Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/310

Rh 286 VOLTAIRE the imprisonment, and though Voltaire was admitted to an audience by the regent and treated graciously it is clear that he was not trusted, and the inconveniences he had suffered for a time induced even his incorrigibly mischievous nature to keep quiet. OZdipe was acted at the Theatre Francais on 18th November of the year of release, and was very well received, a not dissimilar rivalry between parties to that which not long before had helped Addison s Cato assisting its success. It had a run of forty-five nights, was acted at court, and brought the author not a little money in profits and presents, besides a gold medal from the regent. Voltaire seems to have begun with these gains his long and (among authors) almost unique series of successful financial speculations. But adversity had by no means done with him. In the spring of next year the production of Lagrange-Chancel s libels, entitled the Pldlippiques, again brought suspicion on him. He was informally exiled, and spent much time with Marshal Villars, again increasing his store of &quot;reminis cences.&quot; He returned to Paris in the winter, and his second play, Artemire, was produced in February 1720. It was a failure, and though it was recast with some success Voltaire never published it as a whole, and used parts of it up in other work. He again spent much of his time with Villars, listening to the marshal s stories and making harmless love to the duchess. In December 1721 his father died, leaving him property (rather more than four thousand livres a year), which was soon increased by a pension of half the amount from the regent. In return for this, or in hopes of more, he offered himself as a spy or at anyrate as a secret diplomatist to Dubois. He had, however, an awkward brush with a fellow-servant in this honourable kind of work, for, meeting his old enemy Beauregard in one of the minister s rooms and making an offensive remark, he was waylaid by Beauregard some time after in a less privileged place and soundly beaten. This unpleasant proceeding was only a preliminary to Voltaire s second and most important experience of &quot; Black Will with a cudgel,&quot; to use Rochester s phrase as to the proper mode of dealing with troublesome men of letters. His visiting espionage, as unkind critics put it his secret diplomatic mission, as he would have liked to have it put himself began in the summer of 1722, and he set out for it en bonne fortune, in company, that is to say, with a certain Madame de Rupelmonde, to whom he as usual made love, though it may perhaps be platonic love only (for Voltaire was not fortunate in this way), taught deism, and served as an amusing travelling companion. He stayed at Cam- bray for some time, where European diplomatists were still in full session, journeyed to Brussels, where he met and quarrelled with Jean Baptiste Rousseau, went on to the Hague, and then returned. It does not seem that he did anything diplomatically important, but from that day to this French Governments have had an amiable weakness for paying the travelling expenses of men of letters who feel inclined to see the world. The Henriade had got on considerably during the journey, and, according to his life long habit, the poet, with the help of his friend Thieriot and others, had been &quot; working the oracle &quot; of puffery after a fashion not particularly creditable, but perhaps recom mended by a knowledge of mankind. During the late autumn and winter of 1722-23 he abode chiefly in Paris, taking a kind of lodging in the town house of M. de Bernieres, a nobleman of Rouen, and endeavouring to procure a &quot; privilege &quot; for his poem. In this he was dis appointed, but he had the work printed at Rouen never theless, and spent the summer of 1723 revising it. In November he caught smallpox and was very seriously ill, so that the book was not given to the world till the spring of 1724 (and then of course, as it had no privilege, appeared privately). Almost at the same time, March 4, his third tragedy, Mariamne, appeared, at first with great success, but before the curtain fell complete damnation fell on it. The regent had died shortly before, not to Voltaire s advantage ; for though that rather hardly treated person had little reason to love the poet he had been a generous patron to him. Voltaire had made, however, a useful friend in another grand seigneur, as profligate and nearly as intelligent, the duke of Richelieu, and with him he passed 1724 and the next year chiefly, recasting Mariamne (which was now successful), writing the comedy of L lndis- cret, and courting the queen, the ministers, the favourites, and everybody who seemed worth courting. The end of 1725 brought a disastrous close to this period of his life. He was insulted in one way or another by the Chevalier de Rohan, replied with his usual sharpness of tongue, and shortly afterwards, when dining at the Hotel Sully, was called out and bastinadoed by the chevalier s hirelings, Rohan himself looking on. Nobody would take his part, and at last he challenged Rohan, who accepted the chal lenge, but on the morning appointed for the duel Voltaire was arrested and sent for the second time to the Bastille. This was nearly three months after the outrage. Voltaire had been ostentatiously taking lessons in fencing mean while, and it requires some effort to sympathize with him in all the circumstances. He was only kept in confine ment a fortnight, and was then packed off to England in accordance with his own request. In the then state of social matters in France this was probably the best end of the matter, and nobody comes out of it so badly as the duke of Sully, who, by the code of gentlemen of all ages, was clearly bound to take the part of the guest who had been trepanned from his OAVU table, and did not take it. But here also Voltaire took the best means of putting him self in the wrong and his enemies in the right by cutting Maximilien de Bethune s name out of the Henriade. No competent judges have ever mistaken the importance of Voltaire s visit to England, and the influence it exercised on his future career. In the first place, the ridiculous and discreditable incident of the beating had time to blow over ; in the second (as a previous experience of J. B. Rousseau s, which a good man of business like Voltaire was not likely to forget, had shown), England was a very favourable place for Frenchmen of note to pick up guineas ; in the third, and most important of all, his contact with a people then far more different in every conceivable way from their neighbours than any two peoples of Europe are different now, acted as a sovereign tonic and stimulant on his intellect and literary faculty. Before the English visit Voltaire had been an elegant trifler, an adept in the forms of literature popular in French society, a sort of superior Dorat or Bouffiers of earlier growth. He returned from that visit one of the foremost literary men in Europe, with views, if not profound or accurate, yet wide and acute on all les grands sujets, and with a solid stock of money to make him independent of those great men of his own country who had taught him how dearly their patronage was to be purchased. The visit lasted about three years, from 1726 to 1729; and, as if to make the visitor s luck certain, George I. died and George II. succeeded soon after his arrival. The new king was not fond of &quot; boetry,&quot; but Queen Caroline was, and the international jealousy (which, though there was no actual war, was never stronger than then) was pleased at the thought of welcoming a distin guished exile from French illiberality. The Walpoles, Bubb Dodington, Bolingbroke especially, Sir Everard Falkener, a merchant and a diplomatist, Young, Congreve, Sarah Marlborough, Pope, were among his English friends. He at least tried to appreciate Shakespeare, and at least attained to the length of now copying and now reviling him. He