miserable English pieces; and the pit applauds, | may call general poetic temperament to Raand demands with enthusiasm the repetition cine; greatly inferior, in some points of it, to of these disgusting ineptitudes (de ces dégoûtantes Corneille, he has an intellectual vivacity, a platitudes.) De la Littérature Allemande. Ber- quickness both of sight and of invention, which lin, 1780.* belongs to neither of these two. We believe that, among foreign nations, his Tragedies, such works as Zaire and Mahomet, are considerably the most esteemed of this school.

However, it is nowise as a Poet, Historian, or Novelist, that Voltaire stands so prominent in Europe; but chiefly as a religious Polemic, as a vehement opponent of the Christian Faith. Viewed in this last character, he may give rise to many grave reflections, only a small portion of which can here be so much as glanced at. We may say, in general, that his style of controversy is of a piece with himself; not a higher, and scarcely a lower style than might have been expected from him. As in a moral point of view, Voltaire nowise wanted a love of truth, yet had withal a still deeper love of his own interest in truth; was, therefore, intrinsically no Philosopher, but a highly-accomplished Trivialist; so likewise, in an in

ingenious and adroit, rather than noble or comprehensive; fights for truth or victory, not by patient meditation, but by light sarcasm, whereby victory may indeed, for a time, be gained; but little Truth, what can be named Truth, especially in such matters as this, is to be looked for.

We have not cited these criticisms with a view to impugn them; but simply to ascertain where the critics themselves are standing. This passage of Frederic's has even a touch of pathos in it; may be regarded as the expiring cry of "Goût," in that country, who sees himself suddenly beleaguered by strange, appalling, Supernatural influences, which he mistakes for Lapland witchcraft, or Cagliostro jugglery; and so he drowns, grasping his opera-hat, in an ocean of " Dégoûtantes platitudes." On the whole, it would appear that Voltaire's view of poetry was radically different from ours; that, in fact, of what we should strictly call poetry, he had almost no view whatever. A Tragedy, a Poem, with him is not to be "a manifestation of man's Reason in forms suitable to his Sense;" but rather a highly complex egg-dance, to be danced before the King, to a given tune, and without break-tellectual point of view, he manifests himself ing a single egg. Nevertheless, let justice be shown to him, and to French poetry at large. This latter is a peculiar growth of our modern ages; has been labouriously cultivated, and is not without its own value. We have to remark also, as a curious fact, that it has been, at one time or other, transplanted into all countries, England, Germany, Spain; but though under the sunbeams of royal protection, it would strike root nowhere. Nay, now it seems falling into the sere and yellow leaf in its own natal soil: the axe has already been seen near its root; and perhaps, in no great lapse of years, this species of poetry may be to the French, what it is to all other nations, a pleasing reminiscence. Yet the elder French loved it with zeal; to them it must have had a true worth: indeed we can understand how, when Life itself consisted so much in Display, these representatives of Life may have been the only suitable ones. And now, when the nation feels itself called to a more grave and nobler destiny among nations, the want of a new literature also begins to be felt. As yet, in looking at their too purblind, scrambling controversies of Romanticists and Classicists, we cannot find that our ingenious neighbours have done much more than make a commencement in this enterprise: however, a commencement seems to be made; they are in what may be called the eclectic state; trying all things, German, English, Italian, Spanish, with a candour and real love of improvement, which give the best omens of a still higher success. From the peculiar gifts of the French, and their peculiar spiritual position, we may expect, had they once more attained to an original style, many important benefits, and important accessions to the Literature of the World. Meanwhile, in considering and duly estimating what that people has, in past times, accomplished, Voltaire must always be reckoned among their most meritorious Poets. Inferior in what we

