SOURCE: Williams, David. “Voltaire's ‘True Essay’ on Epic Poetry.” Modern Language Review 88 (1993): 46-57.

[In the essay below, Williams presents his history of Voltaire's Essai sur la poésie épique, from the first English essay through the unauthorized translations and Voltaire's corrections. Williams suggests that Voltaire's revisions attempted to make the essay more appealing to French readership, but also had the effect of blunting his arguments.]

For almost one hundred and fifty years after the appearance of the first authorized edition of Voltaire's Essai sur la poésie épique in 1733, described in a letter to Thieriot as ‘my true essay on poetry’ (D336), French readers took this text alone to be Voltaire's definitive statement on the modern European epic.¹ The original version of the essay, which he brought out in remarkably elegant English in 1727 as An Essay upon the Epick Poetry of the European Nations, from Homer down to Milton,² was virtually ignored in France until 1915, when an American scholar, Florence D. White, produced the first modern critical edition. The publication of White's edition marked the first separate appearance of Voltaire's English essay since 1760, and paved the way for its recognition and rehabilitation after an astonishingly prolonged period of neglect.³

The Essay upon the Epick Poetry has never been reprinted in France, either during the eighteenth century or subsequently, in any of the collective editions of Voltaire's works, nor has the English text been reprinted with the numerous French editions of the Henriade for which it served as the advertisement and as part of the drive for subscriptions at the time of the launching of Voltaire's poem in London.⁴ Bengesco's knowledge of it was tentative, and it was unknown to Beuchot. Neither Sainte-Beuve nor Rigault separated the English and French versions, and as late as 1938 Raymond Naves, in spite of the evidence of White's research, still assumed that the two essays were essentially the same text, and that the only difference between them was linguistic.⁵

If Voltaire's English essay became something of a bibliographical rarity in France, this was entirely in accordance with the author's intentions. In the Advertisement to the Reader he had sought to play down the intrinsic importance of his essay as a critical statement, and had allowed it to stand entirely in the shadow of the Henriade: ‘As to this present Essay, it is intended as a kind of Preface or Introduction to the Henriade, which is almost entirely printed, nothing being wanting but the printing of the Cuts’ (Essay, p. [36]).⁶ The Essay, together with its companion, An Essay upon the Civil Wars of France, extracted from Curious Manuscripts, was presented simply as part of a strategy for publicizing the Henriade in England and as a device for encouraging English subscriptions. Even so, the New Memoirs of Literature, announcing the essay's publication by Samuel Jallasson on 6 December (old style) 1727, commented that it deserved to be read by ‘all the curious’ (vi. 461), and indeed what Voltaire had to say about the epic, and in particular about Milton, was to enliven critical debate in England for the rest of the century.⁷ The first edition was followed by three more London editions between 1728 and 1731, and two Dublin editions, graced by a flattering Short Account of the Author by Swift, the last of which appeared in 1760. Public interest in England in Voltaire's Essay was lively, and was to remain so for some considerable time.

Voltaire never gave any indication that he was either aware of, or interested in, the fortunes of his English essay in England. There is no evidence at all of any authorized editorial adjustments, still less of genuine variants, in any of the English or Irish editions.⁸ If his essay's English fate did not concern him, however, its potential impact in Paris caused him intense anxiety. He was very wary about sending copies of the first edition to France, as his letter of 11 April 1728 to Puchot des Alleurs indicates: ‘I have been tempted to send you an essay of mine which I have been bold to print in english about two months ago, but I dare not send anything of that kind in to France before I have settled my affairs in that country. […] I think I am not to let the french court know that I think and write like a free englishman’ (D330). In connexion with the licence to print the Henriade in France, he told Thieriot a few days later (2 May) that he had no wish to offend Hérault, the lieutenant de police whom he had already crossed at the time of the Rohan-Chabot incident prior to his incarceration in the Bastille in April 1726 (see D265, D266, and D267): ‘J have assur'd him j would never send in to france any thing without the consent of the ministery’ (D333). Within less than one year of the work's first appearance in England, Voltaire was taking steps to forestall its premature appearance in France.

He was all the more dismayed, therefore, to learn that the Abbé Desfontaines was already going ahead with a translation, and he lost no time in asking Thieriot to intervene: ‘j think you should see the interloper and tell him only that you have acquainted me with his design. […] Tell him besides j disaprove intirely his design of translating my english essay, since j have translated it my self; that little pamphlet could not succeed in France without being dressed in quite an other manner. […] The stile besides is after the english fashion, so many similes, so many things which appear but easy and familiar here, would seem to low to yr wits of Paris. In short j know nothing so impertinent as to go about to translate me in spight of my teeth. In fine y^r business must be to gain time with him, to terrify him by m^r Herauts means, and to obtain of m^r Herault that he will hinder not only the man, but every body else from publishing the book’ (D333). It was in this letter that Voltaire, in promising to send Thieriot the plates and sheets of the quarto London edition of the Henriade, also promised ‘the essay on epick poetry in French, and calculated for the French meridian’.

