ABSTRACT
Were I so criminal as to be extremely rich, I should endeavour to palliate the circumstance by laying out wide and pleasant gardens, rather in the mythological style commended by the Prince de Ligne. Certainly I should imitate M. de Ligne to the extent of planning a secluded Bosquet Voltaire. The tutelary deity should be Houdon’s statue, opposite which should be placed some Graeco-Roman Venus, so that M. de Voltaire might seem to smile for ever in his enigmatic way at the emblem of grace, life, and beauty. In his lifetime he admired beautiful forms and, though undoubtedly he made his money by the basest kind of war profiteering, his taste was not affected. If in some respects he appears a forerunner of drab utilitarianism, in others he was a late development of the Renaissance man, if only from his versatility and energy and his respect for what he held to be beautiful. He had a Renaissance gusto for life and he was no puritan ; whatever envy was in his nature was not directed against the pleasures and possessions of others. His rationalism, however much indebted to northern minds, was nevertheless Mediterranean in its recognition of the human right to enjoyment.
