the most desirable in that great lottery where good tickets are so scarce, and where the Great Prize of continual happiness has never been gained by any one. Your philosophy has never been upset by chimeras which have sometimes perplexed tolerably good brains. You have never been in any sense a charlatan, nor the dupe of charlatans, and that I reckon as a rare merit, which adds something to the shadow of happiness that we are allowed to taste of in this short life."

Lord Chesterfield died on the twenty-fourth of March, 1773. In pointing out his charming course of wordly education, we have not thought it out of place even in a democracy, to take lessons of savior vivre and politeness, and to receive them from a man whose name is so closely connected with those of Montesquieu and Voltaire, who, more than any of his countrymen in his own time, showed singular fondness for our nation; who delighted, more than was right, perhaps, in our amiable qualities; who appreciated our solid virtues, and of whom it might be said, as his greatest praise, that he was a French wit, if he had not introduced into the verve and vivacity of his sallies that inexplicable something of imagination and color that bears the impress of his

race.

Complete.

3336

GEORGE EDWARD BATEMAN SAINTSBURY

(1845-)

OR nearly two decades past, Saintsbury has been a favorite contributor to the English reviews. Much of his work as an essayist has been in the form of literary biographies and book reviews. As a book reviewer, he is much less aggressive than the slashing critics of the first half of the century. The change of style is as marked as the improvement of literary morality which made it possible. Saintsbury was born at Southampton, England, October 23d, 1845. After graduating from Merton College, Oxford, he taught the Classics at Elizabeth College in Guernsey, and was head master of the Elgin Educational Institute (1874-76). In 1876 he began in London the work as an editor and essayist he has since continued. Among his works are "English Worthies,» «History of Elizabethan Literature," and "Essays on English Literature."

ON PARTON'S "VOLTAIRE »

F NEARLY all the events of this remarkable life Mr. Parton has given an account, sometimes faulty in form, but sufficient and complete in substance. His book, though it may give some new facts, will, of course, not materially alter the idea of Voltaire to those who have previously studied his life and his works; but to those who do not already possess much knowledge of him it furnishes a convenient means of informing themselves. A book of thirteen hundred pages, deformed by American misspelling of the English tongue, and by references to "inflationists" and such-like irrelevances, not to mention constant expressions of the author's sentiments, which are, to say the least, unimportant, may seem a formidable undertaking. But its copiousness of incident and anecdote and its abundant quotations lighten the task of reading very considerably. At the end of it he must be a somewhat thoughtless reader (if, indeed, any such be likely to reach the end) who does not endeavor to make up for himself, assisted by the critical comments of those of Mr. Parton's predecessors to whom Pallas has been more kind, some no

tion of the singular personality here portrayed. Mr. Parton's own notion of that personality is decided enough. In his own marvelous language he tells us that Voltaire's empty sepulchre "is vocal, it is resonant, it booms and thunders over the earth. » The superstition-crusher pushes everything and everybody else aside in his estimate. I think, for my own part, that from such a standpoint it is as difficult to judge Voltaire rightly as from that of my friend who called him a wretch, from that of Johnson, or from that of George III.

The truth seems to be that Voltaire was an extremely complicated character; the wonderful diversity of his literary work only reflects this complexity in part, though the one, no doubt, is the reason of the other. As I can hardly think of any man who displayed so many different forms of the literary faculty, so I can hardly think of any man, whether of letters or of business, who united the capacity and in a way the actual performance of so many different parts. Of his varied ability in practical administrative business there is proof almost as ample as of his varied ability in literary work. If he failed anywhere in what he undertook it was in diplomacy, and it is fair to remember that he had an antagonist to contend with there by whom it was no shame to be beaten. He has not, like Wordsworth, left us explicit intimations that in his own opinion his mission was to be Prime Minister, or Archbishop of Canterbury, or Commander in Chief, or Lord Chancellor, or all of them together. But I have no doubt that if the opportunity of any or all of these posts had come in his way he would have accepted it cheerfully, and would have performed the duties on the whole very well. The complementary defect of the quality of jack of all trades is well known. Voltaire suffered from it less than most people, but he did suffer from it. In no literary style, except in that of satirical prose fiction, or allegory of the social kind, can he be said to have attained the highest mastery. In work requiring research of any kind he was rather rapid than thorough, and he carried to excess the national habit of hasty deduction from insufficiently investigated premises. His moral and intellectual character, with which we are here more specially concerned, shows inconsistencies and blemishes of all kinds. Let us try and sum up what the devil's advocates say against him. He was an unscrupulous liar; he was extraordinarily vain; he was utterly destitute of reverence; he had an impure imagination which was

