1. 13. Bramante et Michel-Ange. Bramante and Michael Angelo were the architects of St Peter's at Rome. 1. 17. des guerres &c., i. e. the Wars of the Roses, or of York and Lancaster, in the fifteenth century. 1. 18. des années entières, for pendant des &c. 1. 36. la bizarrerie dans ses peintures. The French classical school could not understand the greatness of Milton's poem, and Boileau saw in it (Art poétique, Chant III.) nothing but "Le diable toujours hurlant contre les cieux." A reaction, however, took place about the end of the last century, and the Abbé Delille's diluted translation of Paradise Lost (1804) comes third on a list where we find already the names of Dupré de Saint-Maur (1729) and Louis Racine (1753). M. de Châteaubriand's prose version appeared in 1836. See on Milton appreciated by Frenchmen of the present time M. Taine's Histoire de la littérature anglaise, and especially M. Vinet's Études sur la littérature française au dix-neuvième siècle, vol. I. pp. 500-574. son paradis des sots. Behold a wonder! They but now who seemed In bigness to surpass earth's giant sons Now less than smallest dwarfs, in narrow room 1. 5. qu'on s'y jette à la tête. I. passim. "From those deep-throated engines belcht, whose roar And all her entrails tore... They pluck't the seated hills with all their load, So hills amid the air encountered hills." VI. passim. 1. 7. 1. 14. se rejoignent soudain. "Since now we find this our empyreal form Imperishable, and though pierc'd with wounds, ....a bridge Of length prodigious joining to the wall 1. 17. qui sent les cadavres. VI. 432-435. X. 303-306. "So saying, with delight he snuff'd the smell Where armies lie encampt, come flying, fur'd For death, the following day, in bloody fight. sur le froid et sur le sec. .The aggregated soil X. 273-281. Death with his mace petrifies, cold and dry, دو X. 295-297. littérature variée, essay literature is what Voltaire means PAGE 127. 1. 3. la seule tragédie &c. It is hardly necessary to say that Shakspere was completely out of fashion in France at this time. 1. 4. une noblesse continue, "conçue entièrement dans le système français," says M. Vapereau, "froide et déclamatoire, mais écrite avec noblesse, et contenant de beaux passages. 1. 9. c'est Rabelais perfectionné. Coleridge says of Dean Swift, anima Rabelæsi habitans in sicco. It was quite natural that the satirical and often coarse mind of Voltaire should sympathize with the particular talent which characterizes Gulliver's travels and the Tale of a tub. M. Taine's appreciation of the English pamphlet-writer strikes us as extremely correct: "Swift ne rencontre ni une cause qu'il puisse chérir, ni une doctrine qu'il puisse établir; il emploie toute la force de l'esprit le mieux armé et du caractère le mieux trempé à décrier et à détruire." (Hist. de la litt. ang. III. 195.) 1. 12. qui était très-grossière à Londres avant Charles II. This is not correct. Bishop Hall, Donne, Thomas Fuller, and Jeremy Taylor, had obtained their well-deserved reputation before the accession of Charles II. 1. 15. en imitant les Français. "The common style of sermons was either very flat or low, or swelled up with rhetoric to a false pitch of a wrong sublime. The king (Charles II) had little or no literature, but true and good sense; and had got a right notion of style; for he was in France at a time when they were much set on reforming their language. It soon appeared that he had a true taste. So this helped to raise the value of these men, when the king approved of the style their discourses generally ran in; which was clear, plain, and short." (Burnet, History of his own times, I. 330, edit. of 1823.) Hallam is worth quoting on this subject: "The style of preaching in England was less ornamental, and spoke less to the imagination and the affections than these celebrated writers (Fléchier, Bossuet, Massillon) of the Gallican church; but in some of our chief divines it had its own excellencies." (Literature of Europe, III. 295.) 1. 36. presque chaque année. See M. Lecky's History of England in the eighteenth century, especially vol. I. chap. II. Butler, in the preface to his Analogy, declares that "it has come to be taken for granted that Christianity is not so much as a subject of enquiry; but that it is now at length discovered to be fictitious. In another work (Charge delivered to the Clergy in the Diocese of Durham, 1751) he speaks of "the general decay of religion in the nation; which is now observed by every one, and has been for some time the complaint of all serious persons. "The influence of it," he adds, "is more and more wearing out of the minds of men, even of those who do not pretend to enter into speculations upon the subject; but the number of those who do, and who profess themselves unbelievers, increases, and with their numbers their zeal...... As different ages have been distinguished by different sorts of particular errors and vices, the deplorable distinction of ours is an avowed scorn of religion in some, and a growing disregard of it in the generality." Addison pronounced it an unquestionable truth that there was "less appearance of religion in England than in any neighbouring state or kingdom, whether Protestant or Catholic." (Lecky, Hist. of England, 11. 530.) Montesquieu says (Notes sur l'Angleterre): "Je passe en France pour avoir peu de religion; en Angleterre pour en avoir trop.' The following dates are interesting with reference to this subject: Blount, Oracles of reason, 1693.-Toland, Christianity not mysterious, 1696.Mandeville, Fable of the bees, 1706.-Collins, Priestcraft in perfection, 1709.-Shaftesbury, An enquiry concerning virtue in his Characteristics, 1711-23; Discourse on free-thinking, 1713; Discourse of the grounds and reasons of the Christian religion, 1724.-Lyons, The infallibility of human judgment, its dignity and excellence, 1723.-Woolston, Six discourses on the Miracles of Christ, 1729.—Tindal, Christianity as old as creation, 1730.-Bolingbroke, Philosophical Works, 1754. PAGE 128. 1. 