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knowledge the divinity of Christ.95 What seems his most authentic expression of his last opinions had been dictated to his secretary, Wagnière, at the time of his first illness on February 28: "Je meurs en adorant Dieu, en aimant mes amis, en ne haïssant pas mes ennemis, et en détestant la superstition." 96 Voltaire's body was buried in haste and by stealth at the Abbaye de Scellières near Troyes in Champagne under the jurisdiction of his nephew, the conseiller Mignot, barely in advance of an order from the Bishop of Troyes refusing burial. In 1791 his body and that of Rousseau were transferred with enthusiastic honors to the Panthéon at Paris.

A M. LE COMTE DE LALLY

26 mai (1778)

This is Voltaire's last letter, written four days before his death and addressed to Lally-Tollendal, the son of General Lally, an Irish Jacobite who had been in the service of the French in India. The French Government had charged him with having sold Pondicherry to the English and threw him into the Bastille as a traitor. On May 6, 1766, at the age of sixty-four, he was gagged, handcuffed, and beheaded. Voltaire from the first believed in his innocence and set about his vindication. On May 26, 1778, when Voltaire was on his death bed, Louis XVI publicly vindicated the memory of General Lally.

"M. de Voltaire était au lit de mort quand on lui fit part de cet événement; il sembla se ranimer pour écrire ce billet, qui peut être regardé comme le dernier soupir de ce grand homme; il retomba, après l'avoir écrit, dans l'accablement dont il n'est plus sorti, et expira le 30 de mai 1778, âgé de quatre-vingt-quatre ans et quelques mois." (Note in Moland, L, 297.)

Le mourant ressuscite en apprenant cette grande nouvelle ; il embrasse bien tendrement M. de Lally; il voit que le roi est le défenseur de la justice: il mourra content.97

95 Ibid., I, 160-61.

96 Ibid., I, pp. 13 ff.

(Moland, L, 297.)

97 "Cela ne lui suffit pas; on attachait par ses ordres à la tapisserie un papier sur lequel il faisait écrire : "Le 26 mai l'assassinat juridique commis par Pasquier (conseiller au parlement) en la personne de Lally a été vengé par le conseil du roi." (Note in Moland, cited from La Harpe, Correspondance littéraire, II, 242.)

"There have been few men with whom the ruling passion of hatred of tyranny, oppression, injustice, has been so strong in death: and better

VOLTAIRE'S CHARACTER

In what precedes there has already been given, it seems, sufficient to form a general estimate of Voltaire's character, which is so contradictory in its tendencies that there is infinite room for partisanship both for and against. Opinions are bound to vary according to the personal bias of the reader, according to whether one emphasizes his great qualities or his very grave shortcomings. "Il a tant de bonnes qualités," said Mme de Graffigny, "que c'est une pitié de lui voir des faiblesses si misérables.” 98 It is of great significance if no man is a hero to his valet-that all three of his secretaries speak well of him. Longchamp mentions his "extrême vivacité de caractère, qui éclatait par occasion et se calmait presque au même instant. Je vis de plus en plus dans la suite qu'autant ses vivacités étaient passagères, et pour ainsi dire, superficielles, autant son indulgence et sa bonté étaient des qualités solides et durables." "9 Colini, though discharged by Voltaire for cause, testifies: "A ces vivacités près, Voltaire était bon et bienfaisant." 1 Wagnière is constant in his admiration: "Ce vieillard respectable, qui était passionné pour le bien public." 2 John Moore visited Ferney in 1776 and observed: "Considéré comme maître, Voltaire se présente à Genève sous un jour très favorable. Il est affable, humain et généreux envers ses vassaux et ses domestiques. Il aime à les voir prospérer, et s'intéresse à leurs affaires avec le zèle d'un vrai patriarche.” 3 Mme Suard attempts a balanced judgment: "En adorant le génie et l'âme passionnée de Voltaire pour les intérêts de ses semblables, je ne prétends pas approuver les excès où l'a souvent entraîné la violence de ses passions. Je ne le considère point comme un modèle de vertu dans sa vie, quoique remplie d'actions nobles et généreuses, je l'envisage

99

men, who, in their last hours, have found it impossible to think of any soul but their own." S. G. Tallentyre (pseud. for Evelyn Beatrice Hall), Voltaire in His Letters, N. Y. and London, 1919, pp. 269-70. 98 Mme de Graffigny, Lettres, p. 102.

