A LIVES OF MEN OF LETTERS AND SCIENCE WHO FLOURISHED THERE is a mobility about Lord Brougham which nothing can check or control. Whether for good or for evil, he must be busy. There is a fidgety restlessness about him which must find vent either in parole or in print. The House of Lords sits but on an average five months in the year; the appellate jurisdiction of the same tribunal encroaches but little on the ex-chancellor's time; the judicial committee of the Privy Council has not been favoured with the noble and learned lord's presence more than a score and a half of times during the last twelve months; and, in the interval in which he can neither talk in public, nor give judgments good, bad, or indifferent, as the case may be, what is Lord Brougham to do? Why, to write to be sure. If he did not print or perorate, this poor peer would die either of a retention of the subjects of many essays, or of the ready-made and forcibly retained rhetoric of divers speeches. The public, therefore, seeing that they must either lose the lord or his lucubrations, consent to accept the latter for just so much as they are worth, and cry, "Long live Lord Brougham, for such time as he affords us laughter much at little jest' in badgering plain John Campbell!"" For the speeches of the peer in parliament, even though they roast "plain John," there is a heavy penalty to pay. Litigants for this amusement bear the burden, to use no harsher word, of Lord Brougham's judgments, and the literary public the blunders and balaam of his biography. His lordship at first condescended to give us the Statesmen of George III.'s Reign, of whom he knew little or nothing personally; and now he attempts to give us a summary of the lives of the literary men, of whom, if possible, he knew and knows still less. A literate countryman of a celebrated and eloquent Irish orator and wor shipper of Lord Brougham is reported to have, some years ago, asked that fervid admirer of the ex-chanof Catherine of Russia, that he gives cellor, "What can Brougham know us a biography of the Semiramis of the North half a century after she is dead ?" "Why, I suppose," said the eloquent and witty provincial commissioner of bankrupts, "it may he conceded he never had an affaire de cœur with her imperial and royal passed in intimate knowledge of the majesty, and, therefore, may be surlady by scores of her admirers." This was turning off an awkward inquiry by a happy, yet somewhat coarse jest; yet how could the ready attempting the lives of Voltaire and utterer of that jest palliate his friend's Rousseau ? When some good-natured friend told Johnson that Jemmy Boswell meditated writing his life, surly Sam is reported to have said, "I ought to anticipate the fellow, by taking his;" and the same idea is paraphrased, but not plagiarised, by Curran. An Irish barrister with the euphonious name of O'Regan, having announced to the orator that he meant to write his life deliberately and with the malice prepense of full leisure, Curran replied, "Take it, my dear O'Regan, at once in the excitement of hot blood, but don't commit premeditated, deliberate murder, coolly and aforethought." The warning of the Irish Master of the Rolls tainly perpetrate deliberate murder, was disregarded. O'Regan did cerbut his subject still lives green graphy of the Irish barrister be conin our memories, though the biosigned to the trunk-makers. O'Regan, however, had some little excuse. He did know something of Curran. together after midnight, they were They had often counted the chimes members of the same profession, and had lived at the same epochs; but *Lives of Men of Letters and Science who Flourished in the Time of George III. of the Royal Academy of Naples. London, 1845. Charles Knight and Co. 22 LudBy Henry Lord Brougham, F.R.S., Member of the National Institute of France, and gate Street. VOL. XXXI. NO. CLXXXVI. UU apply these remarks to Lord Brougham, apart from mere fitness and capability, and what business, in Heaven's name, has he to write the lives of Voltaire and Rousseau ? Voltaire died sixty-seven or sixtyeight years ago in the eighty-fifth year of his age, pretty much about the time that Lord B. was born; and Rousseau died sixty-seven years and cleven months ago, when the name of Brougham, as a literary character, had been never heard of. Personally, therefore, Lord B. could have known nothing of these celebrated characters, nor did he ever live in familiar intercourse with those, whether Englishmen or foreigners, who had enjoyed their friendship. The next inquiry is, whether Lord Brougham be familiar with the history of the literature and language of the time; and truth as well as the contents of these volumes compel us to say that he appears to be neither familiar with the literature nor the language. That he is not familiar with the literature, these volumes supply abundant testimony; that he is not familiar with the French language, every human being knows who has had intercourse with him in mixed English and foreign society, either at home or abroad. Why, therefore, should the lord have written? "There is no good life of Voltaire," responds the ex-chancellor, first delicately suggesting, that now that he has put pen to paper, that want is sure to be supplied. position,-details which the reader is anxious to learn; but on these subjects Lord B. is silent. We would by no means be understood