VOLTAIRE,ædiaVoltaireFranç François Marie Arouet de, a French
author, born in Paris, Nov. 21, 1694, died there, May 30, 1778. His parents were the sieur Arouet, treasurer in the chamber of accounts, and Marie Catharine d'Aumart, of a noble family of Poitou. The name Voltaire is said by some to have been derived from a family estate that belonged to the mother, while others consider it an anagram of Arouet l. i. (le jeune). His godfather, a certain abbé de Châteauneuf, was his first teacher, and indoctrinated him in the lively but skeptical literature of the day. The child was taught to read in the Mosaïde, a poem in which Moses is described as an impostor, ascribed to Jean Baptiste Rousseau. His first verses, written in his 12th year, addressed to the dauphin and soliciting alms for an invalid, attracted the attention of Ninon de l'Enclos, who bequeathed him 2,000 francs for the purchase of books. At the college of Louis-le-Grand the Jesuits soon discovered both his extraordinary talents and the freedom of mind which induced one of them to predict that he would one day become the coryphæus of deism. On his departure from college, the
boy was placed in a school of jurisprudence, with a view to the subsequent purchase of a judicial office; but he preferred poetry to law. Besides, the abbé de Châteauneuf had introduced him to the brilliant and licentious society of his mistress Ninon, which already reacted against the asceticism of Mme. de Maintenon, and indulged in railleries against all established institutions, religious, political, and social. His law studies were of course interrupted, and this fact, together with the composition of a poem in 1712 on the decoration of the choir of Notre Dame, led his father to connect him with the embassy of the marquis de Châteauneuf to the United Provinces. At the Hague one Mme. Dunoyer accused him of seducing her daughter, though she was herself suspected of having favored the crime, and from a mercenary motive published their correspondence. This scandal obliged him to return to Paris, and his father pardoned him only on condition that he should resume his studies with a notary. A friend of the family, M. de Caumartin, procured permission for him to pass a few months in his country residence at St. Ange. On his return to Paris he was suddenly and strangely arrested and transferred to the Bastile. Louis XIV. had just died; satirical and witty pamphlets celebrated the event as a happy deliverance; and some of the lampoons or epigrams being ascribed to Voltaire, though he was barely 20 years of age, the regent issued orders for his confinement. During the year he spent in prison he wrote a part of his epic the Henriade, and completed a tragedy, begun some years before, entitled Œdipe. Pleased with these performances, the regent released him, and added to the favor a considerable donation. Œdipe was soon afterward (1718) produced on the stage with brilliant success, and even his father became reconciled to his literary career. The play abounded in impressive scenes, lofty characters, and a most fervid and beautiful declamation; it has since kept possession of the stage, but is rather a series of impassioned and eloquent dialogues than a drama. Voltaire now passed from château to château, to visit illustrious friends; he studied at Amsterdam, passed some time at Brussels, and sought out Jean Baptiste Rousseau in his place of exile. Yet in the midst of these diversions he composed two new tragedies, Artémire and Mariamne, and a comedy, L'indiscret, and completed the Henriade. The tragedies met with indifferent success in the representation, and the comedy was a failure. But his epic, suggested by the reign of Henry IV., having been purloined, altered, and published under the title of La ligue, by a copyist named Desfontaines, became rapidly popular. The sensation it produced, even in the mutilated and factitious form in which it had been given to the public, compelled the author to hasten his own final revisions. Certain bold sentiments of philosophy and tolerance, however, scattered among the poetic beauties,