Front matter (continued 5)

Gil Blas, discouraged, was about to leave Dr. Sangrado’s service, when that distinguished physician said to him—we take up the text of the story once more:

“I have a regard for thee, and without further delay will make thy fortune.... I spare thee the trouble of studying pharmacy, anatomy, botany, and physic: know, my friend, all that is required is to bleed the patients and make them drink warm water. This is the secret of curing all the distempers incident to man”.... I assured him that I would follow his maxims as long as I lived, even if they should be contrary to those of Hippocrates. But this assurance was not altogether sincere; for I disapproved of his opinion with regard to water, and resolved to drink wine every day, when I went out to visit my patients.

This resolution Gil Blas carried out, and, returning home drunk in consequence, gave Dr. Sangrado an artfully heightened account of a scuffle he had had with a rival physician of his master named Cuchillo. Let Gil Blas pursue the narrative:

“Thou hast done well, Gil Blas,” said Dr. Sangrado, “in defending the honor of our remedies against that little abortion of the faculty. He affirms, then, that aqueous draughts are improper for the dropsy! Ignorant wretch! I maintain, I do, that a dropsical patient cannot drink too much.”... He perceived that I drank more water that evening than usual, the wine having made me very thirsty, ... and said, with a smile, “I see, Gil Blas, thou hast no longer an aversion to water. Heaven be praised! thou drinkest it now like nectar.”... “Sir,” I replied, “there is a time for all things: I would not at present give a pint of water for an hogshead of wine.” The doctor, charmed with this answer, did not neglect such a fair opportunity of extolling the excellence of water.... “There are still a few,” he exclaimed, “who, like thou and I, drink nothing but water; and, who, as a preservative from, or cure of all distempers, trust to hot water unboiled: for I have observed that boiled water is more heavy and less agreeable to the stomach.”

... I entered into the doctor’s sentiments, inveighed against the use of wine, and lamented that mankind had contracted a taste for such a pernicious liquor. Then (as my thirst was not sufficiently quenched) I filled a large goblet with water, and having swallowed long draughts of it: “Come, sir,” said I to my master, “let us regale ourselves with this benevolent liquor.” ... He applauded my zeal, and during a whole quarter of an hour exhorted me to drink nothing but water. In order to familiarize myself to this prescription, I promised to swallow a great quantity every evening; and that I might the more easily perform my promise, went to bed with a resolution of going to the tavern every day.

In passing from the humor of Le Sage’s Dr. Sangrado, we cannot refrain from exhorting the reader not to miss that refinement about water made hot without actually boiling. The present writer seems to himself to have encountered the same delicacy of hot-water-drinking in his own personal observation of those who now practice this method of health or of cure.

A later fortune of Gil Blas, in his long career of extremely various “adventures,” shaken from change to change as in a kaleidoscope, was to fall into the service of an archbishop, by whom he was soon advanced to a post of confidential favor. Gil Blas became in fact the archbishop’s “guide, philosopher, and friend,” in the very important matter of that high dignitary’s literary and historical reputation. This happened through Gil Blas’s felicity in copying out with judicious calligraphy—a calligraphy such as seemed to their author to commend those productions in some fit proportion to their worth—the venerable archbishop’s homilies. Gil Blas thus relates the immediate, and then the more remote, result of his submitting to the archbishop his maiden essay in copy-hand reproduction of that prelate’s pulpit rhetoric:

“Good heaven!” cried he in a transport, when he had surveyed all the sheets of my copy, “was ever anything seen so correct? You transcribe so well that you must certainly understand grammar. Tell me ingenuously, my friend, have you found nothing that shocked you in writing it over? Some neglect, perhaps, in the style, or improper term?” “O, sir,” answered I, with an air of modesty, “I am not learned enough to make critical observations; and if I was, I am persuaded that the works of your grace would escape my censure.” The prelate smiled at my reply; and, though he said nothing, discovered through all his piety, that he was a downright author.

By this kind of flattery, I entirely gained his good graces, became more and more dear to him every day.... One evening he repeated in his closet, when I was present, with great enthusiasm, an homily which he intended to pronounce the next day in the cathedral; and, not satisfied with asking my opinion of it in general, obliged me to single out the particular passages which I most admired. I had the good luck to mention those that he himself looked upon to be the best, his own favorite morceaus: by which means I passed, in his judgment, for a man who had a delicate knowledge of the true beauties of a work. “This is,” cried he, “what is called having taste and sentiment: well, friend, I assure thee thou hast not got Bœotian ears.” In a word, he was so well satisfied with me, that he pronounced with some vivacity, “Gil Blas, henceforth give thyself no uneasiness about thy fortune: I undertake to make it extremely agreeable; I love thee; and, as a proof of my affection, make thee my confidant.”

I no sooner heard these words than I fell at his grace’s feet, quite penetrated with gratitude; I heartily embraced his bandy legs, and looked upon myself as a man on the high way to wealth and opulence. “Yes, my child,” resumed the archbishop, whose discourse had been interrupted by my prostration, “thou shalt be the repository of my most secret thoughts. Listen with attention to what I am going to say: my chief pleasure consists in preaching; the Lord gives a blessing to my homilies; they touch the hearts of sinners, make them seriously reflect on their conduct, and have recourse to repentance.... I will confess my weakness; I propose to myself another reward, a reward which the delicacy of my virtue reproaches me with in vain! I mean the esteem that the world shows for fine polished writing. The honor of being reckoned a perfect orator has charmed my imagination; my performances are thought equally strong and delicate; but I would, of all things, avoid the fault of good authors who write too long, and retire without forfeiting the least tittle of my reputation. Wherefore, my dear Gil Blas,” continued the prelate, “one thing that I exact of thy zeal is, whenever thou shalt perceive my pen smack of old age, and my genius flag, don’t fail to advertise me of it: for I don’t trust to my own judgment, which may be seduced by self-love.” ... “Thank heaven, sir,” said I, “that period is far off: besides, a genius like that of your grace will preserve its vigor much better than any other; or, to speak more justly, will be always the same. I look upon you as another Cardinal Ximenes, whose superior genius, instead of being weakened by age, seemed to receive new strength from it.” “No flattery, friend,” said he, interrupting me. “I know I am liable to sink all at once: people at my age begin to feel infirmities, and the infirmities of the body often affect the understanding. I repeat it to thee again, Gil Blas, as soon as thou shalt judge mine in the least impaired, be sure to give me notice; and be not afraid of speaking freely and sincerely, for I shall receive thy advice as a mark of thy affection. Besides, thy interest is concerned; if, unhappily for thee, it should come to my ears that the public says my discourses have no longer their wonted force, and that it is high time for me to repose myself, I frankly declare that thou shalt lose my friendship, as well as the fortune I have promised. Such will be the fruit of thy foolish reserve!”

Gil Blas was destined soon to be put to the extreme proof of his fidelity. Himself must tell how:

In the very zenith of my favor we had a hot alarm in the episcopal palace: the archbishop was seized with a fit of the apoplexy; he was, however, succored immediately, and such salutary medicines administered that in a few days his health was re-established; but his understanding had received a rude shock, which I plainly perceived in the very next discourse which he composed. I did not, however, find the difference between this and the rest so sensible as to make me conclude that the orator began to flag, and waited for another homily to fix my resolution. This, indeed, was quite decisive; sometimes the good old prelate repeated the same thing over and over, sometimes rose too high or sunk too low; it was a vague discourse, the rhetoric of an old professor, a mere capucinade. [The word, “capucinade,” satirizes the Capuchin monks.]

I was not the only person who took notice of this. The greatest part of the audience when he pronounced it, as if they had been also hired to examine it, said softly to one another, “This sermon smells strong of the apoplexy.” Come, master homily-critic, said I then to myself, prepare to do your office; you see that his grace begins to fail; it is your duty to give him notice of it, not only as the depository of his thoughts, but, likewise, lest some one of his friends should be free enough with him to prevent you; in that case you know what would happen: your name would be erased from his last will....

After these reflections I made others of a quite contrary nature. To give the notice in question, seemed a delicate point. I imagined that it might be ill-received by an author like him, conceited of his own works; but, rejecting this suggestion, I represented to myself that he could not possibly take it amiss after having exacted it of me in so pressing a manner. Add to this that I depended upon my being able to mention it with address, and make him swallow the pill without reluctance. In a word, finding that I ran a greater risk in keeping silence than in breaking it, I determined to speak.

The only thing that embarrassed me now was how to break the ice. Luckily the orator himself extricated me from that difficulty by asking what people said of him, and if they were satisfied with his last discourse. I answered that his homilies were always admired, but in my opinion the last had not succeeded so well as the rest in affecting the audience. “How, friend!” replied he with astonishment, “has it met with any Aristarchus?” “No, sir,” said I, “by no means; such works as yours are not to be criticised; everybody is charmed with them. Nevertheless, since you have laid your injunctions upon me to be free and sincere, I will take the liberty to tell you that your last discourse, in my judgment, has not altogether the energy of your other performances. Are you not of the same opinion?”

