and some of his compositions written about | M. Arouet made interest with the Marquis the age of twelve were notable enough to de Châteauneuf, surviving brother of the be referred to in the salon of Ninon de godfather abbé, to take young François l'Enclos, a friend of his mother, then a with him as page to the Hague, where he lively old lady turned of eighty. Young had just been appointed French ambasArouet's godfather was the Abbé de Châ-sador. The marquis and suite arrived at teauneuf (Ninon's last lover), whose cler- their destination September 28, 1713; but ical repute lay chiefly in the line of gal- the diplomatic career of the attaché was a lantry, and he it was who brought the short one, for rash boy of nineteen little poet to make his bow to the venera- he lost little time in falling into new misble fair one whose perennial charms had adventure by conceiving an undying pasbeen worshipped by so many generations sion for a young countrywoman without a of lovers. The veteran Aspasia was de- sou, daughter of a Madame Dunoyen, wife lighted with the boy, his ready answers, of a French Catholic gentleman from whom sprightly talk, and manners of the pretti- she was separated. Olimpe Dunoyen, est, and Ninon's famous legacy of eighty then a young lady of twenty-one, was not guineas with which to purchase books, was exactly pretty, as Voltaire used to say the fruit of the visit. But to the poetry of some sixty years after, though amiable schooldays quickly succeeds the prose of and winsome, romantic and adventurous life, and it ere long became necessary for to a degree. October and November François to think of a profession. "I passed away, and still "soft eyes looked desire none," said the youth, “except that love to eyes that spoke. again;” but alas! of literature." But literature, in the opin- one dreadful evening early in December, ion of his father, was the pursuit of a man when the page returned to the embassy, who would soon die of hunger, and so, the ambassador confronted him, informed though law, with its wigs and sheepskins him that all was discovered, and that he pointing towards high honors and deep must hold himself in readiness for immeflesh-pots, had no charm for him, he be-diate departure. To the last day of his came a law student, and ultimately an avocat with the right of pleading for money, as he himself put it, if he had a loud enough voice. And in the sequel, young Arouet's voice proved so loud that his pleadings were heard in courts far wider and more extensive than those of the French capital. Meanwhile, he was eighteen, and in Paris, and had an occupation which it was a pleasure to him to neglect. His godfather the abbé had introduced him to other votaries of pleasure besides the aged Ninon, among others to the Epicurean Society of the Temple-the ancient monastery of the Templars, where in later times Louis XVI. and his family were confined which chiefly existed for the purposes of elegant and sometimes by no means elegant dissipation. He himself was nowise lacking in some of the most remarkable qualifications for social success. Madame de Genlis admits that he alone of the men of his century possessed the lost art of talking to women as women love to be talked to; and a portrait of him painted when he was four-and-twenty shows him "full of grace and spirit, with a mocking mouth, refined profile, possessed of the air of a gentleman, a luminous forehead, and a fine hand in a fine ruffle." Distressed and annoyed at the loose and extravagant habits of his younger son, 66 stay the love-stricken swain sent long letters to the lady of his dreams, continuing to write even from the cabin of the yacht which bore him from the enchanted shore. A year or two later the fascinating “ Pimpette" became a countess Madame la Comtesse de Winterfeld — but her lover, to the end of his days, preserved a tender recollection of the woman he had so ar dently loved in the springtime of life, when the "world lay all enamelled before him, a distant prospect sungilt." In the autumn of 1715 Louis XIV. slept with his fathers, and the Regent d'Orleans reigned in his stead. Presently some satirical verses appeared entitled, "Things that I have seen," wherein the writer enumerated a number of evil things that he had remarked in the late reign, and as the piece was so arranged that nearly every line began with Fai vu, the poem was commonly called Les j'ai vu. The last line ran that all these ills the writer had seen, and yet was not twenty years old: J'ai vu ces maux, et je n'ai pas vingt ans. 12 one of the towers of the Bastile, where he with Frederika caused him to lose two was put under triple bolts with ten feet of entire years of his life, so Voltaire was solid and ancient masonry between him wont to express contrition for the fruitand the May day world of Paris. But less passion which for a while completely never did captive possess a lighter heart. arrested his powers of thought and work. The brightness of the world shut out, he In the month of December, 1725, young employed himself, though denied pen, ink, Arouet was dining one evening with the and paper, upon his epic poem "La Hen- duke at the Hotel de Sully, still recognizriade," one entire canto of which is said able as 143 Rue S. Antoine, when a serto have come to him in the stillness of vant came up to him, and whispered that the night watches. After