Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/309

Rh VOLTAIRE 285 VOLTAIRE, FRANCOIS MARIE AROUET DE (1694-1778), whose real name was FRANCOIS MARIE AROUET simply, was born on the 21st of November 1694 at Paris, and was baptized the next day. His father was Francois Arouet, a notary ; his mother was Marie Marguerite Daumart (sometimes, but less correctly, spelt D Aumard, apparently because her family was noble). Both father arid mother were of Poitevin extraction, but the Arouets had been for two generations established in Paris, the grandfather being a prosperous tradesman, and the father, as has been said, a still more prosperous notary. The Arouet family are heard of in Poitou as far back as the early 16th century, and appear to have always belonged to the yeoman-tradesman class. Their special home was the town of St Loup. Voltaire was the fifth child of his parents twin boys (of whom one survived), a girl, Marguerite Catherine, and another boy who died young, having preceded him. Not very much is known of the mother, who died when Voltaire himself was but seven years old. She seems, however, to have had delicate health, and she pretty certainly was the chief cause of Voltaire s early introduction to good society, the Abbe de Chateauneuf (his sponsor in more ways than one) having been her friend. The father appears to have been somewhat peremptory in temper, but neither inhospitable nor tyrannical. Marguerite Arouet, of whom her younger brother was very fond, married early ; the elder brother Armand was a strong Jansenist, and there never was any kind of sympathy between him and Francois. Voltaire appears to have received no very regular education till he was ten years old ; but the Abbe de Chateauneuf instructed him pretty early in belles lettres and deism, and he showed when quite a child the unsur passed faculty for facile verse-making which always distin guished him, and to which the literary tastes and models of the time lent themselves with especial readiness. But at the age just mentioned he was sent to the College Louis-le Grand, which was under the management of the Jesuits. This was in 1704. He remained there till 1711. It was his whim, as part of his general liberalism, to depreciate the education he received ; but it seems to have been a very sound and good education, which beyond all doubt formed the basis of his extraordinarily wide, though never extraordinarily accurate, collection of knowledge subsequently, and (a more important thing still) disciplined and exercised his literary faculty and judgment. Nor can there be much doubt that the great attention bestowed on acting the Jesuits kept up the Renaissance practice of turning schools into theatres for the performance of plays both in Latin and in the vernacular had much to do with Voltaire s lifelong devotion to the stage. It must have been in his very earliest school years that the cele brated presentation of him by his godfather to Ninon de Lenclos took place, for Ninon died in 1705. She left him two thousand livres &quot; to buy books with.&quot; Voltaire s school experience appears to have been much more like that of English schoolboys than like the dreary imprison ment of which in later days Frenchmen have generally complained. He worked fairly, played fairly, lived com fortably, made good and lasting friends. Some curious traits are recorded of this life one being that in the terrible famine year of Malplaquet a hundred francs a year were added to the usual boarding expenses, and yet the boys had to eat pain bis. His troubles began when, in August 1711, at the age of 17, he came home, and the usual battle began between a son who desired no profession but literature and a father who, in those days not quite unreasonably, refused to con sider literature a profession at all. For a time Voltaire submitted, and read law at least nominally, doing quite other things besides or instead of that study. The Abbe d^ Chateauneuf died before his godson left school, but he had already introduced him to the famous coterie of the Temple, of which the grand prior Vendome was the head, and the poets Chaulieu and La Fare the chief literary stars, and which chiefly existed for purposes of sometimes elegant and sometimes by no means elegant dissipation. It does not appear that Voltaire got into any great scrapes, and the anecdotes recorded of this wild oats time of his are harmless enough. But his father naturally prognosti cated little good to him from such society, and tried to break him off from it, by sending him first to Caen and then in the suite of the Marquis de Chateauneuf, the abbe s brother, to the Hague. Here, however, he got into what, in the paternal eyes at least, was a far worse scrape than staying out at night or wasting his substance on the purchase of coaches and horses. He met a certain Olyrnpe Dunoyer (&quot; Pimpette&quot;), a girl apparently of respectable character and not bad connexions, but a Protestant, penniless, and daughter of a literary lady whose literary reputation was not spotless. The mother discouraged the affair, and, though Voltaire, with an early display of his afterwards famous cunning, tried to avail himself of the mania for proselytizing which then distinguished France, his father would not hear of the match, and stopped the whole affair by procuring a lettre de cachet, which, however, he did not use. Voltaire, who had been sent home, sub mitted, and for a time pretended to work in a Parisian lawyer s office. But he again manifested a faculty for get ting into trouble, this time in the still more dangerous way of writing libellous poems, so that his father was glad to send him to stay for nearly a year (1714-1715) with Louis de Caumartin, Marquis de St Ange, in the country. Here he was still supposed to study law, but as usual really devoted himself in part to literary essays, in part to storing up that immense treasure of gossiping history which was afterwards one of his most unique pos sessions. Almost exactly at the time of the death of Louis XIV. he returned to Paris, to fall once more into literary and Templar society, and to make the tragedy of CEdipe, which he had already written, privately known. He was now introduced to a less questionable and even more distinguished coterie than Vendome s, to the famous &quot; court of Sceaux,&quot; the circle of the beautiful and am bitious Duchesse du Maine. It seems, though it is not certainly known, that Voltaire lent himself to the duchess s frantic hatred of the regent Orleans, and helped to com pose lampoons on that prince. At any rate, in May 1716 he was exiled, first to Tulle, then to Sully. He was allowed to return, but again fell under suspicion of having been concerned in the composition of two violent libels, one in Latin and one in French, called from their first words the Piiero Regnante and the J ai vu, was inveigled by a spy named Beauregard into a real or burlesque con fession, and on May 16, 1717, was arrested and sent to the Bastille. He remained there for eleven months, recast (Edipe, began the Henriade, and determined to alter his name. Ever after his exit from the Bastille in April 1718 he was known as Arouet de Voltaire, or simply Voltaire, though legally he never abandoned his patronymic. The origin of the famous name has been much debated, and attempts have been made to show that it actually existed in the Daumart pedigree or in some territorial designation. The balance of opinion has, however, always inclined to the hypothesis of an anagram on the name &quot;Arouet le jeune,&quot; or &quot; Arouet 1. j.,&quot; u being changed to v and ./ to i according to the ordinary rules of the game. If it be so, the much despised art of the anagrammatist has the triumph of pro ducing one of the dozen or score most famous names in literary history. A further &quot;exile&quot; at Chatenay and else where succeeded