as saying that the production of Mrs. Shelley is a perfect and faultless performance; but it is a far more light, lively, graphic, and correct biography than the heavy and lumbering work of Lord B.'s. Could Lord B. have read the production to which we refer? If so, he has wilfully excluded many particulars from his own sketch that ought to have been stated; and, if he have not read it, then is he culpably ignorant of the best biography of Voltaire that has yet appeared in our tongue. Lord B. laments in his preface the want of any thing that deserves the name of a life of Voltaire, and complains in a disparaging tone of M. Condorcet; but, though we are far from saying that produc tion is such as the occasion required, yet it is a far more legible piece of biography than the more ambitious and tawdry sketch that we are reviewing. Condorcet, though what was called a philosopher and a man of extravagant political opinions, was yet a gentleman by education, by habits, by social position, by conduct, and by birth. Early in life he had an opportunity of mixing in the society of Voltaire; he knew the character of the man, his little foibles and defects of temper, he knew the character of the society in which he moved, he was aware of the effect which his writings had produced, not merely in France, but in every por In the English language there certainly is no good life. The compilation of the civilised world, and he tion of Mr. Frank Hall Standish, was, therefore, in this respect eminently qualified to be his biographer. Lord B. would have us believe that Condorcet has referred, in the account which he gives, to no portion of the fourteen volumes' correspondence; but this criticism is a captious coinage of the noble and learned lord. Con dorcet may not have read over, and we dare say he did not read over, the whole of the fourteen volumes, containing, according to Lord B.'s ing style, while the performance of fatally accurate memory, 9000 pages: Lord B. is painfully elaborated, and affords evidence in almost every page of turgidity and bombast. Mrs. Shelley, too, enters into some detail as to the literary history of the time, the mode and habits of life of the author, his method of literary com which first appeared in 1821, is ill designed and worse executed; but we are bound in justice to a highly gifted woman to state that Mrs. Shelley's Life of Voltaire in Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopedia is far more comprehensive and better executed in every respect than the more pretensious, yet poorer performance of Lord Brougham. The sketch of Mrs. S. is written in a plain and unpretend Must a biobut what then? grapher read every line in every letter written by the most voluminous writer whom France produced? Such a doctrine is, to the last degree, preposterous, and the conditions which Lord B. would impose on others he has in no degree fulfilled himself. He avers that Condorcet never refers to the correspondence; whereas he more than once does so, citing chapter and verse; and it is plain from every page in his book that the correspondence had been fixed in his memory, and that he had of it that general recollection to be sufficiently accurate without being tediously minute. Condorcet wrote for the general public at large, who desired to have a brief summary of the leading events of the literary patriarch's life, and his work is sufficiently full for the average run of readers. What Voltaire said of the life of Bayle* may be said of his own life: "Des Maiseux a écrit sa vie," he writes, " en un gros volume; elle ne devait pas contenir six pages; la vie d'un écrivain sédentaire est dans ses écrits." There is the real truth in a few words, well expressed, and the public will still continue, whatever Lord Brougham says to the contrary, to seek the character of Voltaire in his voluminous writings, rather than in the clumsy biography of one who had never seen him, and whose knowledge is derived at second and third hand. Lord Brougham, however, contends that he has had access to valuable documents. "I have had access," says he, " to valuable original documents, both of Voltaire, Robertson, and Cavendish." Now, as to Voltaire, the only documents said to be original are five letters written to the Duchess of Saxe Gotha from 1754 to 1762, filled with trivial compliments, ill and negligently expressed, and complaints as to Frederick of Prussia's treatment of his niece, Madame Denis. Nor are we quite so sure that these five letters are original after all. We have a distinct recollection of having read one of them, that of 1754, where he speaks of travelling with books as the heroines did, with diamonds and of romance 66 A errors, and is guilty of very many unpardonable omissions? Nor is the spirit in which the work is undertaken a noble or a lofty one. craven fear of displeasure, a base hunting after popularity, an obtrusive and offensive projection of the personal pronoun is every where apparent. "I fear," says the noble lord (and is this, we would ask, the way in which history should be written?)"I fear my historical statements and my commentaries on some lives, as those of Voltaire, Rousseau, and Hume, may find enemies among the two great parties whose principles come in question. The free-thinkers will object to the blame I have ventured to pronounce on their favourite authors; the friends of the Church may