as a contrast to the views of dr. johnson and de maistre, which for generations represented the current opinion of protestants and catholics, i bring together a few independent testimonies. as time goes on his admirers increase in volume, while his detractors now are mainly those who have an interest in or secret sympathy with the abuses he destroyed. and first, i will give the testimony of goldsmith who had met him. it was written while voltaire was alive, but when a false report of his death had been received in england. “should you look for the character of voltaire among the journalists and illiterate writers of the age, you will find him there characterised as a monster, with a head turned to wisdom, and a heart inclining to vice—the powers of his mind and the baseness of his principles forming a detestable contrast. but seek for his character among writers like himself, and you will find him very differently described. you perceive him, in their accounts, possessed of good nature, humanity, greatness of soul, fortitude, and almost every virtue: in this description those who might be supposed best acquainted with his character are unanimous. the royal prussian, d’argens, diderot, d’alembert, and fontenelle conspire in drawing the picture, in describing the friend of man, and the patron of every rising genius.”
lord byron’s lines on voltaire and gibbon (childe harold, iii., 105-107) are well known. he says:
they were gigantic minds, and their steep aim
was, titan-like, on daring doubts to pile
thoughts which should call down thunder, and the flame
of heaven again assail’d, if heaven the while
on man and man’s research could deign do more than smile.
the one was fire and fickleness, a child
most mutable in wishes, but in mind
a wit as various,—gay, grave, sage, or wild,—
historian, bard, philosopher, combined;
he multiplied himself among mankind,
the proteus of their talents:
but his own
breathed most in ridicule,—which, as the wind,
blew where it listed, laying all things prone,—
now to o’erthrow a fool, and now to shake a throne.
the other, deep and slow, exhausting thought,
and having wisdom with each studious year,
in meditation dwelt, with learning wrought,
and shaped his weapon with an edge severe,
sapping a solemn creed with solemn sneer;
the lord of iron,—that master-spell,
which stung his foes to wrath, which grew from fear,
and doom’d him to the zealot’s ready hell,
which answers to all doubts so eloquently well.
warton, the learned critic and author of a history of poetry (dissertation i.) remarked: “voltaire, a writer of much deeper research than is imagined, and the first who has displayed the literature and customs of the dark ages with any degree of penetration and comprehension.” robertson, the historian, similarly observed that, had voltaire only given his authorities, “many of his readers who only consider him as an entertaining and lively writer would have found that he is a learned and well informed historian.”
lord holland wrote, in his account of the life and writings of lope de vega: “till voltaire appeared there was no nation more ignorant of its neighbors’ literature than the french. he first exposed and then corrected this neglect in his countrymen. there is no writer to whom the authors of other nations, especially of england, are so indebted for the extension of their fame in france, and, through france, in europe. there is no critic who has employed more time, wit, ingenuity, and diligence in promoting the literary intercourse between country and country, and in celebrating in one language the triumphs of another. his enemies would fain persuade us that such exuberance of wit implies a want of information; but they only succeed in showing that a want of wit by no means implies an exuberance of information.”
goethe said: “voltaire will ever be regarded as the greatest name in literature in modern times, and perhaps even in all ages, as the most astonishing creation of nature, in which she united, in one frail human organisation, all the varieties of talent, all the glories of genius, all the potencies of thought. if you wish depth, genius, imagination, taste, reason, sensibility, philosophy, elevation, originality, nature, intellect, fancy, rectitude, facility, flexibility, precision, art, abundance, variety, fertility, warmth, magic, charm, grace, force, an eagle sweep of vision, vast understanding, instruction rich, tone excellent, urbanity, suavity, delicacy, correctness, purity, cleanness, eloquence, harmony, brilliancy, rapidity, gaiety, pathos, sublimity and universality—perfection indeed—behold voltaire.”