My master grew pale at these words, and said with a forced smile, “So, then, Mr. Gil Blas, this piece is not to your taste?” “I don’t say so, sir,” cried I, quite disconcerted, “I think it excellent, although a little inferior to your other works.” “I understand you,” he replied, “you think I flag, don’t you? Come, be plain; you believe it is time for me to think of retiring.” “I should not have been so bold,” said I, “as to speak so freely if your grace had not commanded me; I do no more, therefore, than obey you, and I most humbly beg that you will not be offended at my freedom.” “God forbid,” cried he, with precipitation, “God forbid that I should find fault with it. In so doing I should be very unjust. I don’t at all take it ill that you speak your sentiment; it is your sentiment only that I find bad. I have been most egregiously deceived in your narrow understanding.”

Though I was disconcerted, I endeavored to find some mitigation in order to set things to rights again; but how is it possible to appease an incensed author, one especially who has been accustomed to hear himself praised? “Say no more, my child,” said he, “you are yet too raw to make proper distinctions. Know that I never composed a better homily than that which you disapprove, for my genius, thank heaven, hath as yet lost nothing of its vigor. Henceforth I will make a better choice of a confidant and keep one of greater ability than you. Go,” added he, pushing me by the shoulders out of his closet, “go tell my treasurer to give you a hundred ducats, and may heaven conduct you with that sum. Adieu, Mr. Gil Blas, I wish you all manner of prosperity, with a little more taste.”

It would be hard, we think, to overmatch anywhere in literature the shrewd but genial satire, the quiet, effective comedy, of the foregoing. How deep it gently goes, probing and searching into the secret springs of our common human nature! The cool, the frontless calculation of self-interest on Gil Blas’s part throughout the whole course of his conduct of the relation between himself and the archbishop is perfectly characteristic of the impudent easy-heartedness everywhere displayed of this conscienceless adventurer. It illustrates the consummate art of the author that the whole is so managed that, while you do not sympathize with his hero, you still are by no means forced to feel unplesantly offended at him. This is a great feat of lullaby to the conscience of the reader; for the character of the work is such that if, in perusing it, you should throughout keep vigilantly obeying the wholesome safeguard injunction of the apostle, “Abhor that which is evil,” you would be so busy doing the duty of abhorring as seriously to interfere with your enjoyment of the comedy. To get the pleasure or the profit, and at the same time leave the taint, that is the problem often in studying the masterpieces of literature. As generally, so in the case of “Gil Blas,” it is a problem perhaps best to be solved by being still more intent on leaving the taint than on getting the pleasure or the profit.

On the whole, the reading of “Gil Blas” entire is a task or a diversion that may safely in most cases be postponed to the leisure of late life. The whole is such, or is not so good, as the part that has here been shown. It is an instance in which the building is very fairly represented by a single specimen brick. Multiply what you have seen by the necessary factor, and you have the total product with little or no loss.

It ought to be added that “Gil Blas,” as in local color and in what might be styled medium not French at all, is also in general character the least French of French productions. It seems almost as if expressly written to be part of what Goethe taught his disciples to look for, namely, a “world-literature.” “Gil Blas,” though French in form, is in essence French only because it is human. And for the same reason it is of every other nation as well. It possesses, therefore, as French literature a unique and, so to speak, paradoxical importance in not being French literature; it is, in fact, perhaps quite the only French book that is less national than universal.

XV.

MONTESQUIEU: 1689-1755; DE TOCQUEVILLE: 1805-1859.

To Montesquieu belongs the glory of being the founder, or inventor, of the philosophy of history. Bossuet might dispute this palm with him; but Bossuet, in his “Discourse on Universal History,” only exemplified the principle which it was left to Montesquieu afterward more consciously to develop.

Three books, still living, are associated with the name of Montesquieu—“The Persian Letters,” “The Greatness and the Decline of the Romans,” and “The Spirit of Laws.” “The Persian Letters” are a series of epistles purporting to be written by a Persian sojourning in Paris and observing the manners and morals of the people around him. The idea is ingenious; though the ingenuity, we suppose, was not original with Montesquieu. Such letters afford the writer of them an admirable advantage for telling satire on contemporary follies. This production of Montesquieu became the suggestive example to Goldsmith for his “Citizen of the World; or, Letters of a Chinese Philosopher.” We shall have here no room for illustrative citations from Montesquieu’s “Persian Letters.”

The second work, that on the “Greatness and the Decline of the Romans,” is less a history than a series of essays on the history of Rome. It is brilliant, striking, suggestive. It aims to be philosophical rather than historical. It deals in bold generalizations. The spirit of it is, perhaps, too constantly and too profoundly hostile to the Romans. Something of the ancient Gallic enmity—as if a derivation from that last and noblest of the Gauls, Vercingetorix—seems to animate the Frenchman in discussing the character and the career of the great conquering nation of antiquity. The critical element is the element chiefly wanting to make Montesquieu’s work equal to the demands of modern historical scholarship. Montesquieu was, however, a full worthy forerunner of the philosophical historians of to-day. We give a single extract in illustration—an extract condensed from the chapter in which the author analyzes and expounds the foreign policy of the Romans. The generalizations are bold and brilliant,—too bold, probably, for strict critical truth. (We use, for our extract, the recent translation by Mr. Jehu Baker, who enriches his volume with original notes of no little interest and value.) Montesquieu:

This body [the Roman Senate] erected itself into a tribunal for the judgment of all peoples, and at the end of every war it decided upon the punishment and the recompenses which it conceived each to be entitled to. It took away parts of the lands of the conquered states, in order to bestow them upon the allies of Rome, thus accomplishing two objects at once—attaching to Rome those kings of whom she had little to fear and much to hope, and weakening those of whom she had little to hope and all to fear.

Allies were employed to make war upon an enemy, but the destroyers were at once destroyed in their turn. Philip was beaten with the half of the Ætolians, who were immediately afterward annihilated for having joined themselves to Antiochus. Antiochus was beaten with the help of the Rhodians, who, after having received signal rewards, were humiliated forever, under the pretext that they had requested that peace might be made with Perseus.

When they had many enemies on hand at the same time, they accorded a truce to the weakest, which considered itself happy in obtaining such a respite, counting it for much to be able to secure a postponement of its ruin.

When they were engaged in a great war, the Senate affected to ignore all sorts of injuries, and silently awaited the arrival of the proper time for punishment; when, if it saw that only some individuals were culpable, it refused to punish them, choosing rather to hold the entire nation as criminal, and thus reserve to itself a useful vengeance.

As they inflicted inconceivable evils upon their enemies, there were not many leagues formed against them; for those who were most distant from danger were not willing to draw nearer to it. The consequence of this was, that they were rarely attacked; whilst, on the other hand, they constantly made war at such time, in such manner, and against such peoples, as suited their convenience; and, among the many nations which they assailed, there were very few that would not have submitted to every species of injury at their hands if they had been willing to leave them in peace.

It being their custom to speak always as masters, the ambassadors whom they sent to nations which had not yet felt their power were certain to be insulted; and this was an infallible pretext for a new war.

As they never made peace in good faith, and as, with the design of universal conquest, their treaties were, properly speaking, only suspensions of war, they always put conditions in them which began the ruin of the states which accepted them. They either provided that the garrisons of strong places should be withdrawn, or that the number of troops should be limited, or that the horses or the elephants of the vanquished party should be delivered over to themselves; and if the defeated people was powerful on sea, they compelled it to burn its vessels, and sometimes to remove, and occupy a place of habitation farther inland.

After having destroyed the armies of a prince, they ruined his finances by excessive taxes, or by the imposition of a tribute under the pretext of requiring him to pay the expenses of the war—a new species of tyranny, which forced the vanquished sovereign to oppress his own subjects, and thus to alienate their affection.

When they granted peace to a king, they took some of his brothers or children as hostages. This gave them the means of troubling his kingdom at their pleasure. If they held the nearest heir, they intimidated the possessor; if only a prince of a remote degree, they used him to stir up revolts against the legitimate ruler.

Whenever any people or prince withdrew their obedience from their sovereign, they immediately accorded to them the title of allies of the Roman people, and thus rendered them sacred and inviolable; so that there was no king, however great he might be, who would for a moment be sure of his subjects, or even of his family.

Although the title of Roman ally was a species of servitude, it was, nevertheless, very much sought after; for the possession of this title made it certain that the recipients of it would receive injuries from the Romans only, and there was ground for the hope that this class of injuries would be rendered less grievous than they would otherwise be.

Thus, there was no service which nations and kings were not ready to perform, nor any humiliation which they did not submit to, in order to obtain this distinction....

These customs were not merely some particular facts which happened at hazard. They were permanently established principles, as may be readily seen; for the maxims which the Romans acted upon against the greatest powers were precisely those which they had employed in the beginning of their career against the small cities which surrounded them....

But nothing served Rome more effectually than the respect which she inspired among all nations. She immediately reduced kings to silence, and rendered them as dumb. With the latter, it was not a mere question of the degree of their power; their very persons were attacked. To risk a war with Rome was to expose themselves to captivity, to death, and to the infamy of a triumph. Thus it was that kings, who lived in pomp and luxury, did not dare to look with steady eyes upon the Roman people, and, losing courage, they hoped, by their patience and their obsequiousness, to obtain some postponement of the calamities with which they were menaced.