It was too late. Desfontaines had already obtained permission from Lancelot to publish his translation on 23 April, and the privilège, signed by Cognard, was registered on 19 May 1728. Apart from the uncontrolled appearance of his essay, Voltaire was also worried about any premature marketing in France of the Henriade (D333), Desfontaines having already offended in 1724 in the matter of La Ligue.⁹ The May 1728 edition of the Journal des savants reported that the Desfontaines translation of the Essay was on sale (p. 319), and it was almost certainly issued in late May 1728, published anonymously in Paris by Chaubert.¹⁰ Beuchot inferred that Voltaire had authorized Desfontaines to produce a French translation: ‘L'auteur […] le fit imprimer en anglais, et le fit traduire en français par l'abbé Desfontaines.’¹¹ While Voltaire had indeed permitted reluctantly the publication of a hastily and superficially corrected version of Desfontaines's text, there is no evidence to support the view that Desfontaines's project to translate Voltaire's 1727 Essay was initiated either with Voltaire's approval or with his knowledge.¹² His quarrel with Desfontaines on the matter was to simmer for many more years, and the latter was still denying authorship ten years later, deflecting responsibility onto Plélo.¹³

By 14 June 1728 Voltaire had received a copy of the Desfontaines translation, and in a damage limitation exercise instructed Thieriot to announce ‘that the english essay was but the sketch of a very serious work which J have almost finish'd in French with all the care, the liberty, and the impartiality j am capable of. […] J intend […] to give the publick as soon as possible the best edition j can of the Henriade together with my true essay on poetry. The printing of 'em both is a duty j must discharge before j think of other duties less suitable with the life of a man of letters, but becoming a man of honour, and from which you may be sure j shall never depart as long as j breath’ (D336). He asked Thieriot to let him have ‘the sense of the public of the Henriade and the essay’.

Despite Voltaire's complaints and denigrations,¹⁴ Desfontaines's 1728 translation is an elegant and, for the most part, accurate rendering of the text of the first English edition of the Essay. It was reasonably well received by contemporaries, though soon forgotten (see Morris, pp. 209-10). Voltaire made only minor adjustments after listing rather diffidently the main errors that he wished to correct in D336: ‘It is but a slight performance in english, but it is a ridiculous one in french. […] Besides abbot des Fontaines has been very far from doing me justice in many passages.’ It was only much later, between 1731 and 1738, that his irritation with Desfontaines grew more acrimonious. The final appearance of this corrected Desfontaines translation appears to have been in 1772, when it was included in the Neuchâtel (Panckoucke, Paris) edition of Voltaire's works (Trapnell, pp. 133-35). Desfontaines's 1728 translation, together with Voltaire's corrected text, remained the only evidence for the existence of the original English version of the Essai sur la poésie épique for French readers, and neither text made much impact. The corrected Desfontaines-Voltaire hybrid appeared in the 1732 Ledet/Desbordes edition of the Henriade, and it was reprinted without change in only three subsequent unauthorized editions of Voltaire's works.¹⁵ Neither version represented, however, the text that Voltaire wished to see disseminated in France.

He had already started work on his own ‘translation’ of the English text during the spring and early summer of 1728, although this ‘true essay on poetry’, was not to appear for another five years. After the summary correction and reissuing of Desfontaines's version, Voltaire announced in mid-August of 1728 that his own Essai sur la poésie épique was not going to be simply a translation of the ill-formed English embryo, ‘mais un ouvrage complet et très curieux pour ceux qui quoyque nez en France veulent avoir une idée du goust des autres nations’ (D341). The Essai was in fact to be only intermittently a translation. More precisely, it was to be a carefully reworked text, very different in tone, pruned and shaped to French sensibilities and interests, expanded in parts, and garnished with a modified referential framework.

What had started as a hurriedly conceived project to confound ‘il buggerone abbate’ (D344) gradually assumed the proportions of a much larger and more complex commitment. On 31 July 1731 Cideville encouraged him to take his time: ‘Donnés vous le temps cependant de le refondre en entier, comme vous en avés le projet’ (D420), and Voltaire continued to work on the Essai throughout 1731. He consulted Formont about the concluding chapter on 21 November (D439). Two years later, in June 1733, this ‘true essay’ was duly published with the Jore-Bouche edition of the Henriade. On 15 September of the same year Voltaire sent two copies to the marquis de Caumont with the comment: ‘J'avois d'abord composé cet essai en anglais, et il avoit été traduit par l'abbé Desfontaines, homme fort connu dans la littérature, mais je l'ay depuis retravaillé en français, et je l'ai calculé pour notre méridien’ (D654). On 20 November the completed text was sent to Brossette ‘tel que je l'ay composé en francais et non pas tel que m^r l'abbe des Fontaines l'avoit traduit d'après mon Essay anglais. Vous trouverez peut être assez plaisant que je sois un auteur traduit par mes compatriotes et que je me suis retraduit moy même. Mais si vous aviez été deux ans comme moy en Angleterre je suis sûr que vous auriez été si touché de l'énergie de cette langue que vous auriez composé quelque chose en anglais’ (D681).

