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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O Lord. Let them pass away as waters that run continually; when he bendeth his bow to shoot his arrows, let them be as cut in pieces. As a snail which melteth, let every one of them pass away, like the untimely birth of a woman, that they may not see the sun. Before your pots can feel the thorns, he shall take them away as in a whirlwind, both living, and in his wrath.
"'They return at evening; they make a noise like a dog. But Thou, O Lord, shalt laugh at them; Thou shalt have all the heathen in derision. Consume them in wrath; consume them that they may not be.
"'The hill of God is as the hill of Bashan, a high hill as the hill of Bashan. Why leap ye, ye high hills? The Lord said I will bring again from Bashan, I will bring up my people again from the depths of the sea; that thy feet may be dipped in the blood of thine enemies, and the tongue of thy dogs in the same.
"'Open thy mouth wide and I will fill it. O my God, make them like a wheel; as the stubble before the wind. As the fire burneth the wood, and as the flame setteth the mountains on fire; so persecute them with Thy tempest and make them afraid with Thy storm.
"'He shall judge among the heathen; he shall fill the places with dead bodies; He shall wound the heads over many countries. Happy shall he be that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones,'" etc.
The Florentine, having listened with great attention to the verses of the canticles recited by the doctor, as well as to the first lines of Fingal bellowed forth by the Scotchman, confessed that he was not greatly moved by all these Eastern figures, and that he liked the noble simplicity of Virgil's style much better.
At these words the Scotchman turned pale with wrath, the Oxonian shrugged his shoulders with pity, but Lord Chesterfield encouraged the Florentine by a smile of approbation.
The Florentine, becoming warm and finding himself supported, said to them: "Gentlemen, nothing is more easy than to do violence to nature; nothing more difficult than to imitate her. I know something of those whom we in Italy call improvisatori; and I could speak in this oriental style for eight hours together without the least effort, for it requires none to be bombastic in negligent verse, overloaded with epithets almost continually repeated, to heap combat upon combat, and to describe chimeras."
"What!" said the professor, "you make an epic poem impromptu!" "Not a rational epic poem in correct verse, like Virgil," replied the Italian, "but a poem in which I would abandon myself to the current of my ideas, and not take the trouble to arrange them."
"I defy you to do it," said the Scotchman and the Oxford graduate at once. "Well," returned the Florentine, "give me a subject." Lord Chesterfield gave him as a subject the Black Prince, the conqueror of Poictiers, granting peace after the victory.
The Italian collected himself and thus began:
"Muse of Albion, genius that presidest over heroes, come sing with me—not the idle rage of men implacable alike to friends and foes—not the deeds of heroes whom the gods have favored in turn, without any reason for so favoring them—not the siege of a town which is not taken—not the extravagant exploits of the fabulous Fingal, but the real victories of a hero modest as brave, who led kings captive and respected his vanquished enemies.
"George, the Mars of England, had descended from on high on that immortal charger before which the proudest coursers of Limousin flee as the bleating sheep and the tender lambs crowd into the fold at the sight of a terrible wolf issuing from the forest with fiery eyes, with hair erect and foaming mouth, threatening the flock and the shepherd with the fury of his murderous jaws.
"Martin, the famed protector of them who dwell in fruitful Touraine, Genevieve, the mild divinity of them who drink the waters of the Seine and the Marne, Denis, who bore his head under his arm in the sight of man and of immortals, trembled as they saw George proudly traversing the vast fields of air. On his head was a golden helmet, glittering with diamonds that once paved the squares of the heavenly Jerusalem, when it appeared to mortals during forty diurnal revolutions of the great luminary and his inconstant sister, who with her mild radiance enlightens the darkness of night.
"In his hand is the terrible and sacred lance with which, in the first days of the world, the demi-god Michael, who executes the vengeance of the Most High, overthrew the eternal enemy of the world and the Creator. The most beautiful of the plumage of the angels that stand about the throne, plucked from their immortal backs, waved over his casque; and around it hovered Terror, destroying War, unpitying Revenge, and Death, the terminator of man's calamities. He came like a comet in its rapid course, darting through the orbits of the wondering planets, and leaving far behind its rays, pale and terrible, announcing to weak mortals the fall of kings and nations.
"He alighted on the banks of the Charente, and the sound of his immortal arms was echoed from the spheres of Jupiter and Saturn. Two strides brought him to the spot where the son of the magnanimous Edward waited for the son of the intrepid de Valois," etc.
The Florentine continued in this strain for more than a quarter of an hour. The words fell from his lips, as Homer says, more thickly and abundantly than the snows descend in winter; but his words were not cold; they were rather like the rapid sparks escaping from the furnace when the Cyclops forge the bolts of Jove on resounding anvil.
His two antagonists were at last obliged to silence him, by acknowledging that it was easier than they had thought it was, to string together gigantic images, and call in the aid of heaven, earth and hell; but they maintained that to unite the tender and moving with the sublime was the perfection of the art.
"For example," said the Oxonian, "can anything be more moral, and at the same time more voluptuous, than to see Jupiter reposing with his wife on Mount Ida?"
His lordship then spoke: "Gentlemen," said he, "I ask your pardon for meddling in the dispute. Perhaps to the Greeks there was something very interesting in a god's lying with his wife upon a mountain; for my own part, I see nothing in it refined or attractive. I will agree with you that the handkerchief, which commentators and imitators have been pleased to call the girdle of Venus, is a charming figure; but I never understood that it was a soporific, nor how Juno could receive the caresses of the master of the gods for the purpose of putting him to sleep. A queer god, truly, to fall asleep so soon! I can swear that, when I was young, I was not so drowsy. It may, for aught I know, be noble, pleasing, interesting, witty, and decorous to make Juno say to Jupiter, 'If you are determined to embrace me, let us go to your apartment in heaven, which is the work of Vulcan, and the door of which closes so well that none of the gods can enter."
"I am equally at a loss to understand how the god of sleep, whom Juno prays to close the eyes of Jupiter, can be so brisk a divinity. He arrives in a moment from the isles of Lemnos and Imbros; there is something fine in coming from two islands at once. He then mounts a pine and, is instantly among the Greek ships; he seeks Neptune, finds him, conjures him to give the victory to the Greeks, and returns with a rapid flight to Lemnos. I know of nothing so nimble as this god of sleep.
"In short, if in an epic poem there must be amorous matters, I own that I incomparably prefer the assignations of Alcina with Rogero, and of Armida with Rinaldo. Come, my dear Florentine, read me those two admirable cantos of Ariosto and Tasso."
The Florentine readily obeyed, and his lordship was enchanted; during which time the Scotchman reperused Fingal, the Oxford professor reperused Homer; and every one was content. It was at last agreed that happy is he who is sensible to the merits of the ancients and the moderns, appreciates their beauties, knows their faults and pardons them.
ANECDOTES.
If Suetonius could be confronted with the valets-de-chambre of the twelve Cæsars, think you that they would in every instance corroborate his testimony? And in case of dispute, who would not back the valets-de-chambre against the historian?
In our own times, how many books are founded on nothing more than the talk of the town?—just as the science of physics was founded on chimeras which have been repeated from age to age