The “Spirit of Laws” is probably to be considered the masterpiece of Montesquieu. It is our duty, however, to say that this work is quite differently estimated by different authorities. By some, it is praised in terms of the highest admiration, as a great achievement in wide and wise political or juridical philosophy. By others, it is dismissed very lightly, as the ambitious, or, rather, pretentious, effort of a superficial man, a showy mere sciolist.

The philosophical aim and ambition of the author at once appear in the inquiry which he institutes for the three several animating principles of the several forms of government respectively distinguished by him; namely, democracy (or republicanism), monarchy, and despotism. What these three principles are will be seen from the following statement: “As virtue is necessary in a republic, and in a monarchy honor, so fear is necessary in a despotic government.” The meaning is that in republics virtue possessed by the citizens is the spring of national prosperity; that under a monarchy the desire of preferment at the hands of the sovereign is what quickens men to perform services to the State; that despotism thrives by fear inspired in the breasts of those subject to its sway.

To illustrate the freely discursive character of the work, we give the whole of chapter sixteen—there are chapters still shorter—in Book VII.:

AN EXCELLENT CUSTOM OF THE SAMNITES.

The Samnites had a custom which in so small a republic, and especially in their situation, must have been productive of admirable effects. The young people were all convened in one place and their conduct was examined. He that was declared the best of the whole assembly had leave given him to take which girl he pleased for his wife; the second best chose after him, and so on. Admirable institution! The only recommendation that young men could have on this occasion was their virtue and the service done their country. He who had the greatest share of these endowments chose which girl he liked out of the whole nation. Love, beauty, chastity, virtue, birth, and even wealth itself, were all, in some measure, the dowry of virtue. A nobler and grander recompense, less chargeable to a petty state and more capable of influencing both sexes, could scarce be imagined.

The Samnites were descended from the Lacedemonians; and Plato, whose institutes are only an improvement of those of Lycurgus, enacted nearly the same law.

The relation of the foregoing chapter to the subject indicated in the title of the book is sufficiently obscure and remote for a work like this, purporting to be philosophical. What relation exists seems to be found in the fact that the custom described tends to produce that popular virtue by which republics flourish. But the information, at all events, is curious and interesting.

The following paragraphs, taken from the second chapter of Book XIV., contain in germ a large part of the philosophy underlying M. Taine’s essays on the history of literature:

OF THE DIFFERENCE OF MEN IN DIFFERENT CLIMATES.

A cold air constringes the extremities of the external fibers of the body; this increases their elasticity, and favors the return of the blood from the extreme parts to the heart. It contracts those very fibers; consequently it increases also their force. On the contrary, a warm air relaxes and lengthens the extremes of the fibers; of course it diminishes their force and elasticity.

People are therefore more vigorous in cold climates. Here the action of the heart and the reaction of the extremities of the fibers are better performed, the temperature of the humors is greater, the blood moves freer toward the heart, and reciprocally the heart has more power. This superiority of strength must produce various effects; for instance, a greater boldness—that is, more courage; a greater sense of superiority—that is, less desire of revenge; a greater opinion of security—that is, more frankness, less suspicion, policy, and cunning. In short, this must be productive of very different tempers. Put a man into a close, warm place, and for the reasons above given he will feel a great faintness. If under this circumstance you propose a bold enterprise to him, I believe you will find him very little disposed towards it; his present weakness will throw him into a despondency; he will be afraid of every thing, being in a state of total incapacity. The inhabitants of warm countries are, like old men, timorous; the people in cold countries are, like young men, brave.

In the following extract, from chapter five, Book XXIV., the climatic theory is again applied, this time to the matter of religion, in a style that makes one think of Buckle’s “History of Civilization”:

When the Christian religion, two centuries ago, became unhappily divided into Catholic and Protestant, the people of the north embraced the Protestant, and those south adhered still to the Catholic.

The reason is plain: the people of the north have, and will forever have, a spirit of liberty and independence, which the people of the south have not; and therefore a religion which has no visible head is more agreeable to the independency of the climate than that which has one.

Climate is a “great matter” with Montesquieu. In treating of the subject of a State changing its religion, he says:

The ancient religion is connected with the constitution of the kingdom, and the new one is not; the former agrees with the climate, and very often the new one is opposite to it.

For the Christian religion, Montesquieu professes profound respect—rather as a pagan political philosopher might do, than as one intimately acquainted with it by a personal experience of his own. His spirit, however, is humane and liberal. It is the spirit of Montaigne, it is the spirit of Voltaire, speaking in the idiom of this different man, and of this different man as influenced by his different circumstances. Montesquieu had had practical proof of the importance to himself of not offending the dominant hierarchy.

On the whole, concerning Montesquieu it may justly be said, that of all political philosophers, he, if not the profoundest, is at least one of the most interesting; if not the most accurate and critical, at least one of the most brilliant and suggestive.

As to Montesquieu the man, it is perhaps sufficient to say that he seems to have been a very good type of the French gentleman of quality. An interesting story told by Sainte-Beuve reveals, if true, a side at once attractive and repellent of his personal character. Montesquieu at Marseilles employed a young boatman, whose manner and speech indicated more cultivation than was to have been looked for in one plying his vocation. The philosopher learned his history. The youth’s father was at the time a captive in one of the Barbary States, and this son of his was now working to earn money for his ransom. The stranger listened apparently unmoved, and went his way. Some months later, home came the father, released he knew not how, to his surprised and overjoyed family. The son guessed the secret, and, meeting Montesquieu a year or so after in Marseilles, threw himself in grateful tears at his feet, begged the generous benefactor to reveal his name and to come and see the family he had blessed. Montesquieu, calmly expressing himself ignorant of the whole business, actually shook the young fellow off, and turned away without betraying the least emotion. It was not till after the cold-blooded philanthropist’s death that the fact came out.

A tranquil, happy temperament was Montesquieu’s. He would seem to have come as near as any one ever did to being the natural master of his part in life. But the world was too much for him; as it is for all—at last. Witness the contrast of these two different sets of expressions from his pen. In earlier manhood he says:

Study has been for me the sovereign remedy for all the dissatisfactions of life, having never had a sense of chagrin that an hour’s reading would not dissipate. I wake in the morning with a secret joy to behold the light. I behold the light with a kind of ravishment, and all the rest of the day I am happy.

In late life, the brave, cheerful tone had declined to this:

I am broken down with fatigue; I must repose for the rest of my life

Then it took a further fall to this:

I have expected to kill myself for the last three months, finishing an addition to my work on the origin and changes of the French civil law. It will take only three hours to read it; but, I assure you, it has been such a labor to me, that my hair has turned white under it all.

Finally it touches nadir:

It [his work] has almost cost me my life; I must rest; I can work no more.

My candles are all burned out; I have set off all my cartridges.

When Montesquieu died, only Diderot, among Parisian men of letters, followed him to his tomb.

Belonging to an entirely different world, literary, social, political, from that in which Montesquieu flourished—more than one full century, and that a French century, had intervened—was a man kindred in genius with him, to whom, for the double reason that his intellectual rank deserves it, and that the subject of his principal work is one to command especially the interest of Americans, we feel compelled to devote serious, though it must be hastening, attention. We refer to Alexis de Tocqueville, the author of that famous book, “Democracy in America.” We can most conveniently discharge our duty by letting their likeness in intellectual character and achievement bridge for us the chasm of time between the two men, and thus considering the later in conjunction here with the earlier author.

“Democracy in America” is a most remarkable book to have been, as in fact it was, the production of a young man of thirty. It was the fruit of a tour in the United States undertaken by the writer ostensibly to visit in an official capacity the prisons of the new nation that France had helped create, in a kind of counterpoise to England, on this side of the Atlantic. The inquisitive young French inspector inspected much more than the prison system of the lusty infant republic. He observed and studied American institutions and manners at large, in order to lay a base line for the boldest speculative triangulation into the probable political future of the world.

Tocqueville held the belief that democracy, as a system of government, was destined to prevail universally. He wrote his observations and reflections, and he made his guesses, primarily for the instruction of France. So confident was his conviction on the subject of democratic destiny for his own country at least, that, while as yet the apparently profound peace was undisturbed of the monarchical reaction under Louis Philippe, he predicted an impending revolution; predicted in fact the revolution which actually occurred in 1848. France, after that date, both during the prophet’s life, and subsequently to his death, experienced her vibrations from, one form of government to another; but no one can now deny that thus far the resultant tendency is in favor of Tocqueville’s bold speculative forecast of the political future of his nation. The same thing is true, we think, more broadly, of the world in general; and of this Brazil apparently furnishes a striking late instance in confirmation.

“Democracy in America” is a classic in literature. Its credit is highest with those best qualified to form a judgment. But its fame is universal. It associates its author in rank of genius with the foremost political philosophers of the world—with Machiavelli, with Montesquieu, with Burke. Every American aiming at a political career, every American journalist having to discuss political subjects should be familiar with this book. Mr. Bryce’s more recent work on the United States, which has sprung so suddenly into such commanding fame, by no means supersedes, though it does most usefully supplement, the monumental treatise of Tocqueville—a name generally miscalled “De Tocqueville.”

Of Alexis de Tocqueville’s life it need only be said that, sprung of a noble French family, he ran a respectable, though neither a brilliant, nor a very influential, career in the politics of his country; until, discontented with the second empire, that of the usurper, Louis Napoleon, he retired, about 1851, from public service and devoted himself to labor with the pen. His second chief work was “The Ancient Régime,” published in 1856, three years before his death.

