1 Lemontey, Hist. de la régence et de la minorité de Louis XV, 1835, ii, 358, note. In 1731 there was published under the name of Boulainvilliers (d. 1722) a so-called Réfutation de Spinoza, which was “really a popular exposition.” Pollock, Spinoza, 2nd ed. p. 363. Sir F. Pollock assents to Voltaire’s remark that Boulainvilliers “gave the poison and forgot to give the antidote.” ↑
2 For a brief view of the facts, usually misconceived, see Lanson, pp. 610–11. Fénelon seems to have been uncandid, while Bossuet, by common consent, was malevolent. There is probably truth, however, in the view of Shaftesbury (Characteristics, ed. 1900, ii, 214), that the real grievance of Fénelon’s ecclesiastical opponents was the tendency of his mysticism to withdraw devotees from ceremonial duties. ↑
3 Now remembered chiefly through the account of his intercourse with Fénelon (repr. in Didot ed. of Fénelon’s misc. works), and Hume’s long extract from his Philosophical Principles of Natural and Revealed Religion in the concluding note to the Essays. Cp. M. Matter, Le Mysticisme en France au temps de Fénelon, 1865, pp. 352–54. ↑
4 Tyssot de Patot was Professor of Mathematics at Deventer. In his Lettres choisies, published in 1726, there is an avowal that “he might be charged with having different notions from those of the vulgar in point of religion” (New Memoirs of Literature, iv (1726), 267); and his accounts of pietists and unbelieving and other priests sufficiently convey that impression (id. pp. 268–84). ↑
5 Towards the close of his “poem” Polignac speaks of a defence of Christianity as a future task. He died without even completing the Anti-Lucretius, begun half a century before. Of him are related two classic anecdotes. Sent at the age of twenty-seven to discuss Church questions with the Pope, he earned from His Holiness the compliment: “You seem always to be of my opinion; and in the end it is yours that prevails.” Louis XIV gave him a long audience, after which the King said: “I have had an interview with a young man who has constantly contradicted me without my being able to be angry for a moment.” (Éloge prefixed to Bougainville’s trans., L’Anti-Lucrèce, 1767, i. 131.) ↑
6 Cp. Duvernet, Vie de Voltaire, ch. i. Rivarol (Lettres à Necker, in Œuvres, ed. 1852, p. 138) wrote that under Louis XV there began a “general insurrection” of discussion, and that everybody then talked “only of religion and philosophy during half a century.” But this exaggerates the beginnings, of which Rivarol could have no exact knowledge. ↑
7 La verité de la religion chrétienne prouvée par les faits: précédée d’un discours historique et critique sur la méthode des principaux auteurs qui ont écrit pour et contre le christianisme depuis son origine, 1722. Rep. 1741, 3 vols. 4to., 4 vols. 12mo. ↑
8 Nouveau Dictionnaire historique portatif, 1771, art. Houteville, tom. ii. ↑
9 Whose Considérations sur les Mœurs (1751) does not seem to contain a single religious sentiment. Historiographer of France, he had not escaped the suppression of his Histoire de Louis XI, 1745. ↑
10 See above, p. 130. Buffier seems to have begun an attempt at spelling reform (by dropping doubled letters), followed in 1725 by Huard and later by Prémontval. ↑
11 7 vols. 4to., 10 vols. 12mo. Rep. with corrections 1733. Seconde partie, 1753, 8 vols. 12mo. ↑
12 A reprint in 1735 bears the imprint of London, with the note “Aux dépens de la Compagnie.” ↑
13 Lanson, p. 702. The Persian Letters, like the Provincial Letters of Pascal, had to be printed at Rouen and published at Amsterdam. Their freethinking expressions put considerable difficulties in the way of his election (1727) to the Academy. See E. Edwards, Chapters of the Biog. Hist. of the French Academy, 1864, pp. 34–35, and D. M. Robertson, Hist. of the French Academy, 1910, p. 92, as to the mystification about the alleged reprint without the obnoxious passages. ↑
