to be unkind. "Voltaire's first impulse," he said, "is to be good; it is
reflection that makes him bad."[343] Tronchin had said in the same way
that Voltaire's heart was the dupe of his understanding. Rousseau is
always trying to like him, he always recognises him as the first man of
the time, and he subscribed his mite for the erection of a statue to
him. It was the satire and mockery in Voltaire which irritated Rousseau
more than the doctrines or denial of doctrine which they cloaked; in his
eyes sarcasm was always the veritable dialect of the evil power. It says
something for the sincerity of his efforts after equitable judgment,
that he should have had the patience to discern some of the fundamental
merit of the most remorseless and effective mocker that ever made
superstition look mean, and its doctors ridiculous.


II.

Voltaire was indirectly connected with Rousseau's energetic attack upon
another great Encyclopædist leader, the famous Letter to D'Alembert on
Stage Plays. "There," Rousseau said afterwards, "is my favourite book,
my Benjamin, because I produced it without effort, at the first
inspiration, and in the most lucid moments of my life."[344] Voltaire,
who to us figures so little as a poet and dramatist, was to himself and
to his contemporaries of this date a poet and dramatist before all else,
the author of _Zaïre_ and _Mahomet_, rather than of _Candide_ and the
_Philosophical Dictionary_. D'Alembert was Voltaire's staunchest
henchman. He only wrote his article on Geneva for the Encyclopædia to
gratify the master. Fresh from a visit to him when he composed it, he
took occasion to regret that the austerity of the tradition of the city
deprived it of the manifold advantages of a theatre. This suggestion had
its origin partly in a desire to promote something that would please the