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Letters on England by

Voltaire (Francois Marie Arouet)

A Penn State Electronic Classics Series Publication

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Contents LETTER I.—ON THE QUAKERS .............................................................................................................................. 6 LETTER II.—ON THE QUAKERS .......................................................................................................................... 10 LETTER III.—ON THE QUAKERS ......................................................................................................................... 12 LETTER IV.—ON THE QUAKERS .......................................................................................................................... 16 LETTER V.—ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND .................................................................................................. 20 LETTER VI.—ON THE PRESBYTERIANS ............................................................................................................ 23 LETTER VII.—ON THE SOCINIANS, OR ARIANS, OR ANTITRINITARIANS ............................................. 24 LETTER VIII.—ON THE PARLIAMENT ............................................................................................................... 26 LETTER IX.—ON THE GOVERNMENT ............................................................................................................... 29 LETTER X.—ON TRADE ......................................................................................................................................... 33 LETTER XI.—ON INOCULATION ......................................................................................................................... 35 LETTER XII.—ON THE LORD BACON ................................................................................................................ 39 LETTER XIII.—ON MR. LOCKE ............................................................................................................................ 43 LETTER XIV.—ON DESCARTES AND SIR ISAAC NEWTON ........................................................................... 49 LETTER XV.—ON ATTRACTION ........................................................................................................................... 54 LETTER XVI.—ON SIR ISAAC NEWTON’S OPTICS ......................................................................................... 62 LETTER XVII.—ON INFINITES IN GEOMETRY, AND SIR ISAAC NEWTON’S CHRONOLOGY ............. 65 LETTER XVIII.—ON TRAGEDY ............................................................................................................................ 71 LETTER XIX.—ON COMEDY ................................................................................................................................. 76 LETTER XX.—ON SUCH OF THE NOBILITY AS CULTIVATE THE BELLES LETTRES .............................. 81 LETTER XXIII.—ON THE REGARD THAT OUGHT TO BE SHOWN TO MEN OF LETTERS .................... 92 LETTER XXIV.—ON THE ROYAL SOCIETY AND OTHER ACADEMIES ...................................................... 96

Letters on England

Letters on England by

Voltaire (Francois Marie Arouet)

INTRODUCTION

FRANCOIS MARIE AROUET, who called himself Voltaire, was

the son of Francois Arouet of Poitou, who lived in Paris, had

given up his office of notary two years before the birth of this

his third son, and obtained some years afterwards a treasurer’s

office in the Chambre des Comptes. Voltaire was born in the

year 1694. He lived until within ten or eleven years of the

outbreak of the Great French Revolution, and was a chief

leader in the movement of thought that preceded the Revo-

lution. Though he lived to his eighty-fourth year, Voltaire

was born with a weak body. His brother Armand, eight years

his senior, became a Jansenist. Voltaire when ten years old was

placed with the Jesuits in the College Louis-le-Grand. There

he was taught during seven years, and his genius was encour-

aged in its bent for literature; skill in speaking and in writing

being especially fostered in the system of education which the

Jesuits had planned to produce capable men who by voice

and pen could give a reason for the faith they held. Verses

written for an invalid soldier at the age of eleven won for

young Voltaire the friendship of Ninon l’Enclos, who en-

couraged him to go on writing verses. She died soon after-

wards, and remembered him with a legacy of two thousand

livres for purchase of books. He wrote in his lively school-

days a tragedy that afterwards he burnt. At the age of seven-

teen he left the College Louis-le-Grand, where he said after-

wards that he had been taught nothing but Latin and the

Stupidities. He was then sent to the law schools, and saw life

in Paris as a gay young poet who, with all his brilliant liveli-

ness, had an aptitude for looking on the tragic side of things,

and one of whose first poems was an “Ode on the Misfor-

tunes of Life.” His mother died when he was twenty. Voltaire’s

father thought him a fool for his versifying, and attached him

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as secretary to the Marquis of Chateauneuf; when he went as

ambassador to the Hague. In December, 1713, he was dis-

missed for his irregularities. In Paris his unsteadiness and his

addiction to literature caused his father to rejoice in getting

him housed in a country chateau with M. de Caumartin. M.

de Caumartin’s father talked with such enthusiasm of Henri

IV. and Sully that Voltaire planned the writing of what be-

came his Henriade, and his “History of the Age of Louis XIV.,”

who died on the 1st of September, 1715.

Under the regency that followed, Voltaire got into trouble

again and again through the sharpness of his pen, and at last,

accused of verse that satirised the Regent, he was locked up—

on the 17th of May, 1717—in the Bastille. There he wrote the

first two books of his Henriade, and finished a play on OEdipus,

which he had begun at the age of eighteen. He did not obtain

full liberty until the 12th of April, 1718, and it was at this

time—with a clearly formed design to associate the name he

took with work of high attempt in literature—that Francois

Marie Arouet, aged twenty-four, first called himself Voltaire.

Voltaire’s OEdipe was played with success in November,

1718. A few months later he was again banished from Paris,

and finished the Henriade in his retirement, as well as another

play, Artemise, that was acted in February, 1720. Other plays

followed. In December, 1721, Voltaire visited Lord

Bolingbroke, who was then an exile from England, at the

Chateau of La Source. There was now constant literary activ-

ity. From July to October, 1722, Voltaire visited Holland

with Madame de Rupelmonde. After a serious attack of small-

pox in November, 1723, Voltaire was active as a poet about

the Court. He was then in receipt of a pension of two thou-

sand livres from the king, and had inherited more than twice

as much by the death of his father in January, 1722. But in

December, 1725, a quarrel, fastened upon him by the Cheva-

lier de Rohan, who had him waylaid and beaten, caused him

to send a challenge. For this he was arrested and lodged once

more, in April, 1726, in the Bastille. There he was detained a

month; and his first act when he was released was to ask for a

passport to England.

Voltaire left France, reached London in August, 1726, went

as guest to the house of a rich merchant at Wandsworth, and

remained three years in this country, from the age of thirty-

two to the age of thirty-five. He was here when George I.

Letters on England

died, and George II. became king. He published here his

Henriade. He wrote here his “History of Charles XII.” He

read “Gulliver’s Travels” as a new book, and might have been

present at the first night of The Beggar’s Opera. He was here

whet Sir Isaac Newton died.

In 1731 he published at Rouen the Lettres sur les Anglais,

which appeared in England in 1733 in the volume from which

they are here reprinted.

H.M.

LETTERS ON ENGLAND

LETTER I.—ON THE QUAKERS

I WAS OF OPINION that the doctrine and history of so ex-

traordinary a people were worthy the attention of the

curious. To acquaint myself with them I made a visit to

one of the most eminent Quakers in England, who, after

having traded thirty years, had the wisdom to prescribe limits

to his fortune and to his desires, and was settled in a little

solitude not far from London. Being come into it, I per-

ceived a small but regularly built house, vastly neat, but with-

out the least pomp of furniture. The Quaker who owned it

was a hale, ruddy-complexioned old man, who had never been

afflicted with sickness because he had always been insensible

to passions, and a perfect stranger to intemperance. I never in

my life saw a more noble or a more engaging aspect than his.

He was dressed like those of his persuasion, in a plain coat

without pleats in the sides, or buttons on the pockets and

sleeves; and had on a beaver, the brims of which were hori-

zontal like those of our clergy. He did not uncover himself

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when I appeared, and advanced towards me without once

stooping his body; but there appeared more politeness in the

open, humane air of his countenance, than in the custom of

drawing one leg behind the other, and taking that from the

head which is made to cover it. “Friend,” says he to me, “I

perceive thou art a stranger, but if I can do anything for thee,

only tell me.” “Sir,” said I to him, bending forwards and ad-

vancing, as is usual with us, one leg towards him, “I flatter

myself that my just curiosity will not give you the least of-

fence, and that you’ll do me the honour to inform me of the

particulars of your religion.” “The people of thy country,”

replied the Quaker, “are too full of their bows and compli-

ments, but I never yet met with one of them who had so

much curiosity as thyself. Come in, and let us first dine to-

gether.” I still continued to make some very unseasonable cer-

emonies, it not being easy to disengage one’s self at once from

habits we have been long used to; and after taking part in a

frugal meal, which began and ended with a prayer to God, I

began to question my courteous host. I opened with that

which good Catholics have more than once made to Hugue-

nots. “My dear sir,” said I, “were you ever baptised?” “I never

was,” replied the Quaker, “nor any of my brethren.” “Zounds!”

say I to him, “you are not Christians, then.” “Friend,” replies

the old man in a soft tone of voice, “swear not; we are Chris-

tians, and endeavour to be good Christians, but we are not of

opinion that the sprinkling water on a child’s head makes

him a Christian.” “Heavens!” say I, shocked at his impiety,

“you have then forgot that Christ was baptised by St. John.”

“Friend,” replies the mild Quaker once again, “swear not;

Christ indeed was baptised by John, but He himself never

baptised anyone. We are the disciples of Christ, not of John.”

I pitied very much the sincerity of my worthy Quaker, and

was absolutely for forcing him to get himself christened. “Were

that all,” replied he very gravely, “we would submit cheerfully

to baptism, purely in compliance with thy weakness, for we

don’t condemn any person who uses it; but then we think

that those who profess a religion of so holy, so spiritual a

nature as that of Christ, ought to abstain to the utmost of

their power from the Jewish ceremonies.” “O unaccountable!”

say I: “what! baptism a Jewish ceremony?” “Yes, my friend,”

says he, “so truly Jewish, that a great many Jews use the bap-

tism of John to this day. Look into ancient authors, and thou

Letters on England

wilt find that John only revived this practice; and that it had

been used by the Hebrews, long before his time, in like man-

ner as the Mahometans imitated the Ishmaelites in their pil-

grimages to Mecca. Jesus indeed submitted to the baptism of

John, as He had suffered Himself to be circumcised; but cir-

cumcision and the washing with water ought to be abolished

by the baptism of Christ, that baptism of the Spirit, that

ablution of the soul, which is the salvation of mankind. Thus

the forerunner said, ‘I indeed baptise you with water unto

repentance; but He that cometh after me is mightier than I,

whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptise you

with the Holy Ghost and with fire.’ Likewise Paul, the great

apostle of the Gentiles, writes as follows to the Corinthians,

‘Christ sent me not to baptise, but to preach the Gospel;’ and

indeed Paul never baptised but two persons with water, and

that very much against his inclinations. He circumcised his

disciple Timothy, and the other disciples likewise circumcised

all who were willing to submit to that carnal ordinance. But

art thou circumcised?” added he. “I have not the honour to be

so,” say I. “Well, friend,” continues the Quaker, “thou art a

Christian without being circumcised, and I am one without

being baptised.” Thus did this pious man make a wrong but

very specious application of four or five texts of Scripture

which seemed to favour the tenets of his sect; but at the same

time forgot very sincerely an hundred texts which made di-

rectly against them. I had more sense than to contest with

him, since there is no possibility of convincing an enthusiast.

A man should never pretend to inform a lover of his mistress’s

faults, no more than one who is at law, of the badness of his

cause; nor attempt to win over a fanatic by strength of rea-

soning. Accordingly I waived the subject.

“Well,” said I to him, “what sort of a communion have

you?” “We have none like that thou hintest at among us,”

replied he. “How! no communion?” said I. “Only that spiri-

tual one,” replied he, “of hearts.” He then began again to throw

out his texts of Scripture; and preached a most eloquent ser-

mon against that ordinance. He harangued in a tone as though

he had been inspired, to prove that the sacraments were merely

of human invention, and that the word “sacrament” was not

once mentioned in the Gospel. “Excuse,” said he, “my igno-

rance, for I have not employed a hundredth part of the argu-

ments which might be brought to prove the truth of our

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religion, but these thou thyself mayest peruse in the Exposi-

tion of our Faith written by Robert Barclay. It is one of the

best pieces that ever was penned by man; and as our adversar-

ies confess it to be of dangerous tendency, the arguments in it

must necessarily be very convincing.” I promised to peruse

this piece, and my Quaker imagined he had already made a

convert of me. He afterwards gave me an account in few words

of some singularities which make this sect the contempt of

others. “Confess,” said he, “that it was very difficult for thee

to refrain from laughter, when I answered all thy civilities

without uncovering my head, and at the same time said ‘thee’

and ‘thou’ to thee. However, thou appearest to me too well

read not to know that in Christ’s time no nation was so ri-

diculous as to put the plural number for the singular. Augustus

Caesar himself was spoken to in such phrases as these: ‘I love

thee,’ ‘I beseech thee,’ ‘I thank thee;’ but he did not allow any

person to call him ‘Domine,’ sir. It was not till many ages

after that men would have the word ‘you,’ as though they

were double, instead of ‘thou’ employed in speaking to them;

and usurped the flattering titles of lordship, of eminence, and

of holiness, which mere worms bestow on other worms by

assuring them that they are with a most profound respect,

and an infamous falsehood, their most obedient humble ser-

vants. It is to secure ourselves more strongly from such a

shameless traffic of lies and flattery, that we ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ a

king with the same freedom as we do a beggar, and salute no

person; we owing nothing to mankind but charity, and to the

laws respect and obedience.

“Our apparel is also somewhat different from that of oth-

ers, and this purely, that it may be a perpetual warning to us

not to imitate them. Others wear the badges and marks of

their several dignities, and we those of Christian humility.

We fly from all assemblies of pleasure, from diversions of

every kind, and from places where gaming is practised; and

indeed our case would be very deplorable, should we fill with

such levities as those I have mentioned the heart which ought

to be the habitation of God. We never swear, not even in a

court of justice, being of opinion that the most holy name of

God ought not to be prostituted in the miserable contests

betwixt man and man. When we are obliged to appear before

a magistrate upon other people’s account (for law-suits are

unknown among the Friends), we give evidence to the truth

Letters on England

by sealing it with our yea or nay; and the judges believe us on

our bare affirmation, whilst so many other Christians for-

swear themselves on the holy Gospels. We never war or fight

in any case; but it is not that we are afraid, for so far from

shuddering at the thoughts of death, we on the contrary bless

the moment which unites us with the Being of Beings; but

the reason of our not using the outward sword is, that we are

neither wolves, tigers, nor mastiffs, but men and Christians.

Our God, who has commanded us to love our enemies, and

to suffer without repining, would certainly not permit us to

cross the seas, merely because murderers clothed in scarlet,

and wearing caps two foot high, enlist citizens by a noise made

with two little sticks on an ass’s skin extended. And when,

after a victory is gained, the whole city of London is illumi-

nated; when the sky is in a blaze with fireworks, and a noise is

heard in the air, of thanksgivings, of bells, of organs, and of

the cannon, we groan in silence, and are deeply affected with

sadness of spirit and brokenness of heart, for the sad havoc

which is the occasion of those public rejoicings.”

LETTER II.—ON THE QUAKERS

S UCH WAS THE SUBSTANCE of the conversation I had with

this very singular person; but I was greatly surprised to

see him come the Sunday following and take me with

him to the Quakers’ meeting. There are several of these in

London, but that which he carried me to stands near the fa-

mous pillar called The Monument. The brethren were al-

ready assembled at my entering it with my guide. There might

be about four hundred men and three hundred women in the

meeting. The women hid their faces behind their fans, and

the men were covered with their broad-brimmed hats. All

were seated, and the silence was universal. I passed through

them, but did not perceive so much as one lift up his eyes to

look at me. This silence lasted a quarter of an hour, when at

last one of them rose up, took off his hat, and, after making

a variety of wry faces and groaning in a most lamentable man-

ner, he, partly from his nose and partly from his mouth, threw

out a strange, confused jumble of words (borrowed, as he

imagined, from the Gospel) which neither himself nor any of

his hearers understood. When this distorter had ended his

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beautiful soliloquy, and that the stupid, but greatly edified,

congregation were separated, I asked my friend how it was

possible for the judicious part of their assembly to suffer such

a babbling? “We are obliged,” says he, “to suffer it, because no

one knows when a man rises up to hold forth whether he will

be moved by the Spirit or by folly. In this doubt and uncer-

tainty we listen patiently to everyone; we even allow our

women to hold forth. Two or three of these are often in-

spired at one and the same time, and it is then that a most

charming noise is heard in the Lord’s house.” “You have, then,

no priests?” say I to him. “No, no, friend,” replies the Quaker,

“to our great happiness.” Then opening one of the Friends’

books, as he called it, he read the following words in an em-

phatic tone:- “‘God forbid we should presume to ordain any-

one to receive the Holy Spirit on the Lord’s Day to the preju-

dice of the rest of the brethren.’ Thanks to the Almighty, we

are the only people upon earth that have no priests. Wouldst

thou deprive us of so happy a distinction? Why should we

abandon our babe to mercenary nurses, when we ourselves

have milk enough for it? These mercenary creatures would

soon domineer in our houses and destroy both the mother

and the babe. God has said, ‘Freely you have received, freely

give.’ Shall we, after these words, cheapen, as it were, the

Gospel, sell the Holy Ghost, and make of an assembly of

Christians a mere shop of traders? We don’t pay a set of men

clothed in black to assist our poor, to bury our dead, or to

preach to the brethren. These offices are all of too tender a

nature for us ever to entrust them to others.” “But how is it

possible for you,” said I, with some warmth, “to know whether

your discourse is really inspired by the Almighty?” “Whoso-

ever,” says he, “shall implore Christ to enlighten him, and

shall publish the Gospel truths he may feel inwardly, such an

one may be assured that he is inspired by the Lord.” He then

poured forth a numberless multitude of Scripture texts which

proved, as he imagined, that there is no such thing as Chris-

tianity without an immediate revelation, and added these re-

markable words: “When thou movest one of thy limbs, is it

moved by thy own power? Certainly not; for this limb is

often sensible to involuntary motions. Consequently he who

created thy body gives motion to this earthly tabernacle. And

are the several ideas of which thy soul receives the impression

formed by thyself? Much less are they, since these pour in

Letters on England

upon thy mind whether thou wilt or no; consequently thou

receivest thy ideas from Him who created thy soul. But as He

leaves thy affections at full liberty, He gives thy mind such

ideas as thy affections may deserve; if thou livest in God,

thou actest, thou thinkest in God. After this thou needest

only but open thine eyes to that light which enlightens all

mankind, and it is then thou wilt perceive the truth, and make

others perceive it.” “Why, this,” said I, “is Malebranche’s doc-

trine to a tittle.” “I am acquainted with thy Malebranche,”

said he; “he had something of the Friend in him, but was not

enough so.” These are the most considerable particulars I learnt

concerning the doctrine of the Quakers. In my next letter I

shall acquaint you with their history, which you will find

more singular than their opinions.

LETTER III.—ON THE QUAKERS

Y OU HAVE ALREADY HEARD that the Quakers date from

Christ, who, according to them, was the first Quaker.

Religion, say these, was corrupted a little after His

death, and remained in that state of corruption about sixteen

hundred years. But there were always a few Quakers con-

cealed in the world, who carefully preserved the sacred fire,

which was extinguished in all but themselves, until at last this

light spread itself in England in 1642.

It was at the time when Great Britain was torn to pieces by

the intestine wars which three or four sects had raised in the

name of God, that one George Fox, born in Leicestershire,

and son to a silk-weaver, took it into his head to preach, and,

as he pretended, with all the requisites of a true apostle—that

is, without being able either to read or write. He was about

twenty-five years of age, irreproachable in his life and con-

duct, and a holy madman. He was equipped in leather from

head to foot, and travelled from one village to another, ex-

claiming against war and the clergy. Had his invectives been

levelled against the soldiery only he would have been safe

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enough, but he inveighed against ecclesiastics. Fox was seized

at Derby, and being carried before a justice of peace, he did

not once offer to pull off his leathern hat, upon which an

officer gave him a great box of the ear, and cried to him,

“Don’t you know you are to appear uncovered before his

worship?” Fox presented his other cheek to the officer, and

begged him to give him another box for God’s sake. The

justice would have had him sworn before he asked him any

questions. “Know, friend,” says Fox to him, “that I never

swear.” The justice, observing he “thee’d” and “thou’d” him,

sent him to the House of Correction, in Derby, with orders

that he should be whipped there. Fox praised the Lord all the

way he went to the House of Correction, where the justice’s

order was executed with the utmost severity. The men who

whipped this enthusiast were greatly surprised to hear him

beseech them to give him a few more lashes for the good of

his soul. There was no need of entreating these people; the

lashes were repeated, for which Fox thanked them very cor-

dially, and began to preach. At first the spectators fell a-laugh-

ing, but they afterwards listened to him; and as enthusiasm is

an epidemical distemper, many were persuaded, and those

who scourged him became his first disciples. Being set at lib-

erty, he ran up and down the country with a dozen proselytes

at his heels, still declaiming against the clergy, and was whipped

from time to time. Being one day set in the pillory, he ha-

rangued the crowd in so strong and moving a manner, that

fifty of the auditors became his converts, and he won the rest

so much in his favour that, his head being freed tumultu-

ously from the hole where it was fastened, the populace went

and searched for the Church of England clergyman who had

been chiefly instrumental in bringing him to this punishment,

and set him on the same pillory where Fox had stood.

Fox was bold enough to convert some of Oliver Cromwell’s

soldiers, who thereupon quitted the service and refused to

take the oaths. Oliver, having as great a contempt for a sect

which would not allow its members to fight, as Sixtus Quintus

had for another sect, Dove non si chiamava, began to perse-

cute these new converts. The prisons were crowded with them,

but persecution seldom has any other effect than to increase

the number of proselytes. These came, therefore, from their

confinement more strongly confirmed in the principles they

had imbibed, and followed by their gaolers, whom they had

Letters on England

brought over to their belief. But the circumstances which

contributed chiefly to the spreading of this sect were as fol-

lows:-Fox thought himself inspired, arid consequently was of

opinion that he must speak in a manner different from the

rest of mankind. He thereupon began to writhe his body, to

screw up his face, to hold in his breath, and to exhale it in a

forcible manner, insomuch that the priestess of the Pythian

god at Delphos could not have acted her part to better advan-

tage. Inspiration soon became so habitual to him that he could

scarce deliver himself in any other manner. This was the first

gift he communicated to his disciples. These aped very sin-

cerely their master’s several grimaces, and shook in every limb

the instant the fit of inspiration came upon them, whence

they were called Quakers. The vulgar attempted to mimic

them; they trembled, they spake through the nose, they quaked

and fancied themselves inspired by the Holy Ghost. The only

thing now wanting was a few miracles, and accordingly they

wrought some.