We cannot probably make a better brief selection, at once more characteristic and more interesting, from Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America” than by presenting in large part the chapter entitled: “Causes which render democratic armies weaker than other armies at the outset of a campaign, and more formidable in a protracted warfare.”

A striking illustrative light was destined to be thrown by momentous subsequent history in our own land on the sagacity and justness of the speculations hazarded here by the author on his particular topic.

It would not be far wrong to consider that Americans, by the great civil war, furnished, in a single historical case, the double example required for complete illustration of Tocqueville’s point: an example of the democratic, together with an example of the aristocratic, community engaging in war after a long peace. Readers may make each his own comparison of the Frenchman’s philosophical speculations with the actual facts that emerged in the course of our national strife:

Any army is in danger of being conquered at the outset of a campaign, after a long peace; any army which has long been engaged in warfare has strong chances of victory: this truth is peculiarly applicable to democratic armies. In aristocracies the military profession, being a privileged career, is held in honor even in time of peace. Men of great talents, great attainments, and great ambition embrace it; the army is in all respects on a level with the nation, and frequently above it.

We have seen, on the contrary, that among a democratic people the choicer minds of the nation are gradually drawn away from the military profession to seek, by other paths, distinction, power, and especially wealth. After a long peace—and in democratic ages the periods of peace are long—the army is always inferior to the country itself. In this state it is called into active service: and until war has altered it, there is danger for the country as well as for the army.

I have shown that in democratic armies, and in time of peace, the rule of seniority is the supreme and inflexible law of advancement. This is not only a consequence, as I have before observed, of the constitution of these armies, but of the constitution of the people, and it will always occur.

The words italicized by us above illustrate the intrepid firmness of our author in staking the fortune of an opinion of his upon the risk of confutation by future fact. He affirms, it will be seen, absolutely, and does not seek to save himself by a clause.

Again, as among these nations the officer derives his position in the country solely from his position in the army, and as he draws all the distinction and the competency he enjoys from the same source, he does not retire from his profession or is not superannuated till toward the extreme close of life. The consequence of these two causes is that when a democratic people goes to war after a long interval of peace all the leading officers of the army are old men. I speak not only of the generals, but of the non-commissioned officers, who have most of them been stationary, or have only advanced step by step. It may be remarked with surprise that in a democratic army after a long peace all the soldiers are mere boys, and all the superior officers in declining years; so that the former are wanting in experience, the latter in vigor. This is a strong element of defeat, for the first condition of successful generalship is youth. I should not have ventured to say so if the greatest captain of modern times had not made the observation. [The unequaled success of the aged Von Moltke in the conduct of the Prussian war against France in 1870 is here a curious comment on the text.]

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I am therefore of opinion that when a democratic people engages in a war after a long peace, it incurs much more risk of defeat than any other nation; but it ought not easily to be cast down by its reverses, for the chances of success for such an army are increased by the duration of the war. When a war has at length by its long continuance roused the whole community from their peaceful occupations and ruined their minor undertakings the same passions which made them attach so much importance to the maintenance of peace will be turned to arms. War, after it has destroyed all modes of speculation, becomes itself the great and sole speculation, to which all the ardent and ambitious desires which equality engenders are exclusively directed. Hence it is that the self-same democratic nations which are so reluctant to engage in hostilities sometimes perform prodigious achievements when once they have taken the field.

As the war attracts more and more of public attention, and is seen to create high reputations and great fortunes in a short space of time, the choicest spirits of the nation enter the military profession. All the enterprising, proud, and martial minds, no longer of the aristocracy solely, but of the whole country, are drawn in this direction. As the number of competitors for military honors is immense, and war drives every man to his proper level, great generals are always sure to spring up. A long war produces upon a democratic army the same effects that a revolution produces upon a people; it breaks through regulations, and allows extraordinary men to rise above the common level. Those officers whose bodies and minds have grown old in peace are removed, or superannuated, or they die. In their stead a host of young men are pressing on whose frames are already hardened, whose desires are extended and inflamed by active service. They are bent on advancement at all hazards, and perpetual advancement. They are followed by others with the same passions and desires, and after these are others yet, unlimited by aught but the size of the army. The principle of equality opens the door of ambition to all, and death provides chances for ambition. Death is constantly thinning the ranks, making vacancies, closing and opening the career of arms.

There is, moreover, a secret connection between the military character and the character of democracies which war brings to light. The men of democracies are naturally passionately eager to acquire what they covet, and to enjoy it on easy conditions. They, for the most part, worship chance, and are much less afraid of death than of difficulty. This is the spirit which they bring to commerce and manufactures; and this same spirit, carried with them to the field of battle, induces them willingly to expose their lives in order to secure in a moment the rewards of victory. No kind of greatness is more pleasing to the imagination of a democratic people than military greatness—a greatness of vivid and sudden luster, obtained without toil, by nothing but the risk of life.

Thus, while the interest and the tastes of the members of a democratic community divert them from war, their habits of mind fit them for carrying on war well; they soon make good soldiers when they are roused from their business and their enjoyments.

If peace is peculiarly hurtful to democratic armies, war secures to them advantages which no other armies ever possess; and these advantages, however little felt at first, cannot fail in the end to give them the victory. An aristocratic nation which, in a contest with a democratic people, does not succeed in ruining the latter at the outset of the war always runs a great risk of being conquered by it.

“Democracy in America” must be credited with a very important teaching influence on the political thought of mankind. This influence is more than the impulse of stimulating speculation. It is a practical force fruitful of solid political result. The present writer remembers hearing Tocqueville taught to eager audiences of French students in the Collège de France, at Paris, by M. Laboulaye, a popular professor in that national institution. This was while in France the second empire remained as yet apparently firm on its base, and while in this country the great duel between section and section remained as yet apparently doubtful. The applause with which the lecturer’s praise of free institutions was greeted signified much. It signified that the leaven of Tocqueville’s ideas was working in those youthful hearts. (M. Laboulaye’s lectures, which possessed original merit of their own, were finally published in a volume.) Present republican France owes, in no despicable degree, its existence to the fact that Tocqueville had visited, and reported, and interpreted the United States to his countrymen. Perhaps, also, it is true that the American Union is standing to-day partly because the popular sentiment created by Tocqueville in France favorable to American democracy was too strong, too vivid, and too universal, for the emperor safely to disregard it, in imperial acts, long threatened, hostile to the integrity of the republic. If Tocqueville’s guess is right, if democratic institutions are indeed ultimately to prevail throughout the world, certainly it cannot be denied that the prophet himself will have done his part toward fulfilling his prophecy.

We feel that we shall have done scant justice to the high and serious spirit who forms the subject of these concluding pages of the present chapter, if we do not go from the one work itself, by example out of which we have shown him, to expressions of his in his correspondence that may let us a little deeper into the personal secret of the man himself. Tocqueville, although, as we have intimated, a believer in the democratic destiny of the world, was not such in virtue of being a democrat by preference himself. On the contrary, his own aristocratic blood favoring it perhaps, his individual choice would apparently have gone, not for, but against, democracy. This seems to be indicated in what follows, written to a friend concerning the purpose of his work, “Democracy in America”:

I wished to show what in our days a democratic people really was, and, by a rigorously accurate picture, to produce a double effect on the men of my day. To those who have fancied an ideal democracy, as a brilliant and easily realized dream, I undertook to show that they had clothed the picture in false colors; that the democratic government which they desired, though it may procure real benefits to the people who can bear it, has none of the elevated features with which their imaginations would endow it; and moreover, that such a government can only maintain itself under certain conditions of faith, enlightenment, and private morality, which we have not yet reached, and which we must labor to attain before grasping their political results.

To men for whom the word “democracy” is the synonym of overthrow, spoliation, anarchy, and murder, I have endeavored to prove that it was possible for democracy to govern society, and yet to respect property, to recognize rights, to spare liberty, to honor religion; that if democratic government is less fitted than other forms to develop some of the finest faculties of the human soul, it has yet its noble and its lovely features; and that perhaps, after all, it may be the will of God to distribute a moderate degree of happiness to the mass of men, and not to concentrate great felicity and great perfection on a few. I have tried, moreover, to demonstrate that, whatever might be their opinion upon these points, the time for discussing them was past; that the world marched onward day by day towards a condition of social equality, and dragged them and every one along with it; that their only choice now lay between evils henceforth inevitable; that the practical question of this day was not whether you would have an aristocracy or a democracy, but whether you would have a democratic society, without poetry and without grandeur, but with morality and order; or a democratic society disorganized and depraved, delivered over to a furious frenzy, or else bent beneath a yoke heavier than any that have weighed upon mankind since the fall of the Roman Empire.

The “Commune” in France, “Nihilism” in Russia, “Socialism” in Germany, “Nationalism” in the United States, are all of them, each in its own different way, remarkable historical commentaries on the prophetic political forecast contained in the foregoing letter.

