Among the élèves of Voltaire on the boards of the Comédie Française, was an actor named Paulin, who performed the parts of tyrants in tragedy and of peasants in comedy. M. Grimm says that 'il était paysan passable, mais mauvais tyran,' and that Voltaire was misled by his sonorous voice in imagining that nature had designed him for a Herod. Laissez-moi faire,' he used to say, Je vous élève un tyran à la brochette, dont vous serez contens.' He instructed him to perform the part of Polifonte, in his tragedy Merope; and once, while it was under rehearsal, waked his let at three o'clock in the morning to fetch the actor to receive wme new idea which he wished to communicate. The servant vainly remonstrated that M. Paulin was in his first sleep. Be said the poet with great seriousness- Va-cours-les tms ne dorment jamais.' The appointment of Voltaire, by Pope Ganganelli, to the lay ofice of Père temporel des Capucins du pays de Gex,' gave rise 10 a variety of witticisms at his expense, and he appears to have been by no means averse to join in the pleasantries himself. 'They pretend,' says the Baron, 'that he has already written letters, signed with a cross, †, Voltaire, Capucin indigne. He says of himself "that those who foretold that he would die a Capuchin, have not been mistaken, and he should esteem himself very happy if, at his old age, he could hope to arrive at the bonnes fortunes of a Capuchin." A person, just arrived from Ferney, relates to us that the Patriarch said to him, at his first visit, "Vous me trouverez bien changé: on devient cagot à mesure qu'on vieillit; j'ai pris l'habitude de me faire faire quelque lecture pieuse en me mettant à table;" and that, in effect, they began to read to him a sermon out of Massillon's Petit Carême, during which the Patriarch frequently exclaimed, "Ah, que c'est beau! el style! quelle harmonie! quelle éloquence!" but when they had got through two or three pages, he said, " tirez Massillon," upon which They shut the book, and the admiring hearer se livra, à son ordinaire, toute la verve et à toute la folie de son imagination, qui aura bien de la peine à contracter la gravité nécessaire à un père temporel des Ca pucins.' The following letter to the Maréchal de Richelieu proves the temper in which Voltaire himself received and treated his ecclesiastical promotion. 'Je voudrais bien, monseigneur, avoir le plaisir de vous donner ma bénédiction avant de mourir. L'expression vous paraîtra un peu forte: elle est pourtant dans la vérité. J'ai l'honneur d'etre Capucin. Notre général qui est à Rome, vient de m'envoyer mes patentes; mon titre est; Frère spirituel et Père temporel des Capucins. Mandez-moi laquelle de vos maîtresses vous voulez retirer du purgatoire; je vous jure sur ma barbe qu'elle n'y sera pas dans vingt-quatre heures. Comme je dois me détacher des biens de ce monde, j'ai abandonné à mes parens ce qui m'est m'est dû par la succession de feu Madame la Princesse de Guise, et par M. votre intendant; ils iront à ce sujet prendre vos ordres qu'ils regarderont comme un bienfait. Je vous donne ma bénédiction. Signé Voltaire, Capucin indigne, et qui n'a pas encore eu de bonne fortune de Capucin.' We have a long account of the original design of the famous statue of Voltaire, which was first proposed at the house of Madame Necker, on the 17th of April, 1770. The anecdote of M. Pigalle (the sculptor)'s visit to Ferney, is amusing and characteristic. 'Phidias Pigalle a fait son voyage de Ferney. The Patriarch granted him the honour of a sitting every day; but he was all the time behaving like a child, unable to keep himself still a single instant. The greater part of the time he had his secretary by his side, to dictate letters to him, while the artist was forming his model, et, suigant un tic qui lui est familier en dictant des lettres, il soufflait des pois ou faisait d'autres grimaces mortelles pour le statuaire. The poor artist was in despair, and seemed to have no other resource than either to return home or fall ill at Ferney of a burning fever. On the last day, however, the conversation, by good luck, fell upon Aaron's golden calf, and the sculptor having declared that he should require at least six months to cast such a piece of metal, the Patriarch was so delighted with the remark, that Pigalle was able to do whatever he pleased with him all the rest of the sitting.' Voltaire's opposition to the atheistical principles of the 'Système de la Nature' does not seem to have been expected or looked for by his philosophical friends at Paris. The reflections of M. Grimm on the subject, appear to us so remarkable as to deserve notice. Le patriarche ne veut pas se départir de son rémunérateur-vengeur; il le croit nécessaire au bon ordre. Il veut bien qu'on détruise le dieu des fripons et des superstitieux, mais il veut qu'on épargne celui des honnêtes gens et des sages. Il raisonne la-dessus