Fox, this modern patriarch, spoke thus to a justice of peace

before a large assembly of people: “Friend, take care what

thou dost; God will soon punish thee for persecuting His

saints.” This magistrate, being one who besotted himself ev-

ery day with bad beer and brandy, died of an apoplexy two

days after, the moment he had signed a mittimus for impris-

oning some Quakers. The sudden death with which this jus-

tice was seized was not ascribed to his intemperance, but was

universally looked upon as the effect of the holy man’s pre-

dictions; so that this accident made more converts to Quak-

erism than a thousand sermons and as many shaking fits could

have done. Oliver, finding them increase daily, was desirous

of bringing them over to his party, and for that purpose at-

tempted to bribe them by money. However, they were incor-

ruptible, which made him one day declare that this religion

was the only one he had ever met with that had resisted the

charms of gold.

The Quakers were several times persecuted under Charles

II.; not upon a religious account, but for refusing to pay the

tithes, for “theeing” and “thouing” the magistrates, and for

refusing to take the oaths enacted by the laws.

At last Robert Barclay, a native of Scotland, presented to

the King, in 1675, his “Apology for the Quakers,” a work as

well drawn up as the subject could possibly admit. The dedi-

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cation to Charles II. is not filled with mean, flattering enco-

miums, but abounds with bold touches in favour of truth

and with the wisest counsels. “Thou hast tasted,” says he to

the King at the close of his epistle dedicatory, “of prosperity

and adversity; thou knowest what it is to be banished thy

native country; to be overruled as well as to rule and sit upon

the throne; and, being oppressed, thou hast reason to know

how hateful the Oppressor is both to God and man. If, after

all these warnings and advertisements, thou dost not turn unto

the Lord with all thy heart, but forget Him who remem-

bered thee in thy distress, and give up thyself to follow lust

and vanity, surely great will be thy condemnation.

“Against which snare, as well as the temptation of those

that may or do feed thee and prompt thee to evil, the most

excellent and prevalent remedy will be, to apply thyself to

that light of Christ which shineth in thy conscience, which

neither can nor will flatter thee nor suffer thee to be at ease in

thy sins, but doth and will deal plainly and faithfully with

thee, as those that are followers thereof have plainly done.—

Thy faithful friend and subject, Robert Barclay.”

A more surprising circumstance is, that this epistle, written

by a private man of no figure, was so happy in its effects, as to

put a stop to the persecution.

Letters on England

LETTER IV.—ON THE QUAKERS

A BOUT THIS TIME arose the illustrious William Penn,

who established the power of the Quakers in

America, and would have made them appear vener-

able in the eyes of the Europeans, were it possible for man-

kind to respect virtue when revealed in a ridiculous light. He

was the only son of Vice-Admiral Penn, favourite of the Duke

of York, afterwards King James II.

William Penn, at twenty years of age, happening to meet

with a Quaker in Cork, whom he had known at Oxford, this

man made a proselyte of him; and William being a sprightly

youth, and naturally eloquent, having a winning aspect, and a

very engaging carriage, he soon gained over some of his inti-

mates. He carried matters so far, that he formed by insensible

degrees a society of young Quakers, who met at his house; so

that he was at the head of a sect when a little above twenty.

Being returned, after his leaving Cork, to the Vice-Admiral

his father, instead of falling upon his knees to ask his blessing,

he went up to him with his hat on, and said, “Friend, I am

very glad to see thee in good health.” The Vice-Admiral imag-

ined his son to be crazy, but soon finding he was turned Quaker,

he employed all the methods that prudence could suggest to

engage him to behave and act like other people. The youth

made no other answer to his father, than by exhorting him to

turn Quaker also. At last his father confined himself to this

single request, viz., “that he should wait upon the King and the

Duke of York with his hat under his arm, and should not ‘thee’

and ‘thou’ them.” William answered, “that he could not do

these things, for conscience’ sake,” which exasperated his father

to such a degree, that he turned him out of doors. Young Pen

gave God thanks for permitting him to suffer so early in His

cause, after which he went into the city, where he held forth,

and made a great number of converts.

The Church of England clergy found their congregations

dwindle away daily; and Penn being young, handsome, and

of a graceful stature, the court as well as the city ladies flocked

very devoutly to his meeting. The patriarch, George Fox, hear-

ing of his great reputation, came to London (though the jour-

ney was very long) purely to see and converse with him. Both

resolved to go upon missions into foreign countries, and ac-

cordingly they embarked for Holland, after having left

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labourers sufficient to take care of the London vineyard.

Their labours were crowned with success in Amsterdam,

but a circumstance which reflected the greatest honour on

them, and at the same time put their humility to the greatest

trial, was the reception they met with from Elizabeth, the

Princess Palatine, aunt to George I. of Great Britain, a lady

conspicuous for her genius and knowledge, and to whom

Descartes had dedicated his Philosophical Romance.

She was then retired to the Hague, where she received these

Friends, for so the Quakers were at that time called in Hol-

land. This princess had several conferences with them in her

palace, and she at last entertained so favourable an opinion of

Quakerism, that they confessed she was not far from the king-

dom of heaven. The Friends sowed likewise the good seed in

Germany, but reaped very little fruit; for the mode of “theeing”

and “thouing” was not approved of in a country where a man

is perpetually obliged to employ the titles of “highness” and

“excellency.” William Penn returned soon to England upon

hearing of his father’s sickness, in order to see him before he

died. The Vice-Admiral was reconciled to his son, and though

of a different persuasion, embraced him tenderly. William

made a fruitless exhortation to his father not to receive the

sacrament, but to die a Quaker, and the good old man en-

treated his son William to wear buttons on his sleeves, and a

crape hatband in his beaver, but all to no purpose.

William Penn inherited very large possessions, part of which

consisted in Crown debts due to the Vice-Admiral for sums

he had advanced for the sea service. No moneys were at that

time more insecure than those owing from the king. Penn

was obliged to go more than once, and “thee” and “thou”

King Charles and his Ministers, in order to recover the debt;

and at last, instead of specie, the Government invested him

with the right and sovereignty of a province of America, to

the south of Maryland. Thus was a Quaker raised to sover-

eign power. Penn set sail for his new dominions with two

ships freighted with Quakers, who followed his fortune. The

country was then called Pennsylvania from William Penn,

who there founded Philadelphia, now the most flourishing

city in that country. The first step he took was to enter into

an alliance with his American neighbours, and this is the only

treaty between those people and the Christians that was not

ratified by an oath, and was never infringed. The new sover-

Letters on England

eign was at the same time the legislator of Pennsylvania, and

enacted very wise and prudent laws, none of which have ever

been changed since his time. The first is, to injure no person

upon a religious account, and to consider as brethren all those

who believe in one God.

He had no sooner settled his government, but several Ameri-

can merchants came and peopled this colony. The natives of

the country, instead of flying into the woods, cultivated by

insensible degrees a friendship with the peaceable Quakers.

They loved these foreigners as much as they detested the other

Christians who had conquered and laid waste America. In a

little time a great number of these savages (falsely so called),

charmed with the mild and gentle disposition of their

neighbours, came in crowds to William Penn, and besought

him to admit them into the number of his vassals. It was very

rare and uncommon for a sovereign to be “thee’d” and “thou’d”

by the meanest of his subjects, who never took their hats off

when they came into his presence; and as singular for a Gov-

ernment to be without one priest in it, and for a people to be

without arms, either offensive or defensive; for a body of

citizens to be absolutely undistinguished but by the public

employments, and for neighbours not to entertain the least

jealousy one against the other.

William Penn might glory in having brought down upon

earth the so much boasted golden age, which in all probabil-

ity never existed but in Pennsylvania. He returned to England

to settle some affairs relating to his new dominions. After the

death of King Charles II., King James, who had loved the

father, indulged the same affection to the son, and no longer

considered him as an obscure sectary, but as a very great man.

The king’s politics on this occasion agreed with his inclina-

tions. He was desirous of pleasing the Quakers by annulling

the laws made against Nonconformists, in order to have an

opportunity, by this universal toleration, of establishing the

Romish religion. All the sectarists in England saw the snare

that was laid for them, but did not give into it; they never

failing to unite when the Romish religion, their common

enemy, is to be opposed. But Penn did not think himself

bound in any manner to renounce his principles, merely to

favour Protestants to whom he was odious, in opposition to

a king who loved him. He had established a universal tolera-

tion with regard to conscience in America, and would not

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have it thought that he intended to destroy it in Europe, for

which reason he adhered so inviolably to King James, that a

report prevailed universally of his being a Jesuit. This cal-

umny affected him very strongly, and he was obliged to jus-

tify himself in print. However, the unfortunate King James

II., in whom, as in most princes of the Stuart family, gran-

deur and weakness were equally blended, and who, like them,

as much overdid some things as he was short in others, lost

his kingdom in a manner that is hardly to be accounted for.

All the English sectarists accepted from William III, and his

Parliament the toleration and indulgence which they had re-

fused when offered by King James. It was then the Quakers

began to enjoy, by virtue of the laws, the several privileges

they possess at this time. Penn having at last seen Quakerism

firmly established in his native country, went back to Penn-

sylvania. His own people and the Americans received him

with tears of joy, as though he had been a father who was

returned to visit his children. All the laws had been religiously

observed in his absence, a circumstance in which no legislator

had ever been happy but himself. After having resided some

years in Pennsylvania he left it, but with great reluctance, in

order to return to England, there to solicit some matters in

favour of the commerce of Pennsylvania. But he never saw it

again, he dying in Ruscombe, in Berkshire, in 1718.

I am not able to guess what fate Quakerism may have in

America, but I perceive it dwindles away daily in England. In

all countries where liberty of conscience is allowed, the estab-

lished religion will at last swallow up all the rest. Quakers are

disqualified from being members of Parliament; nor can they

enjoy any post or preferment, because an oath must always be

taken on these occasions, and they never swear. They are there-

fore reduced to the necessity of subsisting upon traffic. Their

children, whom the industry of their parents has enriched, are

desirous of enjoying honours, of wearing buttons and ruffles;

and quite ashamed of being called Quakers they become con-

verts to the Church of England, merely to be in the fashion.

Letters on England

LETTER V.—ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND

E NGLAND IS PROPERLY the country of sectarists. Multae

sunt mansiones in domo patris mei (in my Father’s

house are many mansions). An Englishman, as one

to whom liberty is natural, may go to heaven his own way.

Nevertheless, though every one is permitted to serve God

in whatever mode or fashion he thinks proper, yet their true

religion, that in which a man makes his fortune, is the sect of

Episcopalians or Churchmen, called the Church of England,

or simply the Church, by way of eminence. No person can

possess an employment either in England or Ireland unless he

be ranked among the faithful, that is, professes himself a

member of the Church of England. This reason (which car-

ries mathematical evidence with it) has converted such num-

bers of Dissenters of all persuasions, that not a twentieth part

of the nation is out of the pale of the Established Church.

The English clergy have retained a great number of the Romish

ceremonies, and especially that of receiving, with a most scru-

pulous attention, their tithes. They also have the pious ambi-

tion to aim at superiority.

Moreover, they inspire very religiously their flock with a holy

zeal against Dissenters of all denominations. This zeal was pretty

violent under the Tories in the four last years of Queen Anne;

but was productive of no greater mischief than the breaking

the windows of some meeting-houses and the demolishing of

a few of them. For religious rage ceased in England with the

civil wars, and was no more under Queen Anne than the hol-

low noise of a sea whose billows still heaved, though so long

after the storm when the Whigs and Tories laid waste their

native country, in the same manner as the Guelphs and Ghibelins

formerly did theirs. It was absolutely necessary for both parties

to call in religion on this occasion; the Tories declared for Epis-

copacy, and the Whigs, as some imagined, were for abolishing

it; however, after these had got the upper hand, they contented

themselves with only abridging it.

At the time when the Earl of Oxford and the Lord

Bolingbroke used to drink healths to the Tories, the Church

of England considered those noblemen as the defenders of its

holy privileges. The lower House of Convocation (a kind of

House of Commons) composed wholly of the clergy, was in

some credit at that time; at least the members of it had the

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liberty to meet, to dispute on ecclesiastical matters, to sen-

tence impious books from time to time to the flames, that is,

books written against themselves. The Ministry which is now

composed of Whigs does not so much as allow those gentle-

men to assemble, so that they are at this time reduced (in the

obscurity of their respective parishes) to the melancholy oc-

cupation of praying for the prosperity of the Government

whose tranquillity they would willingly disturb. With regard

to the bishops, who are twenty-six in all, they still have seats

in the House of Lords in spite of the Whigs, because the

ancient abuse of considering them as barons subsists to this

day. There is a clause, however, in the oath which the Gov-

ernment requires from these gentlemen, that puts their Chris-

tian patience to a very great trial, viz., that they shall be of the

Church of England as by law established. There are few bish-

ops, deans, or other dignitaries, but imagine they are so jure

divino; it is consequently a great mortification to them to be

obliged to confess that they owe their dignity to a pitiful law

enacted by a set of profane laymen. A learned monk (Father

Courayer) wrote a book lately to prove the validity and suc-

cession of English ordinations. This book was forbid in France,

but do you believe that the English Ministry were pleased

with it? Far from it. Those wicked Whigs don’t care a straw

whether the episcopal succession among them hath been in-

terrupted or not, or whether Bishop Parker was consecrated

(as it is pretended) in a tavern or a church; for these Whigs are

much better pleased that the Bishops should derive their au-

thority from the Parliament than from the Apostles. The Lord

Bolingbroke observed that this notion of divine right would

only make so many tyrants in lawn sleeves, but that the laws

made so many citizens.

With regard to the morals of the English clergy, they are

more regular than those of France, and for this reason. All the

clergy (a very few excepted) are educated in the Universities of

Oxford or Cambridge, far from the depravity and corruption

which reign in the capital. They are not called to dignities till

very late, at a time of life when men are sensible of no other

passion but avarice, that is, when their ambition craves a sup-

ply. Employments are here bestowed both in the Church and

the army, as a reward for long services; and we never see young-

sters made bishops or colonels immediately upon their laying

aside the academical gown; and besides most of the clergy are

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married. The stiff and awkward air contracted by them at the

University, and the little familiarity the men of this country

have with the ladies, commonly oblige a bishop to confine

himself to, and rest contented with, his own. Clergymen

sometimes take a glass at the tavern, custom giving them a

sanction on this occasion; and if they fuddle themselves it is

in a very serious manner, and without giving the least scandal.

That fable-mixed kind of mortal (not to be defined), who

is neither of the clergy nor of the laity; in a word, the thing

called Abbe in France; is a species quite unknown in England.

All the clergy here are very much upon the reserve, and most

of them pedants. When these are told that in France young

fellows famous for their dissoluteness, and raised to the high-

est dignities of the Church by female intrigues, address the

fair publicly in an amorous way, amuse themselves in writing

tender love songs, entertain their friends very splendidly every

night at their own houses, and after the banquet is ended

withdraw to invoke the assistance of the Holy Ghost, and

call themselves boldly the successors of the Apostles, they bless

God for their being Protestants. But these are shameless her-

etics, who deserve to be blown hence through the flames to

old Nick, as Rabelais says, and for this reason I do not trouble

myself about them.

Voltaire

LETTER VI.—ON THE PRESBYTERIANS

T HE CHURCH OF ENGLAND is confined almost to the

kingdom whence it received its name, and to Ire-

land, for Presbyterianism is the established religion

in Scotland. This Presbyterianism is directly the same with

Calvinism, as it was established in France, and is now pro-

fessed at Geneva. As the priests of this sect receive but very

inconsiderable stipends from their churches, and consequently

cannot emulate the splendid luxury of bishops, they exclaim

very naturally against honours which they can never attain to.

Figure to yourself the haughty Diogenes trampling under foot

the pride of Plato. The Scotch Presbyterians are not very un-

like that proud though tattered reasoner. Diogenes did not

use Alexander half so impertinently as these treated King

Charles II.; for when they took up arms in his cause in oppo-

sition to Oliver, who had deceived them, they forced that

poor monarch to undergo the hearing of three or four ser-

mons every day, would not suffer him to play, reduced him

to a state of penitence and mortification, so that Charles soon

grew sick of these pedants, and accordingly eloped from them

with as much joy as a youth does from school.

A Church of England minister appears as another Cato in

presence of a juvenile, sprightly French graduate, who bawls

for a whole morning together in the divinity schools, and hums

a song in chorus with ladies in the evening; but this Cato is a

very spark when before a Scotch Presbyterian. The latter affects

a serious gait, puts on a sour look, wears a vastly broad-brimmed

hat and a long cloak over a very short coat, preaches through

the nose, and gives the name of the whore of Babylon to all

churches where the ministers are so fortunate as to enjoy an

annual revenue of five or six thousand pounds, and where the

people are weak enough to suffer this, and to give them the

titles of my lord, your lordship, or your eminence.

These gentlemen, who have also some churches in England,

introduced there the mode of grave and severe exhortations.

To them is owing the sanctification of Sunday in the three

kingdoms. People are there forbidden to work or take any

recreation on that day, in which the severity is twice as great as

that of the Romish Church. No operas, plays, or concerts are

allowed in London on Sundays, and even cards are so ex-

pressly forbidden that none but persons of quality, and those

Letters on England

we call the genteel, play on that day; the rest of the nation go

either to church, to the tavern, or to see their mistresses.

Though the Episcopal and Presbyterian sects are the two

prevailing ones in Great Britain, yet all others are very wel-

come to come and settle in it, and live very sociably together,

though most of their preachers hate one another almost as

cordially as a Jansenist damns a Jesuit.

Take a view of the Royal Exchange in London, a place more

venerable than many courts of justice, where the representa-

tives of all nations meet for the benefit of mankind. There

the Jew, the Mahometan, and the Christian transact together,

as though they all professed the same religion, and give the

name of infidel to none but bankrupts. There the Presbyte-

rian confides in the Anabaptist, and the Churchman depends

on the Quaker’s word.

If one religion only were allowed in England, the Govern-

ment would very possibly become arbitrary; if there were but

two, the people would cut one another’s throats; but as there

are such a multitude, they all live happy and in peace.

LETTER VII.—ON THE SOCINIANS, OR ARIANS, OR ANTITRINITARIANS

T HERE IS A LITTLE SECT here composed of clergymen,

and of a few very learned persons among the laity,

who, though they do not call themselves Arians or

Socinians, do yet dissent entirely from St. Athanasius with

regard to their notions of the Trinity, and declare very frankly

that the Father is greater than the Son.

Do you remember what is related of a certain orthodox

bishop, who, in order to convince an emperor of the reality

of consubstantiation, put his hand under the chin of the

monarch’s son, and took him by the nose in presence of his

sacred majesty? The emperor was going to order his atten-

dants to throw the bishop out of the window, when the good

old man gave him this handsome and convincing reason:

“Since your majesty,” says he, “is angry when your son has

not due respect shown him, what punishment do you think

will God the Father inflict on those who refuse His Son Jesus

the titles due to Him?” The persons I just now mentioned

declare that the holy bishop took a very wrong step, that his

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argument was inconclusive, and that the emperor should have

answered him thus: “Know that there are two ways by which

men may be wanting in respect to me—first, in not doing

honour sufficient to my son; and, secondly, in paying him

the same honour as to me.”

Be this as it will, the principles of Arius begin to revive, not

only in England, but in Holland and Poland. The celebrated

Sir Isaac Newton honoured this opinion so far as to counte-

nance it. This philosopher thought that the Unitarians argued

more mathematically than we do. But the most sanguine stick-

ler for Arianism is the illustrious Dr. Clark. This man is rig-

idly virtuous, and of a mild disposition, is more fond of his

tenets than desirous of propagating them, and absorbed so

entirely in problems and calculations that he is a mere reason-

ing machine.

It is he who wrote a book which is much esteemed and

little understood, on the existence of God, and another, more

intelligible, but pretty much contemned, on the truth of the

Christian religion.

He never engaged in scholastic disputes, which our friend

calls venerable trifles. He only published a work containing

all the testimonies of the primitive ages for and against the

Unitarians, and leaves to the reader the counting of the voices

and the liberty of forming a judgment. This book won the

doctor a great number of partisans, and lost him the See of

Canterbury; but, in my humble opinion, he was out in his

calculation, and had better have been Primate of all England

than merely an Arian parson.

You see that opinions are subject to revolutions as well as

empires. Arianism, after having triumphed during three cen-

turies, and been forgot twelve, rises at last out of its own

ashes; but it has chosen a very improper season to make its

appearance in, the present age being quite cloyed with dis-

putes and sects. The members of this sect are, besides, too

few to be indulged the liberty of holding public assemblies,

which, however, they will, doubtless, be permitted to do in

case they spread considerably. But people are now so very

cold with respect to all things of this kind, that there is little

probability any new religion, or old one, that may be revived,

will meet with favour. Is it not whimsical enough that Luther,

Calvin, and Zuinglius, all of them wretched authors, should

have founded sects which are now spread over a great part of

Letters on England

Europe, that Mahomet, though so ignorant, should have given

a religion to Asia and Africa, and that Sir Isaac Newton, Dr.

Clark, Mr. Locke, Mr. Le Clerc, etc., the greatest philoso-

phers, as well as the ablest writers of their ages, should scarcely

have been able to raise a little flock, which even decreases

daily.

This it is to be born at a proper period of time. Were Car-

dinal de Retz to return again into the world, neither his elo-

quence nor his intrigues would draw together ten women in

Paris.

Were Oliver Cromwell, he who beheaded his sovereign,

and seized upon the kingly dignity, to rise from the dead, he

would be a wealthy City trader, and no more.

LETTER VIII.—ON THE PARLIAMENT

T HE MEMBERS of the English Parliament are fond of

comparing themselves to the old Romans.

Not long since Mr. Shippen opened a speech

in the House of Commons with these words, “The majesty

of the people of England would be wounded.” The singular-

ity of the expression occasioned a loud laugh; but this gentle-

man, so far from being disconcerted, repeated the same words

with a resolute tone of voice, and the laugh ceased. In my

opinion, the majesty of the people of England has nothing in

common with that of the people of Rome, much less is there

any affinity between their Governments. There is in London

a senate, some of the members whereof are accused (doubt-

less very unjustly) of selling their voices on certain occasions,

as was done in Rome; this is the only resemblance. Besides,

the two nations appear to me quite opposite in character, with

regard both to good and evil. The Romans never knew the

dreadful folly of religious wars, an abomination reserved for

devout preachers of patience and humility. Marius and Sylla,

Caesar and Pompey, Anthony and Augustus, did not draw

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their swords and set the world in a blaze merely to determine

whether the flamen should wear his shirt over his robe, or his

robe over his shirt, or whether the sacred chickens should eat

and drink, or eat only, in order to take the augury. The En-

glish have hanged one another by law, and cut one another to

pieces in pitched battles, for quarrels of as trifling a nature.

The sects of the Episcopalians and Presbyterians quite dis-

tracted these very serious heads for a time. But I fancy they

will hardly ever be so silly again, they seeming to be grown

wiser at their own expense; and I do not perceive the least

inclination in them to murder one another merely about syl-

logisms, as some zealots among them once did.

