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the son a severe reprimand for speaking in so brutal a manner to his father.

All the rest of the scene is in the same style :Pheres (to his son).-Thou speakest against thy father, without his having injured thee.

Admetus.-Oh! I am well aware that you wish to live as long as possible.

Pheres. And art thou not carrying to the tomb her who has died for thee?

Admetus.-Ah! most infamous of men! 'tis the proof of thy cowardice!

Pheres.-At least, thou canst not say she died for me.

Admetus.-Would to heaven that thou wert in a situation to need my assistance!

Pheres.-Thou wouldst do better to think of marrying several wives, who may die that thy life may be lengthened.

After this scene, a domestic comes and talks to himself about the arrival of Hercules.

"A stranger," says he, "opens the door of his own accord, places himself without more ado at table, is angry because he is not served quick enough, fills his cup every moment with wine, and drinks long draughts of red and of white, constantly singing or rather howling bad songs, without giving himself any concern about the king and his wife, for whom we are mourning. He is, doubtless, some cunning rogue, some vagabond, or assassin."

It seems somewhat strange that Hercules should be taken for a cunning rogue, and no less so that Hercules, the friend of Admetus, should be unknown to the household. It is still more extraordinary that Hercules should be ignorant of Alceste's death, at the very time when they were carrying her to her tomb.

Tastes must not be disputed; but such scenes as these would, assuredly, not be tolerated at one of our country fairs.

Brumoy, who has given us the Théâtre des Grecs (Greek Theatre), but has not translated Euripides with scrupulous fidelity, does all he can to justify the scene

of Admetus and his father: the argument he makes use of is rather singular.

First, he says, that "there was nothing offensive to the Greeks in these things which we regard as horrid and indecent; therefore it must be allowed that they were not exactly what we take them to have been; in short, ideas have changed." To this it may be answered, that the ideas of polished nations on the respect due from children to their fathers have never changed.

He adds, "Who can doubt that in different ages ideas have changed, relative to points of morality of still greater importance?" We answer, that there are scarcely any points of greater importance.

"A Frenchman," continues he, "is insulted; the pretended good sense of the French obliges him to run the risk of a duel, and to kill or be killed, in order to recover his honour." We answer, that it is not the pretended good sense of the French alone, but of all the nations of Europe without exception. He proceeds

"The world in general cannot be fully sensible how ridiculous this maxim will appear two thousand years hence, nor how it would have been scoffed at in the time of Euripides." This maxim is cruel and fatal, but it is not ridiculous; nor would it have been in any way scoffed at in the time of Euripides. There were many

instances of duels among the Asiatics. In the very commencement of the first book of the Iliad, we see Achilles half-unsheathing his sword and ready to fight Agamemnon, had not Minerva taken him by the hair and made him desist.

Plutarch relates that Hephaestion and Craterus were fighting a duel, but were separated by Alexander. Quintus Curtius tells us, that two other of Alexander's officers fought a duel in the presence of Alexander, one of them armed at all points, the other, who was a wrestler, supplied only with a staff; and that the latter overcame his adversary. Besides, what has duelling to do with Admetus and his father Pheres, reproaching each other by turns with having too great a love for life and with being cowards?

I shall give only this one instance of the blindness of

translators and commentators; for if Brumoy, the most impartial of all, has fallen into such errors, what are we to expect from others? I would, however, ask the Brumoys and the Daciers if they find much salt in the language which Euripides puts into the mouth of Polyphemus?" I fear not the thunder of Jupiter; I know not that Jupiter is a prouder or a stronger God than myself; I care very little about him. If he sends down rain, I shut myself up in my cavern there I eat a roasted calf or some wild animal; after which, I lie down all my length, drink off a great potful of milk, and send forth a certain noise, which is as good as his thunder."

The schoolmen cannot have very fine noses, if they are not disgusted with the noise which Polyphemus makes when he has eaten heartily.

They say that the Athenian pit laughed at this pleasantry, and that the Athenians never laughed at anything stupid. So the whole populace of Athens had more wit than the court of Louis XIV! and the populace are not the same everywhere!

Nevertheless, Euripides has beauties, and Sophocles still more; but they have much greater defects. We may venture to say, that the fine scenes of Corneille, and the affecting tragedies of Racine, are as much superior to the tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides, as these two Greeks were to Thespis.* Racine was quite sensible of his great superiority over Euripides, but he praised the Greek poet for the sake of humbling Perrault.

Molière, in his best pieces, is as superior to the pure but cold Terence, and to the buffoon Aristophanes, as to the merry-andrew Dancourt.

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.

* The Anglo-Grecian will be able to pass over these extraordi nary remarks of Voltaire, when he recollects his very similar treatment of Shakespear. As a Critic in respect to the Drama, he was uniformly nothing more than a Frenchman.-T.

VOL. I.

I

Certain Comparisons between celebrated 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 excited by that line of Corneille's, unequalled by any in Homer, in Sophocles, or in Euripides:

Que vouliez-vous qu'il fit contre trois ?-Qu'il mourut.
What could he 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 farfetched images often expressed in solecisms or 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 their names-not by the age in which they lived, but by their works themselves.

Suppose Timanthes the painter were at this day to

come and present to us, by the side of the paintings in the Palais-Royal, his picture in four colours of the Sacrifice of Iphigenia, telling us that men of judg ment in Greece had assured him that it was an admirable artifice to veil the 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-birth, the 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.

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 Gaëlic 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 commencement of Fingal. "Cuthullin sat by Tara's wall: by the tree of the

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