Page images
PDF
EPUB

philosophiques, p. 367.) And yet Voltaire never loses an opportunity of extolling Newton at the expense of Descartes.

PAGE IOI.

1.2. la méthode qu'il avait introduite. The celebrated Discours de la méthode which may be said to have revolutionized modern philosophy, was published for the first time in 1637.

1. 9. une académie d'expériences, an academy for the study of experimental philosophy. The academy del Cimento was created in 1657.

1. 18. tandis que le fanatisme opprimait toute vérité. This is another instance of Voltaire's favourite theories about religion. It was not fanaticism which prevented the diffusion of truth, but as Mr Hallam says, Tranquillity is indispensable for science." "The germ of our Royal Society may be traced to the year 1645, when Wallis, Wilkins, Glisson, and others less known, agreed to meet weekly at a private house in London in order to converse on subjects connected with natural, and especially experimental philosophy." (Hallam, Liter. of Europe, III. p. 575.)

PAGE 102.

1. 4. tout système, i.e. every pre-conceived or à priori system. ces voyages plus fameux, that of Bougainville round the world for instance, 1766-1769.

1. 23.

1. 27. le Jardin Royal also called jardin des Plantes, and formerly jardin du Roi; founded in 1626 by Louis XIV, at the request of his physicians Hérouard and Guy la Brosse, and thrown open to the public in 1650.

1. 40. le Journal des savants was founded by Denis de Sallo, councillor in the Parlement of Paris.

PAGE 103.

1. 23. liés de cordes liés avec des cordes.

1. 27.

=

les anneaux constellés. "Anneau fabriqué sous une constellation, ou qui en porte la marque." (Littré.)

1. 28. Les effets de la baguette de coudrier; the pretended possibility of finding out by means of a wand or stick the whereabouts of a stream, a treasure, &c. has given rise to the science of rhabdomancy (Gr. þáßdos= wand, μavreía = divination).

1. 40. Le livre de dom Calmet. M. Ludovic Lalanne says of Calmet's Dissertations sur les apparitions, 1746, 12mo., "Il est impossible de pousser la crédulité plus loin." (Dictionnaire historique de la France.)

PAGE 104.

1. 23. un livre fameux, the Pensées sur la comète, écrites à un Docteur de Sorbonne, published at Amsterdam in 1681, 2 vols. 12mo. "This

book, written apparently for the purpose of quieting the apprehensions of those who connected the comet of 1680 with serious misfortunes and calamities speedily forthcoming, is nothing else but an apology of Atheism. Bayle reasons thus: some persons maintain that God by causing comets to shine in the heavens as signs of his wrath and displeasure, wishes to proclaim the important truth of an overruling Providence ordering all things in the Universe, and to prevent the spreading of Atheism, which is the bane of society; but such a proposition is utterly false, and we can refute it by merely asserting that God would never employ one evil to destroy another: Atheism is no doubt a serious calamity, but the Almighty can find against it a safer remedy than superstition. So far, so good; but Bayle with his inveterate fondness for paradox, follows up the argument by saying that, supposing so extraordinary a recipe was adopted as a dose of superstition to drive off Atheism, the remedy would be worse than the disease, because a community of Atheists is in every respect superior to a community of bigots!" (Masson, Introd. to French literature, p. 78.)

1. 25. On ne croirait pas que les souverains eussent obligation; notice the imperf. subj. eussent used here by attraction on account of the conditional croirait.

eussent obligation à, had reason to be grateful to.

1. 28. excepté le bas peuple. Voltaire distinctly said that religion was good only for the canaille.

à faire valoir, to strengthen.

1. 37.

1. 33. les fureurs des fanatiques des Cévennes. Voltaire forgets that the Cevenol Protestants whom he calls fanatics were fighting for the principle of religious liberty.

en sont plus heureux, en here is pleonastic.