The text of the Essai was to be revised, expanded, and reworked considerably over the next quarter of a century, the greatest number of changes occurring in the 1750s. In effect, it was to mask successfully the texts of both the unauthorized and the corrected Desfontaines translations, and as a consequence of that it ensured oblivion in France for the 1727 English original.

From the very start of the project to undertake a translation of the work himself, however, Voltaire had been quite aware of the implications of addressing himself to a French audience, as opposed to an English one, on the subject of the epic, and he accepted the consequent need for careful adjustment. The structural shape of the Essay was modified: the three-page Advertisement to the Reader, retained by Desfontaines, disappears in the 1733 Essai, never to be reprinted in any of the authorized French editions. In the 1727 Jallasson edition of the Essay there are no formally numbered chapters. After eleven pages of untitled preliminary commentary, the text simply subdivides into eight sections identified by a heading composed of the name of the poet treated, and in the following sequence: Homer, Virgil, Lucan, Trissino, Camões, Tasso, Don Alonzo d'Ereilla y Cuñiga, and Milton. It concludes with ten pages of further commentary without subheading, but marked by a line-space. The longest commentary was devoted to Milton, closely followed by Tasso, then Ercilla. Of the remaining poets, the chapter on Virgil is the most extensive, exceeding the Homer chapter by almost a third. In terms of length, Virgil is then followed by Camões, Trissino, Homer, and Lucan. The extremities of the range (137 lines for Lucan to 235 lines for Virgil) should be noted.

The 1733 Jore-Bouche edition presents a text divided into nine formally numbered chapters. The free-standing conclusion of the Essay has been subsumed into the last chapter on Milton, with no break in line-spacing. The preliminary comments have been reconstituted and expanded to form a new first chapter, and given the title Des différents goûts des peuples. The sequence of poets treated remains the same, but the disposition of material within each chapter has changed, as have the tone and emphasis. In terms of length, the Tasso chapter now dominates physically, although the impression is slightly misleading, as this chapter contains fifty lines of quotation from the Pharsalia, followed by a further sixty-six lines from Brébeuf's translation.

Nevertheless, the space devoted to Tasso does now exceed that devoted to Milton. In fact, the commentary on Milton has been drastically reduced; it now barely exceeds that of the new first chapter on national tastes, and is followed in terms of length by Homer, Virgil, Ercilla, Camões, Lucan, and Trissino. Space devoted to Homer has been doubled, and Trissino has replaced Lucan as the poet with the briefest commentary. The Camões chapter has also been considerably lengthened, as have the chapters on Virgil (now given almost equal treatment with Homer) and Lucan. With the 1733 ‘true essay’ Voltaire was clearly more concerned with the production for his compatriots of a much more formal, more systematically organized, and more authoritative statement on the epic than had been the case in 1727 (see White, pp. 65-72), with a concentration of commentary on the familiar rather than on the unfamiliar. This is reflected not only in the structural changes to the text but also in the replacement of the racy, spontaneous vivacity and colourfulness of the 1727 Essay with a more sober, reflective tone.

Many of the 173 modifications, excisions, and amplifications introduced into the 1733 Essai reflect a wish to avoid controversy or offence. The Homer chapter is a particularly illuminating example of a ‘political’ change of tack tailored carefully to a French reader's perceived tastes and prejudices. The chapter has been almost entirely rewritten, the English original disappearing beneath a new defence of Homer's poetry and an enthusiasm for the Homeric epic and for the beauties of the Greek language. Flattery in the Essay for Pope's translation of the Iliad is now removed to make way for a paragraph on the qualities of untamed genius, of which Homer is proclaimed an early example. The need to please Pope has gone, and Voltaire now declares against the merits of modern translations. It could be argued that much of the English version of this chapter had been influenced by a wish to accommodate Pope, and this was almost certainly why so few of the original features were deemed worthy of retention for French readers. Criticism of Homer's faults is now muted, although it does survive in scattered subsequent references: in comparisons between Homer and Virgil, or Tasso or Ariosto or Ercilla.¹⁶ In the Tasso chapter, for example, Homer continues to be read ‘par une espèce de devoir’, while Ariosto in contrast is read and reread for pleasure.

In the English essay Homer had fulfilled a special role, the Greek poet having been made to bear much of the weight of Voltaire's attack on the putative authority of the ancients over the moderns. Voltaire's hostility to Homer in that essay related closely to his broader attack on the contemporary grip of ancient precepts over modern epic composition. In England Homer had been presented as a representative of the aesthetic tyranny of the ancients over the moderns; in France Homer became a vehicle for the defence of poetry against geometric innovation. His attitude towards Homer in the Essay had thus been central to his approach to the problem of judging art, and of defining the relationship between the art of the ancients and that of the moderns, together with the allied issue of imitation: ‘We should be their Admirers, not their Slaves. […] Our just Respect for the Ancients, proves a meer Superstition, if it betrays us into a rash Contempt of our Neighbours and Countrymen’ (Essay, pp. 45, 46). The point is made at greater length, though in a differently phrased way, in the French version, where facilitating a favourable reception for the Henriade was the urgent pre-requisite: ‘En un mot, admirons les Anciens; mais que notre admiration ne soit pas une superstition aveugle; et ne faisons pas cette injustice à la nature humaine, et à nous-mêmes, de fermer les yeux aux beautés qu'elle répand autour de nous, pour ne regarder et n'aimer que ses anciennes productions, dont nous ne pouvons pas juger avec autant de sûreté’ (Essai, p. 301). After 1733 Voltaire never returned to the broad sweep of his comparativist vision of 1727.

