Excerpt from Life of Voltaire, Vol. 2 Frederic had gathered about him a number of peculiar characters during the eight years of his reign. At this period of his life he seemed two men in one, such a contrast was there between Frederic the head of the Prussian government, and Frederic the head of Prussian society. The chief of a state, indeed, has two kinds of duty, and needs to be two men, for it belongs to his office both to administer and to represent: like the master of a great house, who in the morning examines the accounts and views the leak in the roof, and in the evening receives company and beams at the head of his table. The Romans did not waste a man in having two consuls. Constitutional monarchs reign, but leave to ministers the nobler toil of ruling. The finished republic, perhaps, will reach this necessary division of labor in some suitable way. Frederic both reigned and ruled. It was and is too much for one mortal; and if he acquitted himself of the double task better than any other man has done in Europe during recent centuries, most of his work was but for the day. Bonaparte demolished a good deal of it at Jena; Goethe and Schiller corrected more of it at Weimar. In his day, however, he was a victorious ruler, who redeemed, in some degree, the tarnished character of the royal houses, and kept the name of king from being entirely contemptible. At the moment when Voltaire arrived, to add to his court the eclat of the first literary name of the period, his position was singularly brilliant. He was thirty-eight years of age. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Excerpt from The Life of Voltaire, Vol. 2 of 2 Receiving no answer to his request to be allowed to travel, Voltaire prudently resolved to consider that silence gave consent. But he was still not a little nervous that if he took refuge in a foreign country Louis XV. Might consider himself justified in seizing the pensions Of his truant subject. And then, where was he to go It seems most likely that if it had not been for that unromantic disorder called mat de mer he would have ended his days in Pennsylvania. He had still his bizarre liking for the Quakers; and America was the country of the free. TO be sure, mal da pays was a worse and a longer lived disorder with him than the other and if he had tried Pennsylvania on one impulse, he would quickly have left it on another. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Excerpt from Life of Voltaire, Vol. 1 I attempt in these volumes to exhibit to the American people the most extraordinary of Frenchmen, and one of the most extraordinary of human beings. When first I ventured, many years ago, to think of this task, I soon ceased to wonder why a subject so alluring had not been undertaken before by any one employing the whole of the existing material. Voltaire was then buried under a mountain of heterogeneous record. The attempts of essayists, even those of the first rank, to characterize him truly were in some degree frustrated by an abundance of unsorted informa tion that defied all ordinary research. Since that time the Voltairean material has continued to accumulate, and never so rapidly as during the last three years. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Candide is a French satire by Voltaire, a philosopher of the Age of Enlightenment. It begins with a young man, Candide, who is living a sheltered life in an Edenic paradise and being indoctrinated with Leibnizian optimism (or simply Optimism) by his mentor, Pangloss. The work describes the abrupt cessation of this lifestyle, followed by Candide's slow, painful disillusionment as he witnesses and experiences great hardships in the world. Voltaire concludes with Candide, if not rejecting optimism outright, advocating a deeply practical precept, "we must cultivate our garden", in lieu of the Leibnizian mantra of Pangloss, "all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds". Candide is characterized by its sarcastic tone, as well as by its erratic, fantastical and fast-moving plot. A picaresque novel it parodies many adventure and romance clichés, the struggles of which are caricatured in a tone that is mordantly matter-of-fact. Still, the events discussed are often based on historical happenings, such as the Seven Years' War and the 1755 Lisbon earthquake. As philosophers of Voltaire's day contended with the problem of evil, so too does Candide in this short novel, albeit more directly and humorously. Voltaire ridicules religion, theologians, governments, armies, philosophies, and philosophers through allegory; most conspicuously, he assaults Leibniz and his optimism. As expected by Voltaire, Candide has enjoyed both great success and great scandal. Immediately after its secretive publication, the book was widely banned because it contained religious blasphemy, political sedition and intellectual hostility hidden under a thin veil of naïveté. However, with its sharp wit and insightful portrayal of the human condition, the novel has since inspired many later authors and artists to mimic and adapt it. Today, Candide is recognized as Voltaire's magnum opus and is often listed as part of the Western canon; it is arguably taught more than any other work of French literature. It was listed as one of The 100 Most Influential Books Ever Written.