15 “Au point de vue religieux, Montesquieu tirait poliment son coup de chapeau au christianisme” (Lanson, p. 714). E.g. in the Esprit des Lois, liv. xxiv, chs. i, ii, iii, iv, vi, and the footnote to ch. x of liv. xxv. Montesquieu’s letter to Warburton (16 mai, 1754), in acknowledgment of that prelate’s attack on the posthumous works of Bolingbroke, is a sample of his social make-believe. But no religious reader could suppose it to come from a religious man. ↑
16 Also of E. Edwards, as cited above. ↑
17 See the notes cited on pp. 405, 407 of Garnier’s variorum ed. of the Esprit des Lois, 1871. La Harpe and Villemain seem blind to irony. ↑
18 The flings at Bayle (liv. xxiv, chs. ii, vi) are part of a subtly ironical vindication of ideal as against ecclesiastical Christianity, and they have no note of faith. ↑
19 Paul Mesnard, Hist. de l’académie française, 1857, pp. 61–63. ↑
20 Pensées Diverses: De la religion. ↑
22 Tr. in English, 1753. It is noteworthy that Cataneo formally accepts Montesquieu’s professions of orthodoxy. ↑
23 Correspondance littéraire de Grimm et Diderot, ed. 1829–31, i, 273. See the footnote for an account of the indecent efforts of the Jesuits to get at the dying philosopher. The curé of the parish who was allowed entry began his exhortation with: “Vous savez, M. le Président, combien Dieu est grand.” “Oui, monsieur,” returned Montesquieu, “et combien les hommes sont petits.” ↑
24 Mesnard, Hist. de l’académie française, p. 63. ↑
25 A full analysis is given by Strauss in the second Appendix to his Voltaire: Sechs Vorträge, 2te Aufl. 1870. ↑
26 The details are dubious. See the memoir compiled by “Rudolf Charles” (R. C. D’Ablaing van Giessenburg), the editor of the Testament, Amsterdam, 3 tom. 1861–64. It draws chiefly on the Mémoires secrets de Bachaumont, under date Sept. 30, 1764. ↑
27 Testament, as cited, i, 25. ↑
29 First published in 1762 [or 1764? See Bachaumont, Oct. 30], with the date 1742; and reprinted in the Évangile de la Raison, 1764. It was no fewer than four times ordered to be destroyed in the Restoration period. ↑
30 Probably Diderot did the most of the adaptation. “Il y a plus que du bon sens dans ce livre,” writes Voltaire to D’Alembert; “il est terrible. S’il sort de la boutique du Système de la Nature, l’auteur s’est bien perfectionné” (Lettre de 27 Juillet, 1775). ↑
31 “Il leur faut un Être à ces messieurs; pour moi, je m’en passe.” Grimm, Correspondance Littéraire, ed. 1829–31, iv, 186. ↑
32 Grimm, as cited, i, 235. Grimm tells a delightful story of his reception of the confessor. ↑
33 “Cet ouvrage, dont les vers sont grands et bien tournés, est une satire des plus licencieuses contre les mœurs de nos évêques.” Bachaumont, Mémoires Secrets, Juin 15, 1762. ↑
34 Bonet-Maury, Hist. de la lib. de conscience en France, 1900, p. 68. ↑
35 Nouveau dictionnaire historique-portatif ... par une Société de Gens de Lettres, ed. 1771, i, 314. ↑
36 Marmontel does not relate this in his Mémoires, where he insists on the decorum of the talk, even at d’Holbach’s table. ↑
37 Chamfort, Caractères et Anecdotes. ↑
38 Nouveau dictionnaire, above cited, i, 315. ↑
39 Name assumed for literary purposes, and probably composed by anagram from the real name Arouet, with “le jeune” (junior) added, thus: A. R. O. V. E. T. L(e). I(eune). ↑
40 Not to be confounded with the greater and later Jean Jacques Rousseau. J. B. Rousseau became Voltaire’s bitter enemy—on the score, it is said, of the young man’s epigram on the elder poet’s “Ode to Posterity,” which, he said, would not reach its address. Himself a rather ribald freethinker, Rousseau professed to be outraged by the irreligion of Voltaire. ↑
41 See the poem in note 4 to ch. ii of Duvernet’s Vie de Voltaire. Duvernet calls it “one of the first attacks on which philosophy in France had ventured against superstition” (Vie de Voltaire, ed. 1797, p. 19). ↑
