pides, but he praised the Greek poet for the sake of humbling Perrault. Moliére, in his best pieces, is as superior to the pure but cold Terence, and to the buffoon Aristophanes, as to the merryandrew Dancourt. rhetorical pleadings, fitter for provincial schools than for a tragedy. The same person will discover weakness and uniformity in some of Racine's characters; and in others, gallantry and sometimes even coquetry; he will find declarations of love breathing more of the idyl and the elegy, than of a great dramatic passion; and will complain that more than one well-written piece has elegance to please, but not eloquence to move him. Just so will he judge of the ancients; not by Certain Comparisons between Celebrated their names-not by the age in which Thus there are things in which the moderns are superior to the ancients; and others, though very few, in which we are their inferiors. The whole of the dispute reduces itself to this fact. Works. Both taste and reason seem to require that we should, in an ancient as well as in a modern, discriminate between the good and the bad, which are often to be found in contact with each other. The warmest admiration must be ex cited by that line of Corneille's, unequalled by any in Homer, in Sophocles, or in Euripides : Que vouliéz-vous qu'il fit contre trois.-Qu'il mourut. What could be do against three weapons.-Die. And, with equal justice, the line which follows will be condemned. The man of taste, while he admires the sublime picture, the striking contrasts of character, and strong colouring in the last scene of Rodogyne, will perceive how many faults, how many improbabilities, have prepared the way for this terrible situation how much Rodogyne has belied her character, and by what crooked ways it is necessary to pass to this great and tragical catastrophe. The same equitable judge will not fail to do justice to the fine and artful contexture of Racine's tragedies, the only ones, perhaps, which have been well wrought from the time of Eschylus down to the age of Louis XIV. He will be touched by that continued elegance, that purity of language, that truth of character, to be found in him alone; by that grandeur without bombast, that fidelity to nature which never wanders in vain declamations, sophistical disputes, false and far-fetched images, often expressed in solecisms or they lived-but by their works themselves. this day to come and present to us, by Suppose Timanthes the painter were at the side of the paintings in the Palais Royal, his picture in four colours of the Sacrifice of Iphigenia, telling us that men that it was an admirable artifice to veil the of judgment in Greece had assured him face of Agamemnon, lest his grief should appear to equal that of Clytemnestra, and the tears of the father dishonour the majesty of the monarch. He would find connoisseurs who would reply-it is a stroke of ingenuity, but not of painting; a veil on the head of your principal personage has a frightful effect; your art has failed you. Behold the master-piece of Rubens, who has succeeded in expressing, in the countenance of Mary of Medicis, the pain attendant on child-birththe joy, the smile, the tenderness-not with four colours, but with every tint of nature. If you wished that Agamemnon should partly conceal his face, you should have made him hide a portion of it by placing his hands over his eyes and forehead; and not with a veil, which is as disagreeable to the eye, and as unpicturesque, as it is contrary to all costume. You should then have shown some falling tears which the hero would conceal, and have expressed in his muscles the convulsions of a grief which he struggles to suppress you should have painted in this attitude majesty and despair. You are a Greek, and Rubens is a Belgian; but the Belgian bears away the palm. On a Passage in Homer. the Highest gave his voice, hailstones and. coals of fire." "In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun. Which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber." : A Florentine, a man of letters, of clear understanding and cultivated taste, was one day in Lord Chesterfield's library, together with an Oxford professor, and a Scotsman, who was boasting of the poem of Fingal, composed, said he, in the Gaelic tongue, which is still partly that of Lower Brittany. "Ah!" exclaimed he, "how fine is antiquity!" the poem of Fingal has passed from mouth to mouth for nearly two thousand years, down to us, without any alteration. Such power has real beauty over the minds of men! He then read to the company the com-fore your pots can feel the thorns, he shall mencement of Fingal :take them away as in a whirlwind, both living, and in his wrath." "Cuthullin sat by Tara's wall: by the tree of the rustling sound. His spear leaned against a rock. His shield lay on the grass, by his side. Amid his thoughts of mighty Carbar, a hero slain by the chief in war, the scout of ocean comes, Moran, the son of Fithil! "Arise," says the youth, "Cuthullin, arise! I see the ships of the north! many, chief of men, are the foe; many the heroes of the sea-born Swaran!" "Moran," replied the blue-eyed chief, "thou ever tremblest, son of Fithil! thy fears have increased the foe. It is Fingal, king of desarts, with aid to green Erin of streams." "I beheld their chief," says Moran, " tall as a glittering rock. His spear is a blasted Line. His shield the rising moon! He sat on the shore, like a cloud of mist on the silent hill !" &c. "That," said the Oxford professor, "is the true style of Homer; but what pleases me still more is, that I find in it the sublime eloquence of the Hebrews. I could fancy myself to be reading passages such as these from those fine canticles "Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel." "Break their teeth in their mouth, O God; break the great teeth of the young lions, O Lord. Let them pass away, as waters that run continually when he bendeth his bow to shoot his arrows, let