voix yiolons, singers — fiddlers

Pagre 27. — i. Sadder; See Voltaire's Essai sur les maturs, ch. XI. " II (Zoroastre) ^crivit ou commenta, dit-on, le livre du Zendy que les Parsis, disperses aujourd'hui dans TAsie, r^v^rent comme leur Bible. M. Hyde qui nous a donn^ une traduction du Sadder^ nous aurait procur^ celle du Zend s'il avait pu subvenir aux frais de cette recherche. Je m'en rapporte au moins au Sadder ^ \ cet extrait du Zend, qui est le catechisme des Parsis."

Pagre 28. — i. cire; there are various allusions to the language of the Old Testament in the foregoing lines.

p. 34-66] NOTES 1 53

Ttkge 34* — I. pdle de Canope; some editions have pari de Canope^ and in that case the reference would be to the city of Canopus in Egypt. The better reading however is pole and the Can5pus meant is a star of the first magnitude in the constellation Argo, not visible at any latitude higher than the southern part of the Mediterranean. The whole passage means that Zadig guided himself by the stars and constellations to the southward.

Pagre 3 6. — i. atome de boue; for the thought cf. Tennyson's poem Vastness:

" Raving politics, never at rest— as this poor earth's pale history runs,— What is it all but a trouble of ants in the light of a million million of suns."

Pagre 87. — I. A d'autres, not L

Pagre 89. — i. pens^ 6tre, was near being,

Pagro 42. — I. Gangarides, (rayya/oi&u), a people who, according to the ancient geographers, lived along the coasts of Bengal at the mouth of the Ganges.

Pagre 45. — i. gangaride. Cf. page 42, note i.

Pagre 47. — i. homme de Cambalu, the man of Peking, " Cambalu est la ville capitale du Cathay ou de la Chine Orientale et septentrionale que nous appeldns maintenant Pekin." D*Herbelot, Bibliotheque Orientale (1697).

2. Li Tien, " Mots chinois qui signifient proprement : /i, la lumiere naturelle, la raison; et Tien, le ciel; et qui signifient aussi Dieu." (Note de Voltaire)

Pagre 48. — i. Teutath, Teutatesy war god of Druidical religion. 2. 11 lul apprendrait 2t vivre, he would give him a lesson in manners,

Pagre 49. — The main situation in this chapter goes back ultimately to a very old and famous Hindu story. For a comparatively modem form of the tale in Sanskrit {Upakoshd and her Four Lovers) see Kathd-sarit-sagara (Tawney*s translation, vol. I, pp. 17 ff.). " It is a story of ancient celebrity in Europe as Constant du Hamel ou la Dame qui attrapa un Pritre, un Privdt et un Forestier,"

Pagre 66. — i. /Sowttis, ox eyed, i. e. having large, full, finelyrounded eyes.

Pasre 58* — i. Arable Pto^; Arabia was divided by the ancient geographers into three parts: Arabia Felix ("Araby the Blest"), Arabia Deserta and Arabia Petraea, the last division including the N. W. part of the country bordering on the Red Sea.

Pagre 68* — i. seigneurs de la bouche, lords of the {gugen*s) table,

Pagre 72* — i. en demoiselle suivante, like a maid in waiting.

PagrST 75* — I. apothicaire du corps, apothecary to his lordship^s person; cf. page 63, note i.

Pagre 80* — I. L'Ermite; Voltaire's immediate source for the story in this chapter was Thomas Parnell's (1679-1718) poem The Hermit. Parnell was a friend of Swift's and was associated with Addison and Steele on the Spectator.

Pagre 91* — I. Ciel ; " C'est ici que fihit le manuscrit qu'on a retrouv^ .de I'histoire de Zadig. On sait qu'il a essuy^ bien d'autres aventures qui ont ^te fid^lement ^crites. On prie messieurs les interpretes des langues orientales de les communiquer si elles parviennent jusqu' ^ eux." {Note de Voltaire^

MICROMfiGAS.

