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 VOLTAIEE

VOLTAIRE

but he went to America in 1795, and spent three years travelling there (Tableau du climat et du sol des Etats-Unis d Ameriqiie, 2 vols., 1803). He was elected to the Senate on his return to France. Napoleon made him Count, and Commander of the Legion of Honour ; and he was admitted to the Academy. Volney had joined the Encyclopaedists in his youth, and conver sation with Benjamin Franklin had sug gested the writing of his famous work, Les mines, ou meditations sur les revolu tions des empires, which was published in 1791. It was translated into many lan guages, and had a large share in the Eationalist education of Europe. It is essentially a Deistic attack upon Chris tianity. Volney openly remonstrated with Napoleon, who had a great regard for his ability, when he re-established the Church in France. His second work, La loi naturelle (1794), had little influence. His collected works were issued in eight volumes in 1821. D. Apr. 25, 1820.

VOLTAIRE, Francois Marie Arouet

de, French historian, dramatist, and critic. B. Nov. 21, 1694. Ed. (by Jesuits) College Louis le Grand. Francois Marie Arouet, as he was originally called, was the son of a Paris notary. After he had spent six years at college his father compelled him to take up the study of law, but his earlier teacher, the Abbe de Chateauneuf, one of the many Rationalistic abbes of the time, had inspired him with a love of letters. He neglected law, mixed in a gay literary world, and in 1716 was exiled to the provinces for writing lampoons on the Prince of Orleans. He was allowed to return in 1717, but was presently com mitted to the Bastille for further libel- writing. It was in the Bastille that he decided to write under the name of &quot; Voltaire.&quot; The origin of the name is uncertain, for there were ancestors on his mother s side of that name, yet it is only a slightly modified anagram of &quot; Arouet le jeune.&quot; Possibly he had both facts in mind. In 1718 he produced his first 851

tragedy, (Edipe. He was now known as a brilliant young writer, of particularly caustic pen, and he was exiled again in 1719 under suspicion of having written further lampoons. In 1721 his father left him a small income ; but he was in the Bastille again in 1726 for being so insolent as to challenge De Rohan, and after a few weeks detention was sent to England. Voltaire had hitherto lived the selfish and frivolous life which most Parisians, lay and clerical, did in those days ; and it is disingenuous to dwell with outraged feel ings on his conduct and ignore the liberties- of Archbishop Dillon and Archbishop de Brienne. During his stay in England a more serious vein was developed in him. The light scepticism which Parisian abbes had taught him was now solidly based on English Deism and philosophy ; and the comparative liberty of English political life kindled in him a humanitarian ideaL He was three years in England (1726-29), and on his return he wrote his Lettres philosophiques siir les Anglais. He reserved the manuscript, which would certainly not pass the censor, but it somehow got into- print in 1733. It was burned by the hangman ; and his Temple du Gout, of the same year, was also suppressed. Voltaire had to fly to Lorraine, and at the house of the Marquise du Chatelet he continued his literary and dramatic production for two years. He was back in Paris in 1735 ; but he again incurred trouble, and had to spend a year in the Low Countries. It may be stated in a word that this &quot; arch- mocker,&quot; as so many describe him, spent nearly the whole of his long life, after the age of twenty-two, in exile from his beloved Paris because he would not refrain from telling the truth. The sceptical archbishops and bishops remained at Paris. In 1745 he had an hour of favour, and was named Historiographer Royal. In 1746 the Academy was compelled at length to open its doors to him. His tragedies had long since put him in the position of the finest writer in France. In 1751 he went to live at the court of Frederick the 852