Page:Toleration and other essays.djvu/20

 were slain, and as many more perished in the subsequent fires and horrors. Voltaire was at Geneva, and the horrible news threw him into the deepest distress. The poem into which he condensed his pain and his doubts is not a leisurely and polished piece of art. It has technical defects, and is unequal in inspiration. Should we admire it if it were otherwise? But it is a fine monument to his sincerity and just humian passion, and It contains some phrases that became proverbial and some passages of great beauty. I have altered the structure of the verse — the original is in rhymed hexameters — only in order that I could more faithfully convey to those who read only English the sentiments and, as far as possible, the phrasing of Voltaire. One allusion that recurs throughout needs some explanation. Browning's "All 's right with the world" was a very familiar cry in the eighteenth century. The English Deists, and J. J. Rousseau in France, held obstinately to this most singular optimism. Although Rousseau made a feeble and friendly reply to the poem, it proved a deadly blow to his somewhat fantastic teaching on that point.

Immediately preceding this poem I have given a translation of Voltaire's philosophical essay, Il faut choisir. This was written by him in 1772, six years before his death, and is the most succinct expression of his mature religious views. It is really directed against his atheistic friends at Paris, such as d'Holbach. Condorcet said of it that it contained the most powerful argumentation for the existence of God that had vet been advanced. Its remarkable lucidity and terseness enable us to