The changes of wording and emphasis in the Homer chapter that took place between 1727 and 1733 are intimately, though not exclusively, bound up with questions of strategy regarding the Henriade. It is worth remembering that when Voltaire had sent a description of the future Henriade to Jean-Baptiste Rousseau in 1722 he had claimed that he was composing an epic poem strictly in accordance with the rules (D103). Rousseau rejected that claim two years later.¹⁷ It is a matter for speculation how far Voltaire had Rousseau's unfavourable judgement on La Ligue in mind when revising his 1727 essay for French consumption.

On the other hand, the Essai sur la poésie épique does reflect a serious attempt to broaden the French conception of the epic and to liberate French taste from the constraints of classically based legislation. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the chapter on Homer in the French edition, with its emphasis on a theory of beauty based on ‘sentiment’. Homer is certainly presented to French readers in a more positive way, although it should be noted that Voltaire's view of the Iliad is still far from being one of unqualified approval. The critical focus is still narrow; the reader is still given only a partial view of the poem, and a detailed concentration on the ‘pierres brutes’ still tends to obscure any overall appreciation of ‘le grand bâtiment de marbre’. Such an appreciation of the global grandeur of the Iliad would have to await the passing of neo-Classicism in France.

The other chapter that underwent radical ‘political’ surgery is, not surprisingly, the one devoted to Milton. In the Essay Voltaire's reactions to Paradise Lost had been on the whole favourable, and his English commentary reflected a remarkable sensitivity to semantic nuance and, above all, to the power of Miltonian imagery, although Voltaire's announcement of his aversion to the figures of Death and Sin, to their marriage, and to their subsequent snake progeny had been a focus for lively discussion at Bubb Dodington's dinner party at Eastbury in 1727.¹⁸ That particular point was pursued further in the Essai sur la poésie épique. What is most immediately evident, however, is the general change of emphasis in the French version of the essay to Milton's defects. On 2 May 1728 Voltaire had written to Thieriot: ‘What j say of Milton cannot be understood by the french unless j give a fuller notion of that author’ (D333). Accordingly, the historical and biographical information offers a much fuller account of Milton's life, ‘des circonstances de sa vie que le public ignore’ (Essai, p. 351), than was available to French readers of Dupré de Saint-Maur's translation of Paradise Lost,¹⁹ to whose lacunae Voltaire drew specific attention in the opening paragraph of the Milton chapter (Essai, p. 351; compare pp. 356-57). The outline of Milton's travels in Italy and the reference to the possible influence of Andreini follow that of the English original quite closely, with only a few minor deviations.²⁰ From then onwards very little of the English chapter survives in the French.

Whereas in 1727 Voltaire could not understand how Dryden could rate Milton so highly on one occasion and so low on another, in 1733 Dryden's inconsistency was deemed understandable: ‘Ce n'est pas la première fois, qu'on a porté du même ouvrage des jugements contradictoires. Quand on arrive à Versailles du côté de la cour, on voit un vilain petit bâtiment écrasé, avec sept croisées de face, accompagné de tout ce que l'on a pu imaginer du plus mauvais goût. Quand on le regarde du côté des jardins, on voit un palais immense dont les beautés peuvent racheter les défauts’ (Essai, p. 360). Milton's greatness now depended upon the reader's angle of perception, and the criteria by which epic poetry was to be judged. Dryden's contrasting reactions were the direct consequence of ‘ce grand nombre de fautes grossières’ in the poem. Milton's Paradise Lost, ‘the noblest Work, which human Imagination hath ever attempted’ (Essay, p. 104) now becomes ‘un ouvrage plus singulier que naturel, plus plein d'imagination que de grâces, et de hardiesse que de choix, dont le sujet est tout idéal, et qui semble n'être pas fait pour l'homme’ (Essai, p. 360).

It was in the Milton chapter, and in the concluding comments that follow it as continuous text in the French edition, that Voltaire took the most significant steps to adapt his English essay to ‘the French meridian’ (D333). He was to return to Milton frequently in later years, although he was to insist that the position adopted in the Essai represented his final, consistently held view.²¹ He was always to remain sensitive to the possible misinterpretations to which his ‘English’ views were prone in France, and which had been preserved intact of course in Desfontaines's translation. As late as 1739 he could admonish Helvétius for having read his views on Milton only in ‘la malheureuse traduction de mon essai anglais’ (D1997). As with the scattered remnants of Voltaire's original position on Homer, traces of his ‘english’ reaction to Milton to survive elsewhere in the text. In the first chapter, for example, Voltaire retains without qualification the observation that the English placed Paradise Lost above the Iliad, and that ‘beaucoup de personnes le préfèrent à Homère, avec quelque apparence de raison’ (Essai, p. 292). Milton, moreover, was still permitted in the French edition to do as much honour to England as ‘le grand Newton’ (Essai, p. 301).

