pity in "Candide." Voltaire, whose light touch on familiar
institutions opens them and reveals their absurdity, likes to remind us
that the slaughter and pillage and murder which Candide witnessed among
the Bulgarians was perfectly regular, having been conducted according to
the laws and usages of war. Had Voltaire lived to-day he would have done
to poverty what he did to war. Pitying the poor, he would have shown us
poverty as a ridiculous anachronism, and both the ridicule and the pity
would have expressed his indignation.

Almost any modern, essaying a philosophic tale, would make it long.
"Candide" is only a "Hamlet" and a half long. It would hardly have been
shorter if Voltaire had spent three months on it, instead of those three
days. A conciseness to be matched in English by nobody except Pope, who
can say a plagiarizing enemy "steals much, spends little, and has
nothing left," a conciseness which Pope toiled and sweated for, came as
easy as wit to Voltaire. He can afford to be witty, parenthetically, by
the way, prodigally, without saving, because he knows there is more wit
where that came from.

One of Max Beerbohm's cartoons shows us the young Twentieth Century
going at top speed, and watched by two of his predecessors. Underneath
is this legend: "The Grave Misgivings of the Nineteenth Century, and the
Wicked Amusement of the Eighteenth, in Watching the Progress (or
whatever it is) of the Twentieth." This Eighteenth Century snuff-taking
and malicious, is like Voltaire, who nevertheless must know, if he
happens to think of it, that not yet in the Twentieth Century, not for
all its speed mania, has any one come near to equalling the speed of a
prose tale by Voltaire. "Candide" is a full book. It is filled with
mockery, with inventiveness, with things as concrete as things to eat
and coins, it has time for the neatest intellectual clickings, it is
never hurried, and it moves with the most amazing rapidity. It has the
rapidity of high spirits playing a game. The dry high spirits of this
destroyer of optimism make most optimists look damp and depressed.
Contemplation of the stupidity which deems happiness possible almost
made Voltaire happy. His attack on optimism is one of the gayest books
in the world. Gaiety has been scattered everywhere up and down its pages
by Voltaire's lavish hand, by his thin fingers.

Many propagandist satirical books have been written with "Candide" in
mind, but not too many. To-day, es