produce his strongest feelings in some literary form, he cast his protest against Optimism into the two very different shapes of the "Poem on the Disaster of Lisbon" and the novel of 'Candide,' which both testify to what his other writings so frequently evince—namely, that beneath the mental activity, the vivacity, and the satirical gaiety of Voltaire, lay the profoundest sense of the hapless condition of humanity, and the liveliest sympathy with its sorrows.
The poem begins with a picture of the ruined city; and the poet asks what the mangled inhabitants had done, more than the populations of London and Paris, to merit such a visitation. He invites the Optimist to contemplate the scene, and asks him if the universe would have been in a worse condition without this infernal gulf which had swallowed Lisbon? and if he would so limit the Supreme Power as to forbid it to exercise clemency? Will it, he asks, console the wretched inhabitants of the desolated city to be told that they suffer for the good of the world, that other hands will rebuild their shattered homes, that the towns of the north will be enriched by their ruin, and that all their sufferings are a benefit in the general scheme of law? These unchangeable laws of necessity the poet does not believe in: God, he says, holds in His hand the chain which binds the system of the universe, and is not Himself bound by it; He is free, just, and not implacable. Why, then, do we suffer under His rule?—ah! there is the fatal knot which we want untied.
The elements, the animal world, the human race, all are at war, and Evil has sway on the earth. Does it come from the Author of all good? Or is He opposed
