Rouss. Thou art surely the most incorrigible of infidels! Mirabeau himself would blush to hear you. Volt. Ah! my dear friend, do you not know how very difficult it is for a man to arrive at the pinnacle of fame? Rouss. I do not rightly understand you. Are we not to seek in your writings for the genuine sentiments of your heart? Volt. Nothing like them, I give you my word.-Dissimulation is now unnecessary; and I will very frankly own to you, though you are pleased to consider me as an infidel, that I have sometimes trembled while I wrote ! Rouss. Why then have you been industrious in propagating an opinion so injurious to the cause of humanity; so destructive to the hopes of man? Volt. From the same motive that the eagle dares to beat his steep course up the sky;-from a desire of setting up my opinion against the world's;-in a word, from a love of distinction and fame. Rouss. And was this really your only motive for ridiculing every thing that is sacred and divine? Volt. I certainly had no other. I knew that it was the only way to succeed in my wishes, and I boldly stood forth the contemner of religious and vulgar prejudices. Every eye was fixed on me. Men looked up to me as to a superior being; they gazed on me till they were dazzled by my splendour. In fine, I acquired the consequence and notice I had so long been ambitious of. Rouss. I cannot help thinking, however, but that you might have raised your consequence by other and less exceptionable means. Volt. Never. You must surely have observed the fondness and partiality of mankind for every thing that is rare and uncommon. For example, we gaze with admiration on a comet, while an ordinary star is wholly unnoticed by us. For me I have ever appeared with a train of light. Rouss. And not a little eccentric and irregular in your orbit. But that I could readily have pardoned.— Jean-Jacques, you may remember, was a star that sometimes deviated from its proper sphere. Volt. I remember, indeed, that, in your letter to the Archbishop of Paris, you told him-" Je suis devenu homme de lettres par mépris pour cet état." Do you mean to insinuate that in becoming an author you had quitted your proper sphere? Rouss. How can you ask me such a question? Did I not observe to that same archbishop, that such was my rank and importance in the republic of letters—“ que tous les gouvernemens bien policées me doivent élever des statues?" Volt. True: I had really forgotten that particular. A pretty remarkable proof of pride! Rouss. You are perfectly right,-pride had ever an entire possession of my soul. Many, however, will be of opinion that you had the greater reason to be proud; you who were publicly saluted on the cheek by a young and amiable duchess. But it Volt. A somewhat whimsical circumstance.* was not the kiss of love,-nothing like your "premier baiser de l'amour,"+ I give you my word. Rouss. “Il faut distinguer le moral du physique dans le sentiment de l'amour," as I have already observed, in my discourse on the inequality of mankind; but we will call it the kiss of friendship, if you please. Volt. It may certainly so be termed; the Duchess ever afterwards honoured me with her notice. But what *Voltaire has given the following history of the Kiss in his account of the success of his tragedy of Mahomet. "Le parterre a demandé à grands cris à me voir. On m'est venu prendre dans un cache, où je m'étais tapi. On m'a mené de force dans la loge de Madame la Maréchalle de Villars, où était sa belle-fille. Le parterre était fou: il a crié à la Duchesse de Villars de me baiser, et il a tant fait de bruit qu'elle a été obligé d'en passer par là, par l'ordre de sa belle-mère. J'ai été baisé publiquement comme Alain Chartier par la Princesse Margueritte d'Ecosse; mais il dormait, et j'étais fort éveillé." + See La Nouvelle Héloïse. I had really reason to be proud of, were the attentions and assiduities of Madame du Châtelet. Rouss. And I perhaps might be equally vain of the tendres amitiés of my little Genevoise. Ah! my dear friend, what fortunate fellows have we been,-caressed and admired by the women, abused and envied by the men! Volt. Fortunate, do you say? why, to confess the truth, there is something pleasing in awakening envy, but I cannot say the same with respect to abuse; the genus irritabile vatum were ever my aversion. Rouss. Oh," Censure is the tax that a man pays to the public for being eminent,"-you surely have not forgotten that; but, then it is a tax which such a man will pay but for a little time. Merit is not to be kept in obscurity by any, even the most powerful of envy's arts. Volt. Here I think you are somewhat mistaken; Ah! who can tell how many a soul sublime And poverty's unconquerable bar!