1. 38. autour d'un tombeau à Saint-Médard, allusion to the extraordinary nervous epidemic which seized upon the convulsionnaires (Jansenist maniacs) who used to assemble at the Saint-Médard cemetery in Paris where was buried the deacon François de Paris (1727). The disorderly scenes which took place there reached such a pitch that the government interfered and the cemetery was closed: the next day the following distich affixed to the gate caused much merriment:

"De par le Roi défense à Dieu

De faire miracle en ce lieu."

PAGE 105.

1. 3. accrédités, credited, believed. Accréditer is also synonymous with faire reconnaître, to accredit, accréditer un ministre auprès d'un gouvernement étranger.

CHAPTER XXXII.

1. 21. les livres de morale et d'agrément, books on ethics, and composed for recreation.

VOL. III.

14

1. 28. le tour, le nombre, la propriété du style, elegance of construction, harmony, appropriateness of style.

1. 31. mais c'était tout. "Enfin Malherbe vint..." says Boileau: the merit of Malherbe consists less in his poetical talent than in the remarkable tact with which he reformed the French language.

1. 34. rebelle entre leurs mains. Notwithstanding Voltaire's assertion the speeches of L'Hôpital are monuments of excellent writing, although perhaps the author is too fond of metaphors.

PAGE 106.

1. 1. qui avait fait le seul mérite...Voltaire's appreciation of mediæval and sixteenth century authors, made from the point of view of what has been called l'école classique, is singularly erroneous. We are amused at seeing him (1) put together in one category writers so different from each other as Joinville, Amyot, Marot, &c., and (2) assign naïveté as their only literary merit. What does Voltaire mean further by the irrégularité of these authors, and by their grossièreté? If the former of his grievances consists in their not having allowed themselves to be fettered by the pseudo-Aristotelic rules, we own that they acted most wisely; as to the latter, if by grossièreté Voltaire meant that the French language of the middle ages and of the Renaissance period was barbarous, such an accusation proves that in common with most of his contemporaries, he knew nothing whatever of the subject he was talking about; if, on the other hand, he was thinking of coarseness of ideas, the charge is, to say the least, a most extraordinary one when applied to Joinville.

1.7. le grand goût, classical taste.

1. 19. ampoulées, inflated: from Latin ampulla, a wine-flask: cf. Horace, Ars Poet. 97, "Projicit ampullas et sesquipedalia verba." 1. 22. Je me sauve à la nage, I am swimming about.

11. 25, 28. pour avoir trouve...pour l'avoir employée parce qu'il avait trouvé...parce qu'il l'avait employée. Balzac did for French prose what Malherbe did for poetry. He has certainly the rare talent of selecting the most appropriate words, of arranging them in the best order, and of observing strictly all the laws of harmony; he has contributed more than anybody else perhaps to purify the vocabulary; but his sesquipedalia verba are too often a mere jingle. The witty line of Maynard may be construed into an expression of praise or the reverse; at any rate it is perfectly descriptive of Balzac.

"Il n'est pas de mortel qui parle comme lui."

1. 35. usage de l'esprit. Voiture's great merit consists in the inexhaustible variety of forms which he applies to the monotonous sterility of his ideas. He never seems to move beyond the narrow circle of drawing-room topics, but these he presents to the reader under a countless variety of shapes.

1. 39. écrit purement. "Pureté méticuleuse," says M. Vapereau (Dict. général des littératures).

1. 40. qui aient vieilli, obsolete; note the idiomatic use of the subjunctive, because the statement made is only of a possible or probable character.

PAGE 107.

1. 5. au barreau. And nevertheless it is perfectly true to say of Patru's forensic compositions: "Ils fatiguent par leur sécheresse."

1. 12. presque toujours piquante. Critics have noticed the inconsistency of Jean Jacques Rousseau who calls La Rochefoucauld's Maximes 66 un triste livre." Without wishing to defend the leading axiom of the work, we may just be allowed to say that in his Émile Rousseau adopts exactly the same view when he says: "Les auteurs, en nous parlant toujours de la vérité, dont ils ne se soucient guère, ne songent qu'à leur intérêt, dont ils ne parlent pas : l'intérêt, voilà le grand mobile de toutes les actions."