nearly eleven some one wished to speak with him at the months' imprisonment the poet was per- house door. He found there a hackney mitted once more to look upon the sky coach with two men, who forthwith laid and the gardens of the Palais Royal. One hands on him and belabored him over the resolution he formed in the silence of his shoulders with sticks, while the Chevalier solitary cell to change his name when de Rohan, a dissolute man about town, he was restored to freedom; he had not and nephew of his host, and with whom succeeded well as Arouet, henceforth he Voltaire had had a quarrel some few evenwould court Fortune's smiles as Arouetings previously at the opera, encouraged de Voltaire. Why he chose that name is his "workmen " in their task. With torn an enigma not yet solved, the most prob-frills and deranged hair the young poet able explanation being that it was the rushed back into the palace and demanded anagram of Arouet, 1. j. (le jeune); at any vengeance of the duke on the aggressor. rate, he entered the Bastile in May, 1717, But Monseigneur de Sully only shrugged François Marie Arouet, he came out of his shoulders and proposed nothing, and the Bastile the April following, Arouet de Voltaire, thus deprived of any satisfaction Voltaire. It is said that a nobleman of by the law, attempted to vindicate himself the court about this time conducted him by calling out the person who had insulted to an interview with the regent. "Be pa- him. He set to work to take fencing lestient," the prince is reported to have said sons, the Rohan family were uneasy, the to him, “and I will take care of you." police on the qui vive, a lettre de cachet "I thank your Royal Highness for taking was procured, and Voltaire once again care of my board," returned the irrepres- found himself a prisoner in the Bastile. sible youth, "but I beg of you to trouble But there was no desire to keep him in yourself no further for my lodging." confinement, and as he expressed his willIn the year 1718 his first tragedy, ingness to take a run across the Channel "Edipe," was produced with decisive and visit "the land of free thought and success, and performed forty-five successive nights- a run not previously equalled on the French stage. The story goes that at one of the performances the author, exulting in his triumph, appeared holding up the high priest's train and swinging it this way and that, with nods and becks and wreathed smiles, as though laughter holding both his sides and not gorgeous tragedy in sceptred pall, came sweeping by. Madame de Villars, the beautiful wife of Louis XIV.'s famous marshal, inquired who the young man was who scemed so desirous to ruin the play. Upon learning that it was the author, she desired that he might be brought to her box and presented to her. She cast her eyes on him, and the kindly glance be stowed in the susceptible hour of success was followed perchance by other glances; at any rate the poet fell prostrate before the charms of the lovely wife of the hero of Denain. She did but play with him, however, tradition would have us believe; and as Goethe tells us that his love affair free writing," his offer was gladly accepted; he was released on the 2nd of May, and within a week shook from off his feet the dust of ungrateful France. But his friends in Paris did not forget him, and ere long Horace Walpole, ambassador at the French court, brother of Sir Robert, then prime minister of England, wrote at the instance of the French minister for foreign affairs, commending the refugee from the city of the Bastile to the good offices of Bubb Doddington. The letter opened the doors of the great Whig houses of the kingdom to the exile, as his previous acquaintance with Boling. broke, whom he had visited at his place, La Source, some five miles from Orleans in the opening days of 1723, gave him favorable access to the circles of the Tory party. It was one of the most beautiful days of May, nature pranking herself in her spring robe of green leaves, of many-colored blossoms and of golden sunshine, when * Parton's Life of Voltaire, vol. i., p. 185. from the passers-by, and so took occasion Voltaire first set foot on British soil at Greenwich. It chanced, it would seem, to have been the day of the great Greenwich Fair, and the traveller describes the river as covered with shipping, gay with flags in honor of the king and queen, who were upon the water in a gilded barge, escorted by boats with bands of music. Continuing his rambles, he passed into the park, and as he viewed the crowds of well-dressed citizens, the beauty of the women, the horse-races, the river, and the mighty city in the distance, the exile was willing to believe that England was always gay, its skies ever clear and bright, and the people intent upon naught but pleasure. Such were his first hours in England, but he was soon to learn that there had been much illusion for him in the scene. He was in London the same evening, and met, as he relates, some ladies of fashion, perhaps at Lord Bolingbroke's house at Battersea. But they lacked the air of vivacity which he had remarked in the gay crowd who participated in the ravishing spectacle which he had witnessed at Greenwich, they even seemed constrained and reserved as they sat sipping their tea, flirting their fans, talking Nevertheless he rose to the occasion scandal or playing