Shakespeare and Voltaire

IN his genial progress from battlefield to battlefield of old Shakespearean Wars, Professor Thomas R. Lounsbury comes in his second volume¹ to the scene of that dread conflict once so bitterly waged against the woundless shade of Shakespeare by Voltaire. The first thought that comes to one finishing the delighted perusal of the book is, How Professor Lounsbury must have enjoyed writing it ! It is composed with an engaging, leisurely gusto, with an amplitude of learning, and a freedom of humane remark, which take one back to old times of scholarship, when the typewriter was not, and folios were in fashion. The volume is, indeed, a vindication of the reality and value of criticism. Professor Lounsbury has realized those wordy “ battles long ago ” with a vivid, imaginative grasp, made firm by minute and various research. With Homeric fullness and zest he tells of the duels fought by minor warriors from either camp, but the chief interest always centres about the adroit attack by the champion, the literary dictator of Europe, Voltaire.

The course of the unpleasantness between Shakespeare and M. Arouet was dramatic. During his early exile in England, the Frenchman, with the sensibility of the fine genius which he undoubtedly possessed, came much under the spell of Shakespeare’s plays. Returning to France he proceeded, as we all remember, to introduce this uncouth but interesting writer of the country made glorious by Locke to his own compatriots. This he accomplished by exposition, and, unfortunately, by somewhat disingenuous paraphrase and unacknowledged borrowing. Here concludes the first act; from that time on the action moved steadily to its inevitable end, the disaster that sooner or later overtakes literary disingenuousness. Before long certain Englishmen arose to resent these covert conveyances from their great poet, whereat Voltaire, fearful lest something of this come to the ears of his own faithful Frenchmen, amiably lectured to them about the “ drunken savage,” Shakespeare. Anon came La Place’s so-called translation of Shakespeare, showing even Frenchmen that the plays of the “ drunken savage ” were not wholly devoid of merit, and bringing many bothersome questions to the author of Zaire, Mahomet, and Semiramis. Then, in strict dramatic propriety, as the net tightened around Voltaire his activity became more feverish. The “unities" had been aspersed, the supreme position of Racine, Voltaire et Cie. had been questioned. He sparred with Walpole and other English correspondents, he wrote commentaries on Corneille, he made an appeal to all the nations of Europe. Then, when nothing availed, he settled into pessimism ; the taste of France was decaying. Le Tourneur’s more adequate and successful translation of Shakespeare evoked from Voltaire a final burst of wrath, an adventurous sally, and an empty, academic victory on the famous day of St. Louis. Yet from that day, the cause, so far as Voltaire was concerned, was lost, though after his death certain of his adherents kept the field for half a century until the decisive battle of Hernani.

The long struggle thus briefly outlined is recounted by Professor Lounsbury in nearly five hundred pages of subtle exposition and pointed comment, pages of considerable import for the light they throw upon the talents of three men, Professor Lounsbury, Voltaire, and Shakespeare. It may not prove unprofitable to consider them in this order.

Of the learning of the book enough has been said ; in the main its taste and judgment are quite as noteworthy. Perhaps the only exception is seen in the constitutional inability of the professional English scholar duly to appreciate the perennial beauty and dignity which lie at the root of the classic ideal of the Latin races, even in the tragedies of Voltaire. Indeed his opinion of all so-called “classic drama” might not unjustly be expressed in six lines from the prologue written by George Colman, Esq., for a late eighteenth-century revival of Philaster: —

Which is the truth, yet not all of it. Nevertheless this is but a petty caveat to enter against a book so essentially sound as Professor Lounsbury’s. In fact, its chief virtues are sanity and humor. Be it said in all seriousness, Professor Lounsbury ranks as one of the most considerable of our humorists. The present volume is informed throughout by a subtly humorous point of view, and it exhibits a proficiency at the keen but covert thrust worthy of Voltaire himself. The periphrases for “ lying,” for example, are as numerous as they are delightful. At times he is downright witty, as when he mentions Hannah More, “ who had not yet assumed her brevet title of Mrs.,” or says of well-meaning Aaron Hill that his “ language did not really conceal thought, as he himself and perhaps some of his contemporary readers fancied ; it merely concealed what he thought he thought.”

Voltaire, of course, appears in Professor Lounsbury’s book only in a single phase of his myriad-minded, often beneficent activities. Yet there is much in the intensive study of that one phase to exhibit the essential nature of the man. One is disconcerted to find the person who had boasted that when he had crossed the Styx,

so bound by racial and personal prejudice ; and one is dismayed to discover this rugged old fighter for “ enlightenment” and “justice” so inconspicuous, in literary dealings, for common honesty. Yet one who reads the record attentively will discern how little of this seeming mendacity arose from intentional deceit, how much was referable to the spontaneous activity of the “ literary temperament.” Indeed, Shakespeare and Voltaire might with advantage be assigned as collateral reading for the many earnest students of Mr. Barrie’s Tommy.

But after all it is the mighty genius of Shakespeare —winning his way by the resistless compulsion of his art through prejudice and hostility to men’s regard — which dominates the imagination of the reader. The final impression is pretty much that contained in the fine paragraph which Professor Lounsbury quotes from Maurice Morgann’s Essay on Falstatf. Morgann, it will be remembered, was the accomplished and modest gentleman who had the singular felicity and distinction of hearing from Dr. Johnson’s lips the words : “ Sir, I have been thinking over our dispute last night. You were in the right.” Fully as right as that forgotten contention has proved to be the prophecy which must have seemed but sound and fury to so many of his contemporaries:

“ When the hand of time shall have brushed off his present editors and commentators, and when the very name of Voltaire, and even the memory of the language in which he has written, shall be no more, the Appalachian Mountains, the banks of the Ohio, and the plains of Sciola shall resound with the accents of this barbarian. In his native tongue he shall roll the genuine passions of nature ; nor shall the griefs of Lear be alleviated, or the charms and wit of Rosalind be abated by time.” F. G.