But here follows a more essential difference between Rome

and England, which gives the advantage entirely to the lat-

ter—viz., that the civil wars of Rome ended in slavery, and

those of the English in liberty. The English are the only people

upon earth who have been able to prescribe limits to the power

of kings by resisting them; and who, by a series of struggles,

have at last established that wise Government where the Prince

is all-powerful to do good, and, at the same time, is restrained

from committing evil; where the nobles are great without

insolence, though there are no vassals; and where the people

share in the Government without confusion.

The House of Lords and that of the Commons divide the

legislative power under the king, but the Romans had no such

balance. The patricians and plebeians in Rome were perpetu-

ally at variance, and there was no intermediate power to rec-

oncile them. The Roman senate, who were so unjustly, so

criminally proud as not to suffer the plebeians to share with

them in anything, could find no other artifice to keep the

latter out of the administration than by employing them in

foreign wars. They considered the plebeians as a wild beast,

whom it behoved them to let loose upon their neighbours,

for fear they should devour their masters. Thus the greatest

defect in the Government of the Romans raised them to be

conquerors. By being unhappy at home, they triumphed over

and possessed themselves of the world, till at last their divi-

sions sunk them to slavery.

The Government of England will never rise to so exalted a

pitch of glory, nor will its end be so fatal. The English are not

fired with the splendid folly of making conquests, but would

only prevent their neighbours from conquering. They are not

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only jealous of their own liberty, but even of that of other

nations. The English were exasperated against Louis XIV. for

no other reason but because he was ambitious, and declared

war against him merely out of levity, not from any interested

motives.

The English have doubtless purchased their liberties at a

very high price, and waded through seas of blood to drown

the idol of arbitrary power. Other nations have been involved

in as great calamities, and have shed as much blood; but then

the blood they spilt in defence of their liberties only enslaved

them the more.

That which rises to a revolution in England is no more

than a sedition in other countries. A city in Spain, in Barbary,

or in Turkey, takes up arms in defence of its privileges, when

immediately it is stormed by mercenary troops, it is punished

by executioners, and the rest of the nation kiss the chains they

are loaded with. The French are of opinion that the govern-

ment of this island is more tempestuous than the sea which

surrounds it, which indeed is true; but then it is never so but

when the king raises the storm—when he attempts to seize

the ship of which he is only the chief pilot. The civil wars of

France lasted longer, were more cruel, and productive of greater

evils than those of England; but none of these civil wars had a

wise and prudent liberty for their object.

In the detestable reigns of Charles IX. and Henry III. the

whole affair was only whether the people should be slaves to

the Guises. With regard to the last war of Paris, it deserves

only to be hooted at. Methinks I see a crowd of schoolboys

rising up in arms against their master, and afterwards whipped

for it. Cardinal de Retz, who was witty and brave (but to no

purpose), rebellious without a cause, factious without design,

and head of a defenceless party, caballed for caballing sake,

and seemed to foment the civil war merely out of diversion.

The Parliament did not know what he intended, nor what he

did not intend. He levied troops by Act of Parliament, and

the next moment cashiered them. He threatened, he begged

pardon; he set a price upon Cardinal Mazarin’s head, and af-

terwards congratulated him in a public manner. Our civil wars

under Charles VI. were bloody and cruel, those of the League

execrable, and that of the Frondeurs ridiculous.

That for which the French chiefly reproach the English na-

tion is the murder of King Charles I., whom his subjects treated

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exactly as he would have treated them had his reign been pros-

perous. After all, consider on one side Charles I., defeated in a

pitched battle, imprisoned, tried, sentenced to die in

Westminster Hall, and then beheaded. And on the other, the

Emperor Henry VII., poisoned by his chaplain at his receiv-

ing the Sacrament; Henry III. stabbed by a monk; thirty as-

sassinations projected against Henry IV., several of them put

in execution, and the last bereaving that great monarch of his

life. Weigh, I say, all these wicked attempts, and then judge.

LETTER IX.—ON THE GOVERNMENT

T HAT MIXTURE in the English Government, that har-

mony between King, Lords, and commons, did not

always subsist. England was enslaved for a long se-

ries of years by the Romans, the Saxons, the Danes, and the

French successively. William the Conqueror particularly, ruled

them with a rod of iron. He disposed as absolutely of the

lives and fortunes of his conquered subjects as an eastern mon-

arch; and forbade, upon pain of death, the English either fire

or candle in their houses after eight o’clock; whether was this

to prevent their nocturnal meetings, or only to try, by an odd

and whimsical prohibition, how far it was possible for one

man to extend his power over his fellow-creatures. It is true,

indeed, that the English had Parliaments before and after Wil-

liam the Conqueror, and they boast of them, as though these

assemblies then called Parliaments, composed of ecclesiastical

tyrants and of plunderers entitled barons, had been the guard-

ians of the public liberty and happiness.

The barbarians who came from the shores of the Baltic,

and settled in the rest of Europe, brought with them the form

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of government called States or Parliaments, about which so

much noise is made, and which are so little understood. Kings,

indeed, were not absolute in those days; but then the people

were more wretched upon that very account, and more com-

pletely enslaved. The chiefs of these savages, who had laid

waste France, Italy, Spain, and England, made themselves

monarchs. Their generals divided among themselves the sev-

eral countries they had conquered, whence sprung those

margraves, those peers, those barons, those petty tyrants, who

often contested with their sovereigns for the spoils of whole

nations. These were birds of prey fighting with an eagle for

doves whose blood the victorious was to suck. Every nation,

instead of being governed by one master, was trampled upon

by a hundred tyrants. The priests soon played a part among

them. Before this it had been the fate of the Gauls, the Ger-

mans, and the Britons, to be always governed by their Druids

and the chiefs of their villages, an ancient kind of barons, not

so tyrannical as their successors. These Druids pretended to

be mediators between God and man. They enacted laws, they

fulminated their excommunications, and sentenced to death.

The bishops succeeded, by insensible degrees, to their tempo-

ral authority in the Goth and Vandal government. The popes

set themselves at their head, and armed with their briefs, their

bulls, and reinforced by monks, they made even kings tremble,

deposed and assassinated them at pleasure, and employed every

artifice to draw into their own purses moneys from all parts of

Europe. The weak Ina, one of the tyrants of the Saxon Heptarchy

in England, was the first monarch who submitted, in his pil-

grimage to Rome, to pay St. Peter’s penny (equivalent very

near to a French crown) for every house in his dominions. The

whole island soon followed his example; England became in-

sensibly one of the Pope’s provinces, and the Holy Father used

to send from time to time his legates thither to levy exorbitant

taxes. At last King John delivered up by a public instrument

the kingdom of England to the Pope, who had excommuni-

cated him; but the barons, not finding their account in this

resignation, dethroned the wretched King John and seated

Louis, father to St. Louis, King of France, in his place. How-

ever, they were soon weary of their new monarch, and accord-

ingly obliged him to return to France.

Whilst that the barons, the bishops, and the popes, all laid

waste England, where all were for ruling the most numerous,

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the most useful, even the most virtuous, and consequently the

most venerable part of mankind, consisting of those who study

the laws and the sciences, of traders, of artificers, in a word, of

all who were not tyrants—that is, those who are called the

people: these, I say, were by them looked upon as so many

animals beneath the dignity of the human species. The Com-

mons in those ages were far from sharing in the government,

they being villains or peasants, whose labour, whose blood,

were the property of their masters who entitled themselves the

nobility. The major part of men in Europe were at that time

what they are to this day in several parts of the world—they

were villains or bondsmen of lords—that is, a kind of cattle

bought and sold with the land. Many ages passed away before

justice could be done to human nature—before mankind were

conscious that it was abominable for many to sow, and but few

reap. And was not France very happy, when the power and

authority of those petty robbers was abolished by the lawful

authority of kings and of the people?

Happily, in the violent shocks which the divisions between

kings and the nobles gave to empires, the chains of nations

were more or less heavy. Liberty in England sprang from the

quarrels of tyrants. The barons forced King John and King

Henry III. to grant the famous Magna Charta, the chief de-

sign of which was indeed to make kings dependent on the

Lords; but then the rest of the nation were a little favoured in

it, in order that they might join on proper occasions with

their pretended masters. This great Charter, which is consid-

ered as the sacred origin of the English liberties, shows in

itself how little liberty was known.

The title alone proves that the king thought he had a just

right to be absolute; and that the barons, and even the clergy,

forced him to give up the pretended right, for no other rea-

son but because they were the most powerful.

Magna Charta begins in this style: “We grant, of our own

free will, the following privileges to the archbishops, bishops,

priors, and barons of our kingdom,” etc.

The House of Commons is not once mentioned in the

articles of this Charter—a proof that it did not yet exist, or

that it existed without power. Mention is therein made, by

name, of the freemen of England—a melancholy proof that

some were not so. It appears, by Article XXXII., that these

pretended freemen owed service to their lords. Such a liberty

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as this was not many removes from slavery.

By Article XXI., the king ordains that his officers shall not

henceforward seize upon, unless they pay for them, the horses

and carts of freemen. The people considered this ordinance as

a real liberty, though it was a greater tyranny. Henry VII., that

happy usurper and great politician, who pretended to love

the barons, though he in reality hated and feared them, got

their lands alienated. By this means the villains, afterwards

acquiring riches by their industry, purchased the estates and

country seats of the illustrious peers who had ruined them-

selves by their folly and extravagance, and all the lands got by

insensible degrees into other hands.

The power of the House of Commons increased every day.

The families of the ancient peers were at last extinct; and as

peers only are properly noble in England, there would be no

such thing in strictness of law as nobility in that island, had

not the kings created new barons from time to time, and

preserved the body of peers, once a terror to them, to oppose

them to the Commons, since become so formidable.

All these new peers who compose the Higher House re-

ceive nothing but their titles from the king, and very few of

them have estates in those places whence they take their titles.

One shall be Duke of D-, though he has not a foot of land in

Dorsetshire; and another is Earl of a village, though he scarce

knows where it is situated. The peers have power, but it is

only in the Parliament House.

There is no such thing here as haute, moyenne, and basse

justice—that is, a power to judge in all matters civil and crimi-

nal; nor a right or privilege of hunting in the grounds of a

citizen, who at the same time is not permitted to fire a gun in

his own field.

No one is exempted in this country from paying certain

taxes because he is a nobleman or a priest. All duties and taxes

are settled by the House of Commons, whose power is greater

than that of the Peers, though inferior to it in dignity. The

spiritual as well as temporal Lords have the liberty to reject a

Money Bill brought in by the Commons; but they are not

allowed to alter anything in it, and must either pass or throw

it out without restriction. When the Bill has passed the Lords

and is signed by the king, then the whole nation pays, every

man in proportion to his revenue or estate, not according to

his title, which would be absurd. There is no such thing as an

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arbitrary subsidy or poll-tax, but a real tax on the lands, of all

which an estimate was made in the reign of the famous King

William III.

The land-tax continues still upon the same foot, though

the revenue of the lands is increased. Thus no one is tyrannised

over, and every one is easy. The feet of the peasants are not

bruised by wooden shoes; they eat white bread, are well

clothed, and are not afraid of increasing their stock of cattle,

nor of tiling their houses, from any apprehension that their

taxes will be raised the year following. The annual income of

the estates of a great many commoners in England amounts

to two hundred thousand livres, and yet these do not think it

beneath them to plough the lands which enrich them, and on

which they enjoy their liberty.

LETTER X.—ON TRADE

A S TRADE ENRICHED the citizens in England, so it con-

tributed to their freedom, and this freedom on the

other side extended their commerce, whence arose

the grandeur of the State. Trade raised by insensible degrees

the naval power, which gives the English a superiority over

the seas, and they now are masters of very near two hundred

ships of war. Posterity will very probably be surprised to hear

that an island whose only produce is a little lead, tin, fuller’s-

earth, and coarse wool, should become so powerful by its

commerce, as to be able to send, in 1723, three fleets at the

same time to three different and far distanced parts of the

globe. One before Gibraltar, conquered and still possessed by

the English; a second to Portobello, to dispossess the King of

Spain of the treasures of the West Indies; and a third into the

Baltic, to prevent the Northern Powers from coming to an

engagement.

At the time when Louis XIV. made all Italy tremble, and

that his armies, which had already possessed themselves of

Savoy and Piedmont, were upon the point of taking Turin;

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Prince Eugene was obliged to march from the middle of Ger-

many in order to succour Savoy. Having no money, without

which cities cannot be either taken or defended, he addressed

himself to some English merchants. These, at an hour and

half ’s warning, lent him five millions, whereby he was en-

abled to deliver Turin, and to beat the French; after which he

wrote the following short letter to the persons who had dis-

bursed him the above-mentioned sums: “Gentlemen, I have

received your money, and flatter myself that I have laid it out

to your satisfaction.” Such a circumstance as this raises a just

pride in an English merchant, and makes him presume (not

without some reason) to compare himself to a Roman citi-

zen; and, indeed, a peer’s brother does not think traffic be-

neath him. When the Lord Townshend was Minister of State,

a brother of his was content to be a City merchant; and at the

time that the Earl of Oxford governed Great Britain, a younger

brother was no more than a factor in Aleppo, where he chose

to live, and where he died. This custom, which begins, how-

ever, to be laid aside, appears monstrous to Germans, vainly

puffed up with their extraction. These think it morally im-

possible that the son of an English peer should be no more

than a rich and powerful citizen, for all are princes in Ger-

many. There have been thirty highnesses of the same name,

all whose patrimony consisted only in their escutcheons and

their pride.

In France the title of marquis is given gratis to any one who

will accept of it; and whosoever arrives at Paris from the midst

of the most remote provinces with money in his purse, and a

name terminating in ac or ille, may strut about, and cry, “Such

a man as I! A man of my rank and figure!” and may look

down upon a trader with sovereign contempt; whilst the trader

on the other side, by thus often hearing his profession treated

so disdainfully, is fool enough to blush at it. However, I need

not say which is most useful to a nation; a lord, powdered in

the tip of the mode, who knows exactly at what o’clock the

king rises and goes to bed, and who gives himself airs of gran-

deur and state, at the same time that he is acting the slave in

the ante-chamber of a prime minister; or a merchant, who

enriches his country, despatches orders from his counting-

house to Surat and Grand Cairo, and contributes to the well-

being of the world.

Voltaire

LETTER XI.—ON INOCULATION

I T IS INADVERTENTLY affirmed in the Christian countries

of Europe that the English are fools and madmen. Fools,

because they give their children the small-pox to prevent

their catching it; and madmen, because they wantonly com-

municate a certain and dreadful distemper to their children,

merely to prevent an uncertain evil. The English, on the other

side, call the rest of the Europeans cowardly and unnatural.

Cowardly, because they are afraid of putting their children to

a little pain; unnatural, because they expose them to die one

time or other of the small-pox. But that the reader may be

able to judge whether the English or those who differ from

them in opinion are in the right, here follows the history of

the famed inoculation, which is mentioned with so much

dread in France.

The Circassian women have, from time immemorial, com-

municated the small-pox to their children when not above

six months old by making an incision in the arm, and by

putting into this incision a pustule, taken carefully from the

body of another child. This pustule produces the same effect

in the arm it is laid in as yeast in a piece of dough; it ferments,

and diffuses through the whole mass of blood the qualities

with which it is impregnated. The pustules of the child in

whom the artificial small-pox has been thus inoculated are

employed to communicate the same distemper to others.

There is an almost perpetual circulation of it in Circassia; and

when unhappily the small-pox has quite left the country, the

inhabitants of it are in as great trouble and perplexity as other

nations when their harvest has fallen short.

The circumstance that introduced a custom in Circassia, which

appears so singular to others, is nevertheless a cause common to

all nations, I mean maternal tenderness and interest.

The Circassians are poor, and their daughters are beautiful,

and indeed, it is in them they chiefly trade. They furnish with

beauties the seraglios of the Turkish Sultan, of the Persian

Sophy, and of all those who are wealthy enough to purchase

and maintain such precious merchandise. These maidens are

very honourably and virtuously instructed to fondle and ca-

ress men; are taught dances of a very polite and effeminate

kind; and how to heighten by the most voluptuous artifices

the pleasures of their disdainful masters for whom they are

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designed. These unhappy creatures repeat their lesson to their

mothers, in the same manner as little girls among us repeat

their catechism without understanding one word they say.

Now it often happened that, after a father and mother had

taken the utmost care of the education of their children, they

were frustrated of all their hopes in an instant. The small-pox

getting into the family, one daughter died of it, another lost

an eye, a third had a great nose at her recovery, and the un-

happy parents were completely ruined. Even, frequently, when

the small-pox became epidemical, trade was suspended for

several years, which thinned very considerably the seraglios of

Persia and Turkey.

A trading nation is always watchful over its own interests,

and grasps at every discovery that may be of advantage to its

commerce. The Circassians observed that scarce one person

in a thousand was ever attacked by a small-pox of a violent

kind. That some, indeed, had this distemper very favourably

three or four times, but never twice so as to prove fatal; in a

word, that no one ever had it in a violent degree twice in his

life. They observed farther, that when the small-pox is of the

milder sort, and the pustules have only a tender, delicate skin

to break through, they never leave the least scar in the face.

From these natural observations they concluded, that in case

an infant of six months or a year old should have a milder

sort of small-pox, he would not die of it, would not be

marked, nor be ever afflicted with it again.

In order, therefore, to preserve the life and beauty of their

children, the only thing remaining was to give them the small-

pox in their infant years. This they did by inoculating in the

body of a child a pustule taken from the most regular and at

the same time the most favourable sort of small-pox that

could be procured.

The experiment could not possibly fail. The Turks, who

are people of good sense, soon adopted this custom, insomuch

that at this time there is not a bassa in Constantinople but

communicates the small-pox to his children of both sexes

immediately upon their being weaned.

Some pretend that the Circassians borrowed this custom

anciently from the Arabians; but we shall leave the clearing

up of this point of history to some learned Benedictine, who

will not fail to compile a great many folios on this subject,

with the several proofs or authorities. All I have to say upon it

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is that, in the beginning of the reign of King George I., the

Lady Wortley Montague, a woman of as fine a genius, and

endued with as great a strength of mind, as any of her sex in

the British Kingdoms, being with her husband, who was

ambassador at the Porte, made no scruple to communicate

the small-pox to an infant of which she was delivered in

Constantinople. The chaplain represented to his lady, but to

no purpose, that this was an unchristian operation, and there-

fore that it could succeed with none but infidels. However, it

had the most happy effect upon the son of the Lady Wortley

Montague, who, at her return to England, communicated

the experiment to the Princess of Wales, now Queen of En-

gland. It must be confessed that this princess, abstracted from

her crown and titles, was born to encourage the whole circle

of arts, and to do good to mankind. She appears as an ami-

able philosopher on the throne, having never let slip one op-

portunity of improving the great talents she received from

Nature, nor of exerting her beneficence. It is she who, being

informed that a daughter of Milton was living, but in miser-

able circumstances, immediately sent her a considerable

present. It is she who protects the learned Father Courayer. It

is she who condescended to attempt a reconciliation between

Dr. Clark and Mr. Leibnitz. The moment this princess heard

of inoculation, she caused an experiment of it to be made on

four criminals sentenced to die, and by that means preserved

their lives doubly; for she not only saved them from the gal-

lows, but by means of this artificial small-pox prevented their

ever having that distemper in a natural way, with which they

would very probably have been attacked one time or other,

and might have died of in a more advanced age.

The princess being assured of the usefulness of this opera-

tion, caused her own children to be inoculated. A great part

of the kingdom followed her example, and since that time

ten thousand children, at least, of persons of condition owe

in this manner their lives to her Majesty and to the Lady

Wortley Montague; and as many of the fair sex are obliged to

them for their beauty.

Upon a general calculation, threescore persons in every hun-

dred have the small-pox. Of these threescore, twenty die of it

in the most favourable season of life, and as many more wear

the disagreeable remains of it in their faces so long as they

live. Thus, a fifth part of mankind either die or are disfigured

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by this distemper. But it does not prove fatal to so much as

one among those who are inoculated in Turkey or in En-

gland, unless the patient be infirm, or would have died had

not the experiment been made upon him. Besides, no one is

disfigured, no one has the small-pox a second time, if the

inoculation was perfect. It is therefore certain, that had the

lady of some French ambassador brought this secret from

Constantinople to Paris, the nation would have been for ever

obliged to her. Then the Duke de Villequier, father to the

Duke d’Aumont, who enjoys the most vigorous constitu-

tion, and is the healthiest man in France, would not have

been cut off in the flower of his age.

The Prince of Soubise, happy in the finest flush of health,

would not have been snatched away at five-and-twenty, nor the

Dauphin, grandfather to Louis XV., have been laid in his grave

in his fiftieth year. Twenty thousand persons whom the small-

pox swept away at Paris in 1723 would have been alive at this

time. But are not the French fond of life, and is beauty so

inconsiderable an advantage as to be disregarded by the ladies?

It must be confessed that we are an odd kind of people. Per-

haps our nation will imitate ten years hence this practice of the

English, if the clergy and the physicians will but give them

leave to do it; or possibly our countrymen may introduce in-

oculation three months hence in France out of mere whim, in

case the English should discontinue it through fickleness.

I am informed that the Chinese have practised inoculation

these hundred years, a circumstance that argues very much in

its favour, since they are thought to be the wisest and best

governed people in the world. The Chinese, indeed, do not

communicate this distemper by inoculation, but at the nose,

in the same manner as we take snuff. This is a more agreeable

way, but then it produces the like effects; and proves at the

same time that had inoculation been practised in France it

would have saved the lives of thousands.

Voltaire

LETTER XII.—ON THE LORD BACON

N OT LONG SINCE the trite and frivolous question

following was debated in a very polite and learned

company, viz., Who was the greatest man, Cae-

sar, Alexander, Tamerlane, Cromwell, &c.?

Somebody answered that Sir Isaac Newton excelled them

all. The gentleman’s assertion was very just; for if true great-

ness consists in having received from heaven a mighty genius,

and in having employed it to enlighten our own mind and

that of others, a man like Sir Isaac Newton, whose equal is

hardly found in a thousand years, is the truly great man. And

those politicians and conquerors (and all ages produce some)

were generally so many illustrious wicked men. That man

claims our respect who commands over the minds of the rest

of the world by the force of truth, not those who enslave

their fellow-creatures: he who is acquainted with the universe,

not they who deface it.

Since, therefore, you desire me to give you an account of

the famous personages whom England has given birth to, I

shall begin with Lord Bacon, Mr. Locke, Sir Isaac Newton,

&c. Afterwards the warriors and Ministers of State shall come

in their order.

