How censurable soever his levity may be, yet there was nothing impious in the death of Voltaire. Had he even believed in the fundamental doctrines of christianity, he might not possibly have deemed it his duty to acknowledge them, to a person, who would have requir ed him to profess others, peculiar indeed to his church, but equally important in his eyes. The persecuting spirit, and superstitious practices, which he conceived arose from the discriminating doctrines of the Roman church had been the habitual subjects of his opposition and ridicule, and however some may conceive him to be mistaken in tracing these evils to their source; yet every friend to mankind will so far allow credit to his writings as they contributed to disgrace and expel from society the monsters of intolerance and the harlequins of religion. Fair had been his fame, and the gratitude of the world increasing and everlasting, had this writer stopt at this glorious point. But his writings in general, and his posthumous letters in particular, clearly show, that his opposition and hatred were not pointed at the noxious or unbecoming excrescences, but at the vital parts of christianity itself. His invectives against these were not only indecent and disingenuous, but were uttered, moreover, with a degree of acrimony spite, bitterness, and bigotry unexampled in any other deistical writer whatever. As the following sketches of this celebrated character are, probably, not generally known in this country, I submit them to your judgment, as deserving the public attention. The following first appeared at the end of a work entitled "The Oracle of Modern Philosophers;" but with many inaccuracies, which were afterwards corrected. "You ask me for a faithful character of Voltaire, with whom you say you are acquainted only through his works. In my opinion, it is a point of some importance to know him even as an author. But you are desirous also of knowing him as a man: under both these views it is my intention to delineate him. Mr. Voltaire is above the middle height. He is lean, and of a dry temperament. His countenance of a bilious and dingy hue, exhibiting an air satirical and caustic, with eyes uncommonly arch and sparkling. His whole manner exhibits the fire which you perceive in his writings. Lively even to levity, he is ever dazzling you with the brilliant scintillations of his wit. A man of this constitution must of course be a valetudinarian. So keen a blade must be always wearing out the scabbard. He is from gay disposition, but composed from necessity, and reserved without friends, he knows the world and forgets it. "Aristippus in the morning and Diogenes in the evening, he loves grandeur but despises the great: with these he feels himself at ease, but is reserved with his equals. His first address is polite, but it soon becomes cold, and ends in disgust. He loves the court, but is quickly tired of its restraints. With sensibility without attachment; voluptuousness without passion, he clings to nothing through choice, but to every thing through inconstancy. Reasoning without principles, his understanding acts by fits like the folly of other men. With an active mind and a malignant heart, he penetrates into every thing in order to despise it. Vain to excess, but still more avaricious, he writes less for reputation than for money. He was made for enjoyment, but is busy only in accumulating wealth. Such is the man, now behold the author. "Being a poet by nature, his verses cost him too little. This facility injures him; he abuses it continually, and of course, seldom gives us any finished production. As he composes with ease, ingenuity, and eloquence, next to poetry his occupation should be history, were he capable of profound research, and an inviolable love of truth; but he has adopted the manner of Bayle, whom he copies after, while he censures him. It has been said that a writer without passion and prejudices should be of no religion, or country whatever. In this particular Voltaire makes rapid strides to perfection. No one surely will accuse him of national partiality or attachment; on the contrary, a strain of complaint approaching to the querulous imbecility of old age runs through all his writings. He is continually blaming and ridiculing whatever is French, while every thing that lies at a thousand leagues distance from France is the constant subject of his extravagant encomiums. As to religion, it is well known, that he acknowledges none at all. He possesses much French and foreign literature, much of that motley erudition so fashionable at this day. He would be an adept in politics, in physics, in geometry, in what you please; but in all these capacities he never penetrates beyond the surface of science. And yet it requires a very pliant genius to touch even thus lightly on such a variety of subjects. His taste is more delicate than true. An ingenious satirist, but indifferent critic, he is fond of ab stract sciences, which peculiarity, nevertheless, excites no surprise. He is accused of never knowing how to stop at the golden point of moderation. At one time he is a melting philanthropist, at another an outrageous libeller. In a word, Mons. Voltaire is ambitious of passing for an extraordinary man, and such he surely is." Another portrait of Voltaire drawn by one of his cotemporaries, a Mons. de la Baumelle, is not, I believe, very generally known. "Voltaire, says he, possessed every requisite to the most extensive reputation. His wit was universal; and as an individual he had more than any other man; but the genius that confers durability on wit, he did not possess. He was highly pleasing at first, but is becoming daily less so, from abounding only in beauties that are hackneyed and obvious. He seizes upon whatever comes within his view, and makes it his own. With the rapidity of the eagle, he wants its bright and penetrating eye. The profusion of imagery which he throws over the same object, the variety of his expressions, and the luxury of his elocution serve only to mask the leanness of his ideas, and the scantiness