lord brougham, in his lives of men of letters and science who flourished in the time of george iii., devotes a considerable section to voltaire. after censuring “the manner in which he devoted himself to crying down the sacred things of his country,” he continues: “but, though it would be exceedingly wrong to pass over this great and prevailing fault without severe reprobation, it would be equally unjust, nay, ungrateful, ever to forget the immense obligations under which voltaire has laid mankind by his writings, the pleasure derived from his fancy and his wit, the amusement which his singular and original humor bestows, even the copious instruction with which his historical works are pregnant, and the vast improvement in the manner of writing history which we owe to him. yet, great as these services are—among the greatest that can be rendered by a man of letters—they are really of far inferior value to the benefits which have resulted from his long and arduous struggle against oppression, especially against tyranny in the worst form which it can assume, the persecution of opinion, the infraction of the sacred right to exercise the reason upon all subjects, unfettered by prejudice, uncontrolled by authority, whether of great names or of temporal power.”
macaulay, in his essay on frederick the great, observes: “in truth, of all the intellectual weapons which have ever been wielded by man, the most terrible was the mockery of voltaire. bigots and tyrants, who had never been moved by the wailing and cursing of millions, turned pale at his name.”
carlyle, in his depreciatory essay, acknowledged: “perhaps there is no writer, not a mere compiler, but writing from his own invention or elaboration, who has left so many volumes behind him; and if to the merely arithmetical we add a critical estimate, the singularity is still greater; for these volumes are not written without an appearance of due care and preparation; perhaps there is not one altogether feeble and confused treatise, nay, one feeble and confused sentence to be found in them.” and at the end he admits: “he gave the death-stab to modern superstition! that horrid incubus, which dwelt in darkness, shunning the light, is passing away; with all its racks and poison chalices, and foul sleeping-draughts, is passing away without return. it was a most weighty service.”
one of the strangest of tributes to voltaire is that from ruskin, the disciple of carlyle. in his fors clavigera (vol. viii., p. 76) he says: “there are few stronger adversaries to st. george than voltaire. but my scholars are welcome to read as much of voltaire as they like. his voice is mighty among the ages.”
dr. d. f. strauss wrote: “voltaire’s historical significance has been illustrated by the observation of goethe that, as in families whose existence has been of long duration, nature sometimes at length produces an individual who sums up in himself the collective qualities of all his ancestors, so it happens also with nations, whose collective merits (and demerits) sometimes appear epitomised in one individual person. thus in louis xiv. stood forth the highest figure of a french monarch. thus, in voltaire, the highest conceivable and congenial representative of french authorship. we may extend the observation farther, if, instead of the french nation only, we take into view the whole european generation on which voltaire’s influence was exercised. from this point of view we may call voltaire emphatically the representative writer of the eighteenth century, as goethe called him, in the highest sense, the representative writer of france.”
victor hugo, in the magnificent oration which he pronounced on the centenary of voltaire’s death, said: “voltaire waged the splendid kind of warfare, the war of one alone against all—that is to say, the grand warfare; the war of thought against matter; the war of reason against prejudice; the war of the just against the unjust; the war of the oppressed against the oppressor; the war of goodness; the war of kindness. he had the tenderness of a woman and the wrath of a hero. he was a great mind and an immense heart. he conquered the old code and the old dogma. he conquered the feudal lord, the gothic judge, the roman priest. he raised the populace to the dignity of people. he taught, pacified, and civilised. he fought for sirven and montbailly, as for calas and la barre. he accepted all the menaces, all the persecutions, calumny, and exile. he was indefatigable and immovable. he conquered violence by a smile, despotism by sarcasm, infallibility by irony, obstinacy by perseverance, ignorance by truth.”
buckle, in his history of civilisation (vol. ii., p. 304) says: “it would be impossible to relate all the original remarks of voltaire, which, when he made them, were attacked as dangerous paradoxes, and are now valued as sober truths. he was the first historian who recommended universal freedom of trade; and although he expresses himself with great caution, still, the mere announcement of the idea is a popular history forms an epoch in the progress of the french mind. he is the originator of that important distinction between the increase of population and the increase of food, to which political economy has been greatly indebted, a principle adopted several years later by townsend, and then used by malthus as the basis of his celebrated work. he has, moreover, the merit of being the first who dispelled the childish admiration with which the middle ages had been hitherto regarded. in his works the middle ages are for the first time represented as what they really were—a period of ignorance, ferocity, and licentiousness; a period when injuries were unredressed, crime unpunished, and superstition unrebuked.” again (page 308): “no one reasoned more closely than voltaire when reasoning suited his purpose. but he had to deal with men impervious to argument; men whose inordinate reverence for antiquity had only left them two ideas, namely, that everything old is right, and that everything new is wrong. to argue against these opinions would be idle indeed; the only other resource was to make them ridiculous, and weaken their influence by holding up their authors to contempt. this was one of the tasks voltaire set himself to perform; and he did it well. he therefore used ridicule, not as the test of truth, but as the scourge of folly. and with such effect was the punishment administered that not only did the pedants and theologians of his own time wince under the lash, but even their successors feel their ears tingle when they read his biting words; and they revenge themselves by reviling the memory of the great writer whose works are as a thorn in their side, and whose very name they hold in undisguised abhorrence.”
