CRITICAL ESSAYS. ESSAY on TRAGEDY.* Addressed to Henry St. John, Lord Viscount Bolingbroke. I HOUGH I dedicate to an Englishman a play represented at Paris, it is not, my lord, that there are wanting in France men of great merit, and excellent judges, to whom I might have paid that homage. But, you know, the tragedy of Brutus was begun in England: you remember when I was retired to Wandfworth at my good friend, Sir Everard Falkener's, that worthy and virtuous patriot, I applied myself to write, in English profe, the first act of this play, pretty much in the fame manner as it now stands in Prefixed to his Tragedy of Brutus, There is an English Brutus by an author named Lee; but it is a perfornmance unknown, and never reprefented in London. Voltaire. A the French verfe. I spoke to you of it sometimes, and we were both furprized that no English writer had handled this subject, which is so extremely well adapted to your theatre. You emboldened me to continue a fubje&t so susceptible of great fentiments. Give me leave then, my lord, to offer you Brutus, though wrote in a foreign tongue, docte fermones utrifque linguæ, to you who could give me inftructions in the French as well as in the English; to you, who, at least, might teach me to add to my native language that energy and force which a noble liberty of thinking infpires: for the vigorous fentiments of the foul pafs always to the tongue; a ftrength of mind always commands a ftrength of expreffion. I must own that at my return from England, where I spent a couple of years in a continual ftudy of your language, I found myself at a lofs, when I attempted to write a French tragedy. I was almost accustomed to think in English. I perceived that the French terms did not offer themselves to my imagination in the fame abundance they formerly did. It was a rivulet whofe fource had been diverted another way: both time and pains were neceffary to bring it back to its former channel. I became fenfible that, to fucceed in an art, we muft cultivate it our whole life. What terrified me most, was the great Arictness of our poetry and the flavery of rhime. I regretted that liberty you possess of writing your tragedies in blank verfe, of lengthening, or of shortening almost all your words at plea fure, of throwing one line into another, and of creating new terms at will, which are always adopted by the nation when their neceffity is obvious, their fenfe eafily understood, and their found harmonious *. An English poet, I used to fay, is a free man, who fubjects his language to his genius; the Frenchman is a conftant flave to rhime, often obliged to write four verfes to convey a thought, which in English can be expreffed in one. An Englishman fays what he will fay, but a Frenchman, only what he ean. The one runs on boldly in a vast career; the other, loaded with chains, fteps on flowly in a flippery narrow path. - Notwithstanding these reflections and complaints, we fhall never be able to free ourselves From the yoke of rhime. It is effential to French Poetry. Our language does not admit of tranfpofitions, our verfe does not allow of lines run ing into each other, our fyllables are incapable of causing any sensible harmony by long or short It must be remarked that in France the admittance of new words finds much more difficulty Than the naturalization of a foreign fubject. One remarkable inftance I remember, which is the word Profateur, profe-writer. The famous Menage, who wrote fo much and fo well on the French language, and of its origin, was very fond of Profateur, and laboured forty years, it is faid, among his brethren of the French academy to introduce this really-useful term; but without fuccefs. The writers of that nation are fince grown a little lefs difficult, and among others, this word has gained admittance. measures. Our hemistics and a stated number of feet are not alone fufficient to diftinguish profe from verfe, and therefore the addition of rhime is abfolutely neceffary in French poetry. Befides, fo many great writers, who have made ufe of rhime, fuch as the Corneilles, Ra cines, and Boileaus, have so accustomed our ears to that kind of harmony, that we can endure no other; and I must repeat it, whoever attempts to get rid of a burden which was borne by the great Corneille, will be, with juftice, looked upon, not as an enterprizing genius, who opens out to himself a new road, but as a very weak man unable to fupport himsef in the antient track. It has been attempted to give us tragedies in profe; but I do not fuppofe that this undertaking will ever fucceed. They who have more will not be easily satisfied with less. He that diminishes the public's pleasure, will be always ill received by them. If, among the pictures of Rubens or of Paul Veronefe, any body placed his own defigns in crayon, would he not be in the wrong to put himself in competition with these painters? We are accustomed at feasts to fing and dance; would it be enough merely to walk and fpeak, because it would be cafier and more natural? It is probable that verfe will be every where found necessary in the tragic fcene, and rhime * In French verfe, there is, generally, a paufe about the middle of every line, which is called Céfure, and each half-line is diftinct from the other, and called Hémiftiche. always in our's. It is even to this constraint of rhime, and to the extreme feverity of our verfification, that we are indebted for the excellent performances we poffefs in our language. We infift that rhime fhould not be at the expence of thought; it must be neither trivial nor far fetched. We require the fame purity and exactness in our poetry as in our profe. We do not fuffer the leaft licenfe. An author must never discontinue to wear his chains, and he yet must always appear as if free from them. acknowlege for poets, only fuch as have fulfilled all these conditions. We On this account it is easier to make an hundred verfes in any other languages than four in French. The example of our abbe Regnier Delmarais of the French academy, and of the academy della crufca, is an evident proof of this affertion. He tranflated Anacreon into Italian verfe, with fuccefs; and yet his French poetry, excepting a few ftanzas, is extremely indifferent. Our Menage was just in the fame cafe. How many of our ingenious countrymen have wrote excellent latin verfe; whofe French poetry is not even tolerable! es I know how many disputes I have had about our versification, in England, and the reproachmade me by the learned bishop of Rochefter on this puerile conftraint, which, he pretends, we impofe on ourselves without any colour of neceffity. But be affured, my lord, that the more a foreigner is acquainted with our lan * * Dr. Atterbury. |