I must begin with the celebrated Viscount Verulam, known

in Europe by the name of Bacon, which was that of his fam-

ily. His father had been Lord Keeper, and himself was a great

many years Lord Chancellor under King James I. Neverthe-

less, amidst the intrigues of a Court, and the affairs of his

exalted employment, which alone were enough to engross his

whole time, he yet found so much leisure for study as to

make himself a great philosopher, a good historian, and an

elegant writer; and a still more surprising circumstance is that

he lived in an age in which the art of writing justly and el-

egantly was little known, much less true philosophy. Lord

Bacon, as is the fate of man, was more esteemed after his

death than in his lifetime. His enemies were in the British

Court, and his admirers were foreigners.

When the Marquis d’Effiat attended in England upon the

Princess Henrietta Maria, daughter to Henry IV., whom King

Charles I. had married, that Minister went and visited the

Lord Bacon, who, being at that time sick in his bed, received

him with the curtains shut close. “You resemble the angels,”

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says the Marquis to him; “we hear those beings spoken of

perpetually, and we believe them superior to men, but are

never allowed the consolation to see them.”

You know that this great man was accused of a crime very

unbecoming a philosopher: I mean bribery and extortion. You

know that he was sentenced by the House of Lords to pay a

fine of about four hundred thousand French livres, to lose his

peerage and his dignity of Chancellor; but in the present age

the English revere his memory to such a degree, that they will

scarce allow him to have been guilty. In case you should ask

what are my thoughts on this head, I shall answer you in the

words which I heard the Lord Bolingbroke use on another

occasion. Several gentlemen were speaking, in his company,

of the avarice with which the late Duke of Marlborough had

been charged, some examples whereof being given, the Lord

Bolingbroke was appealed to (who, having been in the oppo-

site party, might perhaps, without the imputation of inde-

cency, have been allowed to clear up that matter): “He was so

great a man,” replied his lordship, “that I have forgot his vices.”

I shall therefore confine myself to those things which so

justly gained Lord Bacon the esteem of all Europe.

The most singular and the best of all his pieces is that which,

at this time, is the most useless and the least read, I mean his

Novum Scientiarum Organum. This is the scaffold with

which the new philosophy was raised; and when the edifice

was built, part of it at least, the scaffold was no longer of

service.

The Lord Bacon was not yet acquainted with Nature, but

then he knew, and pointed out, the several paths that lead to

it. He had despised in his younger years the thing called phi-

losophy in the Universities, and did all that lay in his power

to prevent those societies of men instituted to improve hu-

man reason from depraving it by their quiddities, their hor-

rors of the vacuum, their substantial forms, and all those im-

pertinent terms which not only ignorance had rendered ven-

erable, but which had been made sacred by their being ridicu-

lously blended with religion.

He is the father of experimental philosophy. It must, in-

deed, be confessed that very surprising secrets had been found

out before his time—the sea-compass, printing, engraving on

copper plates, oil-painting, looking-glasses; the art of restor-

ing, in some measure, old men to their sight by spectacles;

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gunpowder, &c., had been discovered. A new world had been

fought for, found, and conquered. Would not one suppose

that these sublime discoveries had been made by the greatest

philosophers, and in ages much more enlightened than the

present? But it was far otherwise; all these great changes hap-

pened in the most stupid and barbarous times. Chance only

gave birth to most of those inventions; and it is very probable

that what is called chance contributed very much to the dis-

covery of America; at least, it has been always thought that

Christopher Columbus undertook his voyage merely on the

relation of a captain of a ship which a storm had driven as far

westward as the Caribbean Islands. Be this as it will, men had

sailed round the world, and could destroy cities by an artifi-

cial thunder more dreadful than the real one; but, then, they

were not acquainted with the circulation of the blood, the

weight of the air, the laws of motion, light, the number of

our planets, &c. And a man who maintained a thesis on

Aristotle’s “Categories,” on the universals a parte rei, or such-

like nonsense, was looked upon as a prodigy.

The most astonishing, the most useful inventions, are not

those which reflect the greatest honour on the human mind.

It is to a mechanical instinct, which is found in many men,

and not to true philosophy, that most arts owe their origin.

The discovery of fire, the art of making bread, of melting

and preparing metals, of building houses, and the invention

of the shuttle, are infinitely more beneficial to mankind than

printing or the sea-compass: and yet these arts were invented

by uncultivated, savage men.

What a prodigious use the Greeks and Romans made after-

wards of mechanics! Nevertheless, they believed that there

were crystal heavens, that the stars were small lamps which

sometimes fell into the sea, and one of their greatest philoso-

phers, after long researches, found that the stars were so many

flints which had been detached from the earth.

In a word, no one before the Lord Bacon was acquainted

with experimental philosophy, nor with the several physical

experiments which have been made since his time. Scarce one

of them but is hinted at in his work, and he himself had

made several. He made a kind of pneumatic engine, by which

he guessed the elasticity of the air. He approached, on all sides

as it were, to the discovery of its weight, and had very near

attained it, but some time after Torricelli seized upon this

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truth. In a little time experimental philosophy began to be

cultivated on a sudden in most parts of Europe. It was a hid-

den treasure which the Lord Bacon had some notion of, and

which all the philosophers, encouraged by his promises, en-

deavoured to dig up.

But that which surprised me most was to read in his work,

in express terms, the new attraction, the invention of which is

ascribed to Sir Isaac Newton.

We must search, says Lord Bacon, whether there may not

be a kind of magnetic power which operates between the earth

and heavy bodies, between the moon and the ocean, between

the planets, &c. In another place he says either heavy bodies

must be carried towards the centre of the earth, or must be

reciprocally attracted by it; and in the latter case it is evident

that the nearer bodies, in their falling, draw towards the earth,

the stronger they will attract one another. We must, says he,

make an experiment to see whether the same clock will go

faster on the top of a mountain or at the bottom of a mine;

whether the strength of the weights decreases on the moun-

tain and increases in the mine. It is probable that the earth has

a true attractive power.

This forerunner in philosophy was also an elegant writer,

an historian, and a wit.

His moral essays are greatly esteemed, but they were drawn

up in the view of instructing rather than of pleasing; and, as

they are not a satire upon mankind, like Rochefoucauld’s

“Maxims,” nor written upon a sceptical plan, like Montaigne’s

“Essays,” they are not so much read as those two ingenious

authors.

His History of Henry VII. was looked upon as a master-

piece, but how is it possible that some persons can presume

to compare so little a work with the history of our illustrious

Thuanus?

Speaking about the famous impostor Perkin, son to a con-

verted Jew, who assumed boldly the name and title of Rich-

ard IV., King of England, at the instigation of the Duchess of

Burgundy, and who disputed the crown with Henry VII., the

Lord Bacon writes as follows:-

“At this time the King began again to be haunted with sprites,

by the magic and curious arts of the Lady Margaret, who

raised up the ghost of Richard, Duke of York, second son to

King Edward IV., to walk and vex the King.

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“After such time as she (Margaret of Burgundy) thought he

(Perkin Warbeck) was perfect in his lesson, she began to cast

with herself from what coast this blazing star should first ap-

pear, and at what time it must be upon the horizon of Ire-

land; for there had the like meteor strong influence before.”

Methinks our sagacious Thuanus does not give in to such

fustian, which formerly was looked upon as sublime, but in

this age is justly called nonsense.

LETTER XIII.—ON MR. LOCKE

P ERHAPS NO MAN ever had a more judicious or more

methodical genius, or was a more acute logician than

Mr. Locke, and yet he was not deeply skilled in the

mathematics. This great man could never subject himself to

the tedious fatigue of calculations, nor to the dry pursuit of

mathematical truths, which do not at first present any sen-

sible objects to the mind; and no one has given better proofs

than he, that it is possible for a man to have a geometrical

head without the assistance of geometry. Before his time, sev-

eral great philosophers had declared, in the most positive terms,

what the soul of man is; but as these absolutely knew nothing

about it, they might very well be allowed to differ entirely in

opinion from one another.

In Greece, the infant seat of arts and of errors, and where

the grandeur as well as folly of the human mind went such

prodigious lengths, the people used to reason about the soul

in the very same manner as we do.

The divine Anaxagoras, in whose honour an altar was erected

for his having taught mankind that the sun was greater than

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Peloponnesus, that snow was black, and that the heavens were

of stone, affirmed that the soul was an aerial spirit, but at the

same time immortal. Diogenes (not he who was a cynical

philosopher after having coined base money) declared that

the soul was a portion of the substance of God: an idea which

we must confess was very sublime. Epicurus maintained that

it was composed of parts in the same manner as the body.

Aristotle, who has been explained a thousand ways, because

he is unintelligible, was of opinion, according to some of his

disciples, that the understanding in all men is one and the

same substance.

The divine Plato, master of the divine Aristotle,—and the

divine Socrates, master of the divine Plato—used to say that

the soul was corporeal and eternal. No doubt but the demon

of Socrates had instructed him in the nature of it. Some

people, indeed, pretend that a man who boasted his being

attended by a familiar genius must infallibly be either a knave

or a madman, but this kind of people are seldom satisfied

with anything but reason.

With regard to the Fathers of the Church, several in the

primitive ages believed that the soul was human, and the an-

gels and God corporeal. Men naturally improve upon every

system. St. Bernard, as Father Mabillon confesses, taught that

the soul after death does not see God in the celestial regions,

but converses with Christ’s human nature only. However, he

was not believed this time on his bare word; the adventure of

the crusade having a little sunk the credit of his oracles. After-

wards a thousand schoolmen arose, such as the Irrefragable

Doctor, the Subtile Doctor, the Angelic Doctor, the Seraphic

Doctor, and the Cherubic Doctor, who were all sure that they

had a very clear and distinct idea of the soul, and yet wrote in

such a manner, that one would conclude they were resolved

no one should understand a word in their writings. Our

Descartes, born to discover the errors of antiquity, and at the

same time to substitute his own, and hurried away by that

systematic spirit which throws a cloud over the minds of the

greatest men, thought he had demonstrated that the soul is

the same thing as thought, in the same manner as matter, in

his opinion, is the same as extension. He asserted, that man

thinks eternally, and that the soul, at its coming into the body,

is informed with the whole series of metaphysical notions:

knowing God, infinite space, possessing all abstract ideas—in

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a word, completely endued with the most sublime lights,

which it unhappily forgets at its issuing from the womb.

Father Malebranche, in his sublime illusions, not only ad-

mitted innate ideas, but did not doubt of our living wholly

in God, and that God is, as it were, our soul.

Such a multitude of reasoners having written the romance

of the soul, a sage at last arose, who gave, with an air of the

greatest modesty, the history of it. Mr. Locke has displayed

the human soul in the same manner as an excellent anatomist

explains the springs of the human body. He everywhere takes

the light of physics for his guide. He sometimes presumes to

speak affirmatively, but then he presumes also to doubt. In-

stead of concluding at once what we know not, he examines

gradually what we would know. He takes an infant at the

instant of his birth; he traces, step by step, the progress of his

understanding; examines what things he has in common with

beasts, and what he possesses above them. Above all, he con-

sults himself: the being conscious that he himself thinks.

“I shall leave,” says he, “to those who know more of this

matter than myself, the examining whether the soul exists

before or after the organisation of our bodies. But I confess

that it is my lot to be animated with one of those heavy souls

which do not think always; and I am even so unhappy as not

to conceive that it is more necessary the soul should think

perpetually than that bodies should be for ever in motion.”

With regard to myself, I shall boast that I have the honour

to be as stupid in this particular as Mr. Locke. No one shall

ever make me believe that I think always: and I am as little

inclined as he could be to fancy that some weeks after I was

conceived I was a very learned soul; knowing at that time a

thousand things which I forgot at my birth; and possessing

when in the womb (though to no manner of purpose) knowl-

edge which I lost the instant I had occasion for it; and which

I have never since been able to recover perfectly.

Mr. Locke, after having destroyed innate ideas; after having

fully renounced the vanity of believing that we think always;

after having laid down, from the most solid principles, that

ideas enter the mind through the senses; having examined our

simple and complex ideas; having traced the human mind

through its several operations; having shown that all the lan-

guages in the world are imperfect, and the great abuse that is

made of words every moment, he at last comes to consider

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the extent or rather the narrow limits of human knowledge.

It was in this chapter he presumed to advance, but very mod-

estly, the following words: “We shall, perhaps, never be ca-

pable of knowing whether a being, purely material, thinks or

not.” This sage assertion was, by more divines than one, looked

upon as a scandalous declaration that the soul is material and

mortal. Some Englishmen, devout after their way, sounded

an alarm. The superstitious are the same in society as cowards

in an army; they themselves are seized with a panic fear, and

communicate it to others. It was loudly exclaimed that Mr.

Locke intended to destroy religion; nevertheless, religion had

nothing to do in the affair, it being a question purely philo-

sophical, altogether independent of faith and revelation. Mr.

Locke’s opponents needed but to examine, calmly and im-

partially, whether the declaring that matter can think, implies

a contradiction; and whether God is able to communicate

thought to matter. But divines are too apt to begin their dec-

larations with saying that God is offended when people differ

from them in opinion; in which they too much resemble the

bad poets, who used to declare publicly that Boileau spake

irreverently of Louis XIV., because he ridiculed their stupid

productions. Bishop Stillingfleet got the reputation of a calm

and unprejudiced divine because he did not expressly make

use of injurious terms in his dispute with Mr. Locke. That

divine entered the lists against him, but was defeated; for he

argued as a schoolman, and Locke as a philosopher, who was

perfectly acquainted with the strong as well as the weak side

of the human mind, and who fought with weapons whose

temper he knew. If I might presume to give my opinion on

so delicate a subject after Mr. Locke, I would say, that men

have long disputed on the nature and the immortality of the

soul. With regard to its immortality, it is impossible to give a

demonstration of it, since its nature is still the subject of con-

troversy; which, however, must be thoroughly understood

before a person can be able to determine whether it be im-

mortal or not. Human reason is so little able, merely by its

own strength, to demonstrate the immortality of the soul,

that it was absolutely necessary religion should reveal it to us.

It is of advantage to society in general, that mankind should

believe the soul to be immortal; faith commands us to do

this; nothing more is required, and the matter is cleared up at

once. But it is otherwise with respect to its nature; it is of

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little importance to religion, which only requires the soul to

be virtuous, whatever substance it may be made of. It is a

clock which is given us to regulate, but the artist has not told

us of what materials the spring of this chock is composed.

I am a body, and, I think, that’s all I know of the matter.

Shall I ascribe to an unknown cause, what I can so easily im-

pute to the only second cause I am acquainted with? Here all

the school philosophers interrupt me with their arguments,

and declare that there is only extension and solidity in bodies,

and that there they can have nothing but motion and figure.

Now motion, figure, extension and solidity cannot form a

thought, and consequently the soul cannot be matter. All this

so often repeated mighty series of reasoning, amounts to no

more than this: I am absolutely ignorant what matter is; I guess,

but imperfectly, some properties of it; now I absolutely cannot

tell whether these properties may be joined to thought. As I

therefore know nothing, I maintain positively that matter can-

not think. In this manner do the schools reason.

Mr. Locke addressed these gentlemen in the candid, sincere

manner following: At least confess yourselves to be as ignorant

as I. Neither your imaginations nor mine are able to compre-

hend in what manner a body is susceptible of ideas; and do you

conceive better in what manner a substance, of what kind soever,

is susceptible of them? As you cannot comprehend either mat-

ter or spirit, why will you presume to assert anything?

The superstitious man comes afterwards and declares, that

all those must be burnt for the good of their souls, who so

much as suspect that it is possible for the body to think with-

out any foreign assistance. But what would these people say

should they themselves be proved irreligious? And indeed,

what man can presume to assert, without being guilty at the

same time of the greatest impiety, that it is impossible for the

Creator to form matter with thought and sensation? Con-

sider only, I beg you, what a dilemma you bring yourselves

into, you who confine in this manner the power of the Cre-

ator. Beasts have the same organs, the same sensations, the

same perceptions as we; they have memory, and combine cer-

tain ideas. In case it was not in the power of God to animate

matter, and inform it with sensation, the consequence would

be, either that beasts are mere machines, or that they have a

spiritual soul.

Methinks it is clearly evident that beasts cannot be mere

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machines, which I prove thus. God has given to them the

very same organs of sensation as to us: if therefore they have

no sensation, God has created a useless thing; now according

to your own confession God does nothing in vain; He there-

fore did not create so many organs of sensation, merely for

them to be uninformed with this faculty; consequently beasts

are not mere machines. Beasts, according to your assertion,

cannot be animated with a spiritual soul; you will, therefore,

in spite of yourself, be reduced to this only assertion, viz.,

that God has endued the organs of beasts, who are mere mat-

ter, with the faculties of sensation and perception, which you

call instinct in them. But why may not God, if He pleases,

communicate to our more delicate organs, that faculty of feel-

ing, perceiving, and thinking, which we call human reason?

To whatever side you turn, you are forced to acknowledge

your own ignorance, and the boundless power of the Creator.

Exclaim therefore no more against the sage, the modest phi-

losophy of Mr. Locke, which so far from interfering with

religion, would be of use to demonstrate the truth of it, in

case religion wanted any such support. For what philosophy

can be of a more religious nature than that, which affirming

nothing but what it conceives clearly, and conscious of its

own weakness, declares that we must always have recourse to

God in our examining of the first principles?

Besides, we must not be apprehensive that any philosophi-

cal opinion will ever prejudice the religion of a country.

Though our demonstrations clash directly with our myster-

ies, that is nothing to the purpose, for the latter are not less

revered upon that account by our Christian philosophers, who

know very well that the objects of reason and those of faith

are of a very different nature. Philosophers will never form a

religious sect, the reason of which is, their writings are not

calculated for the vulgar, and they themselves are free from

enthusiasm. If we divide mankind into twenty parts, it will

be found that nineteen of these consist of persons employed

in manual labour, who will never know that such a man as

Mr. Locke existed. In the remaining twentieth part how few

are readers? And among such as are so, twenty amuse them-

selves with romances to one who studies philosophy. The

thinking part of mankind is confined to a very small number,

and these will never disturb the peace and tranquillity of the

world.

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Neither Montaigne, Locke, Bayle, Spinoza, Hobbes, the

Lord Shaftesbury, Collins, nor Toland lighted up the fire-

brand of discord in their countries; this has generally been the

work of divines, who being at first puffed up with the ambi-

tion of becoming chiefs of a sect, soon grew very desirous of

being at the head of a party. But what do I say? All the works

of the modern philosophers put together will never make so

much noise as even the dispute which arose among the

Franciscans, merely about the fashion of their sleeves and of

their cowls.

LETTER XIV.—ON DESCARTES AND SIR ISAAC NEWTON

A FRENCHMAN who arrives in London, will find phi-

losophy, like everything else, very much changed

there. He had left the world a plenum, and he now

finds it a vacuum. At Paris the universe is seen composed of

vortices of subtile matter; but nothing like it is seen in Lon-

don. In France, it is the pressure of the moon that causes the

tides; but in England it is the sea that gravitates towards the

moon; so that when you think that the moon should make it

flood with us, those gentlemen fancy it should be ebb, which

very unluckily cannot be proved. For to be able to do this, it

is necessary the moon and the tides should have been inquired

into at the very instant of the creation.

You will observe farther, that the sun, which in France is

said to have nothing to do in the affair, comes in here for very

near a quarter of its assistance. According to your Cartesians,

everything is performed by an impulsion, of which we have

very little notion; and according to Sir Isaac Newton, it is by

an attraction, the cause of which is as much unknown to us.

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At Paris you imagine that the earth is shaped like a melon, or

of an oblique figure; at London it has an oblate one. A Carte-

sian declares that light exists in the air; but a Newtonian as-

serts that it comes from the sun in six minutes and a half. The

several operations of your chemistry are performed by acids,

alkalies and subtile matter; but attraction prevails even in

chemistry among the English.

The very essence of things is totally changed. You neither

are agreed upon the definition of the soul, nor on that of

matter. Descartes, as I observed in my last, maintains that the

soul is the same thing with thought, and Mr. Locke has given

a pretty good proof of the contrary.

Descartes asserts farther, that extension alone constitutes

matter, but Sir Isaac adds solidity to it.

How furiously contradictory are these opinions!

“Non nostrum inter vos tantas componere lites.”

Virgil, Eclog. III.

“’Tis not for us to end such great disputes.”

This famous Newton, this destroyer of the Cartesian sys-

tem, died in March, anno 1727. His countrymen honoured

him in his lifetime, and interred him as though he had been a

king who had made his people happy.

The English read with the highest satisfaction, and trans-

lated into their tongue, the Elogium of Sir Isaac Newton,

which M. de Fontenelle spoke in the Academy of Sciences.

M. de Fontenelle presides as judge over philosophers; and the

English expected his decision, as a solemn declaration of the

superiority of the English philosophy over that of the French.

But when it was found that this gentleman had compared

Descartes to Sir Isaac, the whole Royal Society in London

rose up in arms. So far from acquiescing with M. Fontenelle’s

judgment, they criticised his discourse. And even several (who,

however, were not the ablest philosophers in that body) were

offended at the comparison; and for no other reason but be-

cause Descartes was a Frenchman.

It must be confessed that these two great men differed very

much in conduct, in fortune, and in philosophy.

Nature had indulged Descartes with a shining and strong

imagination, whence he became a very singular person both

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in private life and in his manner of reasoning. This imagina-

tion could not conceal itself even in his philosophical works,

which are everywhere adorned with very shining, ingenious

metaphors and figures. Nature had almost made him a poet;

and indeed he wrote a piece of poetry for the entertainment

of Christina, Queen of Sweden, which however was suppressed

in honour to his memory.

He embraced a military life for some time, and afterwards

becoming a complete philosopher, he did not think the pas-

sion of love derogatory to his character. He had by his mis-

tress a daughter called Froncine, who died young, and was

very much regretted by him. Thus he experienced every pas-

sion incident to mankind.

He was a long time of opinion that it would be necessary

for him to fly from the society of his fellow creatures, and

especially from his native country, in order to enjoy the hap-

piness of cultivating his philosophical studies in full liberty.

Descartes was very right, for his contemporaries were not

knowing enough to improve and enlighten his understand-

ing, and were capable of little else than of giving him uneasi-

ness.

He left France purely to go in search of truth, which was

then persecuted by the wretched philosophy of the schools.

However, he found that reason was as much disguised and

depraved in the universities of Holland, into which he with-

drew, as in his own country. For at the time that the French

condemned the only propositions of his philosophy which

were true, he was persecuted by the pretended philosophers

of Holland, who understood him no better; and who, having

a nearer view of his glory, hated his person the more, so that

he was obliged to leave Utrecht. Descartes was injuriously

accused of being an atheist, the last refuge of religious scan-

dal: and he who had employed all the sagacity and penetra-

tion of his genius, in searching for new proofs of the existence

of a God, was suspected to believe there was no such Being.