mr. lecky, in his history of rationalism in europe (vol. ii., p. 66) says: “voltaire was at all times the unflinching opponent of persecution. no matter how powerful was the persecutor, no matter how insignificant was the victim, the same scathing eloquence was launched against the crime, and the indignation of europe was soon concentrated upon the oppressor. the fearful storm of sarcasm and invective that avenged the murder of calas, the magnificent dream in the philosophical dictionary reviewing the history of persecution from the slaughtered canaanites to the latest victim who had perished at the stake, the indelible stigma branded upon the persecutors of every age and of every creed, all attested the intense and passionate earnestness with which voltaire addressed himself to his task. on other subjects a jest or a caprice could often turn him aside. when attacking intolerance he employed, indeed, every weapon; but he employed them all with the concentrated energy of a profound conviction. his success was equal to his zeal; the spirit of intolerance sank blasted beneath his genius. wherever his influence passed, the arm of the inquisitor was palsied, the chain of the captive riven, the prison door flung open. beneath his withering irony, persecution appeared not only criminal but loathsome, and since his time it has ever shrunk from observation and masked its features under other names. he died, leaving a reputation that is indeed far from spotless, but having done more to destroy the greatest of human curses than any other of the sons of men.”
mr. lecky, in his history of england in the eighteenth century (v., 312), observes: “no previous writer can compare with him in the wideness and justness of his conceptions of history, and even now no historian can read without profit his essays on the subject. no one before had so strongly urged that history should not be treated as a collection of pictures or anecdotes relating to courts or battles, but should be made a record and explanation of the true development of nations, of the causes of their growth and decay, of their characteristic virtues and vices, of the changes that pass over their laws, customs, opinions, social and economical conditions, and over the relative importance and well-being of their different classes... (p. 315). untiring industry, an extraordinary variety of interests and aptitudes, a judgment at once sound, moderate, and independent, a rare power of seizing in every subject the essential argument or facts, a disposition to take no old opinions on trust and to leave no new opinions unexamined, combined in him with the most extraordinary literary talent. never, perhaps, was there an intellect at once so luminous, versatile, and flexible, which produced so much, which could deal with such a vast range of difficult subjects without being ever obscure, tangled, or dull.”
colonel hamley wrote: “but after the winnowings of generations, a wide and deep repute still remains to him; nor will any diminution which it may have suffered be without compensation, for, with the fading of old prejudices, and with better knowledge, his name will be regarded with increased liking and respect. yet it must not be supposed that he is here held up as a pattern man. he was, indeed, an infinitely better one than the religious bigots of that time. he believed, with far better effect on his practice than they could boast, in a supreme ruler. he was the untiring and eloquent advocate at the bar of the universe of the rights of humanity.”
mr. swinburne has well expressed this characteristic. “voltaire’s great work,” he says, “was to have done more than any other man on record to make the instinct of cruelty not only detestable, but ludicrous; and so to accomplish what the holiest and the wisest of saints and philosophers had failed to achieve: to attack the most hideous and pernicious of human vices with a more effective weapon than preaching and denunciation: to make tyrants and torturers look not merely horrible and hateful, but pitiful and ridiculous.”
edgar quinet, in his lectures on the church, says: “i watch for forty years the reign of one man who is himself the spiritual direction, not of his country, but of his age. from the corner of his chamber he governs the realm of mind. everyday intellects are regulated by his; one word written by his hand traverses europe. princes love and kings fear him. nations repeat the words that fall from his pen. who exercises this incredible power which has nowhere been seen since the middle ages? is he another gregory vii? is he a pope? no—voltaire.”