them be as cut in pieces. As a snail which melteth, let every one of them pass away; like the untimely birth of a woman, that they may not see the sun. 66 Be They return at evening; they make a noise like a dog. But thou, O Lord, shalt laugh at them; thou shalt have all the heathen derision. Consume them in wrath; consume them that they may not be." "The hill of God is as the hill of Bashan, a high hill as the hill of Bashan. Why leap ye, ye high hills? The Lord said, I will bring again from Bashan I will bring up my people again from the depths of the sea: That thy feet may be dipped in the blood of thine enemies, and the tongue of thy dogs in the same." Open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it." 66 "O my God, make them like a wheel; as the stubble before the wind. As the fire burneth the wood, and as the flame setteth the mountains on fire; so persecute them with thy tempest, and make them afraid with thy storm." "He shall judge among the heathen; he shall fill the places with dead bodies; he shall wound the heads over many countries." 66 Happy shall he be that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones," "Thou hast broken the teeth of the &c. &c. &c. ungodly." "Then the earth shook and trembled; the foundation also of the hills moved and were shaken, because he was wroth. The Lord also thundered in the heavens; and The Florentine, having listened with great attention to the verses of the canticles recited by the doctor, as well as to the first lines of Fingal bellowed forth by the Scotsman, confessed that he was not -greatly moved by all these Eastern figures, and that he liked the noble simplicity of Virgil's style much better. At these words the Scotsman turned pale with wrath, the Oxonian shrugged his shoulders with pity, but Lord Chesterfield encouraged the Florentine by a smile of approbation. tal charger before which the proudest coursers of Limousin flee, as the bleating sheep and the tender lambs crowd into the fold at the sight of a terrible wolf issuing from the forest with fiery eyes, with hair erect, and foaming mouth, theatening the flock and the shepherd with the fury of his murderous jaws. "Martin, the famed protector of them who dwell in fruitful Touraine, Genevieve, the mild divinity of them who drink the waters of the Seine and the Marne, Denis, who bore his head under his arm in the sight of man and of immortals, trembled as they saw George proudly traversing the vast fields of air. On his head was a golden helmet, glittering with dia The Florentine becoming warm, and finding himself supported, said to them, "Gentlemen, nothing is more easy than to do violence to nature; nothing more difficult than to imitate her. I know something of those whom we in Italy call improvisatori; and I could speak in this Oriental style for eight hours together, without the least effort; for it requires none to be bombastic in negligent verse,monds that once paved the squares of overloaded with epithets almost continually repeated, to heap combat upon combat, and to describe chimeras." the heavenly Jerusalem, when it appeared to mortals during forty diurnal revolutions of the great Luminary and his inconstant sister, who with her mild radiance enlightens the darkness of night. "What!" said the Professor, " you make an epic poem impromptu!" "Not a rational epic poem in correct verse, like "In his hand is the terrible and saVirgil," replied the Italian, "but a poem cred lance with which, in the first days or in which I would abandon myself to the the world, the demi-god Michael, who current of my ideas, and not take the trou-executes the vengeance of the Most High, ble to arrange them." "I defy you to do it," said the Scotsman and the Oxford graduate at once. "Well," returned the Florentine, "give me a subject." Lord Chesterfield gave him as a subject the Black Prince, the conqueror of Poictiers, granting peace after the victory. overthrew the eternal enemy of the world and the Creator. The most beautiful of the plumage of the angels that stand about the throne, plucked from their immortal backs, waved over his casque; and around it hovered Terror, destroying War, unpitying Revenge, and Death the terminator of man's calamities. He came The Italian collected himself, and thus like a comet in its rapid course, darting beganthrough the orbits of the wondering pla"Muse of Albion, Genius that presid-nets, and leaving far behind its rays, pale est over heroes, come sing with me-not and terrible, announcing to weak mortals the idle rage of men implacable alike to the fall of kings and nations. friends and foes-not the deeds of heroes whom the Gods have favoured in turn, without any reason for so favouring them -not the siege of a town which is not taken-not the extravagant exploits of the fabulous Fingal, but the real victories of a hero modest as brave, who led kings{ captive, and respected his vanquished enemies. "George, the Mars of England, had descended from on high, on that immor "He alighted on the banks of the Cha{rente, and the sound of his immortal arms was echoed from the spheres of Jupiter and Saturn. Two strides brought him to the spot where the son of the magnanimous Edward waited for the son of the intrepid de Valois," &c. The Florentine continued in this strain for more than a quarter of an hour. The words fell from his lips, as Homer says, more thickly and abundantly than the snows descend in winter: but his words were not cold; they were rather like the rapid sparks escaping from the furnace, when the Cyclops forge the bolts of Jove on resounding anvil. His two antagonists were at last obliged to silence him, by acknowledging that it was easier than they had thought it was to string together gigantic images, and call in the aid of heaven, earth, and hell; but they maintained that to unite the tender and moving with the sublime, was the perfection of the art. "For example," said the Oxonian, can anything be more moral, and at the