Apart from Homer and Milton, other adjustments for French consumption abound: in the chapter on Virgil all reference to Addison is cut, although many of the points taken from the Spectator remain intact. Instead, it starts with a lengthy account of Virgil's life, raising by implication the problem of patronage. The point that Voltaire had raised in the English essay concerning Virgil's use of Homeric Gods is considerably extended in the French version with a comment on the superiority of Virgil's treatment of the siege of Troy and of the descent of Æneas into Hell, all of which far surpassed Homer's handling of similar material.

Voltaire stressed the sterility of contemporary Virgilian criticism in both versions, but his elaboration of the point is different. In the English essay he had attacked those who claimed that Virgil was a pallid imitator of Homer, noting particularly the contrasting details in the presentation of Dido, Æneas, and Ulysses. Voltaire's English essay offered the view that only occasionally did Virgil fail in his reworking of Homeric sources, rejecting sharply the view that Virgil was a slavish imitator of writers such as Pisander and Apollonius. Neither Pisander nor Apollonius was mentioned in the French essay, where much less was made of the need to defend Virgil's originality as a poet in the face of attacks to the contrary. The whole of the lengthy English argument on this point is compressed into five lines in the French. The tone of Voltaire's commentary on Virgil in the French essay is much less defensive, as can be seen in the rewording of the statement on the inferiority of the last six books of the Æneid to the first six.

In the chapter on Lucan the issue of Corneille's and Addison's debt to the poet does not survive, but on the whole this chapter is the first to follow closely the original English text. There are variations, but they are relatively minor matters of detail. Sarpedon, Diomedes, and Mezentius replace Agamemnon and Æneas. Praise for the beauty of the characterizations of Cato, Caesar, and Pompey disappears, to be replaced by a much more flowery eulogy of Lucan's ‘pensées mâles et hardies’ and a comparison with Corneille, Livy, Tacitus, and Sallust. In the French essay the chapter on Lucan contains much more illustrative material, and the chapter is considerably lengthened by the inclusion of the quotation from Brébeuf's translation of the Pharsalia.²² This is missing in the English essay, where the conclusion to the Lucan chapter contains a much more positive emphasis on the power of Lucan's genius despite his lack of poetic skill, and where the ‘vigorous Thoughts’ of Lucan are preferred to the ‘elegant Narration’ of Virgil.

Voltaire reduced the length of his chapter on Trissino in the French essay. In 1727 he had concentrated largely on linguistic matters, particularly with regard to the use of Italian in poetry. The French chapter has a similar reference to the emergence of Italian and other modern European languages, but more attention is now paid to the evolution of the art of poetry and to the contributions of Dante and Petrarch. The commentary in the English chapter on the moderns' use of Latin sources is omitted in the French chapter. Much of the divergence of the English and French chapters on Trissino is to be found in the form of supplementary digressions, although there is one substantial reworking of the original text at the point where Voltaire comments on the art of the Middle Ages.

In the case of Tasso, the French chapter is longer than the English, but the omissions in the French version include the lines dealing with the inscription on Tasso's tomb, miscellaneous, unfavourable comments on various French writers, and the passages dealing with religious matters. There is more information about Tasso's life and misfortunes. In resuming Tasso's achievements in his English essay Voltaire had referred to the moderns' admiration, though not to their imitation, of Tasso's poetry. In the French version this disappears and is replaced by a simple ranking of Tasso alongside Homer and Virgil, ‘malgré ses fautes, et malgré la critique de Despréaux’ (Essai, p. 334). The comparison of Gerusalemme liberata with the Iliad was retained in the French edition, and the textual examples, the references to Piero and Calcas, Rinaldo and Achilles, Argante and Hector, Godefra and Agamemnon all survive, though in an abbreviated form. In other respects, however, the Fregnch text departs radically from the English. In 1727 Voltaire had expanded on the subject of Tasso's heroic portraits, his handling of events, and his manipulation of dramatic interest and narrative drive. He had praised Tasso's style, and the way in which the Italian language had gained epic grandeur in Tasso's hands, with the exception of some two hundred lines ‘in which he flattens into pitiful Conceits’ (Essay, p. 82). The comments on Tasso's style, and the reservation about the concetti, reappear in the French version but are supplemented with expanded commentary on the iniquity of the Crusades (Essai, p. 336).

The paragraphs dealing with Ismeno and the theft of the image of Mary, the story of Olinda and Sophronia, and that of the ten Christian princes turned into fish are all recast in the French chapter, although the contracted text at this point does parallel intermittently the English original, but never at any point does it bear any sign of being a literal translation. Finally in this chapter, Voltaire replaced Rowe's English translation with the Latin text, together with Bébeuf's translation, ‘qui comme toutes les autres traductions est au-dessous de l'original’ (Essai, p. 339).²³ The allusion to ‘Popish religion’ does not survive, nor does the closing comment in the English version on the anachronisms in modern Italian and Flemish representations of biblical scenes.

