Home

VOLTAIRE THE LISBON EARTHQUAKE AND OTHER POEMS Vol. X— Part II - The Works of Voltaire, Vol. X The Dramatic Works Part 1 (Zaire, Caesar, The Prodigal, Prefaces) and Part II (The Lisbon Earthquake and Other Poems).

Return to Title Page for The Works of Voltaire, Vol. X The Dramatic Works Part 1 (Zaire, Caesar, The Prodigal, Prefaces) and Part II (The Lisbon Earthquake and Other Poems).

The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

Also in the Library:

Subject Area: Literature

VOLTAIRE THE LISBON EARTHQUAKE AND OTHER POEMS Vol. X— Part II - Voltaire, The Works of Voltaire, Vol. X The Dramatic Works Part 1 (Zaire, Caesar, The Prodigal, Prefaces) and Part II (The Lisbon Earthquake and Other Poems). [1901]

Edition used:

From The Works of Voltaire, A Contemporary Version, (New York: E.R. DuMont, 1901), A Critique and Biography by John Morley, notes by Tobias Smollett, trans. William F. Fleming. Vol. X The Dramatic Works Part 1 (Zaire, Caesar, The Prodigal, Prefaces) and Part II (The Lisbon Earthquake and Other Poems).

Author: Voltaire
Translator: William F. Fleming
Notes: Tobias Smollett

Part of: The Works of Voltaire. A Contemporary Version, in 21 vols.

About Liberty Fund:

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.

Copyright information:

The text is in the public domain.

Fair use statement:

This material is put online to further the educational goals of Liberty Fund, Inc. Unless otherwise stated in the Copyright Information section above, this material may be used freely for educational and academic purposes. It may not be used in any way for profit.

I was at Lille in 1741, where M. de Voltaire came to pass a few days; there was then the best company of actors in the town that had even been in Provence, who presented this piece to the satisfaction of a very numerous audience. The governor and the intendant were several times present at the performance. A tragedy written in so new a taste, and on so delicate a subject, treated with such judgment and discretion, induced many prelates to have it acted in a private house by the same persons. Their opinion confirmed that of the public. The author was at the same time so happy as to get his manuscript presented to one of the first men in the church, and indeed in all Europe,1 who supported the weight of public affairs with firmness, and judged concerning works of genius with true taste, at an age when few men have, and still fewer preserve their wit and delicacy. He decided that the piece was written with all proper decorum and circumspection, and that it was impossible to handle with more prudence so dangerous a subject; but that with regard to the poetry, there were many things in it that wanted correction; these the author, to my knowledge, afterward retouched with the greatest care. This was also the opinion of another eminent personage of equal rank, and of equal abilities.

At length this excellent performance, which had been licenced according to form in many other places, was exhibited at Paris on August 9, 1742: a whole box was filled with the principal magistrates of the city; the ministers were also present, and all were of the same opinion as the excellent judges above mentioned. There were, however, some persons at the first representation who disapproved of it: whether it was that in the hurry of the action they did not sufficiently attend to the gradual process of it, or that they were little versed in stage matters,1 they seemed shocked at Mahomet’s ordering a man to commit murder, and making use of his religion to stir up an innocent youth, the instrument of his crimes, to an assassination. These gentlemen, struck with the horror of the action, did not sufficiently consider, that this murder is represented in the tragedy as the most atrocious of all crimes, and that indeed it was morally impossible it should be otherwise. The truth was, they saw indeed but one side, the usual method which men take to deceive themselves. And as they considered that side only, it was no wonder they should take offence, which a little more attention would easily have removed: but in the first heat of their zeal they cried out that it was a dangerous performance, and fit only to produce Ravaillacs and Jacques Cléments. A most extraordinary piece of criticism which these gentlemen no doubt are by this time heartily ashamed of. This would in effect be to affirm that Hermione teaches us to assassinate kings, Electra to kill our mothers, Cleopatra and Medea to slay our own children: that Harpagon makes misers, the Gamester gamesters, and Tartuffe hypocrites. The censure of Mahomet would carry with it even more injustice than this, because the iniquity of that false prophet is represented in a light more odious and detestable than any of the vices or follies satirized in those performances. The tragedy was written directly in opposition to the Ravaillacs and Jacques Cléments, insomuch that, as a person of excellent judgment lately observed, if “Mahomet” had been written in the time of Henry III. and Henry IV. it might have saved both their lives. Would one think it possible that the author of “La Henriade” would ever have met with such a reproach, he who has so often in that poem, and in other parts of his works, lifted up his voice, not only against such crimes, but against all those pernicious maxims which are the causes of them? The more I read that writer’s works, the more have I always found the love of public good their distinguishing characteristic: every part of them inspires horror and detestation of rebellion, persecution, and fanaticism.

He soon perceived that a formidable party was raised against him; some of the most violent among them got the ear of a few great men, who not having seen the piece themselves believed everything that these gentlemen thought proper to report concerning it. The celebrated Molière, the glory of France, was once in nearly the same condition, when his “Tartuffe” was first exhibited; he had immediate recourse to Louis the Great, who knew and loved him. The authority of that monarch soon put an end to the sinister and malevolent misrepresentations of “Tartuffe;” but times are changed; that protection which is given to arts in their infant state cannot be expected to continue after those arts have been cultivated for a length of time: besides one man may not have interest to obtain that which another has procured with ease; hence some instruments must be set to work, some discussions made, some new examinations passed through, before anything can be done in his favor. The author therefore thought it most advisable to withdraw his piece, after the third representation, in hopes that time would get the better of prejudice, which must inevitably happen among a people so sensible and judicious as our own.1 It was stated in the public papers, that the tragedy of “Mahomet” had been stopped by order of the government, which was an absolute falsehood; no such order was ever given; and the first men in the kingdom, who had seen this tragedy, unanimously concurred in their admiration of it. Some persons having hastily transcribed a few scenes from the actors’ parts, two or three imperfect editions crept into the world; it is easy to see how much they differ from the true work which I have here given. Prefixed to this tragedy are several interesting pieces; one of the most curious among them, in my opinion, is a letter written by the author to his majesty, the King of Prussia, on his return through Holland, after a visit to him. In papers of this kind, which were not originally designed for the public, one sees the real sentiments of men: I flatter myself they will afford the same pleasure to every true philosopher which they gave me in the perusal.

VOLTAIRE THE LISBON EARTHQUAKE AND OTHER POEMS

Vol. X—Part II

AUTHOR’S PREFACE TO THE LISBON EARTHQUAKE.

If the question concerning physical evil ever deserves the attention of men, it is in those melancholy events which put us in mind of the weakness of our nature; such as plagues, which carry off a fourth of the inhabitants of the known world; the earthquake which swallowed up four hundred thousand of the Chinese in 1699, that of Lima and Callao, and, in the last place, that of Portugal and the kingdom of Fez. The maxim, “whatever is, is right,” appears somewhat extraordinary to those who have been eye-witnesses of such calamities. All things are doubtless arranged and set in order by Providence, but it has long been too evident, that its superintending power has not disposed them in such a manner as to promote our temporal happiness.

When the celebrated Pope published his “Essay on Man,” and expounded in immortal verse the systems of Leibnitz, Lord Shaftesbury and Lord Bolingbroke, his system was attacked by a multitude of divines of a variety of different communions. They were shocked at the novelty of the propositions, “whatever is, is right”; and that “man always enjoys that measure of happiness which is suited to his being.” There are few writings that may not be condemned, if considered in one light, or approved of, if considered in another. It would be much more reasonable to attend only to the beauties and improving parts of a work, than to endeavor to put an odious construction on it; but it is one of the imperfections of our nature to put a bad interpretation on whatever has a dubious sense, and to run down whatever has been successful.

In a word, it was the opinion of many, that the axiom, “whatever is, is right,” was subversive of all our received ideas. If it be true, said they, that whatever is, is right, it follows that human nature is not degenerated. If the general order requires that everything should be as it is, human nature has not been corrupted, and consequently could have had no occasion for a Redeemer. If this world, such as it is, be the best of systems possible, we have no room to hope for a happy future state. If the various evils by which man is overwhelmed, end in general good, all civilized nations have been wrong in endeavoring to trace out the origin of moral and physical evil. If a man devoured by wild beasts, causes the well-being of those beasts, and contributes to promote the orders of the universe; if the misfortunes of individuals are only the consequence of this general and necessary order, we are nothing more than wheels which serve to keep the great machine in motion; we are not more precious in the eyes of God, than the animals by whom we are devoured.

These are the inferences which were drawn from Mr. Pope’s poem; and these very conclusions increased the sale and success of the work. But it should have been seen from another point of view. Readers should have considered the reverence for the Deity, the resignation to His supreme will, the useful morality, and the spirit of toleration, which breathe through this excellent poem. This the public has done, and the work being translated by men equal to the task, has completely triumphed over critics, though it turned on matters of so delicate a nature.

It is the nature of over violent censurers to give importance to the opinions which they attack. A book is railed at on account of its success, and a thousand errors are imputed to it. What is the consequence of this? Men, disgusted with these invectives, take for truths the very errors which these critics think they have discovered. Cavillers raise phantoms on purpose to combat them, and indignant readers embrace these very phantoms.

Critics have declared that Pope and Leibnitz maintain the doctrine of fatality; the partisans of Leibnitz and Pope have said on the other hand that, if Leibnitz and Pope have taught the doctrine of fatality, they were in the right, and all this invincible fatality we should believe.

Pope had advanced that “whatever is, is right,” in a sense that might very well be admitted, and his followers maintain the same proposition in a sense that may very well be contested.

The author of the poem, “The Lisbon Earthquake,” does not write against the illustrious Pope, whom he always loved and admired; he agrees with him in almost every particular, but compassionating the misery of man; he declares against the abuse of the new maxim, “whatever is, is right.” He maintains that ancient and sad truth acknowledged by all men, that there is evil upon earth; he acknowledges that the words “whatever is, is right,” if understood in a positive sense, and without any hopes of a happy future state, only insult us in our present misery.

If, when Lisbon, Moquinxa, Tetuan, and other cities were swallowed up with a great number of their inhabitants in the month of November, 1759, philosophers had cried out to the wretches, who with difficulty escaped from the ruins, “all this is productive of general good; the heirs of those who have perished will increase their fortune; masons will earn money by rebuilding the houses, beasts will feed on the carcasses buried under the ruins; it is the necessary effect of necessary causes; your particular misfortune is nothing, it contributes to universal good,” such a harangue would doubtless have been as cruel as the earthquake was fatal, and all that the author of the poem upon the destruction of Lisbon has said amounts only to this.

He acknowledges with all mankind that there is evil as well as good on the earth; he owns that no philosopher has ever been able to explain the nature of moral and physical evil. He asserts that Bayle, the greatest master of the art of reasoning that ever wrote, has only taught to doubt, and that he combats himself; he owns that man’s understanding is as weak as his life is miserable. He lays a concise abstract of the several different systems before his readers. He says that Revelation alone can untie the great knot which philosophers have only rendered more puzzling; and that nothing but the hope of our existence being continued in a future state can console us under our present misfortunes; that the goodness of Providence is the only asylum in which man can take refuge in the darkness of reason, and in the calamities to which his weak and frail nature is exposed.

P. S.—Readers should always distinguish between the objections which an author proposes to himself and his answers to those objections, and should not mistake what he refutes for what he adopts.

THE LISBON EARTHQUAKE.*

an inquiry into the maxim, “whatever is, is right.”

Oh wretched man, earth-fated to be cursed;
Abyss of plagues, and miseries the worst!
Horrors on horrors, griefs on griefs must show,
That man’s the victim of unceasing woe,
And lamentations which inspire my strain,
Prove that philosophy is false and vain.
Approach in crowds, and meditate awhile
Yon shattered walls, and view each ruined pile,
Women and children heaped up mountain high,
Limbs crushed which under ponderous marble lie;
Wretches unnumbered in the pangs of death,
Who mangled, torn, and panting for their breath,
Buried beneath their sinking roofs expire,
And end their wretched lives in torments dire.
Say, when you hear their piteous, half-formed cries,
Or from their ashes see the smoke arise,
Say, will you then eternal laws maintain.
Which God to cruelties like these constrain?
Whilst you these facts replete with horror view,
Will you maintain death to their crimes was due?
And can you then impute a sinful deed
To babes who on their mothers’ bosoms bleed?
Was then more vice in fallen Lisbon found,
Than Paris, where voluptuous joys abound?
Was less debauchery to London known,
Where opulence luxurious holds her throne?
Earth Lisbon swallows; the light sons of France
Protract the feast, or lead the sprightly dance.
Spectators who undaunted courage show,
While you behold your dying brethren’s woe;
With stoical tranquillity of mind
You seek the causes of these ills to find;
But when like us Fate’s rigors you have felt,
Become humane, like us you’ll learn to melt.
When the earth gapes my body to entomb,
I justly may complain of such a doom.
Hemmed round on every side by cruel fate,
The snares of death, the wicked’s furious hate,
Preyed on by pain and by corroding grief
Suffer me from complaint to find relief.
’Tis pride, you cry, seditious pride that still
Asserts mankind should be exempt from ill.
The awful truth on Tagus’ banks explore,
Rummage the ruins on that bloody shore,
Wretches interred alive in direful grave
Ask if pride cries, “Good Heaven thy creatures save.”
If ’tis presumption that makes mortals cry,
“Heaven on our sufferings cast a pitying eye.”
All’s right, you answer, the eternal cause
Rules not by partial, but by general laws.
Say what advantage can result to all,
From wretched Lisbon’s lamentable fall?
Are you then sure, the power which could create
The universe and fix the laws of fate,
Could not have found for man a proper place,
But earthquakes must destroy the human race?
Will you thus limit the eternal mind?
Should not our God to mercy be inclined?
Cannot then God direct all nature’s course?
Can power almighty be without resource?
Humbly the great Creator I entreat,
This gulf with sulphur and with fire replete,
Might on the deserts spend its raging flame,
God my respect, my love weak mortals claim;
When man groans under such a load of woe,
He is not proud, he only feels the blow.
Would words like these to peace of mind restore
The natives sad of that disastrous shore?
Grieve not, that others’ bliss may overflow,
Your sumptuous palaces are laid thus low;
Your toppled towers shall other hands rebuild;
With multitudes your walls one day be filled;
Your ruin on the North shall wealth bestow,
For general good from partial ills must flow;
You seem as abject to the sovereign power,
As worms which shall your carcasses devour.
No comfort could such shocking words impart,
But deeper wound the sad, afflicted heart.
When I lament my present wretched state,
Allege not the unchanging laws of fate;
Urge not the links of the eternal chain,
’Tis false philosophy and wisdom vain.

The God who holds the chain can’t be enchained;* By His blest will are all events ordained:

He’s just, nor easily to wrath gives way,
Why suffer we beneath so mild a sway:*
This is the fatal knot you should untie,
Our evils do you cure when you deny?
Men ever strove into the source to pry,
Of evil, whose existence you deny.
If he whose hand the elements can wield,
To the winds’ force makes rocky mountains yield;
If thunder lays oaks level with the plain,
From the bolts’ strokes they never suffer pain.
But I can feel, my heart oppressed demands
Aid of that God who formed me with His hands.
Sons of the God supreme to suffer all
Fated alike; we on our Father call.
No vessel of the potter asks, we know,
Why it was made so brittle, vile, and low?
Vessels of speech as well as thought are void;
The urn this moment formed and that destroyed,
The potter never could with sense inspire,
Devoid of thought it nothing can desire.
The moralist still obstinate replies,
Others’ enjoyments from your woes arise,
To numerous insects shall my corpse give birth,
When once it mixes with its mother earth:
Small comfort ’tis that when Death’s ruthless power
Closes my life, worms shall my flesh devour.
Remembrances of misery refrain
From consolation, you increase my pain:
Complaint, I see, you have with care repressed,
And proudly hid your sorrows in your breast.
But a small part I no importance claim
In this vast universe, this general frame;
All other beings in this world below
Condemned like me to lead a life of woe,
Subject to laws as rigorous as I,
Like me in anguish live and like me die.
The vulture urged by an insatiate maw,
Its trembling prey tears with relentless claw:
This it finds right, endowed with greater powers
The bird of Jove the vulture’s self devours.
Man lifts his tube, he aims the fatal ball
And makes to earth the towering eagle fall;
Man in the field with wounds all covered o’er,
Midst heaps of dead lies weltering in his gore,
While birds of prey the mangled limbs devour,
Of Nature’s Lord who boasts his mighty power.
Thus the world’s members equal ills sustain,
And perish by each other born to pain:
Yet in this direful chaos you’d compose
A general bliss from individuals’ woes?
Oh worthless bliss! in injured reason’s sight,
With faltering voice you cry, “What is, is right”?
The universe confutes your boasting vain,
Your heart retracts the error you maintain.
Men, beasts, and elements know no repose
From dire contention; earth’s the seat of woes:
We strive in vain its secret source to find.
Is ill the gift of our Creator kind?
Do then fell Typhon’s cursed laws ordain
Our ill, or Arimanius doom to pain?
Shocked at such dire chimeras, I reject
Monsters which fear could into gods erect.
But how conceive a God, the source of love,
Who on man lavished blessings from above,
Then would the race with various plagues confound,
Can mortals penetrate His views profound?
Ill could not from a perfect being spring,
Nor from another, since God’s sovereign king;
And yet, sad truth! in this our world ’tis found,
What contradictions here my soul confound!
A God once dwelt on earth amongst mankind,
Yet vices still lay waste the human mind;
He could not do it, this proud sophist cries,
He could, but he declined it, that replies;
He surely will, ere these disputes have end,
Lisbon’s foundations hidden thunders rend,
And thirty cities’ shattered remnants fly,
With ruin and combustion through the sky,
From dismal Tagus’ ensanguined shore,
To where of Cadiz’ sea the billows roar.
Or man’s a sinful creature from his birth,
And God to woe condemns the sons of earth;
Or else the God who being rules and space,
Untouched with pity for the human race,
Indifferent, both from love and anger free,
Still acts consistent to His first decree:
Or matter has defects which still oppose
God’s will, and thence all human evil flows;
Or else this transient world by mortals trod,
Is but a passage that conducts to God.
Our transient sufferings here shall soon be o’er,
And death will land us on a happier shore.
But when we rise from this accursed abyss,
Who by his merit can lay claim to bliss?
Dangers and difficulties man surround,
Doubts and perplexities his mind confound.
To nature we apply for truth in vain,
God should His will to human kind explain.
He only can illume the human soul,
Instruct the wise man, and the weak console.
Without Him man of error still the sport,
Thinks from each broken reed to find support.
Leibnitz can’t tell me from what secret cause
In a world governed by the wisest laws,
Lasting disorders, woes that never end
With our vain pleasures real sufferings blend;
Why ill the virtuous with the vicious shares?
Why neither good nor bad misfortunes spares?
I can’t conceive that “what is, ought to be,”
In this each doctor knows as much as me.
We’re told by Plato, that man, in times of yore,
Wings gorgeous to his glorious body wore,
That all attacks he could unhurt sustain,
By death ne’er conquered, ne’er approached by pain.
Alas, how changed from such a brilliant state!
He crawls ’twixt heaven and earth, then yields to fate.
Look round this sublunary world, you’ll find
That nature to destruction is consigned.
Our system weak which nerves and bone compose,
Cannot the shock of elements oppose;
This mass of fluids mixed with tempered clay,
To dissolution quickly must give way.
Their quick sensations can’t unhurt sustain
The attacks of death and of tormenting pain,
This is the nature of the human frame,
Plato and Epicurus I disclaim.
Nature was more to Bayle than either known:
What do I learn from Bayle, to doubt alone?
Bayle, great and wise, all systems overthrows,
Then his own tenets labors to oppose.
Like the blind slave to Delilah’s commands,
Crushed by the pile demolished by his hands.
Mysteries like these can no man penetrate,
Hid from his view remains the book of fate.
Man his own nature never yet could sound,
He knows not whence he is, nor whither bound.*
Atoms tormented on this earthly ball,
The sport of fate, by death soon swallowed all,
But thinking atoms, who with piercing eyes
Have measured the whole circuit of the skies;
We rise in thought up to the heavenly throne,
But our own nature still remains unknown.
This world which error and o’erweening pride,
Rulers accursed between them still divide,
Where wretches overwhelmed with lasting woe,
Talk of a happiness they never know,
Is with complaining filled, all are forlorn
In seeking bliss; none would again be born.
If in a life midst sorrows past and fears,
With pleasure’s hand we wipe away our tears,
Pleasure his light wings spreads, and quickly flies,
Losses on losses, griefs on griefs arise.
The mind from sad remembrance of the past,
Is with black melancholy overcast;
Sad is the present if no future state,
No blissful retribution mortals wait,
If fate’s decrees the thinking being doom
To lose existence in the silent tomb.
All may be well; that hope can man sustain,
All now is well; ’tis an illusion vain.
The sages held me forth delusive light,
Divine instructions only can be right.
Humbly I sigh, submissive suffer pain,
Nor more the ways of Providence arraign.
In youthful prime I sung in strains more gay,
Soft pleasure’s laws which lead mankind astray.
But times change manners; taught by age and care
Whilst I mistaken mortals’ weakness share,
The light of truth I seek in this dark state,
And without murmuring submit to fate.
A caliph once when his last hour drew nigh,
Prayed in such terms as these to the most high:
“Being supreme, whose greatness knows no bound,
I bring thee all that can’t in Thee be found;
Defects and sorrows, ignorance and woe.”
Hope he omitted, man’s sole bliss below.

PREFACE TO THE POEM ON THE LAW OF NATURE.

It is generally known that this poem was not intended for the public; it long remained a secret between a great king and the author. About three months ago a few copies were handed about in Paris, and soon after several impressions of it were published, as incorrect as those of other works by the same hand.

It would be no more than justice to be more indulgent to a work forced out of the obscurity to which the author had condemned it than to a work offered by the writer himself to the inspection of the public. It would also be agreeable to equity not to pass the same judgment on a poem composed by a layman as on a theological thesis. These two poems are the fruits of a transplanted tree. Some of these fruits may perhaps not be to the taste of certain persons; they come from a foreign climate, but none of them are poisoned, and many of them may prove highly salutary.

This work should be considered as a letter, in which the author freely discloses his sentiments. Most books resemble those formal and general conversations in which people seldom utter their thoughts. The author, in this poem, declares his real opinions to a philosophical prince, whom he then had the honor of living with. He has been informed that persons of the best understanding have been pleased with this sketch: they were of opinion that the poem on the “Law of Nature” was intended only to prepare the world for truths more sublime. This consideration alone would have determined the author to render his work more complete and correct, if his infirmities had permitted it. He was at last obliged to content himself with correcting the faults which the first edition swarm with.

The praises bestowed in this work upon a prince by no means solicitous about praise should not surprise anybody, they came from the heart; they are very different from that incense which self-interestedness lavishes upon power. The man of letters might not perhaps have deserved the praises or the favors poured upon him by the monarch, but the monarch was every way deserving of the encomiums bestowed upon him in this poem by the man of letters. The change which has since happened, in a connection which does so much honor to learning, has by no means altered the sentiments which gave occasion to these praises.

In fine, since a work never intended for publication, has been snatched out of secrecy and obscurity, it will last among a few sages as a monument of a philosophical correspondence, which should not have ended, and if it shows human weakness throughout, it, at the same time, makes it appear that true philosophy always surmounts that weakness.

To conclude, this weak essay was first occasioned by a little pamphlet which appeared at that time. It was entitled, “A Treatise on the Sovereign Good,” and it should have been called “A Treatise on the Sovereign Evil.” The author of it maintained that there is no such thing as virtue or vice, and that remorse of conscience is a weakness owing to the prejudice of education, which a man should endeavor to subdue. The author of the following poem maintains, that remorse of conscience is as natural to us as any passion of the human soul. If the violence of passion hurries man into a fault, when come to himself he is sensible of that fault. The wild girl who was found near Châlons, owned, that in her passion she gave her companion a blow, of the consequence of which the poor wretch died in her arms. As soon as she saw her blood, she repented, she wept, she stopped the blood, and dressed the wound with herbs. Those who maintain that this relenting of humanity is only a branch of self-love do that principle a great deal of honor. Let men call reason and conscience by what names they will, they exist, and are the foundation of the law of nature.

THE LAW OF NATURE.

Thou by whose works, deeds, reign with wonders fraught,
The brave and wise their duty shall be taught,
Who with unaltered brow alike look down
On life and death, the cottage and the crown;
With force like thine my wavering soul inspire,
Spread o’er me rays of that celestial fire,
Which owes to sacred reason all its light,
By prepossession dimmed and turned to night.
On darkness which o’erspreads the world below,
Let’s strive some light however faint to throw.
Our first of studies in our early age,
Was courtly Horace with Boileau’s chaste page.
In them you sought with philosophic mind,
The true and beautiful at once to find;
Oft with instructive and with moral lines,
Brightly each finished composition shines;
But Pope possessed of genius more refined,
What lightly they skimmed knew how to find.
Light into the abyss of being first he brought,
And man by him to know himself was taught.
A trivial now, and now a useful art,
Verse is in Pope divine, it forms the heart.
What need we know that Horace hired to praise
Octavius in vile, prostituted lays,
When from the night’s polluted joys he rose,
Insulted Crispinus in measured prose?
That pensioned Boileau satire’s venom shed
On Quinault’s lyre and Tasso’s laureled head;
Could paint the hurry, bustle, and the throng
Of Paris, where men scarce can pass along;
Or at a wretched feast what passed rehearse,
In flowing numbers and harmonious verse.
A soul like thine to higher views aspires,
Far other information it requires;
The essence of our spirit you explore,
Its end, beginning, but its duty more.
On this important theme what others thought,
What error has to vulgar doctors taught,
Let’s scan and balance with those truths divine,
Which heaven suggests to such a soul as thine.
God we should search for in ourselves alone,
If He exists the human heart’s His throne.
The God whose power from dust could mortals raise,
Must we then seek in learning’s winding maze?
You trust not Origen’s or Scotus’ page,
Nature instructs us more than either sage;
Systems let’s drop, those follies of the wise,
And into self descending, learn to rise.

PART THE FIRST.

God has given men ideas of justice and conscience to admonish them just as He has given them everything else necessary. This is that Law of Nature upon which religion is founded. This is the only principle herein discussed. The author speaks only of the Law of Nature, and not of religion and its awful mysteries.

Whether a self-existent* being laid
The world’s foundations, out of nothing made,
If forming matter o’er it he presides,
And having shaped the mass, directs and guides;
Whether the soul, that bright ethereal spark
Of heavenly fire, too oft obscure and dark,
Makes of our senses one or acts alone;
We all are subject to the Almighty’s throne.
But at His throne round which deep thunders roar
What homage shall we pay, how God adore?
Can jealousy affect the eternal mind?
Will adulation there acceptance find?
Is it that warlike race of haughty brow,
Who to their power made famed Byzantium bow,
The phlegmatic Chinese, the Tartar rude,
Whose arms so many regions have subdued,
That rightly knows to praise the Power divine,
And offer grateful homage at His shrine?
Various in language and religious lore
A different deity they all implore;
Then all have erred, let’s therefore turn our eyes
From vile impostors who delight in lies:*
Nor let us vainly make attempt to sound
Awful religion’s mysteries profound,
To reason let researches vain give place,
Let’s strive to know if God instructs our race.
Nature to man has given with bounteous hand
Whate’er his nature’s cravings can demand;
Sense’s sure instinct, spirit’s varied springs,
To him each element its tribute brings.
In the brain’s foldings memory is placed,
And on it nature’s lively image traced.
Ready at every motion of his will,
His call external objects answer still;
Sound to his ear is wafted by the air,
The light he sees without or pains or care.
As to his God, the end of humankind
Is man to ceaseless errors then confined?
Is nature then displayed to mortal’s eyes,
While nature’s God obscure and hidden lies?
Is succor in my greatest need denied?
Must my chief craving rest unsatisfied?
No, God in vain has not His creatures made,
The hand divine on every brow’s displayed,
My Master’s will can’t from me be concealed;
When He gave being He His law revealed.
Doubtless He spoke, but spoke to all mankind;
To Egypt’s deserts He was ne’er confined.
In Delphi, Delos, or the Sibyl’s cave,
No oracle the godhead ever gave.
Morality, unvaried and the same,
Denounces to each age God’s holy name.
’Tis Trajan’s law, ’tis Socrates’, yours,
By nature preached, like nature it endures;
Reason receives it, and the keen remorse
Of conscience strengthens it, and gives it force;
For conscience makes the obstinate repent,
And hardest bosoms at her voice relent.
Think you young Ammon, mad ambition’s slave,
Not like you moderate, although as brave,
In a friend’s blood, when he his hands imbrued.
By augurs to soft pity was subdued?
Religious rites for gold they had profaned,
And washed the monarch’s hands by murder stained:
But nature’s instinct could not be suppressed,
It pleaded powerful in the monarch’s breast;
He could not his impetuous rage forgive,
But thought himself a wretch unfit to live.
This law which bears in China sovereign sway,
To which fierce Japanese due reverence pay,
Fired Zoroaster’s genius unconfined,
And shed its sacred light on Solon’s mind.
It cries from Indus to cold Zembla’s shore,
“Be just, thy country love, and God adore.”
The Laplander, amidst eternal snows,
His God adores, and what is justice, knows;
And sold to distant coasts the negro race
With joy in others negro features trace.
No slanderer vile, no murderer ever knows
The mind’s calm sunshine and the soul’s repose;
Nor ever thus his secret thoughts expressed,
He who destroys the innocent is blessed;
Blessed he by whom his mother’s blood is spilt,
Great the attractions and the charms of guilt.
Believe me, mortals, man, with dauntless brow,
Would openly such sentiments avow,
If there was not a universal law
Crimes to repress, and keep the world in awe.
Did men create the sense of guilt or shame?
Their soul and faculties did mortals frame?
Whether in Peru or in China flame
The golden heaps, their nature is the same:
From the artist’s hands new forms the ingots take,
But he who shapes unable is to make:
Thus God, to whom each man his being owes,
In every heart the seeds of virtue sows.
True virtue by the Almighty first was made,
By man its counterfeit, and empty shade;
He may disguise the truth with errors vain,
His feelings an attempt to change restrain.

PART THE SECOND.

Containing answers to the objections against universal morality, with a demonstration of that truth.

Cardan and famed Spinoza both reply,
This check of conscience, Nature’s boasted cry,
From mutual wants and habit take their rise,
’Tis these cement our friendships and our ties.
Foe to thyself, sophist both weak and blind,
Whence springs this want? Why did the sovereign mind
Make in the bosom of all mortals dwell,
Instincts which to society impel?
Laws made by mortal man soon pass away,
The varied, weak productions of a day.
Jacob of old, as inclination led,
Two sisters of the Hebrew race could wed;
David, exempt both from restraint and shame,
Could to a hundred beauties tell his flame,
Whilst at the Vatican, the pope distressed,
Can’t without scandal be of one possessed.
Here successors are chosen by the sires,
Whilst birthright there the whole estate acquires.
If but a whiskered Polander commands,
All public business suspended stands.
Electors must the emperor sustain,
The pope has dignity, the English gain.
Worship, law, interests, variations know,
Virtue’s alone unchangeable below.
But whilst this moral beauty we admire,
See on a scaffold Britain’s king expire.
Borgia the blade against his brother drew,
And stabbed whilst to his sister’s arms he flew.
There the Dutch rabble roused to frantic rage,
Two brothers tear, the worthies of their age.
In France Brinvilliers constant still at prayers,
Poisons her sire, and to confess repairs;
The just is by the wicked’s force subdued,
Hence do you virtue but a name conclude?
When with the baleful south wind’s tainted breath,
All nature sickens, and each gale is death,
Will you maintain that since the world began,
Health never yet was known to dwell with man.
The various pests that poison human life,
Effects that spring from elemental strife,
Corrupt the bliss of mortals here below,
But quickly vanish both their guilt and woe.
Soon as our passions fierce subside and cool,
Our hearts assent to every moral rule.
The source is pure, the furious winds in vain
Disturb its waves, and rushing torrents stain;
The mud that on its surface flows refines,
And by degrees the watery mirror shines;
The worst man there fierce as the storm before,
His image sees when once its rage is o’er.
The light of reason heaven gave not in vain
To man, but added conscience to restrain.
The springs of sense are moved by her command;
Who hears her voice is sure to understand:
To minds by passion swayed though free before,
She still an equilibrium can restore;
She kindles in each breast a generous flame,
And makes self-love and social love the same.
This was the demon Socrates’ guide,
Ordained o’er all his actions to preside,
The God whose presence could his fears control,
Who made him dauntless drink the poisoned bowl.
Was to the sage its influence confined?
No; heaven must sure direct each human mind.
By this for five years Nero’s rage was quelled,
Five years the voice of flattery he repelled.
His soul to this Aurelius still applied,
Like a philosopher he lived and died.
Julian, apostate by the Christians named,
Adhered to reason, whilst he faith disclaimed,
The Church’s scandal, but of kings the pride,
Ne’er from the law of nature turned aside.
But cavillers truth’s force will never own,
They cry to infants, “Reason is unknown;”
The power of education forms the mind,
Man still to copy others is inclined;
Nothing peculiar actuates his heart,
Others he apes, and acts a borrowed part;
Justice and truth with him are words of course,
But machine-like he acts by instinct’s force.
He’s Turk or Jew, Pagan or Child of Grace,
Layman or Monk, according to his race.
I know example influence acquires
O’er man; that habit sentiment inspires.
Speech, fashions, and the mind’s unbounded range
Of mad opinions, subject still to change,
Are feeble traces by our sires impressed,
With mortal signet on each human breast.
But the first springs are made by God’s own hand,
Of source divine, they shall forever stand.
To practise them the child a man must grow,
Their force he cannot in the cradle know.
The sparrow when he first beholds the light,
Can he unfledged feel amorous delight?
Do new-born foxes prey to seek begin?
Do insects taught by nature silk to spin,
Or do the humming swarms, whose artful skill,
Can wax compose, and honey’s sweets distil,
Soon as they see the day their work produce?
Time ripens and brings all things into use,
All beings have their object, and they tend
At a fixed period to their destined end.
Passion, ’tis true, may hurry us along,
Sometimes the just may deviate into wrong.
Oft man from good to hated evil flies,
None in all moments virtuous are or wise.
We’re told that man’s a mystery o’er and o’er;
All nature as mysterious is or more.
Philosophers sagacious and profound,
The beasts’ sure instinct could you ever sound?
The nature of the grass can you explain,
That dies, then rising spreads a verdant plain?
This world a veil o’erspreads of darkest night,
If through the deep obscure the glimmering light
Of reason serves to guide us on our way,
Should we extinguish it, and go astray.
When God first filled the vast expanse of sky,
Bid oceans flow and kindled suns on high;
He said, “Be in your limits fixed contained,”
And in their bounds the rising worlds remained.
On Venus laws and Saturn he imposed,
The sixteen orbs of which our world’s composed;
On jarring elements that still contend,
On rolling thunders that the ether rend,
On man created to adore His power,
And on the worm that shall man’s flesh devour.
Shall man audaciously, with effort vain,
His own laws add to those the heavens ordain?
Should we the phantoms of a day at most,
Who scarcely can a real being boast,
Place ourselves on the throne at God’s right hand,
And issue forth (like Gods) supreme command?

PART THE THIRD.

Shows that as men have for the most part disfigured, by the various opinions which they have adopted, the principle of natural religion which unites them, they should mutually bear with each other.

The universe is God’s eternal shrine,
Men various ways adore the power divine.
All of their faith, their saints, their martyred host,
And oracles unerring voice make boast.
On numerous ablutions one relies,
He thinks heaven sees them with propitious eyes,
And that all those who are not circumcised,
Are by his God rejected and despised.
Another thinks he Brahma’s favor gains,
Whilst he from eating rabbits’ flesh abstains,
Amongst the blessed above he hopes a seat,
The just reward of merit so complete.
Against their neighbors all alike declaim,
And brand them with the unbeliever’s name.
The jars amidst contending Christians bred,
More desolation through the world have spread,
Than the pretext of statesmen weak and vain,
Midst Europe’s powers a balance to maintain.
See an inquisitor, with air benign,
His neighbor’s body to the flames consign;
Much sorrow at the tragic scene he shows,
But takes the money to assuage his woes.
Whilst touched with zeal religious crowds advance,
And praising God, around the victim dance.
Blind zeal could oft good Catholics incite,
At leaving mass to hurry to the sight,
And threatening each their neighbor loudly cry,
“Wretch, think like me, or else this moment die.”
From Paris, Calvin and his sect withdrew,
Their effigies the bloodless hangman slew.
Servetus born in torments to expire,
By Calvin’s self was sentenced to the fire.
Had but Servetus been of power possessed,
The Trinitarians had been sore oppressed,
Quickly had ended all the warm dispute,
For halters can the obstinate confute.
Thus sectaries who ’gainst Arminius rose,
Bent all his tenets warmly to oppose,
In Flanders gained the martyr’s glorious name,
In Holland executioners became.
Why for so many years with pious rage,
Religious wars did our forefathers wage?
From nature’s law allegiance they withdrew,
Or added others dangerous as new;
And man to his own sense an abject slave,
To God his weakness and his passions gave.
To him men give the faults of humankind,
They paint him fickle, false, to rage inclined:
But reason, thanks to Heaven, in these our days
O’er half the globe diffuses kindly rays;
Man at her voice persuasive grows humane,
No piles are lighted, blood no altars stain.
If bigot fury should again be known,
Those fires would soon to tenfold rage be blown.
So oft opinion does not pass for guilt,
By man his brother’s blood’s more rarely spilt,
More rarely horror acts of faith inspire
At Lisbon, fewer Jews in flames expire;*
Less oft the Mufti cries in furious strain,
“Slave, follow Mahomet, from wine refrain.”
But Christian still the furious Mufti names
Dogs, and condemns them to eternal flames.
The Catholics again from bliss exclude
The Turks, who have so many realms subdued;
They to damnation northern realms consign,
The curse great king affects even worth like thine,
In vain your goodness is each day displayed,
In vain all mankind you protect and aid;
You people and improve the barren plain,
Arts cultivate, asylums build in vain:
For confidently may doctors say
That you from Beelzebub derive your sway.
The Pagan virtues were but crimes at best,
All generous souls such maxims must detest.
Journalist base who with malignant mind
Thinkest thyself authorized to damn mankind;
Thou seest with joy God human beings frame,
To glut the devil and burn with endless flame.
Is it not enough that you at once consign
Montaigne and Montesquieu to wrath divine?
Shall Aristides, Socrates the sage,
Solon the guide and model of his age;
Aurelius, Trajan, Titus dear to fame,
Against whom you with bitterness declaim,
All be cast into the abyss of hell,
By the just Being whom they served so well?
And shall you be in heaven with glory crowned,
While crowds of cherubim your throne surround;
Because with monks a wallet once you bore,
In ignorance slept and greasy sack-cloth wore?
Be blest above, with souls no war I wage,
But why should Newton, wonder of his age,
Leibnitz profound, and Addison whose mind
With learning fraught was by true taste refined:
Locke who could spirits’ properties explain.
And understanding’s limits ascertain;
Men whom the God supreme deigned to inspire—
Wherefore should these be doomed to penal fire?
In judging be more temperate and cool,
Teach not eternal wisdom how to rule;
To judge severely such great men beware,
And those who ne’er condemned you learn to spare.
Religion well observed will quell your rage,
And make you mild, compassionate and sage;
Drown others not, but try the port to find,
He’s right who pardons but the angry blind.
Sons of one God, in these our days of woe
Let’s live like brothers whilst we dwell below.
Let’s strive to lend each other kind relief,
We groan beneath a load of woes and grief:
Against our lives a thousand foes lay wait,
Our lives which we at once both love and hate:
Some guide, some prop our wavering hearts require,
With languor chilled, or burned with strong desire.
Tears by the happiest mortals have been shed,
All have their share of anxious care and dread.
If kind society her succors lend,
Her joys awhile our grief and cares suspend:
Yet even here a weak resource we find,
’Gainst grief that ever rankles in the mind.
Dash not the cup in which our comforts flow,
Do not corrupt the balm of human woe.
Felons, methinks, I in a dungeon spy,
Who at their fellows’ throats with fury fly;
And though they could relieve each other’s pains,
Forever jar and combat with their chains.

