ship of Stanislaus of Poland, but about the same time he lost his companion and the associate of his literary occupations, Madame du Châtelet, and in consequence of this misfortune he returned to Paris, and there quickly resumed with ardour his customary labours, the product of which were the plays severally entitled "Semiramis," "Orestes," and "Rome Sauvée." Never exempt either from the malignant assaults of his envious literary rivals or from the persecutions of ecclesiastics, Voltaire again accepted the proffered friendship of Frederick of Prussia, who had conferred upon him a decoration of honour and a pension. He repaired to Berlin, and became the king's boon companion in those hours in which the cares of state were forgotten in the freedom of talk, philosophic and literary, in railleries and impieties. The friendship of men, such as were these two, quite wanted the support of serious moral sentiment and of mutual esteem. Wounded vanity speedily bred disgust, suspicion, and hatred, and Voltaire made his escape from Prussia in haste, yet he did not regain his liberty until after vexatious and absurd means had been resorted to for preventing his return to France. It was during his stay in Prussia that he completed the "Siècle de Louis XIV.," an incomparable work, so it must be spoken of, notwithstanding the grievous wrong which the author does to the Calvinists of France. During a visit in Alsace he compiled the "Annales de l'Empire." Finding that his enemies would still render his return to Paris unsafe or disagreeable, he, after some time of inquietude, established himself at Ferney with his niece, Madame Denis, then a widow without children, and there he passed some years in seclusion, yet not in idleness. It was there that he signalized himself by his generous endeavours to serve and to save more than two or three victims of popular or ecclesiastical malice. Among these should be named the English Admiral Byng, sacrificed to party rancour. Great, though fruitless efforts, he made also in behalf of the unfortunate protestant Calas. From his retreat at Ferney issued several of his most noted writings, among them the poem "Sur la loi naturelle," in which he professes his principles as a deist; and that on the destruction of Lisbon, which asserts similar doctrines. In 1757 he edited a complete edition of his then published works, yet found leisure for new compositions—historical, dramatic, and even scientific; for in relation to physical science he was still ambitious of a fame which, in truth, was beyond his reach. Several articles he contributed to the Encyclopedia, then beginning to appear; and, besides these labours, he availed himself of many occasions for giving vent to what had become with him a virulent distemper of the moral nature—his hatred of Christianity. No restraints, either of good taste or of care as to the truth of statements, or of a decent regard to public feeling, stood in the way of Voltaire in these instances. It could subserve no useful purpose to bring into notice at this time, or to rebut, these pitiable samples of impotent animosity. This brilliant writer effectually wrought his purpose upon the French mind in his day, and the issue came up a few years later in the atrocities, the devastations, and the blasphemies of the Revolution. Not that Voltaire knowingly drove his countrymen forward toward the gulf of atheistic fanaticism; but he failed to understand the truth, that when Christianity is rejected, and a specious deism is pleaded for in its stead, the interval is quickly passed over which divides between a philosophy of this sort, and the murderous impieties which are always the popular interpretation of the same doctrine. Voltaire died ten years or more before the time when what he had put forth as sparkling witticism, and as warrantable satire, broke abroad in France in forms of infernal cruelty and misery. After this lapse of years it is easy to be calmly equitable in our judgments as to Voltaire himself. The gospel, which he laboured to drive from the earth, survives; and his own literary fame, the idol of his worship, barely sustains the damage which has accrued to it from the encounter.
Madame Denis, becoming weary of the monotony of her life in retirement, at length persuaded her uncle to return to Paris, there to receive the worship of the theatres. He received it to the full. "I shall be suffocated," he said, "under the weight of these offerings." This adulation sustained him against the virulent assaults of his many enemies. His enemies at this time were a coalition of profligate courtiers, of Jesuits, jansenists, and literary rivals. Although he was not the leader in the Encyclopedia, Voltaire, by his ago and his European fame, stood before the world as the chief of the able men who were its principal contributors and conductors; and although, as we have said, he stoutly maintained his position as a deist, while they without exception were avowed atheists, it was felt by himself and by them that the difference was a speculative refinement which lost its meaning in the broad apprehension of the world. Nice distinctions of this sort are inappreciable, when once Christianity has lost its hold of the public mind.