Such a persecution from all sides, must necessarily suppose

a most exalted merit as well as a very distinguished reputa-

tion, and indeed he possessed both. Reason at that time darted

a ray upon the world through the gloom of the schools, and

the prejudices of popular superstition. At last his name spread

so universally, that the French were desirous of bringing him

back into his native country by rewards, and accordingly of-

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fered him an annual pension of a thousand crowns. Upon

these hopes Descartes returned to France; paid the fees of his

patent, which was sold at that time, but no pension was settled

upon him. Thus disappointed, he returned to his solitude in

North Holland, where he again pursued the study of phi-

losophy, whilst the great Galileo, at fourscore years of age,

was groaning in the prisons of the Inquisition, only for hav-

ing demonstrated the earth’s motion.

At last Descartes was snatched from the world in the flower

of his age at Stockholm. His death was owing to a bad regi-

men, and he expired in the midst of some literati who were

his enemies, and under the hands of a physician to whom he

was odious.

The progress of Sir Isaac Newton’s life was quite different.

He lived happy, and very much honoured in his native coun-

try, to the age of fourscore and five years.

It was his peculiar felicity, not only to be born in a country

of liberty, but in an age when all scholastic impertinences were

banished from the world. Reason alone was cultivated, and

mankind could only be his pupil, not his enemy.

One very singular difference in the lives of these two great

men is, that Sir Isaac, during the long course of years he en-

joyed, was never sensible to any passion, was not subject to

the common frailties of mankind, nor ever had any com-

merce with women—a circumstance which was assured me

by the physician and surgeon who attended him in his last

moments.

We may admire Sir Isaac Newton on this occasion, but

then we must not censure Descartes.

The opinion that generally prevails in England with regard

to these new philosophers is, that the latter was a dreamer,

and the former a sage.

Very few people in England read Descartes, whose works

indeed are now useless. On the other side, but a small num-

ber peruse those of Sir Isaac, because to do this the student

must be deeply skilled in the mathematics, otherwise those

works will be unintelligible to him. But notwithstanding this,

these great men are the subject of everyone’s discourse. Sir

Isaac Newton is allowed every advantage, whilst Descartes is

not indulged a single one. According to some, it is to the

former that we owe the discovery of a vacuum, that the air is

a heavy body, and the invention of telescopes. In a word, Sir

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Isaac Newton is here as the Hercules of fabulous story, to

whom the ignorant ascribed all the feats of ancient heroes.

In a critique that was made in London on Mr. de

Fontenelle’s discourse, the writer presumed to assert that

Descartes was not a great geometrician. Those who make such

a declaration may justly be reproached with flying in their

master’s face. Descartes extended the limits of geometry as far

beyond the place where he found them, as Sir Isaac did after

him. The former first taught the method of expressing curves

by equations. This geometry which, thanks to him for it, is

now grown common, was so abstruse in his time, that not so

much as one professor would undertake to explain it; and

Schotten in Holland, and Format in France, were the only

men who understood it.

He applied this geometrical and inventive genius to diop-

trics, which, when treated of by him, became a new art. And

if he was mistaken in some things, the reason of that is, a man

who discovers a new tract of land cannot at once know all the

properties of the soil. Those who come after him, and make

these lands fruitful, are at least obliged to him for the discov-

ery. I will not deny but that there are innumerable errors in

the rest of Descartes’ works.

Geometry was a guide he himself had in some measure fash-

ioned, which would have conducted him safely through the

several paths of natural philosophy. Nevertheless, he at last aban-

doned this guide, and gave entirely into the humour of form-

ing hypotheses; and then philosophy was no more than an in-

genious romance, fit only to amuse the ignorant. He was mis-

taken in the nature of the soul, in the proofs of the existence of

a God, in matter, in the laws of motion, and in the nature of

light. He admitted innate ideas, he invented new elements, he

created a world; he made man according to his own fancy; and

it is justly said, that the man of Descartes is, in fact, that of

Descartes only, very different from the real one.

He pushed his metaphysical errors so far, as to declare that

two and two make four for no other reason but because God

would have it so. However, it will not be making him too

great a compliment if we affirm that he was valuable even in

his mistakes. He deceived himself; but then it was at least in a

methodical way. He destroyed all the absurd chimeras with

which youth had been infatuated for two thousand years. He

taught his contemporaries how to reason, and enabled them

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to employ his own weapons against himself. If Descartes did

not pay in good money, he however did great service in cry-

ing down that of a base alloy.

I indeed believe that very few will presume to compare his

philosophy in any respect with that of Sir Isaac Newton. The

former is an essay, the latter a masterpiece. But then the man

who first brought us to the path of truth, was perhaps as great

a genius as he who afterwards conducted us through it.

Descartes gave sight to the blind. These saw the errors of

antiquity and of the sciences. The path he struck out is since

become boundless. Rohault’s little work was, during some

years, a complete system of physics; but now all the Transac-

tions of the several academies in Europe put together do not

form so much as the beginning of a system. In fathoming

this abyss no bottom has been found. We are now to examine

what discoveries Sir Isaac Newton has made in it.

LETTER XV.—ON ATTRACTION

T HE DISCOVERIES which gained Sir Isaac Newton so

universal a reputation, relate to the system of the

world, to light, to geometrical infinities; and, lastly,

to chronology, with which he used to amuse himself after the

fatigue of his severer studies.

I will now acquaint you (without prolixity if possible) with

the few things I have been able to comprehend of all these

sublime ideas. With regard to the system of our world, dis-

putes were a long time maintained, on the cause that turns

the planets, and keeps them in their orbits: and on those causes

which make all bodies here below descend towards the sur-

face of the earth.

The system of Descartes, explained and improved since his

time, seemed to give a plausible reason for all those phenom-

ena; and this reason seemed more just, as it is simple and

intelligible to all capacities. But in philosophy, a student ought

to doubt of the things he fancies he understands too easily, as

much as of those he does not understand.

Gravity, the falling of accelerated bodies on the earth, the

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revolution of the planets in their orbits, their rotations round

their axis, all this is mere motion. Now motion cannot per-

haps be conceived any otherwise than by impulsion; there-

fore all those bodies must be impelled. But by what are they

impelled? All space is full, it therefore is filled with a very

subtile matter, since this is imperceptible to us; this matter

goes from west to east, since all the planets are carried from

west to east. Thus from hypothesis to hypothesis, from one

appearance to another, philosophers have imagined a vast

whirlpool of subtile matter, in which the planets are carried

round the sun: they also have created another particular vor-

tex which floats in the great one, and which turns daily round

the planets. When all this is done, it is pretended that gravity

depends on this diurnal motion; for, say these, the velocity of

the subtile matter that turns round our little vortex, must be

seventeen times more rapid than that of the earth; or, in case

its velocity is seventeen times greater than that of the earth, its

centrifugal force must be vastly greater, and consequently

impel all bodies towards the earth. This is the cause of grav-

ity, according to the Cartesian system. But the theorist, be-

fore he calculated the centrifugal force and velocity of the

subtile matter, should first have been certain that it existed.

Sir Isaac Newton, seems to have destroyed all these great

and little vortices, both that which carries the planets round

the sun, as well as the other which supposes every planet to

turn on its own axis.

First, with regard to the pretended little vortex of the earth,

it is demonstrated that it must lose its motion by insensible

degrees; it is demonstrated, that if the earth swims in a fluid,

its density must be equal to that of the earth; and in case its

density be the same, all the bodies we endeavour to move

must meet with an insuperable resistance.

With regard to the great vortices, they are still more chi-

merical, and it is impossible to make them agree with Kepler’s

law, the truth of which has been demonstrated. Sir Isaac shows,

that the revolution of the fluid in which Jupiter is supposed

to be carried, is not the same with regard to the revolution of

the fluid of the earth, as the revolution of Jupiter with respect

to that of the earth. He proves, that as the planets make their

revolutions in ellipses, and consequently being at a much

greater distance one from the other in their Aphelia, and a

little nearer in their Perihelia; the earth’s velocity, for instance,

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ought to be greater when it is nearer Venus and Mars, because

the fluid that carries it along, being then more pressed, ought

to have a greater motion; and yet it is even then that the earth’s

motion is slower.

He proves that there is no such thing as a celestial matter

which goes from west to east since the comets traverse those

spaces, sometimes from east to west, and at other times from

north to south.

In fine, the better to resolve, if possible, every difficulty, he

proves, and even by experiments, that it is impossible there

should be a plenum; and brings back the vacuum, which

Aristotle and Descartes had banished from the world.

Having by these and several other arguments destroyed the

Cartesian vortices, he despaired of ever being able to discover

whether there is a secret principle in nature which, at the same

time, is the cause of the motion of all celestial bodies, and

that of gravity on the earth. But being retired in 1666, upon

account of the Plague, to a solitude near Cambridge; as he

was walking one day in his garden, and saw some fruits fall

from a tree, he fell into a profound meditation on that grav-

ity, the cause of which had so long been sought, but in vain,

by all the philosophers, whilst the vulgar think there is noth-

ing mysterious in it. He said to himself; that from what height

soever in our hemisphere, those bodies might descend, their

fall would certainly be in the progression discovered by Galileo;

and the spaces they run through would be as the square of the

times. Why may not this power which causes heavy bodies to

descend, and is the same without any sensible diminution at

the remotest distance from the centre of the earth, or on the

summits of the highest mountains, why, said Sir Isaac, may

not this power extend as high as the moon? And in case its

influence reaches so far, is it not very probable that this power

retains it in its orbit, and determines its motion? But in case

the moon obeys this principle (whatever it be) may we not

conclude very naturally that the rest of the planets are equally

subject to it? In case this power exists (which besides is proved)

it must increase in an inverse ratio of the squares of the dis-

tances. All, therefore, that remains is, to examine how far a

heavy body, which should fall upon the earth from a moder-

ate height, would go; and how far in the same time, a body

which should fall from the orbit of the moon, would de-

scend. To find this, nothing is wanted but the measure of the

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earth, and the distance of the moon from it.

Thus Sir Isaac Newton reasoned. But at that time the En-

glish had but a very imperfect measure of our globe, and

depended on the uncertain supposition of mariners, who

computed a degree to contain but sixty English miles, whereas

it consists in reality of near seventy. As this false computa-

tion did not agree with the conclusions which Sir Isaac in-

tended to draw from them, he laid aside this pursuit. A

half-learned philosopher, remarkable only for his vanity,

would have made the measure of the earth agree, anyhow,

with his system. Sir Isaac, however, chose rather to quit the

researches he was then engaged in. But after Mr. Picard had

measured the earth exactly, by tracing that meridian which

redounds so much to the honour of the French, Sir Isaac

Newton resumed his former reflections, and found his ac-

count in Mr. Picard’s calculation.

A circumstance which has always appeared wonderful to

me, is that such sublime discoveries should have been made

by the sole assistance of a quadrant and a little arithmetic.

The circumference of the earth is 123,249,600 feet. This, among

other things, is necessary to prove the system of attraction.

The instant we know the earth’s circumference, and the dis-

tance of the moon, we know that of the moon’s orbit, and

the diameter of this orbit. The moon performs its revolution

in that orbit in twenty-seven days, seven hours, forty-three

minutes. It is demonstrated, that the moon in its mean mo-

tion makes an hundred and fourscore and seven thousand

nine hundred and sixty feet (of Paris) in a minute. It is like-

wise demonstrated, by a known theorem, that the central force

which should make a body fall from the height of the moon,

would make its velocity no more than fifteen Paris feet in a

minute of time. Now, if the law by which bodies gravitate

and attract one another in an inverse ratio to the squares of

the distances be true, if the same power acts according to that

law throughout all nature, it is evident that as the earth is

sixty semi-diameters distant from the moon, a heavy body

must necessarily fall (on the earth) fifteen feet in the first sec-

ond, and fifty-four thousand feet in the first minute.

Now a heavy body falls, in reality, fifteen feet in the first

second, and goes in the first minute fifty-four thousand feet,

which number is the square of sixty multiplied by fifteen.

Bodies, therefore, gravitate in an inverse ratio of the squares

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of the distances; consequently, what causes gravity on earth,

and keeps the moon in its orbit, is one and the same power; it

being demonstrated that the moon gravitates on the earth,

which is the centre of its particular motion, it is demonstrated

that the earth and the moon gravitate on the sun which is the

centre of their annual motion.

The rest of the planets must be subject to this general law;

and if this law exists, these planets must follow the laws which

Kepler discovered. All these laws, all these relations are indeed

observed by the planets with the utmost exactness; therefore,

the power of attraction causes all the planets to gravitate to-

wards the sun, in like manner as the moon gravitates towards

our globe.

Finally, as in all bodies re-action is equal to action, it is

certain that the earth gravitates also towards the moon; and

that the sun gravitates towards both. That every one of the

satellites of Saturn gravitates towards the other four, and the

other four towards it; all five towards Saturn, and Saturn to-

wards all. That it is the same with regard to Jupiter; and that

all these globes are attracted by the sun, which is reciprocally

attracted by them.

This power of gravitation acts proportionably to the quan-

tity of matter in bodies, a truth which Sir Isaac has demon-

strated by experiments. This new discovery has been of use to

show that the sun (the centre of the planetary system) attracts

them all in a direct ratio of their quantity of matter com-

bined with their nearness. From hence Sir Isaac, rising by de-

grees to discoveries which seemed not to be formed for the

human mind, is bold enough to compute the quantity of

matter contained in the sun and in every planet; and in this

manner shows, from the simple laws of mechanics, that every

celestial globe ought necessarily to be where it is placed.

His bare principle of the laws of gravitation accounts for all

the apparent inequalities in the course of the celestial globes.

The variations of the moon are a necessary consequence of

those laws. Moreover, the reason is evidently seen why the

nodes of the moon perform their revolutions in nineteen years,

and those of the earth in about twenty-six thousand. The

several appearances observed in the tides are also a very simple

effect of this attraction. The proximity of the moon, when at

the full, and when it is new, and its distance in the quadra-

tures or quarters, combined with the action of the sun, ex-

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hibit a sensible reason why the ocean swells and sinks.

After having shown by his sublime theory the course and

inequalities of the planets, he subjects comets to the same

law. The orbit of these fires (unknown for so great a series of

years), which was the terror of mankind and the rock against

which philosophy split, placed by Aristotle below the moon,

and sent back by Descartes above the sphere of Saturn, is at

last placed in its proper seat by Sir Isaac Newton.

He proves that comets are solid bodies which move in the

sphere of the sun’s activity, and that they describe an ellipsis

so very eccentric, and so near to parabolas, that certain comets

must take up above five hundred years in their revolution.

The learned Dr. Halley is of opinion that the comet seen in

1680 is the same which appeared in Julius Caesar’s time. This

shows more than any other that comets are hard, opaque bod-

ies; for it descended so near to the sun, as to come within a

sixth part of the diameter of this planet from it, and conse-

quently might have contracted a degree of heat two thousand

times stronger than that of red-hot iron; and would have been

soon dispersed in vapour, had it not been a firm, dense body.

The guessing the course of comets began then to be very much

in vogue. The celebrated Bernoulli concluded by his system

that the famous comet of 1680 would appear again the 17th

of May, 1719. Not a single astronomer in Europe went to

bed that night. However, they needed not to have broke their

rest, for the famous comet never appeared. There is at least

more cunning, if not more certainty, in fixing its return to so

remote a distance as five hundred and seventy-five years. As

to Mr. Whiston, he affirmed very seriously that in the time

of the Deluge a comet overflowed the terrestrial globe. And

he was so unreasonable as to wonder that people laughed at

him for making such an assertion. The ancients were almost

in the same way of thinking with Mr. Whiston, and fancied

that comets were always the forerunners of some great calam-

ity which was to befall mankind. Sir Isaac Newton, on the

contrary, suspected that they are very beneficent, and that

vapours exhale from them merely to nourish and vivify the

planets, which imbibe in their course the several particles the

sun has detached from the comets, an opinion which, at least,

is more probable than the former. But this is not all. If this

power of gravitation or attraction acts on all the celestial globes,

it acts undoubtedly on the several parts of these globes. For in

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case bodies attract one another in proportion to the quantity

of matter contained in them, it can only be in proportion to

the quantity of their parts; and if this power is found in the

whole, it is undoubtedly in the half; in the quarters in the

eighth part, and so on in infinitum.

This is attraction, the great spring by which all Nature is

moved. Sir Isaac Newton, after having demonstrated the ex-

istence of this principle, plainly foresaw that its very name

would offend; and, therefore, this philosopher, in more places

than one of his books, gives the reader some caution about it.

He bids him beware of confounding this name with what the

ancients called occult qualities, but to be satisfied with know-

ing that there is in all bodies a central force, which acts to the

utmost limits of the universe, according to the invariable laws

of mechanics.

It is surprising, after the solemn protestations Sir Isaac made,

that such eminent men as Mr. Sorin and Mr. de Fontenelle

should have imputed to this great philosopher the verbal and

chimerical way of reasoning of the Aristotelians; Mr. Sorin in

the Memoirs of the Academy of 1709, and Mr. de Fontenelle

in the very eulogium of Sir Isaac Newton.

Most of the French (the learned and others) have repeated

this reproach. These are for ever crying out, “Why did he not

employ the word impulsion, which is so well understood, rather

than that of attraction, which is unintelligible?”

Sir Isaac might have answered these critics thus: —”First,

you have as imperfect an idea of the word impulsion as of

that of attraction; and in case you cannot conceive how one

body tends towards the centre of another body, neither can

you conceive by what power one body can impel another.

“Secondly, I could not admit of impulsion; for to do this I

must have known that a celestial matter was the agent. But so

far from knowing that there is any such matter, I have proved

it to be merely imaginary.

“Thirdly, I use the word attraction for no other reason but

to express an effect which I discovered in Nature—a certain

and indisputable effect of an unknown principle—a quality

inherent in matter, the cause of which persons of greater abili-

ties than I can pretend to may, if they can, find out.”

“What have you, then, taught us?” will these people say

further; “and to what purpose are so many calculations to tell

us what you yourself do not comprehend?”

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“I have taught you,” may Sir Isaac rejoin, “that all bodies

gravitate towards one another in proportion to their quantity

of matter; that these central forces alone keep the planets and

comets in their orbits, and cause them to move in the pro-

portion before set down. I demonstrate to you that it is im-

possible there should be any other cause which keeps the plan-

ets in their orbits than that general phenomenon of gravity.

For heavy bodies fall on the earth according to the propor-

tion demonstrated of central forces; and the planets finishing

their course according to these same proportions, in case there

were another power that acted upon all those bodies, it would

either increase their velocity or change their direction. Now,

not one of those bodies ever has a single degree of motion or

velocity, or has any direction but what is demonstrated to be

the effect of the central forces. Consequently it is impossible

there should be any other principle.”

Give me leave once more to introduce Sir Isaac speaking.

Shall he not be allowed to say? “My case and that of the an-

cients is very different. These saw, for instance, water ascend

in pumps, and said, ‘The water rises because it abhors a

vacuum.’ But with regard to myself; I am in the case of a man

who should have first observed that water ascends in pumps,

but should leave others to explain the cause of this effect. The

anatomist, who first declared that the motion of the arm is

owing to the contraction of the muscles, taught mankind an

indisputable truth. But are they less obliged to him because

he did not know the reason why the muscles contract? The

cause of the elasticity of the air is unknown, but he who first

discovered this spring performed a very signal service to natu-

ral philosophy. The spring that I discovered was more hidden

and more universal, and for that very reason mankind ought

to thank me the more. I have discovered a new property of

matter—one of the secrets of the Creator—and have calcu-

lated and discovered the effects of it. After this, shall people

quarrel with me about the name I give it?”

Vortices may be called an occult quality, because their exist-

ence was never proved. Attraction, on the contrary, is a real

thing, because its effects are demonstrated, and the propor-

tions of it are calculated. The cause of this cause is among the

Arcana of the Almighty.

“Precedes huc, et non amplius.”

(Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther.)

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LETTER XVI.—ON SIR ISAAC NEWTON’S OPTICS

T HE PHILOSOPHERS of the last age found out a new

universe; and a circumstance which made its dis-

covery more difficult was that no one had so much

as suspected its existence. The most sage and judicious were

of opinion that it was a frantic rashness to dare so much as to

imagine that it was possible to guess the laws by which the

celestial bodies move and the manner how light acts. Galileo,

by his astronomical discoveries, Kepler, by his calculation,

Descartes (at least, in his dioptrics), and Sir Isaac Newton, in

all his works, severally saw the mechanism of the springs of

the world. The geometricians have subjected infinity to the

laws of calculation. The circulation of the blood in animals,

and of the sap in vegetables, have changed the face of Nature

with regard to us. A new kind of existence has been given to

bodies in the air-pump. By the assistance of telescopes bodies

have been brought nearer to one another. Finally, the several

discoveries which Sir Isaac Newton has made on light are

equal to the boldest things which the curiosity of man could

expect after so many philosophical novelties.

Till Antonio de Dominis the rainbow was considered as an

inexplicable miracle. This philosopher guessed that it was a

necessary effect of the sun and rain. Descartes gained immor-

tal fame by his mathematical explication of this so natural a

phenomenon. He calculated the reflections and refractions of

light in drops of rain. And his sagacity on this occasion was at

that time looked upon as next to divine.

But what would he have said had it been proved to him

that he was mistaken in the nature of light; that he had not

the least reason to maintain that it is a globular body? That it

is false to assert that this matter, spreading itself through the

whole, waits only to be projected forward by the sun, in or-

der to be put in action, in like manner as a long staff acts at

one end when pushed forward by the other. That light is cer-

tainly darted by the sun; in fine, that light is transmitted from

the sun to the earth in about seven minutes, though a can-

nonball, which were not to lose any of its velocity, could not

go that distance in less than twenty-five years. How great

would have been his astonishment had he been told that light

does not reflect directly by impinging against the solid parts

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of bodies, that bodies are not transparent when they have

large pores, and that a man should arise who would demon-

strate all these paradoxes, and anatomise a single ray of light

with more dexterity than the ablest artist dissects a human

body. This man is come. Sir Isaac Newton has demonstrated

to the eye, by the bare assistance of the prism, that light is a

composition of coloured rays, which, being united, form white

colour. A single ray is by him divided into seven, which all

fall upon a piece of linen, or a sheet of white paper, in their

order, one above the other, and at unequal distances. The first

is red, the second orange, the third yellow, the fourth green,

the fifth blue, the sixth indigo, the seventh a violet-purple.

Each of these rays, transmitted afterwards by a hundred other

prisms, will never change the colour it bears; in like manner,

as gold, when completely purged from its dross, will never

change afterwards in the crucible. As a superabundant proof

that each of these elementary rays has inherently in itself that

which forms its colour to the eye, take a small piece of yellow

wood, for instance, and set it in the ray of a red colour; this

wood will instantly be tinged red. But set it in the ray of a

green colour, it assumes a green colour, and so of all the rest.

