FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159   160   161   162   163   164   165   166   167   168  
169   170   171   172   173   174   175   176   177   178   179   180   181   182   183   184   185   186   187   188   189   190   191   192   193   >>   >|  
it also gave him a respite from the tyranny of the fencing-master, and allowed him to turn to his first, last and only love--literature. In Voltaire's cosmos was a good deal of the Bob Acres quality. There were plenty of reasons for locking him up--heresy and treason have ever been first cousins--and pamphlets lampooning Churchmen high in office were laid at his door. No doubt some of the anonymous literature was not his--"I would have done the thing better or not at all," he once said in reference to a scurrilous brochure. The real fact was, that that particular pamphlet was done by a disciple, and if Voltaire's writings were vile, then was his offense doubled in that he vitalized a ravenous brood of scribblers. They played Caliban to his Setebos. Voltaire's most offensive contributions were always attributed by him to this bishop or that, and to various dignitaries who had no existence save in the figment of his own fertile pigment. He once carried on a controversy between the Bishop of Berlin and the Archbishop of Paris, each man thundering against the other with a monthly pamphlet wherein each one gored the other without mercy, and revealed the senselessness of the other's religion. They flung the literary stinkpot with great accuracy. "The other man's superstition is always ridiculous to us--our own is sacred," said Voltaire, and so he allowed his controversialists to fight it out for his own quiet joy, and the edification of the onlookers. Then his plan of printing an alleged sermon, giving some unknown prelate due credit on the title-page, starting in with a pious text and a page of trite nothings and gradually drifting off into ridicule of the things he had started in to defend--all this gives a comic tinge to his wail that "some evil-minded person is attributing things to me I never wrote," If an occasional sly Churchman got after him with his own weapon, writing things in his style more hazardous than he dare express, surely he should not have complained. But this was a fact--the enemy could not follow him long with a literary fusillade--they hadn't the mental ammunition. Well has Voltaire been called "the father of all those who wear shovel-hats." * * * * * A few months in the Bastile, and Voltaire's indeterminate sentence was commuted to exile. He was allowed to leave his country for his country's good. Early in the year Seventeen Hundred Twenty-six he landed i
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159   160   161   162   163   164   165   166   167   168  
169   170   171   172   173   174   175   176   177   178   179   180   181   182   183   184   185   186   187   188   189   190   191   192   193   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
Voltaire
 

things

 

allowed

 

literary

 

country

 
pamphlet
 
literature
 

defend

 
ridicule
 

started


person

 

occasional

 
Churchman
 

minded

 
drifting
 

attributing

 
nothings
 
printing
 

respite

 

alleged


sermon

 

onlookers

 

edification

 

giving

 

unknown

 

starting

 

prelate

 

credit

 

gradually

 

weapon


months

 
Bastile
 

indeterminate

 

shovel

 

called

 
father
 

sentence

 
commuted
 

Twenty

 
landed

Hundred
 

Seventeen

 
express
 
surely
 

hazardous

 

writing

 
complained
 

mental

 
ammunition
 

fusillade