praises, as the most inoffensive, and even moral of men; while Voltaire, who never said worse than D'Alembert freely but privately wrote, raises in their minds the idea of an emanation from the father of all evil. It may be hard to define the bounds which should contain the free discussion of sacred subjects. Those who are the most firmly convinced of religious truth are, generally speaking, the most careless to what extent the liberty of assailing it, in examining its grounds, shall be carried; but without attempting to lay down any such rule, we may safely admit that Voltaire offended, and offended grievously, by the manner in which he devoted himself to crying down the sacred things of his country, whether we regard the interests of society at large, or the interests of the particular system which he desired to establish.

But though it would be exceedingly wrong to pass over this great and prevailing fault without severe reprobation, it would be equally unjust, nay, ungrateful, ever to forget the immense obligations under which Voltaire has laid mankind by his writings, the pleasure derived from his fancy and his wit, the amusement which his singular and original humour bestows, even the copious instruction with which his historical works are pregnant, and the vast improvement in the manner of writing history which we owe to him. Yet great as these services are among the greatest that can be rendered by a man of letters-they are really of far inferior value to the benefits which have resulted from his long and arduous struggle against oppression. especially against tyranny in the worst form which it can assume, the persecution of opinion, the infraction of the sacred right to exercise the reason upon all subjects, unfettered by prejudice, uncontrolled by authority, whether of great names or of temporal power. That he combated many important truths which he found enveloped in a cloud of errors, and could not patiently sift, so as to separate the right from the wrong,

is undeniably true; that he carried on his conflict, whether with error or with truth, in an offensive manner, and by the use of unlawful weapons, has been freely admitted. But we owe to him the habit of scrutinizing, both in sacred matters and in profane, the merits of whatever is presented for our belief, of examining boldly the foundations of received opinions, of making probability a part of the consideration in all that is related, of calling in plain reason and common sense to assist in our councils when grave matters are under discussion; nor can any one since the days of Luther be named, to whom the spirit of free inquiry, nay, the emancipation of the human mind from spiritual tyranny, owes a more lasting debt of gratitude. No one beyond the pale of the Romish church ever denies his obligation to the great Reformer, whom he thanks and all but reveres for having broken the chains of her spiritual thraldom. All his coarseness, all his low ribaldry, all that makes the reading of his works in many places disgusting, in not a few offensive to common decency, and even to the decorum proper to the handling of pious topics, all his assaults upon things which should have been sacred from rude touch, as well as his adherence with unrestrained zeal to some of the most erroneous tenets of the Romish faith-all are forgiven, nay, forgotten, in contemplating the man

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* See particularly his abominable sermon at Wittenberg, on marriage, actually preached, and of so immoral a tendency, as well as couched in such indelicate language, that it can only be referred to without translation, by Bishop Bossuet and others; also his 'Table-talk,' in those parts where he treats of women, and describes with ribaldry the most filthy his conflicts against the devil. Nothing in Rabelais is more coarse. Indeed these are passages unexampled in any printed book; but the original sermon must be consulted, for no translator would soil his page with them, and accordingly Audin and others give them only by allusion and circumlocution. 'Titzen-Rede,' p. 306 and 464, must itself be resorted to if we would see how the great Reformer wrote and spoke. His allowing the Landgrave of Hesse to marry a second wife while the first was living, and the grounds of the permission, are well known; and the attempt to deny this passage of his life is an entire failure.

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of whom we can say "He broke our chains." happily the bad parts of Voltaire's writings are not only placed as it were in a setting by the graces of his style, so that we unwillingly cast them aside, but embalmed for conservation in the spirit of his immortal wit. But if ever the time shall arrive when men, intent solely on graver matters, and bending their whole minds to things of solid importance, shall be careless of such light accomplishments, and the writings which now have so great a relish, more or less openly tasted, shall pass into oblivion, then the impression which this great genius has left will remain ; and while his failings are forgotten, and the influence of his faults corrected, the world, wiser and better because he lived, will continue still to celebrate his name.*

* The edition of Voltaire referred to in this 'Life' is that of Baudouin, at Paris, 1828, in 75 volumes.

APPENDIX.

I.

It would be improper to dismiss the subject of Voltaire without adverting to the somewhat ambitious work which Condorcet has written under the somewhat inaccurate title of his 'Life.' This is a defence and panegyric throughout; no admission of blame, or even error, is ever made; and there is a scorn of all details, facts, dates, which takes from the book its whole value as a biographical, while its unremitting partiality deprives it of all merit as a philosophical composition. Considering the importance of the subject, and the resources of the writer for either recording facts or giving a commentary, it may safely be asserted that there is no greater failure than this work, appealed to as it so often is, out of mere deference to the respectable name it bears. Condorcet was a man of science, no doubt, a good mathematician; but he was in other respects of a middling understanding and violent feelings. In the revolution they called him "le mouton enragé," by way of describing his feeble fury. He belonged to the class of literary men in France whose intolerance was fully equal to that of their pious adversaries-those denouncing as superstition all belief, these holding all doubt to be impious. Rather enamoured of Voltaire's irreligion than dazzled with his wit or his fine sense, he makes no distinction between his good and his bad writings in point of moral worth, nor indeed ever seems to admit that in point of merit one is or can be inferior to another. Witness his panegyric of the 'Pucelle,' which, after some passages were erased, he pronounces to be "a work for which the author of 'Mahomet' and 'Louis XIV.' had no longer any reason to blush" (Vie de Voltaire, 100). His credulity on material things is at least equal to his unbelief on spiritual. He gravely relates that hopes were held out from the court of Madame de Pompadour of

I

a cardinal's hat for Voltaire when he was instructed to translate some psalms, a task which he performed with such admirable address, though in perfect good faith, that they excited a general horror, and were condemned to be burnt. It is none of the least absurd parts of Condorcet's work, that he, being so well versed in physical and mathematical science, passes without any particular observation the writings of Voltaire on physical subjects, when he was so competent to pronounce an opinion upon their merits. But the strangest part of the matter is, that the author of Voltaire's 'Life' should apparently never have read his voluminous and various correspondence, from which alone the real materials for such a work are to be obtained. He might as well have undertaken the 'Life' of Rousseau without reading the 'Confessions.'

The publication in 1820 of Madame de Grafigny's 'Letters,' while residing for six months at Cirey, entitled, not accurately, 'Vie privée de Voltaire et de Madame du Chatelet,' adds some curious particulars to our former knowledge of Madame du Chatelet and of her household, always supposing that we can entirely rely on the testimony of a woman whose own character was very far from respectable, and who professedly acted the very unworthy part of an eaves-dropper for so considerable a time, pleading only as her excuse the extreme penury from which the hospitality that she violated afforded her a shelter. On Voltaire's character it casts no new light whatever, except that it tends to raise our admiration of his talents, if that be possible, and also of his kindly disposition. Of Madame du Chatelet it gives a far less amiable picture.

II.

I HAVE been favoured, by the great kindness of Mr. Stanford, F.R.S., with part of a series of letters which Voltaire wrote to the Duchess Louisa of Saxe Gotha, grandmother of the late Duke, and of which his Serene Highness was graciously pleased to allow him to make a copy. By Mr. Stanford's permission I am enabled to add some of them; and I have selected the six following, which are now