42 Duvernet, ch. ii. The free-hearted Ninon de l’Enclos, brightest of old ladies, is to be numbered among the pre-Voltairean freethinkers, and to be remembered as leaving young Voltaire a legacy to buy books. She refused to “sell her soul” by turning dévote on the invitation of her old friend Madame de Maintenon. Madame D’Épinay, Voltaire’s “belle philosophe et aimable Habacuc,” Madame du Deffand, and Madame Geoffrin were among the later freethinking grandes dames of the Voltairean period; and so, presumably, was the Madame de Créquí, quoted by Rivarol, who remarked that “Providence” is “the baptismal name of Chance.” As to Madame Geoffrin see the Œuvres Posthumes de D’Alembert, 1799, i, 240, 271; and the Mémoires de Marmontel, 1804, ii, 102 sq. If Marmontel is accurate, she went secretly at times to mass (p. 104). ↑
43 Deslandes wrote some new chapters of his Réflexions in London, for the English translation. Eng. tr. 1713, p. 99. ↑
44 Pour et Contre, ou Épitre à Uranie. It was of course not printed till long afterwards. Diderot, writing his Promenade du Sceptique in 1747, says: “C’est, je crois, dans l’allée des fleurs [of his allegory] entre le champagne et le tokay, que l’épitre à Uranie prit naissance.” (L’Allée des Marronniers, ad init.) This seems unjust. ↑
45 He has been alternately represented as owing everything and owing very little to England. Cp. Texte, Rousseau and the Cosmopolitan Spirit, Eng. tr. p. 58. Neither view is just. ↑
46 In his Essay upon the Civil Wars of France, and ... upon Epick Poetry (2nd ed. 1728, “corrected by himself”), written and published in English, he begins his “Advertisement” with the remark: “It has the appearance of too great a presumption in a traveller who hath been but eighteen months in England, to attempt to write in a language which he cannot pronounce at all, and which he hardly understands in conversation.” As the book is remarkably well written, he must have read much English. ↑
47 Lord Morley (Voltaire, 4th ed. p. 40) speaks of the English people as having then won “a full liberty of thought and speech and person.” This, as we have seen, somewhat overstates the case. But discussion was much more nearly free than in France. ↑
48 Probably as much on political as on religious grounds. The 8th letter, Sur le Parlement, must have been very offensive to the French Government; and in 1739, moved by angry criticisms, Voltaire saw fit to modify its language. See Lanson’s ed. of the Lettres, 1909, i, 92, 110. ↑
49 Condorcet, Vie de Voltaire, ed. 1792, p. 92. In reprints the poem was entitled Sur la religion naturelle, and was so commonly cited. ↑
51 See above, pp. 213–14, as to the works of Boulainvilliers, Tyssot de Patot, Deslandes, and others who wrote between 1700 and 1715. ↑
52 Cited by Schlosser, Hist. of the Eighteenth Century, Eng. tr. i, 146–7. ↑
53 Traité de la verité de la religion chrétienne, tiré en partie du latin de M. J. Alphonse Turrettin, professeur ... en l’académie de Génève, par M. J. Vernet, professeur de belles-lettres en la même Académie. Revue et corrigé par un Théologien Catholique. 1e éd. Génève, 1730. Rep. in 2 tom. 1753. Ecclesiastical approbation given 15 janv. 1749; privilège, juillet, 1751. ↑
54 Dom Remi Desmonts, according to Barbier. ↑
55 “Par Panage” (=Toussaint?). Rep. 1755 and 1767 (Berlin). ↑
56 Work cited, ed. 1755, p. 252. ↑
57 A glimpse of old Paris before or about 1750 is afforded by Fontenelle’s remark that the prevailing diseases might be known from the affiches. At every street corner were to be seen two, of which one advertised a Traité sur l’incrédulité. (Grimm, Corr. litt. iii, 373.) ↑
58 Thus Duruy had said in his Histoire de France (1st ed. 1852) that in the work of the Jansenists of Port Royal “l’esprit d’opposition politique se cacha sous l’opposition religieuse” (ed. 1880, ii, 298). ↑