No one, we suppose, ever arrogated for Voltaire any praise of originality in this discussion; we suppose there is not a single idea, of any moment, relating to the Christian religion, in all his multifarious writings, that had not been set forth again and again before his enterprises commenced. The labours of a very mixed multitude, from Porphyry down to Shaftesbury, including Hobbeses, Tindals, Tolands, some of them skeptics of a much nobler class, had left little room for merit in this kind: nay, Bayle, his own countryman, had just finished a life spent in preaching skepticism precisely similar, and by methods precisely similar, when Voltaire appeared on the arena. Indeed, skepticism, as we have before observed, was at this period universal among the higher ranks in France, with whom Voltaire chiefly associated. It is only in the merit and demerit of grinding down this grain into food for the people, and inducing so many to eat of it, that Voltaire can claim any singularity. However, we quarrel not with him on this head: there may be cases where the want of originality is even a moral merit. But it is a much more serious ground of offence that he intermeddled in Religion without being himself, in any measure, Religious; that he entered the Temple and continued there, with a levity, which, in any Temple where men worship, can beseem no brother man; that, in a word, he ardently, and with long-continued effort, warred against Christianity, without understanding beyond the mere superficies of what Christianity was.

His polemical procedure in this matter, it appears to us, must now be admitted to have been, on the whole, a shallow one. Through

*We quote from the compilation: Goethe in den Zeug- all its manifold forms, and involutions, and re

missen der Mitlebenden, s. 124.

petitions, it turns, we believe exclusively, on

Ephesian Temple, which it had employed | compared with which the often-commemorated many wise heads and strong arms, for a life-"horrors of the French Revolution," and all time, to build, could be un-built by one mad- Napoleon's wars, were but the gay jousting of man, in a single hour.

Of such errors, deficiencies, and positive misdeeds, it appears to us, a just criticism must accuse Voltaire: at the same time, we can nowise join in the condemnatory clamour which so many worthy persons, not without the best intentions, to this day keep up against him. His whole character seems to be plain enough, common enough, had not extraneous influences so perverted our views regarding it: nor, morally speaking, is it a worse character, but considerably a better one, than belongs to the mass of men. Voltaire's aims in opposing the Christian Religion were unhappily of a mixed nature yet, after all, very nearly such aims as we have often seen directed against it, and often seen directed in its favour: a little love of finding Truth, with a great love of making Proselytes; which last is in itself a natural, universal feeling; and if honest, is, even in the worst cases, a subject for pity, rather than for hatred. As a light, careless, courteous Man of the World, he offers no hateful aspect; on the contrary, a kindly, gay, rather amiable one: hundreds of men, with half his worth of disposition, die daily, and their little world laments them. It is time that he too should be judged of by his intrinsic, not by his accidental qualities; that justice should be done to him also; for injustice can profit no man and no cause.

a tournament to the sack of stormed cities. Our European community has escaped the like dire consummation; and by causes, which, as may be hoped, will always secure it from such. Nay, were there no other cause, it may be asserted, that in a commonwealth where the Christian religion exists, where it once has existed, public and private Virtue, the basis of all Strength, never can become ex tinct; but in every new age, and even from the deepest decline, there is a chance, and in the course of ages, a certainty of renovation.

That the Christian Religion, or any Religion, continued to exist; that some martyr heroism still lived in the heart of Europe to rise against mailed Tyranny when it rode triumphant,was indeed no merit in the age of Louis XV., but a happy accident which it could not altogether get rid of. For that age too is to be regarded as an experiment, on the great scale, to decide the question, not yet, it would appear, settled to universal satisfaction: With what degree of vigour a political system, grounded on pure Self-interest, never so enlightened, but without a God, or any recogni tion of the godlike in man, can be expected to flourish; or whether, in such circumstances, a political system can be expected to flourish, or even to subsist at all? It is contended by many that our mere love of personal Pleasure, or Happiness as it is called, acting on every individual, with such clearness as he may easily have, will of itself lead him to respect the rights of others, and wisely employ his own: to fulfil, on a mere principle of economy, all the duties of a good patriot; so that, in what respects the State, or the merely social existence of mankind, Belief, beyond the testimony of the senses, and Virtue, beyond the very common Virtue of loving what is pleasant, and hating what is painful, are to be considered as supererogatory qualifications, as ornamental, not essential. Many there are, on the other hand, who pause over this doctrine; cannot discover, in such a universe of conflicting atoms, any principle by which the whole shall cohere: for, if every man's selfishness, infinitely expansive, is to be hemmed in only by the infinitely-expansive selfishness of every other man, it seems as if we should have a world of mutually-repulsive bodies with no centripetal force to bind them together; in which case, it is well known they would, by and by, diffuse themselves over space, and constitute a remarkable Chaos, but no habitable Solar or Stellar System.

