Voltaire's History of Charles XII King of Sweden

Voltaire's History of Charles XII King of Sweden

By Voltaire INTRODUCTION THE "Life of Charles XII" that Mr. John Burns once bought for a penny in the New Cut an incident in itself historical if one looks at it in the right way--was, he writes to say, an English version of Voltaire's book. The "Histoire de Charles XII, Roi de Suede," was first published at Rouen in 1731, first freely translated into English by Alexander Henderson in 1734, and soon afterwards reduced into a chap-book, which made the King a proverbial hero in English fairs and market places. There have been other translations since Henderson's, and it is now retranslated by Miss Todhunter with a closer correspondence than his to Voltaire's original. The book may claim a particular right to an English hearing, apart from the main interest of its subject. It was in England that the life of Charles XII was written by Voltaire, when he was on a visit of exigency there after the Rohan escapade and his second Bastille imprisonment. The effect of this stay in England was that of a determining event in his career. "Voltairism" writes Mr. John Morley, "may be said to have begun from the flight of its founder from Paris to London. This, to borrow a name from the most memorable instance of outward change marking inward revolution, was the decisive 'hegira, ' from which the philosophy of destruction in a formal shape may be held seriously to date." We may supplement this passage from the criticism of a French critic of another school, who says, "England at this time was worked by a spirit of dog matic irreligion which based itself on a false erudition, a bold criticism and an insidious metaphysic. It was the time of Woolston, of Toland, of Tindal, of Chubb, of Collins, of Bolingbroke. Until then, an insouciant disciple and imitator of the epicureans of the Temple and the rous of the Regency, Voltaire had only ventured on impiety by sallies; dogmas and mysteries had so far only Inspired him with bon mots. In the school of the English philosophers he learnt to reason out his incredulity." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Windham Press is committed to bringing the lost cultural heritage of ages past into the 21st century through high-quality reproductions of original, classic printed works at affordable prices. This book has been carefully crafted to utilize the original images of antique books rather than error-prone OCR text. This also preserves the work of the original typesetters of these classics, unknown craftsmen who laid out the text, often by hand, of each and every page you will read. Their subtle art involving judgment and interaction with the text is in many ways superior and more human than the mechanical methods utilized today, and gave each book a unique, hand-crafted feel in its text that connected the reader organically to the art of bindery and book-making. We think these benefits are worth the occasional imperfection resulting from the age of these books at the time of scanning, and their vintage feel provides a connection to the past that goes beyond the mere words of the text.