Here is ripe practical wisdom occurring in a letter written by Tocqueville about two years before his death:

You know that my most settled principle is, that there is no period of a man’s life at which he is entitled to rest; and that effort out of one’s self, and still more above one’s self, is as necessary in age as in youth—nay, even more necessary. Man in this world is like a traveler who is always walking towards a colder region, and who is therefore obliged to be more active as he goes farther north. The great malady of the soul is cold. And in order to counteract and combat this formidable illness, he must keep up the activity of his mind not only by work, but by contact with his fellow-men and with the world. Retirement from the great conflicts of the world is desirable no doubt for those whose strength is on the decline; but absolute retirement, away from the stir of life, is not desirable for any man, nor at any age.

His experience as practical politician made him write thus:

It is a sad side of humanity that politics uncovers. We may say, without making any exception, that nothing there is either thoroughly pure or thoroughly disinterested; nothing really generous, nothing hearty or spontaneous. There is no youth, even among the youngest; and something cold, selfish, and premeditated may be detected even in the most apparently passionate proceedings.

There was so much wholesome reaction in Tocqueville’s moral nature that, notwithstanding the disparaging views, on his part, thus revealed of human worth, he never became cynical. He could even write as follows to a friend of his who, he thought, went too far in decrying mankind:

You make humanity out worse than it is. I have seen many countries, studied many men, mingled in many public transactions, and the result of my observation is not what you suppose. Men in general are neither very good nor very bad; they are simply mediocre. I have never closely examined even the best without discovering faults and frailties invisible at first. I have always in the end found among the worst certain elements and holding-points of honesty. There are two men in every man: it is childish to see only one; it is sad and unjust to look only at the other.... Man, with all his vices, his weaknesses, and his virtues, this strange mixture of good and bad, of low and lofty, of sincere and depraved, is, after all, the object most deserving of study, interest, pity, affection, and admiration to be found upon this earth; and since we have no angels, we cannot attach ourselves to anything greater or worthier than our fellow-creatures.

On the whole, Alexis de Tocqueville’s own practice in life showed that he wrote not only with sincerity, but with earnestness, when he wrote those words. It was not of such Frenchmen as was Tocqueville that the author of that heavy sentence on France could have been thinking—that the French character was made up without conscience. We, for our part, cannot but maintain that Tocqueville is as much more solid as he may be less brilliant than his predecessor and fellow, Montesquieu. They were both too theoretical; that is, too exclusively French as distinguished, for instance, from English, in political philosophy. They began to be deductive, when to be inductive yet longer would have been their wiser part. In a word—like Guizot, too, the author of the “History of Civilization,” and the minister of Citizen-King Louis Philippe—both Montesquieu and Tocqueville failed of escaping what the French would call the defect of their quality.

XV.

VOLTAIRE.

1694-1778.

By the volume and the variety, joined to the unfailing brilliancy, of his production; by his prodigious effectiveness; and by his universal fame, Voltaire is undoubtedly entitled to rank first, with no fellow, among the eighteenth-century literary men, not merely of France, but of the world. He was not a great man, he produced no great single work, but he must nevertheless be pronounced a great writer. There is hardly any species of composition to which, in the long course of his activity, he did not turn his talent. It cannot be said that he succeeded splendidly in all; but in some he succeeded splendidly, and he failed abjectly in none. There is not a great thought, and there is not a flat expression, in the whole bulk of his multitudinous and multifarious works. Read him wherever you will, in the ninety-seven volumes (equivalent, probably in the aggregate, to two hundred volumes like the present) which, in one leading edition, collect his productions, you may often find him superficial, you may often find him untrustworthy, you will certainly often find him flippant, but not less certainly you will never find him obscure, and you will never find him dull. The clearness, the vivacity of this man’s mind were something almost preternatural. So, too, were his readiness, his versatility, his audacity. He had no distrust of himself, no awe of his fellow-men, no reverence for God, to deter him from any attempt with his pen, however presuming. If a state ode were required, it should be ready to order at twelve to-morrow; if an epic poem—to be classed with the “Iliad” and the “Æneid “—the “Henriade” was promptly forthcoming, to answer the demand. He did not shrink from flouting a national idol, by freely finding fault with Corneille; and he lightly undertook the task of extinguishing a venerable form of Christianity, simply with pricks, innumerably repeated, of his tormenting pen.

A very large part of the volume of Voltaire’s production consists of letters, written by him to correspondents perhaps more numerous, and more various in rank, from kings on the throne down to scribblers in the garret, than ever, in any other case, exchanged such communications with a literary man. Another considerable proportion of his work in literature took the form of pamphlets, either anonymously or pseudonymously published, in which this master-spirit of intellectual disturbance and ferment found it convenient, or advantageous, or safe, to promulge and propagate his ideas. A shower of such publications was incessantly escaping from Voltaire’s pen. More formal and regular, more confessedly ambitious, literary essays of his, were poems in every kind—heroic, mock-heroic, lyric, elegiac, comic, tragic, satiric—historical and biographical monographs, and tales or novels of a peculiar class.

Voltaire’s poetry does not count for very much now. Still, its first success was so great that it will always remain an important topic in literary history. Besides this, it really is, in some of its kinds, remarkable work. Voltaire’s epic verse is almost an exception, needful to be made, from our assertion that this author is nowhere dull. “The Henriade” comes dangerously near that mark. It is a tasteless reproduction of Lucan’s faults, with little reproduction of Lucan’s virtues. Voltaire’s comedies are bright and witty, but they are not laughter-provoking; and they do not possess the elemental and creative character of Shakespeare’s or Molière’s work. His tragedies are better; but they do not avoid that cast of mechanical which seems necessarily to belong to poetry produced by talent, however consummate, unaccompanied with genius. Voltaire’s histories are luminous and readable narratives, but they cannot claim the merit either of critical accuracy or of philosophic breadth and insight. His letters would have to be read in considerable volume in order to furnish a full satisfactory idea of the author. His tales, finally, afford the most available, and, on the whole, likewise the best means of arriving shortly and easily at a knowledge of Voltaire.

But, before coming to these, we owe it to our readers, and perhaps to ourselves, to justify with example what, a little way back, we said of Voltaire as epic poet.

Voltaire was profoundly influenced by his personal observations of what England was, alike in her literary, her political, and her theological aspects. Voltairism may, in fact, be pronounced a transplantation from English soil. It was English deism “mixed with cunning sparks of”—French wit. A very short passage from the “Henriade” will suffice the double purpose of showing what in quality of style that poem of Voltaire’s is, and of suggesting its author’s sense of debt to the England which, for its freedom and its free-thinking, he so much admired. The reader will not fail to note the skill with which Voltaire manages in praising another country to give a very broad hint to his own. The old-fashioned formal heroic couplet, with rhyme, in which the following passage appears translated, is not inapposite to the artificial cast and style of the original. Various passions, such as “Fear,” are not only personified in the “Henriade,” but made to play the part of veritable characters in the action of the poem. Supernatural interferences occur. History is boldly fabricated or falsified at the pleasure of the poet. Of this audacious freedom the passage from which we take our extract presents an instance. Voltaire sends his hero on a mythical mission to England to solicit help from Queen Elizabeth. He here meets every reader’s familiar old friend, “a venerable hermit,” who instructs him in English history and manners. Voltaire wrote prefaces and notes to vindicate his epic practices. He went to Virgil for precedents. Lucan he censured for not making free enough with his history. “Eliza” is, of course, Queen Elizabeth, and “Bourbon,” is the hero of the epic, Henry IV. of France, from whose name, it need not be said, comes the title, “Henriade.” We quote from the first canto of the poem:

A virgin queen the regal scepter sway’d, And fate itself her sovereign power obeyed. The wise Eliza, whose directing hand Had the great scale of Europe at command; And ruled a people that alike disdain Or freedom’s ease, or slavery’s iron chain. Of every loss her reign oblivion bred; There, flocks unnumbered graze each flowery mead. Britannia’s vessels rule the azure seas, Corn fills her plains, and fruitage loads her trees. From pole to pole her gallant navies sweep The waters of the tributary deep. On Thames’s banks each flower of genius thrives, There sports the Muse, and Mars his thunder gives. Three different powers at Westminster appear, And all admire the ties which join them there. Whom interest parts the laws together bring, The people’s deputies, the peers and king. One whole they form, whose terror wide extends To neighboring nations, and their rights defends. Thrice happy times, when grateful subjects show That loyal, warm affection which is due! But happier still, when freedom’s blessings spring From the wise conduct of a prudent king! O when, cried Bourbon, ravished at the sight, In France shall peace and glory thus unite?

A poem flaunting on its front invidious praise like the foregoing of a foreign government so different from the government of France, could not be very acceptable to the ruling classes of his time in the author’s own country. But in England, during the poet’s two years’ stay in that island, a revised edition of the “Henriade” was issued under auspices the most august and imposing. Queen Caroline headed the list of subscribers, and such was the brilliancy of the patronage extended to the poem that Voltaire, as is with probability said, netted forty thousand dollars from his English edition—a sum of money equivalent to, say, one hundred thousand dollars, present value. This early success laid the foundation of a fortune for Voltaire, which the skill, the prudence, the servility, the greed, and the unscrupulousness of the owner subsequently built into proportions that were nothing less than princely. Voltaire’s annual income at his death was about a hundred thousand dollars. It seems incredible that a man so rich, and, in some ways, it must be acknowledged, so generous, should have been at the same time so mean, so sordid, so literally perjured in sordidness, as Voltaire is demonstrated, and admitted even by his farthest-going admirers, for instance, Mr. John Morley, to have been.