take exception to the praises I have occasionally bestowed." This is what the French call the jeu de bascule; it is, in truth, seesawing it between both parties in a time-serving and ignoble fashion. Here is nothing of the bold truth-teller, who, regardless of consequences, speaks his mind out openly. And then Lord B. deprecates and disclaims any identity of religious opinion either with Voltaire, Rousseau, or Hume, expressly for the purpose, it would seem, of obtruding on the reader the startling announcement that he has published, either nearly as much in defence of reanonymously or under his own name, ligion as they did against it. And then he proceeds to say, that if, with powers so infinitely below theirs (what mock modesty !), he may hope to have obtained some little success, and done some small service to the fortune to the intrinsic merits of that good cause, he can ascribe this good cause which he has ever supported. And he proceeds to tell us in a note that it has given him heartfelt satisfaction to receive many communications from persons both at home and dirty linen, seventeen or eighteen abroad, which intimated their (sic) years ago. But, even supposing that the whole of Lord Brougham's appendix is original, is the reproduction of this chit-chat any justification for the undertaking of a biography in which the writer does not tell a single new fact, in which he commits many having been converted from irre- * Œuvres de Voltaire, tom. xviii. p. 58. ordinary of Newgate than the disquisition of the highest ex-judicial functionary, is introduced for the purpose of announcing, in most slipshod English, that the book called the Illustrations of Paley has converted many persons both at home and abroad. This book, we have heard and believe, has been a drug among the trade; and, if it do not go off briskly now after this puff direct of the noble author, the fault is not Lord Brougham's. We could not have much to object to the rules laid down for trying Voltaire, if he were arraigned before any specially constituted judicial tribunal; but these rules are out of place in a biographical work, and are expressed in so turgid, stiff, and bombastical a style, that the reader would do well to pass them over. What have these tedious disquisitions to do with the history of a literary life? Every human being who can read, and who has the least literary attainments, has long since made up his mind as to the infidel tendency of many of Voltaire's writings, and as to his insensibility to the sublime, humanising, and civilising influence of the Christian religion; but a great portion of Voltaire's satire, ridicule, and ribaldry, are directed not against religion, but against its ministers; against the worst corruptions of a Christian creed, and the intolerance, bigotry, and ignorance of a hierarchy, and a priesthood who wished to make slaves of prince and people. Voltaire warred against the corruptions and grosser errors of the Church of Rome -" against," to use the language of 66 Lord B., " the exorbitant usurpations of her bishops, and the preposterous claims of her clergy." But the grosser errors of Romanism are not Christianity, nor are persecution, bigotry, and intolerance, any fit adjuncts of a divine religion. Far are we from palliating, still less from defending, the scoffing and ribald spirit in which Voltaire too often treats, not merely the churchman, but subjects of belief and doctrines of faith; but when the religious intolerance of that day is fairly taken into account, when the quarrels and brawls of those within the pale of the Catholic Church are considered, and the cruelties, persecutions, and dragonnades, the torturings and burnings of those without the church, namely, the unfortunate Huguenots, are pondered on, one does not wonder at the indignant vituperation of Voltaire, though one is unable to excuse his ribald scoffing and sarcastic spirit. Voltaire did not distinguish between the impostures of a profligate and corrupt clergy and the simple truths of religion; and herein lay his most grievous error and worst mistake. In denouncing the unspeakable evils brought upon his country by the great and mischievous abuses of the priesthood, he took but a one-sided view of a great question. In balancing the account between the church and the country, he ought to have fairly stated that centuries before 1694, the year of his birth, France was indebted to the clergy for whatever civilisation she subsequently pos sessed. The attacks of Voltaire on a corrupt religious and social system might have been more easily palliated, had the mode and manner in which they were made been different; but a generous and true-hearted man can seldom sympathise with the scoffer or the scorner. Lord Brougham says,― "But no one can exempt Voltaire from blame for the manner in which he attacked religious opinions, and outraged the feelings of believers. There he is without defence. Had all men been pre pared to make the step which he himself had taken, the wound would have been inconsiderable; but he must have written with the absolute certainty that their religious belief would long survive his assaults, and that, consequently, to the vast majority of readers, they could only give pain. Indeed, he must, in the mo ments of calm reflection, have been aware that reasoning, and not ridicule, is the proper remedy for religious error, and that