PART THE FOURTH.

Proves that it is the business of the government to put an end to the unhappy disputes of the schools, by which the peace of society is disturbed.

I oft have heard it from your lips august,
’Tis the grand duty, doubtless, to be just;
And the first blessing is the heart’s repose.
How could you, where so many sects oppose,
Amidst incessant wrangling and debate,
Preserve a peace so lasting in the state?
Whence is it Calvin’s sons, and Luther’s, tell,
Deemed by the Papists Satan’s offspring fell,
The Roman, Greek, who will not own the power
Of Rome; the Quaker, Anabaptist sour,
Who in their law could never yet agree,
Are all united in the praise of thee?
’Tis because nature formed you for the throne;
Like you to rule had the first Valois known,
A Jacobin had not, with fury fired,
To rival Judith and Aod, aspired;
Ne’er on the king his hands profane had laid.
But Valois edged the church’s* murderous blade,
That blade by which, though subject crowds stood round,
Great Henry after fell, for worth renowned.
Such cursed effects from pious quarrels flow,
Or soon or late all factions bloody grow;
Quickly they spread and strength acquire, if prized,
But quickly sink to nothing, if despised.
He who can armies lead against the foe,
To govern refractory priests should know.
Yet could a Norman confessor persuade
A king who prowess in the field displayed,
That Quesnel, Jansen threatened much the state,
The monarch by his greatness gave them weight.
Then rose a hundred factions filled with ire,
Blind zeal made judges, pleaders, clerks conspire;
Then Jesuits, Capuchins, and Cordeliers,
The kingdom filled with scruples and with fears:
Ridiculous once by the regent made,
They quickly sunk into oblivion’s shade.
The master’s presence and his care suffice
To scatter bliss, thence general good must rise.
Who cultivates within the well-fenced field,
The treasures which the spring and autumn yield,
Can water, earth, sun’s various gifts bestow,
Upon the trees that in his gardens grow;
On slender props he feeble branches rears,
And from the ground the useless plants uptears;
Or prunes them when they too luxuriant shoot,
And drain of needful sap the trunk and root.
His lands afford him all he can desire,
The laws of nature with his toil conspire;
A tree which he has planted with his hand,
Is sure, with others, to enrich the land;
And all the planter’s cares are well repaid
With luscious fruits and with a grateful shade.
A gardener never could, by vengeance led,
Make heaven upon it baleful influence shed;
Could ne’er, by curses, make his fruits decay,
Or vines and fig-trees wither quite away.
Wretched those nations where laws still contend!
Their jarring factions never can have end:
The Roman senate, watchful o’er the state,
Morals and rites intent to regulate,
Set to the vestals’ number its due bound,
Nor suffered bacchanals to range around.
Aurelius, Trajan, princes of renown,
The pontiff’s bonnet wore, and emperor’s crown:
The world depended on their care alone,
And the schools’ vain disputes were then unknown;
Those legislators, with sage maxims fraught,
Ne’er for their sacred birds with fury fought.
On the same principle Rome now holds command,
The throne and altar by their union stand;
Her citizens enjoy serene repose,
More blessed than when they vanquished numerous foes.
Not that I think kings should the mitre wear,
And the cross jointly with the sceptre bear,
Or when they come from council should, aloud,
Utter their benediction to the crowd;
But I assert that kings, when they are crowned,
To maintain order are by duty bound,
That their authority’s o’er all the same,
That all their fatherly protection claim.
On various orders well-formed states depend,
Merchants enrich them, warriors defend.
Religious ordinances level all,
The rich and poor, the great as well as small;
Equal authority has civil law,
This keeps both citizens and priests in awe.
Law in a state should equal sway extend
O’er all; all to it equally should bend.
Farther to treat of such points I decline,
Heaven ne’er for government formed souls like mine;
But from the port where now my life I close,
In tranquil happiness and calm repose,
Seeing the storms that all around me rage,
I with your lessons moralize my page.
From this discourse what inference shall we draw?
That prejudice to fools alone gives law;
We should not for it with fierce rage contend,
Earth teems with error, truths from heaven descend;
And amidst thistles which obstruct the way,
The sage finds paths that cannot lead astray.
Peace, which man wishes, whilst he from it flies,
As much as sacred truth should mortals prize.

PRAYER.
Great God, whose being by thy works is known,
My last words hear from Thy eternal throne:
If I mistook ’twas while Thy law I sought,
I may have erred, but Thou wert in each thought.
Fearless I look beyond the opening grave,
And cannot think the God who being gave,
The God whose favors made my bliss o’erflow,
Has doomed me, after death, to endless woe.

THE TEMPLE OF TASTE.*

That cardinal o’er all the realm†
Revered, not he who holds the helm,
But he who o’er Parnassus reigns,
Renowned for his harmonious strains;
The patron whom all bards respect,
Who can instruct them and protect,
Whose eloquence we all admire,
Who with a true poetic fire,
In Latin verse can reason right,
Plato with Virgil can unite,
Who vindicates high heaven to man,
And quite subverts Lucretius’ plan.

That cardinal, whom every one must know by this picture, desired me one day to accompany him to the Temple of Taste. “ ’Tis a place,” said he, “which resembles the Temple of Friendship, which everybody speaks of, which few visit, and which most of those who travel to it, have never thoroughly examined.”

I answered frankly, I must own,
To me taste’s laws are little known,
To favor you that God inclines,
He to your hands the keys consigns;
You are his vicar here deputed,
And o’er his Church pope constituted.
In furious fret all Rome may rage,
And rave at this my honest page;
But there’s a difference very plain,
’Twixt you and Rome’s pope, I’ll maintain;
For Sorbonne’s doctors all aver
God’s vicar upon earth may err:
But when I hear you reason strong,
I think you can’t be in the wrong;
So just your reasoning, wit so bright,
You seem infallible outright.

“Ah,” replied he, “at Rome infallibility is confined to things which men do not comprehend: in the Temple of Taste, it concerns what all think they understand. You must positively come with me.” But, continued I, if you carry me with you, I will make it my public boast.

I shall be importuned I’m sure,
To write a volume on this tour:
Voltaire’s account shall be at best,
But a short narrative in jest.
But town and court will, without fail,
Loudly at the relation rail;
The court will murmur, and the town
Will, as a fibber, run me down;
As one who talks with serious air
Of places, when he ne’er was there,
And readers better to engage,
Tells a flat lie in every page.

However, as we should never refuse ourselves an innocent pleasure, for fear others should think ill of us, I followed the guide who did me the honor to be my conductor.

Abbé with taste and genius fraught,
With us the sacred shrine you sought;
You, who with sage enlightened mind,
At once both knowing and refined,
Have, by example, shown the way
Which we may take, nor fear to stray,
When in pursuit of taste we go,
That God which wits so seldom know.

In our journey we had many difficulties to encounter. We first of all met with Messrs. Baldus, Scioppius, Lecicocrassus, Scriblerius, and a crowd of commentators, who made it their business to restore passages, and compile volumes upon a word which they did not understand.

Dacier, Salmasius the profound,
With learned lumber stored I found;
Their faces wan, their fire quite spent,
With pouring o’er Greek authors bent.
Soon as the squalid troop I spied.
I raised my voice, and to them cried,
“To Taste’s famed Temple do you bend?”
“No, sir, we no such thing intend.
What others have with care expressed,
With accuracy we digest,
On others’ thoughts we spend our ink,
But we for our part never think.”

After this ingenuous confession, these gentlemen would have had us read some passages of Dictys, of Crete, and Metrodorus of Lampsacus, which Scaliger had spoiled. We thanked them for their kind offer, and continued our journey. We had not walked a hundred steps, when we met a person surrounded with painters, architects, carvers, gilders, pretended connoisseurs, and flatterers. They turned their backs to the Temple of Taste.

With air important, pride reposed,
His face with gravity composed,
Then Crassus, snoring, cried: “I’ve store
Of gold, of wit and genius more:
With taste, sir, I am amply fraught,
I know all things, yet ne’er was taught;
I’m skilled in council and affairs,
In spite of tempests and corsairs;
My vessel safe to port I’ve brought,
With pirates, and with winds I’ve fought,
A palace, therefore, I shall raise,
Which every man of taste will praise,
Where every art shall be displayed,
Which shall with wonder be surveyed.
The money’s ready, no delay,”
He said and slept. They all obey:
This is no sooner said than done,
To labor all the workmen run.
To a Vitruvius pride erects
One of our modern architects,
Resolving to do something new,
A plan too much adorned he drew;
No porch or front the pile could show,
But your eye meets an endless row,
Your walls not thick, your closets great,
Your salon without depth complete;
Windows each one of which appears,
Like a church door and little peers;
Gilt, wainscoted, and painted white,
It shall with wonder strike the sight.
“Wake, sir,” a painter cried aloud,
Be to my art just praise allowed;
The skill of Raphael ne’er was such,
He had not half so soft a touch.
To nature I can give new grace,
And cover all the ceiling’s space,
With various figures, which the sight
Beholds at distance with delight.”
Crassus awakening, took the plan,
And to examine it began:
Having at length the whole inspected,
At random he its faults corrected;
Then glass in hand a connoisseur
Said, “Look upon this picture, sir;
Buy it, sir, ’twill your chapel grace,
God in His glory suits the place;
The taste alone’s enough to show,
That ’tis the work of famed Vatau.”
Meantime a bookseller, a cheat,
Whom wits are often forced to treat,
Opens tomes which the works contains,
Of Gacon, Noble, Desfontaines;
Miscellanies of journals store,
My lord begins to read and snore.

I thought we should meet with no further delay, but that we should approach the Temple without encountering any other difficulty; but the journey is more dangerous than I imagined. We soon after fell into a new ambuscade.

Thus in the path which to salvation
Leads, devotees meet much temptation;
And with the devil oft contend,
Before they reach their journey’s end.

This was a concert given by a gentleman of the long robe, infatuated with music, which he never learned, and chiefly with the Italian music, which he had no knowledge of, but from some indifferent airs which were never heard at Rome, and which are very badly sung in France by some girls belonging to the opera.

He then caused a long French recitative, set to music by an Italian, who did not understand our language, to be performed. It was to no purpose to remonstrate to him, that as this sort of music is nothing more than noted declamation, it is of consequence, subjected to the genius of the language; and that nothing can be as ridiculous as French scenes sung in the Italian taste, except Italian ones sung in the French taste.

Nature ingenious, fertile, wise,
Earth with gifts various beautifies;
She speaks to all in language fit,
They differ both in tongue and wit;
Their tone, their voices suit; each note
Is by the hand of nature wrote;
And every difference must appear
To a refined, judicious ear.
Music to charm in France, the tone
Of France must imitate alone.
Lulli could to our taste descend,
Not strive to alter but amend.

No sooner were these judicious remarks made, but the pretended connoisseur, shaking his head, cried, “Come, come, you shall soon see something new.” We could not refuse to enter, and immediately after, the concert began.

The rivals then of Lully’s fame,
Their taste and skill in art the same,
French verse most dissonantly played
With the Italian music’s aid:
A lady, with distorted eyes,
Acted a thousand ecstasies.
A coxcomb, of his dress quite vain,
Quavered and thrilled a frantic strain,
And beat time false, which made them soon
All equally play out of tune.

We left the place as rapidly as we could, and we did not arrive at the Temple of Taste, until after we had met with many adventures of this kind.

On basis firm, in ancient days,
Greece did this famous temple raise:
The building, with revolving years
Increased, to menace heaven appears.
The world, upon its altars laid,
Incense and adoration paid:
To own the power Rome long delayed,
At length to taste she homage paid.
The Turk, a more inveterate foe,
In dust the edifice laid low.
The ruins, by the Goths neglected,
Were all in Italy collected.
Soon the first Francis, nobly bold,
Raised a new temple like the old;
But his posterity despised
An architecture once so prized.
Next Richelieu made it all his care
The abandoned temple to repair.
Lewis adorned the sacred shrine,
Colbert invited all the nine;
Each art, in which the wise excel,
Beneath the temple’s roof to dwell.
By this the first shrine was surpassed,
But much I doubt it will not last.
Here might I in descriptive verse
The beauties of the shrine rehearse;
But let us not, to show our skill in
Description, simply write for filling;
Let us prolixity avoid,
By which Felibien’s readers cloyed;
Whilst he each trifle to explain,
Launches into rhetoric strain.
This noble building’s not disgraced
With heaps of rubbish round it placed;
For thus our sires, but little skilled,
Their Gothic structures used to build.
The shrine from all the faults we see,
In Versailles Chapelle famed is free;
That gewgaw which strikes vulgar eyes,
But which all men of taste despise.

It is much easier to give a negative than a positive idea of this Temple. To avoid so difficult an attempt I shall only add,

The structure’s of a simple taste,
Each ornament is justly placed;
The whole’s arranged with so much care,
Art seems to copy nature there;
The beauteous structure fills the sight,
Not with surprise, but with delight.

The Temple was surrounded with a crowd of virtuosos, artists and connoisseurs of various kinds, who endeavored to enter, but did not succeed.

For criticism, severe and just,
Still stood before that shrine august,
Repelling all the efforts rude
Of Goths, who would in crowds intrude.

How many men of quality, how many persons in high vogue with the public, who dictate so imperiously to little clubs, are refused admittance into that Temple!

There the cabals of wit no more
Have the same power they had before;
When they could make an audience praise
Pradon’s and Scudéri’s* wretched lays,
And think their writings did excel
Those of Racine and great Corneille.

The obscure enemies of all-shining merit, those insects of society, which are taken notice of only because they bite, were repelled with equal rudeness. These would have envied the great Condé the glory he acquired at Rocroi, and Villars the reputation he gained at Denain, as much as they envied Corneille for having written “Polyeucte.” They would have assassinated Lebrun for having painted the family of Darius; and they in fact forced Lemoine to lay violent hands upon himself for having painted the admirable salon of Hercules. They always hold in their hands a bowl of aconite, like that which men of the same character caused Socrates to drink.

Pride mixing with envy in odious embrace,
Gave birth to this cursed and detestable race,
Suspicion, self-interest, malignant detraction,
And of devotees a most dangerous faction,
These often in secret confederacy combine,
And to the cabal ope the gates of the shrine.
There a Midas’ eyes they impose on with ease,
Knaves yield them support, and fools glut them with praise;
True merit, indignant, a sad silence keeps;
Time alone wipes his tears, whilst in secret he weeps.

These persecuting wretches fled as soon as they saw my two guides. Their precipitate flight was followed by something of a more diverting nature; this was a crowd of writers of every rank, age and condition, who scratched at the door and begged of Criticism to permit them to enter. One brought with him a mathematical romance, another a speech made before the Academy; one has just composed a metaphysical comedy; another held in his hand a poetical miscellany long since printed, with a long approbation and a privilege; another presented a mandate wrote in an affected and over-refined style, and was surprised to find that all present laughed instead of asking his blessing. “I am the reverend father,” said one: “Make room for my lord,” said another.

A prating sir, with voice acute,
Cried, “I’m the judge of each dispute,
I argue, contradict and prate,
What others like I’m sure to hate.”
Then Criticism appearing, cried,
“Your merit is by none denied;
But since Taste’s godhead you reject,
Do not to enter here expect.”

Bardou then cried out, “The world’s in an error, and will always continue so; there’s no God of Taste, and I’ll prove it thus.” Then he laid down a proposition, divided and subdivided it; but nobody listened, and a greater multitude than ever crowded to the gate.

Amidst the various coxcombs chased
By judgment from the shrine of Taste,
La Motte Houdart amongst the rest
Approached, and words like these addressed:
Receive my Œdipus in prose;
Roughly, ’tis true, I verse compose;
I must with Boileau hold converse,
And rail against all sorts of verse.

Criticism knew him by his gentle deportment and the roughness of the two last lines, and she left him awhile between Perrault and Chapelain, who had laid a fifty years siege to the temple, and constantly exclaimed against Virgil.

At that very moment there arrived another versifier supported by two little satires, and crowned with laurels and thistles.

“I come hither to laugh, to sport, and to play, And make merry,” said he, “till the dawn of the day.”

“What’s this I hear?” said Criticism. “’Tis I,” answered the rhymer; I am just come from Germany to visit you, and I have chosen the spring of the year to travel in.

Spring, the season in which the young Zephyrs dissolve

The bark of the floods, and to fluid resolve.”*

The more he spoke in this style, the less was Criticism disposed to open the door to him. “What,” said he, “am I then taken for

A frog, who from his narrow throat
Still utters, in discordant note.
Boekekex, roax, roax?”

“Heavens,” cried Criticism, “what horrible jargon is this!” She could not immediately guess who the person was that expressed himself in this manner. She was told it was Rousseau, and that the Muses had altered his voice as a punishment for his misdeeds. She could not believe it, and refused to open the door. He blushed and cried out,

“A rigor so extreme abate,
I come to seek Marot, my mate;
Like him, ill luck I had awhile,
But Phœbus now does on me smile;
I’m Rousseau, and to you well known;
Here’s verses against the famed Bignon.†
O thou, who always didst inspire
My bosom with thy sacred fire,
Kind Criticism a welcome give
To one who elsewhere cannot live.”

Criticism, upon hearing these words, opened the door and spoke thus:

“Rousseau, my temper better know,
I’m just, and ne’er with gall o’erflow;
Unlike that fury, whose fell rage
Suggested thy malicious page;
Who poured her poison in your heart,
And armed you with the deadly dart.
The calumnies you strove to spread,
Drew Themis’ vengeance on your head;
Your muse was into banishment*
For certain wicked couplets sent.
And for a wretched, ill-writ case,
Which added to your dire disgrace;
But Phœbus quickly did pursue
Your malice with the vengeance due;
Your soul of genius he deprived;
Genius which you from him derived,
Of harmony he robbed your lays,
Which by that only merit praise;
Yet you the scribbling itch retain,
Whilst Phœbus disavows each strain.”

Criticism, after having given this advice, adjudged that Rousseau should take place of La Motte as a versifier; but that La Motte should have the precedence whenever genius or understanding were the subjects of dispute.

These two men, so different from each other, had not walked four steps, when the one turned pale with rage, and the other leaped with joy, at the sight of a man who had been a long time in the temple, sometimes in one place, and sometimes in another.

This was the learned Fontenelle,
Who could in all the arts excel,
And on each branch of science threw
A light that pleased, because ’twas new;
He from a planet came post-haste
Back to the sacred shrine of Taste;
Reasoned with Mairan, with Quinault
Trifled away an hour or so;
And managed with an equal skill
The lyre, the compass and the quill.

“What!” cried Rousseau, “shall I see that man here, that man against whom I have written so many epigrams? What! shall Taste suffer in her temple the author of the Chevalier D’Her’s letters, of an ‘Autumnal Passion,’ of ‘Moonlight,’ of ‘A Brook in Love with a Meadow,’ of ‘The Tragedy of Aspar,’ of ‘Endymion,’ etc.”

“No,” answered Criticism. “’Tis not the author of those works that you see before you; ’tis the author of the plurality of worlds, who composed ‘Thetus and Peleus,’ an opera that excites your envy, and the history of the Academy of Sciences, which you are not capable of understanding.”

Rousseau was going to write an epigram, and Fontenelle looked upon him with that philosophical compassion which every man of an enlightened mind must have for a mere rhymer, and then went and seated himself with great composure between Lucretius and Leibnitz.*

I asked how Leibnitz came to be there. I was told that it was because he had written tolerably good Latin verses, though he was versed in both metaphysics and geometry, and that Criticism admitted him into her temple to soften by such an example the austerity of his scientific brethren.

Criticism then turned to the author of the “Plurality of Worlds” and said: I shall not reproach you with some of your juvenile performances, as these zealous cynics have done; but I am Criticism; you are now in the presence of the God of Taste, and I must thus address you in the name of that god, the public and myself; for we all three agree in the main.

Your sportful and instructive muse
Of art should not be so profuse;
Her charms are not quite so faint,
As to require the aid of paint.

As for Lucretius, he blushed as soon as ever he saw the cardinal, his adversary; but no sooner did he hear him speak than he conceived a friendship for him; he ran to him and accosted him in very fine Latin verses, which I translate into indifferent French ones.

Misled by Epicurus’ lore,
I thought I Nature could explore,
And as a god the man admired,
Who, with presumptuous fury fired,
Dared impious war with heaven to wage,
The gods dethroning in his rage.
I thought the soul a transient fire,
Dissolved the moment we expire;
I now no more with truth contend;
The soul shall never have an end;
But of existence always sure,
Shall like your deathless verse endure.

The cardinal answered this compliment in the language of Lucretius. All the Latin poets present, from his air and style, judged him to be an ancient Roman; but the French poets are highly displeased at authors composing verses in a language which is no longer spoken; and they affirm that since Lucretius, born at Rome, wrote a Latin poem upon the philosophy of Epicurus, his adversary, born at Paris, should have written against him in French. To conclude, after several such amusing delays, we at last arrived at the Temple of the God of Taste.

I saw the god, whom I in vain
Implore for aid in every strain;
That god, who never was defined;
Whose essence escapes the searching mind;
To whom just service few can pay,
Though they with such devotion pray;
Who animates La Fontaine’s strain,
And Vodius searches for in vain.
The Graces he consults, whose ease,
With native beauty joined, can please;
Graces which other nations own,
Are best to the French writers known;
Which others oft to copy tried;
Which by strict rules are never tied;
Which reigned at court in times of yore,
With which love crowns the Gallic shore.
Around the god the tender band
Of Graces still obsequious stand;
They to adorn the god attend;
He pleases by the charms they lend;
They crown him with a wreath divine,
Where Phœbus self took care to twine;
Laurels, which once famed Maro crowned
For epic poetry renowned.
Myrtle and ivy leaves, which graced
Horace supreme in wit and taste;
The roses, which in times of yore
The lyric bard Anacreon wore.
His front, the mirror of his mind,
Showed wisdom by true taste refined;
Wit sparkled in his eyes, his air
Was such as might his soul declare.
To prove his beauty is divine,
Silvia, his face resembles thine;
I thus conceal your real name,
Lest envious beauties should declaim
Against you should it once be known,
Your charms are greater than their own.
Rollin not far, with action grave,
To youth his learned lessons gave.
And though in his professor’s chair,
Was listened to, a thing most rare.
Meantime in an apartment by,
Which Girardon and Puget vie
With statues to adorn, where taste
As well as just expression’s traced;
Poussin upon stretched canvas showed
What genius in his bosom glowed.
Le Brun with elevated mind,
And genius nobly bold, designed.
Le Sueur, in his art complete,
Between both painters took his seat;
None murmured to behold him there,
All owned him worthy of the chair.
The god, who with a critic eye
Could every pencil’s stroke espy,
Grieved, whilst he much admired their art,
They could not to their works impart
Those vivid colors, whose bright glow
On nature’s self new charms bestow.
A crowd of loves before him played,
And to his touch new force conveyed,
And raised each beauty to its height,
By adding Rubens’ colors bright.

I was surprised that I did not meet at the sanctuary several persons, who, sixty or eighty years ago, passed for the greatest favorites of the God of Taste. The Pavillons, the Benserades, the Pellissons, the Segraises, the St. Évremonds, the Balzacs, the Voitures, were no longer in possession of the first places. They possessed them heretofore, said one of my guides; they made a figure before the bright period of the learned world; but they have at length given place to men of real genius. At present they are but little considered; and, in fact, most of them had only the wit peculiar to their age, and not that species of wit which reaches posterity.

The graces of their feeble lays
Are tarnished, and they lose their praise;
None them as geniuses admit,
But all agree to praise their wit.

Segrais attempted one day to enter the sanctuary at the same time, repeating the following verse of Boileau:

Que Segrais dans l’églogue en charme les forêts.
Let Segrais charm the woods with rural lays.

But Criticism having, unhappily for him, read a few pages of his “Æneid” in French verse, dismissed him a little roughly, and in his place admitted Madame de la Fayette, who published the delightful romance of “Zada”; and the Princess of Cleves, under the name of “Segrais.”

Pellisson is not easily excused, for having in his history of the French Academy gravely related so many puerilities, and cited as strokes of wit things which by no means deserve that name. The soft, but weak Pavillon, humbly pays his court to Madame Deshoulières, who is placed far above him. The unequal St. Èvremond does not presume to speak of poetry. Balzac, with his long-winded hyperbolical phrases, tires the patience of Benserade and Voiture, who answer him by antitheses and quibbles, which they are presently after ashamed of themselves. I went in quest of the famous Count de Bussy. Madame de Sévigné, who is beloved by all who dwell in the Temple, told me that her dear cousin, a man of great wit, but a little too vain, could never succeed so far as to make the God of Taste entertain the same favorable opinion of Mons. Roger de Rabutin, which the Count de Bussy had of him.

Bussy for pride and self-love famed,
Is by the god severely blamed;
Because too much a slave to fame,
Himself he often made his theme;
His son with every talent graced,
Is always well received by taste;
He flatters none, of none speaks ill,
His conversation pleases still;
He shows that wit and eloquence,
To which his father makes pretence.
Chaulieu, who gay and void of care,
Rising from table sang an air;
Addressed the god-head as a friend,
With freedom which could not offend.
His lively and luxuriant vein
Roves unconfined, nor hears the rein;
His muse disdaining all control,
With native beauties charms the soul.
La Farre, with softness tempering fire,
Tuned to a lower note his lyre,
And poured forth in his mistress’ praise,
His incorrect, but sprightly lays;
Which might from ease and pleasure spring,
Though Phœbus had not taught to sing.
There Hamilton, whose darts ne’er fail
To wound, at all mankind did rail;
There St. Aulaire, who for old age,
Surpassed Anacreon, the sage;
Could all love’s joys and cares rehearse,
In softer and more pleasing verse;
Cytherian chaplets graced his head,
With hoary honors overspread.

The god had a great affection for these gentlemen, especially for those who piqued themselves upon nothing. He hinted to Chaulieu that he should look upon himself as the first of careless and negligent poets, not as the first of good poets.

They conversed with some of the most amiable men of their age. Their conversations were equally free from the affectation of the Hotel de Rambouillet, and from the confusion which reigns amongst our young fellows.

From here with equal shame are chased
The affected and pedantic taste,
The stiff and syllogistic air,
The rage which strives to overbear.
There gracefully we see unite,
Learning profound with humor light;
And with precision close we find,
The follies of the human mind.
Genius takes various forms there,
It jests and knows a jest to bear;
For fear of tiring there the wise,
Put on even pleasantry’s disguise.

Chapelle was there; that genius more debauched than delicate; more natural than polite; an easy versifier, incorrect in his style and licentious in his thoughts. He constantly answered the God of Taste in the same rhymes. ’Tis said that God once answered him thus:

“Chapelle henceforward less admire,
Reiterated rhymes they tire;
Those strings of syllables displayed
By Richelet, ill a poet aid;
That author’s dictionary gleaning,
In double rhymes you’ll have no meaning.”

In this agreeable company I met the President de Maisons, a man of a very different character, not at all used to utter words without a meaning; a man as solid as agreeable, and equally a lover of all the arts.

“Dear Maisons, is it thee I then embrace?”
Cried I, while trickling tears bedewed my face;
“Thou who wast snatched from me by cruel death,
Who in my arms when young resigned thy breath.
Deaf to my prayer, inexorable fate
Was bent two dearest friends to separate;
Ah! since its rigor either death required,
Thou shouldst have lived, and I should have expired.
Since my sad eyes first opened on the sphere.
’Twas heaven’s decree I should be wretched here;
Thy path of life by heaven was strewed with flowers,
And heart-felt joy winged all thy golden hours.
With pleasures and with honors compassed round,
In arts your wisdom full contentment found;
Weakness is not of worth, like thine the source,
O’er such a mind opinion ne’er had force;
Man’s born to err, the potter’s forming hand,
Soft earth is far less able to withstand.
Than can the mind resist the potent sway
Of prejudice, which mortals still obey.
To such vile slavery you refused to bend,
Your time you gave to study, and a friend;
And in your nature were at once combined,
A tender heart, and philosophic mind.”

Among these wits we met some Jesuits. A Jansenist would say upon this that the Jesuits intrude everywhere, but the God of Taste receives their enemies too; and it is diverting to see in this Temple Bourdaloue conversing with Pascal upon the great art of uniting eloquence and close reasoning. Father Bouhours stands behind them, setting down in his pocketbook all the improprieties and inelegances of language which escape them. The cardinal could not help addressing Father Bouhours thus:

The care each little fault to spy,
That pedants diligence lay by;
Let us in eloquence respect
Each careless phrase and bold defect.
Were I to choose, I should prefer
Wild genius, and like great men err,
Rather than be the wight who dwells
On syllables, who scans and spells.

This reprimand was expressed in terms, much more polite than those which I have made use of; but we poets are sometimes guilty of deviations from good breeding for the sake of a rhyme. When I visited this temple my attention was not entirely engaged by the wits.

Harmonious verse and prose refined,
To you alone I’m not confined;
I scorn a taste that’s fixed on parts,
And now invoke all pleasing arts.
Music and painting, arts divine,
With architecture’s great design,
Graving and dancing all unite
My soul to ravish with delight;
From all art pleasure must arise,
None then are slighted by the wise.

I saw the muses by turns place upon the altar of the god, books, designs, and plans of various kinds. The plan of that beautiful front of the Louvre (for which we are not indebted to Bernin, who, with great expense and to no purpose, was brought into France, it being the work of Perrault and Louis la Vau, great artists, whose merit is too little known) is to be seen upon that altar. There also is the plan of St. Denis’s gate, the beauty of which most Parisians are as insensible of, as they are ignorant of the name of Francis Blondel, the architect, to whom they owe this monument.

That admirable fountain, so little taken notice of, which is adorned with the precious sculptures of John Gougeon, but which is in every respect inferior to the admirable fountain of Bouchardon, at the same time that it seems to upbraid the rude taste of all the others. The porch of St. Gervais’ church, a masterpiece of architecture, to which a church, a proper situation and admirers, are wanting, and which should immortalize the name of Desbrosses, still more than the palace of Luxembourg, likewise was built by him. All these monuments, neglected by the vulgar, ever barbarous, and by people of the world ever inattentive, often attract the observation of the deity. The library of this enchanted palace was next shown us; it was not very big. It will be readily believed that we did not find in it.

A heap of manuscripts most rare,
Which greedy bookworms seldom spare;
Nor on those shelves are ever found
Those writings which so much abound;
Writings by no man ever read,
The lumber of an author’s head.
In person here the tuneful nine,
Their proper place to books assign;
To books where genius may be traced,
Combined with elegance of taste.

Most of the books there have passed through the hands of the muses, and been by them corrected. The work of Rabelais is to be seen there, reduced to less than half a quarter of its bulk.

Marot, whose only merit is his style, and who in the same taste, sings the Psalms of David, and the wonders of Alix, has but eight or ten leaves left. The pages of Voiture and Sarrasin together, do not exceed sixty in number.

The whole genius of Bayle, is to be found in a single volume, by his own acknowledgment; for that judicious philosopher, that enlightened judge of authors and sects, often declared that he would never have written more than one volume in folio, if he had not been employed by booksellers.

We were at last admitted into the innermost part of the sanctuary. There the mysteries of the God were unveiled: there I saw what may serve as an example to posterity: a small number of truly great men were employed in correcting those faulty passages of their works, which would have been beauties in those of inferior geniuses.

The amiable author of “Telemachus,” retrenched the repetitions and useless details of his moral romance, and blotted out the title of epic poem, which the indiscreet zeal of some of his admirers had given it; for he frankly owns that there is no such thing as a poem in prose.

The eloquent Bossuet was ready to strike out some familiar expressions, which had escaped his vast, impetuous, and free genius, and which, in some measure disgrace the sublimity of his funeral orations; and it is worthy of remark, that he by no means vouches for the truth of all he has said concerning the pretended wisdom of the ancient Egyptians.

Corneille the great, and the sublime
Who pleased not by the charms of rhyme;
But waked the soul by strokes of art,
Which filled with wonder every heart;
Who with a pencil ever true
Both Cinna and Augustus drew;
Cornelia, Pompey brave and great,
Who fell by too severe a fate;
Into the flames Pulcheria threw
Agesilaus, Surena too,
And sacrificed with no remorse,
The fruits of genius without force:
Productions of declining age,
And quite unworthy of the stage.
Racine more artful and refined,
Who touched with gentle woe the mind;
Who still profound attention draws,
And never breaks dramatic laws;
His lovers’ parts with critic eye,
Remarks, but in them can’t descry
Those various touches which in nature,
Distinguish character like feature:
In all the same perfections meet,
They’re tender, gallant, and discreet;
And love whose power o’er all prevails,
Believes them courtiers of Versailles:
La Fontaine, poet born to please,
By happy negligence and ease;
Whose careless style, with bold neglect,
Pleases us more than if correct.
Your own opinion freely tell
Of works, which in their kind excel:
We’d gladly be informed by you,
About your tales and fables too.

La Fontaine, who retained the simplicity of his character, and who in the Temple of Taste joined acuteness and penetration to that happy instinct, which inspired him during his life, blotted out some of his fables. He abridged almost all his tales, and tore the greater part of a collection of posthumous works, printed by those editors who live by the folly of the dead.

There Boileau reigned who taught his age,
By reason roused to satire’s rage;
Who framed with care poetic laws,
And followed them with just applause:
Severely now his works he views,
One quibbling poem shames his muse;
The verses now he can’t endure,
Written on the taking of Namure;
He blots them out with hasty hand,
And cries, “Your genius understand.”

Boileau, at the express command of the God of Taste, was reconciled to Quinault, who may be considered as a poet, formed by the graces, as Boileau was by reason.

But Boileau, satirist severe,
Whilst he embraced could scarce forbear,
The lyric poet to revile,
Yet Quinault pardoned with a smile.

“I’ll never be reconciled to you,” said Boileau, “except you acknowledge that there are many insipid lines in those agreeable operas.” “That’s very possible,” answered Quinault, “but you must at the same time acknowledge that you were never capable of writing Atys or Armida.”

Your poems labored and exact,
May general esteem attract;
My operas composed with ease
May surely be allowed to please.

After saluting Boileau, and tenderly embracing Quinault, I saw the inimitable Molière, and I made bold to accost him in these terms:

Terence the sage, and the polite,
Could well translate, but could not write;
His elegance is cold and faint,
He could not Roman manners paint:
You the great painter of our nation,
Have drawn each character and station;
Our cits with maggots in their brain,
Our marquises as pert as vain,
Our formal gentry of the law,
All by your art their likeness saw;
And you would have reformed each fault,
If sense and virtue could be taught.

“Ah,” said he, “why was I ever under a necessity of writing for the people? Why was I not always master of my time? I should have invented much more happy intrigues; I should have seldom descended to low comedy.”

‘Twas thus these masters, in their several arts, showed their superiority, by owning those errors to which human nature is subject, and from which the greatest geniuses are not exempt.

I then found that the God of Taste is very hard to be pleased, but that he is never pleased by halves. I perceived that the works which he criticises the most are those which he likes best.

The God takes every author’s part
Of pleasing, if he has the art:
No anger he in censuring shows,
With transport in applauding glows.
The muse displayed her charms divine,
And brought her heroes to his shrine;
The power benign can scarce forbear,
Seeing their faults to drop a tear.
That wretch should be to woe consigned,
Who’s not to tenderness inclined:
By such our nature is disgraced,
He flies the sacred shrine of taste.

When my company was going to retire, the God addressed them in terms to this effect, for I am not permitted to use his own words.

Farewell, my much loved friends, farewell,
Since you in poetry excel;
Let not to Paris, dire disgrace,
My rival there possess my place.
False taste I know, from your keen eyes,
In terror and confusion flies;
If ever you should meet that foe,
You’ll him by this description know:
His tawdry dress, is void of grace,
His air’s affected, and his face,
He forces oft a languid smile,
And talks in the true coxcomb’s style;
He takes my name, assumes my shape
Of genuine taste, the awkward ape;
For he’s the son of art at most,
Whilst nature as my fire I boast.

THE TEMPLE OF FRIENDSHIP.

