French poetry of the kind, stiff with a double mannerism, literary and
devotional.

[Sidenote: Voltaire.]

It would not be easy to give a clearer idea of the strange conception of
poetry which prevailed in France at this time than is given in the
simple statement that Voltaire was acknowledged to be its greatest poet.
It is probable that few Englishmen think of Voltaire as a poet at all;
and he has indeed no claim to the title except such as may be derived
from his remarkable skill in the mechanism of the art of poetry, and
from the extraordinary felicity of his light occasional pieces. It is,
however, as a poet that he was chiefly regarded by his contemporaries;
and though he will figure in almost every one of the chapters of this
book, such brief notice of his life as can alone be attempted in this
volume may best be given here. He was born in Paris in 1694, being the
younger son of a wealthy notary. The Jesuits had charge of his
education, and he very early displayed inclinations towards verse which
were not agreeable to his father. His youth seemed destined to scrapes.
He became identified with the party hostile to the Regent, and was twice
imprisoned in the Bastile (the second time in consequence of no fault of
his own), while he was at least twice bastinadoed by personal enemies.
Being sent in the suite of an ambassador to Holland, he became entangled
in a foolish love affair, and had to be hastily recalled. But by degrees
his literary talent developed itself. His first visit to the Bastile is
identified, more or less correctly, with the composition of _Oedipe_,
his second with that of the _Henriade_. After his second release he had
to go to England, and there the poem was published. He was soon enabled
to return to France, and from that time forward was careful to keep
himself out of difficulties by residing first with his friend, Madame du
Chatelet, at the remote frontier chateau of Circy, then with Frederick
II. at Berlin, then on the neutral territory of Switzerland, or close to
its border, at Les Delices and Ferney. During the whole of his long life
his literary production was incessant, and the form most congenial to
him was poetry, or at least verse. Besides the _Henriade_, his only
poem of great bulk is the scandalous burlesque epic of the _Pucelle_,
nominally imitated from Ariosto, but destitute of the poetical feeling
prominent in the _Orlando_. Voltaire's talent, however, was so much
greater in the li