In fact, Voltaire's chief merits belong to Nature and himself; his chief faults are of his time and country. In that famous era of the Pompadours and Encyclopédies, he forms the main figure; and was such, we have seen, more by resembling the multitude, than by differing from them. It was a strange age that of Louis XV.; in several points, a novel one in the history of mankind. In regard to its luxury and depravity, to the high culture of all merely practical and material faculties, and the entire torpor of all the purely contem plative and spiritual, this era considerably resembles that of the Roman Emperors. There, too, was external splendour and internal squalour; the highest completeness in all sensual arts, including among these not cookery and its adjuncts alone, but even "effect-painting" and " effect-writing;" only the art of virtuous living was a lost one. Instead of Love for Poetry, there was "Taste" for it; refinement in manners, with utmost coarseness in morals: in a word, the strange spectacle of a social system, embracing large, cultivated portions of the human species, and founded only on Atheism. With the Romans, If the age of Louis XV. was not made an things went what we should call their natural experimentum crucis in regard to this question, course: Liberty, public spirit, quietly declined one reason may be that such experiments are into a caput-mortuum; Self-love, Materialism, too expensive. Nature cannot afford, above Baseness even to the disbelief in all possibi- once or twice in the thousand years, to destroy lity of Virtue, stalked more and more imperi- a whole world, for purposes of science; ously abroad; till the body-politic, long since deprived of its vital circulating fluids, had now become a putrid carcass, and fell in pieces to be the prey of ravenous wolves. Then was there, under those Attilas and Alarics, a world's-spectacle of destruction and despair,

but must content herself with destroying one or two kingdoms. The age of Louis XV., so far as it went, seems a highly illustrative experiment. We are to remark, also, that its operation was clogged by a very considerable disturbing force; by a large remnant, namely,

of the old faith in Religion, in the invisible, a poor era; that any little morality it had was celestial nature of Virtue, which our French chiefly borrowed, and from those very ages Purifiers, by their utmost efforts of lavation, which it accounted so barbarous. For this had not been able to wash away. The men "Honour," this "Force of Public Opinion," is did their best, but no man can do more. Their not asserted, on any side, to have much renoworst enemy, we imagine, will not accuse vating, but only a sustaining or preventive them of any undue regard to things unseen power; it cannot create new Virtue, but at best and spiritual: far from practising this invisi- may preserve what is already there. Nay, of ble sort of Virtue, they cannot even believe the age of Louis XV., we may say that its very in its possibility. The high exploits and en- Power, its material strength, its knowledge, all durances of old ages were no longer virtues, that it had, was borrowed. It boasted itself to but "passions;" these antique persons had a be an age of illumination; and truly illuminataste for being heroes, a certain fancy to die tion there was of its kind: only, except the for the truth: the more fools they! With our illuminated windows, almost nothing to be seen Philosophers, the only virtue of any civilization thereby. None of those great Doctrines or Inwas that they call "Honour," the sanctioning stitutions that have "made man in all points deity of which is that wonderful "Force of a man;" none even of those Discoveries that Public Opinion." Concerning which virtue have the most subjected external Nature to his of Honour, we must be permitted to say that purposes, were made in that age. What she reveals herself too clearly, as the daughter Plough, or Printing-press, what Chivalry, or and heiress of our old acquaintance Vanity, Christianity; nay, what Steam-engine, or Quawho indeed has been known enough, ever kerism, or Trial by Jury, did these Encyclosince the foundation of the world, at least pedists invent for mankind? They invented since the date of that "Lucifer, son of the simply nothing; not one of man's virtues, not Morning;" but known chiefly in her proper one of man's powers, is due to them: in all character of strolling actress, or cast-clothes these respects, the age of Louis XV. is among Abigail; and never till that new era had seen the most barren of recorded ages. Indeed, the her issue set up as Queen and all-sufficient whole trade of our Philosophes was directly the Dictatress of man's whole soul, prescribing opposite of invention: it was not to produce, with nicest precision what, in all practical that they stood there; but to criticise, to quarrel and all moral emergencies, he was to do and with, to rend in pieces, what had been already to forbear. Again, with regard to this same produced;-a quite inferior trade: sometimes Force of Public Opinion, it is a force well a useful, but on the whole a mean trade; often known to all of us, respected, valued as of in- the fruit, and always the parent, of meanness, dispensable utility, but nowise recognised as in every mind that permanently follows it. a final or divine force. We might ask what Considering the then position of affairs, it is divine, what truly great thing had ever been not singular that the age of Louis XV. should effected by this force? Was it the Force of have been what it was: an age without noblePublic Opinion that drove Columbus to Ame-ness, without high virtues, or high manifestarica; John Kepler, not to fare sumptuously tions of talent; an age of shallow clearness, of among Rodolph's Astrologers and Fire-eaters, polish, self-conceit, skepticism, and all forms but to perish of want, discovering the true of Persiflage. As little does it seem surprising, System of the Stars! Still more ineffectual or peculiarly blamable, that Voltaire, the leaddo we find it as a basis of public or private Morals. Nay, taken by itself, it may be called a baseless basis; for without some ulterior sanction, common to all minds; without some belief in the necessary, eternal, or which is the same, in the supramundane, divine nature of Virtue, existing in each individual, what could the moral judgment of a thousand or a thousand thousand individuals avail us Without some such celestial guidance, whencesoever derived, or howsoever named, it appears to us the Force of Public Opinion would, by and by, become an extremely unprofitable one. "Enlighten Self-interest!" cries the Philosophe; "Do but sufficiently enlighten it! We ourselves have seen enlightened Self-interests, ere now; and truly, for most part, their light was only as that of a horn-lantern, sufficient to guide the bearer himself out of various puddles: but to us and the world of comparatively small advantage. And figure the human species, like an endless host, seeking its way onwards through undiscovered Time, in black darkness, save that each had his hornlantern, and the vanguard some few of glass! However, we will not dwell on controversial niceties. What we had to remark was that this era, called of Philosophy, was in itself but