From what cause, therefore, do colours arise in Nature? It

is nothing but the disposition of bodies to reflect the rays of

a certain order and to absorb all the rest.

What, then, is this secret disposition? Sir Isaac Newton dem-

onstrates that it is nothing more than the density of the small

constituent particles of which a body is composed. And how

is this reflection performed? It was supposed to arise from the

rebounding of the rays, in the same manner as a ball on the

surface of a solid body. But this is a mistake, for Sir Isaac

taught the astonished philosophers that bodies are opaque for

no other reason but because their pores are large, that light

reflects on our eyes from the very bosom of those pores, that

the smaller the pores of a body are the more such a body is

transparent. Thus paper, which reflects the light when dry,

transmits it when oiled, because the oil, by filling its pores,

makes them much smaller.

It is there that examining the vast porosity of bodies, every

particle having its pores, and every particle of those particles

having its own, he shows we are not certain that there is a

cubic inch of solid matter in the universe, so far are we from

conceiving what matter is. Having thus divided, as it were,

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light into its elements, and carried the sagacity of his discov-

eries so far as to prove the method of distinguishing com-

pound colours from such as are primitive, he shows that these

elementary rays, separated by the prism, are ranged in their

order for no other reason but because they are refracted in

that very order; and it is this property (unknown till he dis-

covered it) of breaking or splitting in this proportion; it is

this unequal refraction of rays, this power of refracting the

red less than the orange colour, &c., which he calls the differ-

ent refrangibility. The most reflexible rays are the most re-

frangible, and from hence he evinces that the same power is

the cause both of the reflection and refraction of light.

But all these wonders are merely but the opening of his

discoveries. He found out the secret to see the vibrations or

fits of light which come and go incessantly, and which either

transmit light or reflect it, according to the density of the

parts they meet with. He has presumed to calculate the den-

sity of the particles of air necessary between two glasses, the

one flat, the other convex on one side, set one upon the other,

in order to operate such a transmission or reflection, or to

form such and such a colour.

From all these combinations he discovers the proportion in

which light acts on bodies and bodies act on light.

He saw light so perfectly, that he has determined to what

degree of perfection the art of increasing it, and of assisting

our eyes by telescopes, can be carried.

Descartes, from a noble confidence that was very excusable,

considering how strongly he was fired at the first discoveries

he made in an art which he almost first found out; Descartes,

I say, hoped to discover in the stars, by the assistance of tele-

scopes, objects as small as those we discern upon the earth.

But Sir Isaac has shown that dioptric telescopes cannot be

brought to a greater perfection, because of that refraction,

and of that very refrangibility, which at the same time that

they bring objects nearer to us, scatter too much the elemen-

tary rays. He has calculated in these glasses the proportion of

the scattering of the red and of the blue rays; and proceeding

so far as to demonstrate things which were not supposed even

to exist, he examines the inequalities which arise from the

shape or figure of the glass, and that which arises from the

refrangibility. He finds that the object glass of the telescope

being convex on one side and flat on the other, in case the flat

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side be turned towards the object, the error which arises from

the construction and position of the glass is above five thou-

sand times less than the error which arises from the refrangi-

bility; and, therefore, that the shape or figure of the glasses is

not the cause why telescopes cannot be carried to a greater

perfection, but arises wholly from the nature of light.

For this reason he invented a telescope, which discovers ob-

jects by reflection, and not by refraction. Telescopes of this

new kind are very hard to make, and their use is not easy; but,

according to the English, a reflective telescope of but five feet

has the same effect as another of a hundred feet in length.

LETTER XVII.—ON INFINITES IN GEOM- ETRY, AND SIR ISAAC NEWTON’S CHRO-

NOLOGY

T HE LABYRINTH and abyss of infinity is also a new

course Sir Isaac Newton has gone through, and we

are obliged to him for the clue, by whose assistance

we are enabled to trace its various windings.

Descartes got the start of him also in this astonishing in-

vention. He advanced with mighty steps in his geometry, and

was arrived at the very borders of infinity, but went no far-

ther. Dr. Wallis, about the middle of the last century, was the

first who reduced a fraction by a perpetual division to an infi-

nite series.

The Lord Brouncker employed this series to square the hy-

perbola.

Mercator published a demonstration of this quadrature;

much about which time Sir Isaac Newton, being then twenty-

three years of age, had invented a general method, to perform

on all geometrical curves what had just before been tried on

the hyperbola.

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It is to this method of subjecting everywhere infinity to

algebraical calculations, that the name is given of differential

calculations or of fluxions and integral calculation. It is the

art of numbering and measuring exactly a thing whose exist-

ence cannot be conceived.

And, indeed, would you not imagine that a man laughed at

you who should declare that there are lines infinitely great

which form an angle infinitely little?

That a right line, which is a right line so long as it is finite,

by changing infinitely little its direction, becomes an infinite

curve; and that a curve may become infinitely less than an-

other curve?

That there are infinite squares, infinite cubes, and infinites

of infinites, all greater than one another, and the last but one

of which is nothing in comparison of the last?

All these things, which at first appear to be the utmost ex-

cess of frenzy, are in reality an effort of the subtlety and extent

of the human mind, and the art of finding truths which till

then had been unknown.

This so bold edifice is even founded on simple ideas. The

business is to measure the diagonal of a square, to give the

area of a curve, to find the square root of a number, which has

none in common arithmetic. After all, the imagination ought

not to be startled any more at so many orders of infinites

than at the so well-known proposition, viz., that curve lines

may always be made to pass between a circle and a tangent; or

at that other, namely, that matter is divisible in infinitum.

These two truths have been demonstrated many years, and

are no less incomprehensible than the things we have been

speaking of.

For many years the invention of this famous calculation

was denied to Sir Isaac Newton. In Germany Mr. Leibnitz

was considered as the inventor of the differences or moments,

called fluxions, and Mr. Bernouilli claimed the integral calcu-

lus. However, Sir Isaac is now thought to have first made the

discovery, and the other two have the glory of having once

made the world doubt whether it was to be ascribed to him

or them. Thus some contested with Dr. Harvey the inven-

tion of the circulation of the blood, as others disputed with

Mr. Perrault that of the circulation of the sap.

Hartsocher and Leuwenhoek disputed with each other the

honour of having first seen the vermiculi of which mankind

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are formed. This Hartsocher also contested with Huygens

the invention of a new method of calculating the distance of

a fixed star. It is not yet known to what philosopher we owe

the invention of the cycloid.

Be this as it will, it is by the help of this geometry of infinites

that Sir Isaac Newton attained to the most sublime discover-

ies. I am now to speak of another work, which, though more

adapted to the capacity of the human mind, does nevertheless

display some marks of that creative genius with which Sir

Isaac Newton was informed in all his researches. The work I

mean is a chronology of a new kind, for what province soever

he undertook he was sure to change the ideas and opinions

received by the rest of men.

Accustomed to unravel and disentangle chaos, he was re-

solved to convey at least some light into that of the fables of

antiquity which are blended and confounded with history,

and fix an uncertain chronology. It is true that there is no

family, city, or nation, but endeavours to remove its original

as far backward as possible. Besides, the first historians were

the most negligent in setting down the eras: books were infi-

nitely less common than they are at this time, and, conse-

quently, authors being not so obnoxious to censure, they there-

fore imposed upon the world with greater impunity; and, as

it is evident that these have related a great number of ficti-

tious particulars, it is probable enough that they also gave us

several false eras.

It appeared in general to Sir Isaac that the world was five

hundred years younger than chronologers declare it to be. He

grounds his opinion on the ordinary course of Nature, and

on the observations which astronomers have made.

By the course of Nature we here understand the time that

every generation of men lives upon the earth. The Egyptians

first employed this vague and uncertain method of calculat-

ing when they began to write the beginning of their history.

These computed three hundred and forty-one generations

from Menes to Sethon; and, having no fixed era, they sup-

posed three generations to consist of a hundred years. In this

manner they computed eleven thousand three hundred and

forty years from Menes’s reign to that of Sethon.

The Greeks before they counted by Olympiads followed

the method of the Egyptians, and even gave a little more ex-

tent to generations, making each to consist of forty years.

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Now, here, both the Egyptians and the Greeks made an

erroneous computation. It is true, indeed, that, according to

the usual course of Nature, three generations last about a hun-

dred and twenty years; but three reigns are far from taking up

so many. It is very evident that mankind in general live longer

than kings are found to reign, so that an author who should

write a history in which there were no dates fixed, and should

know that nine kings had reigned over a nation; such an his-

torian would commit a great error should he allow three hun-

dred years to these nine monarchs. Every generation takes about

thirty-six years; every reign is, one with the other, about twenty.

Thirty kings of England have swayed the sceptre from Will-

iam the Conqueror to George I., the years of whose reigns

added together amount to six hundred and forty-eight years;

which, being divided equally among the thirty kings, give to

every one a reign of twenty-one years and a half very near.

Sixty-three kings of France have sat upon the throne; these

have, one with another, reigned about twenty years each. This

is the usual course of Nature. The ancients, therefore, were

mistaken when they supposed the durations in general of reigns

to equal that of generations. They, therefore, allowed too great

a number of years, and consequently some years must be sub-

tracted from their computation.

Astronomical observations seem to have lent a still greater

assistance to our philosopher. He appears to us stronger when

he fights upon his own ground.

You know that the earth, besides its annual motion which

carries it round the sun from west to east in the space of a

year, has also a singular revolution which was quite unknown

till within these late years. Its poles have a very slow retro-

grade motion from east to west, whence it happens that their

position every day does not correspond exactly with the same

point of the heavens. This difference, which is so insensible in

a year, becomes pretty considerable in time; and in threescore

and twelve years the difference is found to be of one degree,

that is to say, the three hundred and sixtieth part of the cir-

cumference of the whole heaven. Thus after seventy-two years

the colure of the vernal equinox which passed through a fixed

star, corresponds with another fixed star. Hence it is that the

sun, instead of being in that part of the heavens in which the

Ram was situated in the time of Hipparchus, is found to

correspond with that part of the heavens in which the Bull

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was situated; and the Twins are placed where the Bull then

stood. All the signs have changed their situation, and yet we

still retain the same manner of speaking as the ancients did. In

this age we say that the sun is in the Ram in the spring, from

the same principle of condescension that we say that the sun

turns round.

Hipparchus was the first among the Greeks who observed

some change in the constellations with regard to the equi-

noxes, or rather who learnt it from the Egyptians. Philoso-

phers ascribed this motion to the stars; for in those ages people

were far from imagining such a revolution in the earth, which

was supposed to be immovable in every respect. They there-

fore created a heaven in which they fixed the several stars, and

gave this heaven a particular motion by which it was carried

towards the east, whilst that all the stars seemed to perform

their diurnal revolution from east to west. To this error they

added a second of much greater consequence, by imagining

that the pretended heaven of the fixed stars advanced one de-

gree eastward every hundred years. In this manner they were

no less mistaken in their astronomical calculation than in their

system of natural philosophy. As for instance, an astronomer

in that age would have said that the vernal equinox was in the

time of such and such an observation, in such a sign, and in

such a star. It has advanced two degrees of each since the time

that observation was made to the present. Now two degrees

are equivalent to two hundred years; consequently the astrono-

mer who made that observation lived just so many years before

me. It is certain that an astronomer who had argued in this

manner would have mistook just fifty-four years; hence it is

that the ancients, who were doubly deceived, made their great

year of the world, that is, the revolution of the whole heavens,

to consist of thirty-six thousand years. But the moderns are

sensible that this imaginary revolution of the heaven of the

stars is nothing else than the revolution of the poles of the

earth, which is performed in twenty-five thousand nine hun-

dred years. It may be proper to observe transiently in this place,

that Sir Isaac, by determining the figure of the earth, has very

happily explained the cause of this revolution.

All this being laid down, the only thing remaining to settle

chronology is to see through what star the colure of the equi-

noxes passes, and where it intersects at this time the ecliptic in

the spring; and to discover whether some ancient writer does

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not tell us in what point the ecliptic was intersected in his

time, by the same colure of the equinoxes.

Clemens Alexandrinus informs us, that Chiron, who went

with the Argonauts, observed the constellations at the time

of that famous expedition, and fixed the vernal equinox to

the middle of the Ram; the autumnal equinox to the middle

of Libra; our summer solstice to the middle of Cancer, and

our winter solstice to the middle of Capricorn.

A long time after the expedition of the Argonauts, and a

year before the Peloponnesian war, Methon observed that the

point of the summer solstice passed through the eighth de-

gree of Cancer.

Now every sign of the zodiac contains thirty degrees. In

Chiron’s time, the solstice was arrived at the middle of the

sign, that is to say to the fifteenth degree. A year before the

Peloponnesian war it was at the eighth, and therefore it had

retarded seven degrees. A degree is equivalent to seventy-two

years; consequently, from the beginning of the Peloponnesian

war to the expedition of the Argonauts, there is no more than

an interval of seven times seventy-two years, which make five

hundred and four years, and not seven hundred years as the

Greeks computed. Thus in comparing the position of the heav-

ens at this time with their position in that age, we find that the

expedition of the Argonauts ought to be placed about nine

hundred years before Christ, and not about fourteen hundred;

and consequently that the world is not so old by five hundred

years as it was generally supposed to be. By this calculation all

the eras are drawn nearer, and the several events are found to

have happened later than is computed. I do not know whether

this ingenious system will be favourably received; and whether

these notions will prevail so far with the learned, as to prompt

them to reform the chronology of the world. Perhaps these

gentlemen would think it too great a condescension to allow

one and the same man the glory of having improved natural

philosophy, geometry, and history. This would be a kind of

universal monarchy, with which the principle of self-love that

is in man will scarce suffer him to indulge his fellow-creature;

and, indeed, at the same time that some very great philoso-

phers attacked Sir Isaac Newton’s attractive principle, others

fell upon his chronological system. Time that should discover

to which of these the victory is due, may perhaps only leave the

dispute still more undetermined.

Voltaire

LETTER XVIII.—ON TRAGEDY

T HE ENGLISH as well as the Spaniards were possessed

of theatres at a time when the French had no more

than moving, itinerant stages. Shakspeare, who was

considered as the Corneille of the first-mentioned nation, was

pretty nearly contemporary with Lopez de Vega, and he cre-

ated, as it were, the English theatre. Shakspeare boasted a strong

fruitful genius. He was natural and sublime, but had not so

much as a single spark of good taste, or knew one rule of the

drama. I will now hazard a random, but, at the same time,

true reflection, which is, that the great merit of this dramatic

poet has been the ruin of the English stage. There are such

beautiful, such noble, such dreadful scenes in this writer’s mon-

strous farces, to which the name of tragedy is given, that they

have always been exhibited with great success. Time, which

alone gives reputation to writers, at last makes their very faults

venerable. Most of the whimsical gigantic images of this poet,

have, through length of time (it being a hundred and fifty

years since they were first drawn) acquired a right of passing

for sublime. Most of the modern dramatic writers have cop-

ied him; but the touches and descriptions which are applauded

in Shakspeare, are hissed at in these writers; and you will eas-

ily believe that the veneration in which this author is held,

increases in proportion to the contempt which is shown to

the moderns. Dramatic writers don’t consider that they should

not imitate him; and the ill-success of Shakspeare’s imitators

produces no other effect, than to make him be considered as

inimitable. You remember that in the tragedy of Othello,

Moor of Venice, a most tender piece, a man strangles his wife

on the stage, and that the poor woman, whilst she is stran-

gling, cries aloud that she dies very unjustly. You know that in

Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, two grave-diggers make a grave,

and are all the time drinking, singing ballads, and making

humorous reflections (natural indeed enough to persons of

their profession) on the several skulls they throw up with

their spades; but a circumstance which will surprise you is,

that this ridiculous incident has been imitated. In the reign of

King Charles II., which was that of politeness, and the Golden

Age of the liberal arts; Otway, in his Venice Preserved, intro-

duces Antonio the senator, and Naki, his courtesan, in the

midst of the horrors of the Marquis of Bedemar’s conspiracy.

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Antonio, the superannuated senator plays, in his mistress’s

presence, all the apish tricks of a lewd, impotent debauchee,

who is quite frantic and out of his senses. He mimics a bull

and a dog, and bites his mistress’s legs, who kicks and whips

him. However, the players have struck these buffooneries

(which indeed were calculated merely for the dregs of the

people) out of Otway’s tragedy; but they have still left in

Shakspeare’s Julius Caesar the jokes of the Roman shoemak-

ers and cobblers, who are introduced in the same scene with

Brutus and Cassius. You will undoubtedly complain, that those

who have hitherto discoursed with you on the English stage,

and especially on the celebrated Shakspeare, have taken notice

only of his errors; and that no one has translated any of those

strong, those forcible passages which atone for all his faults.

But to this I will answer, that nothing is easier than to exhibit

in prose all the silly impertinences which a poet may have

thrown out; but that it is a very difficult task to translate his

fine verses. All your junior academical sophs, who set up for

censors of the eminent writers, compile whole volumes; but

methinks two pages which display some of the beauties of

great geniuses, are of infinitely more value than all the idle

rhapsodies of those commentators; and I will join in opinion

with all persons of good taste in declaring, that greater advan-

tage may be reaped from a dozen verses of Homer of Virgil,

than from all the critiques put together which have been made

on those two great poets.

I have ventured to translate some passages of the most cel-

ebrated English poets, and shall now give you one from

Shakspeare. Pardon the blemishes of the translation for the

sake of the original; and remember always that when you see

a version, you see merely a faint print of a beautiful picture. I

have made choice of part of the celebrated soliloquy in Ham-

let, which you may remember is as follows:—

“To be, or not to be? that is the question!

Whether ‘t is nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And by opposing, end them? To die! to sleep!

No more! and by a sleep to say we end

The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to! ’Tis a consummation

Voltaire

Devoutly to be wished. To die! to sleep!

To sleep; perchance to dream! O, there’s the rub;

For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause. There’s the respect

That makes calamity of so long life:

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,

The oppressor’s wrong, the poor man’s contumely,

The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,

The insolence of office, and the spurns

That patient merit of the unworthy takes,

When he himself might his quietus make

With a bare bodkin. Who would fardels bear

To groan and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death,

The undiscovered country, from whose bourn

No traveller returns, puzzles the will,

And makes us rather bear those ills we have,

Than fly to others that we know not of?

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought:

And enterprises of great weight and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry,

And lose the name of action—”

My version of it runs thus:—

“Demeure, il faut choisir et passer a l’instant

De la vie, a la mort, ou de l’etre au neant.

Dieux cruels, s’il en est, eclairez mon courage.

Faut-il vieillir courbe sous la main qui m’outrage,

Supporter, ou finir mon malheur et mon sort?

Qui suis je? Qui m’arrete! et qu’est-ce que la mort?

C’est la fin de nos maux, c’est mon unique asile

Apres de longs transports, c’est un sommeil tranquile.

On s’endort, et tout meurt, mais un affreux reveil

Doit succeder peut etre aux douceurs du sommeil!

On nous menace, on dit que cette courte vie,

De tourmens eternels est aussi-tot suivie.

O mort! moment fatal! affreuse eternite!

Tout coeur a ton seul nom se glace epouvante.

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Eh! qui pourroit sans toi supporter cette vie,

De nos pretres menteurs benir l’hypocrisie:

D’une indigne maitresse encenser les erreurs,

Ramper sous un ministre, adorer ses hauteurs;

Et montrer les langueurs de son ame abattue,

A des amis ingrats qui detournent la vue?

La mort seroit trop douce en ces extremitez,

Mais le scrupule parle, et nous crie, arretez;

Il defend a nos mains cet heureux homicide

Et d’un heros guerrier, fait un Chretien timide,” &c.

Do not imagine that I have translated Shakspeare in a ser-

vile manner. Woe to the writer who gives a literal version;

who by rendering every word of his original, by that very

means enervates the sense, and extinguishes all the fire of it. It

is on such an occasion one may justly affirm, that the letter

kills, but the Spirit quickens.

Here follows another passage copied from a celebrated tragic

writer among the English. It is Dryden, a poet in the reign of

Charles II.—a writer whose genius was too exuberant, and

not accompanied with judgment enough. Had he written only

a tenth part of the works he left behind him, his character

would have been conspicuous in every part; but his great fault

is his having endeavoured to be universal.

The passage in question is as follows:—

“When I consider life, ‘t is all a cheat,

Yet fooled by hope, men favour the deceit;

Trust on and think, to-morrow will repay;

To-morrow’s falser than the former day;

Lies more; and whilst it says we shall be blest

With some new joy, cuts off what we possessed;

Strange cozenage! none would live past years again,

Yet all hope pleasure in what yet remain,

And from the dregs of life think to receive

What the first sprightly running could not give.

I’m tired with waiting for this chymic gold,

Which fools us young, and beggars us when old.”

I shall now give you my translation:—

“De desseins en regrets et d’erreurs en desirs

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Les mortals insenses promenent leur folie.

Dans des malheurs presents, dans l’espoir des plaisirs

Nous ne vivons jamais, nous attendons la vie.

Demain, demain, dit-on, va combler tous nos voeux.

Demain vient, et nous laisse encore plus malheureux.

Quelle est l’erreur, helas! du soin qui nous devore,

Nul de nous ne voudroit recommencer son cours.

De nos premiers momens nous maudissons l’aurore,

Et de la nuit qui vient nous attendons encore,

Ce qu’ont en vain promis les plus beaux de nos jours,” &c.

It is in these detached passages that the English have hith-

erto excelled. Their dramatic pieces, most of which are barba-

rous and without decorum, order, or verisimilitude, dart such

resplendent flashes through this gleam, as amaze and aston-

ish. The style is too much inflated, too unnatural, too closely

copied from the Hebrew writers, who abound so much with

the Asiatic fustian. But then it must be also confessed that the

stilts of the figurative style, on which the English tongue is

lifted up, raises the genius at the same time very far aloft,

though with an irregular pace. The first English writer who

composed a regular tragedy, and infused a spirit of elegance

through every part of it, was the illustrious Mr. Addison. His

“Cato” is a masterpiece, both with regard to the diction and

to the beauty and harmony of the numbers. The character of

Cato is, in my opinion, vastly superior to that of Cornelia in

the “Pompey” of Corneille, for Cato is great without any-

thing like fustian, and Cornelia, who besides is not a neces-

sary character, tends sometimes to bombast. Mr. Addison’s

Cato appears to me the greatest character that was ever brought

upon any stage, but then the rest of them do not correspond

to the dignity of it, and this dramatic piece, so excellently

well writ, is disfigured by a dull love plot, which spreads a

certain languor over the whole, that quite murders it.