59 The case has been thus correctly put by M. Rocquain, who, however, decides that “de religieuse qu’elle était, l’opposition devient politique” as early as about 1724–1733. L’Esprit révolutionnaire avant la révolution, 1878; table des matières, liv. 2e. Duruy (last note) puts the tendency still earlier. ↑
60 “Cette hardiesse étonna Voltaire, et excita son émulation” (ed. cited, p. 118). ↑
61 Avertissement des éditeurs, in Basle ed. of 1792, vol. xlv, p. 92. ↑
62 It has been counted that he used no fewer than a hundred and thirty different pseudonyms; and the perpetual prosecution and confiscation of his books explains the procedure. As we have seen, the Lettres philosophiques (otherwise the Lettres anglaises) were burned on their appearance, in 1734, and the bookseller put in the Bastille; the Recueil des pièces fugitives was suppressed in 1739; the Voix du Sage et du Peuple was officially and clerically condemned in 1751; the poem on Natural Law was burned at Paris in 1758; Candide at Geneva in 1759; the Dictionnaire philosophique at Geneva in 1764, and at Paris in 1765; and many of his minor pseudonymous performances had the same advertisement. But even the Henriade, the Charles XII, and the first chapters of the Siècle de Louis XIV were prohibited; and in 1785 the thirty volumes published of the 1784 edition of his works were condemned en masse. ↑
63 Diderot, critique of Le philosophe ignorant in Grimm’s Corr. Litt. 1 juin 1766; Lessing, Hamburgische Dramaturgie, Stück 10–12, 15; Gibbon, ch. i, note near end; ch. li, note on siege of Damascus. Rousseau was as hostile as any (see Morley’s Rousseau, ch. ix, § 1). But Rousseau’s verdict is the least important, and the least judicial. He had himself earned the detestation of Voltaire, as of many other men. In a moment of pique, Diderot wrote of Voltaire: “Cet homme n’est que le second dans tous les genres” (Lettre 71 à Mdlle. Voland, 12 août, 1762). He forgot wit and humour! ↑
64 Prof. Jowett, of Balliol College. See L. A. Tollemache, Benjamin Jowett, Master of Balliol, 4th ed. pp. 27–28. ↑
65 See details in Lord Morley’s Voltaire, 4th ed. pp. 165–70, 257–58. The erection by the French freethinkers of a monument to La Barre in 1905, opposite the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, Montmartre, Paris, is an expression at once of the old feud with the Church and the French appreciation of high personal courage. La Barre was in truth something of a scapegrace, but his execution was an infamy, and he went to his death as to a bridal. The erection of the monument has been the occasion of a futile pretence on the clerical side that for La Barre’s death the Church had no responsibility, the movers in the case being laymen. Nothing, apparently, can teach Catholic Churchmen that the Church’s past sins ought to be confessed like those of individuals. It is quite true that it was a Parlement that condemned La Barre. But what a religious training was it that turned laymen into murderous fanatics! ↑
66 M. Lanson seems to overlook it when he writes (p. 747) that “the affirmation of God, the denial of Providence and miracles, is the whole metaphysic of Voltaire.” ↑
67 Lord Morley writes (p. 209): “We do not know how far he ever seriously approached the question ... whether a society can exist without a religion.” This overlooks both the Homélie sur l’Athéisme and the article Athéisme in the Dictionnaire Philosophique, where the question is discussed seriously and explicitly. ↑
68 Horace Walpole, Letter to Gray, Nov. 19, 1765. Compare the mordant criticism of Grimm (Corr. litt. vii, 54 sq.) on his tract Dieu in reply to d’Holbach. “Il raisonne là-dessus comme un enfant,” writes Grimm, “mais comme un joli enfant qu’il est.” ↑
69 Browning, The Two Poets of Croisic, st. cvii. ↑
70 Cp. Ständlin, Gesch. des Rationalismus und Supernaturalismus, 1826, pp. 287–90. Hagenbach, Kirchengeschichte des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts, 2te Aufl. 1848, i, 218–20. ↑