comme un enfant, mais comme un joli enfant qu'il est. Il serait bien étonné si on lui demandait de quelle couleur est son dieu, &c. &c.' We shall not sully our pages with any of the hacknied Epicurean arguments of M. Grimm which follow in this place, and which (we suppose) were adopted by him without any reflection, after the loose manner of Messieurs les philosophes, when warm from the perusal of the Système de la Nature.' It will be a satisfaction to some to know how Voltaire spoke and reasoned upon the subject. In a letter to Madame Necker, he thus expresses himself: Vous me parlez, Madame, du Système de la Nature, livre qui fait grand bruit parmi les ignorans, et qui indigne tous les gens sensés. Il est un peu honteux à notre nation, que tant de gens aient embrassé si vite une opinion si ridicule. Il faut être bien fou pour ne pas admettre une grande intelligence quand on en a une si petite; mais le comble de de limpertinence est d'avoir fondé un système tout entier sur une fausse expérience faite par une jésuite irlandais qu'on a pris pour un philosophe. Les Français ont eu grand tort d'abandonner les belles lettres pour ces profondes fadaises, et on a tort de les prendre sérieusement. A tout prendre, le siècle de Phèdre et du Misanthrope valait mieux.' We suspect that the following anecdote is already current; but it is worth repeating. An Englishman visited Voltaire at Ferney, on his way to Rome, and asked the patriarch's commands where he was going. Voltaire entreated him, at any risk, to bring lim back the ears of the Grand Inquisitor. On his arrival at Rome the Englishman mentioned this commission in many different circles, and it was at last repeated to Ganganelli, who, when the struger attended an audience of his holiness, asked him what Commands he had brought with him from M. de Voltaire? The tweiler could not avoid smiling at the question, and his holiness cou/inued, 'I beg you will inform M. de Voltaire that, for a long witle past, the inquisition has had neither ears nor eyes.' The terrors of Voltaire's satire are well known, especially against all unfortunate poets, whose evil destinies led them to meddle with what he deemed his own peculiar provinces in literature. An unhappy being of this description, by name Clément, (whom Voltaire called Clément Maraud, to distinguish him from the old bard Clément Marot,) was induced to write a tragedy called Mérope, for which he endeavoured in vain to procure the honours of representation. A servant once offered himself to Voltaire, who said he came from the service of this Clément. 'Coquin,' said Voltaire, looking him full in the face, 'tu m'as bien l'air d'avoir fait les trois premiers actes de sa Mérope.' The following anecdote is much more discreditable to him. He had conceived a mortal displeasure at the popularity of a young actress called Mademoiselle Raucourt, who valued herself on the purity of her reputation, which, it seems, had never been called in question. In a fit of ill humour, he wrote to the Maréchal de Richelieu, that this person had been formerly mistress to a gentleman at Geneva, and was even now ready to accede to the terms of the best bidder. It happened that the epistle was received by the Maréchal while at table with the very lady in question, and he immediately, without looking at its contents, put it into the hands of one of the party to read aloud for the benefit of the rest. The fair Raucourt fell senseless into the arms of her mother, and D'Alembert dispatched an indignant remonstrance to the guilty patriarch, who was obliged to submit to the shameful humiliation of retracting the whole invention. The only cause which M. Grimm is able to assign to this 'incartade tres-répréhensible' of his oracle, is, that the intended representation of his tragedy of the Lois de Minos,' VOL. IX. NO. XVII. G had had been forced to give way to the fashionable novelty of Mademoiselle de Raucourt. Cela suffit pour indisposer un enfant de soixante-dix-neuf ans contre un enfant de dix-sept qui dérange et trompe ses espérances.' The Abbé Coyer, who is here characterised as being 'l'homme du monde le plus lourd, l'ennui personnifié,' kindly undertook to pay Voltaire a visit for two or three months at his Château de Ferney. The first day the philosopher bore his company with tolerable politeness; but the next morning he interrupted him in a long prosing narrative of his travels, by a question which appeared to embarrass him not a little. 'Savez-vous bien, M. l'Abbé, la différence qu'il y a entre Don Quichotte et vous? c'est que Don Quichotte prenait toutes les auberges pour des châteaux, et vous, vous prenez tous les châteaux pour des auberges.' This address effected the immediate disenchantment of M. l'Abbé, who took his departure within twenty-four hours afterwards. But the following letter, describing a somewhat similar visit made by an unhappy dramatic author, is still more characteristic. : ... 