The Philosophy of Voltaire - Collected Works: Treatise On Tolerance, Philosophical Dictionary, Candide, Letters on England, Plato's Dream, Dialogues, The Study of Nature, Ancient Faith and Fable…. Вольтер
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sends the Desfontaines to the Bicêtre, and the Deschaufours to the Place de Grève: but there is not one word offensive to the ear of chastity; you have to divine the meaning.
Three or four Englishmen have excelled in this way: Butler, in his "Hudibras," which was the civil war excited by the Puritans turned into ridicule; Dr. Garth, in his "Dispensary"; Prior, in his "Alma," in which he very pleasantly makes a jest of his subject and Phillips, in his "Splendid Shilling."
Butler is as much above Scarron as a man accustomed to good company is above a singer at a pot-house. The hero of "Hudibras" was a real personage, one Sir Samuel Luke, who had been a captain in the armies of Fairfax and Cromwell. See the commencement of the poem, in the article "Prior," "Butler," and "Swift."
Garth's poem on the physicians and apothecaries is not so much in the burlesque style as Boileau's "Lutrin": it has more imagination, variety, and naivete than the "Lutrin"; and, which is rather astonishing, it displays profound erudition, embellished with all the graces of refinement. It begins thus:
Speak, Goddess, since 'tis thou that best canst tell
How ancient leagues to modern discord fell;
And why physicians were so cautious grown
Of others' lives, and lavish of their own.
Prior, whom we have seen a plenipotentiary in France before the Peace of Utrecht, assumed the office of mediator between the philosophers who dispute about the soul. This poem is in the style of "Hudibras," called doggerel rhyme, which is the stilo Berniesco of the Italians.
The great first question is, whether the soul is all in all, or is lodged behind the nose and eyes in a corner which it never quits. According to the latter system, Prior compares it to the pope, who constantly remains at Rome, whence he sends his nuncios and spies to learn all that is doing in Christendom.
Prior, after making a jest of several systems, proposes his own. He remarks that the two-legged animal, new-born, throws its feet about as much as possible, when its nurse is so stupid as to swaddle it: thence he judges that the soul enters it by the feet; that about fifteen it reaches the middle; then it ascends to the heart; then to the head, which it quits altogether when the animal ceases to live.
At the end of this singular poem, full of ingenious versification, and of ideas alike subtle and pleasing, we find this charming line of Fontenelle: "Il est des hochets pour tout âge." Prior begs of fortune to "Give us play-things for old age."
Yet it is quite certain that Fontenelle did not take this line from Prior, nor Prior from Fontenelle. Prior's work is twenty years anterior, and Fontenelle did not understand English. The poem terminates with this conclusion:
For Plato's fancies what care I?
I hope you would not have me die
Like simple Cato in the play,
For anything that he can say:
E'en let him of ideas speak
To heathens, in his native Greek.
If to be sad is to be wise,
I do most heartily despise
Whatever Socrates has said,
Or Tully writ, or Wanley read.
Dear Drift, to set our matters right,
Remove these papers from my sight;
Burn Mat's Descartes and Aristotle—
Here, Jonathan,—your master's bottle.
In all these poems, let us distinguish the pleasant, the lively, the natural, the familiar—from the grotesque, the farcical, the low, and, above all, the stiff and forced. These various shades are discriminated by the connoisseurs, who alone, in the end, decide the fate of every work.
La Fontaine would sometimes descend to the burlesque style—Phædrus never; but the latter has not the grace and unaffected softness of La Fontaine, though he has greater precision and purity.
BULGARIANS.
These people were originally Huns, who settled near the Volga; and Volgarians was easily changed into Bulgarians.
About the end of the seventh century, they, like all the other nations inhabiting Sarmatia, made irruptions towards the Danube, and inundated the Roman Empire. They passed through Moldavia and Wallachia, whither their old fellow-countrymen, the Russians, carried their victorious arms in 1769, under the Empress Catherine II.
Having crossed the Danube, they settled in part of Dacia and Moesia, giving their name to the countries which are still called Bulgaria. Their dominion extended to Mount Hæmus and the Euxine Sea.
In Charlemagne's time, the Emperor Nicephorus, successor to Irene, was so imprudent as to march against them after being vanquished by the Saracens; and he was in like manner defeated by the Bulgarians. Their king, named Krom, cut off his head, and made use of his skull as a drinking-cup at his table, according to the custom of that people in common with all the northern nations.
It is related that, in the ninth century, one Bogoris, who was making war upon the Princess Theodora, mother and guardian to the Emperor Michael, was so charmed with that empress's noble answer to his declaration of war, that he turned Christian.
The Bulgarians, who were less complaisant, revolted against him; but Bogoris, having shown them a crucifix, they all immediately received baptism. So say the Greek writers of the lower empire, and so say our compilers after them: "Et voilà justement comme on écrit l'histoire."
Theodora, say they, was a very religious princess, even passing her latter years in a convent. Such was her love for the Greek Catholic religion that she put to death in various ways a hundred thousand men accused of Manichæism—"this being," says the modest continuator of Echard, "the most impious, the most detestable, the most dangerous, the most abominable of all heresies, for ecclesiastical censures were weapons of no avail against men who acknowledged not the church."
It is said that the Bulgarians, seeing that all the Manichæans suffered death, immediately conceived an inclination for their religion, and thought it the best, since it was the most persecuted one: but this, for Bulgarians, would be extraordinarily acute.
At that time, the great schism broke out more violently than ever between the Greek church, under the Patriarch Photius, and the Latin church, under Pope Nicholas I. The Bulgarians took part with the Greek church; and from that time, probably, it was that they were treated in the west as heretics, with the addition of that fine epithet, which has clung to them to the present day.
In 871, the Emperor Basil sent them a preacher, named Peter of Sicily, to save them from the heresy of Manichæism; and it is added, that they no sooner heard him than they turned Manichæans. It is not very surprising that the Bulgarians, who drank out of the skulls of their enemies, were not extraordinary theologians any more than Peter of Sicily.
It is singular that these barbarians, who could neither write nor read, should have been regarded as very knowing heretics, with whom it was dangerous to dispute. They certainly had other things to think of than controversy, since they carried on a sanguinary war against the emperors of Constantinople for four successive centuries, and even besieged the capital of the empire.
At the commencement of the thirteenth century, the Emperor Alexis, wishing to make himself recognized by the Bulgarians, their king, Joannic, replied, that he would never be his vassal. Pope Innocent III. was careful to seize this opportunity of attaching the kingdom of Bulgaria to himself: he sent a legate to Joannic, to anoint him king; and pretended that he had conferred the kingdom upon him, and that he could never more hold it but from the holy see.
This was the most violent period of the crusades. The indignant Bulgarians entered into an alliance with the Turks, declared war against the pope and his crusaders, took the pretended Emperor Baldwin prisoner, had his head cut off, and