be said, with equal truth, to have sketched the outlines of the system of Indian government which now prevails; although many years passed before his views were appreciated, and nearly a century before they were adopted.' 141 V. VOLTAIRE. 1. Voltaire et la Société au XVIIIme Siècle. Vol. I. La Jeunesse de Voltaire. Vol. II. Par Gustave Desnoiresterres. Voltaire à la Cour. Vol. IV. Voltaire et Frédéric. aux Délices. Paris, 1871-3. 2. Voltaire. Sechs Vorträge von David Friedrich Strauss. Leipzig, 1870. 3. Voltaire in Frankfort am Main, 1753. Denkwürdigkeiten von K. A. Varnhagen von Ense. Achter Band. Leipzig, 1859. 4. Jean Calas et sa Famille. Étude historique d'après les Documents originaux, suivie de Pièces justificatives et des Lettres de la Sœur A.-J. Fraisse de la Visitation. Par Athanase Coquerel fils. Seconde Edition, refaite sur de nouveaux documents. Paris, 1869. 5. Voltaire. By John Morley. London, 1872.1 M. GUSTAVE DESNOIRESTERRES' five volumes,2 the last of which brings Voltaire to the end of his personal démélés with thrones and dominations,' and to the beginning of the period facetiously distinguished as that of his Ferney Patriarchate, are distinguished in a remarkable degree by minute research and exact citation of every accessible document that can throw fresh light on his subject. They are not less distinguished by the skilful mise en scène of the motley Voltairian drama which kept Europe amused or scandalised during its whole performance, and in which the author successively brings on the stage the minor actors in due relation and subordination to the chief performer. The recently published Voltaire readings to the Princess Louis of Hesse (alas!) and a select circle of hearers, by Dr. David Friedrich Strauss (the general tone of which provokes little recollection of the graver and more questionable antecedents From the Quarterly Review, October 1873. 2 Three more have been published since. of the veteran controversialist), condense so much of the results of M. Desnoiresterres' previous labours as could be brought within one small volume; and supply, in addition, a complete and entertaining narrative of the twenty years of Voltaire's Ferney Patriarchate, and a critique of his philosophical and theological writings, which appears to us itself open to criticism. M. Athanase Coquerel fils, who has figured lately as M. Guizot's 'Liberal' antagonist in the debates of the Synod of the French Reformed Church, contributes very usefully, in his volume on Jean Calas et sa Famille,' to the authentic illustration of the most creditable and not least characteristic episode of Voltaire's later life-his persevering and successful efforts for the reversal of an atrocious sentence, and the rescue from ruin of the innocent family of an equally innocent and legally murdered parent. And, finally, Mr. John Morley, last, not least, brings up the rear of recent Voltaire literature. His Apology for Voltaire vividly exhibits the character, if it exaggerates the enduring effects, of his irregular onslaughts on the creed of Christendom. Biographers have differed as to both the place and the precise time of Voltaire's birth, and he himself has assigned different dates to it at different periods. As if the spirit of scepticism had been destined to beset his life from the beginning, the first exercise of it has been made at the expense of his baptismal register, which bears date November 22, 1694, and certifies his birth as having taken place on the day previous. M. Desnoiresterres' researches have fixed his birthplace at Paris about the date given by the register; and there is no reason whatever for crediting by preference any of the various fancy dates scattered about in his correspondence. The older he made himself, the less he imagined would the authorities dare to persecute him. Don't say, I beg of you,' he writes to D'Argental, in January 1777 (the year before his death), 'that I am only eighty-two; it is a cruel calumny. Even were it true, according to a cursed baptismal register, that I was born in November 1694, it must still be granted me that I am in my eighty-third year.' François Marie Arouet (we shall see in the sequel how he came to assume the name of Voltaire) was almost condemned to death in the hour of birth, and it is said, was ondoyé (the term employed for informal sprinkling with water at home), lest there might be no time for the ecclesiastical rite. He was all his life, or always said he was, on the point of dying, and was resolved, all the while, to live as long as he could-and longer. Voltaire owed much that afterwards peculiarly distinguished him to his Jesuit college training, notwithstanding the ridicule which he afterwards threw upon it in his 'Dialogue entre un Conseiller et un ex-Jésuite.' The rhetorical and poetical exercises through which he was put by the good Père Porée, not only in Latin, but in French also, and the dramatic performances, which made a conspicuous figure in all the Jesuit establishments, supplied the first aliment to his genius for poetry and the drama to which he owed so much of his contemporary celebrity throughout his career. As Voltaire's father was a highly respectable notary, entrenched in his morale bourgeoise, though of eminent and extensive aristocratic business connections, it seems singular that he should have selected for friend of the family, and godfather of the infant François Marie, a certain Abbé de Châteauneuf, whose clerical reputation chiefly lay in the line of gallantry, and whose idea of carrying out the spiritual relation between himself and his godchild was first decisively illustrated by introducing young Arouet to the old Aspasia of French hetairism, Ninon de l'Enclos, who was then turned eighty. The lively lad found favour in the eyes of the lively old lady, who left him 2,000 francs in her will to buy books with. Godfather Châteauneuf introduced his youthful charge into worse company than Ninon's-exceedingly good company indeed in the sense of the day. While yet a pupil of the Jesuit college, he was taken into the so-called Société du Temple, where, during the last dreary years of hypocritical devotion of the Grand Monarque's reign, princes and dukes solaced themselves with gallant and poetical abbés for their compelled gravity at court by the most unrestrained derision of religion and morality altogether. The little Society of the Temple,' says M. Desnoiresterres, 'presided over by the Abbé de Chaulieu, though chiefly composed of old men, was none the more chaste, sober, or orthodox on that account.' To these voluptuaries the nearness of the tomb seemed only an additional reason for making haste to enjoy their last days of grace. It was the philosophy of Tom Moore's Regent in the Twopenny Post Bag: Brisk let us revel, while revel we may, For the gay bloom of fifty soon passes away; And infirm, and all that, And a wig, I confess it, so clumsily sits, That it frightens the little Loves out of their wits. Vincennes and the Bastille had, in some flagrant instances, for a while avenged the sinking monarchy of the bacchanalian outrages of the princes, aged abbés, and adolescent acolytes of the Temple. But the death of Louis XIV. instantly freed from exile or durance vile the Chevalier (Grand Prieur) de Vendôme and the Abbé Servien, the two most audacious of that audacious brotherhood. Vendôme was sincerely and profoundly respected for his vigour in vice by the new Regent. I have seen him,' said Saint-Simon, who knew him well, in perpetual admiration of the Grand Prior, who for forty years had every night gone to bed drunk, always publicly kept mistresses, and never ran dry of sallies of impiety and irreligion.' Amongst these débauchés à outrance, says M. Desnoiresterres, of whom Chaulieu was the patriarch, the prejudice of age no more existed than any other. Greybeards retained all the gaiety and vigour of adolescence; the lapse of years was ignored altogether; they glided by like river-water, leaving no trace behind. If they developed embonpoint, that only increased the resemblance to Anacreon and Silenus, the saints held most in honour of the Bacchic Olympus.' Their ranks indeed were ever and anon thinned by death. Godfather Châteauneuf was carried off amongst others. But new guests instantly filled the place of the old; and the religion, or rather philosophy, of the place proscribed superfluous mourning for the departed. |