Sacred to peace, within a wood’s recess,
A blest retreat, where courtiers never press,
A temple stands, where art did never try
With pompous wonders to enchant the eye;
There are no dazzling ornaments, nor vain,
But truth, simplicity, and nature reign:
The virtuous Gauls raised erst the noble shrine,
And sacred vowed to Friendship’s power divine.
Mistaken mortals who believed their race,
Would never cease to crowd to such a place!
Orestes’ name, and Pylades’ appear,
Wrote on the front, names still to Friendship dear:
Pirithous’ medal of uncommon size,
Those of soft Nisus and Achates wise.
All these are heroes, and as friends renowned,
These names are great, but still in fable found;
The power to this remote retreat retired,
Nor Tripod boasts, nor priests with truth inspired;
She miracles but seldom can effect,
No popish saint e’er met with such neglect.
Still in her presence faithful truth attends,
And to the goddess needful succor lends:
Truth’s ever ready to enlighten all,
But few on truth for kind assistance call.
In vain she waits for votaries at her shrine,
None come, though all at wanting her repine;
Her hand holds forth the register exact,
Of every generous, every friendly act;
Favors in which esteem with friendship vied,
Received not meanly, not conferred with pride:
Such favors as those who confer forget,
And who receive, declare without regret.
This history of the virtues of mankind,
Within a narrow compass is confined;
In Gothic characters all these are traced
Upon two sheets, by time almost defaced.
By what strange frenzy is mankind possessed,
Friendship is banished now from every breast;
Yet all usurp of Friend the sacred name,
And vilest hypocrites bring in their claim.
All that they’re faithful to her laws maintain,
And even her enemies her rights profane:
In regions subject to the pope’s command,
Thus we see beads oft in an atheist’s hand.
’Tis said the goddess, each pretended friend,
Once in her presence summoned to attend;
She fixed the day on which they should be there,
A prize proposing for each faithful pair;
Who with a tenderness like hers replete,
Amongst true friends might justly claim a seat;
Then quickly came allured by such a prize,
The French who novelty still idolize:
A multitude before the temple came,
And first, two courtly friends preferred their claim,
By interest joined, they walked still hand in hand,
And of their union Friendship thought the band:
Post-haste a courier came and made report,
That there was then a vacancy at court;
Away each friend polite that moment flies,
Forsakes at once the temple and the prize;
Thus in a moment friends are turned to foes,
Each swears his rival warmly to oppose:
Four devotees next issue from the throng,
Poring on prayer-books as they pass along;
Their charity to mankind overflows,
And with religious zeal their bosom glows.
A pampered prelate one with fat o’ergrown,
Triple-chinned, much to apoplexy prone;
The swine quite gorged with tithes, and overfed,
At length by indigestion’s force lies dead:
Quick the confessor clears the sinner’s score,
His soles are greased, his body sprinkled o’er,
And spruced up by the curate of the place,
To go his heavenly journey with good grace;
His three friends o’er him merrily say prayers,
His benefice alone excites their cares:
Devoutly rivals grown, each still pretends
Attachment most sincere to both his friends;
Yet all in making interest at the court,
Their brothers downright Jansenists report.
Two youths of fashion next came arm in arm,
Their eyes and hearts, their mistress letters charm:
These as they passed along they read aloud,
And both displayed their persons to the crowd;
Some favorite airs they sing, while they advance
Up to the altar, just as to a dance:
They fight about some trifle, one is slain,
And Friendship’s altar hence receives a stain;
The less mad of the two with conquest crowned,
Left his dear friend expiring on the ground.
Next Lisis, with her much loved Chloe came,
From infancy their pleasures were the same;
Alike their humor, and alike their age,
Those trifles which the female heart engage;
Lisis was prone to Chloe to impart,
They spoke the overflowings of the heart;
At last one lover touched both female friends,
And strange to tell! here all their Friendship ends;
Lisis and Chloe Friendship’s shrine forsake,
And the high road to Hatred’s temple take.
The beauteous Zara shone forth in her turn,
With eyes that languish, whilst our hearts they burn:
“What languor,” said she, “reigns in this abode!
By that sad goddess, say what joy’s bestowed?
Here dismal melancholy dwells alone,
For love’s soft joys are ever here unknown.”
Leaving the place, crowds followed her behind,
And struck with envy, twenty beauties pined:
Where next my Zara went, is known to none,
And Friendship’s glorious prize could not be won:
The goddess everywhere so much admired,
So little known, and yet by all admired;
With cold upon her sacred altar froze—
Hence hapless mortals, hence derive your woes.

THOUGHTS ON THE NEWTONIAN PHILOSOPHY, ADDRESSED TO THE MARCHIONESS DU CHÂTELET.

Emilia, whose deep genius all admire,
You like a muse my laboring breast inspire;
I wake at your command, I dream no more,
But virtue’s laws and nature’s paths explore.
Melpomene, the theatre I quit,
No more I idolize a crowded pit:
Let Rufus, son of earth, in hobbling verse,
To life’s last verge a foolish thought express,
And aim at me the darts which he designed
To level at the rest of human kind.
Four times a month the Zoilus of the age,
May pour in fierce invective senseless rage;
Their cries by hatred formed I will not hear,
Nor mind their tracks which in the dirt appear:
Divine philosophy’s all powerful charms,
Fell envy of her darts with ease disarms;
Wrapt in his heaven, great Newton scarcely knows
Amongst the sons of men that he has foes:
Of mine I think not, to my ravished eyes,
Truth shows how I may to that heaven rise;
Those vortices which run so strange a race,
Heaped without order, moving without space.
Those learned visions pass like smoke away,
Motion’s restored, I see a brighter day,
Space which contains the universal soul,
Sees in its bosom vast creation roll;
God speaks, and at His voice old Chaos flies,
All things towards a common centre rise;
The spring of nature, by dark ignorance night
Concealed, had long lain hid from mortal sight:
Newton the compass takes, he lifts the veil,
He makes truth’s light o’er ignorance prevail:
With learned hand he to my eye displays
That star’s bright robe which seasons rules and days;
The sparkling diamond’s variegated dyes,
With gorgeous lustre dazzle human eyes;
Each ray’s pure substance to spectators show
The various colors of fair Iris’s Bow;
Blended, they light impart to mortal eyes,
They vivify the world, and fill the skies.
Ye ministering angels to the king of kings,
Ye burning seraphs, who with constant wings
Cover the Almighty Power’s eternal throne
Of men, would you not envy him alone?
He rules the sea, I see the humid deep,
Time ever with attracting Cynthia keep;
Its efforts strong a central power restrains,
Ocean rolls back, and in its bed remains;
Comets which men as much as thunder fear,
To terrify the world at length forbear;
In an ellipse immense your wanderings end,
Rise near the star of day and near descend;
Your fiery tresses shake, returning strive,
Exhausted, drooping nature to revive.
Sister of Phœbus, star which in the skies,
Long time deceived the inquirer’s erring eyes:
Newton has fixed the bounds of thy career,
Move on, and rule the day, the month and year:
Earth change thy form, and let thy masses weight,
Sinking the Pole the Equator elevate;
Pole, which seem motionless to every eye,
The Bear, that frozen constellation, fly;
And let your long protracted periods last,
Till numberless revolving years are past.
What noble objects these! what high delights!
Feels the rapt soul filled with such glorious light!
The mind let loose from its corporeal chains,
A conversation with its God maintains.
How couldst thou say, whilst yet in tender youth,
Receive these treasures of eternal truth,
Shun pleasures which consume our youthful days,
And to such views sublime thy genius raise;
With Newton tread paths ne’er trod before,
And nature’s winding labyrinth explore?
May I with you her temple penetrate,
And to all France these truths sublime relate;
Whilst Algarotti, whose instructions please,
This stranger to the Tiber’s shore conveys:
Let him with flowers adorn her beauteous face,
Compass in hand, her lineaments I’ll trace:
With my rough pencil I’ll express each line,
None can embellish beauty so divine.

ON THE DEATH OF ADRIENNE LECOUVREUR, A CELEBRATED ACTRESS.

What sight of woe thus harrows up my soul!
Must those love-darting eyes in anguish roll?
Shall ghastly death such charms divine invade?
You muses, graces, loves come to her aid.
Oh! you my gods and hers assist the fair,
Your image sure must well deserve your care.
Alas! thou diest, I press thy corpse alone;
Thou diest, the fatal news too soon is known.
In such a loss, each tender feeling heart
Is touched like mine, and takes in grief a part.
I hear the arts on every side deplore
Their loss, and cry, “Melpomene’s no more:”
What exclamations will the future race
Utter, at hearing of those arts’ disgrace?
See cruel men a burying place refuse,
To her whom Greece had worshipped as a muse;
When living, they adored her power divine,
To her they bowed like votaries at a shrine:
Should she then, breathless, criminal be thought,
And is it then to charm the world a fault?
Seine’s* banks should now no more be deemed profane,
Lecouvreur’s sacred ashes there remain:
At this sad tomb, shrine sacred to thy shade,
Our vows are still as at a temple paid.
I don’t revere the famed St. Denis more,
Thy graces, charms, and wit, I there adore
I loved them living, incense now I’ll burn,
And pay due honors to thy sacred urn.
Though error and ingratitude are bent,
To brand with infamy thy monument.
Shall Frenchmen never know what they require,
But damn capriciously what they admire?
Must laws with manners jar? Must every mind
In France, be made by superstition blind?
Wherefore should England be the only clime,
Where to think freely is not deemed a crime?
Oh! London, Athens’ rival, thou alone,
Could tyrants, and could prejudice dethrone;
In that blest region, general freedom reigns,
Merit is honored, and reward obtains:
Marlborough the greatest general of his age,
Harmonious Dryden, Addison the sage,
Immortal Newton, charming Oldfield there,
The honors due to real genius share.
The farce of life had there Lecouvreur closed
With heroes, statesmen, kings she had reposed:
Genius at London makes its owner great,
Freedom and wealth have in that happy state,
Procured the inhabitants immortal fame,
They rival now the Greek and Roman name.
Parnassian laurels wither in our fields,
And France no more a crop of merit yields:
Wherefore you gods do all our glories fade,
Why is not honor due to genius paid?

TO THE KING OF PRUSSIA ON HIS ACCESSION TO THE THRONE.

- At length arrives the blest auspicious day,
- Which sheds its kindest influence on thee;
- A day which fills thee only with dismay,
- Whilst others wish thy exalted state to see.
- Fly hence you fanatic, ye fraudful bands,
- Ye persecutors, who enslave the mind;
- Whose souls implacable and frantic hands,
- Delight in carnage, and destruction find.
- Shall odious calumny still lift her head?
- Monster thou didst, with cursed rage inspired,
- On famed Descartes and Bayle thy venom shed,
- On Wolfe who Leibnitz to approach aspired.
- You from the sacred altar took a sword,
- Whose point you turned against each far-famed sage;
- By the same weapon shall your breast be gored,
- Your blood shall expiate your frantic rage.
- He strikes, you die, his arm asserts truth’s cause;
- Truth is restored, and error disappears;
- Philosophy is freed from tyrant laws,
- The face of nature glorious freedom cheers.
- And you, your odious rules, by Borgia taught,
- The art in governing mankind to oppress;
- The art of crimes with vilest maxims fraught,
- The art which tyrants openly profess.
- May you to oblivion ever be consigned,
- With too much ease men learn the dangerous art
- The crafts of policy show a narrow mind.
- The best of statesmen has a generous heart.
- The annals of all nations amply show,
- That tyrants never tasted sweet repose,
- But suffer all their lives unceasing woe,
- As they on others bring a load of woes.
- They died with infamy, they died with rage,
- But Trajan, Titus, Antoninus wise;
- The ornaments and blessings of their age
- Lived blest, and calmly closed their dying eyes.
- In thee those heroes shall again arise,
- Virtue with happiness shall still be crowned;
- You may with justice claim fair virtue’s prize,
- Since in you every royal virtue’s found.
- Upon the throne we now behold a sage,
- A blessing which men rarely can obtain;
- He who is able to instruct the age,
- Is doubtless worthy o’er mankind to reign.
- Presumptuous ignorance long has spurned the head
- Of patient merit, which defenceless lay;
- The fury dared on sciences to tread,
- And virtue’s self was forced to bear her sway.
- Immersed in soft delights, the courtly train
- Think man was never born the truth to know;
- All knowledge they despise as weak and vain,
- Though science can content of mind bestow.
- Dunces to truth can scarcely ope their eyes,
- Their souls are wrapt in darkness black as night;
- Behold a northern Solomon arise,
- Approach barbarians to the source of light.

FROM LOVE TO FRIENDSHIP.

If you would have me love once more,
The blissful age of love restore;
From wine’s free joys, and lovers’ cares,
Relentless time, who no man spares,
Urges me quickly to retire,
And no more to such bliss aspire.
From such austerity exact,
Let’s, if we can, some good extract;
Whose way of thinking with his age
Suits not, can ne’er be deemed a sage.
Let sprightly youth its follies gay,
Its follies amiable display;
Life to two moments is confined,
Let one to wisdom be consigned.
You sweet delusions of my mind,
Still to my ruling passion kind,
Which always brought a sure relief
To life’s accurst companion, grief.
Will you forever from me fly,
And must I joyless, friendless die?
No mortal e’er resigns his breath
I see, without a double death;
Who loves, and is beloved no more,
His hapless fate may well deplore;
Life’s loss may easily be borne,
Of love bereft man is forlorn.
’Twas thus those pleasures I lamented,
Which I so oft in youth repented;
My soul replete with soft desire,
Vainly regretted youthful fire.
But friendship then, celestial maid,
From heaven descended to my aid;
Less lively than the amorous flame,
Although her tenderness the same.
The charms of friendship I admired,
My soul was with new beauty fired;
I then made one in friendship’s train,
But destitute of love, complain.

THE WORLDLING.*

Others may with regret complain
That ’tis not fair Astrea’s reign,
That the famed golden age is o’er
That Saturn, Rhea rule no more:
Or, to speak in another style,
That Eden’s groves no longer smile.
For my part, I thank Nature sage,
That she has placed me in this age:
Religionists may rail in vain;
I own, I like this age profane;
I love the pleasures of a court;
I love the arts of every sort;
Magnificence, fine buildings, strike me;
In this, each man of sense is like me.
I have, I own, a worldly mind,
That’s pleased abundance here to find;
Abundance, mother of all arts,
Which with new wants new joys imparts
The treasures of the earth and main,
With all the creatures they contain:
These, luxury and pleasures raise;
This iron age brings happy days.
Needful superfluous things appear;
They have joined together either sphere.
See how that fleet, with canvas wings,
From Texel, Bordeaux, London brings,
By happy commerce to our shores,
All Indus, and all Ganges stores;
Whilst France, that pierced the Turkish lines,
Sultans make drunk with rich French wines.
Just at the time of Nature’s birth,
Dark ignorance o’erspread the earth;
None then in wealth surpassed the rest,
For naught the human race possessed.
Of clothes, their bodies then were bare,
They nothing had, and could not share:
Then too they sober were and sage,
Martialo* lived not in that age.
Eve, first formed by the hand divine,
Never so much as tasted wine.
Do you our ancestors admire,
Because they wore no rich attire?
Ease was like wealth to them unknown,
Was’t virtue? ignorance alone.
Would any fool, had he a bed,
On the bare ground have laid his head?
My fruit-eating first father, say,
In Eden how rolled time away?
Did you work for the human race,
And clasp dame Eve with close embrace!
Own that your nails you could not pare,
And that you wore disordered hair,
That you were swarthy in complexion,
And that your amorous affection
Had very little better in’t
Than downright animal instinct.
Both weary of the marriage yoke
You supped each night beneath an oak
On millet, water, and on mast,
And having finished your repast,
On the ground you were forced to lie,
Exposed to the inclement sky:
Such in the state of simple nature
Is man, a helpless, wretched creature.
Would you know in this cursed age,
Against which zealots so much rage,
To what men blessed with taste attend
In cities, how their time they spend?
The arts that charm the human mind
All at his house a welcome find;
In building it, the architect
No grace passed over with neglect.
To adorn the rooms, at once combine
Poussin, Correggio the divine,
Their works on every panel placed
Are in rich golden frames incased.
His statues show Bouchardon’s skill,
Plate of Germain, his sideboards fill.
The Gobelin tapestry, whose dye
Can with the painter’s pencil vie,
With gayest coloring appear
As ornaments on every pier.
From the superb salon are seen
Gardens with Cyprian myrtle green.
I see the sporting waters rise
By jets d’eau almost to the skies.
But see the master’s self approach
And mount into his gilded coach,
A house in motion, to the eyes
It seems as through the streets it flies.
I see him through transparent glasses
Loll at his ease as on he passes.
Two pliant and elastic springs
Carry him like a pair of wings.
At Bath, his polished skin inhales
Perfumes, sweet as Arabian gales.
Camargot at the approach of night
Julia, Gossin by turns invite.
Love kind and bounteous on him pours
Of choicest favors plenteous showers.
To the opera house he must repair,
Dance, song and music charm him there.
The painter’s art to strike the sight,
Does there with that blest art unite;
The yet more soft, persuasive skill,
Which can the soul with pleasure thrill.
He may to damn an opera go,
And yet perforce admire Rameau.
The cheerful supper next invites
To luxury’s less refined delights.
How exquisite those sauces flavor!
Of those ragouts I like the savor.
The man who can in cookery shine,
May well be deemed a man divine.
Chloris and Ægle at each course
Serve me with wine, whose mighty force
Makes the cork from the bottle fly
Like lightning darting from the sky.
Bounce! to the ceiling it ascends,
And laughter the apartment rends.
In this froth, just observers see
The emblem of French vivacity.
The following day new joys inspires,
It brings new pleasures and desires.
Mentor, Telemachus descant
Upon frugality, and vaunt
Your Ithaca and your Salentum
To ancient Greeks, since they content them:
Since Greeks in abstinence could find
Ample supplies of every kind.
The work, though not replete with fire,
I for its elegance admire:
But I’ll be whipped Salentum through
If thither I my bliss pursue.
Garden of Eden, much renowned,
Since there the devil and fruit were found,
Huetius, Calmet, learned and bold,
Inquired where Eden lay of old:
I am not so critically nice,
Paris to me’s a paradise.

ON CALUMNY.

Since beautiful ’twill be your fate
Emilia to incur much hate,
Almost one-half of human race
Will even curse you to your face;
Possessed of Genius’ noblest fire,
With fear you will each breast inspire;
As you too easily confide
You’ll often be betrayed, belied:
You ne’er of virtue made parade,
To hypocrites no court you’ve paid.
Therefore, of calumny beware,
Foe to the virtuous and the fair.
Expect from every fool at court
Those squibs thrown out in evil sport;
Those jests which each on others makes,
And suffers freedoms which he takes.
The cursed licentiousness of tongue
From indolence and self-love sprung.
The monster of each sex appears,
Her prate the crowd attentive hears.
The scourge of man and man’s delight
She o’er the world asserts her right.
Wit to the dullest she imparts,
The wise repel her from their hearts.
The fury, with malignant sneer,
Attacks mankind in every sphere.
But these three ranks she most devours,
And on them all her venom pours:
Wits, beauties, and the haughty great,
All are the objects of her hate:
When merit strikes the public eye,
Against it, she her darts lets fly.
Whoever genius has displayed
Is ever satire’s object made.
Adorned with trinkets, full of airs,
Young Ægle to the priest repairs:
She goes to be consigned for life
To one she never saw as wife;
The next day she’s in triumph seen
At court and ball, before the queen.
And next by Paris ever kind
A gallant’s to the bride assigned.
Roy in a ballad sings her fame.
And the town echoes with her name.
Ægle’s incensed, her cries are vain:
Ægle, excuse the poet’s strain.
Your case you’ll bitterly deplore
When men shall speak of you no more;
A beauty you can scarcely name
Who never suffered in her fame.
We find it in Bayle’s learned page,
Blessed Mary* could not escape its rage;
Lampooner’s rage was unrestrained,
And even her sacred name profaned.
Through all the nations of the world
Fierce satire has her vengeance hurled:
Has been to Jews and Christians known,
But she in Paris holds her throne.
A crowd of idlers every night,
Of idlers called the world polite,
Wandering about the town is seen,
Still followed by that fiend, the spleen.
There, jilted baggages abound,
And jades of quality are found;
Who nothings like mere parrots say;
Who ogle fools, and cheat at play.
Amongst them sparks we likewise find,
Who seem much more of womankind.
Their heads with trifles are well filled;
In trifles they are deeply skilled.
With forward air, and voices pert,
They sing and dance, behave alert;
And if some man with sense endued,
Should in their presence be so rude
To speak like one who books has read,
And show he wears a learned head,
With anger fired they on him fall,
He’s persecuted by them all.
Envy, each drone to combat brings,
Against the bee they point their stings;
Of ministers, and monarchs still,
Inferior mortals will speak ill;
From Cæsar to our Louis down,
Name we one king of high renown,
From famed Mæcenas’ days produce
A favorite who could escape abuse.
Colbert, who, vigilant and wise,
Enriched us still with new supplies;
Who found means to replace the stores
We lost by minions, priests, and whores:
That worthy, to whose cares we owe
A greatness we no longer know,
Against him saw the state conspire;
Saw Frenchmen rage with furious ire,
Disturb* his urn, insult his shade,
To whom they once such honors paid.
When Louis, who bravely could oppose
Death’s terrors, like his fiercest foes,
At length, by the decree of fate,
Was to St. Denis borne, in state.
I saw his people prone to changing,
Quite mad with wine and folly ranging,
Follow the mighty monarch’s horse,
And curse him after death in verse.
You’ve known a regent at the helm
Turn upside down the Gallic realm:
He for society was born
Arts to promote and to adorn.
Great without pride, replete with wit,
Though loose, he could no crime commit;
And yet, most curst, most black of crimes!
All France has seen atrocious rhymes
Outrageously that prince defame
And give him every odious name.
Philippics† wrote in unchaste strain
Scandalous chronicles remain;
And will no Frenchman’s generous rage
Refute the vile, detested page?
When any make a false report,
All will conspire in its support:
If truth’s discovered in the end,
All men are backward to defend.
But will you from the great at court
To objects turn of meaner sort?
Leaving the court, all grandeur’s centre,
Into wit’s temple let us enter;
That shrine, which always I admired,
To whose view Bardus self aspired,
Where Damis never could repair
Let’s enter, see curst envy there,
Daughter of verse, to verse a foe,
Who drawing emulation’s bow,
Can pride inflame and rage excite
Amongst fools who for glory write.
See how they’re bent to fight till death,
All to secure fame’s idle breath;
Upon their rivals they let fall
The blackest and the bitterest gall:
Jansenist eager to devour
Molinist could not blacker pour.
The casuist Doucin n’er so well
Bedaubed famed Pasquier Quesnel.
The old rhymer, whom all men despise,
Organe, impure, of many lies,
That wretch, who all the town offends,
Who punished often, never mends;
That Rufus* who your fire befriended,
And from the attacks of want defended,
Whose serpent sting soon after bored
The bosom that had life restored;
The wicked Rufus, who in court
Made against innocence report;
Who would have hid had he been wise,
His guilt and shame from mortal eyes,
We see at Brusseis Marshes strive
The flame of discord to revive:
He strives on me to throw the shame
Which must forever brand his name.
What will that satire then avail,
With which he dares the world assail,
Pieces in French and German wrote,
Wherein he apes the old Marot,
In which his vices all are seen,
So dull they almost give the spleen.
What great effect then do we see
From all those heaps of calumny?
Subjected to all mortals’ hate,
He to his poisons owes his fate.
Let us not fear the slanderer’s strain;
Boileau lashed famed Quinault in vain,
Quinault, whose beauties charmed his age,
Laughs at, whilst he forgives his rage.
I, whom a cursed cad would blast,
And foul aspersions on me cast,
In spite of bigots live at ease,
Both court and town my verses please.
From all this what shall we conclude?
Ye French, censorious, though not rude,
Severe, although polite and kind,
Amongst you must we ever find
Things which so very ill agree
As graces and severity?
You, who the sex, in charms excel,
You know this dangerous people well;
With them we live amidst our foes,
Boldly their malice sly oppose.
Amidst them all your charms display,
Discreetly follow your own way,
Follow your innate virtues lore,
And slanderers then shall prate no more.

THE KING OF PRUSSIA TO M. VOLTAIRE.

If all histories were written like that which you sent me, we would be better acquainted with the manners of all ages, and less imposed upon by historians. The longer I know you, the more I admire your abilities. No style can, in my opinion, be finer than that in which the “History of Louis XIV.” is written. I read every paragraph three or four times over, to such a degree do I admire it: every sentence is striking, it everywhere abounds with admirable reflections: there is not a false thought in it, there is nothing in it any way puerile, and its impartiality is unexceptionable. When I have read the work through, I shall send you a few remarks on it, amongst the rest, on the German names which you have a little disfigured, this might render the work somewhat obscure, as some of them are so disguised that we are puzzled to guess at them.

I wish every work capable of conveying instruction, was to come from your pen. We should then be sure of being improved by the books we read.

I sometimes am vexed at the puerilities, the trivial remarks, and the dry style of certain books. These things readers are often obliged to digest. You spare your readers that trouble. Let a man have judgment or not, he is equally improved by your works: he has no occasion for anything but memory. Pray, my dear friend, tell me how you pass your time at Cirey, ’tis a retreat which I envy you.

THE ANSWER.

You ask me, and I’ll tell in rhyme,
How we at Cirey pass our time:
What need I to you this relate,
Our master, you we imitate:
From you we’ve learned the wisest rules,
Taught in famed Epicurus’ schools.
We here all sacrifice like you,
To every art and nature too.
And yet we but at distance follow
Your steps, though guided by Apollo.
Thus when the brilliant god of day
Casts from heaven’s height a shining ray,
Upon some chamber dark as night.
Of those blest rays the shining light,
The chambers deep obscure pervades
And dissipate the gloomy shades,
Then the spectators cast their eyes on
A miniature of the horizon.
Such a comparison may show
That some philosophy I know,
That I’ve read Newton and Kirkherus,
Authors both learned, profound and serious.
Perhaps my muse this tone assuming,
May be by many thought presuming;
Perhaps I spoil at the same time
As well philosophy as rhyme,
But novelties have charms for me
From laws poetic I’d be free;
Let others in their lyric lays
Say the same thing a thousand ways,
The world with ancient fables tire,
I new and striking truths admire.
Ye deities adored by swains,
Naiad and nymphs that trip the plains,
Satyrs to dancing still inclined,
Ye boys called Cupids by mankind,
Who whilst our meadows bloom in spring,
Inspire men love’s soft joys to sing,
Assist a poet with your skill,
The charms ’twixt sense and rhyme to fill.
The enchanting pleasures well I know
Which from harmonious numbers flow;
The ear’s a passage to the heart,
Sound can to thought new charms impart;
But geniuses I must prefer
Though even nobly wild they err,
To pedants whose exact discourse
Is void of genius as of force.
Gardens where symmetry’s displayed,
Trees which in rows yield equal shade,
Who thus arranged you on the plain
May boast his art and skill in vain:
Gardens from you I must retire,
Too much of art I can’t admire.
The spacious forest suits my mind,
Where nature wanders unconfined,
Its shades with awe spectators fill,
They baffle all the artist’s skill.
But in my free and artless strain,
Nature I imitate in vain,
Though wild, I can’t like nature please,
I can’t boast charming nature’s ease.
This rhapsody, great prince, excuse,
’Tis but the folly of my muse,
Reason had o’er me lost her sway,
When I composed this hurried lay,
Judgment was from my breast expelled,
For fair Emilia I beheld.

ON THE ENGLISH GENIUS.

to an english friend who had compared voltaire to the sun.

The glow of genius is old England’s sun,
Inspiring love of glory and her race,
And pride in freedom which her people won
These, more than all the Arts, her ’scutcheon grace.
The sacred fire which rash Prometheus stole
Illumes not climates, but the mind’s flame feeds;
The north winds chill not the true Briton’s soul,
Nor quench the sparks that shine in mighty deeds.
This love of country gives the ardent thrill
In sober statesman—speech and pulpit plea,
That fires the patriot heart with steadfast will
To make its country great and keep it free.

WHAT PLEASES THE LADIES.

Now that the brilliant God of Day
Burns Afric’ up with forcing ray,
Now that the tropic in a sphere
Oblique contracts his bright career;
Whilst slowly lags each winter’s night,
My friends, this story may delight.
’Tis of a knight, as poor as bold,
The adventure’s worthy to be told.
’Tis Sir John Robert that I sing,
He lived when Dagobert was king.
A trip to holy Rome he made,
Less splendid when the Cæsars swayed;
From that famed capital he brought
Not laurels plucked in fields well fought,
Of dispensations, pardons, store,
Indulgences he plenty bore;
Of money little had he; then
Knights errant were poor gentlemen,
Then, to the Church’s sons alone
Were affluence and riches known.
A suit of armor, which, with rust,
Revolving years must needs incrust,
An ambling steed, a dog was all,
Robert his property could call;
But what’s more precious he possessed,
With youth’s bright gifts our knight was blessed;
Alcides’ strength, Adonis’ grace,
Gifts prized in every age and place.
Robert, near Paris, chanced to ride
By a wood, on Charenton’s side;
Marton he saw, the blithe and fair,
A ribbon tied her flaxen hair:
Her shape was easy, dress so light,
Her leg it hid not from the sight.
Soon Robert’s eyes such charms explored
As even saints might have adored;
The lily, with the blushing rose,
Combine a nosegay to compose,
Whose variegated hues are seen
Two panting globes of snow between;
Which never fail loves flame to raise
In all who on their beauties gaze;
Whilst her complexion’s charms divine
The lustre of the flowers outshine.
To tell what was not told before,
A basket this fair creature bore,
And with attractions various graced
Made to the neighboring market haste
Of eggs and butter to dispose,
Which all her little stock compose.
Robert, who felt the amorous flame,
Leaped forward and embraced the dame;
“I’ve twenty crowns, my dear,” he cried,
“Take them, and take my heart beside,
Take all I have, and take the donor.”
Said Marton, “Sir, ’tis too much honor.”
But Robert still so briskly plied her,
That down she fell, he fell beside her,
And, oh disaster dire to tell!
He broke her eggs as down he fell.
His courser started at the sight,
To the next thicket took his flight.
An honest monk, as people say,
Happened, just then, to pass that way,
The steed his monkship quickly strides,
And, post-haste, to his convent rides;
Her cap, which was become a fright,
Marton’s first care, was to set right.
To Robert turning then she said,
“My twenty crowns where are they fled?”
The knight, in hesitating strain,
Seeking his purse and steed in vain,
Excuses offered, all were lame,
For no excuse would serve the dame.
Being thus injured, straight she went
To tell the king her discontent:
“A knight has robbed me, Sire,” she said,
“And ravished too, but never paid.”
Wisely the king replied, “’Tis clear
A rape is what has brought you here:
Before Queen Bertha plead your cause,
In these points well she kens the laws;
She’ll hear attentive what you say,
And judgment pass without delay.”
Marton, with reverence bowed the head,
And to the queen her way she sped.
The queen was quite humane and mild,
Looked on each subject as a child;
But she was still severely bent
To punish the incontinent:
Of prudes her council she assembled,
The knight uncapped before them trembled;
With downcast eyes ne’er dared to stir,
He then had neither boot nor spur;
The court by no chicane delayed,
But ample full confession made;
That taking by Charonne his way
He was by Satan led astray;
That he repented of his crime,
Would ne’er offend a second time:
But that the first might prove the last,
Sentence of death was on him passed.
Robert had so much youthful grace,
So fine his person, fair his face,
That Bertha and assessors all
Awarding sentence, tears let fall.
Pangs of remorse sad Marton felt,
And every heart began to melt:
Berthe to the court then made it plain,
That the knight pardon might obtain,
And that if ready witted, he
Might from all punishment be free;
Since by the laws established there,
Who tells what pleases all the fair,
Has to his pardon a just claim,
Acquitted by each virtuous dame;
But then he must the thing explain
Completely, or his hopes are vain.
What thus had been in council started
Quickly to Robert was imparted.
The good Queen Bertha bent to save him,
Eight days to think upon it gave him;
He swore in eight days he’d appear,
And strive to make the matter clear;
Then for this favor unexpected,
Thanked Bertha, and went out dejected.
Then thus the matter he debated
Thus he his difficulty stated;
How can I in plain terms declare
What ’tis that pleases all the fair,
And not her majesty offend?
She mars what she proposed to mend.
Since to be hanged must be my lot,
Would I’d been hanged upon the spot.
Robert, whene’er in road or street,
He chanced a wife or maid to meet,
Her he in urgent manner pressed
To say what ’twas she loved the best.
All gave evasive answers, none
The real truth would fairly own.
Robert, despairing e’er to hit,
Wished him in hell’s profoundest pit.
Seven times the star that rules the year
Had gilded o’er the hemisphere,
When under a refreshing shade,
Which trees with winding boughs had made,
He saw a score of beauties bright,
Who danced in circling mazes light;
Of their rich robes the wavy pride
Their secret beauties scarce could hide.
Soft Zephyr sporting near the fair,
Played in the ringlets of their hair;
On the green turf they lightly danced,
Their feet scarce on its surface glanced.
Robert draws nigh, in hopes to find
Ease from perplexity of mind.
Just then all vanished from his sight,
Scarcely had day given place to night;
A toothless hag then met his eyes,
Sooty in hue and short of size,
Bent double, and with age oppressed,
She leaned upon a stick for rest.
Her nose, prodigious, long, and thin,
Extended till it met her chin;
Her eyes with rheum were galled and red,
A few white hairs her pate o’erspread;
A scrap of tapestry was her gown,
It o’er her wrinkled thigh hung down.
At such an odd and uncouth sight,
A sort of terror seized our knight.
The beldame, with familiar tone,
Accosts him thus: “I see, my son,
By your dejected, thoughtful air
Your heart feels some corroding care:
Relate to me your secret grief:
(To talk of woes gives some relief)
Although your case be e’er so bad,
Some consolation may be had.
I’ve long beheld this earthly stage,
And wisdom must increase with age.
The most unhappy oft have sped
To bliss by my directions led.”
“Alas!” replied the knight, “in vain
I’ve sought instruction to obtain:
The fatal hour is drawing nigh,
I must upon a gibbet die!
Unless I can the queen tell right
What ’tis gives women most delight.”
“Courage, my son,” the dame replied,
“ ’Tis God has to me been your guide,
’Tis for your good; then straight to court,
Boldly proceed and make report.
Let’s go together, I’ll unfold
The secret which must there be told;
But swear that for the life you owe,
Becoming gratitude you’ll show;
That from you I shall have with ease
What never fails our sex to please.
An oath then from you I require
That you’ll do all that I desire.”
Robert, who scrupled not to swear,
From laughter could not well forbear.
“Be serious,” cried the ancient dame,
“To laugh shows want of grace and shame;”
Then moving onward, hand in hand,
Before Queen Bertha now they stand.
The council met without delay,
Robert, asked what he had to say,
Cried, “Ladies, now your secret’s out,
What you love most admits no doubt:
What, at all seasons, can content ye,
Is not of lovers to have plenty;
But woman, of whate’er degree,
Whate’er her qualities may be,
Desires to bear both night and day
O’er all about her sovereign sway:
Woman would always fain command,
If I lie, hang me out of hand.”
Whilst thus harangued our doughty spark,
All present said he hit the mark.
The queen’s hand Robert kissed when cleared;
Then straight a haggard form appeared,
The hag of whom we spoke before,
With rags and dirt all covered o’er,
Crying out, “Justice,” forward pressed,
And in these terms the queen addressed:
“Oh lovely queen, thy sex’s pride,
Who always justly doth decide,
To whom fair equity is known,
Whilst mercy dwells beside thy throne;
By me this knight your secret knew,
The life I saved to me is due:
He swore, nor should the oath prove vain,
That I should what I wished obtain;
Upon your justice I rely,
And hope you won’t my right deny.”
Says Robert, “I deny it not,
I never a good turn forgot;
But, bate my armor, all I had
Was baggage, twenty crowns, and pad.
A monk, when Marton I caressed,
With pure religious zeal possessed,
As lawful prize seized on the whole,
For ’twere a sin to say he stole.
Though honest, since I’m broke outright,
I can’t this friendly turn requite.”
The queen replied, “What you have lost
Shall be repaid to friar’s cost;
All parties shall be satisfied;
In three your fortune we’ll divide;
For her lost eggs and chastity,
The twenty crowns shall Marton’s be;
The steed I to this dame consign,
The armor, Robert, shall be thine.”
“Most generously you’ve decreed,”
Said madam, “but I want no steed;
’Tis Robert’s person I desire,
His grace and valor I admire:
I o’er his amorous heart would reign,
That’s all the prize I wish to gain;
Robert with me must pass his life,
This day must take me for a wife.”
Her purpose being thus declared,
Robert stood motionless, and stared:
Then o’er her rags and figure strange,
His rolling eyes began to range;
With horror struck, he back retreated,
Crossing himself, these words repeated:
“Why should this ridicule and shame
With foul dishonor blast my name?
With the de’il’s dam I’d rather wed
Than to that beldame go to bed;
The hag must doubtless be run mad,
Or else she dotes, and that’s as bad.”
The hag then tenderly replied,
“My person, queen, he can’t abide;
He’s like the whole ungrateful crew
Of males, but soon I’ll bring him too;
I feel love’s flame so brightly burn,
He needs must love me in his turn.
The heart does all, I can’t but say
My charms begin to fade away;
But I’ll more tender prove and kind;
’Tis best to cultivate the mind.
We find e’en Solomon declare
The wise by far exceed the fair.
I’m poor, is that so hard a case?
Sure poverty is no disgrace.
Can’t one enjoy content of mind,
Except on ivory bed reclined?
Madam, in all this regal pride,
When you lie by our monarch’s side,
Do you enjoy more kindly rest?
Does love sincerer warm your breast?
You’ve read of old Philemon’s flame
For Baucis, though an ancient dame.
Those jealousies by old age bred,
Dwell not beneath the rustic shed;
Vice flies where luxury is unknown,
We equal kings, serve God alone;
Your country’s glory we support,
We furnish soldiers for the court:
In rendering populous the state,
The poor by much outdo the great.
If heaven should to my chaste desire
Refuse the offspring I require,
Love’s flowers without its fruits can please,
Upon love’s tree those flowers I’ll seize.”
While thus the ancient dame descanted,
All the court ladies were enchanted.
Robert was to her arms consigned,
Disgust was vain, for oaths must bind;
The dame insisted on her right
Of riding with her much loved knight
To her thatched hut, where wedlock’s bands
Were to unite their hearts and hands.
Robert his steed begins to stride,
With sorrow takes his future bride;
With horror seized, and red with shame,
He often strove to throw the dame,
Or drown her, but was by the law
Of chivalry still kept in awe.
The lady with her knight delighted
To him her race’s deeds recited,
How the great Clovis’ royal sword
The bosoms of three monarchs gored,
Who were his friends, yet could obtain
Pardon and heaven’s high favor gain.
From heaven she saw the famed dove bring
To Remi, that illustrious king,
The flask and oil so highly prized,
Which he was smeared with when baptized.
With all her narratives she blended
Thoughts and reflections well intended,
Sallies of wit, remarks refined,
Which, without calling off the mind,
Attention in who heard excited,
And both instructed and delighted.
Still does our knight with eager ears
Devour the stories that he hears;
Charmed when he heard his wife, but when
He saw, the unhappiest of men.
At length the ill-matched couple came
To the thatched cabin of the dame;
Preparing things with eager haste,
The table for her spouse she placed;
Such fare might suit with Saturn’s age,
’Tis now but talked of by the sage.
Three sticks support two rotten boards,
Such table that poor hut affords;
At this our couple sat at meat,
Each oddly placed on narrow seat;
The husband sadly hung his head,
The bride a thousand gay things said;
Wit she combined with graceful ease,
Uttered bons mots which pique and please,
So natural that to those who hear,
Said by themselves they must appear.
So pleased was Robert, that a smile
Escaped him, and he thought a while
His wife less ugly than before,
But she would fain, the supper o’er,
Have her spouse go with her to bed;
He raves, he wishes to be dead:
He yields, though not with a good grace,
Since without remedy his case.
Foul clothes our knight but little matters,
Quite gnawed by rats and torn to tatters,
On pieces of old wood extended,
And frequently with packthread mended;
All this the knight could have digested,
But Hymen’s rites he quite detested.
Of these, indeed, he much complained;
“Good heaven,” cried he, “is’t so ordained!
At Rome, ’tis said, grace from on high
Can both the power and will supply;
But grace does for the present fail,
And I for my part am but frail;
My wife can by her wit impart
Delight, she has a feeling heart;
But when with sense there’s conflict dire,
Can heart or head true joy inspire?”
Our knight benumbed like ice, this said,
Threw himself flat upon his bed;
And, to conceal his anguish, tries
To feign asleep, sleep from him flies.
The beldame, pinching Robert, cried,
“Do you then slumber by your bride?
Dear but ungrateful spouse, you see
I am subdued, now yield to me;
The timid voice of struggling shame
Is stifled by my amorous flame;
Reign o’er my sense without control,
Since you reign powerful o’er my soul;
I die! just heaven say to what end
With virtue must our love contend?
I’m quite dissolved in love’s bright flame,
Pleasure thrills through my vital frame;
Must I, alas! without thee die?
’Tis to thy conscience I apply.”
Our knight was complaisant and kind,
Religion, candor, graced his mind;
He took compassion on the dame;
“Madam.” said he, “I wish my flame
Like yours, might strong and brightly shine,
The power to effect it is not mine.”
“You can effect it,” said his wife,
“A great heart, at your stage of life,
By fortitude, by art, and care,
Performs with ease achievements rare:
Think how the ladies will approve
At court this miracle of love.
Perhaps I your disgust excite,
Wrinkles are shocking to your sight;
Heroes magnanimous despise
Such trifles, only shut your eyes.”
Our knight of glory fond would fain
This conquest of himself obtain;
Obedience then became his choice,
Listening alone to honor’s voice,
Finding in vigorous youth alone
What could for beauty’s want atone,
And love’s supply, he shuts his eyes,
And, to perform his duty, tries.
“Enough, enough,” then said the bride,
“I ask no more; I’m satisfied;
My influence o’er your heart I know,
That influence to me you owe;
Acknowledge then, as matters stand,
The wife will still at home command.
Robert, all that I ask of thee
Is to be always ruled by me;
My love enjoins an easy task,
Now view me well, ’tis all I ask.”
Then Robert looks, and sees in clusters
A hundred flambeaux placed on lustres,
In a proud palace, which he saw
Before a cabin thatched with straw.
There underneath rich curtains graced
With fringe of pearls in highest taste.
A beauty bright appeared to view,
Such as Apelles never drew;
E’en Vanloo’s colors would prove faint,
That heaven of charms divine, to paint;
No Phidias nor no Pigall e’er
Could carve a busto of the fair.
Her form like lovely Venus showed,
Whose golden tresses graceful flowed,
Whose melting eyes appeared to languish,
Whilst soothing Mars’s amorous anguish,
“Myself,” she said, “this palace, all
This wealth, your own, dear Robert, call:
You did not ugliness despise,
You therefore merit beauty’s prize.”
But now, methinks, my readers claim
To know what was this fair one’s name,
Whose heart our knight had won; why then
’Twas fairy Urgelle, gentlemen,
Who, warriors, in her time, caressed,
And knights assisted when distressed.
Happy the age! thrice blessed mankind,
When tales like these belief could find,
Of spirits hovering in the air.
Of demons who make men their care!
In castle close by roasting fire,
The daughter, mother, husband, sire,
The neighborhood and all the race,
Attended with a wondering face,
Whilst, by the almoner, were told
Deeds done by sorcerers of old.
We of the marvellous are rifled,
By reason’s weight, the graces stifled,
Have to the insipid men consigned
The soul by reasoning is confined;
Still hunting after truth we go;
From error too some good may flow.