ing man of that age, should have partaken largely of all its qualities. True, his giddy activity took serious effect, the light firebrands, which he so carelessly scattered abroad, kindled fearful conflagrations: but in these there has been good as well as evil; nor is it just that, even for the latter, he, a limited mortal, should be charged with more than mortal's responsibility. After all, that parched, blighted period, and the period of earthquakes and tornadoes which followed it, have now wellnigh cleared away: they belong to the Past, and for us and those that come after us, are not without their benefits, and calm historical meaning.

"The thinking heads of all nations," says a deep observer, "had in secret come to majority; and, in a mistaken feeling of their vocation, rose the more fiercely against antiquated constraint. The Man of Letters is, by instinct, opposed to a Priesthood of old standing: the literary class and the clerical must wage a war of extermination, when they are divided; for both strive after one place. Such division became more and more perceptible, the nearer we approached the period of European manhood, the epoch of triumphant Learning; and Knowledge and Faith came into more decided

contradiction. In the prevailing Faith, as was visited that land which was the most modernthought, lay the reason of the universal degra-ized, and had the longest lain in an asthenic dation; and by a more and more searching state, from the want of freedom. *** Knowledge men hoped to remove it. On all "At the present epoch, however, we stand hands, the Religious feeling suffered, under high enough to look back with a friendly smile manifold attacks against its actual manner of on those bygone days; and even in those existence, against the Forms in which hitherto marvellous follies to discern curious crystalit had imbodied itself. The result of that mo-lizations of historical matter. Thankfully will dern way of thought was named Philosophy; we stretch out our hands to those Men of and in this all was included that opposed itself Letters and Philosophes: for this delusion too to the ancient way of thought, especially, required to be exhausted; and the scientific therefore, all that opposed itself to Religion. side of things to have full value given it. More The original personal hatred against the beauteous and many-coloured stands Poesy, Catholic faith passed, by degrees, into hatred like a leafy India, when contrasted with the against the Bible; against the Christian Reli- cold, dead Spitzbergen of that closet-logic. gion, and at last against Religion altogether. That in the middle of the globe, an India, so Nay, more, this hatred of Religion naturally warm and lordly, might exist, must also a cold extended itself over all objects of enthusiasm motionless sea, dead cliffs, mist instead of the in general; proscribed Fancy_and Feeling, starry sky, and a long night, make both Poles Morality and love of Art, the Future and the uninhabitable. The deep meaning of the laws Antique; placed man, with an effort, foremost of Mechanism lay heavy on those anchorites in the series of natural productions; and in the deserts of Understanding: the charm of changed the infinite, creative music of the the first glimpse into it overpowered them : the Universe into the monotonous clatter of a Old avenged itself on them; to the first feelboundless Mill, which, turned by the streaming of self-consciousness, they sacrificed, with of Chance, and swimming thereon, was a Mill of itself, without Architect and Miller, properly, a genuine perpetuum mobile, a real, self-grinding Mill.

