After some years of a somewhat unsettled kind, Voltaire, in 1758, established himself along with his niece, Mme. Denis, at Ferney in Switzerland, where, with little exception, the last 20 years of his life were passed. During this period some generous traits of character are recorded of him. Thus, he rescued from extreme want a grandniece of Corneille the great dramatist, had her carefully educated under his own eye at Ferney, and made over to her the proceeds of an annotated edition of her ancestor's works, which he issued for her express benefit. His noble exertions in behalf of the Calas family, the victims of a shameful persecution, are also well known. In 1778 lie was induced by his niece to revisit Paris. By the Parisians the poet, now in his 84th year, was received with a perfect tumult of enthusiasm, the excitement connected with which is thought to have hastened his death, which took place on May 30 of that year.
thedoubtful exception of Rousseau (Jean Jacques). who in his character of sates and enthusiast, was perhaps even more deeply influential, Voltaire is by far the most memorable of the band of celebrated writers whose crusade against established opinions was preparing the grand culbute of the French revolution. As every one • knows, it was mainly in the field of religious polemic that his destructive energies were exerted., It is common to stigmatize him a .3 an atheist, but this is simply to exhibit ignorance. Discarding revelation, be steadily upheld the truths of natural religion, and was, in fact, a deist pretty much of the English type. As such, lie was not a little despised by the more "advanced" minds of the period, Diderot and the like, who con sidered belief in a God clear evidence of intellectual infirmity. His favorite weapon was ridicule, and there was never, perhaps, a greater master of it. In a particular form of polished mockery, Voltaire remains almost without a rival. His prose is the perfec
tion of French style; it is admirable in grace, clearness, vivacity, and alive like a sparkling wine with the particular quality of esprit peculiar to the people and the lan guage. As a dramatist Voltaire takes rank as a worthy third with his two great prede • cessors of Corneille and Racine. His most famous poems are the Ilenrtaae, before men tioned, the one epic of the language, and La Pucelle, which is, perhaps, more prop erly to be styled infamous, such is the profanity and indecency with which the writer has willfully defiled the heroic story of the maid of Orleans. In the historical works of Voltaire, with the utmost lucidity of method, there are traces of a more philosoph ical treatment than had previously been applied to such subjects. For its narrative charm, his little historiette, Charles Douse, familiar to every school-boy, is in its kind a perfect model. In English, biographical works on Voltaire are very few in number. Of his earlier life, a most racy and mousing sketch will be found in the second volume of Mr. Carlyle's Frederick the Great; and his relations with Frederick are of course in that work treated of in full, with the writer's characteristic humor and insight. As a critical estimate at once of the man and of the writer, nothing better can anywhere be found than Mr. Carlyle's earlier essay.
In 1866 the first volume of a Life and Times of Francois-Marie Arouet, calling himself Voltaire, by Francis Espinasse, was published by Chapman and Hall; but this work, which promised to ably supply a desideratum, has been left unfinished. See also Voltaire, by David Friedrich Strauss (1870); Voltaire, by John Morley (Loudon. 1872); and Voltaire et la Societe du XVIlle Sarle, by T. G. Desnoiresterres (8 vols. 1855-76).