Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 5.djvu/116

102 became quite social and genteel. Persons of rank and littérateurs mutually cultivated and necessarily perverted each other, for the genteel has always something excluding in its nature; and excluding also was the French criticism, being negative, detracting and faultfinding. The higher class made use of such judgments against the authors: the authors, with somewhat less decorum, proceeded in the same manner against each other,—nay, against their patrons. If the public was not to be awed, they endeavoured to take it by surprise, or gain it by humility; and thus—apart from the movements which shook Church and state to their inmost core—there arose such a literary ferment, that Voltaire himself stood in need of his full activity, and his whole preponderance, to keep himself above the torrent of general disesteem. Already he was openly called an old, capricious child; his endeavours, carried on indefatigably, were regarded as the vain efforts of a decrepit age; certain principles on which he had stood during his whole life, and to the spread of which he had devoted his days, were no more held in esteem and honour; nay, his Deity, by acknowledging whom he continued to declare himself free from atheism, was not conceded him; and thus he himself, the grandsire and patriarch, was forced, like his youngest competitor, to watch the present moment, to catch at new power, to do his friends too much good and his enemies too much harm, and, under the appearance of a passionate striving for the love of truth, to act deceitfully and falsely. Was it worth the trouble to have led such a great, active life, if it were to end in greater dependence than it had begun? How insupportable such a position was, did not escape his high mind, his delicate sensibility. He often relieved himself by leaps and thrusts, gave the reins to his humour, and carried a few of his sword-cuts too far, at which friends and enemies, for