THE EDUCATION OF A PRINCE.

Since the bright God of Day, in the course of his race,
In Aquarius resides with a sorrowful face,
Since tempests so loudly on our high mountains blow,
And our meadows are all covered over with snow,
By the fire I’ll a new story tell in new style,
Amusements the time that hangs heavy beguile.
I am old, I must own it, and will therefore descend
To the pleasures of children, since near my life’s end.
A prince erst reigned at Beneventum, ’tis said,
Quite mad with his power, and in luxury bred,
To knowledge a stranger, and not ill-educated,
By his neighbors despised, by his own subjects hated.
This small state to govern two arch-knaves combined,
They exerted themselves their young master to blind;
In this project they were by his confessor aided,
They by turns succeeded, he by all was persuaded
That his talents, his virtues, and his great reputation.
Could insure perfect bliss to the mightiest nation;
That when once their duke had to manhood attained,
He was dreaded and loved, and in all men’s hearts reigned:
That his arms could both France and Italia confound;
That with wealth his exchequer would ever abound;
That Solomon ne’er had so much wealth of old,
Though the torrent of Kedron o’er golden sands rolled.
Alamon—for by that name this prince we must call—
Still was dupe to gross flatteries, for he swallowed them all,
With pastimes delighted, court buffoons he caressed,
And when he had dined thought his people were blessed.
One valiant old general at court still remained,
Ernon, greatly esteemed when the duke’s father reigned,
Who not being bribed spoke his mind uncontrolled,
And undaunted, the government’s ruin foretold.
To jealousy roused, those who bore supreme sway
Soon found means to remove Ernon out of the way;
Unknown to the prince he to exile was sent,
But there at a farm the old man lived content;
There with friends he lived happy, resigned to his fate,
And he wept for his master as well as the state;
Whilst with sloth and with pleasure the young duke content,
On the down of soft ease both his days and nights spent.
The murmurs by which oft his subjects expressed
Discontent, would however sometimes break his rest,
But that distant din, which he hardly could hear,
Grows weak in its course, and scarce beats on his ear;
Whilst with woe overloaded men groaned through the realm,
Alamon led a languishing life at the helm.
Then was tyranny’s triumph, but the heavens took his part,
And to work reformation with love touched his heart.
Young Amida he saw, he both saw her and heard,
His heart felt emotion, and to live he appeared;
He was handsome, and might with assurance address her,
But the mystery soon was smoked by his confessor;
In his penitent’s breast straight he scruples excited,
Superstition and ignorance are easily frighted:
And the two wicked rulers who feared lest the lover
Might one day their sinister proceedings discover,
Were for making Amida like Ernon depart:
Her all to pack up she prepared with sad heart.
The weak Alamon all this insolence bore,
His reluctance was vain, from his charmer he tore.
He doubted and wavered, for just in that season
His soul was but faintly illumined by reason.
When Amida was going there were heard loud alarms,
The cry was, “All’s lost, let us die and to arms,”
On Allah, St. Germain, Christ, and Mahomet loud,
They called, and on every side fled a crowd:
A warrior turbaned, who led on a band
Of Mussulmans holding their falchions in hand,
Over heaps of the dead, or expiring, who lay
All reeking in gore, with his sword cut a way,
With sword and with fire to the palace he flew,
The women he seized on, their husbands he slew,
From Cuma this general marched to Beneventum,
But the rulers ne’er dreamed he would thus circumvent them;
Desolation and ruin up to Rome’s walls he spread,
And St. Paul and St. Peter were both seized with dread.
My dear readers, this chief was Abdallah the Proud,
Who, by God, to chastise his own church was allowed.
When the palace he entered, in chains all were cast,
Prince, monks, lackeys, ministers, and chiefs were made fast,
As calves tied in couples upon sledges are laid,
And to the next market sad victims conveyed.
Thus appeared the young duke and each worthy assessor,
All laid by the heels with the father confessor,
Who crossed himself often, and with fervency prayed,
And preached resolution, though sorely dismayed.
The victors then shared when the vanquished were tied,
The booty the emirs in three parts divide;
Of men, and of horses, and saints they dispose,
And first from their captives they strip off their clothes.
In all ages have tailors disguised human nature,
So that man to man always was a most unknown creature.
Dress changes men’s figures and their characters too,
To judge of man rightly we should naked him view.
The Mussulman chief had the duke, at that time,
As already was said, he was in his youth’s prime;
Since he seemed to be strong, muleteer he was made,
And soon he was highly improved by that trade.
His nerves, which by sloth and by ease weak were grown,
Inured to hard labor, acquired a new tone;
His sloth, by adversity taught, he subdued,
And valor in him sprung from mean servitude.
Valor, when without power, makes the state of man worse,
His impotence then is the heavier curse.
Abdallah to pleasure began to resign
His soul, and in spite of his prophet drank wine.
The court and townladies, all prone to adore him,
Were by the black eunuch each night brought before him;
By beauties attended he prepares for repose,
And she’s happy to whom he the handkerchief throws.
Whilst the chief led a life of unceasing delight,
Whilst joy winged each hour, and love triumphed at night,
In the stable much hardship and woe the prince bore,
Those his comrades were now who were subjects before.
His mules all his care and attention required,
He combed them each day till his hands were quite tired.
His woe to complete, and to make him quite rave,
He beheld fair Amida led by the black slave
To share, in her turn, the fell conqueror’s bed:
Fired with rage at the sight, to the eunuch he said,
“To make me quite wretched, there but wanted this stroke.”
Wonder seized on the slave at the words which he spoke;
In a language quite different, fair Amida replied,
With affection and sorrow her young lover she eyed;
Her eloquent looks her full meaning express,
They meant, “Bear your woes, live my wrongs to redress;
Your present mean station I do not despise,”
Your sufferings give you new worth in my eyes.
Alamon took the meaning which her looks thus expressed,
And heart-cheering hope was revived in his breast.
Amida with beauty transcendently bright,
So dazzled the chief of the Mussulmans’ sight,
That, transported with passion, by Allah he swore,
He enjoyment had known, but ne’er knew love before.
The fair one resisted to increase his desires,
Resistance served only to fan the chief’s fires.
A woman’s head still with invention is fraught.
Said she, “Sir, your conquest I well may be thought;
You’re unconquered in love as in warlike alarms,
All fall at your feet, or rush into your arms;
But the honor you mean me defer for three days,
And grant, to console me for such sad delays,
Two things, which as proofs of your love, I require:”
“I’ll grant,” said the pirate, “whate’er you desire.”
“Then make three Beneventers,” said she, “undergo
A couple of hundred sound lashes, or so;
This discipline for their transgressions is due;
This, Sir’s, the first favor I hope for from you.
The second, Sir, is, that you two mules would spare me,
Which may on a litter from time to time bear me;
And to drive them a muleteer of my own choosing;”
“Your requests,” said Abdallah, “there is no refusing.”
’Twas done soon as said, and the hypocrite vile
With both courtiers who joined their lord’s youth to beguile,
Received each their full quota, which pleased all of the nation,
Who had often complained of maladministration,
And the duke was the happiest mortal alive,
Since permitted his mistress in litter to drive.
“All’s not over,” said Amida, “you must conquer and reign,
Now’s the time, or to die, or your crown to regain;
You’re not wanting in courage, Ernon’s faithful, and I
Am resolved to serve you and my country, or die.
Then make no delay, but to Ernon repair,
To ask pardon for all he has suffered take care;
To serve you what remains of his life he’ll expose,
Return in three days, and then fall on your foes;
There’s no time to be lost, for Abdallah is bent
To accomplish in three days his lustful intent.
In love and in war, time is precious, you know.”
Alamon with alacrity answered, “I go.”
Ernon, whom Amida had informed of all,
Loved his prince, though ungrateful, and lamented his fall;
His generous, brave friends all stood ready at hand,
And of soldiers he headed a most resolute band.
Ernon tenderly wept when his prince he had found,
They armed in secret, marched in silence profound,
Amida addressed them, and her words could impart
The love of true glory to each abject slave’s heart,
Alamon could both conduct and courage unite,
And a hero became when he first went to fight.
The Turk plunged in luxury, who nothing mistrusted,
Surprised by the vanquished, in his turn was worsted.
Alamon to the palace had in triumph advanced
At the time when the Turk by soft pleasure entranced,
Not having yet heard the dire turn of his fate,
Was with hopes of enjoying fair Amida elate.
His right he asserted, and took the Turk’s place;
Then straight there appeared with a confident face,
The priest in whose air there appeared much resignment,
And the two knavish courtiers just broke from confinement;
Boasting that they did all, though their boasts were quite vain,
The influence they once had they hoped to maintain.
To prove cruel and spiteful cowards but seldom have failed,
The monk was for having Abdallah empaled.
The prince then replied with a resolute tone,
“Vile wretch, such a punishment should be your own;
By a shameful repose you to ruin had brought me,
This Turk and my mistress true courage have taught me;
By your precepts misguided, false zeal I adored,
But misfortunes and love have my virtues restored.
At peace, brave Abdallah, and in freedom depart,
’Tis you have reformed both my mind and my heart:
Then in freedom depart, no more trouble this state,
And if ever it should be so ordered by fate,
That o’er your dominions three knaves should bear sway,
Send directly for me, I’ll your favor repay.”

THE EDUCATION OF A DAUGHTER.

Winter still lasts, my friends, and my greatest delight
Is by telling long stories to amuse you at night.
Let us talk of dame Gertrude, I ne’er yet knew a prude
With charms more attractive or more various endued;
Though thirty-six years had passed over her head,
The graces and loves were not yet from her fled.
Though grave in behavior, she was ne’er seen to frown,
Her eyes had much lustre, yet she ever looked down;
Her breast white as snow was with gauze covered o’er,
Through which curious eyes could its beauties explore.
A few touches of art, and a little red lead,
Gave a delicate glow to her natural red:
Her person neglecting more brightly she shone,
Her dress struck the eye by its neatness alone.
On her toilet a Bible was always displayed,
And near Massillon was a pot of paint laid;
The devotions for Lent she still read o’er and o’er,
But what made zeal in her respected the more,
Was that she in woman excused each rash action,
For Gertrude the devout was no friend of detraction.
This dame had one daughter alone, seventeen
Was her age; a more bright beauty never was seen;
Of this lovely creature Isabel was the name,
More fair than her mother, but her beauty the same.
They appeared like Minerva and like Venus the fair,
To breed up her daughter was Gertrude’s chief care.
Like a flower newly blown she her child kept a stranger
To this wicked world’s contagion and danger.
Cards, public diversions, and gay conversation
To each innocent soul direful baits of temptation,
The true snares of Satan which the saints ever fly,
Were pleasures which Gertrude’s house ne’er durst come nigh.
Gertrude had a chapel whereto to repair,
When minded to heaven to put up a prayer;
There her leisure she oft passed in good meditations,
And her soul breathed to heaven in ejaculations.
Resplendent with richest of furniture shone
This retreat, to the eye of the public unknown:
A pair of stairs where the profane ne’er durst tread,
To the garden and from it into the street led.
You all know that in summer the sun’s scorching ray
Makes night oft more agreeable far than the day;
By the moon’s silver light then the heavens are o’erspread,
And girls take no pleasure to slumber in bed.
Isabel, whilst with pleasing pain throbbed her soft breast,
(As girls at seventeen can’t be always at rest)
Passed the night under shelter of some cooling shade,
Yet scarce ever thought for what use it was made
Unmoved she saw nature, and never admired,
But rose, went and came, just as caprice inspired;
No object impression could make on her mind,
She knew not how to think, yet to think was inclined.
At the chapel she chanced to hear one day some stir,
That moment she felt curiosity’s spur;
No suspicion she had which could justly raise fear,
Yet trembling and with hesitation drew near;
One foot putting forward, on the stairs she ascended,
One hand she held back, and the other extended;
With eye fixed, outstretched neck, and heart throbbing fast,
Herself she exerted to hear all that passed.
The first thing she hears is the voice of soft anguish,
Words half interrupted, sighs of lovers that languish.
“My mother’s oppressed by some pain or some care,”
Cried she, “in her troubles I should have my share.”
Approaching she heard these soft words, “Dear Andrew,
For the bliss of my life I’m indebted to you.”
Isabella this hearing took heart, and she cried:
“My mother is well, I should be satisfied.”
At length Isabella retires to her bed,
But for sighing can’t sleep, strange things run in her head:
Bliss Andrew bestows, but how, by what art?
’Tis sure a rare talent happiness to impart.
Thus she argued the case by herself all the night,
And impatiently wished the return of the light.
Isabel the next morning showed some inquietude,
Her concern was quickly perceived by Gertrude.
To Isabel silence proved a task too severe,
To ask prying questions she could not forbear.
“Who’s this Andrew,” said she, “madam, who’s said to know
The way upon woman true bliss to bestow?”
Gertrude started, as justly it might be supposed
That all was discovered, yet herself she composed:
Then with perfect assurance to her daughter replied,
“O’er every family a saint should preside;
I’ve made choice of St. Andrew, to him I’m devoted,
By him is my temporal welfare promoted:
I invoke him in secret, his assistance implore,
He often appears to me whilst I adore;
There does not one saint in all Paradise dwell,
Who in holiness can my St. Andrew excel.”
A well-shaped young man whom we Denis shall name,
Soon of fair Isabella enamored became.
From Isabel Denis most kind treatment found,
And their loves with enjoyment were frequently crowned.
Gertrude to every stir in her turn giving ear,
Chanced the anthems sung by Isabella to hear.
And the prayers which she made whilst she Denis caressed,
In ecstasy straining him to her soft breast.
Surprising our lovers, Gertrude was enraged:
Her passion the daughter by this answer assuaged:
“Dear mother, excuse me, for patron I claim
St. Denis, as your saint St. Andrew you name.”
Gertrude then grown wiser greater happiness knew,
Retaining her lover, she to saints bade adieu,
She dropped the vain project of deceiving mankind:
They’re not to be cheated, for Envy’s not blind;
With piercing eye Envy will see through your mask;
To conjecture is easy, to feign a hard task;
To live free is a blessing, but all pleasures are faint
To the wretch who lives under perpetual constraint.
The fair Isabel lived no longer retired,
In charms she increased, by the town was admired.
Those pleasures which Gertrude had excluded before,
She agreed as companions of love to restore:
There the most polite people in joy passed their days,
Naught is found in good company undeserving of praise.

THE THREE MANNERS.

How formed were the Athenians true joy to impart!
How their genius delights and enlivens my heart!
How under their fictions ingenious I trace
Truth’s likeness, and soon grow in love with her face!
But of all their inventions that which strikes me the most
Is the stage, of Athenians the pride and the boast;
Whereon heroes renowned, and the chiefs of old times,
Could act over again both their good deeds and crimes.
You see how all nations in this present age
Adopt their example, and would rival their stage.
No folio instruction like the drama conveys,
Perish, perish the wretches who would censure all plays;
When that vile, abject race first existed below,
A heart Nature on them forgot to bestow.
At the Greeks’ solemn games, ’twas the custom to crown
Men of eminent virtue and chiefs of renown;
Before the people justice was done to their merit,
Thus oft I’ve seen Villars and Maurice, whose spirit
And conduct from courtiers met with censure severe,
When they went to the opera receive laurels there.
Thus when Richelieu victorious returned from Mahon,
Which he bravely had taken, as cursed envy must own,
Wherever he passed he received loud applause;
Not greater Clairon from the crowded pit draws.
Before buskins were known in old Æschylus’ time,
Ere Melpomene trod the stage with steps sublime,
To young lovers was granted a much-envied prize,
Whoever, inspired by his mistress’ bright eyes,
In the year had done most, and most tenderness shown,
That man was before all the Greeks crowned alone.
The cause of her passion was by each fair one pleaded,
Her lover’s claim she by her eloquence aided,
Having first made an oath to abstain from all art,
Nor like orators aim at misleading the heart,
Without exaggeration their cause to support;
A hard task to women as to lawyers at court.
Still extant remains one of these fine debates,
Which took rise from the leisure of Greece’s free states.
Eudames being archon, if my memory is right,
Three beauties appearing filled all Greece with delight:
Ægle, Apamis, and Teone were their names;
The wits of all Greece ran in crowds to the games:
Though great talkers, they then kept a silence profound,
Attentively listening as the stage they went round.
In a golden cloud Venus with young Cupid descended,
To all that the disputants uttered attended.
First began youthful Ægle, who had graces and art,
Which, charming eye and ear, found a way to the heart.
“Hermotimes, my much-loved, my much-honored sire,
Throughout his whole life felt true genius’ fire,
He attached himself always to those gifts of the mind,
Those elegant arts which have polished mankind;
To science devoted, from all honors he fled,
And life unambitious with his family led;
His daughter he would to no husband consign,
But to one who like him felt the influence divine,
Who best knew to sing to the lyre, and to paint
The few charms nature gave me, which indeed are but faint.
Young Lygdamon loved me; natural genius alone,
By art unassisted, in him brightly shone,
Discreet and ingenuous, both refined and polite,
He ne’er spoke as a scholar, but always spoke right;
He no talents possessed, yet could judge of each art,
Every grace his mind formed, and soft love filled his heart;
He knew to love only; in that art he excelled:
My heart soon to learn it from him was compelled.
When my sire would have acted a tyrannical part.
And have torn me from him who possessed my sad heart,
And would with some painter have caused me to wed,
Some genius to music and poetry bred,
How incessant the tears trickled from my sad eyes.
Despotic power o’er us parents would exercise!
Since we owe life to them, o’er our lives they have power
Like gods, so for death I prepared in sad hour;
Confused and despairing, wretched Lygdamon fled.
And sought some asylum where to shelter his head.
My sire meant in six months to dispose of my hand,
That delay was expected by the whole amorous band.
No room had they then their sad talents to show,
I was grown a mere picture of sorrow and woe.
The moments swift flying increased my alarms,
My loved Lygdamon had retired from my arms;
When my lovers should meet I expected my doom,
To escape them, I wished to sink into my tomb.
Twenty rivals’ productions were exposed to men’s eyes;
To a thousand debates their productions gave rise:
I who had not seen any for none could decide,
My father impatient would have made me the bride
Of the proud Harpagus, whose works greatly were prized,
To him I was going to be sacrificed.
A slave then, who seemed to arrive in post-haste,
The work of a stranger full in their view placed:
All present then fixed on the canvas their eyes,
’Twas my picture, so like that it caused much surprise.
In the picture I seemed both to breathe and to speak,
And sigh as my heart were just going to break;
In my air, in my eyes perfect love was expressed,
Art appeared not, ’twas nature represented at best;
On the canvas appeared by art wondrous and new,
The soul and the body at once to the view;
There deep shade was united with light’s mildest gleams,
As at morning we see the sun dart his bright beams
Athwart our vast forests circled round with thick shades,
And gild fruits and harvests, green meadows and glades.
To find fault was only Harpagus’ desire,
The rest all stood silent and were forced to admire.
‘Who’s this,’ cried out Harpagus, lost in amaze,
‘That painting to such high perfection could raise?
To whom at last shall I my daughter consign?’
Lygdamon then appearing, said, ‘Shall she be mine?
’Tis love that’s the painter, love alone on my breast
Has this lively image of my Ægle impressed.
’Twas love’s power on the canvas directed my hand,
What art is not subject to that god’s high command?
’Tis his power alone that can all arts inspire.’
Then to voice soft and tender attuning his lyre,
Of tones and notes various he made music so fine,
All thought themselves seated at a concert divine;
Like Apelles he painted, and like Orpheus he sung,
With rage and with fury was Harpagus stung;
Fire flashed from his eyes, and his anger suppressed,
His visage inflamed, and boiled fierce in his breast.
Then seizing with frenzy a javelin, he flew,
In Lygdamon’s blood his fell hands to imbrue;
My lover to slay the barbarian intended,
And over two lives dire destruction impended.
Lygdamon, who perceived him, was no way dismayed;
But with the same hand that so skilfully played,
Which the hearts and the minds of his hearers had charmed,
He raised his foe whom he had fought and disarmed.
Then sure to love’s prize he may justly lay claim,
Permit me to grant the reward of his flame.”
Thus spoke the fair Ægle. Love applauds her discourse,
And the theatre rang, the Greeks clapped with such force,
To hear this applause drew a blush from the dame,
And her passion for Lygdamon fiercer became.
Then rose Teone, nor her speech nor her air
Were formed by art, or seemed studied with care;
The Greeks when she rose, for a time seemed more gay,
Her adventure with smiles she began to display
In verse of less length, and a different measure,
Which runs with great ease, and is heard with much pleasure:
’Twas in such the gay Hamilton still chose to write:
Such nature has often been known to indite.

TEONE.
Young Agaton you all must know;
His charms like those of Nereus show;
His cheeks glowed with a lovely red,
And scarce with down were overspread;
His eyes like Venus’ are sweet,
His voice like hers with love replete.
Lilies united with the rose
The tincture of his hue compose;
The ringlets of Apollo’s hair
Are not so graceful, long, and fair.
When of fit age to be a wife,
I chose him as my own for life,
My heart was not his captive made
By outward charms which quickly fade;
Like Paris, he can strike the eye,
In strength with famed Achilles vie.
One evening as I with my aunt
Took on the Ægean Sea a jaunt,
Near one of those delightful isles
On which kind heaven forever smiles,
A Lydian vessel, great of size,
Seized on our sloop as lawful prize.
Long had the corsair, then grown gray,
Cruised near those isles in quest of prey,
Girls in the bloom of youth he sought,
These to his governor he brought.
He wanted one about my age,
Saw something in me to engage;
He let my ancient aunt go free,
And as men sparrows catch, seized me;
With haste then to his master goes,
Of his new booty to dispose.
My good aunt then with clamorous cries
And bosom swollen with sorrow flies
To the Pyreum, there to tell
Whome’er she met of what befell;
How her Teone was the prey
Of a corsair that roved the sea;
Of one who dealt in female ware,
And meant to sell me at some fair.
Think you was Agaton content
With tears that happened to lament,
On canvas with a brush to trace
The various features of my face,
To tune his lyre, his voice to raise,
To sing my loss and beauties praise?
To arms my lover had recourse,
Resolved to get me back by force:
Not having wherewithal to pay
Those that engage in every fray,
He to his youthful figure trusted,
And like a girl himself adjusted,
With petticoat and stays when dressed,
He hid a poniard in his breast;
Then in a sloop he braved the main,
Bent or to die or me regain.
The youth arrived soon thus arrayed,
To where Mæander winding played.
So bright his charms were, he seemed born
The court of some prince to adorn;
He seemed a sheep made for the fold
To which I just before was sold.
When he began on shore to tread,
To my seraglio he was led.
No girl before was ever blessed
With joy like that which filled my breast,
When I in my seraglio spied
My Grecian lover at my side,
And that within my power it lay
All that his love dared to repay;
Him I accepted as my own,
The deities appeared alone
At nuptials in such hurry made;
No priest was by in robes arrayed;
And those who to a master bend,
Have seldom servants to attend.
At night the amorous satrap came
To my bedside, talked of his flame,
His lust to gratify he thought.
But one fine girl was to him brought,
On seeing two, with great surprise,
“I can’t too many have,” he cries,
“Your lovely friend I much admire,
Company’s all that I desire;
Though two, I’ll find means to content you,
Let no cursed jealousy torment you.”
When thus he had his mind expressed,
He both his mistresses caressed,
His word preparing to make good,
To do as he had said he would;
For Agaton I was afraid,
But my brave Greek quite undismayed
Upon the lustful satrap flew,
Seized on his hair, his poniard drew,
Discovered that he was a man,
And boldly thus to speak began:
“Your doors this instant open throw,
Out of the house let us three go;
By signs your whole attendant band
Not to follow after us command;
To the shore let us take our way,
And there embark without delay.
I’ll watch you with attentive eyes,
If word or gesture I surprise,
If the least doubtful sign I spy,
That very instant you shall die;
Your corpse into the river thrown
Shall to the bottom quick go down.”
The satrap, though a noble peer,
Was very liable to fear;
He with great readiness obeyed;
The man is gentle that’s afraid.
Then in the little bark with haste
With us the governor we placed.
Soon as in Greece we all were landed,
The vanquished’s ransom was demanded;
A round sum in good gold was paid,
This money was my dowry made.
Acknowledge then my lover’s deed
Does that of Lygdamon exceed;
That just had been my sad complaint,
Had he amused himself to paint
My face, or in elaborate verse
My various graces to rehearse.

Her passion delighted, Greece heard her display
With ease unaffected, with simplicity gay,
All that Teone said was with fire animated,
Grace in telling has more force than what is related.
They applauded, they laughed, laughter Greeks never tires,
When man’s happy what signifies what he admires.
Apamis then, her eyes with tears flowing, advanced,
Her sorrows enchanted and her charms enhanced.
The Greeks when she spoke took a more serious air,
No heart in her favor delayed to declare.
In moderate measure she related the woes
Which from her unhappy love’s adventure arose;
The smooth-running syllables gave delight to each ear,
And arranged with much art quite careless appear,
The melody of this easy metre’s divine,
The long oft tires the ear, though acknowledged more fine.

APAMIS.
Though some cursed star then ruled the earth,
’Twas Amatonte first gave me birth,
Blessed region! where in Greece, ’tis said,
The mother of the loves was bred,
Her cradle to that happy shore
The ever-smiling pleasures bore;
Though born the human race to bless,
Me she has loaded with distress.
From her pure law no ill could flow,
She poured down only good below,
Whilst her law nature’s law remained;
Cursed rigor has her altars stained:
The gods are merciful and kind,
But priests to cruelty inclined.
A law they made severe as new,
That any nymph that proved untrue,
Her life should in that water close
From whence Love’s goddess once arose,
Unless her forfeit life to save
Some lover chose a watery grave.
Can nothing then but punishment
Inconstancy in love prevent?
Should woman, weak and prone to change
From love to love, inconstant range?
We’ll own ’tis bad, but cannot see
Of drowning the necessity.
Oh, Venus, beauty of the skies,
From whom my woes and joys took rise,
Whom I with so devout a care
Served with young Batilus the fair,
I upon you as witness call
Of my love’s force, you know it all;
You know if e’er my flame to feed
My passion stood of fear in need;
With love reciprocal delighted,
Our two souls were as one united;
I and my lover felt that fire
Which once the goddess did inspire.
The sun when he began his course,
Was witness of our passion’s force;
And when his setting rays the vale
Began to gild, he heard our tale;
But most the sable shades of night
Were conscious of our soft delight.
Arenorax, by love disclaimed,
Whose heart to every vice was framed,
Loved me, but ’twas through spite alone,
This all his words and deeds made known:
Still he was jealous, for by fate
The wretch was preordained to hate;
Envy’s cursed passions he let fall,
His tongue distilled vile slander’s gall.
Hateful informers, monsters dire,
To hell, which gave you birth, retire;
To hurt me so much art was used,
That e’en my lover was abused,
And innocence a victim fell
To fraud, the offspring cursed of hell.
Do not require to have displayed
The horrid plot this monster laid;
Such thoughts no place have in my soul,
My lover there still claims the whole.
In vain I to Love’s goddess prayed,
By all I found myself betrayed;
Condemned to end my life and woes
In the sea whence fair Venus rose.
To death I was a victim led,
Tears, as I passed, by all were shed,
With unavailing sorrow all
Lamented my untimely fall;
When to me Batilus addressed
A letter, which my fate reversed,
Dear fatal note, which with it brought
Tidings that worse than death I thought!
I almost sank in endless night,
When words like these first struck my sight:
“Though to my love you were not true,
I’m yet resolved to die for you.”
’Twas done as said; my life to save,
My lover plunged into the wave.
All at his boldness were amazed,
They wept, and much his courage praised.
Oh, death! thy aid I then required,
To end my woes alone desired:
To follow Batilus I meant,
But cruel friendship would prevent;
By force kept from the shades below,
I was condemned to life and woe.
The cursed impostor’s hellish spite,
Although too late, was brought to light;
He in his turn death underwent,
I gain not by his punishment.
Lovely Batilus is no more,
For me he sought the Stygian shore.
To you, O judges, I repair,
Grant to my sighs and tender care
Such needful aid, such kind relief
As may but mitigate my grief:
Grant the youth who resigned his breath,
The prize he merited by death;
’Twill cheer him in the shades below,
But I shall comfort no more know:
Then let your generous hearts once more
Force to this trembling hand restore,
That on his tomb before your eyes
It may write, “Athens gives this prize.”
Sobs stopped her when she thus had said,
Ceasing, a flood of tears she shed.
Compassion touched each judge’s breast;
They first took Ægle’s side,
With Teone laughed at each jest,
With Apamis they cried.
I’m sorry that I cannot find
To whom the laurel was assigned.

My friends, close by the fireside seated,
These tales for you I have repeated;
I to an ancient author owe them,
And hope you will some favor show them;
You of their merit must decide,
I by your judgment will abide.

THELEMA AND MACAREUS.

Thelema’s lively, all admire
Her charms, but she’s too full of fire;
Impatience ever racks her breast,
Her heart a stranger is to rest.
A jocund youth of bulky size
This nymph beheld with tender eyes,
From hers his humor differed quite,
Black does not differ more from white.
On his broad face and open mien
There dwelt tranquillity serene;
His converse is from languor free
And boisterous vivacity.
His sleep was sound and sweet at night,
Active he was at morn like light;
As day advanced he pleased still more,
Macareus was the name he bore.
His mistress void of thought as fair
Tormented him with too much care:
She adoration thought her due,
And into fierce reproaches flew;
Her Macareus with laughter left,
And of all hopes of bliss bereft.
From clime to clime like mad she ran
To seek the dear, the faithless man:
From him she could not live content,
So first of all to court she went.
There she of every one inquired,
“Is Macareus with you retired?”
Hearing that name the witlings there
To laugh and smile could scarce forbear.
“Madam,” said they, “who is this squire
Macareus, for whom you inquire?
Madam, his character display,
Or else we shan’t know what to say.”
“He is a man,” returned the fair,
“Possessed of each endowment rare,
A man of virtue so refined,
He hated none of human kind;
To whom no man e’er owed a spite,
Who always knew to reason right,
Who void of care lived still at ease,
And knew all human kind to please.”
The courtiers answered with a sneer,
“You are not like to find him here,
Mortals with such endowments rare
But seldom to the court repair.”
The fair then to the city bent
Her way, and stopped at a convent.
She thought that in that calm retreat
She might her tranquil lover meet.
“Madam,” then said the under-prior,
The man for whom you thus inquire
We long have waited for in vain,
To visit us he ne’er did deign.
But such a loss to compensate,
We’ve idle time and vigils late;
We have our stated days of fasting
With discord and divisions lasting.”
A short monk then with crown shaved o’er,
Said, “Madam, seek this man no more;
For I’m by false reports misled,
Or else your lover’s long since dead.”
What the monk insolently said
Made Thelema with rage grow red:
“Brother,” said she, “I’d have you know
The man who has caused all my woe
Was made for me, and me alone,
He’s in this world on which I’m thrown;
With me he’ll live and die content,
I’m properly his element:
Who aught else told you, on my word,
Has said a thing that’s most absurd.”
This said, away the fair one ran,
Resolved to find the inconstant man.
“At Paris, where the wits abound,
Perhaps,” said she, “he may be found,
The wits speak of him as a sage;”
One of them said: “You by our page,
Madam, perhaps have been misled;
When there of Macareus you read,
We spoke of one we never knew.”
Then near she to the law-court drew,
Shutting her eyes, quick passed the fair,
“My love,” she cried, “can’t sure be there;
There’s some attraction in the Court,
But who’d to this vile place resort?
Themis’ black followers needs must prove
Eternal foes to him I love.”
Fair Thelema at Rameau’s shrine,
Where the muse utters strains divine,
The man who her so much neglected
There to meet, was what she expected.
At those feasts oft she was a guest,
Where meet gay people richly dressed;
Such people as we all agree
To call the best of company.
People of an address polite,
She looked upon at the first sight
As perfect copies of her lover;
But she soon after could discover,
That striving most to appear the same,
They still were widest of their aim.
At last the fair one in despair,
Finding how vain was all her care,
And grown of her inquiries tired,
To her retreat would have retired:
The object which she there first spied
Was Macareus by her bedside;
He waited there, hid from her eyes,
That he the fair one might surprise:
“Henceforward,” said he, “live with me,
From all inquietude be free,
Do not, like vain and haughty dames,
Be too assuming in your claims;
And if you would henceforth possess
My person and my tenderness,
Never more make demands more high
Than suits me with them to comply.”
Who’s understood by either name,
Both of the lover and the dame,
The folks who are profound in Greek
Cannot be very far to seek.
Taught by this emblem they’ll relate
What’s to be every mortal’s fate,
Thee, Macareus,* though all men choose,
Though much they love thee, oft they lose;
And I’m persuaded that you dwell
With me, though this I fear to tell.
Who boasts that with thee he is blessed,
By envy oft is dispossessed;
A man should know, to make thee sure,
How to live happy while obscure.

AZOLAN.

At village lived, in days of yore,
A youth bred in Mahomet’s lore;
His well-turned limbs were formed with grace,
With blooming beauty glowed his face;
His name was Azolan, with care
The Koran he had written fair;
Was on its study ever bent,
To get it all by heart he meant.
From the most early youth his breast
By zeal for Gabriel was possessed;
This minister of the most high
Descended to him from the sky.
“The zeal that in thy bosom glows,”
Said he, “thy guardian Gabriel knows:
To Gabriel gratitude is dear,
To make your fortune I’m come here;
You’ll in short time as first divine
Of Medina and Mecca shine;
This, next to his place who is chief
Of all who hold the true belief,
Is the most high and wealthy station
In holy Mahomet’s donation.
When you your duties once begin,
Honors on all sides will pour in;
But you a solemn oath must make
The whole sex female to forsake;
To lead a life most chaste, and ne’er
But through a grate to view the fair.”
Too hastily the beauteous boy,
That he church treasures might enjoy,
Fell easily into the snare,
Nor of his folly was aware.
Our new-made imam was elate,
Seeing himself become so great;
His joy the salary enhanced,
Which was immediately advanced
By a clerk of important air,
Who with him still went share and share.
No joy can dignity supply,
Nor wealth, should love his aid deny.
Amina fair by chance he spies,
With youthful bloom and charming eyes;
He loves Amina, she in turn
For him feels love’s flame equal burn.
Each morning as the day returned,
The youth, who with love’s flames still burned,
Being by his cursed oath enchained,
Of his sad slavery complained,
Avowing freely in his heart,
That he had played a foolish part.
“Then, Medina, farewell,” he cried,
“Mecca, vain pomp and foolish pride;
Amina, mistress of my breast,
We’ll both live in my village blessed.”
From heaven the archangel made descent,
Severely to reproach him bent:
The tender lover thus replies;
“Do but behold my mistress’ eyes;
I find of me you’ve made a jest,
I’m by your contract quite distressed;
With all you gave I’ll freely part,
I ask alone Amina’s heart.
The prudent and the sacred lore
Of Mahomet I must adore;
Love’s joys he grants to the elect,
Nay, he allows them to expect
Aminas and eternal love,
In his bright Paradise above
To heaven again, dear Gabriel, go,
My zeal for you shall still o’erflow;
To the empyrean then repair;
Without my love I’d not go there.”

THE ORIGIN OF TRADES.