71 Zimmerman, De causis magis magisque invalescentis incredulitatis, et medela huic malo adhibenda, Tiguri, 1739, 4to. Prof. Breitinger of Zurich wrote a criticism afterwards tr. (1741) as Examen des Lettres sur la religion essentielle. De Roches, pastor at Geneva, published in letter-form 2 vols. entitled Défense du Christianisme, as “préservatif contre” the Lettres of Mdlle. Huber (1740); and Bouillier of Amsterdam also 2 vols. of Lettres (1741). ↑
72 Cp. Bouillier, Hist. de la philos. cartés, ii, 624–25; D’Argenson, Mémoires, ed. Jannet, iv. 63. ↑
73 See the thesis (Jerusalem Cœlesti) as printed in the Apologie de M. l’Abbé De Prades, “Amsterdam,” 1752, pp. 4, 6. ↑
75 Mémoires sur la vie et les ouvrages de Diderot, 1821, p. 160. ↑
76 Cp. Bachaumont, Mémoires secrets, 4 fév. 1762; 22 avril, 1768. Tn the latter entry, Yvon is described as “poursuivi comme infidèle, quoique le plus croyant de France.” In 1768, after the Bélisaire scandal, he was refused permission to proceed with the publication of his Histoire ecclésiastique. ↑
77 This was de Prades’s own view of the matter (Apologie, as cited, p. v); and D’Argenson repeatedly says as much. Mémoires, iv, 57, 65, 66, 74, 77. ↑
78 Rocquain, L’esprit revolutionnaire avant la révolution, 1878, pp. 149–51; Morley, Diderot, ch. v; D’Argenson, iv, 78. The decree of suppression was dated 13 fév. 1752. ↑
82 Maury, Hist. de l’ancienne Académie des Inscriptions, 1864, pp. 312–13. ↑
83 Journal historique de Barbier, 1847–56, iv, 304. ↑
84 Astruc, we learn from D’Alembert, connected their decline with the influence of the new opinions. “Ce ne sont pas les jansenistes qui tuent les jésuites, c’est l’Encyclopédie.” “Le maroufle Astruc,” adds D’Alembert, “est comme Pasquin, il parle quelquefois d’assez bon sens.” Lettre à Voltaire. 4 mai, 1762. ↑
85 Cp. pref. (La Vie de Salvien) to French tr. of Salvian, 1734, p. lxix. I have seen MS. translations of Toland and Woolston. ↑
86 MS. statement, in eighteenth-century hand, on flyleaf of a copy of 1755 ed. of the Grands hommes, in the writer’s possession. ↑
87 Lettre à D’Alembert, 16 Octobre, 1765. ↑
88 Of the works noted below, the majority appear or profess to have been printed at Amsterdam, though many bore the imprint Londres. All the freethinking books and translations ascribed to d’Holbach bore it. The Arétin of Abbé Dulaurens bore the imprint: “Rome, aux dépens de la Congrégation de l’Index.” Mystifications concerning authorship have been as far as possible cleared up in the present edition. ↑
89 Given by Brunet, who is followed by Wheeler, as appearing in 1732, and as translated into English, under the title Dying Merrily, in 1745. But I possess an English translation of 1713 (pref. dated March 25), entitled A Philological Essay: or, Reflections on the Death of Freethinkers.... By Monsieur D——, of the Royal Academy of Sciences in France, and author of the Poetae Rusticantis Literatum Otium. Translated from the French by Mr. B——, with additions by the author, now in London, and the translator. [A note in a contemporary hand makes “B” Boyer.] Barbier gives 1712 for the first edition, 1732 for the second. Rep. 1755 and 1776. ↑
90 There is no sign of any such excitement in France over the translation as was aroused in England by the original; but an Examen du traité de la liberté de penser, by De Crousaz, was published at Amsterdam in 1718. ↑
91 This was probably meant to point to the Abbé de Marsy, who died in 1763. ↑
92 The Abbé Sepher ascribed this book to one Dupuis, a Royal Guardsman. ↑
93 This “prose poem” was not an intentional burlesque, as the ecclesiastical authorities alleged; but it did not stand for orthodoxy. See Grimm’s Correspondance, i, 113. ↑
94 “A eu les honneurs de la brûlure, et toutes les censures cumulées des Facultés de Théologie, de la Sorbonne et des évêques.” Bachaumont, déc. 23, 1763. Marsy, who was expelled from the Order of Jesuits, was of bad character, and was hotly denounced by Voltaire. ↑