of the funds on which he is incessantly drawing. His phraseology, if not the most appropriate, is always the most brilliant. He has the art of approximating extremes, and by forcibly contrasting them, surprises the reader at once with the harmony and the conciseness of his diction. But as to the powers of fancy, displayed in his writings, they are never his own. He may claim the varnish, but the painting is another's. He injures his talents by dissipating them upon every kind of composition. In vain did he canvass his mind for that fertility and depth of thought which it was unable to furnish, and discovering the absence of these qualities, he strove to supply their want by pouring out torrents of acrimony on those who possessed them. By an air of independence and novelty he dazzled the eyes of a nation beginning at length to be weary of the monotony and slavery of its ideas; and by occasional plagiarisms from the English writers, by bold assertions, and frantic effusions, attempted to impose upon the public the pretensions of real genius, while, in fact, he was only embellishing some trivial truth. His compositions cost him but little, but they are worth no more than they cost. On subjects of philosophy they are generally ridiculous; on history replete with taste and falsehoods; on criticism they are singular and uncandid. In the tragic walk he is very unequal. The details are often admirable, while the plan is defective. As a poet, he is noble, majestic, brilliant, airy, and a faithful painter of nature; but never sublime. In the line of politics he appears frequently to be perplexed, sometimes frantic, and always mistaken. He is a pigmy discussing the war between the gods and the giants. One valuable quality, however, seems prevalent in his writings, they generally plead the' cause of oppressed humanity. Some have compared him to the president Montesquieu, but the resemblance is no nearer than that of the ingenious phrases of Paterculus to the deep researches of Tacitus." I shall conclude this imperfect account of Voltaire by a few lines from the familiar letters of the author of "The Spirit of the Laws." From these the reader will see what this great man thought of the champion of infidelity. Speaking of his disgrace at the court of Berlin, he says, "Let not Mr. Voltaire imagine that they whom he conceives to be his friends, will express themselves otherwise in their private letters. There is but one opinion respecting his talents, and the same is the case respecting his character. He is, therefore, at liberty to treat me as he has done some eminent prelates, although I am infinitely less worthy of his anger. In doing this, he only confirms by fresh injuries the former opinion of the public on the mildness and moderation of his temper." When the French Academy voted a statue to Voltaire, the following inscription was handed about Paris. It does not contain much point, and I know not whether you will deem it worthy a corner in The Port Folio. En tibi dignum lapide Volterranum Qui in poesi magnus, historiâ mediocres, philosophiâ minimus, religione nihil. Quem irrisorem hominum, Deûmque Senatus. ABROAD, there appears to be no end of the procession of periodical papers. They start up every day, like the mushrooms of a summer's night. We have Tattlers, Triflers, Lookers-on, and Babblers in abundance. After Ramblers, Loungers, Idlers, and Loiterers, we expected to see no more of that family, when lo! a Mr. Clarke, a self-taught genius, appears not unpleasantly before us, in the guise of a good-natured SAUNTERER.* This is the most * This is a novel appellation in the nomenclature of the British essayists; and we think it a very excellent and appropriate title. But it may perhaps be considered a curious circumstance in the annals of literary composition, that many years ago, long before the appearance of Mr. Clarke's book, in conjunction with the brilliant TYLER, the present chief justice of Vermont, and John Curtis Chamberlain, esquire, an accomplished scholar, and a well principled man, who in our national assembly adorns and defends the best councils of his country, the inditer of this note, on topics of life and literature, wrote some ten or twenty papers for a village newspaper, and the task of composing the initial essay, and sketching the outlines of the plan devolving on him, he chose the appellation of THE SAUNTERER, which, it is confidently believed, was then perfectly new. This paper, which, as far as the splendid abilities of his distinguished associates gave it light and lustre, was in a very elegant taste, both of invention and composition, has long since shared the fate of all those productions which the indiscretion of authorship commits to the perishable pages of an ephemeral gazette. Essay No. I, which cost its author the literary labour of a week, has long since sunken to the very bottom of Lake Lethe. Not one trace of the fugitive remains. Its parent merely remembers that in his partial opinion, the short-lived infant had in its features rather more of the goodly child, than of the ill favoured urchin. After this awkward introduction of egotism, it may not be intolerably impertinent to add, in reply to some who unreasonably tax him with literary laziness, that for a period of more than ten years if, instead of writing for gazettes, he had written for the book. sellers, and prearranged his crude thoughts and simple expression in volumes, rather than in sheets, he would have exhibited a greater mass of composition, than any other individual in America, whether a man of letters by profession or otherwise, has ever exhibited, during a period of equal duration. The writer of this article has not like the erudite Erasmus, during an anxious life of penury and vicissitudes produced ten folios, but during a life in many of its features of misfortune, not unlike that of Erasmus, he has written more than five amid the incroachments of Sickness, the blandishments of Sloth, the phantoms of Melancholy, the spectres of Indigence, and the overpowering sorrows of Domestic Calamity. VOL. IV. |