Among Voltaire’s tales doubtless the one most eligible for use, to serve our present purpose, is his “Candide.” This is a nondescript piece of fiction, the design of which is, by means of a narrative of travel and adventure, constructed without much regard to the probability of particular incidents, to set forth, in the characteristic mocking vein of Voltaire, the vanity and misery of mankind. The author’s invention is often whimsical enough; but it is constantly so ready, so reckless, and so abundant, that the reader never tires as he is hurried ceaselessly forward from change to change of scene and circumstance. The play of wit is incessant. The style is limpidity itself. Your sympathies are never painfully engaged, even in recitals of experience that ought to be the most heart-rending. There is never a touch of noble moral sentiment to relieve the monotony of mockery that lightly laughs at you and tantalizes you, page after page, from the beginning to the end of the book. The banter is not good-natured; though, on the other hand, it cannot justly be pronounced ill-natured; and it is, in final effect upon the reader’s mind, bewildering and depressing in the extreme. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity; such is the comfortless doctrine of the book. The apples are the apples of Sodom, everywhere in the world. There is no virtue anywhere, no good, no happiness. Life is a cheat, the love of life is a cruelty, and beyond life there is nothing. At least, there is no glimpse given of any compensating future reserved for men, a future to redress the balance of good and ill experienced here and now. Faith and hope, those two eyes of the soul, are smilingly quenched in their sockets, and you are left blind, in a whirling world of darkness, with a whirling world of darkness before you.

Such is “Candide.” We select a single passage for specimen. The passage we select is more nearly free than almost any other passage as long, in this extraordinary romance, would probably be found, from impure implications. It is, besides, more nearly serious in apparent motive than is the general tenor of the production. Here, however, as elsewhere, the writer keeps carefully down his mocking mask. At least, you are left tantalizingly uncertain all the time how much the grin you face is the grin of the man, and how much the grin of a visor that he wears.

Candide, the hero, is a young fellow of ingenuous character brought successively under the lead of several different persons wise in the ways of the world, who act toward him, each in his turn, the part of “guide, philosopher, and friend.” Candide, with such a mentor bearing the name Martin, has now arrived at Venice. Candide speaks:

“I have heard a great talk of the Senator Pococuranté, who lives in that fine house at the Brenta, where they say he entertains foreigners in the most polite manner. They pretend this man is a perfect stranger to uneasiness.” “I should be glad to see so extraordinary a being,” said Martin. Candide thereupon sent a messenger to Signor Pococuranté desiring permission to wait on him the next day.

Candide and his friend Martin went into a gondola on the Brenta, and arrived at the palace of the noble Pococuranté: the gardens were laid out in elegant taste and adorned with fine marble statues; his palace was built after the most approved rules of architecture. The master of the house, who was a man of sixty, and very rich, received our two travelers with great politeness, but without much ceremony, which somewhat disconcerted Candide, but was not at all displeasing to Martin.

As soon as they were seated two very pretty girls, neatly dressed, brought in chocolate, which was extremely well frothed. Candide could not help making encomiums upon their beauty and graceful carriage. “The creatures are well enough,” said the senator. “I make them my companions, for I am heartily tired of the ladies of the town, their coquetry, their jealousy, their quarrels, their humors, their meannesses, their pride, and their folly. I am weary of making sonnets, or of paying for sonnets to be made, on them; but, after all, these two girls begin to grow very indifferent to me.”

After having refreshed himself, Candide walked into a large gallery, where he was struck with the sight of a fine collection of paintings.

“Pray,” said Candide, “by what master are the two first of these?” “They are Raphael’s,” answered the senator. “I gave a great deal of money for them seven years ago, purely out of curiosity, as they were said to be the finest pieces in Italy: but I cannot say they please me; the coloring is dark and heavy; the figures do not swell nor come out enough, and the drapery is very bad. In short, notwithstanding the encomiums lavished upon them, they are not, in my opinion, a true representation of nature. I approve of no paintings but where I think I behold Nature herself; and there are very few, if any, of that kind to be met with. I have what is called a fine collection, but I take no manner of delight in them.”

While dinner was getting ready Pococuranté ordered a concert. Candide praised the music to the skies. “This noise,” said the noble Venetian, “may amuse one for a little time; but if it was to last above half an hour it would grow tiresome to everybody, though perhaps no one would care to own it. Music is become the art of executing what is difficult; now, whatever is difficult cannot be long pleasing.

“I believe I might take more pleasure in an opera, if they had not made such a monster of that species of dramatic entertainment as perfectly shocks me; and I am amazed how people can bear to see wretched tragedies set to music, where the scenes are contrived for no other purpose than to lug in, as it were by the ears, three or four ridiculous songs, to give a favorite actress an opportunity of exhibiting her pipe. Let who will or can die away in raptures at the trills of a eunuch quavering the majestic part of Cæsar or Cato, and strutting in a foolish manner upon the stage. For my part, I have long ago renounced these paltry entertainments, which constitute the glory of modern Italy, and are so dearly purchased by crowned heads.” Candide opposed these sentiments, but he did it in a discreet manner. As for Martin, he was entirely of the old senator’s opinion.

Dinner being served up, they sat down to table, and after a very hearty repast, returned to the library. Candide, observing Homer richly bound, commended the noble Venetian’s taste. “This,” said he, “is a book that was once the delight of the great Pangloss, the best philosopher in Germany.” “Homer is no favorite of mine,” answered Pococuranté very coolly. “I was made to believe once that I took a pleasure in reading him; but his continual repetitions of battles must have all such a resemblance with each other; his gods that are forever in a hurry and bustle, without ever doing any thing; his Helen, that is the cause of the war, and yet hardly acts in the whole performance; his Troy, that holds out so long without being taken; in short, all these things together make the poem very insipid to me. I have asked some learned men whether they are not in reality as much tired as myself with reading this poet. Those who spoke ingenuously assured me that he had made them fall asleep, and yet that they could not well avoid giving him a place in their libraries; but that it was merely as they would do an antique, or those rusty medals which are kept only for curiosity, and are of no manner of use in commerce.”

“But your excellency does not surely form the same opinion of Virgil?” said Candide. “Why, I grant,” replied Pococuranté, “that the second, third, fourth, and sixth books of his ‘Æneid’ are excellent; but as for his pious Æneas, his strong Cloanthus, his friendly Achates, his boy Ascanius, his silly King Latinus, his ill-bred Amata, his insipid Lavinia, and some other characters much in the same strain, I think there cannot in nature be anything more flat and disagreeable. I must confess I prefer Tasso far beyond him; nay, even that sleepy tale-teller Ariosto.”

“May I take the liberty to ask if you do not receive great pleasure from reading Horace?” said Candide. “There are maxims in this writer,” replied Pococuranté, “from whence a man of the world may reap some benefit; and the short measure of the verse makes them more easily to be retained in the memory. But I see nothing extraordinary in his journey to Brundusium, and his account of his bad dinner; nor in his dirty, low quarrel between one Rupilius, whose words, as he expresses it, were full of poisonous filth; and another, whose language was dipped in vinegar. His indelicate verses against old women and witches have frequently given me great offense; nor can I discover the great merit of his telling his friend Mæcenas, that, if he will but rank him in the class of lyric poets, his lofty head shall touch the stars. Ignorant readers are apt to advance everything by the lump in a writer of reputation. For my part, I read only to please myself. I like nothing but what makes for my purpose.” Candide, who had been brought up with a notion of never making use of his own judgment, was astonished at what he heard; but Martin found there was a good deal of reason in the senator’s remarks.

“Oh, here is a Tully!” said Candide; “this great man, I fancy, you are never tired of reading.” “Indeed, I never read him at all,” replied Pococuranté. “What the deuce is it to me whether he pleads for Rabirius or Cluentius? I try causes enough myself. I had once some liking to his philosophical works; but when I found he doubted of everything, I thought I knew as much as himself, and had no need of a guide to learn ignorance.”

“Ha!” cried Martin, “here are fourscore volumes of the ‘Memoirs of the Academy of Sciences,’ perhaps there may be something curious and valuable in this collection.” “Yes,” answered Pococuranté; “so there might, if any one of these compilers of this rubbish had only invented the art of pin-making. But all these volumes are filled with mere chimerical systems, without one single article conducive to real utility.”

“I see a prodigious number of plays,” said Candide, “in Italian, Spanish, and French.” “Yes,” replied the Venetian; “there are, I think, three thousand, and not three dozen of them good for anything. As to those huge volumes of divinity, and those enormous collections of sermons, they are not all together worth one single page of Seneca; and I fancy you will readily believe that neither myself nor any one else ever looks into them.”

Martin, perceiving some shelves filled with English books, said to the senator: “I fancy that a republican must be highly delighted with those books, which are most of them written with a noble spirit of freedom.” “It is noble to write as we think,” said Pococuranté; “it is the privilege of humanity. Throughout Italy we write only what we do not think; and the present inhabitants of the country of the Cæsars and Antoninuses dare not acquire a single idea without the permission of a father Dominican. I should be enamored of the spirit of the English nation did it not utterly frustrate the good effects it would produce by passion and the spirit of party.”