not checked by the slightest sense of even external decency; he was given to filthy lucre; he was spiteful and revengeful in the extreme toward his personal enemies. This is an ugly catalogue, and it is unfortunately true that no single article in it can be struck out entirely by the most uncompromising defender who knows and respects the facts. Mitigating pleas are all that is possible. His lying, which is a very unpleasant feature to English examiners of his character, has to be taken in conjunction with the fact that it was, so to speak, official and professional lying for the most part. The absurd and iniquitous political and social system of the time and country necessitated and in a manner recognized it. It was little more than the conventional "not guilty," not so much as the equally conventional "not at home." The charge of vanity must be admitted sans phrase, but it is not a very damning one. The lack of reverence also is not contestable, though there are some circumstances on the other side, notably the mountain-top story, which I have not noticed in Mr. Parton, and his lifelong cult of the starry heavens. This was, however, a distinct and inevitable consequence of his peculiar faculty of ridicule, which must also excuse as far as it can (and that is not very far) the uncleanness of his writings. I shall frankly own that that uncleanness is to me the most unpleasant variety of the disease that I know, with the possible exception of Dryden's. His carrying out of the maxim non olet is another blot on his character. There is nothing inexcusable, though perhaps there is something rather undignified, in a poet's making money by stockbroking and money changing; but the Hirsch matter, as to which something has been said already, cannot be defended, and the persistent way in which the author of "L'Homme aux Quarante Ecus" and a hundred other protests against financial mismanagement allowed himself to profit by contracts, loans, and so forth, where the profit was due to corrupt administration, is a still greater blot. With respect to Fréron, Desfontaines, et Cie., perhaps the worst thing that can be said about Voltaire is that in point of malignity there is sometimes nothing and generally very little to choose between himself and his adversaries.

And yet I have not the least intention of admitting that Voltaire was a wretch, or anything of the kind. All the worst of his faults were emphatically the faults of his time and his education. His merits, on the other hand, were personal and his

own, a distinction which, however hackneyed it may be, is almost the only one available in this world of ours. These merits Mr. Parton's book ought to make clear to everybody who is not hopelessly prejudiced. One of the chief of them was an extraordinary kindness of heart and affection for his friends, relations, and, indeed, everybody with whom he was not brought into violent collision. Madame du Châtelet and Madame Denis, the feminine plagues of the greater part of his long life, certainly had nothing to complain of in him. Notwithstanding his occa

sional fits of ill temper, all his servants and dependants were fond of him, and even the passionate Collini did not find those fits intolerable. His friendship for Thieriot, a person of very doubtful merit, and not unfrequently, as in the Desfontaines affair, and in the matter of the employments which Voltaire sought to procure for him from Richelieu, a troublesome and even treacherous friend, was unwearying. No one, even of his enemies, fails to acknowledge his remarkable benevolence to oppressed or unfortunate persons of every degree of merit, from Calas and Lally to La Barre and Desfontaines. Something, perhaps, must be allowed for his love of playing the grand seigneur in estimating his good deeds at Ferney; but even when that allowance is made, a solid amount will remain to his credit. Unscrupulous as he was in some ways in the getting of money, he neither spent it unworthily nor hoarded it for the mere sake of hoarding; his object being, as has been said, the securing of independence, which in his time and country no man, who was neither a priest nor a noble, could hope for without a competent estate. These things are, of course, perfectly well known to students of French literature and French history; but the general reader is less likely to be acquainted with them. Such a reader will find in Mr. Parton's book a good deal to amuse him, and a good deal to correct and heighten his idea of Voltaire as a man. It has been hinted that the merits of the book, as a literary commentary, are hardly equal to its merits as a repository of fact. In the former respect, however, as has also been suggested, more than one scriptor haud paulo melior quam ego aut, Mr. Parton has supplied the deficiency in English by anticipation, and it is therefore superfluous to say any more on that score.

From a review of Parton's "Life of Voltaire.»