1. 21. qui...se soit ressenti.

See above, note to p. 106, 1. 40.

1. 23. la fixation du langage. The Provincial Letters may be considered as forming two series. The first four or five are specimens of the best comic humour; there is apparent from one letter to another, a climax which reaches its height at the close of the tenth. Then Pascal, dropping the mask, turns round against the Jesuits themselves and denounces them to the world in a series of eloquent addresses.

1. 28. ont été abolis. The Jesuits were expelled from France in 1674, and the order was suppressed by Pope Clement XIV in 1773. 1. 32. le style lâche...décousu, the slovenly...disjointed style.

PAGE 108.

1. I. des mœurs du siècle, Massillon has been called "le Racine de la chaire."

1. 5. Peut-être serait-il à souhaiter, it might perhaps be wished.

1. 9. compasser arranger avec exactitude, et comme au compas. Notice that Voltaire judges sermons and homilies here exclusively from the artistic or literary point of view, and therefore utterly misapprehends the relation between the text and the discourse, besides ignoring the fact that neither Greece nor Rome could possibly know anything about sermon composition.

1. 23. Mademoiselle Desvieux, fille d'un rare mérite. The pretended circumstance here alluded to has been amply refuted by Burigny and de Bausset in their lives of Bossuet.

1. 26. se montrèrent de si bonne heure. Bossuet was only sixteen years old when he preached at the Hôtel de Rambouillet; the wellknown anecdote of his sermon in the salon bleu is perfectly authentic, and was told first by Tallemant des Réaux, and then by the Abbé Ledieu. As it was nearly midnight when the sermon came to an end, Voiture remarked that "il n'avait jamais ouï prêcher ni si tôt, ni si tard."

1. 32. soutenus d'une action = soutenus par une action. See above, note to p. 88, 1. 22.

1. 40. qui tient un peu à la poésie, which is somewhat of the province of poetry.

1. 12.

Louis XIV.

PAGE 109.

Madame, Henrietta, Duchess of Orleans, sister-in-law of

=

1. 31. dont il décrit...dont il peint...dont il juge; here dont avec laquelle. This is an archaism.

1. 38. son rival et son ennemi, on account of the famous controversy about Madame Guyon and the Quietists.

1. 39. ce livre singulier. Singulier here is taken in the sense of unlike any other.

qui tient à la fois du... which participates at the same time in the

nature of.

PAGE IIO.

1. 8. enfants de France, the name given to children or grandchildren of the King.

1. 10. Monseigneur, the Dauphin.

1. 12.

la bataille de Rocoux, October 14, 1746.

1. 16. dans son archevêché de Cambrai; he was banished in consequence of the publication of the Telemachus.

1. 22. sur le quiétisme. Voltaire gives an account of the Quietists and of the disputes they caused in chap. XXXVIII of this book, which is not contained in this edition.

ne se doutant pas, having no idea.

1. 23. ce délassement, sc. the Telemachus, which he composed as a relaxation. The disputes with the Quietists were his occupation.

PAGE III.

1. 9. si respecté de tous, et si haï de quelques-uns. De is here used instead of par. See above, note to p. 88, 1. 22.

1. 26. Voilà de quoi, there is wherewith; ce qui suffit (pour).

1. 30. il est à croire, we may believe.

1. 32. en ont produit davantage. In MM. Hachette's edition of La Bruyère (Grands écrivains, vol. III. pp. 179–197) a list is given of fifty-two works composed in imitation of the Caractères.

1. 35. qui plaise et qui instruise qui puisse plaire et instruire. 1. 37. le livre des Mondes, by Fontenelle; the exact title is Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes; the first edition was published in 1686.

PAGE 112.

1. 3. tourbillons, the vortex-theory of Descartes: see above, p. 100, 1. 32, note.

de Descartes; Fontenelle was not by any means a Cartesian à outrance; he says somewhere, "il faut admirer toujours Descartes, et le suivre quelquefois."

« PreviousContinue »