Candide, seeing a Milton, asked the senator if he did not think that author a great man. “Who?” said Pococuranté sharply. “That barbarian, who writes a tedious commentary, in ten books of rambling verse, on the first chapter of Genesis! That slovenly imitator of the Greeks, who disfigures the creation by making the Messiah take a pair of compasses from heaven’s armory to plan the world; whereas Moses represented the Deity as producing the whole universe by his fiat! Can I think you have any esteem for a writer who has spoiled Tasso’s hell and the devil; who transforms Lucifer, sometimes into a toad, and at others into a pigmy; who makes him say the same thing over again a hundred times; who metamorphoses him into a school-divine; and who, by an absurdly serious imitation of Ariosto’s comic invention of fire-arms, represents the devils and angels cannonading each other in heaven! Neither I, nor any other Italian, can possibly take pleasure in such melancholy reveries. But the marriage of Sin and Death, and snakes issuing from the womb of the former, are enough to make any person sick that is not lost to all sense of delicacy. This obscene, whimsical, and disagreeable poem met with the neglect that it deserved at its first publication; and I only treat the author now as he was treated in his own country by his contemporaries.”

Candide was sensibly grieved at this speech, as he had a great respect for Homer, and was very fond of Milton. “Alas!” said he softly to Martin, “I am afraid this man holds our German poets in great contempt.” “There would be no such great harm in that,” said Martin. “Oh, what a surprising man!” said Candide to himself. “What a prodigious genius is this Pococuranté! Nothing can please him!”

After finishing their survey of the library they went down into the garden, when Candide commended the several beauties that offered themselves to his view. “I know nothing upon earth laid out in such bad taste,” said Pococuranté; “everything about it is childish and trifling; but I shall have another laid out to-morrow upon a nobler plan.”

As soon as our two travelers had taken leave of his excellency, “Well,” said Candide to Martin, “I hope you will own that this man is the happiest of all mortals, for he is above everything he possesses.” “But do you not see,” answered Martin, “that he likewise dislikes everything he possesses? It was an observation of Plato long since, that those are not the best stomachs that reject, without distinction, all sorts of aliments.” “True,” said Candide; “but still, there must certainly be a pleasure in criticising everything, and in perceiving faults where others think they see beauties.” “That is,” replied Martin, “there is a pleasure in having no pleasure.” “Well, well,” said Candide. “I find that I shall be the only happy man at last, when I am blessed with the sight of my dear Cunegund.” “It is good to hope,” said Martin.

The single citation preceding sufficiently exemplifies, at their best, though at their worst not, the style and the spirit of Voltaire’s “Candide;” as his “Candide” sufficiently exemplifies the style and the spirit of the most characteristic of Voltaire’s writings in general. “Pococurantism” is a word, now not uncommon in English, contributed by Voltaire to the vocabulary of literature. To readers of the foregoing extract, the sense of the term will not need to be explained. We respectfully suggest to our dictionary-makers, that the fact stated of its origin in the “Candide” of Voltaire would be interesting and instructive to many. Voltaire coined the name, to suit the character of his Venetian gentleman, from two Italian words which mean together “little-caring.” Signor Pococuranté is the immortal type of men that have worn out their capacity of fresh sensation and enjoyment.

Mr. John Morley’s elaborate monograph on Voltaire claims the attention of readers desirous of exhaustive acquaintance with its subject. This author writes in sympathy with Voltaire, so far as Voltaire was an enemy of the Christian religion; but in antipathy to him, so far as Voltaire fell short of being an atheist. A similar sympathy, limited by a similar antipathy, is observable in the same author’s still more extended monograph on Rousseau. The sympathy works without the antipathy to limit it, in Mr. Morley’s two volumes on “Diderot and the Encyclopædists”—for Diderot and his closest fellows were good thorough-going atheists.

Even in Voltaire and Rousseau, but particularly in Voltaire, Mr. Morley, though his sympathy with these writers is, as we have said, not complete, finds far more to praise than to blame. To this eager apostle of atheism, Voltaire was at least on the right road, although he did, unfortunately, stop short of the goal. His influence was potent against Christianity, and potent it certainly was not against atheism. Voltaire might freely be lauded as on the whole a mighty and a beneficent liberalizer of thought.

And we, we who are neither atheists nor deists—let us not deny to Voltaire his just meed of praise. There were streaks of gold in the base alloy of that character of his. He burned with magnanimous heat against the hideous doctrine and practice of ecclesiastical persecution. Carlyle says of Voltaire, that he “spent his best efforts, and as many still think, successfully, in assaulting the Christian religion.” This, true though it be, is liable to be falsely understood. It was not against the Christian religion, as the Christian religion really is, but rather against the Christian religion as the Roman hierarchy misrepresented it, that Voltaire ostensibly directed his efforts. “You are right,” wrote he to his henchman D’Alembert, in 1762, “in assuming that I speak of superstition only; for as to the Christian religion, I respect it and love it, as you do.” This distinction of Voltaire’s, with whatever degree of simple sincerity on his part made, ought to be remembered in his favor, when his memorable motto, “Écrasez l’Infâme,” is interpreted and applied. He did not mean Jesus Christ by l’Infâme; he did not mean the Christian religion by it; he did not even mean the Christian Church by it; he meant the oppressive despotism and the crass obscurantism of the Roman Catholic hierarchy. At least, this is what he would have said that he meant, what in fact he substantially did say that he meant, when incessantly reiterating, in its various forms, his watchword, “Écrasez l’Infâme,” “Écrasons l’Infâme”—“Crush the wretch!” “Let us crush the wretch!” His blows were aimed, perhaps, at “superstition;” but they really fell, in the full half of their effect, on Christianity itself. Whether Voltaire regretted this, whether he would in his heart have had it otherwise, may well, in spite of any protestation from him of love for Christianity, be doubted. Still, it is never, in judgment of Voltaire, to be forgotten that the organized Christianity which he confronted was in large part a system justly hateful to the true and wise lover, whether of God or of man. That system he did well in fighting. Carnal indeed were the weapons with which he fought it; and his victory over it was a carnal victory, bringing, on the whole, but slender net advantage, if any such advantage at all, to the cause of final truth and light. The French Revolution, with its excesses and its horrors, was perhaps the proper, the legitimate, the necessary, fruit of resistance such as was Voltaire’s, in fundamental spirit, to the evils in Church and in State against which he conducted so gallantly his life-long campaign.

But though we thus bring in doubt the work of Voltaire, both as to the purity of its motive and as to the value of its fruit, we should wrong our sense of justice to ourselves if we permitted our readers to suppose us blind to the generous things that this arch-infidel did on behalf of the suffering and the oppressed. Voltaire more than once wielded that pen of his, the most dreaded weapon in Europe, like a knight sworn to take on himself the championship of the forlornest of causes. There is the historic case of Jean Calas at Toulouse, Protestant, an old man of near seventy, broken on the wheel, as suspected, without evidence, and against accumulated impossibilities, of murdering his own son, a young man of about thirty, by hanging him. Voltaire took up the case and pleaded it to the common sense, and to the human feeling, of France, with immense effectiveness. It is, in truth, Voltaire’s advocacy of righteousness, in this instance of incredible wrong, that has made the instance itself immortal. His part in the case of Calas, though the most signal, is not the only example of Voltaire’s literary knighthood. He hated oppression, and he loved liberty, for himself and for all men, with a passion as deep and as constant as any passion of which nature had made Voltaire capable. If the liberty that he loved was fundamentally liberty as against God no less than as against men, and if the oppression that he hated was fundamentally the oppression of being put under obligation to obey Christ as lord of life and of thought, this was something of which, probably, Voltaire never had a clear consciousness.

We have now indicated what was most admirable in Voltaire’s personal character. On the whole, he was far from being an admirable man. He was vain, he was shallow, he was frivolous, he was deceitful, he was voluptuous, he fawned on the great, he abased himself before them, he licked the dust on which they stood. “Trajan, est-il content?” (“Is Trajan satisfied?”)—this, asked, in nauseous adulation, and nauseous self-abasement, by Voltaire of Louis XV., so little like Trajan in character—is monumental. The occasion was the production of a piece of Voltaire’s written at the instance of Louis XV.’s mistress, the infamous Madame de Pompadour. The king, for answer, simply gorgonized the poet with a stony Bourbon stare.

But, taken altogether, Voltaire’s life was a great success. He got on in the world, was rich, was fortunate, was famous, was gay, if he was not happy. He had his friendship with the great Frederick of Prussia, who filled for his false French flatterer a return cup of sweetness, cunningly mixed with exceeding bitterness. His death was an appropriate coup de théâtre, a felicity of finish to such a life quite beyond the reach of art. He came back to Paris, whence he had been an exile, welcomed with a triumph transcending the triumph of a conqueror. They made a great feast for him, a feast of flattery, in the theater. The old man was drunk with delight. The delight was too much for him. It literally killed him. It was as if a favorite actress should be quite smothered to death on the stage under flowers thrown in excessive profusion at her feet.

Let Carlyle’s sentence be our epigraph on Voltaire:

“No great Man.... Found always at the top, less by power in swimming than by lightness in floating.”

XVII

ROUSSEAU: 1712-1778; St. Pierre: 1737-1814.

There are two Rousseaus in French literature. At least there was a first, until the second effaced him, and became the only.