The chapter on Ercilla coincides more closely with the English original than any other chapter in the French version of the essay. It is the only one that could be technically classified as a translation, although there are textual adjustments. In the English essay the French were ‘utterly defeated’ at the Battle of St Quentin; in the French chapter they are just ‘defeated’. Agamemnon had been called ‘Drunkard, Dog and Stag’ in English, but just ‘ivrogne’ and ‘chien’ in French. ‘The Tenderness with which he softens their Boisterousness’ becomes simply ‘la tendresse majestueuse de ses paroles’; Agamemnon is replaced by Nestor. There are no expansions of the English original, and few deviations. Ercilla held little abiding interest for Voltaire.²⁴

In surveying his gallery of great epic poets for a French public, Voltaire wanted above all to make a stimulating impact on French aesthetic assumptions and to disturb received ideas of what constituted epic poetry in much the same way as in the Lettres philosophiques he sought to disturb stagnant perceptions of French society as a whole. French cultural horizons were to be enlarged, and prejudice assaulted; relativistic dimensions were to be introduced; eyes and ears were to be opened to the riches of other European languages. Thus the commentary in the Essai sur la poésie épique is rather more precisely targeted than in its English predecessor. A more overtly didactic note is introduced, not only in the context of Milton, Ercillo, Tasso, and Lucan but also in that of more familiar figures such as Homer and Virgil.

All this is tempered by concessions to French sensibilities and to the diplomatic imperatives of Voltaire's position in the early 1730s. He wished to illuminate, to make the French think again about the epic—and in so doing he wished also to sell copies of the Henriade. Praise of Pope and Addison is suitably muted; effusive comments on Denham and Waller are excised, disparaging reference being made instead in the Milton chapter to ‘les poésies efféminées, la mollesse de Waller’ (Essai, pp. 354-55). Reference to the court of St James is carefully balanced by judicious reference to Versailles, although two critical comments on the French court in the discussion of Homeric heroes are allowed to stand (Essai, pp. 304-05). Miltonian imagination, much praised in the English text, is pronounced revolting to ‘tout lecteur sensé’, and treated with more caution for the benefit of French readers.

While much has been removed, the degree of topicality has increased, and specifically French preoccupations are mirrored. Reference is now made to the Homer dispute between Perrault and Boileau, to the subsequent quarrel between La Motte and Mme Dacier, and to Boileau's criticism of Tasso. In the chapter on Camões a passage dealing with the death of Iñez de Castro is introduced, its interest enhanced in Voltaire's eyes for French readers by the fact that La Motte's play had been performed successfully in Paris on 6 April 1723, Voltaire having been present at the first performance.

Voltaire's French version of his English essay remains, however, more interesting for what it omits than for what it adds. Remarks that he had made in England on the Church and the government, and also on literary circles in Paris, are obvious examples of areas that he judged too dangerous to include in the Essai sur la poésie épique. For the same reason, unfavourable comparisons between living French writers and those of the age of Louis XIV disappear, as do adverse comments on the ‘insupportable’ rules of French poetry, the ‘Popish’ religion, English displays of irreverence for sacred history, and above all most of the provocative comparisons between life in England and life in France. The striking parallels in his English essay between lack of artistic freedom in France and a corresponding lack of social, religious, and political freedom are certainly not drawn in such striking terms in the French essay. These were to reappear in their full force in the Lettres philosophiques, of which the 1727 English essay on epic poetry is an interesting foretaste. In the Lettres philosophiques, however, he was not concerned with the fate of the Henriade, or with persuading his compatriots to look with sympathy upon his own claims to epic glory. In the French version, with the Henriade in mind, France is not reproached for its inability to produce a great epic poem. Instead, Voltaire confines himself to observing that such an enterprise had simply never been contemplated seriously in France. Contradicting the argument advanced in his English essay, he now takes pains to assure his French readers that the French language was quite capable of rising to the challenging demands of a great epic imagination, should one present itself.

Nor was the necessity for rhyme any longer an insuperable barrier. The only true obstacle to French epic greatness was contemporary indifference to poetry, not fundamental incapacity: ‘Il est certain, que notre langue est plus forte que l'italienne, et plus douce que l'anglaise. Les Anglais et les Italiens ont des poèmes épiques; il est donc clair, que si nous n'en avions pas, ce ne serait pas la faute de la langue française. […] Il faut avouer, qu'il est plus difficile à un Français qu'à un autre, de faire un poème épique; mais ce n'est ni à cause de la rime, ni à cause de la sécheresse de notre langue. Oserai-je le dire? C'est que de toutes les nations polies la nôtre est la moins poétique’ (Essai, p. 363). Thus the ground was now being carefully prepared in the Essai sur la poésie épique for the consolidation of Voltaire's case for a modern French epic and for the acceptance of the Henriade as an authentic example. To these ends the sharpest barbs of the 1727 Essay upon the Epick Poetry of the European Nations, from Homer down to Milton have been blunted, with the result that the boldness of the 1727 text has been sanitized by 1733. Although some of this boldness was to return in later editions, it would never quite match the trenchant vigour and rhetorical punch of the original English formulation. The Essai sur la poésie épique remained in all subsequent French editions essentially what it was intended to be: a calculation for the French meridian, distracting French eyes for more than a century and a half from its very different parent essay. Until the end of the nineteenth century the latter was to remain safely insulated on the other side of the English Channel.