When with a skilful hand Prometheus made
A statue that the human form displayed,
Pandora, his own work, to wed he chose,
And from those two the human race arose.
When first to know herself the fair began,
She played her smile’s enchantment upon man;
By softness and alluring speech she gained
The ascendant, and her master soon enchained;
Her beauty on Prometheus’ sense ne’er palled,
And the first husband was the first enthralled.
The god of war soon saw the new-formed fair;
His manly beauty and his martial air,
His golden casque and all his glittering arms
Pandora pleased, and he enjoyed her charms.
When the sea’s ruler in his humid court
Had heard of this intrigue from fame’s report,
The fair he sought, a like reception found,
Could Neptune fail where Mars a triumph found?
Day’s light-haired god from his resplendent height
Their pleasures saw, and hoped the same delight;
She could not to refuse him have the heart,
Who o’er the day presides and every art.
Mercury with eloquence declared his flame,
And in his turn he triumphed o’er the dame.
Squalid and sooty from his forge, at first
Vulcan was ill-received, and gave disgust;
But he by importunity obtained
What other gods with so much ease had gained.
Pandora’s prime thus winged with pleasure flew,
Then she in languor lived, nor wherefore knew.
She that devotes to love her life’s first spring,
As years increase can do no other thing;
For e’en to gods inconstancy is known,
And those who dwell in heaven to change are prone.
Pandora of her favors had been free
To gods who left her; happening then to see
A satyr who through plains and meadows strayed,
Smit with his mien, she love-advances made.
To these amours our race existence owes,
From such amusements all mankind arose;
Hence those varieties in talents spring,
In genius, passions, business, everything:
To Vulcan one, to Mars one owes his birth,
This to a satyr; very few on earth
Claim any kindred with the god of day,
Few that celestial origin display.
From parents each his taste and turn derives:
But most of all trades now Pandora’s thrives;
The most delightful, though least rare it seems,
And is the trade all Paris most esteems.

THE BATTLE OF FONTENOY.

What! could the bard, whose famed satiric lays
Have gained a wreath of never-fading bays,
With voice inspired by energy divine,
Paint deluged o’er with blood the banks of Rhine;
Sing, how her billows, struck with horror, fled,
While her defenders round by thousands bled;
How even her god was seized with dire dismay,
And to our conquering ancestors gave way!
And when your king, in field with crimson dyed,
Sees instant death fly round on every side;
And from proud Tournay, where with ceaseless roar
His deadly engines urged the siege before,
Retires, suspending the besieger’s rage,
And takes the field impatient to engage;
Whilst his great son by love of glory led,
For tented fields forsakes the nuptial bed:
Great through his valor, happy through his care,
Can you, my countrymen, to praise forbear?
Behold your monarch deathless glory gain,
Where Fontenoy extends her spacious plain.
Glory and virtue, powers divine, attend,
You, who our monarch aid, and who defend;
Bellona, goddess of the dreadful fight,
Minerva, who in wisdom dost delight,
Thou ruling passion of each generous heart,
Our country’s love, your succor now impart;
My laboring breast, oh! powers divine, inspire,
And fill the poet with a warrior’s fire;
Paint their great actions on a deathless page,
Such as may live to every distant age:
My soul on fancy’s pinions wings her way,
The adverse hosts already I survey;
Their bands I see with mutual hate engage,
I see the battle glow with tenfold rage;
I see the haughty Saxon there advance,
Maurice,* among us deemed a son of France:
Hov’ring upon the brink of endless night,
His soul was just prepared to take its flight;
But he delayed, he stopped its flying wing,
He could not unassisted leave the king:
One single day to live was his desire,
Contented after conquest to expire.
Propitious heaven, watch o’er the hero’s ways,
For Louis’s sake and ours prolong his days.
The French forsaking, Harcourt† joins our host,
Each danger is foreseen, assigned each post;
Attached both to his country and the throne,
Noailles,‡ the good of France regards alone.
The mighty d’Eu,§ whose birth from Condé springs,
D’Eu, whose right arm the Gallic lightning wings;
The chief,* for youth remarked, for valor more,
Whose great exploits the Main had seen before;
Bouflers and Luxembourg untaught to yield,
Depons, Bavaria, hasten to the field;
The stroke decisive at their posts they wait,
Their men attend with sanguine hope elate:
Danoy,† who still with fortune favor found;
Berenger for the Rhine’s defence renowned;
Chabanes, Colbert, and Gallerande advance,
Du Chaila, all the hardy chiefs of France;‡
These, in the silent horror of the night,
Wait with impatience for the promised fight.
Already from the East, the dawn of day
Upon the colors darts a feeble rav,
Colors which many different nations bear.
That threatening death wave proudly in the air.
The Flemings ruled by France in time of yore,
Who then knew plenty which they know no more;
The Dutch to whom the Indies homage pay,
By industry and freedom raised to sway,
Who long oppressed by Austria’s laws severe,
Now arm for those whose yoke they could not bear;
The Hanoverian’s constant, faithful band,
To combat brave, and prompt to obey command;
The haughty Austrians of past greatness vain,
And the long glories of their Cæsar’s reign;
Chief the aspiring nation that with pride
Beholds her greatness swell on every side,
And of the Gallic glory jealous still,
Thinks Europe’s balance subject to her will;
All these pour on us eager to engage,
By hope seduced, by hatred fired to rage.
The never-conquered genius of the state
Attends our monarch, and defies their hate.
Roused by the din of war, the gods repair,
From rivers, woods, and floods, to fields of air;
Doubtful for whom their silver stream shall flow,
And in whose fertile plains their harvests grow.
Fortune displays a laurel wreath on high,
And hovering near them wings the azure sky,
Provoked that independent of her sway,
Valor alone shall win the glorious day.
Cumberland, who the allied hosts commands,
To firm array draws out his hardy bands;
Not where Scamander flowed in many a round,
Under those walls in ancient song renowned,
Did the great heroes of that famous age,
Like these with order in the field engage?
But such was Scipio, such the chief whose fate
In ruin plunged the Carthaginian state;
Skill, equal to their courage, they displayed,
Each to his rival’s worth due homage paid.
Ruin and death in various forms appear,
But Louis’s dauntless bosom knows no fear.
With their rude throats a hundred cannon gave
The signal, then marched forth the squadron brave;
With firm and speedy pace, in just array,
Towards our ranks they took their hostile way;
Before them terror stalks, a phantom dire,
Onward they march, environed round with fire;
Thus a thick cloud by winds is borne on high,
Whence lightning, thunder, and destruction fly.
They come, those rivals of our monarch’s fame,
More fierce than we, their worth perhaps the same.
Still proud of their exploits in times of yore,
Bourbons avenge whate’er the Valois bore.
With direful shock the hosts three times engage,
Thrice change the ground, yet meet with equal rage;
The French, whose fire the leader strove to rein,
With art to prowess joined, their posts maintain;
The cruel hand of death strikes either side,
And constant carnage swells the bloody tide.
By the sword’s edge, or by a leaden death,
Chiefs, soldiers, officers, resign their breath;
Swept by one common fate, confusedly die,
And in promiscuous heaps expiring lie.
Their parting groans now pierce the wounded air,
And heaven’s vengeance they implore by prayer.
Gramont for valor and for worth renowned,
Covered with wounds lies prostrate on the ground:
Blest, had he known ere sunk in endless night,
That Louis was victorious in the fight.
What now avail his titles of command,*
The warrior’s truncheon which once graced his hand,
Honors on which the great in vain presume,
With them forgotten in the silent tomb?
Craon,* you fall, may heaven grown less secure,
Make your brave brother’s fate its chiefest care.
Say! much-loved Longaunay, what art can save
Such worth as thine from an untimely grave?
Those sons of Mars, who at their chief’s command
Darted like lightning on the hostile band,
Stopped in their course impetuous, breathless fall,
Their speed overtaken by the murderous ball;
As birds when shot, in many an airy round,
Descend and palpitate upon the ground.
D’Avray is by a hostile sabre slain,
Daubeterre beholds upon the ensanguined plain
Close by his side his dauntless chiefs expire,
Victims to the hostile sword or fire;
Warriors whom Chabrillant, with Brancus leads,
How many English slain appease your shades?
Mars, sanguinary god, our thanks we pay,
That Colbert’s noble race escaped that day;
Even war’s fierce god in virtue takes delight,
Since Guerchy escapes uninjured from the fight;
But thou, brave Dache, what shall be thy fate?
’Tis heaven’s to shorten, or protract our date.
Hapless Lutteaux, with wounds all covered o’er,
Striving to cure thee adds but tortures more;
You die in torments, while with ceaseless prayer,
We importune the gods your life to spare.
How many virtues does the tomb devour!
How brilliant youth is nipped, e’en in its flower!
What tears our bloody laurels should bedew
Conquests so dearly bought, how should we rue?
Those valiant leaders perish in the field,
Our happy lives each day new pleasures yield;
Voluptuous ease and luxury unite
To glut our souls with every soft delight.
This bliss our sovereign purchased at the head
Of armed hosts, for this our warriors bled;
Upon their tombs let’s strew each fragrant flower,
Let’s save their names from black oblivion’s power.
You who the thunder rolled, who felt its rage,
Thrice-honored chief, live in our grateful page.
Is there a man with heart unfeeling cursed,
Sparing to praise, and prone to think the worst,
Who led by sordid jealousy astray,
Can envy them the tribute which I pay?
If there is one whose breast ne’er learned to glow
At public good, or feel for public woe,
Who hears this praise with a neglectful ear,
Ungrateful men, for Louis learn to fear;
The fiery torrent spreading as it goes,
Fed with new fuel, still more furious grows;
Not winter inundations, swelled with rain,
Not tides impetuous of the roaring main,
Are half so rapid in their headlong course,
Or rush precipitate with such a force,
As the battalion which in close array,
Against our adverse legions took its way;
They marched with sabres brandished o’er their head,
And cut a passage through the heaps of dead;
The god of battle for their side declared,
Our monarch saw the danger and repaired.
His son, his only hope—loved prince, forbear,
Where do you haste? is life not worth your care?
The dauphin’s danger only can inspire
Louis with dread, the son fears for the sire;
For both our warriors fear, that fear alone
Touches their hearts, all other dreads unknown.
Guards of the king, protectors brave of France,
Nation of heroes who in crowds advance,
Haste to the fight; ’tis yours to fix our fate,
Save Europe, save the king, the prince, the state.
March, household troops, vanquish without delay,
Your chiefs to certain conquest lead the way.
You hardy veterans, whose experienced hands
Launch distant death upon the hostile bands;
Advance, you chosen troops, our army’s boast,
With balls of fire annoy the adverse host;
Squadrons of Louis, crush those haughty foes,
Courage like yours they’re worthy to oppose.
Richelieu, who flies where’er the hosts engage,
Valiant with knowledge, and with ardor sage,
Favorite of Love, by Mars to combat taught,
By wisdom’s goddess to express each thought;
He calls your bands; his soul discerning knows
From whence your enemies’ success arose;
Depending on your valor Richelieu flies,
And shows where you may win the victor’s prize.
La Mark, la Vauguion, chiefs renowned in fight,
Valiant Choiseul endowed with matchless might,
A turf intrenchment’s weak defence oppose
Against the fury of their warlike foes;
Yet thus they stem the hostile torrent’s force,
And stay an army in its headlong course.
D’Argenson, whom his father’s presence fires,
Whose bosom ardent zeal for France inspires,
Struck with the danger of the best of kings,
Excited by the blood from whence he springs,
Attacked three times that formidable band,
Which like a fiery rampart seemed to stand;
Stopped, he undaunted to the charge returns,
And with redoubled rage his bosom burns.
Thus battering rams with strokes redoubled plied
A town, whose ramparts shook on every side.
That brilliant regiment, well known to fame,
With which famed Catinat the foe o’ercame,
Came, saw, and fought; the glory they had gained,
More glory still acquiring, they maintained.
Young Castilmoron, glorious was thy part,
In tender years you showed a manly heart;
Your feeble arm from the stern English bore
The bloody standard which they took before.
But Chevrier falls a victim to their ire,
And Love, with sighs, sees Monace expire.
Ye English, twice Du Guesclin feels your rage;
Shrink at that name, to you of dire presage.
What brilliant hero, ’midst the horrid fray,
Falls, and then rising, cuts himself a way?
Biron, thy ancestors on Ivry’s plain
Thus fought great Henry’s empire to maintain.
Such Grillon was, in worth and rank supreme,
Amongst the valiant a distinguished name;
Such were Daumonts and Créquis, chiefs renowned;
The Montmorencys still with conquest crowned,
Heroes who brightly shone in former days,
The sons now emulate their fathers’ praise.
Such was Turenne, who in the field of fame
Was taught by arms to win a deathless name,
Under another chief of Saxon birth,
Whose conquering arm with terror shook the earth,
When in another Louis’s glorious days,
Justice and Mars at once conspired to raise
Gallia to grandeur never known before,
And make the Austrian eagle cease to soar.
Can polished courtiers, used to soft delight,
Thus rush like lions furious to the fight?
How grace and valor happily combine!
How Bouflers, Meuze, d’Ayen and Duras shine!
At Louis’s voice intrepid troops advance;
Led by their king, how great the sons of France!
They’ll surely conquer, headed by their sire,
No headlong instinct does his soul inspire;
Free from all passion, he, with mind serene,
Can o’er himself and over fortune reign;
His vigilance can suffer no surprise,
No error cast a mist before his eyes;
He marches like the cloud-compelling sire,
Hurling at Titans heaven’s vindictive fire,
Whose boisterous rage he guided by a nod,
And in the storm, with brow unruffled trod.
He marches thus; beneath his hosts the ground
Groans, and the noise is echoed all around;
The ocean roars; the Scheldt its fountain’s head
Astonished seeks; with darkness heaven’s o’erspread.
Beneath a cloud, which with a hideous roar
From northern caves the winds impetuous bore,
The Valois’ conquerors enraged descend:
“On you, great duke,”* they cried, “we all depend;
Rally your hardy legions to the fight.
Dutchmen, defend your barriers and your right.
Since peace, you English, fills you with alarms,
Against a king who loves it, turn your arms;
Will you his valor as his friendship fear?”
In vain they urge, for Louis soon draws near.
Their genius fails, the English lose the field,
Fierceness* to valor is constrained to yield.
The valiant Clare, who heads Hibernia’s powers,
At once defends his country’s cause and ours.
Happy Helvetians, faithful race, and sage,
With France united during many an age,
Drawn up in close compacted, firm array,
You follow where fierce Neustrians† lead the way.
That Dane, that hero of immortal fame,
Who from the frozen north to Gallia came,
Beholds our nation with astonished eyes,
When suddenly he hears a thousand cries,
“Or die, or to our force superior yield,
Louis at length has won the bloody field.”
Go, brave d’Estrées,‡ the mighty work complete;
Go, chain the foes who have escaped from fate.
Let them implore his aid whom they defied,
To yield to him will scarce abate their pride.*
Swift after them these rapid warriors ride,
Who like the dragon, formerly their guide,
Are prompt to fight on foot, or urge the steed
Against the foe, and noted for their speed.
Thus in Numidia’s plains, with rapid race,
Intrepid bands of hunters urge the chase;
Across the field the foaming coursers bound,
They climb the hills, the forests they surround;
The snares are spread, the hunters watch with care,
And balls and pointed javelins pierce the air;
With wounds the bloody leopards covered o’er,
Make the wide forests echo with their roar,
Then to some shady wood’s recess repair,
To hide their rage, and howl in secret there.
Enough our foes as well as friends have bled,
Too long you walk on mountains of the dead.
Noailles,† retire with your triumphant bands,
Mars overjoyed sees their victorious hands;
Draw to our camp those tubes for ruin framed,
Whose thunder at our heads so long was aimed.
Come, turn ’gainst the foe their hostile balls,
And with them batter Tournay’s lofty walls,
Tournay,‡ the Dutchman’s barrier and retreat,
Which was of Gallic monarchs once the seat.
Tournay surrenders, terrors Ghent* invade.
Disturbed and restless the first Charles’s† shade
With dismal cries makes from the town retreat,
Where he was born to be by conquest great.
He flies, but what beholds the frighted ghosts?
Those spacious plains all covered by our hosts;
Routed and broke he sees the English bands,
Leaving their standards in our soldiers’ hands;
The Dutch in vain retiring from the stroke,
Whilst on the ground Ghent’s ruined ramparts smoke,
The place that gave the first‡ of Cæsars birth,
By Louis’s car triumphant crushed to earth.
Thrice happy France, ’tis not your only boast,
That to sure conquest Louis led your host;
That bearing death and terror through the field,
He could with brow serene his thunder wield;
His greatest triumph is, that, mild as brave,
He wept the slaughtered foe he could not save;
That victor, modest, with heroic mind,
Lavish in others’ praise, he praise declined;
And that he strove, at once humane and brave,
To snatch the wounded warrior from the grave.
Those mangled captives, by our soldiers borne,
From hungry death’s devouring jaws scarce torn,
The fury of the battle over, find
In the mild victors, benefactors kind.
Oh, real greatness! Conquest ever blest!
Can any foe have such a ruthless breast,
Our monarch’s royal virtues not to own,
And wish to be the subject of his throne?
The empire soon with peace his arms shall bless,
Germans and English both his worth confess.
Bavaria wondering his exploits surveyed,
And grieved at having lost his powerful aid.
Naples is safe, and Turin in alarms,
The kings, his allies, triumph by his arms;
To Seine from Elbro ’tis by all confessed,
The first of heroes is of kings the best.
Kind heaven, our monarch with that title grace,
Dear to himself and to the human race,
That prize of virtue, highest pitch of fame,
The peacemaker’s august and holy name;
And may a life, on which our lives depend,
Be blessed with ease, and to late time extend.
You warriors brave, who emulate your king,
The hero to his grateful people bring;
Palms in their hands, your fellow-subjects burn
For your long wished-for prosperous return;
Your wives and children, with your past distress
And danger terrified, around you press.
They haste with ardor to your loved embrace,
With tears of joy to bathe each manly face.
Your wished return no longer then delay,
Kind love prepares the prize of worth to pay.

THE MAN OF THE WORLD.*

AN APOLOGY FOR LUXURY.
At dinner, ’twas one day my case
By a rank bigot to have place,
Who said, I on it might depend
That hell would have me in the end;
And he an angel heaven’s host in
Would loudly laugh to see me roasting.
Roasting for what? “Why for your crimes;
You’ve told us in some impious rhymes
That Adam, ere the days of sin,
Was oft with rain wet to the skin;
That he his time most dully spent,
Ate fruit, and drank the element;
That he his nails could never pare;
And that he was not over fair.
You Epicurus’ doctrine teach,
And for luxurious pleasures preach.”
Having these words in passion said.
He swallowed wine like amber red;
Wine, which by its taste confessed
The grape from whence the juice was pressed.
And I, while crimson stained his face,
Addressed the saint brimful of grace:
“Religious sir, whence comes this wine?
I own its gusto is divine.”
“This wine is from Canary brought,”
Said he, “and should be nectar thought;
It is in every respect
A liquor fit for the elect.”
“That coffee which when full refection
The feast has given, so helps digestion,
Whence comes it?” “It from heaven descended,
A gift by God for me intended.”
“But sure ’twas in Arabia sought
By men, and thence with trouble brought.
Both porcelain and chinaware
For you men labor to prepare;
’Twas baked, and with a thousand dyes
Diversified, to please your eyes;
That silver, where such art’s displayed,
Of which cups, salvers, plates are made,
Which with mild lustre faintly shines,
Was dug from Potosi’s rich mines.
For thee the world at work has been,
That thou at ease might vent thy spleen
Against that world, which for thy pleasure
Has quite exhausted all its treasure.
Thou real worldling, learn to know
Thyself, and some indulgence show
To others, whom so much you blame
For vices, whilst you have the same.
Know luxury, which destroys a state
That’s poor, enriches one that’s great;
That pomp and splendor deemed so vain,
Are proofs still of a prosperous reign.
The rich can spend his ample store;
The poor is grasping still at more.
On yon cascades now fix your sight,
In them the Naiads take delight;
See how those floods of water roam
Covering the marble with a foam.
These waves give moisture to the fields,
Earth beautified more rich crops yields.
But should this source be once decayed,
The grass would wither, flowers would fade.
Thus wealth, in France and Britain’s states,
Through various channels circulates.
Excess prevails, the great are vain,
Their follies oft the poor maintain;
And Industry, whom opulence hires,
To riches by slow steps aspires.
I hear a staunch, pedantic train
Of pleasure’s ill effects complain,
Who Dionysius, Dion cite,
Plutarch and Horace the polite,
And cry that Curius, and a score
Of consuls ending in “us” more,
Tilled the earth during war’s alarms,
And managed both the plow and arms;
That corn which flourished in the land,
Was sown by a victorious hand.
’Tis well, sirs, and I am content
To such relations to assent.
But tell me, should the gods incite
Auteuil against Vaugirard to fight,
Must not the victor from the field
Returning home his land have tilled?
Rome the august was heretofore
A hole like Auteuil, nothing more.
When those chiefs, from god Mars descended,
Attacked a meadow or defended,
When to the field they took their way,
Their standard was a truss of hay.*
Jove’s image wooden under Tullus
Was beaten gold when lived Lucullus.
Then don’t bestow fair virtue’s prize
On what from poverty had rise.
France flourished by wise Colbert’s care,
When once a dunce, intent to spare,
Presumed the progress to oppose
Of arts, by which famed Lyons rose,
And by cursed avarice possessed
Had industry and arts suppressed;
That minister, as wise as great,
By luxury enriched the state.
He the great source of arts increased,
From north to south, from west to east.
Our neighbors all with envy fired
Paid dear for genius they admired.
A monarch’s portrait here I’ll draw,
Rome, Paris, Pekin, such ne’er saw;
’Tis Solomon, that king who shone
A Plato, while he filled a throne;
Who all things was to know allowed,
From hyssop to the cedar proud;
In luxury he surpassed mankind,
With glittering gold his palace shined.
All various pleasures he could taste,
A thousand beauties he embraced.
With beauties he was well supplied;
Give me but one, I’m satisfied.
One’s full enough for me; but I
Cannot with sage or monarch vie.”
Thus speaking, I perceived each guest
To approve of my discourse professed.
Sir Piety no more replied,
But, laughing, still the bottle plied,
While all, who well knew what I meant,
Seemed to my reasons to assent.

THE PADLOCK.*

I triumphed, love’s victorious power
Prevailed, and near approached the hour
Which should have crowned our mutual flame,
Just then your tyrant husband came.
That hoary Jailer was too hard,
To love he all access has barred,
And all our wishes to defeat,
Secures the key of pleasure’s seat;
For such strange matters to account,
Our tale to ancient days should mount;
Ceres must to you sure be known,
Ceres one daughter had alone,
Who much resembled you in face,
Beauteous, adorned with every grace,
To the soft passion much inclined,
And guided by a Cupid blind.
Hymen, a god as blind as he,
Treated him as he treated thee;
Pluto, the rich and old, in hell
Made her his wife, and forced to dwell;
But she the jealous miser scorned,
And Pluto, though a god, was horned;
Pirithous, his rival bright,
Young, handsome, generous, and polite,
Found means to get to hell ere dead,
And clapped huge horns upon his head.
This as a fable you’ll deride,
But love a man to hell may guide;
In hell, as here, by some strange spite,
Intrigues are always brought to light;
In a hot hole a spy concealed,
Saw all, and all he saw revealed;
And added, that the royal dame,
With half the damned had done the same.
The horned god on this report
Convokes at his infernal court,
Each odious, black, and cursed soul,
Sainted below for actions foul,
Each cuckold’s soul, who during life
Did all he could to plague his wife.
Then thus declared a Florentine,
“Most mighty monarch, I’d opine
For death, for once a wife is dead,
She can’t defile the marriage bed;
But ah, sir, an immortal wife
Can never be deprived of life;
A padlock, therefore, I’d invent,
Which should such accidents prevent;
She must be virtuous, of course,
When under the restraint of force;
Not to be come at by her elf,
You’re sure to have her to yourself;
Would I had thought before I died,
Such a convenience to provide.”
This sage advice a loud applause
From all the damned assembly draws;
And straight by order of the state,
Was registered on brass by fate.
That moment in the shades below,
They anvils beat, and bellows blow;
Tisiphone the blacksmith’s trade
Well understood, the locks she made.
Proserpina, from Pluto’s hand
Receiving, wore it by command.
Sometimes the hardest hearts relent,
Even Pluto’s self some pity felt,
When spouse’s virtue he made fast,
And said, “you’ll now perforce be chaste.”
This lock which hell could frame alone,
Soon to the human race was known;
In Venice, Rome, and all about it,
No gentleman or cit’s without it;
’Tis always thought a method sure,
All female honor to secure.
There husbands, though some sneerers mock,
Keep virtue safe and under lock.
But now to bring the matter home,
Your spouse, you know, lived long at Rome;
With bad men few infection ’scape,
He has learned the Roman modes to ape.
But all his jealous care is vain,
Love always knows his ends to gain;
That god will sure espouse our cause,
He still protects who keeps his laws;
For you have given me your heart,
And can’t refuse me any part.

IN CAMP BEFORE PHILIPPSBURG, JULY 3, 1734.

Without a bed we now sleep sound
And take our meals upon the ground;
And though the blazing atmosphere
Must dreadful to the eye appear,
The air though roaring cannons rend
While warriors with fierce rage contend,
The thoughtless French drink, laugh, and sing,
And with their mirth the heavens ring;
The walls of Philippsburg shall burn,
And all her towers to ashes turn
By fifty thousand Alexanders,
Who all deserve to be commanders,
Though they receive the paltry pay
Of only four poor sous a day.
Lavish of life, with high delight
I see them rushing to the fight;
They all appear both gay and jolly,
Quite covered o’er with fame and folly.
The Phantom, which we Glory name,
Spurs them to the pursuit of fame;
With threat’ning eye, and front all o’er
Bedusted, marching still before,
She holds a trumpet in her hand
To sound to arms, and cheer the band,
And loudly sings, with voice sonorous,
Catches, which they repeat in chorus.
Oh! people brilliant, gay, and vain,
Who drag with patience glory’s chain,
’Tis great, an honorable grave
To seek, Eugene and death to brave.
But what will be your mighty prize?
What from your prowess will arise?
Regret your blood, in vain you spilt it;
At Paris cuckolded, or jilted.

ANSWER TO A LADY, OR A PERSON WHO WROTE TO VOLTAIRE AS SUCH.*

The highest praises you bestow me,
And finish with desires to know me;
You’ll praise me less when I am known;
But what I am I’ll freely own.
Three revolutions of the sphere
Will bring about my fortieth year;
Phœbus presided at the time
That I was born, I lisped in rhyme;
The potent god approved my wit,
And to his presence did admit;
My heart was by the god subdued,
I worshipped him through gratitude.
Their inclinations some excite,
But fate ordained that I should write.
My soul was by each taste possessed,
Each noble art inflamed my breast;
Painting delights me; oft I’ve been,
At the king’s or duke’s palace, seen
Gazing on works with raptured eye,
Where art with nature seems to vie;
Paul Veronese’s noble fire
And skill divine I much admire;
Poussin and Raphael, my sight
Ravish with exquisite delight.
From those rooms to the opera, I
Upon the wings of pleasure fly;
What there gives pleasure, from me draws
The tribute of deserved applause.
In music, Mauret’s sprightly strain,
Destouches’s grace, my praise obtain,
Pelissier’s art, le More’s fine voice,
Pleasing by turns, suspend my choice.
Sometimes I to that science soar
Which teaches nature to explore,
Following great Newton through the sky
I to find natural causes try;
I’d know if Cynthia in her course
Is by a changeful central force
Towards us made to gravitate,
And coming near acquires new weight;
I read philosophers profound,
Who nature by their reason found;
I see Clairaut, Maupertuis, rise
By calculation to the skies;
And I indeed too often find
Such studies but perplex my mind.
Obscure researches set apart,
I study next the human heart.
I often Pascal’s works review,
A genius singular and new;
That satirist, devout and sage,
Against mankind too prone to rage.
I, his austerity oppose;
He’d have men to themselves be foes.
A friend to man, I strive to show
How he to love himself may know.
I’m free from passion, care, and strife;
The muse diversifies my life;
My day begins with joy, and ends
In cheerful suppers with my friends.
I now no more of love complain,
Reason at last has broke my chain;
I follow Cupid now no more,
The happy age of love is o’er;
With love’s flame must I no more burn?
Each art I cultivate in turn,
Indolent languor to avoid;
But all this can’t fill up the void,
For notwithstanding all my pains
Still there a craving void remains.

ENVY.

If man is free, he o’er himself should reign,
Attacked by tyrants, should their rage restrain.
Vices are tyrants of the human mind,
And we no vice more fierce and cruel find;
None more capricious, furious, and more base;
None which all goodness does so much efface;
None which envenoms more the human breast,
Or with dire rankling does so much infest;
Whose fierce attacks ’tis harder to control,
Than envy, the tormentor of the soul.
Of pride and folly envy is the child,
Stubborn, perverse, intractable, and wild;
Though sprung from pride, he to appear declines,
At others’ shining merit he repines;
Like to the giant, whom great Jove, in ire,
O’erwhelmed with whirlwinds of tempestuous fire;
Who, while he panting lay, and raved below,
Strove to hurl back the flames against his foe.
At length he raved, imprisoned under ground,
And efforts made to shake earth’s pits profound;
Heaved against Ætna, which his bosom pressed,
Ætna fell back, he was again oppressed.
I oft have courtiers known, the dupes of fame,
Ready to burst at Villars’ glorious name.
The arm they hated, which in fight prevailed,
He fought for them, and they against him railed.
Justly a hero once to Louis said,
Taking the field, “Versailles alone I dread;
Defend me from my countrymen, I go
Fearless in distant realms to fight the foe.”
What anguish feels the mind from envy’s blast!
In public joy it is with grief o’ercast.
You tasteless guests, to you fine food seems vile,
To poison ’tis converted by the bile.
Oh, you who take the road that leads to fame,
Must none besides you travel in the same?
Must each competitor incur your hate?
Would you those Eastern monarchs emulate,
Who make the slavish Asiatics groan,
And cannot bear a brother near the throne?
When at the play-house some enticing bill
Makes love of novelty the play-house fill;
When in Alzire or Zenobia’s part,
Pathetic Gossin touches every heart;
Or when Dufrene* like thunder shakes the stage,
In acting Orasmanes’ jealous rage,
Tears at each stroke bedew the hearer’s eyes,
Tears which from truest satisfaction rise;
The jealous Rufus hangs his drooping head,
Their joy constrains him tears of rage to shed.
If this distinction frail, oh, wretch forlorn,
If others’ bliss thy envious heart has torn,
Of this vexation try thyself to avail,
And strive, by dint of merit, to prevail.
“The Haughty Man”† draws crowds on every night;
Does this afflict thee? Better strive to write.
But if to please the audience you intend,
Your “Sires Capricious”* don’t to Paris send;
Exotic characters suit not the age,
Think not to bring Rabelais upon the stage.
The burlesque writer few know how to bear,
Whose modern muse assumes a gothic air,
And in some verse, which antique guise displays,
Conceals his dulness by Marotic phrase.
This style I would not in a tale reject,
But truth requires a tone of more respect.
A sinner wouldst thou to repentance call,
Bigot, mix honey with thy sermon’s gall;
Assuming the instructor’s arduous task,
Thou ape of virtue, take a better mask;
If rival of some eminent divine,
Envy him not; endeavor to outshine;
Raise higher trophies to make his seem low,
Orpheus alone should dare to hiss Rameau;
Venus to criticise is Psyche’s right;
But why should we in censure thus delight?
No beauty she acquires who blames a face;
Was Bayle e’er hurt by the caballing race?
Though furious Jurieu aimed prophetic lies
At Bayle, he’s still respected by the wise;
Fanatic Jurieu, who ’gainst Bayle declaimed,
Is by the public with abhorrence named.
An author often prostitutes his art,
Descending to the slanderer’s low part.
He helps the levees of the great to fill,
Still ready his vile malice to distil;
Impiety’s reproach he casts on all,
Whoe’er maintains this planet is a ball;
Or says, that the ecliptic with the line
An angle makes, has some accursed design.
Malebranche is Spinozist and Locke’s “Essay,”
With Epicurus’ errors leads astray.
Pope is a reprobate, whose impious pen
Presumes to show God’s clemency to men;
An impious heathen who attempts to show
That God loves all, that all is good below.
He is a wretch indeed who still for pelf
Damns others, and would almost damn himself,
Who lets his venal, prostituted page,
And to the highest bidder sells his rage;
A satirist who resents satiric strains,
Whose dulness tires, who of the dull complains,
Who cries true taste is now from Paris flown,
Which no one’s works prove better than his own:
In Boileau we excuse satiric rage,
Some beauties please in the malignant page.
That bee had honey to assuage the grief
Of those he stung, and give some kind relief.
But the unprofitable, stupid drone,
Who lives by doing dirty work alone,
All will to crush the hated insect try
At once disgusting to the ear and eye.
How great your frenzy, rash and envious band,
Ye rival painters whose presumptuous hand
Dared the French Zeuxis’ picture to deface,
And impiously profaned a sacred place:
His pencil thus a new renown acquired.
The torn remains by all were more admired;
New lustre is reflected on his name,
You are consigned to infamy and shame.
Men should so low, so mean a vice detest.
A critic nobly once his sense expressed,
When mighty Richelieu strove in vain,
To vilify Corneille’s immortal strain;
Less bold than cardinal he the task declined
Defects in such a noble work to find,
With generous rage curst envy he opposed,
And said, “I wish I had the work composed.”
To France a journey when Bernini made,
He wondered at the skill Perrault displayed:
“If France,” said he, “has genius so sublime,
I never should have left the Latin clime.”
’Tis merit others’ merit thus to own,
To a true genius envy is unknown.
What pleasure from a generous temper flows!
How great, to say with truth, I have no foes!
In every brother’s welfare I take part,
We’re all united by one common art.
’Tis thus the earth with joy sees woods arise,
Whose oak or fir trees seem to threat the skies;
By the sap’s circulating juice they’re fed,
Each root is deep as hell, in heaven each head.
The force of winds their solid trunks assails,
They bend and the fierce tempest’s fury fails.
Secure they flourish by each other’s aid,
And over time itself triumphs the shade.
War at their feet the hissing serpents wage,
And the stained roots bear witness to their rage.

THE NATURE OF VIRTUE.

The spacious earth resounds fair virtue’s fame,
The pulpit, bar, and stage, of her declaim;
Virtue, ’tis said, can sometimes penetrate
To courts, and lurk behind the pomp of state.
Virtue’s a sacred name, we always hear
The word pronounced with a delighted ear.
Mortals will ever cultivate deceit,
And sharpers, greater sharpers still defeat:
Thus the deluded French blank tickets draw,
Tickets invented by the impostor Law,
That fool from Scotland, quite engrossed by pelf,
Who duped all mankind, and then duped himself.
What’s virtue? Say, great Brutus, dear to fame,
Exclaimed expiring, “Virtue’s but a name.”
To Zeno’s followers ’twas so little known,
They thought all virtue apathy alone.
The Eastern dervish pours to heaven his prayer,
With arms erect, and with a frantic air,
Dancing like mad, he loud invokes the skies,
And naming Mahomet in circles flies;
And when awhile he has in circles run,
He thinks the noble task of virtue done.
With hempen girdle, and unblushing face,
A monk brimful of ignorance and grace,
Does through the nose his ritual rehearse,
And sings psalms rendered ill in Latin verse:
May piety like this a blessing find,
But what good hence results to human kind?
To him true virtue never sure was known,
Who does no good but to himself alone.
When He who truths divine to mortals taught,
Was before Pilate by vile traitors brought:
“What is the truth?” the Roman Prætor cried
With all the haughty majesty of pride,
The man divine, who all truth could explain,
Made no reply but silence and disdain.
This silent eloquence may serve to show
That men were never made the truth to know.
But when a simple citizen, inspired
With love of truth, his God’s advice required;
When as a sage disciple he explored,
How God by mortal man should be adored,
The heavenly envoy, with the subject fired,
Declared the truth, the truth by God inspired,
And in one word the will divine expressed,
“Love God, and love His creatures, to be blessed.”
This is the law divine, the heavens above
Explained man’s duty when they bade to love.
The world is full of vice, the man who flies
Mankind can’t virtuous be deemed, but wise:
Man should himself and all mankind befriend.
Whither, fanatic, does thy frenzy tend?
Wherefore that jaundiced cheek, that haggard face,
Why those convulsions, that unequal pace?
Against the age you rave, and straight repair
To cant at leisure with some pious fair:
There saints run mad, with strange convulsions soar
To heaven, and God, like men possessed, adore;
There, mounted on a stage, they make loud cries,
Work miracles, and tell prophetic lies;
Thither the blind repair, relief to find,
But to their mansion back return, still blind;
The lame man leaping falls; the holy band
Lead back the wretch, a crutch in either hand;
The deaf who dull and void of sense appears,
Listens attentive, though he nothing hears:
Meantime a troupe devout with transport fired,
And by the foolish multitude admired,
Preach to weak girls, who willingly give ear,
That the last dreadful day is drawing near.
Some souls in such things much delight can find,
But don’t some duties still more strongly bind?
Why does thy friend in want and sickness lie,
Why do you to him needful aid deny?
With such as you salvation’s for the great,
The poor alone can miss a blissful state.
This judge, they say, is upright and austere,
Nothing can mollify his soul severe:
I understand he makes mankind detest
His power, since rigor always steels his breast.
But was his hand e’er known the world to bless,
Did he e’er succor virtue in distress?
Did he e’er serve, or even protect by law,
The man who stands in court with humble awe?
His rigor to the guilty has been shown,
The man’s not just who punishes alone.
The just are still benevolent. Long since,
The wicked minister of a virtuous prince
Thus dared his cursed suggestions to impart,
Timantes is a Calvinist in heart;
A work of Calvin’s at his house was seen,
Such odious heretics you should not screen;
He should in prison all his life be pent,
Or sent into perpetual banishment.
This answer straight returned the prince august,
“Timantes I have faithful found and just;
That courtier’s faults indeed to light you bring,
But you forget how well he served his king.”
This monarch’s truly noble, wise discourse
Inculcates virtue with a sermon’s force.
Shall fraud and insolent pretensions claim
Even sacred virtue’s venerable name?
Shall Germont, weak dispenser of the laws,
Who, when Sejanus raves, won’t plead my cause;
The insipid Cyrus, he whose only care
Is to be praised, and supper to prepare—
Shall these profane fair virtue’s sacred name?
Virtue with scorn rejects the senseless claim.
It is not due to these, but him who glows
With tenderness, and friendship’s duties knows;
Norman and Cochin virtuous I confess,
Whose eloquence protected orphans bless;
It is not due, vile Mannori, to thee,
Who sellest thy anger for a paltry fee,
Who eloquence converted to a trade,
And not a pleading, but a libel made.
Judge, to whose zeal right reason is the guide,
In speech de Thou, a Pucelle to decide;
A tender friend, a generous patron known.
That thou art virtuous sure all men must own.
Enjoy that title, thou whom men revere,
With wisdom thou art just, but not austere:
Thou midst the dazzling pomp of awful state,
Art loved as virtuous, not maligned as great.
An author, whose prolific pen composed
Plans various, which to mankind he proposed;
Who long wrote for ungrateful men alone,
Has coined a word to Vaugelas unknown.
This word I like, this word was made to impart
Ideas of virtue to the human heart.
You pedants, you grammarians of the schools,
Who measure syllables, and frame new rules,
To you the expression may too bold appear,
But surely it must please each virtuous ear.

TO THE KING OF PRUSSIA.

I.

