ox; during which transformation, Ramsay makes Nebuchadnezzar ruminate like a profound theologian. * How astonishing that the prince, for whom this work was composed, preferred the chase and the opera to perusing it! DANTE. You wish to become acquainted with Dante. The Italians call him divine, but it is a mysterious divinity; few men understand his oracles; and although there are commentators, that may be an additional reason why he is little comprehended. His reputation will last, because he is little read. Twenty pointed things in him are known by rote, which spare people the trouble of being acquainted with the remainder. The divine Dante was an unfortunate person. Imagine not that he was divine in his own day: no one is prophet at home. It is true he was a prior, but not a prior of monks, but a prior of Florence; that is to say, one of its senators. a He was born in 1260, when the arts began to flourish in his native land. Florence, like Athens, abounded in greatness, wit, levity, inconstancy, and faction. The white faction was in great credit; it was called after a Signora Bianca. The opposing party was called the blacks, in contradistinction. These two parties sufficed not for the Florentines; they had also Guelphs and Ghibelinės. The greater part of the whites were Ghibelines, attached to the party of the emperors; the blacks, on the other hand, sided with the Guelphs, the partisans of the popes. All these factions loved liberty, but did all they could to destroy it. Pope Boniface VIII. wished to profit by these divisions, in order to annihilate the power of the emperors in Italy. He declared Charles de Valois, brother of Philip the fair, king of France, his vicar in Italy. The vicar came well armed, and chased away the whites and the Ghibelines, and made himself detested by blacks and by Guelphs. Dante was * The prince of Turenne. a white and a Ghibeline; he was driven away among the first, and his house rased to the ground. We may judge if he could be, for the remainder of his life, favourable towards the French interest and to the popes. It is said, however, that he took a journey to Paris, and, to relieve his chagrin, turned theologian, and disputed vigorously in the schools. It is added, that the emperor Henry VIII. did nothing for him, Ghibeline as he was; and that he repaired to Frederick of Arragon, king of Sicily, and returned as poor as he went. He subsequently died in poverty at Ravenna, at the age of fifty-six. It was during these various peregrinations that he composed his divine comedy of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. [Voltaire here enters into a description of the Inferno, which it is unnecessary to insert, after the various translations into English. The conclusion, however, exhibiting our author's usual vivacity, is retained.] Is all this in the comic style? No. In the heroic manner? No. What then is the taste of this poem? An exceeding wild one; but it contains verses so happy and piquant, that it has not laid dormant for four centuries, and never will be laid aside. A poem, moreover, which puts popes into hell excites attention; and the sagaeity of commentators is exhausted in correctly ascertaining who it is that Dante has damned; it being, of course, of the first consequence not to be deceived in a matter so important. A chair and a lecture have been founded with a view to the exposition of this classic author. You ask me why the Inquisition acquiesces. I reply, that in Italy the Inquisition understand raillery, and know that raillery in verse never does any harm.* * Which is being infinitely more sensible and liberal than the Conspiracy intitled the Constitutional Society of London, who would doubtless have prosecuted the Inferno; while the Italian Inquisition, "understanding raillery," would have passed over Byron, and trounced Southey.-T. VOL. II. 21 DAVID. WE are called upon to reverence David as a prophet, as a king, as the ancestor of the holy spouse of Mary, as a man who merited the mercy of God from his penitence. I will boldly assert that the article DAVID, which raised up so many enemies to Bayle, the first author of a dictionary of facts and of reasonings, deserves not the strange noise which was made about it. It was not David that people were anxious to defend, but Bayle whom they were solicitous to destroy. Certain preachers of Holland, his mortal enemies, were so far blinded by their enmity, as to blame him for having praised popes whom he thought meritorious, and for having refuted the unjust calumny with which they had been assailed. This absurd and shameful piece of injustice was signed by a dozen theologians, on the 20th December, 1698, in the same consistory in which they pretended to take up the defence of king David. A great proof