96 A second edition appeared within the year. “Quoique proscrit presque partout, et même en Hollande, c’est de là qu’il nous arrive.” Bachaumont, déc. 27, 1764. ↑
98 “Se repand à Paris avec la permission de la police.” Bachaumont, 13 fév. 1766. ↑
99 “Il est facile de se convaincre que les parties les plus importantes et les plus solides de cet ouvrage sont empruntées aux travaux de Burigny.” L.-F. Alfred Maury, L’ancienne Académie des Incriptions et bellet-lettres, 1864, p. 316. Maury leaves it open question whether the compilation was made by Burigny or by Naigeon. The Abbé Bergier accepted it without hesitation as the work of Fréret, who was known to hold some heretical views. (Maury, p. 317.) Barbier confidently ascribes the work to Burigny. ↑
100 The mystification in regard to this work is elaborate. It purports to be translated from an English version, declared in turn by its translator to be made “from the Greek.” It is now commonly ascribed to Naigeon. (Maury, as cited, p. 317.) Its machinery, and its definite atheism, mark it as of the school of d’Holbach, though it is alleged to have been written by Fréret as early as 1722. It is however reprinted, with the Examen critique des Apologistes, in the 1796 edition of Fréret’s works without comment; and Barbier was satisfied that it was the one genuine “philosophic” work ascribed to Fréret, but that it was redacted by Naigeon from imperfect MSS. ↑
101 Notice sur Henri Meister, pref. to Lettres inédites de Madame de Staël à Henri Meister, 1903, p. 17. ↑
102 “Deux nouveaux livres infernaux ... connus comme manuscrits depuis longtemps et gardés dans l’obscurité des portefeuilles....” Bachaumont, 22 mars, 1769. ↑
103 Bachaumont, Mémoires Secrets, déc. 20, 1767. ↑
105 So Pidansat de Mairobert in his preface to the first ed. (1777) of the Mémoires Secrets of Bachaumont, continued by him. See pref. to the abridged ed. by Bibliophile Jacob. ↑
106 As to the authorship see above, p. 241. ↑
107 La Certitude des preuves du Christianisme (1767). 2e édit. 1768, Avertissement. ↑
108 In the short essay Le Philosophe, which appeared in the Nouvelles Libertés de Penser, 1743 and 1750, and in the Recueil Philosophique, 1770. In the 1793 rep. of the Essai sur les préjugés (again rep. in 1822) it is unhesitatingly affirmed, on the strength of its title-page and the prefixed letter of Dumarsais, dated 1750, that that book is an expansion of the essay Le Philosophe, and that this was published in 1760. But Le Philosophe is an entirely different production, which to a certain extent criticizes les philosophes so-called. The Essai sur les préjugés published in 1770 is not the work of Dumarsais; it is a new work by d’Holbach. This was apparently known to Frederick, who in his rather angry criticism of the book writes that, whereas Dumarsais had always respected constituted authorities, others had “put out in his name, two years after he was dead and buried, a libel of which the veritable author could only be a schoolboy as new to the world as he was puzzle-headed.” (Mélanges en vers et en prose de Frederic II, 1792, ii, 215). Dumarsais died in 1754, but I can find no good evidence that the Essai sur les préjugés was ever printed before 1770. As to d’Holbach’s authorship see the Œuvres de Diderot, ed. 1821, xii, 115 sq.—passage copied in the 1829–31 ed. of the Correspondance littéraire of Grimm and Diderot, xiv, 293 sq. In a letter to D’Alembert dated Mars 27, 1773, Voltaire writes that in a newly-printed collection of treatises containing his own Lois de Minos is included “le philosophe de Dumarsais, qui n’a jamais été imprimé jusqu’à present.” This seems to be a complete mistake. ↑
109 Grimm (iv, 86) has some good stories of him. He announced one day that he had ound twenty-five fatal flaws in the story of the resurrection of Lazarus, the first being that the dead do not rise. His scholarly friend Nicolas Boindin (see above, p. 222) said: “Dumarsais is a Jansenist atheist; as for me, I am a Molinist atheist.” ↑
