VOLTAIRE IN HIS LETTERS.*

IN such moods of pessimism as the recent upheaval of our hitherto comfortable world was bound from time to time to induce— moods that found us wondering whether good or evil was likely to predominate in the final result—most of us have yearned at • Voltaire in his Letters: being a Selection front his Correspondence. Translated ulth a Prelate and Foremords by IL G. Tallentyre. London: John Murray. netJ one moment or another for the resurrection in our midst of some departed hero who personifies for us that quality of greatness which too often seems lacking, or at best latent, in the " big " men of our day. Of course the quality that we miss is not easy to define: there are even those who hold it to be unrecognizable by a contemporary generation ; who tell us that history may ascribe greatness to any one of half-a-dozen men now living and working among us, but that we must not expect to be able

to say : "This, or this, is the man." However that may be—

and the theory is hardly susceptible of proof—the point is that we feel a 'certain need, and that such feelings count.

" Milton ! thou shouldst be living at this hour ! " Wordsworth cried. No doubt many of Wordsworth's contemporaries would have wished him to suppress this sentiment, having themselves, at that particular juncture, no use for Milton. So now, if we could recall the shade of Voltaire, there would be many who would at once take steps to lay the ghost that we had raised. Yet we would, if we could, persevere in Our necromancy to the end. We would " resurrect " Voltaire, and for a definite reason.

Very few of us pretend, even with a victorious Peace in sight, that "all's right with the world." It is not so much that the times are "out of joint" as that the world feels bewildered on abstract questions of ultimate values. Perhaps there is no power so effective as that of clear-headed satire for the elucida- tion of ideals and the establishment of "final ends" on a sure basis. We look back, tantalized, to Voltaire, in whom this power found one of its most distinguished exponents; tantalized because

we know that where there is ,injustice, where there is weakness and vacillation, where there is superstition, slavish adherence to

tradition, ignorance in high places, double-dealing, time-serving, and, above all, where there is "smugness," there the witty pen of Voltaire would do us inestimable service. "Could I rest satisfied with cursing human nature ? " he writes. And for Voltaire, we think, there can hardly have been even a temptation to do so. When it was possible in some practical way to obviate the evils brought about by human nature, he knew how to act. When it was not possible, he laughed. His laughter— wisely directed, of course !—would be salutary for the world to-day.

It is Voltaire "in his Letters"—these letters the selection of which has been guided by a discriminating sympathy—whom we dare to wish back again. The formidable Voltaire of history, irreverent, unscrupulous, undisciplined, neither to have nor to

hold—that would be another matter. But in the portrait with which "S. G. Tallentyre" presents us there is, on the whole, very httle to cause alarm ! The sceptic shows himself, at least, a

convinced Deist : his diatribes against religious institutions rather suggest the sallies of an enfant terrible who has been rubbed the wrong way. The trenchant satirist seems now and then uneasily conscious of his own inconsistencies, as when he attempts to justify to his niece the obvious unwisdom of his sojourn in Prussia. His flatteries are rendered innocuous by their very excess. It is a portrait in which the harsher, uglier lines are softened ; in which many a grateful touch of delicacy and gentleness appears. The playwright's letter to Mlle, Dangeville, a young actress who had " murdered " her part— an important one—in his tragedy of Brutus, represents a phase of his character on which we are glad to dwell :—

" Anyhow, for Heavens' sake, don't worry yourself ! Even if it does not go well, what matter ? You are only fifteen : and the worst any one could say of you would be that you are not yet what you undoubtedly will be. For my part, I offer you very grateful thanks : if you do not realize how tenderly and respect- fully I regard you, you will never act tragedy. Begin by being the friend of one who loves you as a father, and you will play your r6le charmingly."

It may be the phraseology of gallant convention ; but the substance of the letter indicates a fine generosity, to be found not seldom in Voltaire's "Letters "—notably in his appreciation of attainments far inferior to his own, and, as to more intimate relations, in his friendship for a niece who is judged by common consent to have been" the veay apotheosis of the commonplace.'

But "S. G. Tallentyre" has seen to it that bolder lines in the

picture shall not be lacking. She gives us, for instance, the letter to M. Damilaville on the causes cellbres of Gales and of the

Sirvens which have established Voltaire for all time as an avenger of human wrongs. And so, as we turn from the perusal of these letters, we carry with us an image which may be imperfect but cannot be false ; because, after all, we have not been looking at a painted portrait, but at the man himself—presented to us in a

Though in her selection from the eighteen bulky volumes of Voltaire's correspondence "S. G. Tallentyre's" choice has in the main fallen upon those letters which are specially reflective of Voltaire's personality, she has included some of general interest at the present moment. The Frenchman's relations with Frederick the Great offer an illuminating study of the Hohen- zollern temperament. Significant, too, is Voltaire's judgment that "an Englishman who thoroughly knows France, and a Frenchman who thoroughly knows England, are both the better for that knowledge."