important, of their religious duties, and to carry with them into society the urbanity of their illustrious age.1

Such a school Voltaire wanted. He is greatly to be pitied for having possessed that twofold genius which extorts at the same time our admiration and our hatred. He erects and overthrows; he gives the most contradictory examples and precepts; he extols the age of Louis XIV. to the skies, and afterward attacks in detail the reputation of its great men. He alternately praises and slanders antiquity; he pursues through seventy volumes. what he denominates the wretch, and yet the finest passages in his works were inspired by religion. While his imagination enchants you, he throws around him the glare of a fallacious reason, which destroys the marvellous, contracts the soul, and shortens the sight. Except in some of his master-pieces, he considers only the ludicrous side of things and times, and exhibits man to man in a light hideously diverting. He charms and fatigues by his versatility; he both delights and disgusts you; you are at a loss to decide what form is peculiarly his own; you would think him insane, were it not for his good sense, and a misanthropist, did not his life abound with acts of beneficence. You can perceive, amid all his impieties, that he hated sophists." To love the fine arts, letters, and magnificence, was so natural to him that it is nothing uncommon to find him in a kind of admiration of the court of Rome. His vanity caused him, throughout his life, to act a part for which he was not formed, and which was very far beneath him. He bore, in fact, no resemblance to Diderot, Raynal, or D'Alembert. The elegance of his manners, the urbanity of his demeanor, his love of society, and, above all, his humanity, would probably have rendered him one of the most inveterate enemies of the revolutionary system. He is most decidedly in favor of social order, while be unconsciously saps its foundations by attacking the institutions of religion. The most equitable judgment that can be passed upon him is that his

1 It is much to be regretted that the excellence of these writers and their literary labors were so deeply sullied by their attachment to the cause of Jansenism. Though Voltaire was not the cotemporary of Pascal, he knew how to combat Christianity with the same weapons of ridicule that the latter had employed against the Society of Jesus, the great bulwark of Catholicism in that age. T. 2 See note N.

infidelity prevented his attaining the height for which nature. qualified him, and that his works (with the exception of his fugitive poems) have fallen very short of his actual abilities—an example which ought to be an everlasting warning to all those who pursue the career of letters.1 Voltaire was betrayed into all these errors, all these contradictions of style and sentiment, only because he wanted the great counterpoise of religion; and he is an instance to prove that grave morals and piety of thought are more necessary even than a brilliant genius for the successful cultivation of the muse.

1 "Voltaire's pen was fertile and very elegant; his observations are very acute, yet he often betrays great ignorance when he treats on subjects of ancient learning. Madame de Talmond once said to him, 'I think, sir, that a philosopher should never write but to endeavor to render mankind less wicked and unhappy than they are. Now you do quite the contrary; you are always writing against that religion which alone is able to restrain wickedness and to afford us consolation under misfortunes.' Voltaire was much struck, and excused himself by saying that he only wrote for those who were of the same opinion with himself. Tronchin assured his friends that Voltaire died in great agonies of mind. 'I die forsaken by Gods and men!' exclaimed he, in those awful moments when truth will force its way. 'I wish,' added Tronchin, 'that those who had been perverted by his writings had been present at his death. It was a sight too horrid to support."" Seward's Anecdotes, vol. v. p. 274.

BOOK II.

OF POETRY CONSIDERED IN ITS RELATION TO MAN.

Characters.

CHAPTER I.

NATURAL CHARACTERS.

FROM the general survey of epic poems we shall pass to the details of poetic compositions. Let us first consider the natural characters, such as the husband and wife, the father, the mother, &c., before we enter upon the examination of the social characters, such as the priest and the soldier; and let us set out from a principle that cannot be contested.

Christianity is, if we may so express it, a double religion. Its teaching has reference to the nature of intellectual being, and also to our own nature: it makes the mysteries of the Divinity and the mysteries of the human heart go hand-in-hand; and, by removing the veil that conceals the true God, it also exhibits man just as he is.

