stay to argue against such a suggestion, but content ourselves with saying, that if he was insincere in his praise, he could not have been insincere in his attempts at imitation. He must have had a sincere wish to avail himself of such advantages as the study of Shakspeare could afford him, especially when, instead of assuming the false merit of originality, he did not disdain to profess himself an imitator. It will, therefore, assist us in our estimate of his real comprehension of Shakspeare, to enquire how he has acquitted himself in that capacity. It is needless to dwell on his feeble mimicry of the Ghost in Hamlet in his tragedy of Semiramis; nor is the resemblance of Zaire to Othello sufficiently marked to be of much use as an illustration. A better instance will be found in his Mort de Cesar; one of his earliest works, written when he was fresh from the study of our poet,-professedly a copy, founded on some of the same. events which form the subject of Shakspeare's Julius Cæsar and concluding with a scene, where, as in that play, Antony harangues the Roman people assembled round the body of Cæsar. That Voltaire would have imperfectly comprehended the more poetical and imaginative portions of the works of our dramatist; that the Tempest would find small favour in his sight, and that he would be little impressed with the grandeur of Macbeth, will be readily anticipated; but he appeared much better qualified to appreciate the merits of a skilful and eloquent harangue. One should have supposed that he would have penetrated into the refinements of oratorical skill which are so prodigally displayed in the address of Shakspeare's Antony; the ability with which that orator excites the passions which he affects to soothe; the art with which his pretended apologies for the conspirators are converted into the bitterest censures; and the nice gradation by which, seeming rather to follow than to lead, he adapts the increasing fervency of his expressions to the rising passions of the populace. It might have been expected that such merits would have been appreciated by Voltaire, and that his imitation would have afforded a proof, that he had not regarded them in vain. And yet, look at this picture, and at 'this' at the English Antony and the French one. In each play the orator is placed in the disadvantageous position of having to address an audience hostile to the cause he intended to advocate. Shakspeare's Antony, therefore, artfully conciliates them, by a disavowal of his intention to influence their judgments.

I come to bury Cæsar, not to praise him.'

The Antony of Voltaire, on the contrary, is made to exhibit in the outset a singular want of oratorical tact, irritating the popu

lace by proclaiming himself the advocate of Caesar, and exposing himself to their derision by attributing to them feelings ridiculously at variance with those which they really entertained. Qui de vous en effet n'eût expiré pour lui ?'

he exclaims to the very people who were expressing their satisfaction at Cæsar's death;-upon which one Roman tells him, Cesar fut un traitre;' and another adds

6

Puisqu'il étoit tyran il n'eût point de vertus,

Et nous approuvons tous Cassius et Brutus.'

An inauspicious beginning truly! But how does he proceed to conciliate these friends of Cassius and Brutus ?

Contre ses meurtriers je n'ai rien à vous dire;
C'est à servir l'état que leur grand cœur aspire ;
De votre Dictateur ils ont percé le flanc,

Comblés de ses bienfaits, ils sont teints de son sang.'

In the first line he uses an unnecessarily harsh expression, and in the fourth, taxes them with the basest ingratitude. But the weakness of this passage will be most evident if we compare it with what is said by the Antony of Shakspeare—

Good friends-sweet friends-let me not stir you up
To such a sudden flood of mutiny.

They, that have done this deed, are honourable.
What private griefs they have, alas! I know not,
That made them do it. They are wise and honourable,
And will, no doubt, with reasons answer you.'

Without dwelling on the artful assumption of moderation, let us remark how, by one dexterous insinuation, the conduct of the conspirators is deprived of the only attribute which entitled it to the approbation of the public; and a deed which could seem excusable only when its object was patriotic, is made to spring from resentment for private injuries. Voltaire's Antony pursues a very different course. In the midst of his display of impotent anger against the conspirators, he studiously brings forward to notice their patriotic disregard of private ties, and, with strange impolicy, grounds his accusation upon those very points in their couduct which would most endear them to the people he was addressing. On the good taste and historical propriety of making Brutus the son of Caesar, we will not comment; but it seems never to have occurred to Voltaire, that among the Romans, taught to admire the unnatural sacrifice of the elder Brutus, the relationship which he has imagined, instead of exciting feelings of horror and disgust, would probably have tended only to enhance the patriotism of Marcus Brutus in their estimation. If Voltaire is blameable for what he has inserted, he is equally so

for what he has omitted. We search in vain for any counterpart to Shakspeare's introduction of the mantle'-the allusion to the time when Cæsar first wore it-the summer evening in his tent-the day which was signalized by one of his most celebrated victories-the vivid picture of his assassination-the face muffled in his robe-the fall at the foot of the statue of his great rival. All these striking touches are omitted; and after a good deal of vapid declamation, which seems to produce an effect upon the audience surprisingly incommensurate with its real efficiency, he makes the able and politic Antony conclude with the following piece of incendiary rant :—

Il demande vengeance;

Il l'attend de vos mains et de votre vaillance.
Entendez vous sa voix? Réveillez vous, Komains;
Marchez, suivez moi tous contre ses assassins;
Ce sont là les honneurs qu'à Cesar on doit rendre,
Des brandons du bûcher qui va le mettre en cendre.
Embrasons les palais de ces fiers conjurés!
Enfonçons dans leur sein nos bras désespérés.
Venez, dignes amis; venez, vengeurs des crimes,
Au Dieu de la patrie immoler ces victimes.'