Notes

1. La ❙ Henriade ❙ Avec ❙ Des Variantes ❙ Et Des Notes. ❙ Et l'Essai sur le poeme epique. ❙ Nouvelle Edition. ❙ [ornament] ❙ A Londres, ❙ Chez Innis. ❙ [rule] ❙ mdccxxxiii. ❙ 8° [18] 317 pp. Printed by Jore and Bouche at Rouen. The Essai is at pages 233-317. See Mercure de France, 2 (June 1733), 1417-18; La Henriade, ed. by O. R. Taylor, The Complete Works/Œuvres complètes de Voltaire (Geneva: Institut et musée Voltaire, 1970), ii, 239; G. Bengesco, Voltaire: bibliographie de ses œuvres, 4 vols (Paris: Perrin, repr. Kraus, Nendeln, 1967, 1882-1890), no. 371. The edition consulted is that held by the Bibliothèque Nationale (Ye 9221). Reference to Voltaire's correspondence is by letter number to the Correspondence and Related Documents, ed. by Theodore Besterman, 2nd edn (Geneva and Oxford: The Voltaire Foundation, 1968-1977), Siglum: D.

2. An ❙ Essay ❙ Upon The ❙ Civil Wars ❙ Of ❙ France, ❙ Extracted from curious Manuscripts. ❙ And Also Upon The ❙ Epick Poetry ❙ Of The ❙ European Nations ❙ From Homer down to Milton. ❙ [rule] ❙ By Mr. de Voltaire. ❙ [rule] ❙ London: ❙ Printed by Samuel Jallasson, ❙ in Prujean's Court Old Baily, and sold ❙ by the Booksellers of London and West- ❙ minster. m dcc xxvii. ❙ 8° [6] 130 pp. See A. M. Rousseau, L'Angleterre et Voltaire, in Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 145-47 (1976), 977-1032 (no. 102); H. B. Evans, ‘A Provisional Bibliography of English Editions and Translations of Voltaire’, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 8 (1959), 9-121 (no. 201); Bengesco, no. 1551 (note). The copy consulted is the signed copy presented by Voltaire to Sir Hans Sloane held by the British Library (C.60.g.11).

3. Essay on Epick Poetry: A Study and an Edition (Albany, NY: Brandow, 1915), repr. by Phaeton Press (New York, 1970). The text of the first Jallasson edition has also been reproduced in facsimile by S. Curran, Le Bossu and Voltaire on the Epic, 1695-1727 (Gainsville, FA: Scholars' Facsimiles and Reprints, 1970). D. Flower printed an extract from the British Library copy in Voltaire's Essay on Milton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954).

4. La Henriade appeared in London in March 1728, published with the support of 343 subscribers, and for a time it overshadowed the impact of the Essay; see A. M. Rousseau, p. 512.

5. Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi, 15 vols (Paris: Garnier, 1851-62), xiii, 132-71; compare H. Rigault, Histoire de la querelle des anciens et des modernes (Paris: Hachette, 1856), pp. 501-06; R. Naves, Le Goût de Voltaire (Paris: Hatier, 1938), pp. 442-45.

6. Reference is to the first Jallasson edition, see note 2, hereafter Essay. Orthography, capitalization, and punctuation have been retained in the form printed in that edition.

7. See E. Dowden, ‘Milton in the Eighteenth Century 1701-1750’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 3 (1908), 275-95; A. M. Rousseau, pp. 531-34. Voltaire's Miltonian criticism was still being debated in Henry Todd's edition of The Poetical Works of John Milton (London: J. Johnson, 1801), reprinted in 1809 and again in 1826.

8. Corrections were made to the orthography and punctuation of the first edition in the 1728 and 1731 editions published by Nicholas Prevost in London, and also in the 1760 Dublin edition issued by William Ross. No true variants occur, however, in any of the five editions published after 1727 that I have examined. Voltaire's gallicisms remain intact, moreover.

9. Desfontaines had lost no time in pirating an edition of La Ligue; see T. Morris, L'Abbé Desfontaines et son rôle dans la littérature de son temps, in Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 19 (1961), 41-42. See also O. R. Taylor, pp. 54-55; D200, D202, D Appendix 13. Thieriot had warned Voltaire about the dangers in D322, but Voltaire had not been unduly alarmed at first: see D303.

10. Chaubert was the publisher of the Journal des savants and had already collaborated with Desfontaines, who had an editorial role in the production of the journal: see White, p. 31; Morris, pp. 36-37.