You scoffers, who sit in the critical chair;
You witlings malignant, who no man can spare;
Who, proud and loquacious, your ignorance display,
And monarchs presume in the balance to weigh;
Who in language pedantic, erroneous and vain,
That a scholar can ne’er be a hero maintain;
Ye caitiffs, on heroes and poets severe,
Ye censors of kings, to Silesia repair.
Near Neisse see a hundred battalions defeated;
Behold there the chief you so rudely have treated.
’Tis he, ’tis the man, who, with genius profound,
The circle of art and science went round;
Who could the recesses of nature pervade,
And bigots confound, whose religion’s their trade;
Who, in small things as happy as great, knows to please
At a feast by politeness, and freedom, and ease;
Who knows all things, in all things alike can succeed,
Shines in sports and in fields, and rides Pegasus steed.
Turenne, nor Gustavus, nor Sweden’s famed king,
E’er tasted, ’tis true, of famed Helicon’s spring.
But these heroes untinctured with learned lore,
Were ne’er for that cause deemed illustrious the more.
So common a greatness brave Frederick declines,
By turns like Achilles and Homer he shines;
The Austrians and dunces alike he confounds,
And in sarcasms as much as in projects abounds;
Fills Vienna with dread, Rome’s encroachments restrains,
And like a true hero speaks, writes, fights, and reigns.
Oh, prince famed for courage, in talents so bright,
No longer by daring fill my soul with affright;
And with all your wisdom and knowledge reflect,
Cannon balls have for persons but little respect;
And that, forced from a tube by explosion, base lead
May sweep at a stroke the most famed hero’s head,
When, its weight still increased by so rapid a course,
It every moment increases in force.
What becomes then that spirit, that volatile flame,
Sprung from organs of sense and a perishing frame,
That being which vainly would its nature explore,
Which like fire awhile blazes, and then is no more?
Then some surgeon accursed, one of Atropos’ train,
Might dissect the remains of the brave monarch slain;
Behold, might he say, the brain where was found
Such store of ideas, so much science profound;
That noble heart’s fibres might display to the sight,
Which in life all great qualities once did unite;
He might cut—but such images dire must not stain
My page, which his praises alone should contain.
You deities just, noble Frederick defend,
The bliss of mankind does on Frederick depend.
Live, prince, both in peace and in war to do more
Than the princes of Europe could e’er do before;
For I’ll prophesy boldly, in time ’twill appear,
That a star half so bright ne’er lighted the sphere.
But when you by conquest on conquest obtained,
Increase of your glory and empire have gained,
Forget not the bard, who dared once in weak lays
Your great deeds to presage, and your virtues to praise;
Recollect that, in spite of your sovereign command.
His friend you have signed yourself under your hand.
Farewell, victor, deep versed in the statesman’s famed art,
Thirty kingdoms subdued are outweighed by a heart.

II.

From the German chief of such fame and renown,
The brightest of monarchs that e’er wore a crown,
For these three months past, a most tedious long time,
I have not heard once or in prose or in rhyme:
My muse is oppressed with a lethargy deep,
But the din of fierce war will soon rouse her from sleep;
Surprised she will hear the loud accents of fame,
Amidst stern alarms, your valor proclaim,
With a voice so sonorous, it cannot be drowned
By the thunder of cannons and the trumpet’s shrill sound.
This rambling goddess I see through the air,
With post-haste from Berlin to Paris repair,
And Frederick and Louis’s glory resound
From the north to the south, and the whole world around;
Those names, which the hand of true glory has traced
In letters of fire, which can ne’er be effaced:
Names which, while united in friendship remain,
In concord and peace can all Europe maintain.
What happy bard then shall the heavenly muse,
To sing the great deeds of these famed heroes, choose?
What poet shall strive in his well-polished lays,
The worth of these two mighty monarchs to praise?
You who bear, like Achilles, the lance and the lyre,
You only can sing your achievements with fire;
Whose soul genius warms whenever you write;
Who with ardor compose, as with ardor you fight;
And write both in verse and in elegant prose,
With the same ease you take the strong towns of your foes.
In happily copying Horace, you shine
With his gayety, wit, and his graces divine;
But your muse, in some points that come home to man’s breast,
Must ever to his be superior confessed.
The emperor protected the bard in past days,
The emperor’s self to protect is your praise.
Son of Mars and Calliope, favorite of fame,
Who adds a new lustre to either great name,
Europe’s peace by your conquering arm maintain,
And do not to sport with the muses disdain;
And when your victorious legions shall place
The throne of the Cæsars on an unshaken base;
When the harassed Hungarians, secure from alarms,
Their vineyards shall prune, unmolested by arms;
When all nations shall drink the rich wines of Tokay,
And the peacemakers sing with hearts jovial and gay;
Great Frederick to Berlin with speed shall repair,
And the joy of his triumphs his true subjects shall share;
And by a new opera, of his own writing,
Himself shall exhibit his achievements in fighting.
Each author your merit will loudly proclaim,
For though we still envy each rival his fame,
That bard with applause must by all men be read,
By whom an armed host of ten myriads is led.
But by merit like yours no such aid is required,
Were you, like Homer, poor, you’d, like him, be admired.
Excuse me then if, by your goodness excited,
I oft write you letters in such terms indited,
As show that in you ’tis the wit I address,
Not the monarch whom all men a hero confess.
The North, whilst your squadrons to battle you led,
In you saw a warrior that filled them with dread;
But I see in you, whom I have long time known,
The most amiable king that e’er sat on a throne.

TO M. DE FONTENELLE.

Villars, Sept. 1, 1720.

Sir:—

The ladies at Villars are quite spoiled by reading your “Treatise of the Plurality of Worlds.” We could have wished it had rather been by your “Pastorals,” for we would much rather have seen them shepherdesses than philosophers. They spend time in contemplating the stars which they might employ to much greater advantage; and as our taste is regulated by theirs, love for them has made us all turn natural philosophers.

Each night on beds by nature made,
Whose verdure trees o’erarching shade,
Which seem by nature’s self designed,
For meetings of another kind;
We out of order put the skies,
Venus seems Mercury to our eyes;
For we no telescopes have here
To bring the wandering planets near,
But to behold them we apply
Our opera-glasses to the eye.

As we pass the whole night in taking a view of the stars, we very much neglect the sun, to which we rarely pay a visit till he has run one-half of his course. We were informed a while ago, that he looked bloody the whole morning: that afterward, without the air being any way obscured, he, by insensible degrees, was deprived both of his magnitude and his light; this information we did not receive till five o’clock in the evening. We thereupon looked out at the window, and we took the sun for the moon on account of his paleness. We have no doubt you have seen the same phenomenon at Paris.

On this occasion, sir, we address you as our master. You know how to make those things pleasing which are scarcely made intelligible by other philosophers, and such a man as you was necessary in France, and indeed, in all Europe, to inform the literati, and inspire the ignorant with a taste for the sciences.

Say, Fontenelle, who took thy flight
With rapid wings above all height,
Who with Dædalean art could pierce
Each corner of the universe;
And many spheres immortal view,
Seen by St. Paul as well as you,
Where beauties never seen before
He saw, but of them says no more.
Of the sun, which you know so well,
Can you not mortals something tell?
Why did he red as blood appear
In entering on his career?
Why did he tremble and turn pale?
Why lessen? why did his light fail?
Upon a sight so full of dread
What by Boulainvilliers is said?
To many nations will he cry
That their destruction’s drawing nigh.
Shall we behold incursions new,
Edicts or war’s dire terrors view?
Shall imposts over France increase,
Or branches of revenue cease?
When once upon the verdant plain
You tuned your reed, a simple swain,
Had you beheld the god of day,
A change so great to view display,
You’d thought some change must then have rise
In your nymph’s heart as in the skies.
But since your Phœbus left the plains
And all the rural joys of swains,
For those important truths made known
By Euclid and by Varignon;
Since you at length have laid aside
The ribbons, Celadon’s gay pride,
To take the astrolabe in hand,
You’ll speak what few can understand:
You’ll puzzle us with calculation,
Talk of refraction and equation.
But if you graciously should deign
These difficulties to explain,
Whenever you the truth make known,
Use the poetic style alone;
For us bright fancy more engages
Than five score deeply learned pages.

TO COUNT ALGAROTTI AT THE COURT OF SAXONY.

Paris, Feb. 21, 1747.

These strains, O Algarotti, hear,
To Pindus and Cythera dear,
Who dost from Heaven the gifts inherit,
To love, to please, to write with spirit;
Who with each shining talent graced
Can suit thyself to every taste.
While you in lofty palace sit
A poet’s weak address permit;
No art or care these lines display,
Written ’midst the giddy and the gay.
The bliss, O Saxony, we owe
To thee should make our hearts o’erflow
With gratitude, the poet’s lays
Should still be lavish in thy praise;
From thee the valiant hero came,
Who France defends, the royal dame
Who makes it famous o’er the earth,
In thy blessed realm received her birth.
Know this accomplished princess still
Each day continues to fulfil
What oft your muse of her foretold,
What you could prophet-like unfold.
From this description doubtless you
Will think I’ve seen and heard her, too;
It is not so; I’ll freely own
My muse obscure and little known,
Such charms excited to rehearse,
But tells the simple truth in verse,
Re-echoes what all mortals say,
Who homage to such beauty pay.
A dauphiness, by crowds surrounded,
With ceremony is confounded.
Prudently I at first gave place
To dames whose hoops fill so much space,
Who occupy with gaudy pride
Of the apartment every side.
Was Virgil struck with Livia’s state,
Still at her toilet first to wait?
He let Cornelia pass neglected,
Nor peers nor chancellor respected;
Nobles he passed regardless by,
Pomp never once could catch his eye.
He with Tibullus and the muse
To laugh at care would rather choose.
But in my turn I shall obtain
My wish, and not apply in vain.
I to the graces every day
With fervent heart devoutly pray.
Daughters of love, I cry, oh, deign
Propitiously to aid my strain;
And when your sister you attend,
My muse present her as a friend.
But of the sacred nuptial bands,
The tie that joined the royal hands
Of the most noble pair on earth,
Renowned for virtue as for birth—
Venus’s maids of honor may
Indeed be able to display
Those glories; but a wretch profane
Like me should not attempt the strain.
If we may credit the report
Unanimous of the whole court,
From them a race shall soon take rise,
Whose glories shall the world surprise.
To the great minister of state
Who regulates the kingdom’s fate,
A bard’s respects and homage pay,
I would not tire him with my lay.
Those offerings exquisite and rare
Deemed by the great and by the fair,
Who live on flattery and lies,
Such elevated souls despise.
Adieu! Inspire through Saxon plains
A taste for soft Italian strains,
And for the truths by Newton taught,
Newton! almost a God in thought!
In more sublime, more heavenly lays,
Sing fair Æmilia’s deathless praise.

TO CARDINAL QUIRINI.

Berlin, Dec. 12, 1751.

The temple would you have me sing,
To which you various offerings bring?
But yet though I your worth admire,
I cannot do what you require.
How can I, on the banks of Spree,
Where Roman laws no more bear sway,
My voice before all mankind raise,
And utter forth a prelate’s praise?
From Sion, distant and forlorn,
Like a good Catholic, I mourn.
My prince by heresy’s infected,
Religion’s not by him respected.
It fills my soul with poignant woe,
To think that in the shades below
He shall with ancients have his place,
Ancients who were quite void of grace;
We know those heroes, thrice renowned,
Are punished in the abyss profound;
With them he must be damned, because
He in this world lived by their laws.
But still I’m much more grieved to find
A shocking vice infects his mind;
A vice, by men called Toleration,
Which bears the opinions of each nation:
I’m shocked to think the Turkish crew,
The Quaker and the Lutheran, too,
The Protestant and Papist find
Alike, with him, reception kind,
If they can by their actions claim
Of honest men the glorious name.
But, crime more shocking to reveal,
He laughs at sanguinary zeal;
That hate which bigots fills with rage,
Which gentle pity can’t assuage,
But which the Free-thinker, professed,
Profanely turns into a jest:
What can your eminence then hope
From me who don’t revere the pope?
From me, who am the chamberlain
Of a prince obdurate in sin?
You, whose predestinated front
Bears double marks of honor on’t,
Whose scarlet hat, with laurels bound,
Shows you for poetry renowned;
Who Horace and St. Austin’s lore,
With equal genius could explore,
Who equally dost know to rise
To Pindus’ top, and paradise,
Convert that genius; you can please,
And teach mankind with equal ease;
Of Jesus Christ, the grace divine
Does often through your writings shine,
And in them often we admire
Both Homer’s grace and Homer’s fire.

TO HER ROYAL HIGHNESS, THE PRINCESS OF ***.

- A beauteous princess often may
- Languish in pleasure’s season gay;
- The empty forms of haughty state
- Oft make life tedious to the great.
- It must the greatest king confound,
- With all his courtiers circled round,
- Amidst a splendid court to find,
- That grandeur can’t give peace of mind.
- Some think that play can give delight,
- But soon it grows insipid quite;
- And monarchs have been often seen,
- While gaming, tortured with the spleen.
- A king oft feasts with heavy heart,
- Pleasures to him no joy impart;
- While the dull vulgar contemplate,
- Like gazing idiots, pomp and state,
- And fondly think who is possessed
- Of them with bliss supreme is blessed.
- Soon as the sun’s refulgent rays,
- Spread o’er the hemisphere their blaze;
- The king begins another day,
- Yet knows not where to take his way:
- Tired of himself he straight repairs
- To company, to soothe his cares.
- But pleasure flies from his embrace,
- It rises not from change of place;
- This day’s insipid as the last,
- At night he knows not how it passed.
- Time’s loss is not to be repaired,
- Life’s to an instant well compared;
- What, when life posts away so fast,
- Can days appear so long to last?
- Princess, whose worth above thy age,
- All hearts at two courts can engage;
- You usefully that time employ,
- By youth consumed in rapid joy.
- The genius given by heaven benign,
- You strive to polish and refine,
- By studies which at once unite
- Instructions solid, with delight.
- ’Tis best the mind should be employed,
- Indolence leaves a craving void;
- The soul is like a subtile fire,
- Which if not fed must soon expire.

TO M. DE CIDEVILLE.

Pardon at Easter ever due
To Christians who their penance do:
Mine’s done, a silence that’s so lasting,
Is penance worse by far than fasting.
A pardon full you therefore owe me,
So plenary indulgence show me.
Of a true sage I long in quest
Travelled, but now I am at rest;
No more about the world I roam,
I’m ten times happier at home.
All that I sought at length I find,
I’m blest and hid from humankind.
The throne and all its slavish pride,
Grandeurs by men with envy eyed,
Can’t with my hermitage compare,
Where never enters anxious care.
Kings I have seen, who, in retreat,
Thought themselves, like Aurelius, great;
But virtue was no more their care,
When trumpets’ clangors pierced the air;
Good resolutions then are o’er,
They still are kings, but men no more:
They scour the world with eager haste,
To seize on realms, or to lay waste;
They all are to ambition slaves,
But my free soul ambition braves.
Princes, the grandeur of a throne
Renounced, I wish for friends alone.

TO ****.

Dudefans, Fourmont, who both unite
Solidity to graces light,
In whom wit’s charms, with sense combined,
And eloquence’s power we find;
Ye pleasures, which all good contain,
Which I still labored to obtain;
Philosophers, whose learned lore
I vainly labored to explore;
From all the efforts I made to know,
What are the advantages that flow?
Those squares of distances, those springs,
Atoms, inexplicable things,
That vast abyss of infinite,
Can it into my soul pour light?
Lectures on bodies are but vain,
They can’t ease mine when racked with pain:
Does great bliss my soul o’erflow?
Better do I my duty know
When I have all the visions read
In René’s roving fancy bred?
Or when with Malebranche I’ve found
That I cannot the Godhead sound?
Or when by scaling I arise
Up to truth’s castle in the skies,
With the illustrious Leibnitz’ aid,
And see monads alone displayed.
Fly quickly hence, deluding dreams!
Ye cold chimeras, idle schemes!
And since to error we’re consigned,
Let us some pleasing errors find.
The vulgar mind to method bent,
On calculations still intent,
If pleased with such a crabbed trade,
For nothing nobler e’er was made.
From the deep caverns underground,
Where dwells philosophy profound,
Behold Æmilia, on the plain,
Advance with cupids in her train!
Had she not been by these befriended,
Who to Brussels her steps attended,
She would have lost life’s brilliant stage,
In poring o’er a German sage.

EPISTLE XIII.*

You who the errors have reformed,
By which chronology’s deformed;
Who wandering through poetic ground,
Gathered the fairest flowers you found;
Who could sagaciously explore
The depth of philosophic lore,
And have not misemployed your leisure,
For all the allurements of soft pleasure:
Hénaut, I beg you to impart,
The secret of the magic art
By which with glory crowned you quell,
The rage of envy, monster fell;
Whilst I, placed in a lower sphere,
Whom envy never should come near,
The fury see, where’er I tread,
Pour all her poisons on my head:
We should not eagerly seek fame,
I weakly strove to fix my name,
On memory’s temple walls, whilst you
Wisely from fools and noise withdrew:
I labored glory to secure,
Rou shunned her, but you made her sure.
An oak with leafy honors crowned,
May reign o’er all the trees around;
To all its boughs is honor paid,
Men dance beneath the sacred shade:
But should a blade of grass be seen,
To rise o’er others on the green;
Its trifling height offends each eye,
Men tear it up and throw it by.
I pity the poor author’s fate,
Whom all men envy, scorn, or hate;
The author who desires repose,
Must shun all others as his foes;
Montaigne, who could each reader please,
By depth of reason, cheerful ease,
Retiring to his ancient seat,
From critic malice made retreat;
Doubting of all things, laughed at fools,
Who argue gravely in the schools:
But when his pupil, Charon, famed,
With method and reserve declaimed,
And lectures upon wisdom gave,
Like a professor learned and grave;
He narrowly escaped his fate,
Pursued by theologic hate;
Upon occasion, time, and place,
Depend your glory or disgrace:
One day by all you’re idolized,
The next insulted and despised.
Capricious Greece in former days,
To Pyrrho did a statue raise,
Whilst Socrates, who spoke so well,
A martyr to right reason fell:
Thrice happy, who to all unknown,
Lives useful to himself alone.
By friendship only man is blessed,
But envious rivals break his rest;
Glory at rest cannot remain,
And wit is the possessor’s bane:
’Tis often like a wanton wife,
A torment of the owner’s life;
The wife must have her gallant still,
Let the good man say what he will;
A welcome all that offer find,
To every other man she’s kind.
Thus she by others is enjoyed,
The husband’s by possession cloyed;
But let us change a note so sad,
Is then to please a lot so bad?
Envy’s a necessary ill,
It spurs us on to virtue still;
The noble soul in virtue’s course
Is hereby urged with double force.
Hence Hercules acquired a name
And Maro Mævius urged to fame:
For vain discourse what need I care,
It passes like the idle air,
I live thrice happy in this court
Where broils and trouble ne’er resort
No jealous cares e’er give me pain,
The monarch has no courtly train;
With Bouflers and Æmilia fair,
Living I’m blessed beyond compare,
Their converse fills me with delight
Then I may envy well excite.

TO THE DUKE OF RICHELIEU, MARSHAL OF FRANCE, IN WHOSE HONOR THE SENATE OF GENOA HAD JUST BEFORE CAUSED A STATUE TO BE ERECTED.*

To thee as her deliverer praised,
A statue Genoa has raised;
Your uncle with less lustre shone,
His glory was not so far known;
He doubtless would have jealous been,
If he that monument had seen,
Which you in youthful days acquired,
When universally admired,
And thought the wonder of your age,
For talents which all hearts engage.
To take a model of that face,
The court of Venus formed to grace;
Of love he had made choice alone,
That God to changing ever prone;
Less soft had he the features made,
Vertumnus’ face he had displayed,
The graces of the young and gay
Courtier at length must pass away;
Your glory will increase with age,
Your air will then appear more sage:
At this you’re not at all content,
You wish life could in love be spent,
But pleasures were not made to last,
They hurry to their period fast;
But still your influence you’ll maintain,
By wit and valor still you’ll reign.
The features of Richelieu the rover,
The gallant, gay, and favored lover,
In miniature shall oft be found,
In boxes which shall much abound;
With skill by famous Macé wrought,
For Richelieu’s sake by many bought:
But those of Richelieu, the victorious,
Support of armies, hero glorious;
Richelieu, who could protect by arms
A commonwealth in dire alarms;
These are more pleasing to my sight,
They give me more sincere delight.
I ask your pardon, you are not quite
So sage, though still prepared to fight;
Although you can a city save,
You’re not a patriot stern and grave.
I would not have the world be told
That you are grown austere and old;
Who did at Fontenoy display
Such courage on that glorious day;
Against the foe your thunder lance,
And crown with victory flying France.
Lavish of life you in the field
With terror made the allies yield;
When England, Austria, envy lay
Vanquished, you came without delay;
To Paris Cyprian wars to wage,
Subdue by love, not hostile rage.
Love’s wings and times you have curtailed,
In love and war alike prevailed;
For ladies you can break a lance,
Just as for Genoa and France.

TO MADAM DE ***, ON THE MANNER OF LIVING AT PARIS AND VERSAILLES.

Rosalia, to the world unknown,
Let us live for ourselves alone.
Friendship and blood’s endearing tie,
Shall all society supply;
So foolish, dangerous, vain’s mankind,
We in the world no joy can find,
In that whirlpool they call the world
Man’s through so many errors hurled,
That it can coxcombs please alone,
By whom it ne’er was rightly known.
Glycera, when her dinner’s o’er,
Goes out just as the day before;
Into her gorgeous chariot led,
She indolent reclines her head,
Embarrassed by the cumbrous pride
Of a vast hoop that fills each side;
Visits her friend in pomp and state,
Ascends, and then repents too late,
Embracing yawns, and plain is seen
In her constrained behavior spleen;
She seems to beg for nonsense gay,
To make her languor pass away.
They interchange some faint caresses,
They talk of weather, plays, and dresses,
Of sermons, and of ribbons’ price,
And are exhausted in a trice.
Now through necessity grown dumb,
A tune they both begin to hum;
But Mr. Abbé entered soon,
Priest, gallant, sharper, and buffoon,
Endowed with various talents rare,
Who for some months was master there,
A formal coxcomb entered too,
Pleased in the glass himself to view,
Both pedants please, their jargon suits;
A captain enters; both are mutes;
The captain to recite proceeds
The great exploits and hardy deeds
Which his brave men would have performed,
How they Placentia would have stormed,
And then achieved some wonderous feat,
Had they not chose to make retreat.
To Nice, to Var, to Digne he leads,
Not a soul listens, he proceeds.
Then Ifis enters with sad air,
Her time is wholly spent in prayer,
Yet Ifis’ leer is very sly,
A little Jansenist stands by,
St. Austin’s works and saintly pride,
Both equally his heart divide.
Other birds too of different feather
And different tastes tune up together,
Whence various notes so much confound
That slander’s voice is almost drowned.
Their jarring clack’s like winds that rend
The air, and with fierce winds contend.
A chasm of silence most profound
Succeeds to all this empty sound:
All rational converse they shun
And into idle nonsense run.
Oh, David, to their succor haste,
Nor suffer them their time to waste.
Oh, David, thy most powerful ace
Engages all the human race;
Soon as upon the table green
Thy various, magic cards are seen,
The noble, prelate, lawyer, cit,
Are roused and sharpened into wit,
Above all, women take delight
In black and red spots on the white,
All are amused by hopes of treasure,
Avarice assumes the shape of pleasure
From these exploits the wise and fair
To supper by consent repair;
The insipid joy of every guest
In dullest follies is expressed,
The machine man by wholesome food
And richest sauces is renewed.
The soul and blood new force acquire,
The stomach and the brain conspire.
Then their clacks run at a strange rate,
The son of law begins to prate,
All parties he alike assails,
He damns the war, at peace he rails.
A country noble quaffs champagne,
But must of misery complain,
Of misery by his country felt,
At which even hearts of stone might melt,
And though in luxury immersed
By taxes, says, the land’s oppressed.
Then the loquacious abbé tries
For histories true to pass off lies;
His tale cut short must soon give way
To arrant chit-chat of the day;
This, in its turn, is put to flight,
By conversation not more bright.
The jest insipid, double meaning
To obscenity and nonsense leaning,
The foolish laugh, the stupid pun,
Stale pleasantries which pass for fun,
Give this society polite,
The highest rapture and delight.
It’s thus you waste, oh men unwise,
That fleeting time which quickly flies?
Which still to fools will tedious seem,
Which men who think too transient deem.
What shall I do? Whereto shall I
Far from myself for refuge fly?
Man company requires, no doubt,
He’s restless with it, worse without;
Indolent sloth’s the greatest foe
That mortals ever knew below,
Tired of tranquillity at home
To court disgusted creatures roam.
At Paris babble loud prevails,
But artful silence at Versailles,
For real joy can ne’er reside
With men whose principle is pride.
Happy that man must be confessed,
Who’s with his master’s presence blessed.
O’er the empyrean Jove presides,
But from mankind his glory hides;
Heroes and demi-gods alone
Dare to approach the heavenly throne,
Must we amidst the crowds that press
Inferior deities address?
Gods who can good or ill bestow,
But ne’er love those by fate placed low,
Who on the top of fortune’s wheel,
By joys intoxicated reel,
Who amidst all their pomp and show,
No tenderness or feeling know?
Rise early, at their levee wait,
And dance attendance at their gate,
Three years neglected or abused,
At last you’re civilly refused.
No; haughty courts, the sage replies,
Suit not great souls that courts despise.
From treacherous courtiers haste away
And pleasures which, like them, betray.
Make public good your only care,
And you shall public honors share.
The public, what that monster dire,
Whose hundred tongues can never tire,
That fawns and bites, that courts neglects,
That breaks the statues it erects?
Still ready those who serve to spurn
It once profaned great Colbert’s urn,
That oft has vile reflections cast
Virtue and innocence to blast.
To envy merit still inclined
Faults it could in Armida find,
And has with greater pleasure seen
Vile plays than those of famed Racine.
It Athalie long despised
And wretched, ill-penned dramas prized.
Applause it foolishly bestows,
And undeserved indulgence shows.
But all its errors time repairs
At length applause true merit shares;
’Tis true, but oft the owner dies,
Ere to his worth men ope their eyes.
Posterity may to my name
Be just; I’d fain enjoy my fame.
When once a man is in the ground,
He hears not fame’s loud trumpet sound.
A nation to his merit just,
Reveres Pope’s, like a monarch’s, bust,
Dead he’s admired, but from his age
He bore fierce persecution’s rage.
Let’s lie concealed, and pass away
Calmly the evening of our day,
From malice and from envy’s rage
Let us preserve declining age.
Friendship, chief bliss of human race,
My dwelling with thy presence grace,
May I for friendship live alone,
Friendship to wicked men unknown.
Distant from bigotry, whence flow
Terrors in death, life’s piercing woe.

TO THE PRINCE OF VENDôME.

Courtin, one of his faithful friends,
Health to the brave prince Vendôme sends;
The meanest of the sons of rhyme
His homage pays at the same time,
From Sully, whither he was sent
By some sprite on his good intent.

You see, sir, that the desire of serving you has united two men very, very different from each other.

One fat, and fair, and in good case,
Looks pampered and replete with grace,
And seems so sanctified his air,
Predestined to an easy chair.
On his unwrinkled face still glows
The healthful color of the rose,
Which makes the abbé still appear
Youthful as in his twentieth year.
The bard by meagre visage known,
Is nothing else but skin and bone,
To occupy much space not made,
Nor quite ill-natured, as portrayed.

Our first intention was to send your highness a regular composition, half verse, half prose, as was customary with the Chapelles, the Des Barreaux, and the Hamiltons, who were the abbé’s contemporaries and our masters. I should have added, Voitures, if I was not afraid of offending the abbé, who pretends, I don’t know for what reason, that he is not old enough to have seen him.

As there are many bold things to be said concerning the times, the wiser of us two—I don’t mean myself—did not choose to speak of them without enjoining profound secrecy.

The God mysterious he addressed
Whose power by Normans is confessed;
That cautious God with artful leer,
Who whispers fearing men might hear.
He much too often knaves befriends,
But still to wise men succor lends.
He does at court and church preside,
And once was even Cupid’s guide.

This god happened unluckily not to be at Sully; he was then, as we were told, engaged by — and Madam de —, or else we should have finished our work under his inspection.

We then had labored to display
Your sprightly wit, your leisure gay;
Had shown you amiable in chase
Of pleasure, dauntless in disgrace.
We had that period blessed related,
Which to love’s joys was dedicated;
Love’s raptures in harmonious verse
We should have labored to rehearse;
All Paphos’ rites we had explored,
Paphos where Venus was adored;
Amours in the Florentine taste
Had our description likewise graced;
But in so artful a disguise
As might deceive e’en bigot’s eyes.
We had not failed to introduce
Bacchus flushed with the grape’s rich juice,
The world had seen with what delight
You in his orgies passed the night.
Imagination by his side
Should have her utmost care applied,
To embellish with her gayest flowers
The pleasure of your blissful hours.
Ye midnight revels, feasts where joy
Yields pleasures which can never cloy;
From you gay sonnets first took rise,
Which the young loves so highly prize;
How much those brilliant trifles please!
They ravish with harmonious ease,
By such famed Horace was the soul
Of feasts when flowed the sparkling bowl,
When with the witty and the great,
He next Augustus took his seat.

We have here given you a weak sketch of the picture we intended to draw.

But who’d succeed should be inspired;
We to such glory ne’er aspired,
That honor we shall ne’er dispute
With the divine, the enchanting lute
Of him who other bards excels,
Chaulieu, who at your temple dwells.
Know then that indolence and ease
Such minds as ours alone can please.

TO MADAM DE GONDOIN, AFTERWARD COUNTESS OF TOULOUSE, ON THE DANGER SHE HAD BEEN EXPOSED TO IN PASSING THE LOIRE IN 1719.

Whilst in a storm such risk you run,
Know you in Sully what was done?
The rogue Marigni, with a laugh
Malicious, wrote your epitaph;
The waves, said he, will soon restore
The body they o’erwhelmed before;
And then, said he, will be revealed
To sight what she through pride concealed:
But Espar, Guiche, la Vallière,
And Sully wept for one so dear;
Roussi did nothing else but swear,
The abbé Courtin wiped a tear;
Perceiving your last hour draw nigh,
Devoutly prayed to the Most High;
Between his lips some prayer he muttered,
And though the words he faintly uttered,
His voice devoutly in his throat
Quavered with many a thrilling note.
But what a sight, with glad surprise,
Strikes suddenly my wondering eyes,
A thousand loves on every side
Oppose the fury of the tide,
Combat the wind’s impetuous rage,
And strive their fury to assuage;
I see them round your vessel swim,
The surface of the water skim;
Still struggling with the boisterous tide,
Your vessel to the shore they guide.
Gondoin, the time which love has lent,
Must in love’s service all be spent;
Love for himself preserved your days,
And a just claim he to them lays.
That system so much famed, by which
The farmers-general grew rich,
And did their pelfs, through pure good will,
With all the nation’s money fill.
The sibyl thus, in times of old,
As in great Maro’s page we’re told.
No other treasure e’er possessing,
But the black art and skill at guessing,
Gives to Æneas oaken leaves,
From him the golden bough receives.
Perhaps with anguish in my heart,
I shortly shall the news impart,
That the old gouty bard is dead,
Whose works, like Chapelle’s, will be read;
Chaulieu shall quit this earthly sphere,
And soon before his judge appear;
And if a muse, whose polished lays
And numbers smooth all readers praise,
Salvation can on souls bestow,
He surely will to heaven go.
The curate came the other day,
Whilst in the agony he lay,
And gave, with ceremonious face,
His passport to a better place.
He saw his sins washed white as snow
By a repentant word or so,
And then received, with reverence due,
That which I need not name to you;
He made besides an exhortation,
Most highly suited to the occasion.
He pardon asked, and owned his fault,
That he too much false glory sought;
For pride, he candidly confessed,
Reigned much too powerful in his breast.
Poets are ever slaves to fame,
They labor for an empty name;
From vanity, all men agree,
Preachers and bards are seldom free.
Yet his pride can’t the world prevent
So great a poet to lament;
His loss will make Parnassus groan;
For he was left, and left alone,
Of all the bards, whose deathless strain
Immortalized great Louis’ reign.
But in the present age, ’tis said,
Our youths grown tasteless and ill-bred,
Have luxury exchanged for pleasure,
And idleness for that sage leisure,
Which men, with learned ease content,
In constant meditation spent.
Genonville, first of sonneteers,
Who worthy of that age appears,
Seems in great haste to quit the town,
And to your country seat go down.
The system has not soured his spirit,
He still is amiable, has merit;
Still he has elegance of style,
He still can gayly talk and smile;
My mistress’ charms he has enjoyed,
With which I never could be cloyed;
He makes a jest of this black treason,
And I might angry be with reason;
But in this world, a friend with friend
For trifles never should contend.

TO THE DUKE DELAFEUILLADE.

Preserve, my lord, with ceaseless care,
Luxuriant fancy’s follies rare;
Pleasantry and true humor too,
In which all men must yield to you;
Your constitution boast no more,
For none think with you on that score.
A lady, who long since has known
Your person, as it were her own,
Declares you well may counterfeit;
For, though your mind’s in spring of wit,
Though earthly part even now appears
In the full autumn of its years.
Then governor of high renown
Farewell; you rule not o’er a town,
But o’er a beauty heavenly bright,
Who charms the heart as well as sight;
Who by her free licentious spirit,
Does honor to her teacher’s merit;
But pray, lest Venus should depute
In your place, some young substitute,
Lest she should let some lusty blade
So fine a government invade.

TO MARSHAL VILLARS.*

’Tis true, I had some hopes of late
Of tasting at your country seat,
Social enjoyment, sweet repose;
But Vinache does my views oppose;
So for a mere quack I neglected
A hero by all France respected.
I may offend by what I’ve said,
And should not speak of fear or dread,
To him who ne’er thought life worth care,
But instant death sought everywhere.
Do not into a passion fly,
And you shall hear the reason why.
You well may risk your life; but I
Have no great cause to wish to die;
For should you in your glorious course
Fall by some ball’s resistless force,
Conveyed to Pluto’s dreary coast,
What consolations wait your ghost!
With transport it would hear related,
How men your funeral celebrated;
Mass on the occasion had been said,
In honor of the illustrious dead;
And some dull prelate to the crowd
Had trumpeted your praise aloud,
In a discourse, not written by him,
But bought, or people much belie him.
Then at St. Denis’ church in state
You’d be interred amongst the great.
But should poor I, nor great nor brave,
With Charon pass the Stygian wave,
I without pomp would be conveyed;
On a vile bier my body laid,
Two priests would to the churchyard bear,
And lay it in some corner there.
My nieces, and my worthy brother,
Who for Jansenius makes such pother,
Would laugh to see me laid in earth;
My burial would excite their mirth:
And all the honor ever paid
On earth to my departed shade,
Would be some epitaph severe,
Composed my memory to tear.
From what has then been said ’tis plain,
That I should longer here remain,
Those deeds of high renown to view,
Which yet shall be achieved by you.

TO MONSIEUR GENONVILLE.

Impute me not friend, a self-love so extreme,
Like Chaulieu, to make myself always my theme;
But let me that exquisite pleasure enjoy,
Of friendly converse which never can cloy;
When thought meets with thought, o’er the lip it departs,
And both utter freely what they feel in their hearts.
You remember, my friend, how my muse in weak lays,
Whilst yet I was young made some efforts for praise;
You saw calumny vile, all her snakes on her crest,
The spring of my genius with malice infest:
In a horrible dungeon unjustly confined,
Amidst my misfortunes with spirit resigned;
From evil I learned to gather some good,
And the strokes of adversity bravely withstood;
With a constancy which I could never presage,
From the levity common in so tender an age:
Why have I not since been as resolute found?
At slighter attacks I have oft given ground.
How often with tears love has made my eyes flow,
False rogue as you are, without doubt you must know;
You, who with an address which must needs be admired,
The possession of what I love most have acquired;
Who seized on my mistress, and was not content
To get her with ease, and her lover’s consent:
But I loved you, false friend, notwithstanding your fault,
I forgot and forgave as a good Christian ought.
Ah! why do I dwell on ideas long past?
Love once was my bliss, but that bliss could not last.
Now a cruel disease undermines my whole frame,
And it shortly, perhaps, will extinguish life’s flame;
The fates have, I doubt, almost spun out my thread,
And to all sense of pleasure my organs are dead;
I feel with surprise that I’m void of desire,
And my heart glows no longer with love’s vivid fire:
A chaos of thought quite perplexes my head,
My present state’s bad, and the future I dread;
To increase my affliction, my memory’s employed
On ideas of bliss that can’t now be enjoyed:
But what still is worse, I perceive it apace,
That my mental endowments begin to decrease;
The particle subtile of heavenly fire,
Before my corporeal frame does expire:
And can this then be the emanation so bright,
Which flows from the great source of all mental light?
Which lives when our bodies are laid in the earth,
With the organs of sense every mind has its birth;
With them it grows up, and with them feels decrease,
And shall its existence like theirs at length cease:
I know not, but I have good hope it will brave
Death, the ruins of time, and the jaws of the grave;
And that an intelligent substance so pure,
The Almighty intended should always endure.

TO THE COUNTESS OF FONTAINE-MARTEL.*

Fair Martel you must ever seem
Worthy of most profound esteem;
’Tis at the suppers which you give,
I justly may be said to live;
For there I cannot ever miss
Pleasure, the only real bliss:
Sometimes I scold you, I must own,
But for that freedom still atone:
When I above the sex extol,
And own that you are worth them all;
In you a sight most rare we see,
A woman from all foibles free;
You by the charms of wit engage,
And reason like an ancient sage:
Your wisdom’s not that harpy dire,
Whom rancor and fell rage inspire.
Envy’s sad sister, that with eyes
Malignant, into all things pries:
Who like a hag with ceaseless rage,
Rails at the pleasures of the age.
But that blessed wisdom, which with ease
The humors of all men can please,
Which makes life’s every moment charm,
And of its darts can death disarm.
On all sides, madam, you behold
Beauties, when ugly grown and old,
Because by lovers they’re neglected,
Turn saints at last to be respected.
But you more knowing, justly shun
The error into which they run;
You don’t in vigils pass the night,
In cheerful suppers you delight,
The pleasing follies of the muse,
Instead of casuists you peruse,
And in the place of monk, elect
Voltaire your conscience to direct;
Preferring still, as foe to care,
The opera house to house of prayer;
But that which makes my bliss complete,
With you, blessed freedom, seeks retreat,
That goddess bright, whose brow serene,
And lively eyes all hearts must gain,
Whom gestures free, and easy air,
Nor prude, nor yet coquette declare;
Decent, but not at all demure,
That can a double sense endure,
And hear those words without a frown,
Which make severer dames look down.
Her sister goddess blithe as fair,
Heart-easing mirth inhabits there,
Mirth, who in repartee delights,
Whose satire pleases, never bites,
Who sometimes into ridicule,
May turn a blockhead, or a fool,
And makes the wise in proper place,
Relax the muscles of his face.
On you may heaven its gifts bestow,
And make completely blessed below.
One who even in her life’s decline,
Does others in its spring outshine.

WRITTEN FROM PLOMBIÉRES TO M. PALLU, INTENDANT OF LYONS.