no one can heartily embrace the infidel side of the great question merely because he has been made to join in a laugh at the expense of absurdities mixed up with the doctrines of believers; nay, even if he has been drawn into a laugh at the expense of some portion of those doctrines themselves. It is no vindica tion for Voltaire against this heavy charge; but it afford may some palliation of his offence, if we reflect on the very great difference between the ecclesiastical re gimen under which he lived, and that with which we are acquainted in our Pro testant community. Let no man severely condemn the untiring zeal of Voltaire, and the various forms of attack which he employed without measure against the religious institutions of his country, who is not prepared to say that he could have kept entire possession of his own temper, and never cast an eye of suspicion upon the substance of a religion thus abused, nor ever have employed against its perversions the weapons of declamation and of mockery. Had he lived under the system which regarded Alexander Borgia as one of its spiritual guides, which bred up and maintained in all the riot of criminal excess an aristocracy having for one branch of its resources the spoils of the altar, which practised persecution as a favourite means of conviction, and cast into the flames a lad of eighteen charged with laughing as its priests passed by. Such dreadful abuses were present to Voltaire's mind when he attacked the Romish superstitions, and exposed the profligacy as well as the intolerance of clerical usurpation. He unhappily suffered them to poison his mind upon the whole of that religion of which these were the abuse; and, when his zeal waxed hot against the whole system, it blinded him to the unfairness of the weapons with which he attacked both its evidences and its teachers." Of the early history and schoolboy days of Voltaire, Lord B. gives a most meagre and imperfect account; and, in the little insight that he does afford us into his character, he follows that very Condorcet whom he unjustly vilipends. His lordship is guilty of many omissions and mistakes, to two of which only shall we allude for the present; first, the decided repugnance of Voltaire to that profession of which Lord B. was a distinguished member; and, secondly, his passion for Madame la Duchesse de Villars. Lord B. would make the young Aronet enamoured of Madame la Maréchale; whereas it was of her daughter-in-law, the duchess, that he was éperdument après. But, notwithstanding these errors, Lord B.'s criticisms on Voltaire's tragedies are, for the most part, just. In all that it is said on the Edipe, on Zaire, and on Merope, we, for the most part, agree; but there is nothing new, nothing that had not been said half a century ago, in all Lord B's phrases. Voltaire was, no doubt, the poet who gave the largest scope to tragedy in France; but Corneille, Racine, Crébillon, and Shakspeare, had gone before him, and, taking example from the latter (whom he depreciated when it suited his pur pose), he allowed a wider scope to tragic passions than his countrymen had ever done before his day. We agree with Lord B. in thinking that the most perfect of his pieces is Zaire, written in twenty-two days; but Lord B. omits to state that the leading passions in Zaire are taken from Othello. As Voltaire took his philosophy and free spirit of inquiry from England, so he borrowed much of his style in poetry from Tasso, Ariosto, and our own Pope. Voltaire was endowed with the largest share of the imitative power; he possessed the art of clear narration, and the power of sneering and sarcasm in the very highest degree; but in the creative faculties he was deficient. His delineations of character are often more ingenious than true, more elaborately finished than grand or noble. He possessed all that was clever, and was endowed with the largest share, and shone by the very excess, of those mental qualifications which are bestowed in ordinary portions on common men, but he wanted the divine inspiration, the passion, power, and pathos of Shakspeare. The following passage is one of the least exceptionable in Lord B.'s criticism. It is not only true, but well discriminated : "It is certain that the tragedies of Voltaire are the works of an extraordinary genius, and that only a great poet could have produced them; but it is equally certain that they are deficient, for the most part, in that which makes the drama powerful over the feelings,real pathos, real passion, whether of tenderness, of terror, or of horror. The plots of some are admirably contrived; the diction of all is pure and animated, in most passages it is pointed, and in many it is striking, grand, impressive; the characters are frequently well imagined and portrayed, though without sufficient discrimination, and thus often running one into another, from the uniformity of the language, terse, epigrammatic, powerful, which all alike speak. Nor are there wanting situations of great effect and single passages of thrilling force; but, after all, the heart is not there, the deep feeling, which is the parent of all true eloquence, as well as all true poetry, didactic and satirical excepted, is rarely perceived; it is rather rhetoric than eloquence, or, at least, rather eloquence than poetry. It is declamation of a high order in rhyme-no blank verse, indeed, can be borne on |