To Heaven thus offered his expiring breath:
'I bring thee, O sole King, almighty Lord!
All that thy boundless realm can ne'er afford;
Sins, ignorance, regrets, and efforts vain.'
He might have added 'hope,' to cheer the train."
These views being set forth in solemn guise in the poem, 'Candide' was written to show the grotesque side of the same argument, and to indulge another and equally characteristic mood of the writer. To take a professor of optimism and his disciple, and to cause them to pass through such a series of misfortunes as the conditions of the world in Voltaire's time might bring upon them, constituted the whole plan of the piece; and it is obvious that, to render the satire effective, the evils of the world, and the sufferings of the characters, should be treated with the indifference which an optimist would naturally feel for them. But Madame de Staël, actuated by the desire which so many of Voltaire's critics seem to feel, to say something forcible and original about him and his writings, without much regard for clearness or justice of application, thus delivers herself on the subject of 'Candide.' "Voltaire took a singular dislike to final causes, optimism, free-will" (which is not the fact), "in fine, to all philosophical opinions which raise the dignity of man; and he wrote 'Candide,' that work, the gaiety of which may be styled infernal, for it seems written by a being of a nature other than ours, indifferent to our lot, satisfied with our sufferings, and laughing like a demon or an ape at the miseries of the human race, with which he has nothing in common." As if this mode of treatment had not been specially adopted to exhibit optimism in a ridi-