The excitement and the exertions which ensued upon his return to Paris induced a spitting of blood, to which he had been subject in mid life. His death occurred on May 30, 1778; he was then in his eighty-fourth year. A great effort was made by the church to prove to the world that their arch-enemy had at the last humbled himself, and submitted to her rites as a penitent. Neither Christianity nor philosophy is at all concerned in the contestations which took place over the grave of this illustrious writer. A great man he was not; nevertheless the stern disapproval which is his due, as the malignant and prejudiced enemy of the gospel, may well admit some abatement in consideration, not merely of his shining genius, and of the corruptions and hypocrisies which surrounded him, and which he assailed, but also of the many instances in which with a generous courage he employed his talents, and his reputation, and his purse also, in behalf of the oppressed, and the persecuted, and the destitute.
In preparing this brief statement of leading facts we have mainly followed Condorcet (Vie de Voltaire, par M. le Marquis de Condorcet; suivie de Memoires de Voltaire, ecrits par luimeme). His literary course is, in fact, to be gathered from its records in his works, which fill seventy volumes in the octavo edition, Paris, 1820. Our space does not admit of an enumeration of these works by their titles only.—I. T.
VOLTERRA, Daniele da, the popular name of Daniele Ricciarelli, who was born at Volterra in 1509. He studied under Razzi and Peruzzi at Florence, and then entered the school of Perino del Vaga at Rome. He afterwards became the friend and assistant of Michelangelo, and painted some of the great Florentine's designs; as for example the "David and Goliath" in the Louvre. Latterly Daniele turned his attention principally to sculpture. His masterpiece in painting is the "Taking down from the Gross," a fresco still in the church of the Trinità de' Monti, and well known from engravings of it. Pope Paul IV., objecting to some nudities in Michelangelo's Last Judgment, which the painter did not alter, threatened to whitewash the wall; a catastrophe which Daniele prevented by painting some draperies over the offensive figures, whence he was nicknamed "Braghettone." He died at Rome in 1566.—R. N. W.
VOLTOLINA, Giuseppe Milio, a Latin poet of the sixteenth century, was born at Salo, a town on the Laco di Garda in Lombardy. His poem on horticulture, in three books, was published in 1574. It is dedicated to Joachim Scaino, an eminent jurisconsult of that age. Voltolina's poem is highly praised by Cardinal Querini in his Specimen variæ Litteraturæ Brixianæ, and another critic tells us that it abounds in felicitous description, and everywhere yields a certain exquisite pleasure to the mind. Voltolina was author of another poem entitled "Hercules Benacensis."—R. M., A.
VONDEL, Joost von den, a celebrated poet of Holland, was born at Cologne on the 17th of November, 1587. His parents, who were anabaptists, had withdrawn to that city from Antwerp, to escape the persecution to which the intolerance of the Austrian-Spanish government exposed them, on account of their religion. After the establishment of the republic of the United Provinces, they fixed their dwelling in Amsterdam, where Vondel passed the rest of his life. He early displayed a fondness for poetry, and literature seems ever to have had greater charms for him than business—at least if we may judge from the fact that the latter, in his case, was the reverse of prosperous. Although Vondel's tragedies rank among his chief productions, the genius of their author was rather lyric than dramatic; and the magnificent choruses with which they are diversified form the features that principally crave our admiration. One of his dramatic poems, "Palamedes," is stated to have passed through no less than thirty editions in the course of a few years. Another, "Gijsbrecht von Amstel," claims place amongst his finest works. A third, "Lucifer," peculiarly interests the English reader, from the points of resemblance it presents to Milton's Paradise Lost. Not a little has been said on this subject; but although Vondel's "Lucifer" contains grand Miltonic passages, it appeared fourteen years before the work of the English poet. Vondel there-