'You wish to hear, madam, the true history of the pilgrimage lately made by M. Barthe, to Ferney; and you will see how it is possible to be damned in labouring after salvation. Imagine to yourself, then, madam, that he comes express from Marseilles,...... to see M. de Voltaire? No; to read to him his new comedy in five acts and in verse, entitled, l'Homme Personnel. The whole business had been negotiated before-hand by M. Moulton, a great favourite of Voltaire, who had granted the favour desired with the most gracious good humour. Accordingly they came to Ferney together, and were received by the patriarch in the most civil manner possible: at last the reading commenced. Now you might behold Barthe, with one eye upon his MS. the other armed with a spy-glass, watching with the utmost anxiety every change in the countenance of the great critic. At the ten first verses, M. de Voltaire made such grimaces and contorsions as would have frightened any other reader than M. Barthe. When he came to the scene in which the valet relates how his master made him submit to have one of his teeth pulled out in order to make trial of the dentist's skill, he stopped him short, and with his mouth wide open, Une dent! là! ah! ah! The whole act passed off without the slightest applause, not even a smile; and, as soon as he talked of beginning the second, M. de Voltaire was suddenly seized with a terrible fit of yawning-he finds himself unwell-is quite in despair-withdraws to his closet-and leaves poor Barthe in a state of positive distraction. It had been arranged that he should sleep at Ferney; but this he could not consent to after what had passed; so all his baggage was packed up again, and he returned, sad and disconsolate, to Geneva. - Next morning he received a most polite note from M. de Voltaire, containing a thousand apologies, entreating a continuation of the reading, and expressly promising that the accident of the preceding night shall not be repeated. Quel persiflage! age! In spite of all they could say to him, M. Barthe was resolved to be the dupe of it. He returned to Ferney, and was received with still greater civility than before: but, having heard out the second act, yawning all the time, in the very middle of the third, Voltaire took himself off with all possible ceremoniousness; and poor Barthe was reduced to take his departure a second time without having finished his piece; and, what was perhaps still more mortifying, without having any body to fight with.' Voltaire returned to Paris, after an absence of twenty-seven years, on the 8th of February, 1778. 'Non l'apparition d'un revenant, celle d'un prophète, d'un apôtre, n'aurait pas causé plus de surprise et d'admiration que l'arrivé de M. Voltaire. Ce nouveau prodige a suspendu quelques momens tout intérêt, il a fait tomber les bruits de la guerre, les intrigues de ote, les tracasseries de cour, même la grande querelle des Gluckistes et des Piccinistes. L'orgueil encyclopédique a paru diminué de moitié, la Sorbonne a frémi, le parlement a gardé le silence, toute la littérature s'est émue, tout Paris s'est empressé de voler aux pieds de l'idole, et jamais le héros de notre siècle n'eût joui de sa gloire avec plus d'éclat, si la cour l'avait honoré d'un regard plus favorable ou seulement moins indifferent.' 'Whoever should undertake the history of French vanity during the eighteenth century, would go far towards explaining the causes of the revolution,' is a very true saying. Vanity was evidently the spring of all Voltaire's actions and sentiments; nay, it had so incorporated itself with his very essence that, we are persuaded, the very inconsistencies and alterations which were remarked in him towards the close of his life, were owing more to that pervading principle than either to repentance or foresight. The extraordinary part which he took in the affair of M. de Morangiés, has been geterally ascribed to the apprehensions which he latterly began to entertain of an approaching overthrow of the very foundations of society; and the philosophists of Paris appear, from the corre spondence before us, to have been equally astonished and mortified at the desertion of the 'great defender of Calas' from the popular cause which he had hitherto so successfully maintained. Nevertheless, if we consider what part his vanity would naturally have induced him to take in the business, we should be inclined to say that it was that which he in fact espoused. Where all the chiefs of the philosophical party, and all the rabble, were of one mind on the subject, little honour was to be acquired, or notice attracted, by taking the same view of it with them. It was quite otherwise in those earlier times when he so nobly attacked the parliament of Toulouse on the subject of the melancholy affair above alluded to. Besides, he was sick of the homage of those |