Voltaire." In his lighter verses of occasion, epigram,
compliment, light mockery, half-playful, half-serious sentiment, he
is often exquisite.

No part of Voltaire's work has suffered so little at the hands of
time as his tales in prose. In his contributions to the satire of
human-kind he learned something from Rabelais, something from Swift.
It is the satire of good sense impatient against folly, and armed
with the darts of wit. Voltaire does not esteem highly the wisdom
of human creatures: they pretend to knowledge beyond their powers;
they kill one another for an hypothesis; they find ingenious reasons
for indulging their base or petty passions; their lives are under
the rule of _sa Majeste le Hasard_. But let us not rage in Timon's
manner against the human race; if the world is not the best of all
possible worlds, it is not wholly evil. Let us be content to mock
at the absurdity of the universe, and at the diverting, if irritating,
follies of its inhabitants. Above all, let us find support in work,
even though we do not see to what it tends; "Il faut cultiver notre
jardin"--such is Voltaire's word, and the final word of Candide. With
light yet effective irony, Voltaire preaches the lesson of good sense.
When bitter, he is still gay; his sad little philosophy of existence
is uttered with an accent of mirth; his art in satirical narrative
is perfect; he is not resigned; he is not enraged; he is indignant,
but at the same time he smiles; there is always the last resource
of blindly cultivating our garden.

In Voltaire's myriad-minded correspondence the whole man may be
found--his fire, his sense, his universal curiosity, his wit, his
malignity, his goodness, his Protean versatility, his ruling ideas;
and one may say that the whole of eighteenth-century Europe presses
into the pages. He is not only the man of letters, the student of
science, the philosopher; he is equally interested in politics, in
social reform, in industry, in agriculture, in political economy,
in philology, and, together with these, in the thousand incidents
of private life.

CHAPTER III
DIDEROT AND THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA--PHILOSOPHERS, ECONOMISTS,
CRITICS--BUFFON

I

"When I recall Diderot," wrote his friend Meister, "the immense
variety of his ideas, the amazing multiplicity of his knowledge, the
rapid flight, the warmth, the impetuous tumult of his imagination,
all the charm and all the disorder of his conversation, I venture
to liken