and lamartine, in similar strain, remarks: “if we judge of men by what they have done, then voltaire is incontestibly the greatest writer of modern europe. no one has caused, through the powerful influence of his genius alone and the perseverance of his will, so great a commotion in the minds of men. his pen aroused a sleeping world, and shook a far mightier empire than that of charlemagne, the european empire of a theocracy. his genius was not force, but light. heaven had destined him not to destroy, but to illuminate; and wherever he trod, light followed him, for reason—which is light—had destined him to be, first her poet, then her apostle, and lastly her idol.”
mr. alexander a. knox, writing in the nineteenth century (october 1882), says: “that the man’s aspirations were in the main noble and honorable to humanity, i am sure. i am equally so that few men have exercised so great an influence upon their fellow creatures.... the wonderful old man! when he was past eighty years of age he set to work, like another jeremy bentham, to abolish the admission of hearsay evidence into french legal proceedings. but his great work was that by his wit and irony he broke down the principle of authority which had been so foully abused in france. would the most strictly religious man wish to see religion as it was in france in the eighteenth century? would the greatest stickler for authority wish to find a country governed as france was governed in the days of voltaire?”
du bois-reymond, the eminent german scientist, remarks: “voltaire is so little to us at present because the things he fought for, ‘toleration, spiritual freedom, human dignity, justice,' have become, as it were, the air we breathe, and do not think of except when we are deprived of it.”
col. r. g. ingersoll, in his fine oration on voltaire, observes: “voltaire was perfectly equipped for his work. a perfect master of the french language, knowing all its moods, tenses, and declinations—in fact and in feeling playing upon it as skilfully as paganini on his violin, finding expression for every thought and fancy, writing on the most serious subjects with the gaiety of a harlequin, plucking jests from the mouth of death, graceful as the waving of willows, dealing in double meanings that covered the asp with flowers and flattery, master of satire and compliment, mingling them often in the same line, always interested himself, therefore interesting others, handling thoughts, questions, subjects as a juggler does balls, keeping them in the air with perfect ease, dressing old words in new meanings, charming, grotesque, pathetic, mingling mirth with tears, wit and wisdom, and sometimes wickedness, logic and laughter. with a woman’s instinct, knowing the sensitive nerves—just where to touch—hating arrogance of place, the stupidity, of the solemn, snatching masks from priest and king, knowing the springs of action and ambition’s ends, perfectly familiar with the great world, the intimate of kings and their favorites, sympathising with the oppressed and imprisoned, with the unfortunate and poor, hating tyranny, despising superstition, and loving liberty with all his heart. such was voltaire, writing ?dipus at seventeen, irène at eighty-three, and crowding between these two tragedies the accomplishment of a thousand lives.”
the right hon. john morley testifies: “voltaire was the very eye of modern illumination. it was he who conveyed to his generation in a multitude of forms the consciousness at once of the power and the rights of human intelligence. another might well have said of him what he magnanimously said of his famous contemporary, montesquieu, that humanity had lost its title-deeds, and he had recovered them. the four-score volumes which he wrote are the monument, as they were the instrument, of a new renascence. they are the fruit and representation of a spirit of encyclopaedic curiosity and productiveness. hardly a page of all these countless leaves is common form. hardly a sentence is there which did not come forth alive from voltaire’s own mind, or which was said because some one else had said it before. voltaire was a stupendous power, not only because his expression was incomparably lucid, or even because his sight was exquisitely keen and clear, but because he saw many new things, after which the spirits of others were unconsciously groping and dumbly yearning. nor was this all. voltaire was ever in the front and centre of the fight. his life was not a mere chapter in a history of literature. he never counted truth a treasure to be discreetly hidden in a napkin. he made it a perpetual war cry, and emblazoned it on a banner that was many a time rent, but was never out of the field.” we may fitly conclude with browning’s incisive lines in the two poets of croisie:—
“ay, sharpest, shrewdest steel that ever stabbed
to death imposture through the armour joints.”
