Clear knowledge of him ought, at this stage, to be common;
but unexpectedly it is not. What endless writing and biographying
there has been about this man; in which one still reads, with a
kind of lazy satisfaction, due to the subject, and to the French
genius in that department! But the man himself, and his
environment and practical aspects, what the actual physiognomy of
his life and of him can have been, is dark from beginning to
ending; and much is left in an ambiguous undecipherable condition
to us. A proper History of Voltaire, in which should be
discoverable, luminous to human creatures, what he was, what
element he lived in, what work he did: this is still a problem for
the genius of France!--

His Father's name is known to us; the name of his Father's
profession, too, but not clearly the nature of it; still less his
Father's character, economic circumstances, physiognomy spiritual
or social: not the least possibility granted you of forming an
image, however faint, of that notable man and household, which
distinguished itself to all the earth by producing little Francois
into the light of this sun. Of Madame Arouet, who, or what, or how
she was, nothing whatever is known. A human reader, pestered
continually with the Madame-Denises, Abbe-Mignots and enigmatic
nieces and nephews, would have wished to know, at least, what
children, besides Francois, Madame Arouet had: once for all, How
many children? Name them, with year of birth, year of death,
according to the church-registers: they all, at any rate, had that
degree of history! No; even that has not been done. Beneficent
correspondents of my own make answer, after some research, No
register of the Arouets anywhere to be had. The very name
VOLTAIRE, if you ask whence came it? there is no answer, or worse