cards. Nor was it long and with characteristic energy set himere one of these fine ladies explained to self to study English. An amusing story the perplexed foreigner that the scene he is told of him about this time. Finding had witnessed with so much satisfaction that the word plague with six letters was in the morning was not one which people monosyllabic, and that ague with only the of fashion would frequent, that the pretty four last letters of plague was dissyllabic, girls he had so greatly admired were only he fervently desired that the plague might servants or rustics, and that the brilliant take half the English language and the youths who had caracoled so gaily about ague the remainder. But the progress he the park were probably students or ap-made in his studies was remarkably rapid, prentices on hired horses. Quickly too was the stranger to view another side of the shield, and learn how often, in England at all events, "winter lingering chills the lap of May," for next day the wind was east, and a fashionable physician explained to him that at such a time the very animals wore a dejected look, and the most robust lost at least all their good humor, assuring him that the wind blew from that quarter when Charles I.'s head was cut off and when James II. was dethroned. No long time after, Voltaire was upon the Thames one day in a boat, when one of the rowers observing that his passenger was a foreigner, began to boast the superior liberty of his country, declaring with the added emphasis of an oath, that he would rather be a boatman on the Thames than an archbishop in France. The following day Voltaire saw the very same man in prison, ironed, and praying an alms Voltaire was thirty-two years of age when he thus found himself compelled to begin the world anew in a foreign land, of whose language he was almost entirely ignorant, while, to add to his misfortunes, he lost some twenty thousand francs soon after his arrival in England owing to the failure of a Jewish banker. and when he had been at work a little over Laura, would you know the passion That by words can be expressed. All the power of your own. Ultimately Voltaire succeeded in translating portions of Hudibras into good English verse, though he never learned how to spell the name of the party whom he describes as "Wighs." Proper names generally seem to have proved somewhat of a stumbling-block to him; thus, Sir John Vanbrugh figures as "Chevalier Wanbruck," and the identity of Mrs. 66 Oldfield the actress Pope's 'poor Narcissa" is almost lost when we find her apostrophized as "Ofilds " or even Ophils." Well was it on one occasion for Voltaire that be had thus turned his attention to acquiring a knowledge of English, which, by the way, he still took a pleasure in speaking as a very old man when upwards of eighty years of age. Being followed one day by a furious crowd anxious to make him comprehend how Britons in Hogarth's time felt towards the race whom they regarded as their natural foes, the poet lost not a whit of his presence of mind, but mounting a mile-stone, thus addressed the infuriated rabble "Brave Englishmen, is it not sufficient misfortune not to have been born among you?" He spoke, we are assured, with such eloquence, that the people wished at last to carry him home on their shoulders, but, knowing well the capriciousness of crowds, the exile wisely slunk away. For some time Voltaire resided in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, the street wherein Turner the painter was born, and whither Porson's footsteps often turned, in order that he might meet at the Cider Celler the favorite boon companion, of whom he remarked that " Dick can beat us all he can drink all night and spout all day." He was welcomed, too, at Wandsworth in the house of Everard Falkener, afterwards English ambassador at Constantinople, whose sons he delighted to entertain in after years at Ferney, when he would tell them stories of the time when their father was a father to him in England. Voltaire seems to have known almost every person of note in this country, and it is only surprising how scanty is the information to be gleaned concerning him in contemporary records. He was received not only at Bolingbroke's town house, but also at Dawley Court, one wing of which may yet be seen standing not very far from Twickenham. He was a familiar guest at Bubb Doddington's magnificent new seat, Eastbury, in Dorsetshire; he frequented Pope's society, and at a great dinner at his house spoke on one occasion so lightly of Christianity that Mrs. Pope the poet's mother- a good Catholic, rose from the table and quitted the room. He lived during three months with Lord Peterborough, and appears to have been brought in contact, amongst others, with Gay, Congreve, Thomson, Young, and Swift, whom he termed the Rabelais Anglais. It was in this country also that Voltaire made the acquaintance of M. Fabrice, who held poor George I. in his Within the gates of Hell sat Sin and Death In counterview within the gates, that now Stood open wide, belching outrageous flame Far into chaos, since the friends passed through, Sin opening; who thus now to Death began : "O Son, why sit we here each other viewing?" Voltaire, who admired Milton little more than he did Shakespeare, vehemently objected to the personification of Sin and Death. Young replied by the well-known