<p><SPAN name="link2H_4_0182" id="link2H_4_0182"></SPAN></p>
<h2> LETTER CLXXX </h2>
<h3> BATH, October 4, 1752 </h3>
<p>MY DEAR FRIEND: I consider you now as at the court of Augustus, where, if
ever the desire of pleasing animated you, it must make you exert all the
means of doing it. You will see there, full as well, I dare say, as Horace
did at Rome, how states are defended by arms, adorned by manners, and
improved by laws. Nay, you have an Horace there as well as an Augustus; I
need not name Voltaire, 'qui nil molitur inept?' as Horace himself said of
another poet. I have lately read over all his works that are published,
though I had read them more than once before. I was induced to this by his
'Siecle de Louis XIV', which I have yet read but four times. In reading
over all his works, with more attention I suppose than before, my former
admiration of him is, I own, turned into astonishment. There is no one
kind of writing in which he has not excelled. You are so severe a classic
that I question whether you will allow me to call his 'Henriade' an epic
poem, for want of the proper number of gods, devils, witches and other
absurdities, requisite for the machinery; which machinery is, it seems,
necessary to constitute the 'epopee'. But whether you do or not, I will
declare (though possibly to my own shame) that I never read any epic poem
with near so much pleasure. I am grown old, and have possibly lost a great
deal of that fire which formerly made me love fire in others at any rate,
and however attended with smoke; but now I must have all sense, and
cannot, for the sake of five righteous lines, forgive a thousand absurd
ones.</p>
<p>In this disposition of mind, judge whether I can read all Homer through
'tout de suite'. I admire its beauties; but, to tell you the truth, when
he slumbers, I sleep. Virgil, I confess, is all sense, and therefore I
like him better than his model; but he is often languid, especially in his
five or six last books, during which I am obliged to take a good deal of
snuff. Besides, I profess myself an ally of Turnus against the pious
AEneas, who, like many 'soi-disant' pious people, does the most flagrant
injustice and violence in order to execute what they impudently call the
will of Heaven. But what will you say, when I tell you truly, that I
cannot possibly read our countryman Milton through? I acknowledge him to
have some most sublime passages, some prodigious flashes of light; but
then you must acknowledge that light is often followed by darkness
visible, to use his own expression. Besides, not having the honor to be
acquainted with any of the parties in this poem, except the Man and the
Woman, the characters and speeches of a dozen or two of angels and of as
many devils, are as much above my reach as my entertainment. Keep this
secret for me: for if it should be known, I should be abused by every
tasteless pedant, and every solid divine in England.</p>
<p>'Whatever I have said to the disadvantage of these three poems, holds much
stronger against Tasso's 'Gierusalemme': it is true he has very fine and
glaring rays of poetry; but then they are only meteors, they dazzle, then
disappear, and are succeeded by false thoughts, poor 'concetti', and
absurd impossibilities; witness the Fish and the Parrot; extravagancies
unworthy of an heroic poem, and would much better have become Ariosto, who
professes 'le coglionerie'.</p>
<p>I have never read the "Lusiade of Camoens," except in prose translation,
consequently I have never read it at all, so shall say nothing of it; but
the Henriade is all sense from the beginning to the end, often adorned by
the justest and liveliest reflections, the most beautiful descriptions,
the noblest images, and the sublimest sentiments; not to mention the
harmony of the verse, in which Voltaire undoubtedly exceeds all the French
poets: should you insist upon an exception in favor of Racine, I must
insist, on my part, that he at least equals him. What hero ever interested
more than Henry the Fourth; who, according to the rules of epic poetry,
carries on one great and long action, and succeeds in it at last? What
descriptions ever excited more horror than those, first of the Massacre,
and then of the Famine at Paris? Was love ever painted with more truth and
'morbidezza' than in the ninth book? Not better, in my mind, even in the
fourth of Virgil. Upon the whole, with all your classical rigor, if you
will but suppose St. Louis a god, a devil, or a witch, and that he appears
in person, and not in a dream, the Henriade will be an epic poem,
according to the strictest statute laws of the 'epopee'; but in my court
of equity it is one as it is.</p>
<p>I could expatiate as much upon all his different works, but that I should
exceed the bounds of a letter and run into a dissertation. How delightful
is his history of that northern brute, the King of Sweden, for I cannot
call him a man; and I should be sorry to have him pass for a hero, out of
regard to those true heroes, such as Julius Caesar, Titus, Trajan, and the
present King of Prussia, who cultivated and encouraged arts and sciences;
whose animal courage was accompanied by the tender and social sentiments
of humanity; and who had more pleasure in improving, than in destroying
their fellow-creatures. What can be more touching, or more interesting—what
more nobly thought, or more happily expressed, than all his dramatic
pieces? What can be more clear and rational than all his philosophical
letters? and whatever was so graceful, and gentle, as all his little
poetical trifles? You are fortunately 'a porte' of verifying, by your
knowledge of the man, all that I have said of his works.</p>
<p>Monsieur de Maupertius (whom I hope you will get acquainted with) is, what
one rarely meets with, deep in philosophy and, mathematics, and yet
'honnete et aimable homme': Algarotti is young Fontenelle. Such men must
necessarily give you the desire of pleasing them; and if you can frequent
them, their acquaintance will furnish you the means of pleasing everybody
else.</p>
<p>'A propos' of pleasing, your pleasing Mrs. F——-d is expected
here in two or three days; I will do all that I can for you with her: I
think you carried on the romance to the third or fourth volume; I will
continue it to the eleventh; but as for the twelfth and last, you must
come and conclude it yourself. 'Non sum qualis eram'.</p>
<p>Good-night to you, child; for I am going to bed, just at the hour at which
I suppose you are going to live, at Berlin.</p>
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