We speak, of course, in comparison, and hyperbolically. J. B. Rousseau is still named as a lyric poet of the time of Louis XIV. But when Rousseau, without initials, is spoken of, it is always Jean Jacques Rousseau that is meant.

Jean Jacques Rousseau is perhaps the most squalid, as it certainly is one of the most splendid, among French literary names. The squalor belongs chiefly to the man, but the splendor is wholly the writer’s. There is hardly another example in the world’s literature of a union so striking of these opposites.

Rousseau’s life he has himself told, in the best, the worst, and the most imperishable of his books, the “Confessions.” This book is one to which the adjective charming attaches, in a peculiarly literal sense of the word. The spell, however, is repellent as well as attractive. But the attraction of the style asserts and pronounces itself only the more, in triumph over the much there is in the matter to disgust and revolt. It is quite the most offensive, and it is well-nigh the most fascinating, book that we know.

The “Confessions” begin as follows:

I purpose an undertaking that never had an example, and whose execution never will have an imitator. I would exhibit to my fellows a man, in all the truth of nature, and that man—myself.

Myself alone. I know my own heart, and I am acquainted with men. I am made unlike any one I have ever seen—I dare believe unlike any living being. If no better than, I am at least different from, others. Whether nature did well or ill in breaking the mold wherein I was cast, can be determined only after having read me.

Let the last trumpet sound when it will, I will come, with this book in my hand, and present myself before the Sovereign Judge. I will boldly proclaim: Thus have I acted, thus have I thought, such was I. With equal frankness have I disclosed the good and the evil. I have omitted nothing bad, added nothing good; and if I have happened to make use of some unimportant ornament, it has, in every case, been simply for the purpose of filling up a void occasioned by my lack of memory. I may have taken for granted as true what I knew to be possible, never what I knew to be false. Such as I was, I have exhibited myself—despicable and vile, when so; virtuous, generous, sublime, when so. I have unveiled my interior being, such as Thou, Eternal Existence, hast beheld it. Assemble around me the numberless throng of my fellow-mortals; let them listen to my confessions, let them blush at my depravities, let them shrink appalled at my miseries. Let each of them, in his turn, with equal sincerity, lay bare his heart at the foot of thy throne, and then let a single one tell thee, if he dare, I was better than that man.

Notwithstanding our autobiographer’s disavowal of debt to example for the idea of his “Confessions,” it seems clear that Montaigne here was at least inspiration, if not pattern, to Rousseau. But Rousseau resolved to do what Montaigne had done, more ingenuously and more courageously than Montaigne had done it. This writer will make himself his subject, and then treat his subject with greater frankness than any man before him ever used about himself, or than any man after him would ever use. He undoubtedly succeeded in his attempt. His frankness, in fact, is so forward and eager that it is probably even inventive of things disgraceful to himself. Montaigne makes great pretense of telling his own faults, but you observe that he generally chooses rather amiable faults of his own to tell. Rousseau’s morbid vulgarity leads him to disclose traits in himself of character or of behavior, that, despite whatever contrary wishes on your part, compel your contempt of the man. And it is for the man who confesses, almost more than for the man who is guilty, that you feel the contempt.

The “Confessions” proceed:

I was born at Geneva, in 1712, of Isaac Rousseau and Susannah Bernard, citizens.... I came into the world weak and sickly. I cost my mother her life, and my birth was the first of my misfortunes.

I never learned how my father supported his loss, but I know that he remained ever after inconsolable.... When he used to say to me, “Jean Jacques, let us speak of your mother,” my usual reply was, “Well, father, we’ll cry then,” a reply which would instantly bring the tears to his eyes. “Ah!” he would exclaim with agitation, “give me her back, console me for her loss, fill up the void she has left in my soul. Could I love thee thus wert thou but my son?” Forty years after having lost her he expired in the arms of a second wife, but with the name of the first on his lips, and her image engraven on his heart.

Such were the authors of my being. Of all the gifts Heaven had allotted them, a feeling heart was the only one I had inherited. While, however, this had been the source of their happiness, it became the spring of all my misfortunes.

“A feeling heart!” That expression tells the literary secret of Rousseau. It is hardly too much to say that Rousseau was the first French writer to write with his heart; but heart’s blood was the ink in which almost every word of Rousseau’s was written. This was the spring of his marvelous power. Rousseau:

My mother had left a number of romances. These father and I betook us to reading during the evenings. At first the sole object was, by means of entertaining books, to improve me in reading; but, ere long, the charm became so potent, that we read turn about without intermission, and passed whole nights in this employment. Never could we break up till the end of the volume. At times my father, hearing the swallows of a morning, would exclaim, quite ashamed of himself, “Come, let’s to bed; I’m more of a child than you are!”

The elder Rousseau was right respecting himself. And such a father would almost necessarily have such a child. Jean Jacques Rousseau is to be judged tenderly for his faults. What birth and what breeding were his! The “Confessions” go on:

I soon acquired, by this dangerous course, not only an extreme facility in reading and understanding, but, for my age, a quite unprecedented acquaintance with the passions. I had not the slightest conception of things themselves at a time when the whole round of sentiments was already perfectly familiar to me. I had apprehended nothing—I had felt all.

Some hint now of other books read by the boy:

.... Plutarch especially became my favorite reading. The pleasure which I found in incessantly reperusing him cured me in some measure of the romance madness: and I soon came to prefer Agesilaus, Brutus, and Aristides to Orondates, Artemenes, and Juba. From these interesting studies, joined to the conversations to which they gave rise with my father, resulted that free, republican spirit, that haughty and untamable character, fretful of restraint or subjection, which has tormented me my life long, and that in situations the least suitable for giving it play. Incessantly occupied with Rome and Athens, living, so to speak, with their great men, born myself the citizen of a republic [Geneva], the son of a father with whom patriotism was the ruling passion, I caught the flame from him—I imagined myself a Greek or a Roman, and became the personage whose life I was reading.

On such food of reading and of reverie, young Rousseau’s imagination and sentiment battened, while his reason and his practical sense starved and died within him. Unconsciously thus in part were formed the dreamer of the “Émile” and of “The Social Contract.” Another glimpse of the home life—if home life such experience can be called—of this half-orphan, homeless Genevan boy:

I had a brother, my elder by seven years.... He fell into the ways of debauchery, even before he was old enough to be really a libertine. ... I remember once when my father was chastising him severely and in anger, that I impetuously threw myself between them, clasping him tightly. I thus covered him with my body, receiving the blows that were aimed at him; and I held out so persistently in this position, that whether softened by my cries and tears, or fearing that I should get the worst of it, my father was forced to forgive him. In the end my brother turned out so bad that he ran away and disappeared altogether.

It is pathetic—Rousseau’s attempted contrast following, between the paternal neglect of his older brother and the paternal indulgence of himself:

If this poor lad was carelessly brought up, it was quite otherwise with his brother.... My desires were so little excited, and so little crossed, that it never came into my head to have any. I can solemnly aver, that till the time when I was bound to a master I never knew what it was to have a whim.

Poor lad! “Never knew what it was to have a whim!” It well might be, however—his boy’s life all one whim uncrossed, unchecked; no contrast of saving restraint, to make him know that he was living by whim alone!

Young Jean Jacques was at length apprenticed to an engraver. He describes the contrast of his new situation and the effect of the contrast upon his own character and career:

I learned to covet in silence, to dissemble, to dissimulate, to lie, and at last to steal, a propensity for which I had never hitherto had the slightest inclination, and of which I have never since been able quite to cure myself....

My first theft was the result of complaisance, but it opened the door to others which had not so laudable a motive.

My master had a journeyman named M. Verrat.... [He] took it into his head to rob his mother of some of her early asparagus and sell it, converting the proceeds into some extra good breakfasts. As he did not wish to expose himself, and not being very nimble, he selected me for this expedition. Long did I stickle, but he persisted. I never could resist kindness, so I consented. I went every morning to the garden, gathered the best of the asparagus, and took it to “the Molard,” where some good creature, perceiving that I had just been stealing it, would insinuate that little fact, so as to get it the cheaper. In my terror I took whatever she chose to give me and carried it to M. Verrat.

This little domestic arrangement continued for several days before it came into my head to rob the robber, and tithe M. Verrat for the proceeds of the asparagus.... I thus learned that to steal was, after all, not so very terrible a thing as I had conceived, and ere long I turned this discovery to so good an account, that nothing I had an inclination for could safely be left within my reach....

And now, before giving myself over to the fatality of my destiny, let me, for a moment, contemplate what would naturally have been my lot had I fallen into the hands of a better master. Nothing was more agreeable to my tastes, nor better calculated to render me happy, than the calm and obscure condition of a good artisan, more especially in certain lines, such as that of an engraver at Geneva.... In my native country, in the bosom of my religion, of my family, and my friends, I should have led a life gentle and uncheckered as became my character, in the uniformity of a pleasing occupation and among connections dear to my heart. I should have been a good Christian, a good citizen, a good father, a good friend, a good artisan, and a good man in every respect. I should have loved my station; it may be I should have been an honor to it; and after having passed an obscure and simple, though even and happy, life, I should peacefully have departed in the bosom of my kindred. Soon, it may be, forgotten, I should at least have been regretted as long as the remembrance of me survived.