that the condemnation of Bayle arose from personal feelings, is supplied by the fact of that which happened in 1761, to Mr. Peter Anet, in London. The doctors Chandler and Palmer having delivered funeral sermons on the death of King George II. in which they compared him to king David, Mr. Anet, who regarded not this comparison as honourable to the deceased monarch, published his famous dissertation, entitled "The History of the Man after God's own Heart." In that work, he makes it clear that George II. a king much more powerful than David, did not fall into the errors of the Jewish sovereign, and consequently could not display the penitence which was the origin of the comparison. He follows, step by step, the books of Kings, examines the conduct of David with more severity than Bayle, and on it founds an opinion, that the Holy Spirit praises not actions of the nature of those attributed to David. The English author, in fact, judges the king of Judah upon the notions of justice and injustice which prevail at the present time. He cannot approve of the assembly of a band of robbers by David, to the amount of four hundred; of his being armed with the sword of Goliah, by the high priest Abimelech, from whom he received hallowed bread.* He could not think well of the expedition of David against the farmer Nabal, in order to destroy his abode with fire and sword, because Nabal refused contributions to his troop of robbers; or of the death of Nabal a few days afterwards, the widow of whom David immediately espoused.+ He condemned his conduct to king Achish, the possessor of a few villages in the district of Gath. David, at the head of five or six hundred banditti, made inroads upon the allies of his benefactor Achish. He pillaged the whole of them, massacred all the inhabitants, men, women, and children at the breast.-And why the children at the breast? For fear, says the text, these children should carry the news to king Achish, who was deceived into a belief that these expeditions were undertaken against the Israelites, by an absolute lie on the part of David. ‡ Again: Saul loses a battle, and wishes his armourbearer to slay him, who refuses; he wounds himself, but not effectually, and at his own desire a young man dispatches him, who, carrying the news to David, is massacred for his pains. Ishbosheth succeeds his father Saul, and David makes war upon him. Finally, Ishbosheth is assassinated. David, now possessed of the sole dominion, surprised the little town or village of Rabbah, and puts all the inhabitants to death by the most extraordinary devices, sawing them asunder, destroying them with harrows and axes of iron, and burning them in brickkilns. After these expeditions, there was a famine in the * 1 Sam. ch. 21, 22. + Ibid. ch. 25. Ibid. ch. 27. § Ibid. ch. 12. || 2 Sam. ch. 1. country for three years. In fact, from this mode of making war, countries must necessarily be badly cultivated. The Lord was consulted as to the causes of the famine. The answer was easy: in a country which produces corn with difficulty, when labourers are baked in brick-kilns and sawed into pieces, few people remain to cultivate the earth. The Lord, however, replied, that it was because Saul had formerly slain some Gibeonites. What is David's speedy remedy? He assembles the Gibeonites, informs them that Saul had committed a great sin in making war upon them, and that Saul not being like him, a man after God's own heart, it would be proper to punish him in his posterity. He therefore makes them a present of seven grandsons of Saul to be hanged, who were accordingly hanged, because there had been a famine.* Mr. Anet is so just as not to insist upon the adultery with Bathsheba, and the murder of her husband, as these crimes were pardoned in consequence of the repentance of David. They were horrible and abominable, but being remitted by the Lord, the English author absolves them also. No one complained in England of the author, and the parliament took little interest in the history of a kingling of a petty district in Syria.+ Let justice be done to father Calmet; he has kept within bounds in his dictionary of the Bible, in the article DAVID. "We pretend not," said he, "to approve of the conduct of David; but it is to be believed that this excess of cruelty was committed before his repentance on the score of Bathsheba." Possibly he repented of all his crimes at the same time, which were sufficiently numerous. Let us here ask, what appears to us to be an important question. May we not exhibit a portion of contempt in the article DAVID, and treat of his person and glory * 2 Sam. ch. 21. + Voltaire is here mistaken; we believe that this work was finally prosecuted. That of which parliaments may be careless, fanatics are careful.-T. |