11. Œuvres complètes de Voltaire, ed. by Louis Moland, 52 vols (Paris: Garnier, 1877-85), xiii, 302. Reference to the French version of the Essay is to that printed in the first volume of the last authorized edition of Voltaire's collective works, the forty-volume encadrée, published by Cramer and Bardin in Geneva in 1775. Bengesco, no. 2141; W. Trapnell, Voltaire's Manuscripts and Collective Editions in Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 77 (1970), 138. Compare J. Vercruysse, ‘Les éditions encadrées des œuvres de Voltaire de 1775’, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 168 (1977), 71-191, hereafter Essai. The passages cited in this article were unrevised and contain no variants to the text printed in the 1733 edition. The text in the Leningrad copy bears no sign of annotation; see S. S. B. Taylor, ‘The Definitive Text of Voltaire's Works: The Leningrad encadrée’, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 124 (1974), 128.

12. Oeuvres ❙ De ❙ M. De Voltaire. ❙ Nouvelle Edition, ❙ Revüe, corrigée, augmentée par l'Auteur; & enrichie ❙ de Figures en Taille-douce. ❙ Tome Premier. ❙ [woodcut with inscription L'Esperance Me Guide] ❙ A Amster-dam, ❙ Chez Estienne Ledet. ❙ mdccxxxii. ❙ [lines 1, 3 and 7 in red.] 8° [4] 354. Bengesco, no. 2118; Trapnell, p. 111; O. R. Taylor, pp. 238-39. The title-page of copies issued with the Desbordes imprint has a different woodcut with the inscription ‘Serere Ne Dubites’. The Essai is to be found at pages [213]-299.

13. La Voltairomanie, ou Lettre d'un jeune avocat en forme de mémoire en réponse au libelle du sieur de Voltaire, intitulé: Le Préservatif, etc: S.L.N.D. [Paris, 12 December 1738], p. 45. Louis Robert Hippolyte de Brehant, comte de Plélo, had been French Ambassador to Denmark in 1729. He died at the siege of Danzig in 1734.

14. See, for example, D36, D344, D915, D1150. D1192. Compare Le Préservatif in Œuvres complètes de Voltaire, ed. by L. Moland (see note 11), xxii, 386-87.

15. In 1736, 1737, and 1739 (Bengesco, no. 2119; iv, 6 (note); no. 2121; Trapnell, pp. 111-13).

16. On this point and other issues in connexion with Voltaire's reactions to Homer, see D. H. Jory, ‘Voltaire and the Greeks’, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 153 (1976), 1169-87.

17. See the commentary to D103; compare D188. See also P. Bonnefon, ‘Une inimitié littéraire au xviiie siècle, d'après des documents inédits: Voltaire et Jean-Baptiste Rousseau’, Revue d'histoire littéraire de la France, 9 (1902), 554-57.

18. For further details, see A. M. Rousseau, pp. 120-22; R. Pomeau, D'Arouet à Voltaire 1694-1734 (Oxford: The Voltaire Foundation, 1985), p. 247. In 1769 Le Tourneur reminded Voltaire of the event (D15651). Edward Young pursued the issue in the second part of Resignation; see The Poetical Works of Edward Young. edited by J. Mitford, 2 vols (London, 1896), ii, 248-49.

19. Nicolas François-Dupré de Saint-Maur, Le Paradis perdu de Milton (Paris, 1729). The text was revised by Claude-Joseph Chéron de Boismorand, and the degree to which collaboration took place has yet to be precisely established. Chéron de Boismorand published a separate translation of Paradise Lost (also in 1729); see D380. Despite reference to correspondence between Voltaire and Dupré de Saint-Maur in D771, no letters appear to have survived.

20. Giovanni Battista Andreini's mystery play Adamo was first performed and published in 1613. Voltaire was the first to allude to an Italian source (‘that ridiculous Trifle’ (Essay, p. 104)), and the explosive suggestion of imitation was deeply shocking to English contemporaries, though reluctantly conceded in many later eighteenth-century editions of Milton's poems; see A. M. Rousseau, pp. 531-33. Pope had immediately expressed his reservations; see Joseph Spence, Observations, Anecdotes and Characters of Books and Men, Collected from Conversation, ed. by J. M. Osborn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), p. 198. Spence was not so sure that Voltaire was wrong; see A. M. Rousseau, p. 125, note 105.

21. In, for example, Les Honnêtetés littéraires, and of course in the section on Milton in the article ‘Epopée’, Dictionnaire philosophique.

22. Georges de Brébeuf, La Pharsale de Lucain, ou les guerres civiles de César et de Pompée, en vers français (Paris: A. de Sommaville, 1654-55).

23. Nicholas Rowe, Lucan's Pharsalia, Translated into English Verse (Dublin: Leathley, 1719; first published 1718), with a preface by James Welwood.

24. Naves comments: ‘Ercilla l'a occupé un moment quand il passait en revue les épopées modernes; il le trouve d'ailleurs très faible, malgré certains passages qui ont grande allure’ (p. 345).