Works.—Vast and various as his work is, its vastness and variety are of the essence of its writer's peculiar quality. The divisions of it have long been recognized, and may be treated regularly.
The first of these divisions in order is the theatre. Between fifty and sixty pieces (including a few which exist only in frag ments or sketches) are included in his writings, and they cover his literary life. It is at first sight remarkable that Voltaire, whose comic power was undoubtedly far in excess of his tragic, should have written many tragedies of no small excellence in their way, but only one fair second-class comedy, Nanine. His tragedies, on the other hand, are works of extraordinary merit in their own way. Zaire, among those where love is admitted as a principal motive, and Merope, among those where this motive is excluded and kept in subordination, yield to no plays of their class.
As regards his poems proper, of which there are two long ones, the Henriade and the Pucelle, besides smaller pieces, of which a bare catalogue fills fourteen royal octavo columns, their value is very unequal. The Pucelle is extremely desultory; it is a libel on religion and history. But it is amusing. The minor poems are as much above the Pucelle as the Pucelle is above the Henriade. It is true that there is nothing, or hardly anything, that properly deserves the name of poetry in them—no passion, no sense of the beauty of nature, only a narrow "criticism of life," only a conventional and restricted choice of language, a cramped and monotonous prosody, and none of that indefinite suggestion which has been rightly said to be of the poetic essence. But there is immense wit, a wonderful command of such metre and language as the taste of the time allowed to the poet, a singular if somewhat artificial grace, and great felicity of diction.
The third division of Voltaire's works in a rational order con sists of his prose romances or tales. In these admirable works more than in any others that the peculiar quality of Voltaire— ironic style without exaggeration—appears. That he learned it partly from Saint Evremond, still more from Anthony Hamilton, partly even from his own enemy Le Sage, is perfectly true, but he gave it perfection and completion. If one especial peculiarity can be singled out, it is the extreme restraint and simplicity of the verbal treatment. Voltaire never dwells too long on this point, stays to laugh at what he has said, elucidates or comments on his own jokes, guffaws over them or exaggerates their form. The
famous "pour encourager les autres" is an typical example, and indeed the whole of Candide shows the style at its perfection.
To his own age Voltaire was pre-eminently a poet and a philos opher; the unkindness of succeeding ages has sometimes ques tioned whether he had any title to either name, and especially to the latter. His largest philosophical work, at least so called, is the curious medley entitled Dictionnaire philosophique, which is compounded of the articles contributed by him to the great Encyclopedie and of several minor pieces. No one of Voltaire's works shows his anti-religious or at least anti-ecclesiastical animus more strongly. The various title-words of the several articles are often the merest stalking-horses, under cover of which to shoot at the Bible or the church, the target being now and then shifted to the political institutions of the writer's country, his personal foes, etc., and the whole being largely seasoned with that acute, rather superficial, common-sense, but also common place, ethical and social criticism which the 18th century called philosophy. The book ranks perhaps second only to the novels as showing the character, literary and personal, of Voltaire; and despite its form it is nearly as readable.