same time more voluptuous, than to see Jupiter reposing with his wife on Mount Ida?" His lordship then spoke-"Gentlemen," said he, "I ask your pardon for meddling in the dispute. Perhaps to the Greeks there was something very interesting in a God's lying with his wife upon a mountain; for my own part, I see nothing in it very refined or very attractive. I will agree with you that the handkerchief, which commentators and imitators have been pleased to call the girdle of Venus, is a charming figure; but I never understood that it was a soporific, nor how Juno could receive the caresses of the Master of the Gods for the purpose of putting him to sleep. A queer God, truly, to fall asleep so soon! I can swear that, when I was young, I was not so drowsy. It may, for aught I know, be noble, pleasing, interesting, witty, and decorous, to make Juno say to Jupiter, 'If you are determined to embrace me, let us go to your apartment in heaven, which is the work of Vulcan, and the door of which closes so well that none of the gods can enter.' 'I am equally at a loss to understand how the God of Sleep, whom Juno prays to close the eyes of Jupiter, can be so brisk a divinity. He arrives in a moment from the isles of Lemnos and Imbros;there is something fine in coming from two islands at once He then mounts a pine, and is instantly among the Greek Ir Suetonius could be confronted with the valets-de-chambre of the twelve Cæsars, think you that they would in every instance corroborate his testimony? And in case of dispute, who would not back the valets-de-chambre against the historian? l our own times, how many books are founded on nothing more than the talk of the town!-just as the science of physics was founded on chimeras which have been repeated from age to age to the present time. Those who take the trouble of noting down at night what they have heard in the day, should, like St. Augustin, write a book of retractations at the end of the year. Some one related to the grand-audiencier L'Etoile, that Henry IV. hunting near Creteil, went alone into an inn, where some Parisian lawyers were dining in an upper room. The king, without making himself known, sent the hostess to ask them if they would admit him at their table, or sell him a part of their dinner. They sent him for answer that they had private business to talk of, and had but a short dinner; they therefore begged that the stranger would excuse them Henry called his guards, and had the guests outrageously beaten, to teach them, says L'Etoile, to show more courtesy to gentlemen. the character of Henry IV. have been dishonoured by so impertinent an anecdote. In a book, entitled Anecdotes Littéraires, printed by Durand in 1752, avec privilège, there appears the following passage, (vol. 3, page 183.) "The Amours of Louis XIV. having been dramatised in England, that prince wished to have those of King William performed in France. The Abbé Brueys was directed by M. de Torcy to compose the piece; but though applauded, it was never Some authors of the present day, who have taken upon them to write the life of Henry VI., copy this anecdote from L'Etoile without examination, and, which is worse, fail not to praise it as a fine ac-played, for the subject of it died in the tion in Henry. mean time." The thing is, however, neither true nor likely; and were it true, Henry would have been guilty of an act at once the most ridiculous, the most cowardly, the most tyrannical, and the most imprudent. First, it is not likely that, in 1502, Henry IV. whose physiognomy was so remarkable, and who showed himself to every body with so much affability, was unknown at Creteil near Paris. Secondly, L'Etoile, far from verifying his impertinent story, says he had it from a man who had it from M. de Vitri; so that it is nothing more than an idle ru mour. Thirdly, it would have been very cowardly, and very hateful, to inflict a shameful punishment on citizens, assembled together on business, who certainly committed no crime in refusing to share their dinner with a stranger (and, it must be allowed, with an indiscreet one) who could easily find something to eat in the same house. Fourthly, this action, so tyrannical, so unworthy not only of a king, but of a man, so liable to punishment by the laws of every country, would have been as imprudent as ridiculous and criminal; it would have drawn upon Henry IV. the execrations of the whole commonality of Paris, whose good opinion was then of so much importance to him. History, then, should not have been disfigured by so stupid a story, nor should { There are almost as many absurd lies as there are words in these few lines. The Amours of Louis XIV. were never played on the London stage. Louis XIV. never lowered himself so far as to order a farce to be written on the amours of King William. King William never had a mistress; no one accused him of weakness of that sort. The Marquis de Torcy never spoke to the Abbé Brueys; he was incapable of making to the Abbé, or any one else, so indiscreet and childish a proposal. The Abbé Brueys never wrote the piece in question. So much for the faith to be placed in anecdotes. The same book says, that "Louis XIV. was so much pleased with the opera of Isis, that he ordered a decree to be passed in council, by which men of rank were permitted to sing at the opera, and receive a salary for so doing, without demeaning themselves. This decree was registered in the Parliament of Paris." It is No such declaration was ever registered in the Parliament of Paris. true that Lulli obtained in 1672, long before the opera of Isis was performed, letters permitting him to establish his opera, in which letters he got it inserted that, "ladies and gentlemen might sing in this theatre without degradation." But no declaration was ever registered. Of all the anas, that which deserves to stand foremost in the ranks of printed falsehood is the Segraisiana : it was compiled by the amanuensis of Segrais, one |