Micromigas (from /uk/do9 small and ixcfi^y great; the name contains the implication that all size is relative) was first printed at London in 1752 but was possibly written several years earlier. The first idea of MicromJgas goes back to Cyrano de Bergerac's Voyage dans la lune (1656) but Voltaire was more immediately inspired by Swift's Gulliver.

Renan has said, with some exaggeration perhaps, that the substitution in the i6th Century of the Copernican astronomy for the geocentric and anthropocentric view of the universe held in the middle ages is the capital event in modern thought. The new astronomy appealed to Voltaire especially as an engine of attack on the old theology. The real animus of the story appears in the burst of Homeric laughter with which the giant from Sirius greets the assertion of the Sorbonne doctor that the whole universe exists solely for the benefit of man and that the entire secret of creation is contained in the Summa of St. Thomas Aquinas (see p. 114).

p. 83-96] NOTES 1 55

It may be noted as a curiosity of thought that the English scientist Alfred Russel Wallace has recently attempted to defend the anthropocentric theory with arguments drawn from the new astronomy itself.

Pagre 98* — i. colUge des j^uites, a tribute to the prominence of the Jesuit schools under the old Regime. Voltaire himself was educated at the Jesuit College de Louis-le-Grand.

2. Blaise Pascal (i 623-1 662), author of the Pensies and Lettres frovinciales and one of the greatest masters of French prose.

3. Le mufti, an authority on Muhammadan law — especially the chief doctor of Muhammadan sacred law at Constantinople. The word as used here is a thinly disguised reference to the theological inquisitors of the Church of Rome.

Pasre 94* — i. I'esprit et le coeur; Voltaire ridicules here and elsewhere this phrase which is used with special frequency by Rollin (1661-1741) in his Trait/ des Etudes,

2. Derham (William), Vicar of Upminster, Essex (i 657-1 735). The reference here is explained by the following note on Derham in the Kehl edition of Voltaire : " Savant anglais, auteur de la th^ologie astronomique et de quelques autres ouvrages qui ont pour objet de prouver Dieu par le detail des merveilles de la nature; malheureusement, lui et ses pareils se trompent souvent dans Texposition de ces merveilles ; ils s*extasient sur la sagesse qui se montre dans Tordre d*un ph^nom^ne, et on decouvre que ce phenom^ne est tout different de ce qu'ils ont suppos^ ; alors c'est ce nouvel ordre qui leur parait uh chef-d'ceuvre de sagesse. Ce d^faut, commun k tons les ouvrages de ce genre les ont decr^dit^s. On salt trop d'ayance, que de quelque mani^re que les choses soient, Tauteur finira tou jours par les admirer."

Pagre 96. — i. Lulli (1633-1687). Famous Florentine musician who introduced the opera at Paris. A bitter warfare was waged between the partisans of French and of Italian music during the 1 8th century.

2. secretaire de I'Acad^mie de Saturne; Fontenelle (1657- 1757), secretary of the French academy, is meant. At the beginning of ch. II Voltaire ridicules him for the pr/ciosit/ vfith. which in his Dialogues sur la plurality des mondes he has adapted astronomy

to the taste of ladies and society people. For an impartial estimate of him see Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du Lundi^ vol. Ill, pp. 314 ff.

Pagre 99. — i. illustre habitant; the reference is to Huyghens ( 1 629-1 697), famous Dutch physicist, geometrician and astronomer.

Pagre 100.— I. le p^re Castel, learned French Jesuit (1688- 1757)* author of various mathematical works. CasteFs invention of the Clavecin des couleurs (intended to make sound visible) won for him from Voltaire the sobriquet of the Don Quixote of mathematics.

Pagre 101. — I. nouveau style, the change from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar was still recent when Voltaire wrote. A date new style is eleven days in advance of the same date old style,