anks in point of merit
next to _Candide_. If it had stopped about half-way, there could be no
doubt about the matter. The reader is caught at once by one of the most
famous and one of the most Voltairian of phrases, "Il savait de la
metaphysique ce qu'on a su dans tous les ages, c'est-a-dire fort peu de
chose," a little more discussion of which saying, and of others like it,
may perhaps be given later. The successive disappointments of the almost
too perfect[356] hero are given with the simplicity just edged with
irony which is Voltaire's when he is at his best, though he undoubtedly
learnt it from the masters already assigned, and--the suggestion would
have made him very angry, and would probably have attracted one of his
most Yahoo-like descents on this humble and devoted head--from Lesage.
But though the said head has no objection--much the reverse--to "happy
endings," the romance-finish of _Zadig_ has always seemed to it a
mistake. Still, how many mistakes would one pardon if they came after
such a success? _Babouc_, the first of those miniature _contes_ (they
are hardly "tales" in one sense), which Voltaire managed so admirably,
has the part-advantage part-disadvantage of being likewise the first of
a series of satires on French society, which, piquant as they are, would
certainly have been both more piquant and more weighty if there had been
fewer of them. It is full of the perfect, if not great, Voltairian
phrases,--the involuntary _Mene Tekel_, "Babouc conclut qu'une telle
societe ne pouvait subsister"; the palinode after a fashion, "Il
s'affectionnait a la ville, dont le peuple etait doux [oh! Nemesis!]
poli et bien-faisant, quoique leger, medisant et plein de vanite"; and
the characteristic collection of parallel between Babouc and Jonah,
surely not objectionable even to the most orthodox, "Mais quand on a ete
trois jours dans le corps d'une baleine on n'est pas de si bonne humeur
que quand on a ete a l'opera, a la comedie et qu'on a soupe en bonne
compagnie."

[Sidenote: _Micromegas._]

_Memnon, ou La Sagesse Humaine_ is still less of a tale, only a lively
sarcastic apologue; but he would be a strange person who would quarrel
with its half-dozen pages, and much the same may be said of the _Voyages
de Scarmentado_. Still, one feels in both of them, and in many of the
others, that they are after all not much more than chips of an inferior
rehandling of _Gulliver_. _Micromegas_, as has been said, does not
disg