Such is the harangue which Algarotti calls le modele de l'élo'quence la plus séduisante,' after having complimented its author on having made the same judicious use of our barbarous poet, as Virgil of the works of Ennius! These commendations seem merely ridiculous when we turn from the French to the English oration, the latter combining the best requisites of popular eloquence, the former like the inflated declamation of a schoolboy.

Such was the success of Voltaire's solitary attempt at a close imitation of Shakspeare; and such was his inferiority in propriety, in delicacy, in correctness of delineation, and in the refinements of rhetorical skill, to the man whom he was not ashamed to designate as a drunken savage. We think it is tolerably apparent that it is not, as has been said, to Voltaire that what is now called the romantic portion of the French tragic drama is indebted for any very powerful impulse. All that he did was to direct the attention of his countrymen to English literature, and excite curiosity by informing them that it was, in some respects, worthy to be imitated even by him. The route, thus opened, was soon trodden by other feet. A translation of Shakspeare by Le Tourneur enabled the French, though under the disadvantages of a process by which compressed and animated poetry was beaten out into weak and redundant prose, to form some judgment of the merits of the English poet; and a candidate for such honour as might be gained by a skilful adaptation of foreign

Ducis seems to

beauties, appeared in the person of Ducis. have been a writer of more ambition than talent, desirous of novelty, less from any real originality of mind, than because he saw in it the means of acquiring a distinction which he had not sufficient ability to have earned in the beaten tracks of literature. Considering that he was a successful innovator, we are surprised to find that his works afford so few indications of talent. We discover in them as frequent instances of weak and frigid commonplace, as the most ultra of the Classiques could exhibit;-and when we find a recurrence of all the principal faults of that school, we are at a loss to know what defects he could have succeeded in removing. His slight infringements on the Unities hardly amount to an emancipation from their thraldom. His plays are not more interesting than many of the productions of his more rigid predecessors, and he has scarcely indulged in a greater latitude of action. The only improvement respecting which he seems to have been solicitous was, the introduction of incidents more deeply tragic than had hitherto been tolerated on the French stage; and even this easy task is executed with a timidity which shows that he was not a little alarmed at his own boldness. He was not, in the true sense of the word, a poet;-and though the reasoning faculty is not very prominently exerted in his works, it is at least more conspicuous than his imagination. There was occasionally a good deal of animation and energy in his style, and now and then a burst of something like eloquence; and he expressed strong passions forcibly, though he did not depict with much skill their more delicate movements. Passions seem to have occupied his attention more than characters, in the developement of which he was but moderately successful. His imitations of Shakspeare consisted of six plays-Hamlet, Romeo et Juliette, Le Roi Lear, Macbeth, Jean Sans-Terre, and Ottello, which appeared in the order in which they are mentioned, the first in 1769, the last in 1792. In proposing Shakspeare as an object of imitation, Ducis does not appear to have taken an enlarged view of his model. He might be supposed to have been acquainted only with partial extracts, and never to have attended to the conduct of an entire play. There is no appearance of an attempt to transfuse into his copy the more essential characteristics of the original. He did scarcely more than select a few striking scenes, which he surrounded with such a framework as would best accord with the peculiarities of French taste. Circumstances

which gave to them a spirit and a value in the original, were frequently disregarded; and the plot was unmercifully altered for the sake of conforming to the tyranny of the Unities.

His system will, perhaps, be best illustrated by a glance at the transformation to which he has subjected Macbeth. The play opens with the meeting of Duncan and Glamis, premier prince 'du sang,' in a forest, where, after a long discourse on the rebellion of Cawdor, which Macbeth was then engaged in quelling, and Duncan's presentiments of approaching misfortune in consequence of the ominous re-appearance of Iphyctone and the weird sisters,' they are joined by an old man (Sévar), a peasant, to whom Duncan had intrusted his son Malcolm, (kept in ignorance of his origin, and supposed by the nation to be dead,) for the double purpose of saving him from Cawdor, and qualifying him for the high station he was destined to fill. Duncan enquires into the results of this education; and then follow, in the shape of an eulogium on the Prince, sundry reiterations of those exploded praises of primitive simplicity, and the virtues of uncultivated life, which had then been rendered fashionable in France by Rousseau, and were promulgated here, but with less talent and success, by Day. At the end of this homily, on 'entend un gémissement douloureux'-and they separate in great alarm: And such is the business of the first act. In the second, (where the scene changes to Macbeth's castle,) we find Frédégonde (Lady Macbeth) relating to some peasants the successes of her husband, who had defeated Cawdor. Macbeth enters; he is left alone with Frédégonde, to whom he relates his meeting with the witches:

• Près d'un chêne enflammé devant moi se présentent
Trois femmes. Quel aspect! non, l'œil humain jamais
Ne vit d'air plus affreux, de plus difformes traits.
Leur front sauvage et dur, flétri par la vieillesse,
Exprimait par dégrés leur féroce alégresse.

Par des mots inconnus, ces êtres monstrueux
S'appelaient tour-a-tour, s'applaudissaient entre eux,
S'approchaient, me montraient avec un ris farouche;
Leur doigt mystérieux se posait sur leur bouche.
Je leur parle, et dans l'ombre ils s'échappent soudain,
L'un avec un poignard, l'autre un sceptre à la main;
L'autre d'un long serpent serrait le corps livide:
Tous trois vers ce palais ont pris un vol rapide;
Et tous trois dans les airs, en fuyant loin de moi,
M'ont laissé pour adieux ces mots : « Tu seras roi."

Duncan's intended visit is then announced, and he soon enters, attended by Glamis. In the next act it is night-Macbeth and Frédégonde occupy the scene; the latter is inciting her husband to murder Duncan. In the course of the scene, it appears