epigram of which the best version is that given by Dr. Johnson :You are so witty, profligate, and thin, At once we think you Milton, Death, and Sin. While he was in England a daughter of the author of "Paradise Lost was discovered to be residing in London, old, infirm, and pinched with poverty. "In a quarter of an hour," Voltaire tells us," she was rich." It was while living in Surrey Street, Strand, that Congreve was visited by Voltaire; the dramatist spoke of his works as trifles that were beneath him, and intimated that he preferred to be visited as a private gentleman. "If you were nothing but that," replied the exile, "I should never have come to see you." Warm as was Voltaire's attachment to Bolingbroke, he relates but one trifling anecdote of his intercourse with him. The conversation turned one day upon the alleged avarice of the Duke of Marlborough, and some one appealed to Bolingbroke to confirm the statement. "He was so great a man," was the reply, though the speaker belonged to 570 a different political party from the gen- the main influence which England exerted eral," he was so great a man that I have upon him was through its general atmoforgotten his faults." Another of Vol- sphere of free thought. What though his taire's friends was old Duchess Sarah," English Letters was denounced and who told him much that she remembered every copy that could be found was seized, of her great husband's dealings with the it was in vain that the volumes were Swedish monarch Charles XII., and as- burned by the public executioner (in June, sured him that she was convinced that 1734), when in lighting the pyre he did but Queen Anne, towards the close of her unconsciously help to start the general reign, had a secret interview with James conflagration of the French Revolution. II., in which she promised to name him as her successor if he would renounce the Roman Catholic religion. Among his intimates at this time also must be remembered the unfortunate Byng, whom, twenty years later, when the cry for vengeance against him was echoed from every corner of the kingdom, Voltaire strove so earnestly to save. Of all the events that occurred in England during his residence there, the one that appears to have made the deepest impression on Voltaire's mind was the stately funeral of Sir Isaac Newton; but he nevertheless spread throughout Europe the scandal that neither infinitesimal calculus nor gravitation would have availed to obtain for him the appointment of master of the mint had not the witty Catherine Barton, Sir Isaac's charming niece, made a conquest of the Earl of Halifax, her uncle's old and trusted friend. During the whole of the year 1727, Voltaire seems to have been engaged in preparing for publication an issue of "La Henriade by subscription. The king, George II., was no lover of "boetry," but Queen Caroline was, and to her, after Bolingbroke had declined the honor, the poem was dedicated. Her Majesty courteously acknowledged the compliment, and the king, according to custom, sent the author a present of two thousand crowns (écus). Three years was a long exile for an offence such as Voltaire had committed, yet it was towards the end of March, 1729, ere he became once more a recognized inhabitant of the city whence he had been compelled to fly. The import of this visit to England, so far as Voltaire's influence in France and among continental nations is concerned, it is almost impossible to over-estimate. The discreditable incidents of the beating had blown over; guineas had been acquired to an amount by no means trifling for a man so chary of expense and so skilful in the art of investing money; and above all, he had studied our literature, history, and institutions, as no Frenchman had ever done before. But From Murray's Magazine. MAXIMS FOR NOVEL-WRITERS. OWING to the increasing amount of attention now being paid by men, women, and children of all classes of intellect and profession to the interesting amusement of writing novels, it is thought that it may not be out of place to offer to the writing public the following little compendium of the principles adopted by our most sucThe compiler cessful modern authors. trusts that it may at least contribute to save the beginner from the necessity of a distressingly lengthened survey of their works, the dislike of which ordeal, it is to be feared, not unfrequently drives him to the desperate measure of observing hu man nature at first hand. ARSENIC. The poison administered to others by women intending to commit murder. (See also "Chlora!.") ARTIST. A limp creature in long hair and knickerbockers. ATHEIST. If introduced, always the most virtuous man in the book. AUNT. Always "maiden," and eccentric in behavior. BARONET. A bold, bad man; something like a French marquis, but younger. BARRISTER. As bad as a baronet, but not so bold. BEAUTY. Many prefer to make their heroes and heroines "not exactly handsome according to the severe canons of art, but yet possessing a charm of expres sion which instantly fascinated all who be held it." The advantage of this description is that nine out of ten of your readers will think it fits themselves, and will be pleased accordingly. BISHOP. "Worthy;" has been an athlete; has "calves," or sometimes "a pair of calves." CAPTAIN (ARMY). A dashing, well. dressed man in want either of cash or morals, and generally both. |