-MINSTREL. So says the poet; and I believe with sufficient truth. speak of genius in its infancy; le génie naissant, as our language so happily expresses it. Rouss. I, on the contrary, allude not to youthful genius, but to that which, like the proper Minerva, comes into the world full grown and mature. The timidity natural at its outset will operate a little perniciously indeed; but real merit, as I have already observed, cannot be long concealed from the public eye. Volt. You are undoubtedly right. Thus hath it ever been, and thus may it ever remain! Farewell! live, and be happy. Rouss. Live? Heyday! Have you then forgotten that I am now numbered among the dead? Volt. Si qua fata aspera rumpas, tu Marcellus eris.* Dead! 'Tis not in the power of the fates; Rousseau can never die! • Virgil. DIALOGUE V. SCENE-AN ELEGANT APARTMENT. MERCURY* and A LADY OF FASHION. Lady. Well, but, Mr. Mercury, I beg you would not be in such a hurry; where are all my maids? Betty! Sally! Cicily! Merc. O you need not trouble yourself about them— you will have no occasion for waiting-maids in the regions below. Lady. Prithee let me appear before Mr. What-d'yecall-him in a proper dress: why, I am an absolute fright: -I should be perfectly horrified to be seen in this dishabille. Merc. In a proper dress! why, Madam, you must strip off every article of dress: Rhadamanthus will admit of no disguise Lady. Strip! why you impudent fellow! do you think So. Merc. Hold, hold, fair lady, no hard words :-'tis even Our judge is, moreover, no respecter of persons :you will be arraigned and tried with Lady. Arraigned and tried: mercy on me! Well, but if one must be tried, I trust one could get the privilege of being tried alone? *It is properly the business of Iris, and not of Mercury, to free the souls of women from the chains of the body; but as Iris is the messenger of Heaven only, and as the present embassy is from the regions below, the reader will yield to the necessity of the case. + I have somewhere read of a lady, I believe in a paper of Addison's, who expressed a considerable degree of uneasiness at the thought of appearing in the other world in the same state in which she came out of the hands of Dame Nature, "unattired, unadorned." The present dialogue is founded principally on that anecdote. Merc. Alone! O impossible, Madam. Lady. What, to mix with a vulgar crew! Sir, I am a person of fashion :-here are a thousand pounds for your trouble. Do now, my dear sweet gentleman, speak a word or two for me.-Is Daddy What's-his-name a good-natured creature? don't you think one might coax him a little? Merc. A good-natured creature!* coax him! coax a judge! Why, Madam, although you may have heard of such a thing on earth, you cannot expect it with us:no, no, Rhadamanthus is— An upright judge, who, zealous in his trust, With warmth gives sentence, yet is always just. He is strictly impartial,—not to be corrupted, I assure you. Lady. Alas! alas! Merc. How, Madam! do you cry Alas! at the impartiality of your judge? Lady. No, Sir, no:-but undressed, did you say? I shall expire Merc. Yes, Madam; and I can inform you, that, when brought to trial, on one side of you will stand a beautiful nymph from Billingsgate, who came to us rather suddenly, from having taken too copious a draught of juniper, and on the other side, an agreeable Wapping landlady, from whom we had long expected a visit. Lady. Intolerable! but it is impossible that you should be serious :-you are joking, I am very sure. Merc. Joking! no, no, Madam, there is no joking among us. By the gloomy Styx, I am serious; serious as Mr. Doleful, the comic poet, who died about a twelvemonth ago, and whose malady, as you may well remember, carried him off on the ninth day. Lady. Well, but if you will inform this Mr. (I shall never think of his name),-that it is my particular desire It should be remembered, however, that Statius has represented Minos, the colleague of Rhadamanthus, as particularly good-natured. |