110 On two successive pages the title Messiah is declared to mean “simply one sent” and simply “anointed.” ↑
111 Like Buffier and Huard, however, he strives for a reform in spelling, dropping many doubled letters, and writing home, bone, acuse, fole, apelle, honête, afreux, etc. ↑
112 Abriss einer Geschichte der Umwälzung welche seit 1750 auf dem Gebiete der Theologie in Deutschland statt gefunden, in Tholuck’s Vermischte Schriften, 1839, ii, 5. The proposition is repeated pp. 24, 33. ↑
113 The exceptions were books published outside of France. ↑
114 Madame de Sévigné, for instance, declared that she would not let pass a year of her life without re-reading the second volume of Abbadie. ↑
115 Le Déisme refuté par lui-même (largely a reply to Rousseau), 1765; 1770, Apologie de la religion chrétienne; 1773, La certitude des preuves du christianisme. In 1759 had appeared the Lettres sur le Déisme of the younger Salchi, professor at Lausanne. It deals chiefly with the English deists, and with D’Argens. As before noted, the Abbé Gauchat began in 1751 his Lettres Critiques, which in time ran to 15 volumes (1751–61). There were also two journals, Jesuit and Jansenist, which fought the philosophes (Lanson, p. 721); and sometimes even a manuscript was answered—e.g. the Réfutation du Celse moderne of the Abbé Gautier (1752), a reply to Mirabaud’s unpublished Examen critique. ↑
116 Alison, History of Europe, ed. 1849, i, 180–81. ↑
117 The Jesuits were expelled from Portugal in 1759; from Bohemia and Denmark in 1766; from the whole dominions of Spain in 1767; from Genoa and Venice in the same year; and from Naples, Malta, and Parma in 1768. Officially suppressed in France in 1764, they were expelled thence in 1767. Pope Clement XIII strove to defend them; but in 1773 the Society was suppressed by papal bull by Clement XIV; whereafter they took refuge in Prussia and Russia, ruled by the freethinking Frederick and Catherine. ↑
118 See the Correspondance de Grimm, ed. 1829–31, vii, 51 sq. ↑
119 This apologetic work, after having been praised by the censor and registered with privilège du roi in November, 1772, was officially suppressed on Jan. 17, 1773, and, it would appear, reissued in that year. ↑
121 Bachaumont, juin 22; juillet 9, 20, 27; novembre 14, 1762. ↑
122 Grimm notices Astruc’s Dissertations sur l’immortalité, l’immaterialité, et la liberté de l’âme, published in 1755 (Corr. i, 438), but not his Conjectures. At his death (1766) he pronounces him “un des hommes les plus decriés de Paris,” “Il passait pour fripon, fourbe, méchant, en un mot pour un très-malhonnête homme.” “Il était violent et emporté, et d’une avarice sordide.” Finally, he died “sans sacremens” after having “fait le dévot” and attached himself to the Jesuits in their day of power. Corr. v, 98. But Grimm was a man of many hates, and not the best of historians. ↑
123 Cp. Maury, L’ancienne Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres, 1864, pp. 55–56. ↑
124 Voltaire’s various stratagems to secure election are not to his credit. See Paul Mesnard, Histoire de l’académie française, 1857, pp. 68–74. But even Montesquieu is said to have resorted to some questionable devices for the same end. Id. p. 62. ↑
125 Maury, L’ancienne Académie des inscriptions, pp. 54–55, 94, 308. ↑
128 Where he was lieutenant-général, and died in 1750. ↑
130 Mémoires, ed. Jannet, iv, 181. ↑
131 Cp. Mesnard, as cited, pp. 79–80. ↑
133 Id. pp. 82–84. It is noteworthy that the orthodox Thomas, and not any of the philosophes, was the first to impeach the Government in academic discourses. Mesnard, pp. 82–84, 100 sq. ↑
134 “L’excellent Pompignan,” M. Lanson calls him, p. 723. ↑
135 “Les provisions de sa charge pendant six mois en 1736.” Voltaire, Lettre à Mme. D’Épinay, 13 juin, 1760. “Je le servis dans cette affaire,” adds Voltaire. ↑