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XXIII

THE LITERATURE THAT MADE THE

REVOLUTION

THE LITERATURE THAT MADE THE

G

REVOLUTION

§ 1

VOLTAIRE

ENERALLY, it may be said that during the long reign of Louis XV, who had all his great-grandfather's vices, and none of his qualities of dignity and statesmanship, France was miserably misgoverned and overtaxed. There was no justice for the poor, no freedom of speech, no efficiency in administration; the nobility had lost its interest in letters, to a large extent the Church had abandoned its divine mission; the armies were starved, with the consequence that the victories of the seventeenth century were followed by constant defeats in the eighteenth. It was in this atmosphere that the literature of revolt sprang into being. It began with Montesquieu, whose Lettres Persanes are a series of gay, light-hearted correspondence supposed to be written by Persian travellers in Paris, wittily describing the corruption of French life, and making serious suggestions for more satisfactory government.

A Great Satirist

Voltaire was five years younger than Montesquieu. His real name was François Arouet, and he was born in Paris in 1694. His father was a well-to-do notary, and he was educated by the Jesuits. His school-days were tempestuous. One of his early exploits was to write a poem in which Moses was denounced

as an impostor. He quarrelled with his father, and was introduced by his godfather into the dissipated society of Paris during the years that the Duke of Orleans was regent for Louis XV.

Voltaire began his literary career by writing satirical verses which landed him in the Bastille in 1716. He was imprisoned for a year. During the next six years he travelled over half Europe, and in 1725 he was again in the Bastille, this time for challenging an obscure but influential duke with whom he had quarrelled. After another six months in prison Voltaire was ordered to leave Paris, and he landed in England in the middle of May, 1726. Before this visit to England, which had a vital effect on his future work, Voltaire had written poetry which is nowadays never read, and melodramas that had nothing more than a topical value.

Eighteenth-century France regarded Voltaire's epic, the Henriade, as comparable to the achievements of Homer and Virgil; but Professor Saintsbury has well described it as "declamatory in tone, tedious in action, and commonplace in character." In England Voltaire met the Walpoles, Bolingbroke, Congreve, and Pope. He studied English life minutely. In his letters to France he described the manners of the Quakers, and the new inoculation against disease. He learned to read English easily, and he not only read Shakespeare, Dryden, and Swift, but he also studied Newton and Locke, the philosophic founder of democracy. He was immensely impressed with the freedom of thought that existed in England, and with the respect paid to men of letters.

Voltaire stayed in England for three years. Lord Morley has said: "He left France a poet, he returned to it a sage." His English letters were published soon after his return to Paris. His incidental criticisms of the established order in France and his contempt of orthodoxy caused a warrant to be issued for his arrest. This time he took refuge in Lorraine, where he spent

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On a certain occasion, Voltaire, whilst dining with the Chevalier de Rohan-Chabot, engaged in a battle of wits with one of his fellow-guests. Voltaire won, but his opponent, taking his defeat with ill grace, resorted to a ruse to obtain revenge. A message was sent to Voltaire that he was wanted in the street, and on his way there his opponent's lackeys thrashed him soundly.

host that he is unable to take up the cudgels for him against a superior. The incident depicted is the return of the outraged Voltaire, who demands redress for the affront, only to be informed by his suave

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