99 Longchamp et Wagnière, Mémoires, II, 136.

1 Colini, Mon séjour auprès de Voltaire (1807), p. 182.

2 Wagnière, Mémoires, I, 91.

8 In Mme de Graffigny, Lettres, p. 449.

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encore moins comme un exemple de sagesse dans tous ses ouvrages." Chabanon explains that "il fut toute sa vie un enfant indiscipliné, esclave de ses passions, et n'ayant jamais eu le projet de les réprimer," yet "peu d'hommes, dans le cours de leur vie, ont fait autant de bien que Voltaire. Il faut avoir vécu avec lui pour savoir tout celui qu'il opérait, sans faste et sans éclat.” 5 Quite similarly Grimm wrote: "Quant au bon vieux patriarche, vous savez, madame, que c'est un enfant. Il a soixante-douze ans, mais il en aurait cent qu'il serait enfant. Quand on le gronde, il boude; et puis il est fâché d'avoir boudé et puis il ne sait comment faire pour se défâcher. Mais je pardonne volontiers ces petits torts à un homme qui a fait toute sa vie la guerre au fanatisme et à qui la famille Calas doit le peu de justice qu'elle a obtenu." " We should not too easily ignore such contemporary testimonies with their seemingly just mingling of praise for his great qualities and blame for his defects. Few men are perfect. We must take Voltaire as we find him and not prolong uselessly the polemics of the eighteenth century. He remains a singularly important and interesting figure, who did much good and some harm to the world. It is not now a difficult task to separate the wheat from the chaff.

VOLTAIRE'S INFLUENCE

M. Lanson has written an excellent brief chapter on the influence of Voltaire. His popularity in France during the nineteenth century, as shown by new editions or reprintings of his works, was enormous. Whenever liberalism was militant, there Voltaire was to the fore. During periods of reaction or conservatism, his popularity temporarily waned. With Montesquieu and Rousseau, he prepared the way for the French Revolution and it was no accident that the two latter were especially honored at that tragic but fruitful time. He above all stimulated anti-clericalism in France and created the type of the rather narrow scepticism typified by Homais in Flaubert's Madame Bovary, an unintelligent

4 Moland, I, 374.

5 In Lettres de Mme de Graffigny, p. 363.

6 Grimm, Correspondance (Garnier, 1882), XVI, 437. 7 G. Lanson, Voltaire (1906), Chap. XI.

scepticism quite unlike the fiery, passionate doubts of Voltaire himself, who was never indifferent, but always up in arms to correct abuses. Much of his spirit, less the active urge for reform has passed into a man like Anatole France. His Biblierit eism has been superseded by that of Renan, Loisy, and the modern liberal school of theologians.

In America, he was read and quoted by Madison. Jeffersor had many of the same points of view, tempered by the greater mo leration which was in the English tradition. Franklin appears to have been a deist not greatly different from Voltaire in many respects, but of course calmer, more self-contained. Voltaire undoub edly contributed to the insistence of the shapers of the government of the United States upon the separation of Church and State; but many other factors were also at work in the same direction the question has not been studied in detail, and it is impossible atresent to give positive conclusions. Lincoln read Voltaire in his youth and was doubtless influenced by him in his opposition to dogma and orthodoxy, though he remained sympathetic with the aims and general influence of the Church. Robert Ingersoll (1331899) in his popular lectures on Voltaire himself, on the "Mistakes of Moses," etc., continued most closely, though superficially, the narrower side of Voltaire's Biblical criticism with its unsympathetic mockery. Ingersoll may thus have helped somewhat in causing the abandonment of certain untenable theological positions, but, i at all influential now, reaches only the more urinformed public to whom such ideas are still new. Much of Voltaire's work for reform in the direction of tolerance, freedom of thought, rationalism, and common sense, has been done or out-grown; some, however, has still reached only a small part of society and remains, with such corrections and additions as time has shown to be necessary, potentially applicable.

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