wondrous devotedness, what was holiest and fairest in the world! and were the first that, in practice, again recognised and preached forth the sacredness of Nature, the infinitude of Art, the independence of Knowledge, the worth of the Practical, and the all-presence of the Spirit of History; and so doing, put an end to a Spectre-dynasty, more potent, universal, and terrific than perhaps they themselves were aware of."*

How far our readers will accompany Novalis in such high-soaring speculation is not for us to say. Meanwhile, that the better part of them have already, in their own dialect, united with him, and with us, in candid tolerance, in clear acknowledgment, towards French Philosophy, towards this Voltaire and the spiritual period which bears his name, we do not hesitate to believe. Intolerance, animosity, can forward no cause; and least of all beseems the cause of moral and religious truth. A wise

"One enthusiasm was generously left to poor mankind, and rendered indispensable as a touchstone of the highest culture, for all jobbers in the same: Enthusiasm for this magnanimous Philosophy, and above all, for these its priests and mystagogues. France was so happy as to be the birthplace and dwelling of this new Faith, which had thus, from patches of pure knowledge, been pasted together. Low as Poetry ranked in this new Church, there were some poets among them, who for effect's sake made use of the old ornaments and old lights; but, in so doing, ran a risk of kindling the new world-system by ancient fire. More cunning brethren, however, were at hand to help; and always in season poured cold water on the warming audience. The members of this Church were restlessly employed in clear-man has well reminded us, that "in any coning Nature, the Earth, the Souls of men, the troversy, the instant we feel anger, we have Sciences, from all Poetry; obliterating every already ceased striving for Truth, and begun vestige of the Holy: disturbing, by sarcasms, striving for Ourselves." Let no man doubt that the memory of all lofty occurrences, and lofty Voltaire and his disciples, like all men and men; disrobing the world of all its variegated all things that live and act in God's world, Pity that Nature con- will one day be found to have "worked totinued so wondrous and incomprehensible, so gether for good." Nay that with all his evil, poetical and infinite, all efforts to modernize he has already accomplished good, must be her notwithstanding! However, if any- admitted in the soberest calculation. How where an old superstition, of a higher world much do we include in this one little word: and the like, came to light, instantly, on all He gave the death-stab to modern Superstition. hands, was a springing of rattles; that, if pos- That horrid incubus, which dwelt in darkness, sible, the dangerous spark might be extin- shunning the light, is passing away; with all guished, by appliances of philosophy and wit: its racks, and poison-chalices, and foul sleepyet Tolerance was the watchword of the culti-ing-draughts, is passing away without return. vated; and in France, above all, synonymous with Philosophy. Highly remarkable is this history of modern Unbelief; the key to all the vast phenomena of recent times. Not till last century, till the latter half of it, does the novelty begin; and in a little while, it expands to an immeasurable bulk and variety: a second Reformation, a more comprehensive, and more specific, was unavoidable: and naturally it first

vesture.

*

He who sees even a little way into the signs of the times, sees well that both the Smithfield fires and the Edinburgh thumbscrews (for these too must be held in remembrance) are things which have long, very long, lain be hind us; divided from us by a wall of centuries, transparent indeed, but more impassable |

* Novalis Schriften, i., s. 198.