1 6 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC MEN

The “CEdipus Tyrannus” of Sophocles is admirable asa work of art, and more admirable from a certainmajesty that sustains the subject and characters to theend, and from the solemn, magnificent beauty of thechoruses. All this was a dead letter to the sprightlyParisian, who admits that had Sophocles lived in hisdays, he had written better, but had never approachedthe greatness of Racine.

The life of Voltaire was an alternation of pleasureand literary labour, which would have been infinitelydelightful but for that system of caballing which existedin French society, more especially among authors.Voltaire had to struggle with the envious and the pre-sumptuous. His method of warfare was bold ; it wasthat of attack rather than of defence. He was unspar-ing towards his enemies, and this perpetuated hostilitiesthat robbed him of peace and leisure. Add to this, hislabours were often interrupted by bodily suffering;for, though his constitution was strong, he was afflictedby a painful disease. Still pleasure waited on hismoments of ease and leisure. Sometimes he resided inParis , but much of his time was spent in visiting, byturns, the chateaus of the chief nobility; privatetheatricals, in which his own plays were got up withcare and splendour, were principal amusements at thesecountry residences. While at Maisons, a chateaubelonging to the president des Maisons, he was seizedwith the small-pox, on the very eve of a festival, duringwhich a comedy was to be acted, and he, himself, wasto read his tragedy of “ Mariamne ; ” he was attended byGervasi, who treated him in the, then, novel manner, ofletting blood and lowering remedies, by means ofwhich he recovered. His friend Thiriot came up fromNormandy , and waited on him with anxious solicitude.When he recovered, “ Mariamne ” was brought out ; itwent through forty representations, though it nearlyfell on the first, through the levity of a Parisian audi-ence. When, in the fifth act, Mariamne put the cupof poison to her lips, a man in the pit called out, “ La