The custom of introducing love at random and at any rate

in the drama passed from Paris to London about 1660, with

our ribbons and our perruques. The ladies who adorn the

theatrical circle there, in like manner as in this city, will suffer

love only to be the theme of every conversation. The judi-

cious Mr. Addison had the effeminate complaisance to soften

the severity of his dramatic character, so as to adapt it to the

manners of the age, and, from an endeavour to please, quite

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ruined a masterpiece in its kind. Since his time the drama is

become more regular, the audience more difficult to be pleased,

and writers more correct and less bold. I have seen some new

pieces that were written with great regularity, but which, at

the same time, were very flat and insipid. One would think

that the English had been hitherto formed to produce irregu-

lar beauties only. The shining monsters of Shakspeare give

infinite more delight than the judicious images of the moderns.

Hitherto the poetical genius of the English resembles a tufted

tree planted by the hand of Nature, that throws out a thou-

sand branches at random, and spreads unequally, but with

great vigour. It dies if you attempt to force its nature, and to

lop and dress it in the same manner as the trees of the Garden

of Marli.

LETTER XIX.—ON COMEDY

I AM SURPRISED that the judicious and ingenious Mr. de

Muralt, who has published some letters on the English

and French nations, should have confined himself; in

treating of comedy, merely to censure Shadwell the comic

writer. This author was had in pretty great contempt in Mr.

de Muralt’s time, and was not the poet of the polite part of

the nation. His dramatic pieces, which pleased some time in

acting, were despised by all persons of taste, and might be

compared to many plays which I have seen in France, that

drew crowds to the play-house, at the same time that they

were intolerable to read; and of which it might be said, that

the whole city of Paris exploded them, and yet all flocked to

see them represented on the stage. Methinks Mr. de Muralt

should have mentioned an excellent comic writer (living when

he was in England), I mean Mr. Wycherley, who was a long

time known publicly to be happy in the good graces of the

most celebrated mistress of King Charles II. This gentleman,

who passed his life among persons of the highest distinction,

was perfectly well acquainted with their lives and their follies,

Voltaire

and painted them with the strongest pencil, and in the truest

colours. He has drawn a misanthrope or man-hater, in imita-

tion of that of Moliere. All Wycherley’s strokes are stronger

and bolder than those of our misanthrope, but then they are

less delicate, and the rules of decorum are not so well ob-

served in this play. The English writer has corrected the only

defect that is in Moliere’s comedy, the thinness of the plot,

which also is so disposed that the characters in it do not enough

raise our concern. The English comedy affects us, and the

contrivance of the plot is very ingenious, but at the same time

it is too bold for the French manners. The fable is this:- A

captain of a man-of-war, who is very brave, open-hearted,

and inflamed with a spirit of contempt for all mankind, has a

prudent, sincere friend, whom he yet is suspicious of; and a

mistress that loves him with the utmost excess of passion.

The captain so far from returning her love, will not even con-

descend to look upon her, but confides entirely in a false friend,

who is the most worthless wretch living. At the same time he

has given his heart to a creature, who is the greatest coquette

and the most perfidious of her sex, and he is so credulous as

to be confident she is a Penelope, and his false friend a Cato.

He embarks on board his ship in order to go and fight the

Dutch, having left all his money, his jewels, and everything

he had in the world to this virtuous creature, whom at the

same time he recommends to the care of his supposed faith-

ful friend. Nevertheless the real man of honour, whom he

suspects so unaccountably, goes on board the ship with him,

and the mistress, on whom he would not bestow so much as

one glance, disguises herself in the habit of a page, and is with

him the whole voyage, without his once knowing that she is

of a sex different from that she attempts to pass for, which,

by the way, is not over natural.

The captain having blown up his own ship in an engage-

ment, returns to England abandoned and undone, accompa-

nied by his page and his friend, without knowing the friend-

ship of the one or the tender passion of the other. Immedi-

ately he goes to the jewel among women, who he expected

had preserved her fidelity to him and the treasure he had left

in her hands. He meets with her indeed, but married to the

honest knave in whom he had reposed so much confidence,

and finds she had acted as treacherously with regard to the

casket he had entrusted her with. The captain can scarce think

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it possible that a woman of virtue and honour can act so vile

a part; but to convince him still more of the reality of it, this

very worthy lady falls in love with the little page, and will

force him to her embraces. But as it is requisite justice should

be done, and that in a dramatic piece virtue ought to be re-

warded and vice punished, it is at last found that the captain

takes his page’s place, and lies with his faithless mistress, cuck-

olds his treacherous friend, thrusts his sword through his body,

recovers his casket, and marries his page. You will observe that

this play is also larded with a petulant, litigious old woman (a

relation of the captain), who is the most comical character

that was ever brought upon the stage.

Wycherley has also copied from Moliere another play, of as

singular and bold a cast, which is a kind of Ecole des Femmes,

or, School for Married Women.

The principal character in this comedy is one Homer, a sly

fortune hunter, and the terror of all the City husbands. This

fellow, in order to play a surer game, causes a report to be

spread, that in his last illness, the surgeons had found it neces-

sary to have him made a eunuch. Upon his appearing in this

noble character, all the husbands in town flock to him with

their wives, and now poor Homer is only puzzled about his

choice. However, he gives the preference particularly to a little

female peasant, a very harmless, innocent creature, who en-

joys a fine flush of health, and cuckolds her husband with a

simplicity that has infinitely more merit than the witty mal-

ice of the most experienced ladies. This play cannot indeed be

called the school of good morals, but it is certainly the school

of wit and true humour.

Sir John Vanbrugh has written several comedies, which are

more humorous than those of Mr. Wycherley, but not so

ingenious. Sir John was a man of pleasure, and likewise a

poet and an architect. The general opinion is, that he is as

sprightly in his writings as he is heavy in his buildings. It is he

who raised the famous Castle of Blenheim, a ponderous and

lasting monument of our unfortunate Battle of Hochstet.

Were the apartments but as spacious as the walls are thick,

this castle would be commodious enough. Some wag, in an

epitaph he made on Sir John Vanbrugh, has these lines:—

“Earth lie light on him, for he

Laid many a heavy load on thee.”

Voltaire

Sir John having taken a tour into France before the glori-

ous war that broke out in 1701, was thrown into the Bastille,

and detained there for some time, without being ever able to

discover the motive which had prompted our ministry to

indulge him with this mark of their distinction. He wrote a

comedy during his confinement; and a circumstance which

appears to me very extraordinary is, that we don’t meet with

so much as a single satirical stroke against the country in which

he had been so injuriously treated.

The late Mr. Congreve raised the glory of comedy to a greater

height than any English writer before or since his time. He

wrote only a few plays, but they are all excellent in their kind.

The laws of the drama are strictly observed in them; they

abound with characters all which are shadowed with the ut-

most delicacy, and we don’t meet with so much as one low or

coarse jest. The language is everywhere that of men of honour,

but their actions are those of knaves—a proof that he was

perfectly well acquainted with human nature, and frequented

what we call polite company. He was infirm and come to the

verge of life when I knew him. Mr. Congreve had one defect,

which was his entertaining too mean an idea of his first pro-

fession (that of a writer), though it was to this he owed his

fame and fortune. He spoke of his works as of trifles that

were beneath him; and hinted to me, in our first conversa-

tion, that I should visit him upon no other footing than that

of a gentleman who led a life of plainness and simplicity. I

answered, that had he been so unfortunate as to be a mere

gentleman, I should never have come to see him; and I was

very much disgusted at so unseasonable a piece of vanity.

Mr. Congreve’s comedies are the most witty and regular,

those of Sir John Vanbrugh most gay and humorous, and

those of Mr. Wycherley have the greatest force and spirit. It

may be proper to observe that these fine geniuses never spoke

disadvantageously of Moliere; and that none but the con-

temptible writers among the English have endeavoured to

lessen the character of that great comic poet. Such Italian

musicians as despise Lully are themselves persons of no char-

acter or ability; but a Buononcini esteems that great artist,

and does justice to his merit.

The English have some other good comic writers living,

such as Sir Richard Steele and Mr. Cibber, who is an excellent

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player, and also Poet Laureate—a title which, how ridiculous

soever it may be thought, is yet worth a thousand crowns a

year (besides some considerable privileges) to the person who

enjoys it. Our illustrious Corneille had not so much.

To conclude. Don’t desire me to descend to particulars with

regard to these English comedies, which I am so fond of ap-

plauding; nor to give you a single smart saying or humorous

stroke from Wycherley or Congreve. We don’t laugh in rend-

ing a translation. If you have a mind to understand the En-

glish comedy, the only way to do this will be for you to go to

England, to spend three years in London, to make yourself

master of the English tongue, and to frequent the playhouse

every night. I receive but little pleasure from the perusal of

Aristophanes and Plautus, and for this reason, because I am

neither a Greek nor a Roman. The delicacy of the humour,

the allusion, the a propos—all these are lost to a foreigner.

But it is different with respect to tragedy, this treating only

of exalted passions and heroical follies, which the antiquated

errors of fable or history have made sacred. OEdipus, Electra,

and such-like characters, may with as much propriety be

treated of by the Spaniards, the English, or us, as by the Greeks.

But true comedy is the speaking picture of the follies and

ridiculous foibles of a nation; so that he only is able to judge

of the painting who is perfectly acquainted with the people it

represents.

Voltaire

LETTER XX.—ON SUCH OF THE NOBIL- ITY AS CULTIVATE THE BELLES

LETTRES

T HERE ONCE WAS A TIME in France when the polite arts

were cultivated by persons of the highest rank in

the state. The courtiers particularly were conversant

in them, although indolence, a taste for trifles, and a passion

for intrigue, were the divinities of the country. The Court

methinks at this time seems to have given into a taste quite

opposite to that of polite literature, but perhaps the mode of

thinking may be revived in a little time. The French are of so

flexible a disposition, may be moulded into such a variety of

shapes, that the monarch needs but command and he is im-

mediately obeyed. The English generally think, and learning

is had in greater honour among them than in our country—

an advantage that results naturally from the form of their

government. There are about eight hundred persons in En-

gland who have a right to speak in public, and to support the

interest of the kingdom; and near five or six thousand may in

their turns aspire to the same honour. The whole nation set

themselves up as judges over these, and every man has the

liberty of publishing his thoughts with regard to public af-

fairs, which shows that all the people in general are indispens-

ably obliged to cultivate their understandings. In England the

governments of Greece and Rome are the subject of every

conversation, so that every man is under a necessity of perus-

ing such authors as treat of them, how disagreeable soever it

may be to him; and this study leads naturally to that of polite

literature. Mankind in general speak well in their respective

professions. What is the reason why our magistrates, our law-

yers, our physicians, and a great number of the clergy, are

abler scholars, have a finer taste, and more wit, than persons

of all other professions? The reason is, because their condi-

tion of life requires a cultivated and enlightened mind, in the

same manner as a merchant is obliged to be acquainted with

his traffic. Not long since an English nobleman, who was

very young, came to see me at Paris on his return from Italy.

He had written a poetical description of that country, which,

for delicacy and politeness, may vie with anything we meet

with in the Earl of Rochester, or in our Chaulieu, our Sarrasin,

or Chapelle. The translation I have given of it is so inexpres-

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sive of the strength and delicate humour of the original, that

I am obliged seriously to ask pardon of the author and of all

who understand English. However, as this is the only method

I have to make his lordship’s verses known, I shall here present

you with them in our tongue:—

“Qu’ay je donc vu dans l’Italie?

Orgueil, astuce, et pauvrete,

Grands complimens, peu de bonte

Et beaucoup de ceremonie.

“L’extravagante comedie

Que souvent l’Inquisition

Vent qu’on nomme religion

Mais qu’ici nous nommons folie.

“La Nature en vain bienfaisante

Vent enricher ses lieux charmans,

Des pretres la main desolante

Etouffe ses plus beaux presens.

“Les monsignors, soy disant Grands,

Seuls dans leurs palais magnifiques

Y sont d’illustres faineants,

Sans argent, et sans domestiques.

“Pour les petits, sans liberte,

Martyrs du joug qui les domine,

Ils ont fait voeu de pauvrete,

Priant Dieu par oisivete

Et toujours jeunant par famine.

“Ces beaux lieux du Pape benis

Semblent habitez par les diables;

Et les habitans miserables

Sont damnes dans le Paradis.”

Voltaire

LETTER XXI.—ON THE EARL OF ROCHESTER AND

MR. WALLER

The Earl of Rochester’s name is universally known. Mr. de

St. Evremont has made very frequent mention of him, but

then he has represented this famous nobleman in no other

light than as the man of pleasure, as one who was the idol of

the fair; but, with regard to myself, I would willingly de-

scribe in him the man of genius, the great poet. Among other

pieces which display the shining imagination, his lordship only

could boast he wrote some satires on the same subjects as

those our celebrated Boileau made choice of. I do not know

any better method of improving the taste than to compare

the productions of such great geniuses as have exercised their

talent on the same subject. Boileau declaims as follows against

human reason in his “Satire on Man:”

“Cependant a le voir plein de vapeurs legeres,

Soi-meme se bercer de ses propres chimeres,

Lui seul de la nature est la baze et l’appui,

Et le dixieme ciel ne tourne que pour lui.

De tous les animaux il est ici le maitre;

Qui pourroit le nier, poursuis tu? Moi peut-etre.

Ce maitre pretendu qui leur donne des loix,

Ce roi des animaux, combien a-t’il de rois?”

“Yet, pleased with idle whimsies of his brain,

And puffed with pride, this haughty thing would fain

Be think himself the only stay and prop

That holds the mighty frame of Nature up.

The skies and stars his properties must seem,

* * *

Of all the creatures he’s the lord, he cries.

* * *

And who is there, say you, that dares deny

So owned a truth? That may be, sir, do I.

* * *

This boasted monarch of the world who awes

The creatures here, and with his nod gives laws

This self-named king, who thus pretends to be

The lord of all, how many lords has he?”

Oldham, a little altered.

Letters on England

The Lord Rochester expresses himself, in his “Satire against

Man,” in pretty near the following manner. But I must first

desire you always to remember that the versions I give you

from the English poets are written with freedom and lati-

tude, and that the restraint of our versification, and the deli-

cacies of the French tongue, will not allow a translator to

convey into it the licentious impetuosity and fire of the En-

glish numbers:—

“Cet esprit que je hais, cet esprit plein d’erreur,

Ce n’est pas ma raison, c’est la tienne, docteur.

C’est la raison frivole, inquiete, orgueilleuse

Des sages animaux, rivale dedaigneuse,

Qui croit entr’eux et l’Ange, occuper le milieu,

Et pense etre ici bas l’image de son Dieu.

Vil atome imparfait, qui croit, doute, dispute

Rampe, s’eleve, tombe, et nie encore sa chute,

Qui nous dit je suis libre, en nous montrant ses fers,

Et dont l’oeil trouble et faux, croit percer l’univers.

Allez, reverends fous, bienheureux fanatiques,

Compilez bien l’amas de vos riens scholastiques,

Peres de visions, et d’enigmes sacres,

Auteurs du labirinthe, ou vous vous egarez.

Allez obscurement eclaircir vos misteres,

Et courez dans l’ecole adorer vos chimeres.

Il est d’autres erreurs, il est de ces devots

Condamne par eux memes a l’ennui du repos.

Ce mystique encloitre, fier de son indolence

Tranquille, au sein de Dieu. Que peut il faire?

Il pense. Non, tu ne penses point, miserable, tu dors:

Inutile a la terre, et mis au rang des morts.

Ton esprit enerve croupit dans la molesse.

Reveille toi, sois homme, et sors de ton ivresse.

L’homme est ne pour agir, et tu pretens penser?” &c.

The original runs thus:—

“Hold mighty man, I cry all this we know,

And ’tis this very reason I despise,

This supernatural gift that makes a mite

Think he’s the image of the Infinite;

Comparing his short life, void of all rest,

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To the eternal and the ever blest.

This busy, puzzling stirrer up of doubt,

That frames deep mysteries, then finds them out,

Filling, with frantic crowds of thinking fools,

Those reverend bedlams, colleges, and schools;

Borne on whose wings each heavy sot can pierce

The limits of the boundless universe.

So charming ointments make an old witch fly,

And bear a crippled carcase through the sky.

’Tis this exalted power, whose business lies

In nonsense and impossibilities.

This made a whimsical philosopher

Before the spacious world his tub prefer;

And we have modern cloistered coxcombs, who

Retire to think, ‘cause they have naught to do.

But thoughts are given for action’s government,

Where action ceases, thought’s impertinent.”

Whether these ideas are true or false, it is certain they are

expressed with an energy and fire which form the poet. I shall

be very far from attempting to examine philosophically into

these verses, to lay down the pencil, and take up the rule and

compass on this occasion; my only design in this letter being

to display the genius of the English poets, and therefore I

shall continue in the same view.

The celebrated Mr. Waller has been very much talked of in

France, and Mr. De la Fontaine, St. Evremont, and Bayle

have written his eulogium, but still his name only is known.

He had much the same reputation in London as Voiture had

in Paris, and in my opinion deserved it better. Voiture was

born in an age that was just emerging from barbarity; an age

that was still rude and ignorant, the people of which aimed at

wit, though they had not the least pretensions to it, and sought

for points and conceits instead of sentiments. Bristol stones

are more easily found than diamonds. Voiture, born with an

easy and frivolous, genius, was the first who shone in this

aurora of French literature. Had he come into the world after

those great geniuses who spread such a glory over the age of

Louis XIV., he would either have been unknown, would have

been despised, or would have corrected his style. Boileau ap-

plauded him, but it was in his first satires, at a time when the

taste of that great poet was not yet formed. He was young,

Letters on England

and in an age when persons form a judgment of men from

their reputation, and not from their writings. Besides, Boileau

was very partial both in his encomiums and his censures. He

applauded Segrais, whose works nobody reads; he abused

Quinault, whose poetical pieces every one has got by heart;

and is wholly silent upon La Fontaine. Waller, though a bet-

ter poet than Voiture, was not yet a finished poet. The graces

breathe in such of Waller’s works as are writ in a tender strain;

but then they are languid through negligence, and often dis-

figured with false thoughts. The English had not in his time

attained the art of correct writing. But his serious composi-

tions exhibit a strength and vigour which could not have been

expected from the softness and effeminacy of his other pieces.

He wrote an elegy on Oliver Cromwell, which, with all its

faults, is nevertheless looked upon as a masterpiece. To un-

derstand this copy of verses you are to know that the day

Oliver died was remarkable for a great storm. His poem be-

gins in this manner:—

“Il n’est plus, s’en est fait, soumettons nous au sort,

Le ciel a signale ce jour par des tempetes,

Et la voix des tonnerres eclatant sur nos tetes

Vient d’annoncer sa mort.

“Par ses derniers soupirs il ebranle cet ile;

Cet ile que son bras fit trembler tant de fois,

Quand dans le cours de ses exploits,

Il brisoit la tete des Rois,

Et soumettoit un peuple a son joug seul docile.

“Mer tu t’en es trouble; O mer tes flots emus

Semblent dire en grondant aux plus lointains rivages

Que l’effroi de la terre et ton maitre n’est plus.

“Tel au ciel autrefois s’envola Romulus,

Tel il quitta la Terre, au milieu des orages,

Tel d’un peuple guerrier il recut les homages;

Obei dans sa vie, sa mort adore,

Son palais fut un Temple,” &c.

“We must resign! heaven his great soul does claim

In storms as loud as his immortal fame;

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His dying groans, his last breath shakes our isle,

And trees uncut fall for his funeral pile:

About his palace their broad roots are tost

Into the air; so Romulus was lost!

New Rome in such a tempest missed her king,

And from obeying fell to worshipping.

On Œta’s top thus Hercules lay dead,

With ruined oaks and pines about him spread.

Nature herself took notice of his death,

And, sighing, swelled the sea with such a breath,

That to remotest shores the billows rolled,

Th’ approaching fate of his great ruler told.”

Waller.

It was this elogium that gave occasion to the reply (taken

notice of in Bayle’s Dictionary), which Waller made to King

Charles II. This king, to whom Waller had a little before (as is

usual with bards and monarchs) presented a copy of verses

embroidered with praises, reproached the poet for not writ-

ing with so much energy and fire as when he had applauded

the Usurper (meaning Oliver). “Sir,” replied Waller to the

king, “we poets succeed better in fiction than in truth.” This

answer was not so sincere as that which a Dutch ambassador

made, who, when the same monarch complained that his

masters paid less regard to him than they had done to

Cromwell. “Ah, sir!” says the Ambassador, “Oliver was quite

another man—” It is not my intent to give a commentary on

Waller’s character, nor on that of any other person; for I con-

sider men after their death in no other light than as they were

writers, and wholly disregard everything else. I shall only ob-

serve that Waller, though born in a court, and to an estate of

five or six thousand pounds sterling a year, was never so proud

or so indolent as to lay aside the happy talent which Nature

had indulged him. The Earls of Dorset and Roscommon, the

two Dukes of Buckingham, the Lord Halifax, and so many

other noblemen, did not think the reputation they obtained

of very great poets and illustrious writers, any way derogatory

to their quality. They are more glorious for their works than

for their titles. These cultivated the polite arts with as much

assiduity as though they had been their whole dependence.

They also have made learning appear venerable in the eyes

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of the vulgar, who have need to be led in all things by the

great; and who, nevertheless, fashion their manners less after

those of the nobility (in England I mean) than in any other

country in the world.

LETTER XXII.—ON MR. POPE AND SOME OTHER FAMOUS POETS

I INTENDED to treat of Mr. Prior, one of the most amiable

English poets, whom you saw Plenipotentiary and En-

voy Extraordinary at Paris in 1712. I also designed to

have given you some idea of the Lord Roscommon’s and the

Lord Dorset’s muse; but I find that to do this I should be

obliged to write a large volume, and that, after much pains

and trouble, you would have but an imperfect idea of all those

works. Poetry is a kind of music in which a man should have

some knowledge before he pretends to judge of it. When I

give you a translation of some passages from those foreign

poets, I only prick down, and that imperfectly, their music;

but then I cannot express the taste of their harmony.