From the bottom of that stony cavern I write,
Which lies between two craggy mountains’ vast height;
Where the sky is still black, and with clouds overcast,
And thunders oft burst midst the tempest’s rude blast;
Close to a hot bath, which still boils up and smokes,
Where crowds of the sick are brought wrapped up in cloaks;
Where the splenetic mortal, disordered in brain,
Talks of his disease in the medical strain,
Bathes himself and besmokes, and in hope of a cure,
Can exquisite tortures with patience endure.
From this cavern, where hags in crowds daily repair,
And expect to become once more youthful and fair;
Of virgins a few, a great number who fain,
Their virginity, lost many years, would regain;
Where their health to recover, or led by mere fancy,
Old cits in the stage coach come often from Nancy;
And of Commercy monks, a most numerous train,
Who appear from their manners the sons of Lorraine.
From this place, where languor and spleen still resort,
By letter at Paris I make my report:
Though Phœbus forsakes and inspires me no more,
The aid of the graces and loves I implore;
I will frankly own they scarce know me by sight,
But it is to the learned Pallu that I write:
Alcibiades, too, his injunction has laid,
Who at court so much grace and such talents displayed,
Gay, generous, and brave, but prone still to changing,
From beauty to beauty capriciously ranging;
Who, like Cupid, possesses the dangerous art,
Of seducing by gentle persuasion each heart:
Cured by length of time, or by some serious passion,
Of falsehood, a vice that’s so much in the fashion;
In love he appears to have turned out of late,
A model in every respect quite complete;
Who such an extraordinary change brought about,
Let me guess e’er so long I can never find out;
But illustrious fair one, the power of your eyes
Must surely be great to have won such a prize:
Peradventure some women a choice might have made,
Of a cleverer and more promising blade.
To Hercules liker in sinew and bone,
Like Celadon to the soft passion more prone;
But through the whole world could she ever find
One worthier of love amongst all human kind?
For where, dearest madam, can you e’er hope to meet,
One that’s like him, a friend, both reserved and discreet?
In whom the old courtier’s politeness refined,
With the graces and sprightliness of youth is combined,
Whose converse all mortals must equally please,
With vivacity mixing an elegant ease;
Whose natural vein of true humor and wit,
Must the taste of all ranks and all geniuses fit:
And does he not merit the praise of the nation,
Who after three whole years of negotiation,
That formality proud, and those airs ne’er contracted,
Which envoys assume when affairs are transacted?
In this picture faithful from flattery free,
Must not every eye Alcibiades see?

THE NATURE OF PLEASURE.

How long shall bigots, by false zeal grown rude,
All humankind from Paradise exclude?
To virtue mortals shall they then excite,
By sermons which make even fair virtue fright?
Shall preachers then in Calvin’s footsteps tread,
Who thinks God like himself by anger led?
Some tyrant minister, elate and proud,
I see methinks amidst a slavish crowd,
Dictate with savage air what rage inspires,
A milder government my soul requires.
Timon thinks virtue nothing loves below,
But Christian’s nature should not sure forego.
God’s mercy I adore, revere His law,
Approach Him mortals with a grateful awe.
Hark how you’re called by nature’s voice benign,
Through joys and pleasures to the power divine.
The treasures of His wisdom ne’er were known,
Matter by motion He directs alone;
But man by pleasure to conduct He knows,
Learn to enjoy the bliss His hand bestows.
Pleasure existence gave to humankind,
It actuates body, and inspires the mind.
Whether soft slumbers close your weary eyes,
Or morn to rouse you gilds the Orient skies,
Or if by hunger pressed, you seek for fare,
The painful waste of labor to repair;
Or if by Cupid’s genial power you’re led
To taste the pleasures of the nuptial bed;
In every circumstance the power divine
Delight’s blest balm can with your wants combine.
Man is impelled to act by joy alone,
All other motives are to him unknown.
Did not our souls alluring pleasure draw,
Who would submit to Hymen’s rigid law?
What Beauty would not sorely curse her doom,
Condemned a child to carry in her womb,
To bear excruciating pangs and throes,
An infant nurse, and feel a mother’s woes?
His wayward imbecility to shield,
And after to his youthful sallies yield.
Enjoying pleasure in each state and hour,
Mortals acknowledge God’s eternal power.
But wherefore, said I, in your joys alone?
Even in your woes God’s wisdom is made known.
That sense so quick of danger and of harm,
That guard forever prompt to take the alarm,
Cries out incessantly of hurt beware,
Defend your lives, preserve your health with care.
No quarter self-love can with zealots find,
They style it hell-born foe to humankind.
Wretches traduce not of God’s gifts the best,
Love comes from Heaven, God means to make us blest.
From self to sons, to countrymen descends
Our love; but most of all we love our friends.
Love like a soul can even our souls inspire,
They soar to Heaven above on wings of fire.
God gives to man at once severe and kind,
Passions to raise to noble deeds the mind.
They’re dangerous gifts, although ’twas Heaven that gave,
The abuse destroys, the prudent use can save.
That mortal I don’t pity, but admire,
Who knows to check by reason each desire;
Who shunning man, to God devotes his mind,
Nor asks to know perfidious humankind;
Who loving God with all his heart and might,
Shuns lawful pleasures for more high delight.
If of his cross he’s proud, of fasting vain,
Yet still in secret weary of his pain,
If he condemns the world from which he fled,
Rails at all ties, and at the marriage-bed;
We do not in such pride and rancor trace
The friend of God, but foe to human race;
Through his austerity and monkish spleen,
Regret of pleasure he foregoes is seen.
Heaven which bestowed on every man a heart
To animate it, must desires impart.
The modern Stoic would each wish control,
And of its very essence rob my soul.
God, we are told, rules with an iron rod,
Like a fierce Turk obeyed at every nod,
Who hires to guard his brows from dire disgrace,
Eunuchs, the outcasts of the human race.
You who at nature level all your rage,
Have you not read the ancient’s moral page?
In Peleus’s daughters, Peleus worn and old,
As in a glass, your folly you behold.
They thought both time and nature to subdue,
And youthful vigor in their sire renew:
They slew, and left him weltering in his gore,
The prime of life attempting to restore.
Stoics herein behold your frightful form,
You nature murder, striving to reform.
From use of good, felicity must rise,
Ruin from its abuse, so say the wise.
Petronius’s pleasures I’d avoid no less,
Than Epictetus’s austere excess.
Fatal to happiness is either scheme,
Bliss never yet was found in the extreme.
Declaimer subtile, I don’t therefore say,
That man to all his passions should give way;
I would this fiery courser’s speed restrain,
And stem this torrent pouring o’er the plain,
Its headlong rage by banks and dams command,
Nor suffer it to overflow my land.
Winds purify the air, no tempest raise;
Scorch us not sun, but light with kindly rays.
God, to all beings that exist a friend,
Your care to instincts which you gave extend.
The taste of friendship, social tie of hearts,
The love of study, solitude, and arts;
These are my passions, at all time my mind
Could in their charms attractive comfort find.
When on the banks of Main two rogues in place,
Who often broke the laws of human race;
When two commissioned thieves, by avarice led,
Upon me all their rage malignant shed;
Then learned ease was my delight alone,
I cultivated arts to them unknown.
’Twas thus Jove’s son his cares with music eased
His lowing herds when wily Cacus seized.
He still continued his harmonious strain,
Thieves strove to interrupt the song in vain.
That man is born to a propitious fate,
Who to the muse his time can dedicate;
He from the tuneful art derives repose,
The muse his anguish soothes, dispels his woes:
He laughs at all the follies of mankind,
And from his lyre a sure relief can find.

THE UTILITY OF SCIENCES TO PRINCES.

TO THE PRINCE ROYAL OF PRUSSIA, SINCE KING OF PRUSSIA.

Few kings, my prince, can with enlightened mind
Instruct the people to their care consigned;
Few Antoninuses on earth appear,
For since that hero to all Rome so dear,
Since great Aurelius, wonder of his age,
Who shone as monarch, warrior, and sage,
Did ever king like him the truth explore,
Like him give ear to sacred wisdom’s lore?
But two or three of those who wore a crown,
Were held philosophers of high renown;
Others appear as vulgar to your eyes,
The tyrant slaves of pleasure you despise,
Who burdened earth, or else destruction hurled,
Slept on the throne, or wide laid waste the world.
The world can’t see them in a proper light,
To reign is the grand art, if courts say right.
But what’s this art so boasted of by kings?
What are of all their policy the springs?
He speaks the word, and all around obey;
Just as he smiles or frowns, they’re sad or gay.
Is it then hard to play the monarch’s part?
Is then to govern slaves so great an art?
But error’s cup break with a manly hand,
Repel the flattering, fawning, craving band,
Aspiring prelates’ wily arts defeat,
Justice secure upon her awful seat,
From learned bodies vain debates to chase,
And make vain sophistry to truth give place;
To instruct at once the learned, and support,
These are the glories of the Prussian court;
High station’s lustre ignorance can deface,
Which joined to grandeur makes even grandeur base.
A formal envoy of the king of Spain
Two English artists importuned in vain,
For leave, upon a mountain’s top to state,
By a barometer, air’s real weight.
The envoy could with ease have helped the schools,
But, though a fool, he thought the artists fools,
Shall I the folly of a pope reveal?
Show cardinals, with apostolic zeal,
Teaching mankind in their illustrious codes,
’Twas sinful to believe the antipodes.
How many kings and sultans dire alarms
Have felt at an eclipse and dreaded charms?
A monarch who to indolence gives way
Is by the vilest wretches led astray.
Star-gazers, chemists, and dull monks, contrive
To bubble him, and on his folly thrive.
By avarice to alchemists betrayed,
He thinks each piece with treasures will be paid;
The astrologer he asks, if heaven benign
Permits to go to council, or to dine;
As knavish monks direct, he God adores,
And to escape from hell gives up his stores.
Such kings we should no more than idols prize;
Idols who see not, though endowed with eyes.
A king who has both sense and talents rare,
We justly to the Almighty may compare.
Knowledge of arts, ’tis true, should not alone
Distinguish him who sits upon a throne.
Of all the kings in sacred history named,
Who for his royal virtues was most famed?
’Twas Solomon, by God himself inspired,
Beloved in Sion, by the world admired;
Ruled by a sage, his subjects all were blessed,
Of all earth yields they were by trade possessed:
His navy visited each distant shore,
And still new wealth to famed Judæa bore:
Thus fleets to Bordeaux, and to London, bring
All Asia’s treasures at returning spring,
To him not dazzled by so bright a throne,
The art to enjoy what he possessed was known.
’Tis thus wise monarchs o’er their subjects reign;
Knowledge, if not to prudence joined, is vain.
A monarch should not, amidst a thousand cares,
Neglect for love of money state affairs.
To you that English monarch’s history’s known,
James, of that name the first who filled the throne,
Who in sad exile let his nephew die,
Though he could necessary aid supply;
His nephew’s wrongs the king should have redressed,
Relieved the German towns by force oppressed;
He should, by force, insulting foes have quelled,
And between nations a just balance held:
Not as a doctor, labor to be great,
And tracts pedantic to Christ dedicate.
No king of parts in pedantry delights,
He justly thinks, and like a hero fights:
Such Julian was, ill-known to vulgar eyes,
Dreaded, yet loved, and though a warrior, wise:
Such Cæsar, who to all things great aspired,
Who conquered Rome, and was by Rome admired:
Your model he had been in every art,
Had he not banished justice from his heart.

EPISTLE IN ANSWER TO A LETTER, WITH WHICH, UPON HIS ACCESSION TO THE THRONE, THE KING OF PRUSSIA HONORED THE AUTHOR.

Become a monarch, dost thou condescend
Still to regard a poet as a friend?
Just when that happy morn’s auspicious ray
To the world promises so bright a day,
A day that proves thee good as well as great,
Dost thou resolve to make my bliss complete?
Oh, truly royal soul above all pride!
By thine my want of greatness is supplied:
Superior to all prepossession weak,
The language of the heart you nobly speak.
The generous sentiments your lines express,
Show you were born the human race to bless.
Illustrious prince, whose virtues we admire,
Triumphant reign, as you have penned with fire,
Continue by thy reign the world to bless.
Prevailing vice each king swears to repress;
But you by oaths your sacred promise bind,
Arts to protect, and love the human kind.
And thou, whose worth did persecuted shine;
Deemed atheist, blessed with wisdom’s lore divine;
Martyr to reason, against whom combined
Fell envy’s furious rage with error blind;
Return, who speak the truth, fear nothing now;
The crown adorns a philosophic brow.
That gold amassed, the life-blood of each state,
Which unemployed precipitates their fate;
Poured out discreetly by his prudent hand,
Revives and spreads abundance through the land.
He aims not idly to amuse the sight
With useless soldiers of gigantic height;
Through every clime with care preposterous sought,
Colossuses of war too dearly bought;
Courage and ardor used alone to prize,
He judges not of soldiers by their size.
Thus thinks the just, the wise thus rules a state;
But more’s required to make man truly great:
Who does what right and equity ordain,
Makes but a step immortal praise to gain;
The just is oft austere, oft sad the wise,
In other sentiments true greatness lies;
The conqueror’s dreaded, and esteemed the sage,
But benefactors every heart engage;
’Tis not in time their glory to deface,
Their names renowned reach every future race.
What fame to him can great exploits impart,
Who reigns triumphant in each subject’s heart?
Trajan, not far from Ganges’ stream renowned,
In chains the hands of thirty monarchs bound;
And yet from conquest he derives no fame,
His goodness has immortalized his name.
Ne’er for Jerusalem in ashes laid
Was homage to the name of Titus paid.
Beloved by all men he was truly great.
Oh, you, who such bright virtue emulate,
A virtue more heroic still display,
And ne’er like Titus, weep to lose a day.

EPISTLE TO THE KING, PRESENTED TO HIS MAJESTY AT THE CAMP BEFORE FREIBURG.

King of benign, but of undaunted heart,
As brave as mild, and prudent without art,
Whither do you precipitately go?
The fever escaping you provoke the foe!
You haste to Freiburg, Peyronie in vain
Strove your impetuous ardor to restrain.
To risk your precious life, great king, beware.
Fields suit not him who wants physician’s care.
When laurels bind the conquering hero’s brow,
Some care of health he surely may allow.
Zeal spoke, but from you no attention drew,
Deaf to advice, you to the combat flew;
Inclement seasons with the foes conspire,
You brave the seasons and the cannon’s fire:
Your headlong courage fills with dread the state,
But your foes dread it as they dread their fate.
Give to Vienna, not to Paris fear,
Make us rejoice to whom you are so dear;
The hero they admire and love, once more
To loving subjects graciously restore.
A sage has said the only good below,
The only solid bliss that mortals know,
Springs from the tender sympathy of hearts,
From the blest transports friendship’s force imparts;
How happy then must be the monarch’s fate,
Who’s loved by every member of the state!
How blessed the king whose throne’s each subject’s breast!
This bliss enjoy, by thee it is possessed.
To Paris’s ramparts even from Alsace bound
Approach, you’ll hear the voice of love resound.
Subjects you’ll see whose bosoms transports fire,
Blessing the hero whom their souls admire.
Do you not see how on their knees they fall,
How on your face are fixed the eyes of all,
How our hearts leap with transport at the sight
Of our loved king? This triumph’s your delight.
Kings dragged like slaves, through an insulting throng
Led to the capitol in chains along,
Those glittering chariots, priests, that warlike host,
That senate which made earth oppressed its boast.
Wretches from the procession to the tomb
Sent, were the triumphs both of pride and Rome:
Yours is love’s triumph, and its glory pure,
Their time effaced, yours ever will endure;
They shocked mankind, the sinking world you raise.
In you His image God on earth displays,
In the blessed age of gold you had been king,
Enjoy the days of happiness you bring,
May peace forever bless their happy course,
Peace makes blest days, the glorious, martial force.
May she still hear the victor’s voice well-known,
He combated for us and her alone.

ON THE DEATH OF THE EMPEROR CHARLES.

- The cedar which so long defied the rage
- Of winds and storms, now sinks upon the ground;
- That cedar which could flourish even in age,
- And with its boughs o’ershade the states around.
- The stroke is given, the cedar dies,
- And on the plain extended lies.
- Behold the king of kings supreme in power,
- Death from his brow has thirty diadems torn;
- His power extensive’s vanished in an hour,
- Crowns can’t preserve the men by whom they’re worn.
- Oh, haughty race! oh, race august!
- You now are levelled with the dust.
- The tomb absorbs his very name,
- He’s now no longer the renowned;
- That he once reigned is all his fame,
- No courtiers now his praise resound.
- Thus kings, when once life’s breath is fled,
- Are numbered with the vulgar dead.
- Ah! wherefore did he not his squadrons head,
- Where Eugene deluged deep the ensanguined field;
- His numerous cohorts by their monarch led,
- Had made the allied army quit the field.
- Their arms the Empire had upheld,
- And the invading Turks repelled.
- Had he not idly loitered in a town,
- And none but his own chiefs with dread inspired;
- Had he to pull the haughty sultan down,
- Warm with ambition’s noble flame aspired:
- Had he fell Turkish rage restrained,
- And from his subjects’ blood refrained;
- All war declining like a monarch sage,
- Had he to mankind shown himself a friend;
- With virtue, arts, and plenty, blessed the age,
- And to alarms and discord put an end;
- Revived the peace to Rome once known,
- When great Augustus filled the throne;
- Then fame had round him waved her purple wings.
- With glorious light his head encircled round:
- He had been placed among illustrious kings,
- He had been as a patriot king renowned.
- Happy had been the monarch’s fate,
- Esteemed not only good but great.
- I don’t the harmonious art of verse profane,
- I do not dip my pen in satire’s gall;
- Apollo disapproves the audacious strain,
- I must not one reproachful word let fall.
- I must not by one single line
- Offend a king; the royal power’s divine.
- But sacred truth, impartial goddess fame,
- Thou to whose orders mortals still attend;
- Love of mankind, which does my breast inflame,
- Your needful succor to my genius lend.
- Do you my lays inspire,
- Mortals I’ll teach to aspire.
- Monarch, death cites you to that court august,
- Wherein posterity, a judge most sage,
- Shall pass on you a sentence wise and just,
- Trusting the depositions of your age.
- ’Tis to posterity alone,
- The real worth of kings is known.

TO THE QUEEN OF HUNGARY.

- Princess, descended from that noble race
- Which still in danger held the imperial throne,
- Who human nature and thy sex dost grace,
- Whose virtues even thy foes are forced to own.
- The generous French, as fierce as they’re polite,
- Who to true glory constantly aspire;
- Whilst obstinately they against thee fight,
- Thy virtue and great qualities admire.
- The French and Germans leagued by wondrous ties,
- Make Christendom one dismal scene of woe;
- And from their friendship greater ills arise,
- Than e’er did from their longest quarrels flow.
- Thus from the equator and the frozen pole,
- The impetuous winds drive on with headlong force
- Two clouds, which as they on each other roll,
- Forth from their sable skirts the thunder force.
- Do virtuous kings such ruin then ordain?
- A calm they promise, but excite a storm:
- Felicity we hope for from their reign,
- Whilst they with slaughter dire the earth deform.
- Oh! Fleury, wise and venerable sage,
- Whom good ne’er dazzles, danger ne’er alarms;
- Who dost exceed the ancient Nestor’s age:
- Must Europe never cease to be in arms?
- Would thou couldst hold with prudent, steady hand,
- Europa’s balance, shut up Janus’ shrine;
- Make feuds and discords cease at thy command,
- And bring from heaven Astrea, maid divine.
- Would France’s treasures were dispersed no more,
- But prudently within the realm applied;
- Opulence to our cities to restore,
- And make them flourishing on every side.
- You arts from heaven, and from the muses sprung,
- Whom Louis brought triumphant into France;
- Too long your hands are idle, lyres unstrung,
- ’Tis time to start from so profound a trance.
- Your labors are of lasting glory sure,
- Whilst warlike pomps, the triumphs of a day,
- Blaze for a moment, never long endure,
- But soon like fleeting shadows pass away.

INSCRIBED TO THE GENTLEMEN OF THE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, WHO SAILED TO THE POLAR CIRCLE AND THE EQUATOR, IN ORDER TO ASCERTAIN THE FIGURE OF THE EARTH.

- Oh truth sublime! Urania, heavenly maid!
- Bright emanation of the eternal mind,
- By whom all nature’s secrets are displayed,
- Who ranges the heavens with spirit unconfined;
- Whilst you those heroes o’er the seas attend,
- Sages and ministers of thy sacred laws,
- From the equator to the pole, attend
- The words of one that’s zealous in thy cause.
- On what great business are thy sons intent?
- They mean to pull the veil from nature’s face;
- On most important truths their minds are bent,
- To find earth’s mass, its figure and its space.
- Their voyage has even roused the silent shades,
- I see those Grecian heroes’ ghosts arise,
- Chiefs whom in Colchis the admiring maids
- Beheld in times of yore with ravished eyes.
- Ye argonauts, ye demi-gods of Greece,
- The twins and Orpheus, thou whose sure address
- Found means to win the much-famed golden fleece,
- And fair Medea’s charms divine possess;
- When our famed worthies’ labors you behold,
- Your own exploits you view with conscious shame;
- The brightest glories of the times of old
- Are vanquished and eclipsed by modern fame.
- Whene’er Greece spoke the listening world admired;
- And ever her falsehoods could regard obtain;
- Her writers were by vanity inspired
- Highly to celebrate achievements vain.
- Happy the first in glory’s great career,
- They’re still successful in acquiring fame;
- Whilst those who later in the lists appear,
- By all their efforts scarce procure a name.
- Falsehood in memory’s temple makes abode;
- Engraves there by credulity’s weak hand,
- Annals which must to every age be showed,
- Which as the monuments of truth must stand.
- Those fables, oh! Urania, heavenly maid,
- Those names illustrious, usurped, deface;
- By thee be to the admiring world displayed,
- Of real heroes the illustrious race.
- The Genoese, who the new world first found,
- Cortés who vanquished it, with great surprise
- Seeing our sages earth’s extent sail round,
- In terms like these extolled the enterprise:
- “Our great achievements were by all men praised,
- Our glorious actions none could emulate,
- Those to whom mortals oft have altars raised,
- Were less entitled to the name of great.
- “We have done much, ’tis true; you have done more;
- Plutus was in America our guide;
- Virtue’s your leader, whilst you earth explore,
- Your breasts resolved in virtue still confide.”
- Whilst thus they spoke, Newton from heaven looked down,
- Newton upon them fixed his piercing eyes,
- And said, “your labors shall my labors crown,
- Like me to glory’s summit you shall rise.”
- Whilst mortals, objects of contempt and scorn,
- Under the yoke of prepossession bend;
- Wretches who might as well have ne’er been born,
- Since ere they learn to live, their lives have end;
- To truth let your immortal spirits soar,
- Pour on all minds bright truth’s refulgent day;
- To you the mighty God whom you adore,
- Has given of His divinity a ray.
- It is His pleasure that you cultivate
- The genius which He only can bestow;
- He that instructs mankind is truly great,
- The noblest object we behold below.
- But above all, that monster, envy, fly,
- And its cursed offspring, which with hellish ire
- Pursues all merit. Envy sure should die,
- In those pure souls who to the heavens aspire.
- Let a vile Zoilus, who carps at all,
- Revile each genius who adorns the age;
- Let him his venal quill still dip in gall,
- Act basely, write with rancor and with rage.
- Copy those blessed spirits—sons of light—
- Who in the empyrean wear a starry crown;
- Who like the great First Mover from the height
- Of heaven, on mortals look propitious down.

TO M. DE GERVASI, THE PHYSICIAN.*

You returned to Paris a physician renowned,
Those you cured of the plague your just praises resound;
Like Hippocrates’ self you restored the diseased,
And the pestilence’s rage by your art was appeased;
At Maisons, meantime, I lay on a sickbed,
And thought I should in a few moments be dead.
The grim king of terrors, relentless death,
Shook his terrible scythe, I was gasping for breath;
Old Charon pushed forward, with sail and with oar,
And I thought I should soon see the famed Stygian shore:
But like Æsculapius you came to my aid,
And death from his conqueror retreated dismayed.
Had you undertaken dear Genonville to cure,
He had from death’s direful attacks been secure;
He’d have lived, and I still had the pleasure enjoyed
Of his converse, with which I could never be cloyed,
And my eyes, which in death had been closed but for you,
Tears for a lost friend would not each day bedew.
To you and your care I own myself debtor,
That of my disease I have now got the better;
That now all my griefs and afflictions have end,
That I still am beloved, and I still love my friend;
Maisons, my physician, I shall now see once more,
Maisons, the physician, that cured me before;
Maisons, whose deep science surpasses his age,
Who rivals in medical skill the Greek sage.
I hope my last tragedy will not disgust
The virtuous Sully, as brave as he’s just;
That his generous heart may find it pleasure
To see me revived, and intent upon measure;
And that famed Mariamne’s distress may impart,
Some tender sensations to his generous heart.
You gardens of Villars, seats with bliss ever crowned,
’Twas there I again met the hero renowned;
Whom peace crowned with olive to his country brings,
Triumphant and joyous upon victory’s wings:
There I saw Richelieu gay, the delight of his age,
Whose wit and vivacity all men engage;
When Richelieu appears, all my misery ends,
He’ll soon reunite me to his amiable friends;
And thou Bolingbroke, by Apollo inspired,
As an orator, wit, and a statesman admired:
You to whom I so often have listened before,
I shall live and improve by your converse once more;
But what sad idea possesses my mind,
Shall my mistress, shall my charming mistress be kind?
Her image was strongly impressed on my heart,
When I thought I was ready from this world to depart;
Her virtues, her graces, and her charms divine,
The pleasures I tasted when I once called her mine,
In my last moments cherished my amorous fire,
And my heart’s love possessed when I thought to expire.
Can she then have forgot me, can she then prove unkind?
But wretch as I am, why so wanders my mind?
From death scarce escaped, can love still in my breast,
Be of all my affections and my reason possessed.

THE REQUISITES TO HAPPINESS.

- A man must think, or else the brute
- May his superior worth dispute;
- A man must love, for were it not
- For love, most hard would be his lot.
- A man must always have a friend,
- To whose advice he may attend;
- Whose friendly sympathy still knows
- Our bliss to increase, assuage our woes.
- He must at the approach of night,
- Still sup with freedom and delight;
- Drink the best wine, and dainties eat,
- And make before he’s drunk, retreat.
- Each night he must his love declare,
- With raptures to the yielding fair;
- Must when awake her charms adore.
- And when he sleeps must dream them o’er.
- My friends, you surely will allow,
- That I true bliss have shown you now;
- And when my Sylvia I addressed,
- I soon was of such bliss possessed.

TO A LADY, VERY WELL KNOWN TO THE WHOLE TOWN.

Phillis, how much the times are changed,
Since in a hack the town you ranged,
Since without finery or train you shone,
Conspicuous for your charms alone;
When though you supped on sorry fare,
You nectar seemed with gods to share.
You foolishly to one consigned
Beauty which might charm all mankind:
A desperate lover, who for life
Engaged you when he made his wife.
You then no treasure did inherit,
Your beauty was your only merit,
Your bosom charms divine displayed;
There Cupid still an ambush laid;
Your heart was tender, and your mind
To youthful frolics much inclined.
With so many charms endued,
What woman e’er could be a prude?
That fault, oh! beauty all divine,
Was very far from being thine;
Because of favors you were free,
You were the better liked by me.
How differently you live, grown great,
Your life is but the farce of state;
The hoary porter, who still plies
At your own door, and tells such lies,
Is a just emblem of the age,
His very looks ill-luck presage;
He thinks the duty of his place is
To drive away the loves and graces.
The tender swain’s abashed, afraid
Your pompous palace to invade.
When you were young, to my amazement
I’ve seen them enter at the casement;
I’ve seen them enter every day,
And in your chamber nimbly play.
Not all your carpets, and your plate,
Not all your proud parade of state,
Those goblets which so brightly shine,
Graved by Germain with art divine;
Those closets nobly furnished, where
Martin’s exceeds the China ware,
Your vases of Japan, and all
The brittle wonders of your hall;
Your diamond pendants which appear
With such bright lustre at each ear;
Your solitaires so dazzling bright,
Your pomp which strikes the gazer’s sight,
Are worth one quarter of that bliss,
Which once you imparted by a kiss.

FANATICISM.*

- Aspasia, whose heroic mind
- Nobly aspires the truth to find;
- Who in philosophy profound,
- The nature of thy God hath found;
- You know that Being great, supreme,
- From you His emanations beam;
- Of all His works the most complete,
- Your genius shows that He is great;
- You worthy homage to Him pay,
- O’er you weak error bears no sway.
- But as you wisely still reject
- The errors of the godless sect:
- Fanaticism’s rage unblest
- You fly and equally detest;
- You worship the eternal power
- Without false zeal, austerely sour;
- False zeal, which bigot souls inspires,
- And oft with rage destructive fires.
- A subject thus sincere and just,
- Before his monarch’s throne august,
- Free from all servile awe can stand,
- Nor flatter like the courtly band.
- Fanaticism’s frantic flame
- First from religion’s altars came;
- That fiend profanes her rights divine,
- And men with horror fly the shrine.
- Religion, he profanes thy name,
- Thy kindred he presumes to claim;
- From you, that horrid pest of earth
- Pretends that he derives his birth.
- Could such a mother e’er be cursed
- With such a son of fiends the worst?
- Sometimes we in an atheist’s mind
- Humanity’s fairest virtues find;
- Their error always to their heart
- Does not contagion vile impart.
- Desbarreaux* was with mildness blest,
- Justice and candor filled his breast:
- The God, with whom he strove in vain
- A senseless combat to maintain,
- His weakness with compassion viewed,
- And with some worth his soul endued.
- I own, I should be much inclined
- To pity him as mad and blind,
- Who in his folly should deny
- That the sun’s rays pervade the sky.
- A man does not so much blaspheme
- Denying God, the judge supreme,
- As when he paints Him to mankind
- As cruel, and to wrath inclined,
- Taking delight in human woes,
- His creatures treating as His foes.
- When man by error is misled,
- When superstition turns his head,
- When that chimera’s baleful force
- Has poisoned pure religion’s source,
- His heart relentless grows, and hard,
- Access to reason is debarred;
- His fury nothing can assuage,
- His justice then is turned to rage;
- No more compunction he can feel,
- But sacrilege commits through zeal.
- In that court, by the French proscribed,
- Whose horrors scarce can be described,
- In that cursed court where truth’s profaned,
- Reason by ignorance enchained;
- The reverend tyrants without shame
- Made Galileo truth disclaim;
- Thy system, oh! illustrious sage,
- Abjure, to calm their barbarous rage.
- In the most silent hour of night
- See Paris filled with dire affright;
- See carnage raging all around,
- Thousands expiring on the ground;
- Brothers by brothers slain, expire,
- The son assassinates the sire;
- Against the husband see the wife
- In frenzy turn the murderous knife;
- Inhuman priests their rage excite,
- In blood and slaughter they delight.
- Noted for manners mild, and mirth,
- Can the French owe to these their birth?
- You Jansenists and Molinists, who
- Each other with such hate pursue;
- Who fierce disputes and contests hold,
- As Grecian sophists did of old;
- Fear lest your quarrels should once more
- Occasion bloodshed as before.
- With less of furious rage contend,
- You know not where your jars may end.
- The Grecian sages you despise,
- Though by the world reputed wise;
- Their ignorance dark as shades of night,
- Is dissipated by your light:
- But though such guides were weak and blind,
- Though oft they might mislead mankind,
- They ne’er made persecution rage;
- Copy their moderation sage.
- Their various errors you may blame,
- But let your mildness be the same.
- Ye wretches, would you comprehend
- Religion’s nature and its end,
- Behold Marseilles, when every gale
- Did pestilence and death exhale,
- When the tomb swallowed up the dead,
- The land when ruin overspread
- The towns of citizens, the plains
- Deprived of the industrious swains,
- And Terror filled each neighboring state,
- Lest they should share its hapless fate.
- The good Belzuns* then strove to save
- His flock from the devouring grave:
- Langeron prodigal of breath,
- Braved all the fierce attacks of death;
- While you strained hard with labor vain
- Your trivial dogmas to sustain;
- And all your conferences were full
- Of Father Quesnel, and the bull;
- Points, by the knowing valued not,
- And which will shortly be forgot.
- Must we, to instruct the human race,
- Humanity itself deface?
- Must hatred’s torch light on the way,
- Lest we from sacred truth should stray?
- The man who can compassion show,
- Whose heart can feel another’s woe,
- Can by example virtue teach,
- Seems most persuasively to preach.
- The pedant, with o’erweening pride,
- Intent to argue and decide,
- Who blows up persecution’s flame,
- A vile impostor we should name.

ON PEACE CONCLUDED IN 1736.

- Ætna within its cavern dire,
- Thunder conceals and liquid fire;
- On earth the fiery torrent pours,
- And its inhabitants devours,
- Your steps, afflicted Dryads, turn
- From dreary plains which always burn;
- Those caverns where hell seems to breathe
- In fire and sulphur from beneath;
- Those gulfs which to Tartarus bend,
- Their furious floods incessant send.
- More fierce and terrible the Po
- Makes its fierce stream its banks o’erflow;
- Pours through the plain its furious waves,
- Foams, and with dreadful uproar raves:
- It spreads destruction through the plain,
- Fright, terror, death, compose its train;
- And through Ferrara’s fire conveys
- The spoils of nations to the seas.
- This war where elements contend,
- Which heaven’s expanse with fury rend;
- These shocks from which all nature quakes,
- With which earth’s solid basis shakes:
- Scourges of heaven which oft appear
- To hang o’er this sad hemisphere;
- Are all disasters much less dire,
- Than statesmen who too high aspire;
- From them less desolation springs,
- Than from the dangerous feuds of kings.
- From India’s verge to Gallia’s shore,
- One family the sun rolls o’er:
- O’er this love only still should reign,
- And union amongst all maintain.
- Mortals, you’re bound by sacred tie,
- Therefore those cruel arms lay by;
- Can you advantage gain by fight?
- Can you in havoc find delight?
- When you’re sunk in death’s dismal gloom,
- What bliss expect you in the tomb?
- Those soldiers well deserve applause,
- Who combat in their country’s cause;
- But you for hire your lives expose,
- You’re paid to combat others’ foes:
- You die to prop some tyrant’s throne,
- Some tyrant to your eyes unknown;
- You are hired assassins to defend
- Lords, who ill pay you in the end.
- Such are those greedy birds of prey,
- Those animals which man obey,
- Who can their native fierceness tame,
- And teach them to pursue their game.
- The sounding horn excites their rage,
- And makes them ardent to engage;
- They headlong pour upon the game,
- Not led by interest, choice, or fame;
- The victory they strive to gain,
- Although no prize they can obtain.
- Italy, climate of delight,
- How much you suffered by the fight!
- With desolation covered o’er,
- You’re Europe’s garden now no more!
- An army of confederate powers,
- With greediness your crops devours;
- Although the cursed, destructive band,
- Vowed to avenge your injured land:
- Ravaged and desolate you fight
- To assert a foreign master’s right.
- Let kings be armed, yet discords cease,
- Let them all reign like gods of peace;
- Let them the thunder bear on high,
- But never launch it through the sky.
- The faithful shepherd, who befriends
- His flock, and with due care attends;
- By care and diligence obtains
- The applause of all the neighboring swains:
- Unpitied may that shepherd die,
- Who lets his flocks neglected lie,
- Who can his fleecy care expose,
- To perish by the wolves, their foes.
- In that king’s fame, can I take part,
- Whose frenzy stabs me to the heart:
- A king, at whose capricious will,
- My heart’s blood I’m obliged to spill?
- When I’m by indigence oppressed,
- Diseased, deprived of needful rest;
- Say, shall my lot more blessed appear,
- When I our prince’s glories hear;
- Shall my distresses all be o’er,
- If German plains are drenched in gore?
- Colbert, whose praises we resound,
- Who planted arts on Gallic ground,
- France shall revere you as a sage;
- Posterity in every age
- Shall own you born the land to bless.
- And Louvois be applauded less,
- Louvois, who with ambition dire,
- Set the Palatinate on fire;
- And Holland to destroy aspired,
- Had with his fury fate conspired.
- Let Louis, even in decline,
- Still as the greatest monarch shine;
- But may he wisely fame acquire,
- Not to the conqueror’s wreath aspire;
- Louis in peace claims just applause,
- His subjects all revere his laws;
- Their happiness from Louis springs—
- Louis, the greatest, best of kings.

TO ABBÉ CHAULIEU.*

Sully, July 3, 1717.

To thee who dost in lyric lays
Rival the famed Anacreon’s praise,
Who dost voluptuous pleasure preach,
And by your life free living teach;
Thou blessed with such a tuneful mind,
That when to bed by gout confined,
Thy lute there yields as pleasing sounds
As at a feast where mirth abounds—

I write to you from Sully, where Chapelle lived, that is, got drunk for two years together. I wish he had left something of his poetical talent in this castle; it would be very convenient for those who undertake to write to you. But as we are told that he bequeathed it entirely to you, I was obliged to have recourse to magic, of which you have frequently made mention.

Then searching all the castle round,
Soon as the darkest tower I found,
I called upon gay Chapelle’s sprite
From realms where reigns eternal night.
To the infernal gods I made
No offering when I called the shade,
Like knaves who erst in servile days,
Loudly sang forth their godhead’s praise;
Or Endor’s witch whose cursed art
With terror struck Saul’s dastard heart,
Who thought the devil before his eyes
Had made the prophet’s spectre rise.
But we can raise a bard from hell,
Without a magic rite or spell:
A song alone must sure suffice,
To make a poet’s ghost arise;
I thus addressed him: “Much loved friend,
Chapelle, from Pluto’s realms ascend.
A poet wants your kindly aid,
A poet now invokes your shade.
Yet we are told, propitious gods
Have raised you to the blessed abodes,
And placed you ’twixt the powers divine,
That over verse preside, and wine.
Therefore, kind Chapelle, much loved friend,
From realms above on earth descend.”
This prayer familiarly addressed,
Was heard with favor by the blessed,
Though it to merit had no claim,
But being offered in your name.
Before me Chapelle stood confessed,
With transport glowed my ravished breast;
In one hand he held forth the lyre,
Which charmed so oft the heavenly choir,
Gassendi’s* works he with him brought,
With various, well-framed systems fraught;
He on Bachaunon leaning walked,
And with him of his journey talked;
A journey which, whilst he recited,
All those that heard him were delighted.

I asked him by what art he, during his residence in our world,

Touching his lyre could always please
With flowing numbers, and with ease,
Which nature only could impart,
Which ne’er were faulty found by art?
He said: “By love and wine alone,
To me the power of verse was known.
To witty Chaulieu for a time,
I taught the happy art to rhyme;
To you he should in turn impart
The precepts of the tuneful art.”

ANSWER TO THE FOREGOING.

