Though Voltaire’s reputation now rests mainly on his achievements as a precursor of the Revolution, to the eighteenth century he was as much a poet as a reformer.  The whole of Europe beheld at Ferney the oracle, not only of philosophy, but of good taste; for thirty years every scribbler, every rising genius, and every crowned head, submitted his verses to the censure of Voltaire; Voltaire’s plays were performed before crowded houses; his epic was pronounced superior to Homer’s, Virgil’s, and Milton’s; his epigrams were transcribed by every letter-writer, and got by heart by every wit.  Nothing, perhaps, shows more clearly the gulf which divides us from our ancestors of the eighteenth century, than a comparison between our thoughts and their thoughts, between our feelings and their feelings, with regard to one and the same thing—­a tragedy by Voltaire.  For us, as we take down the dustiest volume in our bookshelf, as we open it vaguely at some intolerable tirade, as we make an effort to labour through the procession of pompous commonplaces which meets our eyes, as we abandon the task in despair, and hastily return the book to its forgotten corner—­to us it is well-nigh impossible to imagine the scene of charming brilliance which, five generations since, the same words must have conjured up.  The splendid gaiety, the refined excitement, the pathos, the wit, the passion—­all these things have vanished as completely from our perceptions as the candles, the powder, the looking-glasses, and the brocades, among which they moved and had their being.  It may be instructive, or at least entertaining, to examine one of these forgotten masterpieces a little more closely; and we may do so with the less hesitation, since we shall only be following in the footsteps of Voltaire himself.  His examination of Hamlet affords a precedent which is particularly applicable, owing to the fact that the same interval of time divided him from Shakespeare as that which divides ourselves from him.  One point of difference, indeed, does exist between the relative positions of the two authors.  Voltaire, in his study of Shakespeare, was dealing with a living, and a growing force; our interest in the dramas of Voltaire is solely an antiquarian interest.  At the present moment,[5] a literal translation of King Lear is drawing full houses at the Theatre Antoine.  As a rule it is rash to prophesy; but, if that rule has any exceptions, this is certainly one of them—­hundred years hence a literal translation of Zaire will not be holding the English boards.

It is not our purpose to appreciate the best, or to expose the worst, of Voltaire’s tragedies.  Our object is to review some specimen of what would have been recognised by his contemporaries as representative of the average flight of his genius.  Such a specimen is to be found in Alzire, ou Les Americains, first produced with great success in 1736, when Voltaire was forty-two years of age and his fame as a dramatist already well established.