There is one English poem especially which I should de-

spair of ever making you understand, the title whereof is

“Hudibras.” The subject of it is the Civil War in the time of

the grand rebellion, and the principles and practice of the

Puritans are therein ridiculed. It is Don Quixote, it is our

“Satire Menippee” blended together. I never found so much

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wit in one single book as in that, which at the same time is

the most difficult to be translated. Who would believe that a

work which paints in such lively and natural colours the sev-

eral foibles and follies of mankind, and where we meet with

more sentiments than words, should baffle the endeavours of

the ablest translator? But the reason of this is, almost every

part of it alludes to particular incidents. The clergy are there

made the principal object of ridicule, which is understood

but by few among the laity. To explain this a commentary

would be requisite, and humour when explained is no longer

humour. Whoever sets up for a commentator of smart say-

ings and repartees is himself a blockhead. This is the reason

why the works of the ingenious Dean Swift, who has been

called the English Rabelais, will never be well understood in

France. This gentleman has the honour (in common with

Rabelais) of being a priest, and, like him, laughs at every-

thing; but, in my humble opinion, the title of the English

Rabelais which is given the dean is highly derogatory to his

genius. The former has interspersed his unaccountably-fan-

tastic and unintelligible book with the most gay strokes of

humour; but which, at the same time, has a greater propor-

tion of impertinence. He has been vastly lavish of erudition,

of smut, and insipid raillery. An agreeable tale of two pages is

purchased at the expense of whole volumes of nonsense. There

are but few persons, and those of a grotesque taste, who pre-

tend to understand and to esteem this work; for, as to the rest

of the nation, they laugh at the pleasant and diverting touches

which are found in Rabelais and despise his book. He is looked

upon as the prince of buffoons. The readers are vexed to think

that a man who was master of so much wit should have made

so wretched a use of it; he is an intoxicated philosopher who

never wrote but when he was in liquor.

Dean Swift is Rabelais in his senses, and frequenting the

politest company. The former, indeed, is not so gay as the

latter, but then he possesses all the delicacy, the justness, the

choice, the good taste, in all which particulars our giggling

rural Vicar Rabelais is wanting. The poetical numbers of Dean

Swift are of a singular and almost inimitable taste; true

humour, whether in prose or verse, seems to be his peculiar

talent; but whoever is desirous of understanding him per-

fectly must visit the island in which he was born.

It will be much easier for you to form an idea of Mr. Pope’s

Letters on England

works. He is, in my opinion, the most elegant, the most cor-

rect poet; and, at the same time, the most harmonious (a

circumstance which redounds very much to the honour of

this muse) that England ever gave birth to. He has mellowed

the harsh sounds of the English trumpet to the soft accents of

the flute. His compositions may be easily translated, because

they are vastly clear and perspicuous; besides, most of his sub-

jects are general, and relative to all nations.

His “Essay on Criticism” will soon be known in France by

the translation which l’Abbe de Resnel has made of it.

Here is an extract from his poem entitled the “Rape of the

Lock,” which I just now translated with the latitude I usually

take on these occasions; for, once again, nothing can be more

ridiculous than to translate a poet literally:—

“Umbriel, a l’instant, vieil gnome rechigne,

Va d’une aile pesante et d’un air renfrogne

Chercher en murmurant la caverne profonde,

Ou loin des doux raions que repand l’oeil du monde

La Deesse aux Vapeurs a choisi son sejour,

Les Tristes Aquilons y sifflent a l’entour,

Et le souffle mal sain de leur aride haleine

Y porte aux environs la fievre et la migraine.

Sur un riche sofa derriere un paravent

Loin des flambeaux, du bruit, des parleurs et du vent,

La quinteuse deesse incessamment repose,

Le coeur gros de chagrin, sans en savoir la cause.

N’aiant pense jamais, l’esprit toujours trouble,

L’oeil charge, le teint pale, et l’hypocondre enfle.

La medisante Envie, est assise aupres d’elle,

Vieil spectre feminin, decrepite pucelle,

Avec un air devot dechirant son prochain,

Et chansonnant les Gens l’Evangile a la main.

Sur un lit plein de fleurs negligemment panchee

Une jeune beaute non loin d’elle est couchee,

C’est l’Affectation qui grassaie en parlant,

Ecoute sans entendre, et lorgne en regardant.

Qui rougit sans pudeur, et rit de tout sans joie,

De cent maux differens pretend qu’elle est la proie;

Et pleine de sante sous le rouge et le fard,

Se plaint avec molesse, et se pame avec art.”

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“Umbriel, a dusky, melancholy sprite

As ever sullied the fair face of light,

Down to the central earth, his proper scene,

Repairs to search the gloomy cave of Spleen.

Swift on his sooty pinions flits the gnome,

And in a vapour reached the dismal dome.

No cheerful breeze this sullen region knows,

The dreaded east is all the wind that blows.

Here, in a grotto, sheltered close from air,

And screened in shades from day’s detested glare,

She sighs for ever on her pensive bed,

Pain at her side, and Megrim at her head,

Two handmaids wait the throne. Alike in place,

But differing far in figure and in face,

Here stood Ill-nature, like an ancient maid,

Her wrinkled form in black and white arrayed;

With store of prayers for mornings, nights, and noons,

Her hand is filled; her bosom with lampoons.

There Affectation, with a sickly mien,

Shows in her cheek the roses of eighteen,

Practised to lisp, and hang the head aside,

Faints into airs, and languishes with pride;

On the rich quilt sinks with becoming woe,

Wrapt in a gown, for sickness and for show.”

This extract, in the original (not in the faint translation I

have given you of it), may be compared to the description of

la Molesse (softness or effeminacy), in Boileau’s “Lutrin.”

Methinks I now have given you specimens enough from

the English poets. I have made some transient mention of

their philosophers, but as for good historians among them, I

don’t know of any; and, indeed, a Frenchman was forced to

write their history. Possibly the English genius, which is ei-

ther languid or impetuous, has not yet acquired that unaf-

fected eloquence, that plain but majestic air which history

requires. Possibly too, the spirit of party which exhibits ob-

jects in a dim and confused light may have sunk the credit of

their historians. One half of the nation is always at variance

with the other half. I have met with people who assured me

that the Duke of Marlborough was a coward, and that Mr.

Pope was a fool; just as some Jesuits in France declare Pascal

to have been a man of little or no genius, and some Jansenists

Letters on England

affirm Father Bourdaloue to have been a mere babbler. The

Jacobites consider Mary Queen of Scots as a pious heroine,

but those of an opposite party look upon her as a prostitute,

an adulteress, a murderer. Thus the English have memorials

of the several reigns, but no such thing as a history. There is,

indeed, now living, one Mr. Gordon (the public are obliged

to him for a translation of Tacitus), who is very capable of

writing the history of his own country, but Rapin de Thoyras

got the start of him. To conclude, in my opinion the English

have not such good historians as the French have no such

thing as a real tragedy, have several delightful comedies, some

wonderful passages in certain of their poems, and boast of

philosophers that are worthy of instructing mankind. The

English have reaped very great benefit from the writers of our

nation, and therefore we ought (since they have not scrupled

to be in our debt) to borrow from them. Both the English

and we came after the Italians, who have been our instructors

in all the arts, and whom we have surpassed in some. I cannot

determine which of the three nations ought to be honoured

with the palm; but happy the writer who could display their

various merits.

LETTER XXIII.—ON THE REGARD THAT OUGHT TO BE SHOWN TO MEN OF

LETTERS

N EITHER THE ENGLISH nor any other people have

foundations established in favour of the polite arts

like those in France. There are Universities in most

countries, but it is in France only that we meet with so benefi-

cial an encouragement for astronomy and all parts of the math-

ematics, for physic, for researches into antiquity, for painting,

sculpture, and architecture. Louis XIV. has immortalised his

name by these several foundations, and this immortality did

not cost him two hundred thousand livres a year.

I must confess that one of the things I very much wonder

at is, that as the Parliament of Great Britain have promised a

reward of 20,000 pounds sterling to any person who may

discover the longitude, they should never have once thought

to imitate Louis XIV. in his munificence with regard to the

arts and sciences.

Merit, indeed, meets in England with rewards of another

kind, which redound more to the honour of the nation. The

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English have so great a veneration for exalted talents, that a

man of merit in their country is always sure of making his

fortune. Mr. Addison in France would have been elected a

member of one of the academies, and, by the credit of some

women, might have obtained a yearly pension of twelve hun-

dred livres, or else might have been imprisoned in the Bastile,

upon pretence that certain strokes in his tragedy of Cato had

been discovered which glanced at the porter of some man in

power. Mr. Addison was raised to the post of Secretary of

State in England. Sir Isaac Newton was made Master of the

Royal Mint. Mr. Congreve had a considerable employment.

Mr. Prior was Plenipotentiary. Dr. Swift is Dean of St. Patrick

in Dublin, and is more revered in Ireland than the Primate

himself. The religion which Mr. Pope professes excludes him,

indeed, from preferments of every kind, but then it did not

prevent his gaining two hundred thousand livres by his excel-

lent translation of Homer. I myself saw a long time in France

the author of Rhadamistus ready to perish for hunger. And

the son of one of the greatest men our country ever gave birth

to, and who was beginning to run the noble career which his

father had set him, would have been reduced to the extremes

of misery had he not been patronised by Monsieur Fagon.

But the circumstance which mostly encourages the arts in

England is the great veneration which is paid them. The pic-

ture of the Prime Minister hangs over the chimney of his

own closet, but I have seen that of Mr. Pope in twenty

noblemen’s houses. Sir Isaac Newton was revered in his life-

time, and had a due respect paid to him after his death; the

greatest men in the nation disputing who should have the

honour of holding up his pall. Go into Westminster Abbey,

and you will find that what raises the admiration of the spec-

tator is not the mausoleums of the English kings, but the

monuments which the gratitude of the nation has erected to

perpetuate the memory of those illustrious men who con-

tributed to its glory. We view their statues in that abbey in the

same manner as those of Sophocles, Plato, and other immor-

tal personages were viewed in Athens; and I am persuaded

that the bare sight of those glorious monuments has fired

more than one breast, and been the occasion of their becom-

ing great men.

The English have even been reproached with paying too

extravagant honours to mere merit, and censured for inter-

Letters on England

ring the celebrated actress Mrs. Oldfield in Westminster Ab-

bey, with almost the same pomp as Sir Isaac Newton. Some

pretend that the English had paid her these great funeral

honours, purposely to make us more strongly sensible of the

barbarity and injustice which they object to us, for having

buried Mademoiselle Le Couvreur ignominiously in the fields.

But be assured from me, that the English were prompted

by no other principle in burying Mrs. Oldfield in Westminster

Abbey than their good sense. They are far from being so ri-

diculous as to brand with infamy an art which has

immortalised a Euripides and a Sophocles; or to exclude from

the body of their citizens a set of people whose business is to

set off with the utmost grace of speech and action those pieces

which the nation is proud of.

Under the reign of Charles I. and in the beginning of the

civil wars raised by a number of rigid fanatics, who at last

were the victims to it; a great many pieces were published

against theatrical and other shows, which were attacked with

the greater virulence because that monarch and his queen,

daughter to Henry I. of France, were passionately fond of

them.

One Mr. Prynne, a man of most furiously scrupulous prin-

ciples, who would have thought himself damned had he worn

a cassock instead of a short cloak, and have been glad to see

one-half of mankind cut the other to pieces for the glory of

God, and the Propaganda Fide; took it into his head to write

a most wretched satire against some pretty good comedies,

which were exhibited very innocently every night before their

majesties. He quoted the authority of the Rabbis, and some

passages from St. Bonaventure, to prove that the OEdipus of

Sophocles was the work of the evil spirit; that Terence was

excommunicated ipso facto; and added, that doubtless Brutus,

who was a very severe Jansenist, assassinated Julius Caesar for

no other reason but because he, who was Pontifex Maximus,

presumed to write a tragedy the subject of which was

OEdipus. Lastly, he declared that all who frequented the the-

atre were excommunicated, as they thereby renounced their

baptism. This was casting the highest insult on the king and

all the royal family; and as the English loved their prince at

that time, they could not bear to hear a writer talk of excom-

municating him, though they themselves afterwards cut his

head off. Prynne was summoned to appear before the Star

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Chamber; his wonderful book, from which Father Le Brun

stole his, was sentenced to be burnt by the common hang-

man, and himself to lose his ears. His trial is now extant.

The Italians are far from attempting to cast a blemish on

the opera, or to excommunicate Signor Senesino or Signora

Cuzzoni. With regard to myself, I could presume to wish

that the magistrates would suppress I know not what con-

temptible pieces written against the stage. For when the En-

glish and Italians hear that we brand with the greatest mark of

infamy an art in which we excel; that we excommunicate per-

sons who receive salaries from the king; that we condemn as

impious a spectacle exhibited in convents and monasteries;

that we dishonour sports in which Louis XIV. and Louis XV.,

performed as actors; that we give the title of the devil’s works

to pieces which are received by magistrates of the most severe

character, and represented before a virtuous queen; when, I

say, foreigners are told of this insolent conduct, this contempt

for the royal authority, and this Gothic rusticity which some

presume to call Christian severity, what an idea must they

entertain of our nation? And how will it be possible for them

to conceive, either that our laws give a sanction to an art which

is declared infamous, or that some persons dare to stamp with

infamy an art which receives a sanction from the laws, is re-

warded by kings, cultivated and encouraged by the greatest

men, and admired by whole nations? And that Father Le Brun’s

impertinent libel against the stage is seen in a bookseller’s shop,

standing the very next to the immortal labours of Racine, of

Corneille, of Moliere, &c.

Letters on England

LETTER XXIV.—ON THE ROYAL SOCIETY AND OTHER ACADEMIES

T HE ENGLISH had an Academy of Sciences many years

before us, but then it is not under such prudent

regulations as ours, the only reason of which very

possibly is, because it was founded before the Academy of

Paris; for had it been founded after, it would very probably

have adopted some of the sage laws of the former and im-

proved upon others.

Two things, and those the most essential to man, are want-

ing in the Royal Society of London, I mean rewards and laws.

A seat in the Academy at Paris is a small but secure fortune to

a geometrician or a chemist; but this is so far from being the

case at London, that the several members of the Royal Soci-

ety are at a continual, though indeed small expense. Any man

in England who declares himself a lover of the mathematics

and natural philosophy, and expresses an inclination to be a

member of the Royal Society, is immediately elected into it.

But in France it is not enough that a man who aspires to the

honour of being a member of the Academy, and of receiving

the royal stipend, has a love for the sciences; he must at the

same time be deeply skilled in them; and is obliged to dispute

the seat with competitors who are so much the more formi-

dable as they are fired by a principle of glory, by interest, by

the difficulty itself; and by that inflexibility of mind which is

generally found in those who devote themselves to that perti-

nacious study, the mathematics.

The Academy of Sciences is prudently confined to the study

of Nature, and, indeed, this is a field spacious enough for

fifty or threescore persons to range in. That of London mixes

indiscriminately literature with physics; but methinks the

founding an academy merely for the polite arts is more judi-

cious, as it prevents confusion, and the joining, in some mea-

sure, of heterogeneals, such as a dissertation on the head-dresses

of the Roman ladies with a hundred or more new curves.

As there is very little order and regularity in the Royal Soci-

ety, and not the least encouragement; and that the Academy

of Paris is on a quite different foot, it is no wonder that our

transactions are drawn up in a more just and beautiful man-

ner than those of the English. Soldiers who are under a regu-

lar discipline, and besides well paid, must necessarily at last

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perform more glorious achievements than others who are mere

volunteers. It must indeed be confessed that the Royal Soci-

ety boast their Newton, but then he did not owe his knowl-

edge and discoveries to that body; so far from it, that the

latter were intelligible to very few of his fellow members. A

genius like that of Sir Isaac belonged to all the academies in

the world, because all had a thousand things to learn of him.

The celebrated Dean Swift formed a design, in the latter

end of the late Queen’s reign, to found an academy for the

English tongue upon the model of that of the French. This

project was promoted by the late Earl of Oxford, Lord High

Treasurer, and much more by the Lord Bolingbroke, Secre-

tary of State, who had the happy talent of speaking without

premeditation in the Parliament House with as much purity

as Dean Swift wrote in his closet, and who would have been

the ornament and protector of that academy. Those only

would have been chosen members of it whose works will last

as long as the English tongue, such as Dean Swift, Mr. Prior,

whom we saw here invested with a public character, and whose

fame in England is equal to that of La Fontaine in France;

Mr. Pope, the English Boileau, Mr. Congreve, who may be

called their Moliere, and several other eminent persons whose

names I have forgot; all these would have raised the glory of

that body to a great height even in its infancy. But Queen

Anne being snatched suddenly from the world, the Whigs

were resolved to ruin the protectors of the intended academy,

a circumstance that was of the most fatal consequence to po-

lite literature. The members of this academy would have had

a very great advantage over those who first formed that of the

French, for Swift, Prior, Congreve, Dryden, Pope, Addison,

&c. had fixed the English tongue by their writings; whereas

Chapelain, Colletet, Cassaigne, Faret, Perrin, Cotin, our first

academicians, were a disgrace to their country; and so much

ridicule is now attached to their very names, that if an author

of some genius in this age had the misfortune to be called

Chapelain or Cotin, he would be under a necessity of chang-

ing his name.

One circumstance, to which the English Academy should

especially have attended, is to have prescribed to themselves

occupations of a quite different kind from those with which

our academicians amuse themselves. A wit of this country

asked me for the memoirs of the French Academy. I answered,

Letters on England

they have no memoirs, but have printed threescore or four-

score volumes in quarto of compliments. The gentleman pe-

rused one or two of them, but without being able to under-

stand the style in which they were written, though he under-

stood all our good authors perfectly. “All,” says he, “I see in

these elegant discourses is, that the member elect having as-

sured the audience that his predecessor was a great man, that

Cardinal Richelieu was a very great man, that the Chancellor

Seguier was a pretty great man, that Louis XIV. was a more

than great man, the director answers in the very same strain,

and adds, that the member elect may also be a sort of great

man, and that himself, in quality of director, must also have

some share in this greatness.”

The cause why all these academical discourses have unhap-

pily done so little honour to this body is evident enough.

Vitium est temporis potius quam hominis (the fault is owing

to the age rather than to particular persons). It grew up insen-

sibly into a custom for every academician to repeat these

elogiums at his reception; it was laid down as a kind of law

that the public should be indulged from time to time the

sullen satisfaction of yawning over these productions. If the

reason should afterwards be sought, why the greatest geniuses

who have been incorporated into that body have sometimes

made the worst speeches, I answer, that it is wholly owing to

a strong propension, the gentlemen in question had to shine,

and to display a thread-bare, worn-out subject in a new and

uncommon light. The necessity of saying something, the per-

plexity of having nothing to say, and a desire of being witty,

are three circumstances which alone are capable of making

even the greatest writer ridiculous. These gentlemen, not be-

ing able to strike out any new thoughts, hunted after a new

play of words, and delivered themselves without thinking at

all: in like manner as people who should seem to chew with

great eagerness, and make as though they were eating, at the

same time that they were just starved.

It is a law in the French Academy, to publish all those dis-

courses by which only they are known, but they should rather

make a law never to print any of them.

But the Academy of the Belles Lettres have a more prudent

and more useful object, which is, to present the public with a

collection of transactions that abound with curious researches

and critiques. These transactions are already esteemed by for-

Voltaire

eigners; and it were only to be wished that some subjects in

them had been more thoroughly examined, and that others

had not been treated at all. As, for instance, we should have

been very well satisfied, had they omitted I know not what

dissertation on the prerogative of the right hand over the left;

and some others, which, though not published under so ri-

diculous a title, are yet written on subjects that are almost as

frivolous and silly.

The Academy of Sciences, in such of their researches as are

of a more difficult kind and a more sensible use, embrace the

knowledge of nature and the improvements of the arts. We

may presume that such profound, such uninterrupted pur-

suits as these, such exact calculations, such refined discoveries,

such extensive and exalted views, will, at last, produce some-

thing that may prove of advantage to the universe. Hitherto,

as we have observed together, the most useful discoveries have

been made in the most barbarous times. One would con-

clude that the business of the most enlightened ages and the

most learned bodies, is, to argue and debate on things which

were invented by ignorant people. We know exactly the angle

which the sail of a ship is to make with the keel in order to its

sailing better; and yet Columbus discovered America with-

out having the least idea of the property of this angle: how-

ever, I am far from inferring from hence that we are to con-

fine ourselves merely to a blind practice, but happy it were,

would naturalists and geometricians unite, as much as pos-

sible, the practice with the theory.

Strange, but so it is, that those things which reflect the great-

est honour on the human mind are frequently of the least

benefit to it! A man who understands the four fundamental

rules of arithmetic, aided by a little good sense, shall amass

prodigious wealth in trade, shall become a Sir Peter Delme, a

Sir Richard Hopkins, a Sir Gilbert Heathcote, whilst a poor

algebraist spends his whole life in searching for astonishing

properties and relations in numbers, which at the same time

are of no manner of use, and will not acquaint him with the

nature of exchanges. This is very nearly the case with most of

the arts: there is a certain point beyond which all researches

serve to no other purpose than merely to delight an inquisi-

tive mind. Those ingenious and useless truths may be com-

pared to stars which, by being placed at too great a distance,

cannot afford us the least light.

100

Letters on England

With regard to the French Academy, how great a service

would they do to literature, to the language, and the nation,

if, instead of publishing a set of compliments annually, they

would give us new editions of the valuable works written in

the age of Louis XIV., purged from the several errors of dic-

tion which are crept into them. There are many of these er-

rors in Corneille and Moliere, but those in La Fontaine are

very numerous. Such as could not be corrected might at least

be pointed out. By this means, as all the Europeans read those

works, they would teach them our language in its utmost

purity—which, by that means, would be fixed to a lasting

standard; and valuable French books being then printed at

the King’s expense, would prove one of the most glorious

monuments the nation could boast. I have been told that

Boileau formerly made this proposal, and that it has since

been revived by a gentleman eminent for his genius, his fine

sense, and just taste for criticism; but this thought has met

with the fate of many other useful projects, of being applauded

and neglected.

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Contents

LETTER I.-ON THE QUAKERS
LETTER II.-ON THE QUAKERS
LETTER III.-ON THE QUAKERS
LETTER IV.-ON THE QUAKERS
LETTER V.-ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND
LETTER VI.-ON THE PRESBYTERIANS
LETTER VII.-ON THE SOCINIANS, OR ARIANS, OR ANTITRINITARIANS
LETTER VIII.-ON THE PARLIAMENT
LETTER IX.-ON THE GOVERNMENT
LETTER X.-ON TRADE
LETTER XI.-ON INOCULATION
LETTER XII.-ON THE LORD BACON
LETTER XIII.-ON MR. LOCKE
LETTER XIV.-ON DESCARTES AND SIR ISAAC NEWTON
LETTER XV.-ON ATTRACTION
LETTER XVI.-ON SIR ISAAC NEWTON'S OPTICS
LETTER XVII.-ON INFINITES IN GEOMETRY, AND SIR ISAAC NEWTON'S CHRONOLOGY
LETTER XVIII.-ON TRAGEDY
LETTER XIX.-ON COMEDY
LETTER XX.-ON SUCH OF THE NOBILITY AS CULTIVATE THE BELLES LETTRES
LETTER XXIII.-ON THE REGARD THAT OUGHT TO BE SHOWN TO MEN OF LETTERS
LETTER XXIV.-ON THE ROYAL SOCIETY AND OTHER ACADEMIES