(François Marie Arouet de Voltaire)

VOLTAIRE was born in Paris, November 21th, 1694. His father. François Arouet, was a notary, and the family to which he belonged were middle-class people in good circumstances. The aristocratic “de Voltaire,” which François Marie added to the family name for purposes of his own, has obscured the respectable Arouets, but except that they were middle-class people, he had no reason to be ashamed of them. As a result of the friendship of the Abbé de Châteauneuf for his mother, he was carefully educated in what was then the Jesuit Collège Louis-le-Grand. While still at school he showed unmistakable indications of genius. His wit, his verses, and the influence of his Jesuit patrons secured him the favor of court circles in Paris, and he began the remarkable career as a court favorite and iconoclast, poet, dramatist, historian, philosopher, buffoon, and reformer, which has had no parallel in modern times. Often persecuted and sometimes imprisoned for his iconoclastic utterances, he had no more hesitation in recanting his opinion to escape martyrdom than he had in returning to it and reiterating it as soon as he was at a safe distance from his persecutors. His writings in prose and verse, formidable in quantity as in their general tendencies, may not have been directed by a common and well-defined purpose, but they were all the result of the same general impulse—an impulse which moved in him and through him as it did in his generation, impelling France towards the overthrow of feudal aristocracy and absolute monarchy. From July, 1750, to March, 1753, Voltaire lived with Frederick the Great, who had been his warm admirer; but when the two philosophers became better acquainted with each other, they found it impossible to reconcile conflicting details in their plans for a really systematic universe, and as neither of them was accustomed to giving up his own way, they parted in anger, and Frederick was ungrateful and unphilosophical enough to have his instructor in philosophy arrested. The arrest, which occurred while Voltaire was returning to France, was not intended to be anything more than a piece of friendly insult, however, and, after being sufficiently maltreated at Frankfort, Voltaire was released and allowed to proceed to France, where, after several years of unsettled life, he purchased the estate of Ferney. There he lived from 1758 until his death, which occurred May 30th, 1778, while he was visiting his enthusiastic friends in Paris. It is impossible to estimate the extent of Voltaire’s influence, and it would be wearisome to attempt to catalogue his works. In the edition of “Kehl,” 1784, and of “Paris,” 1829, they make seventy-two volumes. The visit to England which resulted in some of the best of his literary essays (“Letters on England”) was made in 1726, and he remained until 1729. Making the acquaintance of Young, Congreve, Pope, and Bolingbroke, he formed his taste by the study of the masters of English literature. Of Voltaire’s morals, his admirers are not anxious to speak at unnecessary length. That his influence in forcing changes necessary for progress was great, his worst enemies have long ago conceded. His character as a reformer might have become utterly contemptible if he had not made his influence irresistible. “He could not bring himself to testify in any open and dangerous manner for what he thought to be truth,” writes Prof. Saintsbury, with a clear understanding of his vital weakness of character; and we have a valid suggestion of the secret of his strength when Saintsbury adds that he could not “refrain from attacking by every artifice and covert enginery what he thought to be falsehood.”