1

Such a religion must necessarily be more favorable to the delineation of characters than another which dives not into the secrets of the passions. The fairer half of poetry, the dramatic, received no assistance from polytheism, for morals were separated from mythology. A god ascended his chariot, a priest offered a sacrifice; but neither the god nor the priest taught what man is, whence he comes, whither he what are his propengoes, sities, his vices, his virtues, his ends in this life and his destinies in another.

In Christianity, on the contrary, religion and morals are one and the same thing. The Scripture informs us of our origin; it

1 See note 0.

makes us acquainted with our twofold nature; the Christian mysteries all relate to us; we are everywhere seen; for us the Son of God is sacrificed. From Moses to Jesus Christ, from the apostles to the last fathers of the Church, every thing presents the picture of the internal man, every thing tends to dispel the obscurity in which he is enveloped; and one of the distinguishing characteristics of Christianity is that it invariably introduces man in conjunction with God, whereas the false religions have separated the Creator from the creature.

Here, then, is an incalculable advantage which poets ought to have observed in the Christian religion, instead of obstinately continuing to decry it. For if it is equal to polytheism in the marvellous, or in the relations of supernatural things, as we shall in the sequel attempt to prove, it has moreover the drama and moral part which polytheism did not embrace.

In support of this great truth, we shall adduce examples; we shall institute comparisons, which, while they refine our taste, may serve to attach us to the religion of our forefathers by the charms of the most divine among the arts.

We shall commence the study of the natural characters by that of husband and wife, and contrast the conjugal love of Adam and Eve with the conjugal love of Ulysses and Penelope. It will not be said of us that we have purposely selected inferior subjects in antiquity, in order to heighten the effect of the Christian subjects.

CHAPTER II.

THE HUSBAND AND WIFE.

Ulysses and Penelope.

THE suitors having been slain by Ulysses, Euryclea goes to awaken Penelope, who long refuses to believe the wonderful story related by her nurse. She rises, however, and, "descending the steps, passed the stone threshold, and sat down opposite to Ulysses, who was himself seated at the foot of a lofty column,

and, his eyes fixed on the ground, was waiting to hear what his wife would say. But she kept silence, for great astonishment had seized her heart."

Telemachus accuses his mother of coldness. Ulysses smiles, and makes an excuse for Penelope. The princess still doubts; and, to try her husband, commands the bed of Ulysses to be prepared out of the nuptial chamber; upon which the hero immediately exclaims, "Who, then, has removed my couch? Is it no longer spread on the trunk of the olive, around which I built with this hand a bower in my court?"

"He said; and suddenly the heart and knees of Penelope at once failed her; she recognised Ulysses by this indubitable sign. Soon running to him, bathed in tears, she threw her arms about her husband's neck; she kissed his sacred head, and cried, 'Be not angry, thou who wast always the wisest of men! Let me not move thy wrath, if I forbore to throw myself into thine arms. My heart trembled for fear a stranger should betray my faith by deceitful words. . But now I have a manifest proof that it is thyself, by that which thou hast said concerning our couch, which no other man has ever seen, which is known to ourselves and to Actoris alone, (the slave whom my father gave to me when I came to Ithaca, and who is the only attendant on our nuptial chamber.) Thou restorest confidence to this heart rendered distrustful by grief.'

:

"She said and Ulysses, unable to restrain his tears, wept over this chaste and prudent spouse, whom he pressed to his heart. As mariners gaze at the wished-for land, when Neptune has shattered their rapid vessel, the sport of the winds and the mountain billows,-when a small number of the crew, floating on the bosom of the ocean, swim to the shore, and, covered with briny foam, gain the strand, overjoyed at their narrow escape from destruction,-so Penelope fixed her delighted eyes on Ulysses. She could not take her arms from the hero's neck, and rosyfingered Aurora would have beheld the sacred tears of the royal pair had not Minerva held back the sun in the wavy main. . . . . Meanwhile, Eurynome, with a torch in her hand, goes before Ulysses and Penelope, and conducts them to the nuptial chamber.

1 Odyss., b. xxiii. v. 88.