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Any discussion of Voltaire's attitude toward Homer, a figure admired L and condemned for a great variety of reasons during the neoclassic period, must touch ultimately on several different questions. Voltaire's reaction to primitive manners and customs as represented in the Homeric poems, his understanding of history and chronology, the method of his mind in approaching, again and again between 1727 and 1772, a traditional admiration of the first importance—all these subjects and more are involved in a study whose immediate purpose is to show that Voltaire held a consistent view of Homer. And they all prepare a still more com-prehensive question: whether Voltaire defended or neglected the cause of poetry at a time when an opinion of Homer was not far from being equivalent to an opinion of the essential literary art.
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References
1 “De la Réputation d'Homère et de Virgile en France”, Etude sur Virgile (1857), ed. Calmann Lévy (1891), pp. 306–307.
2 Roman. Forsch., xl (1927), 1–226 (esp. pp. 119–120, 133–148).
3 At the end of his chapter, “Les Anciens et la règle”, in Entre le classicisme et le romantisme (192S), pp. 168–169.
4 Gustave Desnoiresterres, Voltaire et la société au XVHIe siècle (1871), i, 79–85.
5 Essay on Epick Poetry, ed. White, p. 32. “Epopée”, Questions sur l'Encyclopédie (cinquième partie, 1771), uvres, ed. Moland, xviii, 565.
6 Traité sur le poème épique (1675), p. 26.
7 Des Causes de la corruption du goût (1715), p. 45.
8 uvres, vii, 177.
9 Candide ou l'Optimisme, traduit de l'allemand de M. le docteur Ralph, ed. André Morize (1913), pp. 187–188.
10 By Horatio Smith, in the John Carter Brown Library, Providence. See MLN, xlvii (April 1932), 234.
11 White, p. 89. All quotations from the English Essay are made from Miss White's edition.
12 “Je joindrai á cette édition [a new edition of the Henriade] un Essai sur la poésie épique qui ne sera point la traduction d'un embryon mal formé, mais un ouvrage complet très curieux pour ceux qui, quoique nés en France, veulent avoir une idée du goût des autres nations.”—-To Thieriot, Correspondance de Voltaire (1726–29), ed. Lucien Foulet (1913), p. 175.
13 To Formont, Nov. 1732, concerning the Lettres anglaises—uvres, xxxiii, 307.
14 “904. Troy taken. Amenophis was still at Susa; the Greeks feigning that he came from thence to the Trojan war....” “870. Besiod flourishes. He hath told us himself that he lived in the age next after the wars of Thebes and Troy, and that this age should end when the men then living grew hoary and dropt into the grave; and therefore it was but of an ordinary length: and Eerodolus has told us [L-2] that Besiod and Borner were but 400 years older than himself. Whence it follows that the destruction of Troy was not older than we have represented it.”—The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended. To which is Prefix'd, a Short Chronicle from the First Memory of Things in Europe, to the Conquest of Persia by Alexander the Great. By Sir Isaac Newton. London: Printed for J. Tonson, J. Osborn and T. Longman; and Sold by Alexander Symmer and William Monro, Booksellers in Edinburgh. MDCCXXVTI. (The Rare Book Room of the Yale Library has a copy of the book.)
With which compare Voltaire: “Homère vivait probablement environ huit cent cinquante années avant l‘ère chrétienne; il était certainement contemporain d'Hésiode. Or Hésiode nous apprend qu'il écrivait dans l‘âge qui suivait celui de la guerre de Troie, et que cet âge, dans lequel il vivait, finirait avec la génération qui existait alors. Il est donc certain qu'Homère fleurissait deux générations après la guerre de Troie; ainsi il pouvait avoir vu dans son enfance quelques vieillards qui avaient été á ce siège, et il devait avoir parlé souvent á des Grecs d'Europe qui avaient vu Ulysse, Ménélas, et Achille.”—uvres, vin, 314. Other quotations from the French Essai are made from this page and pages immediately following.
15 “Homère a plus songé á peindre la nature telle qu'il la voyait qu'á faire des héros fort accomplis.”—“Sur les poëmes des anciens”, uvres mêlées de Saint-Evremond, ed. Charles Girard (1865), ii, 492. Quoted by Donald M. Foerster, Homer in English Criticism, The Historical Approach in the Eighteenth Century, Yale Studies in English (1947), p. 8.
“Un poëte n'est pas fait pour purger son siècle des erreurs de Physique. Sa tâche est de faire des peintures ridelles des murs & des usages de son pays, pour rendre son imitation la plus approchante du vraisemblable qu'il lui est possible.”—Réflexions critiques sur la Poésie & sur la Peinture (1719), ii, 573.
16 “A dissertation concerning the Perfection of the English Language, the State of Poetry, &c.” 1724, in Critical Essays of the Eighteenth Century,“ ed. Willard Higley Durham (Yale, 1915), p. 365.
17 The Iliad of Homer, Translated by Mr. Pope, London. Printed by W. Bowyer, for Bernard Lintott between the Temple-Gates. 1715. First Edition. Preface, p. [Hi]. The verse is from the Iliad, ii, 780.
18 Essai sur les murs, uvres, xii, 247.
19 uvres, xxiii, 344.
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