Sir:—

I should never have thought that such a man as you could have any faith in spirits, and still less that you could believe what they say when they return from God knows where. The Epicurean philosophers, to whose sect you say I belong, have, thank heaven, enabled me to doubt of the reality of Chapelle’s apparition, and equally to distrust the insinuations of his shade, of your politeness, and of my own self-love, which you have with great address endeavored to interest upon this occasion. Among many other good reasons which should induce you to distrust this apparition, you have in yourself an essential one, which should determine you to give it no sort of credit, as it did me.

Do not believe a lying shade,
Who bids you learn the poet’s trade
From me, so much below you;
Such progress you have in it made,
That only Phœbus’ heavenly aid
Can now new light bestow you.

This is all I can say in answer to the prettiest letter that ever was written, a letter whose flattery I should not listen to, and whose brilliancy of imagination deters me from attempting to answer it in form, as the answer would, in all likelihood, be unworthy of a pupil of Chapelle, to whom you might very possibly show it, as you have so great an intimacy with him forty years after his death.

But though I distrust my head, I am always sure of my heart, and in proof of the esteem and affection I have for you, of which you ask me a token that cannot be called in question, I shall with the sincerity which I have always professed, tell you my real opinion of the affair which you have communicated to me.

Paris, July 26, 1717.

TO PRESIDENT HÉNAULT, AUTHOR OF AN EXCELLENT WORK UPON THE HISTORY OF FRANCE.

Cirey, Sept. 2, 1744.

Goddess who dost make blessed the earth,
Health, who to temperance owest thy birth,
Who pleasures to the wife dispense,
Whose joys are governed by good sense,
Who dost with gilded rays adorn
Our youth, of life the brilliant morn;
And oft dost cheer life’s gloomy close
With calm content and soft repose;
Oh, health-dispensing goddess, now
Listen propitious to my vow;
By thy kind star conduct to rest
A mortal worthy to be blessed.
All other gods unite to shed
Their blessings upon Hénault’s head.
Will you, who hold the place of all,
Alone prove deaf to Hénault’s call?
To sweet society once more,
And to his noble feats restore
Hénault, whose happy vein of wit
Can every taste and genius hit.
To him your needful succor lend,
For him time’s rapid course suspend;
So well he knows time to employ,
So well divides ’twixt care and joy.
Women, enchanted by his ease,
Have thought he only knew to please;
Men, who the depth of science sound,
Have ever thought him most profound;
The god of jollity and mirth
Thinks him the merriest soul on earth.
Immortal as his works, may he
Live late posterity to see,
Live long as all the kings, his pen
So well brings to the view of men,
Whose characters so well he draws,
Their deeds relates, explains their laws.
Since he so many ways has shone,
Restore his stomach to its tone.
Of every talent he’s possessed,
With every virtue glows his breast;
The art to please is all his own,
The art to enjoy to him is known;
All this, however, is a jest,
If he’s unable to digest.
I wonder not that Desfontaines,
Who tires all mortals with his strain,
Should in his garret midst his lumber
Of dusty books have easy slumber,
That he should still be in good case,
Though void of virtue and of grace.
Aglaia or Sylvia ne’er invite
Pedants who without genius write,
Whose heaped citations readers tire
Whose writings dulness’ fumes inspire;
His company all mortals cloys,
He is reduced to herd with boys.
Alas! to geniuses alone.
These indigestions cursed are known.

After this hymn to the goddess of health, which I have made with the utmost sincerity of friendship, permit me, sir, to add to it mentally a short Gloria Patri. I have as much occasion for it as you, but I am more solicitous about your welfare than my own. May the goddess of health first shower down her favors upon you; drink the waters of Plombières cheerfully, and return with all speed to Cirey before the Austrian hussars enter Lorraine. Such folks give no waters to drink but those of the river Styx. Do not forget that amongst the multitude of your well-wishers there are two here who desire that you should stop awhile in your journey for their sakes.

CANTO OF AN EPIC POEM.*

COMPOSED BY JEROME CARRÉ.

Found among his papers after his decease.

King Charles was born to undergo,
Through every stage of life, much woe;
To education naught he owed;
Small care was on his youth bestowed;
Burgundy’s duke,† in broils and strife
Involved him in the prime of life;
A lawyer at Goness would fain
Have wrought his ruin by chicane;
Before a court a crier called him;
An English chief in battle mauled him:
He wandered much, and, like poor sinner,
Oft missed a mass, and oft a dinner;
Not long in the same place he stayed;
By mother,‡ uncle, friends betrayed,
And by his mistress; thus unfriended
Was the poor king, and unattended.
His Agnes’ heart an English page
Found means to share as to engage:
A sorcerer dire, named Conculix,
By hell inspired, with magic tricks
His head quite topsy-turvy turned;
By destiny he long was spurned;
Hardships to bear was his sad case;
To bear them well God gave him grace.
The troop of lovers, proud and gay,
Took from that distant tower its way,
Where Conculix disturbed the brain
Of Agnes, Bonneau, and their train.
They marched along that forest wild,
Which now of Orleans is styled.
The spouse of Titan, queen of night,
Rising scarce streaked the shades with light;
Soldiers they saw on distant ground,
With doublets short and bonnets round;
Upon their corselets bright combined
Leopards and fleurs-de-lis shined.
The monarch halted when he spied
The cohort through the forest ride;
Dunois and Joan some space before
Advance, the matter to explore.
Agnes, her arms as lilies white
Extending, urged the king to flight;
But virtuous Joan, who straight drew nigh,
On captives chained soon cast her eye;
With downcast eyes the earth they viewed,
Each face sad consternation showed:
“Alas,” said she, “it plain appears,
That these are captive cavaliers;
The voice of duty now commands
From fetters to unloose their hands:
Let’s fall on, Bastard, undismayed;
You’re Dunois, I am Orleans’ maid.”
This said, they fell with rested lance
On those who with the chiefs advance;
So fierce were Dunois and the maid,
Such fury, too, the ass displayed,
That all those warriors, filled with fright,
Nimbly betook themselves to flight.
Joan then, transported with delight,
Accosted thus each fettered knight:
“Knights, who the chains of England wore,
Thanks to the king, you’re slaves no more;
Now follow him where’er he goes,
And wreak just vengeance on his foes.”
Although this was proposed with grace,
Distrust still sat on each knight’s face;
My readers with impatience glow
Who were these doughty knights to know.
These knights were blades in Paris known
For deeds they would not choose to own,
Who were condemned to plough the seas,
Which might by all be seen with ease.
The king this seeing, deeply sighed;
“These stab me to the heart,” he cried.
“Do here the English empire claim,
Are then decrees made in their name?
The mass is only said for them;
They can my subjects now condemn.”
The king came, by compassion led,
To him who seemed the band to head.
No felon’s air could eyes shock more;
His beard a pointed chin curled o’er,
With strange distortion rolled his eyes
Replete, more than his mouth, with lies,
They squinted ever on the ground;
His eyebrows red most sternly frowned;
There sat imposture, leagued with fraud;
Boldness dwelt on his forehead broad,
Contempt of all remorse and laws,
His teeth still gnashed, and foamed his jaws.
Seeing his prince, the knave took care
To assume an humble, contrite air,
And framed into some show of grace
The features of his shocking face.
The mastiff impudent and sour,
Hoarse-throated, eager to devour,
Thus fawns when he his master spies,
Licks both his hands, and crouching lies;
Grows mild, although by nature rude,
And humbly cringes for his food.
Or Satan has been painted so,
When just ’scaped from the realms below;
He horns and tail hides from the eyes,
And in an anchorite’s disguise,
Like lecherous monk in secret goes,
Sister discreet to tempt, or Rose.
The king of France, by such grimace
Imposed on, pitied much his case,
And thinking him by fraud oppressed,
Words of encouragement addressed.
“What is your trade,” said he, “and name?
Say, for what deed deserving blame
Severe tribunals thus ordain
That you should plough the angry main?”
The man condemned, with mournful tone,
Replied: “Great Sir, my name’s Frélon;*
Nantes is the famous city, where
These lips first breathed the vital air;
No mortal e’er loved Jesus more,
Some time the dress of monks I wore;
My morals are as pure as theirs;
The prettiest boys had all my cares;
Urged by the love of honest praise,
To virtue I consigned my days;
Genius at Paris I displayed,
Famed in the author’s noble trade;
Dearly L— my writings bought,
Great I at Place-Maubert am thought;
There justice never was refused me,
Though authors often have abused me:
But impious malice oft would hit me,
And with the cloister’s vices twit me,
The world’s, and many cheats beside,
But I’m by conscience justified.”
The king, when this account he hears,
Cries: “Henceforth lay aside your fears;
And say, are all now bound like you
To Marseilles, valiant men and true?”
“Oh, royal Sir,” Frélon replied,
“In all these men you may confide;
All were alike by nature framed.
This abbé next me, Guignon* named,
Is, though he otherwise might seem
To some, most worthy of esteem;
Nor quarrelsome nor liar he,
Nor slanderer, but from malice free.
An humble mien cannot conceal
In Maucheix† true religious zeal;
His ardor, for the truth to show,
He discipline would undergo.
When Chaugat‡ talks on gloss and text,
Rabbins themselves would be perplexed.
That lawyer unemployed has taken
The road to heaven, the bar forsaken.
In Vaceras§ all virtues meet,
He’s honest, and his temper’s sweet,
He’s mild, to charity inclined,
The love of truth inspires his mind.
All these who laurels justly claim,
Who rival Cicero’s great name,
Oh, dire disgrace and sad to tell!
Victims like me to envy fell.
Unjustly to our charge ’tis laid,
That we from truth have often strayed:
From virtue persecution springs,
You know this truth, oh, best of kings.”
Whilst thus all faults he strove to hide,
Two persons grave the monarch spied,
Whilst each to hide his visage tries,
“Who are these bashful slaves?” he cries.
Said Frélon: “There two worthies stand,
Honest as e’er took oar in hand.
One’s Fantin,* preacher of great name,
Whom neither rich nor poor can blame;
To spare the living he thought best,
The dying robbed whom he confessed.
T’other’s Brizet,† who nuns directed,
No favors from them he expected,
But still their properties would take,
And only did it for God’s sake:
Though money he loved not at all,
He’d not in bad hands have it fall.
A wretch there meets your royal eye,
With a long head placed quite awry,
On number three it often runs,
He looks like one of Tartuffe’s sons,
All his cursed tricks his village knows,
He’s pointed at where’er he goes,
Such stories of him go about,
That some are true, I make no doubt,
But wretches with such malice fraught,
Are quite below a monarch’s thought.
This noble band of worthies ends
With Meaulabelle,* my best of friends;
This the most mean but most devoted
Of six poor dogs who for me voted;
He oft quite rapt with thoughts high flown,
Takes others’ pockets for his own:
But in his works he is so wise,
To hide strong truths from feeble eyes;
Of truth he always had a dread,
He knows it fools has oft misled;
Therefore he always would conceal it,
And never liked much to reveal it.
The truth I to my prince declare;
That’s dealing openly and fair.
All as a hero you excel,
This to posterity I’ll tell.
The victims of black calumny
Protect, as you have made them free;
Save the good from the wicked’s snare,
To pay us, and revenge, take care,
And here Frélon his word does plight,
We all will in your favor write.”
Then at the English much he railed,
Who had so long in France prevailed;
Spoke loudly for the Salic law,
And swore that he his pen would draw;
Would save the state by it alone,
And prop his injured monarch’s throne.
The king admired his skill profound,
Looked kindly upon all around;
Telling them with most gracious air,
They all should his protection share.
Fair Agnes sympathy expressed,
Emotions tender filled her breast:
Her heart was good; the female mind,
By love, to mercy is inclined;
The heroine and the rigid prude
With virtue are not so endued.
“It needs,” said she, “must be confessed,
This day these wretches have been blessed;
Since they behold your royal face,
Freedom smiles on their happy race.
Too much the judges now presume,
Without their prince to fix men’s doom;
All law my lover should ordain,
Their sentence is both void and vain.”
But Joan, less tender, told the king,
They all deserved alike to swing;
That all who were of Frélon’s trade,
Public examples should be made.
Dunois, more prudent and more wise,
Like warrior deeply skilled, replies:
“Soldiers we lack to assert our right,
Limbs are most needful in a fight;
Limbs these men have, and as things stand,
Whilst we by arms would win the land,
Whilst combats are our only care,
Writing we may contrive to spare:
Then let us lift the fraudful band,
And with a musket arm each hand;
Who used the pen, should henceforth wield
The warrior’s arms in tented field.”
Dunois’ advice the king liked well;
The band before him prostrate fell,
They sighed, a flood of tears they shed,
Then to a yard they all were led,
Before the banquet-house, where all
The courtiers, in a gorgeous hall,
Waited on Charles, and on the fair,
And drank and feasted, void of care.
Agnes to Bonneau gave command,
With plenty to regale the band;
And not one soul of them complained,
For well they fared with what remained.
The time of supper gayly spent,
To bed the king and Agnes went.
Next day with great surprise they rose,
Finding they all had lost their clothes;
Her jewels Agnes sought with care,
And pearl necklace rich and rare;
But all in vain; yet what she most
Regretted, was Charles’ picture lost.
Bonneau, the purser, could not find
The treasure to his care consigned;
It cost him many a heavy groan,
To see plate, linen, wardrobe, flown.
The scribbling crew, to thieving bred,
Who by the gazetteer were led,
With eager haste, had in the night
Plundered the court, and taken flight.
They all with Plato were agreed,
That soldiers luxury don’t need;
Then through by-path their way they win,
And share the booty at an inn;
There they a tract composed profound,
For morals and for doctrine sound;
Pleasure and wealth it taught to scorn,
And showed that man for man was born;
That, born equals, they should share
God’s gifts, and all their burdens bear;
And that, to make their lot more blessed,
Goods should in common be possessed.
’Twas soon exposed to public view,
Enriched with notes and comments, too,
Wrote with religious, good intent,
With preface and advertisement.
The royal household, quite distressed,
Was, the meantime, deprived of rest;
Through every forest and each plain
They ran about, but all in vain.
Thus Phineus erst whom Thrace obeyed,
And thus Æneas were afraid,
When harpies, fluttering on the wing,
Seized on the dinner of each king.
Agnes and Dorothea now,
Their charms to cover knew not how:
Poor Bonneau grieved in such a strain,
From laughter they could scarce refrain:
“Ah,” cried he, “we such loss ne’er bore
By war’s sad fortune heretofore;
The rogues took all; our monarch’s mind
Too much to mercy is inclined;
Thus his indulgence is repaid;
We gain this by the scribbling trade.”
Agnes, compassionate and mild,
Who on each turn of fortune smiled,
In answer said: “My dear Bonneau,
Take not the thing in dudgeon so;
Do not from hence conceive a spite
To learning, and to those that write:
For I could many authors name,
Whom Envy’s self could scarce defame;
Who still prove faithful to the throne,
Do good, but never make it known;
Whose song to virtue gives the prize,
Who practise it before our eyes;
Who, on the public good intent,
To instruct as well as charm are bent;
These are beloved, though some are drones,
Industrious bees our country owns.”
Bonneau replies: “’Tis mighty fine;
But yet, methinks, the king should dine,
And I cannot, as I’m a sinner,
Without the money find a dinner.”
They comfort him, with courage rare
All strive their sufferings to repair;
Then to the town they make retreat,
And to the castle, noble seat
Of Charles, and of his gallant knights,
Whither good cheer with wine invites.
The knights were but half-clad at best,
The ladies were but simply dressed;
They entered harassed, sight most odd,
Bare one foot, t’other badly shod.

EPISTLE ON THE NEWTONIAN PHILOSOPHY.*

TO THE MARCHIONESS OF CHÂTELET.

Immortal Emily, most powerful mind,
Pallas of France, and glory of thy kind;
Surpassing age, even in the bloom of youth,
The pupil, friend, of Newton and of truth;
Thy fires transpierce me, and thy charms control;
I feel the force, the brightness of thy soul!
To thee attracted, I renounce the bays
Sought on the stage, while yet I lived on praise,
My wit, corrected, roves not as before,
Of vain applause idolatrous no more!
Let earth-born Rufus with resentment rave,
And drag his senseless fury to the grave.
In rhyme still straining coldly to enclose
Some trivial thoughts that would depreciate prose,
That harmless thunder let him hurl at me,
Which first his rage for others might decree.
To blast my fame let pedant Zoilus seek,
And spread unmeaning malice once a week;
With me their envy withers in the bud;
I see no tracks imprinted in the mud.
Philosophy, all charming, powerful queen,
Lifts the wise mind above corroding spleen.
Happy on high where Newton now remains,
Knows he on earth if enmity yet reigns?
Not more than he my enemies I know,
While truth august invites me from below.
Already see she opes the gate of day!
The lists I enter, and pursue my way!
The massy whirlpools heaving still for place,
Heaped without rule, and moving without space,
Those learned phantoms vanish from my sight,
And day comes on me with her genuine light!
That vast expanse, of being the abode,
Space that contains the immensity of God,
Sees in her breast this bounded system move,
Of planets, worlds beneath us and above,
Whose whole extent so wondrous to our sense,
Is but a point, an atom in the immense.
God speaks, and chaos at His voice subsides,
In various orbs the mighty mass divides;
At once they gravitate, they strive to fall,
One centre seeking which attracts them all.
That soul of nature, that all moving spring,
Lay long concealed, an unregarded thing;
Till Newton’s compass moving through the space
Measures all nature, and discovers place.
The famous laws of motion are surveyed,
Drawn back the veil, the heavens are all displayed.
His learned hand unfolds the glittering robe
That clothes yon lucid, animated globe,
Which guides the seasons and which rules the day,
Mine eyes distinguish each emitted ray.
With purple, azure, emerald and rose,
The immortal tissue of his habit glows.
Each emanation in pure substance bears
The various colors that all nature wears;
Those blended tints illuminate our eyes,
Give life to matter, fill the expanded skies.
Eternal powers, who, near the King of kings,
Burn with His fires, and cover with your wings
His throne; O say! when viewing Newton’s plan,
Were you not jealous of that wondrous man?
The sea, too, hears him! with stupendous dance
I see the humid element advance!
Towards heaven it rises; heaven attracts it high:
But central power, more potent, as more nigh,
Each effort stops: the sea recoils; it roars;
Sinks in its bed, and rolls against the shores.
Ye comets, dreaded like the bolts of Jove,
In vast ellipses regularly move!
Cease with your motions mortals to affright:
Remount, descend near the great orb of light:
Elance your fires; fly, and as each appears,
Restore the vigor of exhausted spheres.
Thou, sister of the sun, who in the skies,
Of dazzled sages mocked the feeble eyes;
Newton has marked the limits of thy race,
March on, illumine night, we know thy place.
Earth, change thy form; let the great law of matter
Depress thy poles, and heighten the equator.
Avoid, thou pole, that fixed to sight appears,
The frozen chariot of the northern bears;
Embrace in each of thy immense careers,
Almost three hundred centuries of years.*
How beautiful these objects! how the mind
Flies to those truths enlightened and refined!
Yes, in the breast of God, it may rejoice,
And, far from matter, hear the Eternal’s voice.
Thou whom that voice familiarly invites,
Say, even in youth, the season of delights,
How hast thou dared, in spite of custom’s force,
To move so boldly through so vast a course?
To follow Newton in that boundless road,
Where nature’s lost, and everything but God?
Pursuing thee I venture to advance,
And bring home truth, that wanderer, to France.
While Algarotti,* sure to please and teach,
Conducts the stranger to the Latian beach,
With native flowers adorns the beauteous maid,
And Tiber wonders at such worth displayed;
I grasp the compass, and the outlines trace,
And with coarse crayons imitate her face.
The immortal fair all simple, noble, grand,
Should I attempt it, my unskilful hand,
To her, as thee, no lustre could impart,
Above all praise, and far above my art.

. . . . un malheureux visage,Qui d’un Chevalier Romain captiva le courage. ‘. . . . aimant sa renomméeEn avouant qu’elle aime est sûre d’être aimée. . . . . trace des soupirs, et d’un style plaintif,Dans son champ de victoire il se dit son captif.

[1 ] Cardinal Fleury.

[1 ] The true state of the case was that Abbé Desfontaines and some others as malicious as himself, decried the tragedy of “Mahomet,” as a wicked and scandalous performance: the affair made so much noise that the prime minister, Cardinal Fleury, who had long before read and approved of it, was obliged to advise the author to withdraw it.

[1 ] What the editor foresaw in 1742 did actually come to pass in 1751, when this tragedy was presented with universal applause. Cabal and persecution gave way to the voice of the public, and perhaps the more readily as many by this time began to feel some remorse at having forced a man to quit his country, who had labored so successfully for the honor of it.

[* ] The great earthquake occurred on November 1, 1755. The ruin was instantaneous. Between 30,000 and 40,000 lives were lost in the shock and in the fire.

[* ] The universal chain is not, as some have thought, a regular gradation which connects all beings. There is, in all probability, an immense distance between man and beast, as well as between man and substances of a superior nature; there is likewise an infinity between God and all created beings whatever. There are none of these insensible gradations in the globes which move round our sun in their several periods, whether we consider their mass, their distances, or their satellites.

If we may believe Pope, man is not capable of discovering the reason why the satellites of Jove are less than Jove himself; he is herein mistaken, such an error as this may well be overlooked in so fine a genius. Every smatterer in mathematics could have told Lord Bolingbroke and Mr. Pope, that if the satellites of Jove had equalled him in magnitude, they could not have moved round him; but no mathematician is able to discover the regular gradation in the bodies of the solar system.

It is not true, that the world could not exist if a single atom was taken from it: This was justly observed by Mr. Crousaz, a learned geometrician, in a tract which he wrote against Pope. He seems to have been right in this point, though he was fully refuted by Mr. Warburton and Mr. Silhouette.

The concatenation of events was admitted and defended with the utmost ingenuity by the celebrated philosopher Leibnitz; it is worth explaining. All bodies and all events depend upon other bodies and other events. That cannot be denied; but all bodies are not essential to the support of the universe, and the preservation of its order; neither are all events necessary in the general series of events. A drop of water, a grain of sand more or less, can cause no revolution in the general system. Nature is not confined to any determinate quantity, or any determinate form. No planet moves in a curve completely regular; there is nothing in Nature of a figure exactly mathematical; no fixed quantity is required for any operation: Nature is never very strict or rigid in her method of proceeding. It is, therefore, absurd to advance, that the removal of an atom from the earth might be the cause of its destruction.

This holds, in like manner, with regard to events. The cause of every event is contained in some precedent event; this no philosopher has ever called in question. If Cæsar’s mother had never gone through the Cæsarian operation, Cæsar had never subverted the commonwealth; he could never have adopted Octavius, and Octavius could never have chosen Tiberius for his successor in the empire. The marriage of Maximilian with the heiress of Burgundy and the Low Countries, gave rise to a war which lasted two hundred years. But Cæsar’s spitting on the right or left side, or the Duchess of Burgundy’s dressing her head in this manner or in that, could have altered nothing in the general plan of Providence.

It follows, therefore, that there are some events which have consequences and others which have none. Their chain resembles a genealogical tree, some branches of which disappear at the first generation, whilst the race is continued by others. There are many events which pass away without ever generating others. Thus in every machine there are some effects indispensably necessary towards producing motion, and others which are productive of nothing at all. The wheels of a coach make it go; but whether they raise more or less dust, the journey is finished alike. Such is the general order of the world, that the links of the chain would not be in the least discomposed by a small increase or diminution of the quantity of matter, or by an inconsiderable deviation from regularity.

The chain is not in an absolute plenum: it has been demonstrated that the celestial bodies perform their revolutions in an unresisting medium. Every space is not filled. It follows then, that there is not a progression of bodies from an atom to the most remote fixed star. There may of consequence be immense intervals between beings imbued with sensation, as well as between those that are not. We cannot then be certain, that man must be placed in one of these links joined to another by an uninterrupted connection. That all things are linked together means only that all things are regularly disposed of in their proper order. God is the cause and the regulator of that order. Homer’s Jupiter was the slave of destiny; but, according to more rational philosophy, God is the master of destiny. (See Clarke’s Treatise “Upon the Existence of God.”)

[* ]Sub Deo justo nemo miser nisi mereatur.—St. Augustine. The meaning of this ipse dixit of the Saint is, no one is miserable under the government of a just God, without deserving to be so.

[* ] It is self-evident, that man cannot acquire this knowledge without assistance. The human mind derives all its knowledge from experience; no experience can give us an insight into what preceded our existence, into what is to follow it, nor into what supports it at present. In what manner have we received life? What is the spring upon which it depends? How is our brain capable of ideas and memory? In what manner do our limbs obey every motion of the will. Of all this we are entirely ignorant. Is our globe the only one that is inhabited? Was it created after other globes, or at the same instant? Does every particular species of plants proceed from a first plant? Is every species of animals produced by two first animals? The most profound philosophers are no more able to solve these questions than the most ignorant of men. All these questions may be reduced to the vulgar proverb: Was the hen before the egg, or the egg before the hen? The proverb is rather low, but it confounds the utmost penetration of human wisdom, which is utterly at a loss with regard to the first principles of things without supernatural assistance.

[* ] As God is an infinite being, His nature must of consequence be unknown to all men. As this is a philosophical work, it was judged necessary to cite the opinions of philosophers. All the ancients, without exception, looked on matter as eternal; this is almost the only point on which they agreed.

[* ] Confucius should not be confounded with these; he confined himself to natural religion, and discovered everything that could be discovered without the light of revelation.

[* ] When this poem was written, the author could not foresee that flames were to destroy a great part of that unhappy city in which fagots were too often kindled.

[* ] We are not by the word Church, in this place, to understand the Catholic Church. Nothing is here alluded to but the abominable fanaticism of some ecclesiastics detested by the Church in all ages.

[* ] Jean Baptist Rousseau, in exile, became embittered against Voltaire, who had said of the former’s “Ode to Posterity,” that it was not likely to reach its destination. He circulated several unflattering criticisms on Voltaire’s recent productions, including “Zaïre,” the tragedy which placed the young author at the head of the dramatic poets. Voltaire took a merry revenge in this variegated piece, “The Temple of Taste,” which set the town laughing at the good-humored badinage he so freely distributes among his literary and fashionable contemporaries.

[† ] Cardinal de Fleury.

[* ] Scudéri was the declared enemy of Corneille. He had a party, which greatly preferred him to that father of the stage. He boasted that four doorkeepers were killed when one of his pieces were represented, and said he would never yield to Corneille till there were five doorkeepers killed (illegible) the representation of the Cid or the Horatii.

[* ] Rousseau’s lines.

[† ] A privy counsellor; a man whose merit was acknowledged all over Europe. Rousseau had written some bad verses against him.

[* ] It is universally known, that Rousseau was condemned to make an amende honorable, and banished for life, on account of certain infamous verses, which he wrote against his friends, and laid to the charge of Mons. Samin of the French Academy.

[* ] Leibnitz was born at Leipsic, on the 23d of June, 1646, and died at Hanover on the 14th of November, 1716. He was the greatest ornament to learning that Germany ever produced; he was a more universal genius than Newton, though, perhaps, not so great a mathematician. To a profound knowledge in every branch of natural philosophy, he added a refined taste for polite learning; he even wrote French poetry. He owed his fortune entirely to his reputation. He enjoyed considerable pensions from the emperor of Germany, the emperor of Russia, the king of England, and many other sovereigns.

[* ] She was buried on a bank of the Seine.

[* ] This poem was written in 1736. It is a piece of humor founded upon philosophy and the public good.

[* ] The author of a treatise entitled “The French Cook.”

[* ] This calumny, cited by Bayle and the Abbé Houteville, is taken from an old Hebrew book, entitled “Joldos Jeseut,” in which Jonathan is given to this sacred person as husband; and he who raises Jonathan’s suspicions is called Joseph Panther.

[* ] A mob would have taken Colbert out of his grave at St. Eustache’s Church.

[† ] A libel in verse, written against Philip duke of Orleans, regent of the kingdom.

[* ] Rousseau.

[* ] The late M. Vadé has done his readers the justice to believe that they know, that Macareus is happiness, and Thelema desire or will.

[* ] The count de Saxe, marshal of France, being dangerously ill during the battle, was carried through the ranks in a litter, as his weakness, and the pains he felt, rendered him unable to ride. When the king embraced him after the victory, he expressed the same sentiments that are ascribed to him here.

[† ] The duke of Harcourt had invested Tournay.

[‡ ] A marshal of France.

[§ ] Master of the artillery.

[* ] The duke of Penthièvre, who had signalized himself at the battle of Dettingen.

[† ] Monsieur de Danoy was taken by his nurse out of a heap of dead and dying men at the battle of Malplaquet, two days after it was fought: this is a certain fact. The same woman came with a passport, accompanied by a sergeant of the king’s regiment, in which he was then an officer.

[‡ ] The lieutenant-generals in their several departments.

[* ] He was upon the point of being created a marshal of France.

[* ] Nineteen officers belonging to the regiment of Hainault, were either killed or wounded. The prince de Beauveau, brother to Craon, afterwards served in Italy.

[* ] The duke of Cumberland.

[* ] This reproach of ferocity is levelled at the soldiers alone, not at the officers, who are as generous as ours. I have been informed by letter, that when the English battalion filed off from Fontenoy, many of the soldiers belonging to that body cried out, no quarter.

[† ] The Norman regiment, which charged the English battalion a second time, at the same time that the household troops, the gendarmes, the carbineers, etc., poured down upon it.

[‡ ] The count d’Estrées at the head of his division, and M. de Brionne at the head of his regiment, had forced the English grenadiers sword in hand.

[* ] Since the reign of St. Louis, no king of France had in person defeated the English in a pitched battle.

[† ] The count de Noailles attacked the battalion of English infantry with a brigade of horse, which afterwards took their artillery.

[‡ ] Tournay was the principal city belonging to the French under the first race of their kings. The tomb of Childeric was found there.

[* ] The city of Ghent was surrendered to his majesty on July 11th, after M. de Chaila, at the head of the brigades of Crillon and Normandy, the regiment of Graffin, etc., had defeated a body of English.

[† ] Charles the fifth was born at Tournay in the year 1500, on the 25th of February. Philip, archduke of Austria, was his father, and Joan of Castile, heiress to the crown of Spain, his mother.

[‡ ] Of the modern Cæsars, i.e., the emperors of Germany.

[* ] This piece was written as a defence of the “Mondain” (see “The Worldling”), which had been prosecuted.

[* ] A handful of hay at the end of a pole, called Manipulus, was the first standard of the Romans.

[* ] This poem is of ancient date: the author was but eighteen when he composed it, and it was occasioned by a lady who was in the circumstances here spoken of.

[* ] In 1732, a gentleman of Brittany, for a frolic, wrote letters to several of the wits of Paris, and signed them with a woman’s name. This artifice imposed upon everybody, and gave occasion to the present answer.

[* ] Dufrene, a celebrated actor at Paris; Mademoiselle Gossin, a very graceful actress, who played Zaïre the first time the tragedy of that name was represented.

[† ] A comedy of M. Destouches.

[* ] The “Capricious Sires” was a comedy of Rousseau’s, which so disgusted the audience, that they would not suffer it to be acted through.

[* ] Written at Lunéville, Nov. 8, 1748.

[* ] Written at Lunéville, the 18th of November, 1748.

[* ] Written in 1721.

[* ] Written in the year 1732.

[* ] M. de Gervasi, a celebrated physician of Paris, had been sent to cure the plague, and at his return he cured the author of smallpox, at the castle of Maisons, six leagues from Paris, in 1723.

[* ] This ode was written in the year 1732.

[* ] Desbarreaux was a counsellor of parliament; when he made his clients wait any considerable time, he paid the suit costs.

[* ] M. de Belzuns, bishop of Marseilles, and M. de Langeron, the governor, in person, administered remedies to the infected; though the priests and physicians would not venture to come near them.

[* ] This epistle, consisting partly of verse, and partly of prose, is one of our author’s first works. Chapelle, who is here spoken of, was a man of easy genius, and had a turn to libertinism; he had been much given to drinking, which was the vice of his age; both his constitution and his genius were greatly impaired by this practice.

[* ] Chapelle was educated by Gassendi, and became a great partisan of the philosophical system of his master. Whenever he was intoxicated with liquor, he explained Gassendi’s system to all present, and when they were gone, he continued holding forth to the steward.

[* ] This pseudonymous piece was used, slightly altered, in “La Pucelle.” The references are to certain calumniators of Voltaire.

[† ] The Duke of Burgundy, who assassinated the duke of Orleans; but the good King Charles paid him well for it at the bridge of Montereau.

[‡ ] His own mother, Isabella of Bavaria, was his greatest persecutor. She promoted the Treaty of Troyes, by which her son-in-law, Henry V., king of England, obtained the crown of France.

[* ] According to the chronicles of that age, there was a fellow of the name of Frélon, who wrote pamphlets and lampoons. He played some pranks, for which he was frequently confined in the Châtelet, at Bicêtre, and at Fort l’Éveque. He had been for some time a monk, and had been expelled from the convent. Many celebrated authors have done him justice. He was a native of Nantes; and at Paris carried on the trade of satirical gazetteer.

[* ] An author who lived in the reign of Charles VI. He wrote a Roman history, which, though execrably bad, was tolerable for the age in which he lived.

[† ] Another calumniator of that age.

[‡ ] Another calumniator.

[§ ] He wrote, in conjunction with Dr. John Petit, to justify assassination.

[* ] This canto of the abbé Triteme seems to be a prophecy; we have in fact seen one Fantin, a doctor of divinity and curate at Versailles, who was caught stealing a note of fifty louis-d’or from a sick person whom he confessed; he was turned out, but he was not hanged.

[† ] Another prophecy. All Paris has seen Abbé Brizet, a famous director of women of quality, squander in secret debaucheries the money he extorted from his penitents, and which he was intrusted with for the relief of the poor. It seems highly probable that somebody, acquainted with our manners, has inserted these lines in the divine poem of Jerome Carré; the same person should have made mention of Abbé Lacoste, condemned to be branded and sent to the galleys for life, in 1759, for various impositions.

[* ] Meaulabelle, another falsifier of manuscripts, well known in that age.

[* ] This Epistle was prefixed to the “Elements of Newton’s Philosophy,” published by M. de Voltaire, in 1738 and 1741.

[* ] The period of the procession of the equinoxes, which is finished in twenty-six thousand nine hundred and twenty years.

[* ] M. Algarotti, a young Venetian, was then printing at Venice a treatise on light, in which he explains attraction. M. de Voltaire was the first in France that explained the discoveries of the great Newton.

Home

The Forum

Econlib

The Library

Other Sites

The Library

Return to Title Page for The Works of Voltaire, Vol. X The Dramatic Works Part 1 (Zaire, Caesar, The Prodigal, Prefaces) and Part II (The Lisbon Earthquake and Other Poems).

The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

Search this Title:

Also in the Library:

VOLTAIRE THE LISBON EARTHQUAKE AND OTHER POEMS Vol. X— Part II - Voltaire, The Works of Voltaire, Vol. X The Dramatic Works Part 1 (Zaire, Caesar, The Prodigal, Prefaces) and Part II (The Lisbon Earthquake and Other Poems). [1901]

Edition used:

Part of: The Works of Voltaire. A Contemporary Version, in 21 vols.

About Liberty Fund:

Copyright information:

Fair use statement:

VOLTAIRE THE LISBON EARTHQUAKE AND OTHER POEMS Vol. X—Part II

AUTHOR’S PREFACE TO THE LISBON EARTHQUAKE.

THE LISBON EARTHQUAKE.*

PREFACE TO THE POEM ON THE LAW OF NATURE.

THE LAW OF NATURE.

PART THE FIRST.

PART THE SECOND.

PART THE THIRD.

PART THE FOURTH.

PRAYER.

THE TEMPLE OF TASTE.*

THE TEMPLE OF FRIENDSHIP.

THOUGHTS ON THE NEWTONIAN PHILOSOPHY, ADDRESSED TO THE MARCHIONESS DU CHÂTELET.

ON THE DEATH OF ADRIENNE LECOUVREUR, A CELEBRATED ACTRESS.

TO THE KING OF PRUSSIA ON HIS ACCESSION TO THE THRONE.

FROM LOVE TO FRIENDSHIP.

THE WORLDLING.*

ON CALUMNY.

THE KING OF PRUSSIA TO M. VOLTAIRE.

THE ANSWER.

ON THE ENGLISH GENIUS.

WHAT PLEASES THE LADIES.

THE EDUCATION OF A PRINCE.

THE EDUCATION OF A DAUGHTER.

THE THREE MANNERS.

TEONE.

APAMIS.

THELEMA AND MACAREUS.

AZOLAN.

THE ORIGIN OF TRADES.

THE BATTLE OF FONTENOY.

THE MAN OF THE WORLD.*

AN APOLOGY FOR LUXURY.

THE PADLOCK.*

IN CAMP BEFORE PHILIPPSBURG, JULY 3, 1734.

ANSWER TO A LADY, OR A PERSON WHO WROTE TO VOLTAIRE AS SUCH.*

ENVY.

THE NATURE OF VIRTUE.

TO THE KING OF PRUSSIA.

I.

II.

TO M. DE FONTENELLE.

Sir:—

TO COUNT ALGAROTTI AT THE COURT OF SAXONY.

TO CARDINAL QUIRINI.

TO HER ROYAL HIGHNESS, THE PRINCESS OF ***.

TO M. DE CIDEVILLE.

TO ****.

EPISTLE XIII.*

TO THE DUKE OF RICHELIEU, MARSHAL OF FRANCE, IN WHOSE HONOR THE SENATE OF GENOA HAD JUST BEFORE CAUSED A STATUE TO BE ERECTED.*

TO MADAM DE ***, ON THE MANNER OF LIVING AT PARIS AND VERSAILLES.

TO THE PRINCE OF VENDôME.

TO MADAM DE GONDOIN, AFTERWARD COUNTESS OF TOULOUSE, ON THE DANGER SHE HAD BEEN EXPOSED TO IN PASSING THE LOIRE IN 1719.

TO THE DUKE DELAFEUILLADE.

TO MARSHAL VILLARS.*

TO MONSIEUR GENONVILLE.

TO THE COUNTESS OF FONTAINE-MARTEL.*

WRITTEN FROM PLOMBIÉRES TO M. PALLU, INTENDANT OF LYONS.

THE NATURE OF PLEASURE.

THE UTILITY OF SCIENCES TO PRINCES. TO THE PRINCE ROYAL OF PRUSSIA, SINCE KING OF PRUSSIA.

EPISTLE IN ANSWER TO A LETTER, WITH WHICH, UPON HIS ACCESSION TO THE THRONE, THE KING OF PRUSSIA HONORED THE AUTHOR.

EPISTLE TO THE KING, PRESENTED TO HIS MAJESTY AT THE CAMP BEFORE FREIBURG.

ON THE DEATH OF THE EMPEROR CHARLES.

VOLTAIRE THE LISBON EARTHQUAKE AND OTHER POEMS

Vol. X—Part II

THE UTILITY OF SCIENCES TO PRINCES.

TO THE PRINCE ROYAL OF PRUSSIA, SINCE KING OF PRUSSIA.

EPISTLE ON THE NEWTONIAN PHILOSOPHY.*

TO THE MARCHIONESS OF CHÂTELET.