My ******* must have shocked him, and I might have guessed it when he told me he had put the 'Macaronicon' beside the 'Pucelle'. I knew that there was a poem of the same title in circulation, which passed for Voltaire's; but I also knew that he disavowed it, and I thought that would make him conceal the vexation my explanation must have caused him. It was not so, however; he contradicted me sharply, and I closed with him.
"Chapelain," said I, "has the merit of having rendered his subject-matter pleasant, without pandering to the tastes of his readers by saying things shocking to modesty and piety. So thinks my master Crebillon:"
"Crebillon! You cite a weighty authority. But how is my friend Crebillon your master, may I ask?"
"He taught me to speak French in less than two years, and as a mark of my gratitude I translated his Radamiste into Italian Alexandrines.
I am the first Italian who has dared to use this metre in our language."
"The first? I beg your pardon, as that honour belongs to my friend Pierre Jacques Martelli."
"I am sorry to be obliged to tell you that you are ****** a mistake."
"Why, I have his works, printed at Bologna, in my room!"
"I don't deny that, I am only talking about the metre used by Martelli. What you are thinking of must be verses of fourteen syllables; without alternative masculine and feminine rhymes.
However, I confess that he thinks he has imitated the French Alexandrines, and his preface made me explode with laughter. Did you read it?"
"Read it? I always read prefaces, and Martelli proves there that his verses have the same effect in Italian as our Alexandrine verses have in French."
"Exactly, that's what's so amusing. The worthy man is quite mistaken, and I only ask you to listen to what I have to say on the subject. Your masculine verse has only twelve poetic syllables, and the feminine thirteen. All Martelli's lines have fourteen syllables, except those that finish with a long vowel, which at the end of a line always counts as two syllables. You will observe that the first hemistitch in Martelli always consists of seven syllables, while in French it only has six. Your friend Pierre Jacques was either stone deaf or very hard of hearing."
"Then you have followed our theory of versification rigorously."
"Just so, in spite of the difficulty, as nearly all our words end with a short syllable."
"What reception has been accorded to your innovation?"
"It has not been found pleasing, because nobody knows how to recite my verses; but I hope to triumph when I deliver them myself before our literary clubs."
"Do you remember any of your version of the Radamiste?"
"I remember it all."
"You have a wonderful memory; I should be glad to hear it."
I began to recite the same scene that I had recited to Crebillon ten years before, and I thought M. de Voltaire listened with pleasure.
"It doesn't strike one as at all harsh," said he.
This was the highest praise he would give me. In his turn the great man recited a passage from Tancred which had not as yet been published, and which was afterwards considered, and rightly, as a masterpiece.
We should have got on very well if we had kept to that, but on my quoting a line of Horace to praise one of his pieces, he said that Horace was a great master who had given precepts which would never be out of date. Thereupon I answered that he himself had violated one of them, but that he had violated it grandly.
"Which is that?"
"You do not write, 'Contentus paucis lectoribus'."
"If Horace had had to combat the hydra-headed monster of superstition, he would have written as I have written--for all the world."
"It seems to me that you might spare yourself the trouble of combating what you will never destroy."
"That which I cannot finish others will, and I shall always have the glory of being the first in the field."
"Very good; but supposing you succeed in destroying superstition, what are you going to put in its place?"
"I like that. If I deliver the race of man from a wild beast which is devouring it, am I to be asked what I intend to put in its place?"
"It does not devour it; on the contrary, it is necessary to its existence."
"Necessary to its existence! That is a horrible blasphemy, the falsity of which will be seen in the future. I love the human race;
I would fain see men like myself, free and happy, and superstition and ******* cannot go together. Where do you find an enslaved and yet a happy people?"
"You wish, then, to see the people sovereign?"
"God forbid! There must be a sovereign to govern the masses."
"In that case you must have superstition, for without it the masses will never obey a mere man decked with the name of monarch."
"I will have no monarch; the word expresses despotism, which I hate as I do slavery."
"What do you mean, then? If you wish to put the government in the hands of one man, such a man, I maintain, will be a monarch."
"I would have a sovereign ruler of a free people, of which he is the chief by an agreement which binds them both, which would prevent him from becoming a tyrant."
"Addison will tell you that such a sovereign is a sheer impossibility. I agree with Hobbes, of two evils choose the least.
A nation without superstition would be a nation of philosophers, and philosophers would never obey. The people will only be happy when they are crushed and down-trodden, and bound in chains."
"This is horrible; and you are of the people yourself. If you have read my works you must have seen how I shew that superstition is the enemy of kings."
"Read your works? I have read and re-read them, especially in places where I have differed from you. Your ruling passion is the love of humanity. 'Est ubi peccas'. This blinds you. Love humanity, but love it as it is. It is not fit to receive the blessings you would lavish on it, and which would only make it more wretched and perverse. Leave men their devouring monster, it is dear to them.
I have never laughed so heartily as at Don Quixote assailed by the galley-slaves whom his generosity had set free."
"I am sorry that you have such a bad opinion of your fellow-