13. on ne la connaissait pas. An able French critic (art. Newton, in M.Franck's Dictionnaire des sciences philosophiques) makes the following remarks on the comparative merits of the systems of Descartes (Théorie de l'ondulation) and of Newton (Théorie de l'émanation) so far as light is concerned: "Toutes les objections adressées au système Cartésien se trouvent aujourd'hui péremptoirement résolues, tandis que presque tous les faits nouveaux trouvés en optique depuis cinquante ans, les interférences, la polarisation colorée, et les phénomènes de la diffraction, tels qu'ils résultent des mesures précises de Fresnel, qui s'expliquent facilement dans le système des pulsations ou ondulations, restent insolubles dans le système de l'émanation." PAGE 129. 1. 2. est enfin décidée. Boileau's work on the subject is entitled Réflexions sur Longin; it appeared in 1694, and was an answer to Perrault's Parallèle des anciens et des modernes. Sir William Temple's share in the literary controversy was his Essay upon the ancient and modern learning. See for full details, M. H. Rigault's Histoire de la querelle des anciens et des modernes, 8vo. Paris, 1859. 1. 7. Depuis Platon jusqu'à lui il n'y a rien. This passage alone gives a sufficient idea of Voltaire's ignorance and prejudices when he talks on matters connected with philosophy. We have seen him speaking contemptuously of Descartes whose system he knew only through the medium of Locke's criticisms; despite the praises he gives here to the author of the Essay on human understanding, he has found fault with him in other parts of his own writings (see Voltaire's Philosophe ignorant, and also the article on Voltaire in M. Franck's Dictionnaire des sciences philosophiques). 66 1. 17. n'a jamais compris. Voltaire's strictures refer to Plato's Timæus, a work, the influence of which, during the middle ages more especially, cannot be overrated, although it was due, as Professor Jowett remarks, partly to a misunderstanding. In the supposed depths of this dialogue the Neo-Platonists found hidden meanings and connections with the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, and out of these they elicited doctrines quite at variance with the spirit of Plato." PAGE 130. 1. 6. sans consulter les hommes. "On peut dire que Leibniz fut protestant par le jugement, et catholique par l'imagination, et par esprit de systeme." (Franck.) The duke de Broglie published some years ago a posthumous work of Leibniz (Systema theologicum) from which he endeavours to show that the great German philosopher was secretly a Roman Catholic. 1. 7. le plus universel de l'Europe. "Le vaste savoir et l'esprit encyclopédique qui le distinguent lui firent entrevoir l'unité et l'harmonie des sciences et des arts." (Franck.) 1. 8. historien infatigable. Amongst his numerous historical works we may name the Annales imperii occidentis Brunsvicensis. 1. 9. éclairant l'étude du droit par la philosophie: Methodus nova docendæ discendæque jurisprudentiæ (1668). 1. 15. entre Newton et lui. This circumstance originated with the publication (1674) of a treatise by Leibniz, entitled Schediasma de serierum summis et seriebus quadraticis. See Biog. universelle, article Leibniz. 1. 25. servait à l'animer. “L'étude du philosophe s'était convertie en une sorte de cabinet d'agent d'affaires en grand, et de correspondance Havas au moyen de laquelle il était mieux informé que les princes...Les trois formes les plus modernes de l'éclectisme, les bibliothèques ou le goût des livres et des collections, les journaux ou recueils de variétés littéraires, scientifiques et autres, et les académies, ces élites des esprits, il les a connues et cultivées, il les a même perfectionnées... Il a fondé plusieurs journaux. Il avait d'abord travaillé à la fondation des Semestria literaria. Il a fondé les Acta eruditorum, il a donné sa collaboration au Journal des savants qui lui a quelquefois refusé ses articles; il a rédigé le Monatliche Auszug, premier recueil périodique allemand qui parut à Hanovre." (Foucher de Careil.) CHAPTER XXXV. PAGE 132. 1. 1. un ordre de l'État. It is difficult to say exactly what Voltaire means by this phrase, but it appears to be what we should call an "estate of the realm." A distinct "order" the clergy were, of course, in all countries: but it is true they were nowhere so distinctly an "'estate as in France. In England they had, up to the Reformation, claimed to be recognised as such, and voted their own taxes in Convocation, and the position of the Bishops in the House of Lords after the Reformation indicated that their claims were still to a certain extent allowed. In the Protestant states of Germany, the church was completely subject to the civil power. In the rest of the German Empire and in Spain the clergy, if their liberties were not as clearly defined as in France, were at least as independent of the civil power as they were in that country. Voltaire's remark must therefore be taken with caution. 1. 5. la plus ménagée, the most discreet. 1. 8. l'ancienne Eglise, i. e. the separate national church before the universal monarchy of Rome was established. 1. 17. l'avaient écarté. M. l'abbé Houssaye thus describes (Le père de Bérulle et l'oratoire de Jésus, pp. 4, 5) the state of the French clergy towards the beginning of the seventeenth century: "Trop souvent, sur le seuil de ces temples misérables, les paroissiens trouvaient le pasteur qui, sans se donner la peine de quitter son surplis, les suivait au cabaret, y causait et buvait avec eux: s'ils avaient pour curé quelque bénéficier plus riche, l'office à peine terminé, ils le voyaient passer au galop, étalant sur sa personne et sa monture le luxe le plus impudent, pressé de se rendre à l'appel des chasseurs, dont on entendait les fanfares dans la forêt voisine. Les mœurs d'un clergé si peu soucieux de ses devoirs étaient ce que l'on pourrait attendre de la licence de l'époque. D'effroyables scandales venaient chaque jour réjouir les réformés, et défrayer l'éloquence de leurs ministres. Le nom de prêtre était devenu synonyme d'ignorance et de débauche, et M. Bourdoise, un ami de M. Bérulle, n'exagérait rien lorsqu'il s'écriait, outré de |